The black light faded. The region that had once twisted reality and concentrated destruction settled into stillness after one final tremor. The disturbances raised by the terrifying power of the Warp slowly subsided, revealing an empty, cold Sea of Stars.
Gungnir's outline reappeared among the stars. Its immense hull still floated in orbit, but its core had lost the will that had coalesced within it.
Countless energy conduits ceased functioning. The charging arrays' indicators glowed a uniform dark red, and the Warp armor on its surface had turned a scorched gray.
It could still float and maintain its basic structural integrity, but it could no longer aim, gather power, or destroy any world.
Hundreds of millions of Imperial men and women had perished in the bitterly cold Sea of Stars. At the cost of their lives, Gungnir had been disabled.
Their names would never be carved on any monument. Their families would never receive intact remains. Their ships had not even left wreckage behind.
But their sacrifice was embedded in reality, in that fading darkness, in every conduit aboard Gungnir that had ceased functioning.
They had changed fate with their lives.
In the Command Room, Utio watched the last black waveform dissipate on the screen.
He felt no anger, no frustration, and did not even sigh.
His mechanical tentacles stopped working, and his red lenses swept steadily over the collapsed energy curves.
"A change outside the data," Utio said coldly.
He did not say "failure," or "impossible," much less "how dare they."
He merely confirmed a fact: something on the battlefield that his model had not included in its calculations had changed.
For now, he could not quantify what that something was.
But since it had happened, it was worth recording.
"Transmit all data stored aboard Gungnir, along with its