Iax's calculus

Breaking through the hull and returning to the ship in something resembling a Boarding Action was a last resort.

But finding a suitable Landing Port, entering through it, and then making their way to the Bridge would probably take too long.

They had not prepared a teleport beacon in advance. Attempting a hasty solo blind jump would likely embed them directly in the hull. That would be no different from suicide.

Even through their helmets, Iax could sense the Black Templars' anxiety.

They had already seen the synchronized data.

There were at least thirty Iron Warriors aboard, along with several hundred Mortal Rebels and some heavy weapons.

The Black Templars hitching a ride numbered only twelve in total.

This was a squad, not a Squadron.

Facing nearly three times their number in enemies of equal caliber, the Black Templars still had no intention of backing down.

After all, winning against such odds was a glory in itself.

As for defeat...

If they failed, all of the Emperor's angels would fall.

In a battle like this, retreat was not an option.

To seize an Imperial Battleship right before their eyes while they still lived—that was an insult!

"Brothers! Today is our day of glory! As Sons of Dorn, show no pity! No remorse! No fear!"

"No pity! No remorse! No fear!"

"For the Emperor! For our Gene-Father! Honor the glory of the Sons of Dorn!"

Sien led his Battle-Brothers in their war cries, their voices brimming with resolve and fanaticism.

For a moment, the atmosphere even left Iax silent.

He watched as every one of them began carefully checking his equipment, preparing for the grueling battle ahead.

Iax hesitated, then spoke anyway.

"Uh, while I can understand your high spirits, and you've clearly made your 'glorious' decision, still..."

Before Iax could finish, Sien turned to look at him, standing in the center of the passenger compartment like a mechanical sculpture.

"What are you trying to say, Machine Intelligence Iax?"

Iax swiveled his mechanical head, then lowered it to look at Sien.

"I don't think it needs to be that complicated. Just tell me the approximate internal layout and location, and I'll jump into your warship. You won't need to breach the hull or fight a drawn-out battle. If the enemy is only roughly on your level, I think the fighting might be over by the time you find a Landing Port and get there."

Iax's words brought the atmosphere to a standstill.

But Sien quickly recovered.

"Let an ancient machine intelligence of uncertain allegiance and intent board an Imperial battleship on its own, without supervision? And have it take part in a complicated internal defensive action?"

"Iax, although you defeated me in our Duel, that doesn't mean you can disregard our will to fight! If you entertain any more ideas like that, we would rather all perish out here in space than let an unstable element like you into the Imperium."

Sien immediately rejected Iax's proposal. No Astartes would trust an Ancient Construct, especially one with clearly independent intelligence that he could not even defeat.

Who would trust a mechanical being apart from those obsessed Adeptus Mechanicus fanatics who regarded such entities as blessings from the Omnissiah?

What Sien did not know, however, was that Vashul did not trust Iax either. He simply had no way to deal with him.

After all, that enormous Shatterer Cannon had been aimed at the Hive City just moments earlier. Vashul did not dare gamble on whether a fully charged Fragmentation Cannon could destroy the entire Hive City in a single shot.

Iax did not take Sien's refusal to heart. These biosynthetic warriors, clearly stronger than "ordinary humans," evidently possessed higher authorization levels.

Keeping these seemingly fragile warriors alive might help him discover what had happened in the past.

"Sien, we're almost in position. The synchronized warship data shows that the enemy is less than five hundred meters from the Bridge."

"I've already had the Astra Militarum evacuate a corridor along the side. The Thunderhawk isn't carrying armor-piercing melta weapons. Perhaps I can try blasting a hole in the hull with the Battle Cannon."

Pop!

Before the Battle-Brother at the controls finished speaking, Iax vanished from the compartment with a soft sound.

Watching Iax suddenly disappear, Sien felt both his hearts clench.

“Hurry! Breach the hull and get inside immediately! Damn it, the Machine Intelligence must have made a Warp jump on its own. Let's hope nothing goes disastrously wrong. If that thing starts slaughtering everyone aboard, we'll all be guilty!”

Sien roared urgently. The Battle-Brother piloting the craft hurriedly brought its weapons to bear and began bombarding the thick hull, trying to blast a large enough opening.

Iax did not know the internal layout of an Imperial Oberon-class Battleship. Although the Dark Templar at the controls had just said that a corridor had been cleared, Iax did not know where that corridor was, so jumping directly into the ship was impossible.

Jumping directly into space, however, posed no problem.

As Iax floated in space, the vast form of the Oberon-class Battleship filled his vision.

“Hmm, it's quite big. Let's see where the Bridge Structure is.”

A scanning beam quickly swept across the nearby sections of the hull.

A compartment with numerous observation windows and a multitude of control consoles inside appeared in the scan results.

The vaguely familiar layout left Iax puzzled.

"Tens of thousands of years have passed, and the cockpit design is still this old-fashioned. And why are there so many more manual consoles? Is there no intelligent control assistance?"

In his database, only ships designed exclusively for the Creator used cockpit layouts like this, but even those had far fewer consoles. An ordinary exploration vessel did not have this many disorganized manual control units; most of its systems still relied on intelligent assisted control.

That was to say nothing of the warships of the Men of Iron's fleets. Most of those did not even have cockpits.

But now that he had found the cockpit, the rest would be simple.

The light of a Short-Range Jump flared once more. Iax appeared directly on the Oberon-class's Bridge.

"What?! What is that? A xenos incursion?"

The captain immediately spotted Iax, who had suddenly appeared in the cockpit.

Just as everyone swung their weapons away from the compartment doors to aim at Iax, Sien's transmission reached the cockpit in time.

“Captain, keep your people under control. Whatever you do, don't fire on or provoke the strange mechanical being that just appeared. It's an Ancient Construct discovered by the Adeptus Mechanicus down below. As long as it doesn't attack, do not attack it first.”

Sien hurriedly finished speaking, then glanced at the Communications Screen while the Thunderhawk attacked the hull. He immediately spotted Iax in the cockpit.