Reinforcements from the Future

Since the Landing Site Massacre, the organizational structures of the Iron Hands, Salamanders, and Raven Guard had been shattered. The mixed squad formed by Wayland and the others used elusive guerrilla tactics to harass the traitors.

But obviously, on a planet completely controlled by the enemy, the loyalists' room to survive would only grow smaller and smaller. The enemy was killing the survivors through relentless fire saturation.

They had to leave this damned planet, break out of the traitors' encirclement, and strike a fatal blow where the enemy least expected it, bleeding them dry on their march to besiege Terra.

"We still have the Sisypheum. The Iron Father repaired and upgraded it. We can use it to get out of here."

A glimmer flashed in Nykona's eyes. The Warmaster's ambition had buried the glory of the Great Crusade. Most of the warriors of the three Legions had already fallen, and the Warmaster's next target would be humanity's Throne World—Holy Terra.

The tempo of the war had to be wrested back from the enemy.

But to reach the Sisypheum hidden in space, they first had to break through the damned traitors' blockade.

"To evacuate to the Sisypheum, we'll need to think of something. Though the traitors' main force has already left, the enemies remaining behind are still more than we can handle."

Wayland had just been about to continue when a violent shriek suddenly came from outside—a warning of air being torn apart and death about to descend.

Heavy fire saturation!

As a clan warrior of the Iron Hands, Wayland immediately recognized it as bombardment from heavy vehicles and massive artillery.

Their shamefully traitorous brothers, the Iron Warriors, excelled at such things.

Even underground, buffered by thick layers of rock and soil, everyone hiding beneath the surface was shaken to their knees. Their chests ached dully inside their power armor.

"Too many brothers stronger than me died in indiscriminate bombardments..."

Nykona sighed silently. Before such devastating shelling, even stealth techniques were useless.

The bombardment continued, and Wayland's expression grew increasingly grim.

He noticed that the traitors' firepower was steadily intensifying, and the density of their barrage was also rising.

That meant they already knew their coordinates. The net of annihilation had been laid.

"Those Death Guard were bait."

"Notify the warriors. Keep retreating through the prearranged tunnels deeper underground. We have to take a gamble!"

Deep within Isstvan V's mantle, a kilometer-long metal vessel drifted through endlessly flowing molten magma.

Faced with the crushing pressure of hundreds of millions of tons of rock and earth, even the Imperium's hardest adamantium would struggle to withstand nature's might. Yet this long-slumbering vessel moved freely with the currents, like a fish swimming through lava.

The planet's geological activity propelled this human-made creation.

As the vessel restarted, the stasis field generator in the central chamber ceased operation, and the sound of system diagnostics echoed through the ship.

Level One Protocol Activated

Information Entropy Read Complete

Vacuum Zero-Point Energy Engine Activated

A voice that had crossed ten thousand years reappeared within the command nexus of the Red Alert.

After a period of adjustment, Lox had finally recovered from his ten-thousand-year hibernation. He ordered the starship's Cogitator to come online and guided it away from its current location.

The Red Alert was as pristine and intact as if it had just rolled out of the laboratory. Time had left no mark upon it.

A ghostly blue plasma beam erupted from the engines at its stern, and Red Alert began accelerating through the incredibly dense lava.

A thin energy shield enveloped the hull as it tore through the molten rock at high speed. The disintegration field module at its prow activated, pulverizing every rock formation and mineral vein in its path.

At the same time, Nykona and the others, who were evacuating through the underground tunnels, suddenly sensed an unusual and eerie tremor.

The keen Son of the Raven detected through the sensors in his armored boots that this vibration differed from the tremors caused by the bombardment outside. It came from far deeper underground.

Not only that, Nykona's two hearts pounded violently, while his cerebral cortex felt as though invisible needles were piercing through it. An unprecedented sense of danger washed over him.

He had felt this kind of danger only once before: at the Landing Site, when he watched their warships above be destroyed by lances and macro-cannons, then fall under the planet's gravity.

He and the Iron Hands abruptly halted, then sprinted madly in another direction. These dust-covered, scarred gene-forged warriors raced through the underground passageways, no longer caring that their violent movements might be detected by the Iron Warriors on the surface.

A spectral glow burst from beneath the earth. Vast quantities of rock fell into it and were broken down by some invisible force.

"By the Emperor! What is that? A rebel subterranean vehicle?"

The Iron Hands warriors were stunned. Before them stood a colossal vessel whose beginning and end could not be seen. Its shimmering field pulverized everything in its way. Had they not changed direction in time, they would likely have crashed straight into this unknown mechanical creation rampaging beneath the earth.

Wayland's electronic eye analyzed the uninvited intruder while comparing it against the vehicles recorded in the database.

Comparison Failed

No Similar Target Found

The loyalists' retreat had been cut off. These warriors of the Emperor gripped their bolters and power swords, already prepared to die.

These heroes who had survived the Landing Site Massacre had never feared death.

"Don't rush to attack. This may not be a traitor vehicle. Find out what it is first."

Wayland stopped his warriors from opening fire. This mysterious subterranean behemoth could travel through the planet's hard crust and mantle. There was no way their force, lacking heavy weapons, could hope to shake it.

Even on a battlefield in space, Astartes needed boarding torpedoes or teleport beacons to carry out boarding actions.

The Iron Warriors' bombardment outside grew fiercer. These traitors, who worshipped overwhelming armored formations and firepower supremacy, had already noticed the unusual geological disturbances in this region.

Nykona firmly believed that this time, those pursuing them would not be a small force. It would be enemies in Terminator armor, equipped with vast quantities of heavy weapons.

The giant vessel stopped moving, as if it had noticed the little insects outside. Fist-sized fragments of rock and dirt fell sporadically from the ceiling, but the Space Marines paid them no mind, allowing them to strike their power armor and helmets with clanging sounds.

Finally, before the Legion warriors' patience could run out, a hatch more than four meters tall opened from the side of the vessel with a blast of high-pressure gas. Before that, even with Astartes eyesight, they had been completely unable to see that there was a passable hatch above them.

A hatch of that size was just large enough to allow these superhuman warriors, who stood 2.4 meters tall in power armor, to enter with ease.

Nykona and Wayland exchanged a glance. The owner of this mysterious vessel was actually willing to let them enter so readily?

There was no familiar aquila or other common Imperial Navy livery on the exterior of this astonishing behemoth.

It was far too simple. Its silver-white hull looked as though it had been cast in a single piece, with not the slightest trace of welding or rivets.

Imperial warships normally mounted macro-cannon and lance arrays along both sides, allowing them to unleash firepower against enemies broadside-on. But they saw nothing of the sort now.

"Could it be one of those xenos ships? It doesn't look like an Imperial vessel, and I've never heard of anything that can charge through the crust like this!"

An Iron Hands warrior spoke in confusion. The Salamanders warrior beside him, immensely tall and a full head taller than the surrounding warriors, bumped him with a muffled grunt.

"If it's one of those black bean sprouts' ships, then board it and kill them all!"

The sons of Nocturne bore a blood feud against the Dark Eldar, who often raided the people of Nocturne. Especially after their primarch Vulkan returned, the Salamanders had dealt the enemy powerful revenge.

More than a dozen Astartes filed inside. Following the Iron Father's command, they formed up to guard against a sudden attack.

It was an empty chamber. The silver-white floor gleamed with a metallic sheen. Invisible light shone from the walls, yet no source could be found.

Boom—

The hatch behind them suddenly slammed shut. The gaps between the door and the bulkhead melted away like liquid, vanishing in an instant.

Seeing this, Tassa, the Salamanders Apothecary, immediately took out his remaining meltabombs, ready to blast an escape route at any moment.

"I advise you not to lay a hand on my ship, strangers. Let us talk."

Bolters snapped toward the direction of the voice. Almost no living creature could survive a volley of bolter fire.

What appeared before the Astartes was an East Asian human male around 1.75 meters tall, somewhat different in appearance from the mortals who had served aboard their fleets.

He stood tall, with full muscles and vigorous vitality radiating from his entire body. Judging from his face, he was around twenty-five years old, with no signs of physical mutation.

Most mortals serving the Legions, however, grew rougher and older due to the harsh conditions within warships and years of warfare. They could not avoid the effects of cosmic radiation and gravity, and their bodies often differed from those of humans living on planets.

Nykona Barabas Dantioch's dark eyes met those of the mortal.

Instinctively, he sensed the complex emotions contained within those eyes.

Sorrow. Confusion. But not fear or cowardice.

Like a traveler far from home, who had realized he would never have the chance to return.

But he also knew clearly that this suddenly appearing human could not possibly be an ordinary mortal, because the Son of the Raven could not detect even the slightest sign of human biological activity.

Breathing, heartbeat, the faint natural tremors of the body...

Lox looked up at the giants clad in steel armor. To him, the Astartes in their armor were like children standing before adults.

"Superhuman warriors who underwent biomechanical enhancement? Nothing particularly novel. But isn't this power armor rather crude? Does it use some kind of low-intelligence cognitive core?"

He assessed the Astartes by his own standards. In his era, biomechanical enhancement had not been rare. Countless mad scientists, in pursuit of their delusions, had even created nightmare monsters beyond human imagination.

If he could use the Red Alert's laboratory equipment, he might be able to offer a more objective assessment after dissecting one or two warriors. But the power armor worn by these towering warriors was simply too crude.

Their power armor varied greatly: Mk III Iron armor, Mk IV Maximus armor, Mk VI Corvus armor, and even some cobbled together from multiple different marks of armor.

In Lox's eyes, these things called power armor were no different from toys assembled from junkyard scrap.

The Astartes felt somewhat offended by the mortal's gaze. Even warriors immersed in slaughter for so long could sense the appraising undertone in his eyes.

"Mortal, can your vessel make Warp jumps? We need to leave this planet and return to the galaxy."

"Under wartime regulations, the Astartes Legions have the authority to requisition all Imperial starships."

A cold electronic voice issued from the Iron Hands warrior. These warriors, who believed flesh to be weak, rarely treated mortals so politely, but the unclear situation compelled them to maintain every ounce of caution.

"Oh? A variant of High Gothic. Is this the language of this era?"

Lox quickly analyzed and identified the language spoken by these enhanced warriors, then rapidly grasped how to use it.

"Before I answer you, tell me first: what exactly are you, and what is this war raging outside?"

In truth, through the Red Alert's scanning arrays, Lox had already observed the ring around this planet, formed from wrecked warships and dust, as well as the oddly shaped vessels still prowling through orbit.

Several ships that resembled flying cathedral complexes made Lox's eyelid twitch. How the hell did things like that fly? Even if space did not require consideration of air resistance, that design would still weaken the overall structure.

Beyond that, the radiation levels on the planet's surface, high enough to pollute the entire atmosphere and off the charts in intensity, made him wonder whether he had landed in a nuclear waste dump on some remote garbage world.

"If the Alliance Police Department caught this, they'd probably hand down a prison sentence of thousands of years." Lox sighed. From the look of things, the alliance humanity had built had long since turned to ashes.

Wayland suppressed the anger in his heart and glared at the mortal before him.

"Answer my question."

Suddenly, a sense of helplessness struck him. Wayland discovered in horror that his power armor's servo systems had shut down, the power supply from the backpack unit behind him had been cut off, and he was trapped inside his own armor.

No matter how he tried to bring the servo systems back online, he received only a cold response.

Without power, the armor was like an iron coffin fitted tightly around him, leaving him standing rigidly in place.

And all Lox had done was snap his fingers. He realized that this enhanced warrior was difficult to communicate with, so he quickly chose someone more agreeable.

Realizing that the man before them was not to be trifled with, Nykona immediately stepped forward. He had already sheathed his two power swords and returned his bolter to the mounting slot at the back of his waist.

He held both hands where they could clearly be seen, showing that he meant no harm.

"We are the Astartes of the Master of Mankind. We came to purge traitors, only to suffer betrayal from other traitors on the planet beneath our feet, Isstvan V."

"Warriors of the Iron Hands, Salamanders, and Raven Guard Legions made orbital drops onto this battlefield, but the reinforcements that arrived late were traitors who had hidden their betrayal all along!"

"Please help us. We need to return to Terra and unite every loyal warrior to stop the rebellion launched by Warmaster Horus. The Emperor is on Terra. Humanity's Throne World must never be allowed to fall!"

From Nykona's brief account, Lox learned the general situation:

In humanity's thirtieth millennium, an existence called the Emperor had unified the fractured Earth. He launched a Great Crusade that swept across the galaxy, intending to reunite humanity, which had been scattered after the Age of Strife.

But when the Great Crusade was nearing its end, his most beloved son, Warmaster Horus, chose betrayal.

The Emperor's warriors split in two. Half the Astartes Legions and primarchs chose rebellion, and the entire galaxy burned in war.

Having received the answers he wanted, Lox released his control. Before the Red Alert's core intelligence, the crude servo systems were no more difficult than a child's arithmetic problem.

"Looks like I'll need time to adapt to the current situation. But now I understand: the Warmaster you spoke of wants to destroy humanity."

"You will receive supplies and rest. Then we will return to Terra. I want to see this Emperor with my own eyes."