Unexpected visitors

The bizarre scenery around the ship gradually faded, and a Warp rift resembling the Cicatrix Maledictum opened.

With its Gellar Field flickering around its hull, the battleship Resolute plunged into realspace.

"The Charis Sector? Is this... Prye?"

Beyond the viewport lay a nearby gas giant and a Space Station bustling with traffic in orbit.

The Captain, who had served in the Segmentum Obscurus for decades, recognized his ship's location at a glance.

"Have we traveled that far?"

The Navigator beside him looked equally bewildered.

Distance and time were distorted in the Warp. They did not correspond to distances in realspace, but there were usually certain patterns.

The Captain glanced at the voyage recorder. Only a few hours had indeed passed.

By all rights, they should have needed much longer to reach this place.

Yet it was as though the Warp had shoved them straight to their destination.

He had no idea what fresh absurdity this twisted universe had produced, but now that they had returned to realspace, there was no need to worry so much.

The rift through which they had traveled had already closed, and a comparison with the surrounding star charts confirmed that this was their destination.

None of it was an illusion.

Since they had arrived early, the Captain ordered the battleship to hold position and wait.

Provided nothing went wrong, a Lunar-class Cruiser carrying an Inquisitor and members of the Adeptus Mechanicus would arrive in a few hours.

As for what happened afterward, he could not be bothered.

Although this region was already some distance from the Great Rift—the Cicatrix Maledictum—it was still not all that far away.

The entire Segmentum Obscurus seethed with violent chaos under the influence of that terrifying eye of the Warp.

It was only because his ship was an Oberon-class that he dared remain here. A Victory-class or any other Battleship would probably have needed to assemble a fleet first.

Compared with other conventional Battleships, the Oberon-class possessed a wide range of offensive capabilities. Equipped with Lances, macro-cannons, and attack craft alike, it was exceptionally capable of operating independently.

It also carried ultra-long-range sensors rarely fitted to other Battleships.

Unless the enemy emerged from the Warp right in their faces, as those Iron Hands traitors had earlier, taking it by surprise was almost impossible.

While everyone waited patiently, the markers of an entire small fleet appeared on the auspex.

A servitor immediately reported the situation.

"My lord, a small naval fleet has been detected approaching. Its flagship is identified as the Cruiser Scythe."

The auspex markers were clear. Three Cruisers, two destroyers, and five frigates had just emerged from Warp transit into realspace.

The Captain, however, looked somewhat taken aback.

He picked up the orders received earlier and examined them carefully. The document mentioned only the Cruiser Scythe, so why had an entire fleet arrived?

The Imperial Fleet was not far from the Battleship Resolute, and it took only a few dozen minutes for the ships to join formation.

Once they had drawn closer, two Thunderhawk Gunships and an Aquila Shuttle flew from the Scythe straight toward the Resolute.

The Captain gathered his bodyguards and notified the Black Templars, who were still in their quarters, to accompany him.

Only when the party reached the hangar did they clearly make out the markings on the Thunderhawk Gunships.

A winged sword.

Everyone present was startled.

The Dark Angels?!

Here? Why?

The same questions filled everyone's minds.

Since the launch of the Indomitus Crusade, most of the Space Marines they had encountered had been Ultramarines from Ultramar. This was the first time they had seen Dark Angels here.

The Captain could not help slapping his forehead.

The Black Templars were already one of the rarer and less welcome Space Marine Chapters. Now the Dark Angels had turned up as well.

Had he offended the Imperium's Department of the Interior or the Departmento Munitorum?

As the Thunderhawk's hatch opened, heavy footsteps sounded from the shadow cast by its armoured door.

Soon, two Space Marines clad in dark green Mark III Power Armour appeared before them.

Their Power Armour bore numerous gold embellishments, looking even more ornate than that of the Black Templars behind the captain.

The purity seals on their armour, the hanging streamers of Holy Writ, and the gold decorations on their pauldrons and helmets gave them an elaborate, solemn appearance.

As silence settled over the gathering, the nearby Aquila Shuttle opened its hatch as well.

A figure descended in a gray trench coat and hood, a Bolt Pistol visible in the shadows at the waist. The insignia on the figure's clothing proclaimed membership in the Inquisition.

Two members of the Adeptus Mechanicus followed, wearing gold hooded robes. Unlike the robes of the Tech-Priests usually seen, theirs were more ornate and finely crafted, adorned with additional gold embellishments and intricate mechanical patterns.

Others might have struggled to tell these mechanical heads apart, but Farrion, standing toward the back of the group, recognized those decorations at once and muttered under his breath.

"What's going on? Two Sages of the Adeptus Mechanicus?"

Iax, who had also accompanied the group, naturally heard Farrion's words.

A Biological Scan swept directly over the two Sages and the Inquisitor in full view of everyone.

As for the Dark Angels...

There was no need.

Judging by their builds, they were clearly the same sort as the Black Templars beside him: biologically modified warriors.

But the results left Iax somewhat disappointed.

The genes of the Adeptus Mechanicus Sages were likewise riddled with biological contamination. The Inquisitor had undergone a degree of biological enhancement, and those genes were impure as well.

Iax did not know whether this contamination had appeared before or after their biological enhancement. But none of these people met the human standards in his records.

Even after he had voluntarily lowered those standards a tiny amount, they still failed to qualify.

Iax even compared them against the genetic data previously collected in the planet's hive city. The contamination in the genes of those "ordinary people," who could not possibly have received biological enhancement, was even worse than in these enhanced individuals.

Yet the Astra Militarum soldiers aboard the ship, and even its crew, seemed to have considerably less genetic contamination than those ordinary people. This gave Iax a strange feeling.

In this so-called "Imperium of Man," status seemed to be connected to genetic purity.

The higher a person's standing, the more "human" they seemed to be.

As for the Astartes, the genetic contamination of these biologically enhanced warriors was rather strange. They appeared to be organisms created by using another source of contamination to suppress and assimilate the contamination already present in their genes.

Their genes carried numerous defects, and even some risk of genetic collapse.

Yet this accidental mingling of genes also seemed to have made them what they were today.