Several days later.
The Law of Faith, an immense Gloriana-class Battleship, hung motionless in synchronous orbit above a resource-rich planet that had yet to be fully developed.
Massive energy-transfer conduits stretched like pythons between the warship and the orbital supply station, pumping endless streams of resources, equipment, fuel, and supplies into the steel leviathan.
Outside the warship, engineering barges and small maintenance craft darted to and fro like worker bees, performing routine inspections and replacing armor plates.
Everything proceeded in perfect order, following replenishment procedures of the highest standard.
Yet beyond this busy, orderly scene, in a peripheral blind spot of the warship's Sensors coverage, an uninvited guest approached silently beneath the natural background noise generated by the planetary magnetic field and stellar radiation.
It was a small vessel.
So small that it was a speck of dust beside the Law of Faith.
Its shape was eerily streamlined, its surface covered in a nonreflective coating that absorbed and deflected most scanning wavelengths. Its engine trail was almost nonexistent, and its propulsion operated on principles entirely unlike those of the Imperium or any known xenos civilization.
Like a slippery deep-sea hagfish, it precisely evaded every active radar array, long-range auspex, gravitational fluctuation detector, and passive optical watchpost on the warship's outer hull. Following an impossibly intricate "gap" formed by natural interference and the intervals between scanning sectors, it silently approached a relatively flat armor belt on the underside of the Law of Faith, where the defenses were no less formidable.
Then, as though merging with the warship's shadow, the small vessel came to a halt, maintaining a perilous distance of mere millimeters from the magnificent hull.
Next, a blurred figure with constantly shifting contours "seeped" out of the small vessel's sealed cabin.
It opened no hatch, instead passing straight through the