First Exchange of Fire

Nykona once suspected that he and his legionnaires were trapped in an illusory dream woven by some abominable xenos.

Everything they witnessed was too bizarre.

Only after the mortal who called himself Lox radiated light and shadows, passing through the wall and vanishing, did the Astartes realize the figure was nothing more than a holographic projection.

Their superhuman perception had failed to distinguish reality from falsehood.

Yet, the sheer imbalance of having their power armor rendered completely inert and controlled by a mortal left the Iron Hands warriors in silence.

The mechanical augmentations they took such pride in seemed far too fragile when faced with the other's data intrusion.

What followed was even more horrifying: several mechanical arms sprouted from the surrounding bulkheads, their tips emitting light that solidified in the air. As if creating matter from the void, they printed steel components, followed by fragrant food and drinking water.

"These are... power armor parts?!"

Wayland's ocular sensors flickered with green light. In less than thirty seconds, he watched a suit of armor identical to the Iron Hands legionary power armor being printed from thin air.

Even the serial numbers and markings were exactly the same as those on his own suit.

The finished armor dropped to the floor with a dull thud, its weight clearly matching the heft required by an Astartes.

Wayland stepped forward in disbelief, his fingertips brushing against the brand-new armor. A strange texture fed back to his brain through his sensors; this was undoubtedly a material distinct from ceramite.

"By the Omnissiah..."

With the intuition of an Iron Hand, Wayland was certain this armor's defensive capabilities far surpassed his own. As a dozen suits of armor stood before the Astartes, a strange silence fell over them all.

"Iron Father, this forging technology is far beyond our imagination. I do not understand what kind of entity we have encountered."

An Astartes warrior murmured. Not even on Medusa, the Iron Hands' homeworld, nor on Mars, the heart of the Adeptus Mechanicus, had they ever witnessed such miraculous feats.

Crafting a suit of power armor required a complex process; every component had to be meticulously forged and even anointed with holy oils to bless the machine spirit. Generally, it took over a decade to complete a single suit.

Yet here, in the span of a few breaths, every warrior possessed a brand-new suit of armor to replace their own.

The months of guerrilla warfare on Isstvan V had left these warriors with the most visible of scars: their battered, ruined armor.

In that lopsided war, bombardment from Titans and orbital strikes from warships had decimated the majority of the legionnaires, while that abominable betrayal had left them isolated and desperate.

No supplies, no repair materials, no time to refit.

Even Nykona, the most agile among them, bore deep craters on his chest and shoulder plates from bolter rounds—and that was only after his best efforts to dodge.

The Iron Father did not stand on ceremony. With the help of his battle-brothers, he shed his ruined power armor. As he felt the new servo-systems hum to life, a sudden realization dawned upon him.

The Iron Hands legion had always maintained close ties with Mars, and they possessed more detailed knowledge of the fragments of history preceding the Age of Strife than other legions.

In ancient records, long before the Old Night and the rebellion of the Iron Men, human civilization had existed in an enlightened, immensely prosperous, and powerful era.

The STC, which the Adeptus Mechanicus valued above all else and sought at any cost, was a relic of that very age.

But after the long Old Night and darkness, those treasures of human wisdom were either lost or shattered. Even a single fragment would attract the fanatical pursuit of countless Tech-Priests.

This was likely a starship left over from the Dark Age of Technology, which would explain such incredible capabilities.

After the Astartes donned their new armor, they quickly consumed the food provided by the printing technology.

Their keen gustatory nerves could not distinguish these rations from the food they had eaten on legion warships; in fact, compared to the industrial products harvested from agri-worlds, these possessed a freshness that could only be described as succulent.

They ate in silence. Long-term malnutrition had left them ravenous, and regardless of the situation, maintaining peak combat readiness was the best course of action.

Lox watched every move of these gene-enhanced warriors through a holographic projection. At the same time, he browsed the information obtained from the central brain's intrusion into their servo-systems. Some of it was simply mind-boggling.

"A bunch of lunatics possessed by both religious fanaticism and mental illness. Look at what they say: 'Omnissiah'? Why do they worship machines? Humans are the creators of machines; there is no such thing as a creator worshipping their creation."

"What kind of genetic brainwashing did that guy called Emperor perform? Has humanity regressed to a feudal monarchy?"

Waking from his slumber, Lox felt his nerves being challenged repeatedly.

Look at these self-proclaimed Astartes. Granted, their physical augmentations had their own unique merits, but could even the strongest flesh compare to the Iron Men, who were born entirely for slaughter?

Power swords loaded with disruption fields—it was the thirty-first millennium, so why were warriors in power armor still fighting with cold weapons?

"And these warships, built like Gothic cathedrals—why install macro-cannons on the broadsides instead of rotating turrets? Why did their designers build ships so archaic they resemble the Age of Sail?"

Everything before his eyes gave Lox a sense of temporal dissonance. These people were using advanced technology to perform the tasks of primitives.

The Red Alert broke through the atmosphere, thick with nuclear dust, in mere seconds, dragging a sonic boom into the space outside Isstvan V.

Missiles from the Iron Warriors' ground fortresses followed immediately. Within those Fourth Legion strongholds, augur arrays flashed frantic warnings as scans revealed an unidentified hull emerging from the crust of Isstvan and breaking through to the outer atmosphere.

"Damn it, where did that warship come from! Where did a starship pop up from on this cursed planet? How did it overcome the planet's massive gravity to maintain its structural integrity!"

"Destroy it! Otherwise, the Primarch will surely wring our necks!"

The Iron Warriors commander crushed a mortal servant beside the augur array in a fit of rage. A bloody head exploded, spraying gore and brain matter, while the surrounding Iron Warriors and mortals remained expressionless.

Lobotomized servitors rushed forward to clean up the mess.

The warship released a barrage of missiles, attempting to destroy the unusually agile stranger.

The central brain maneuvered the starship to evade the pursuit of those primitive, backward missiles. Lox simply waited in place, even finding the time to open a few viewports for his new passengers so they could witness the situation outside.

The Red Alert was only one kilometer in length, appearing minuscule compared to the strike cruisers and battleships encircling it in orbit.

The battleship at the center of the enemy fleet, eleven kilometers long, formed a formation with several strike cruisers, surrounding the ship that had escaped from Isstvan V.

These warships left behind at Isstvan V were but a negligible fraction of the traitor legions' strength. After backstabbing the loyalist fleet, they had followed their respective Primarchs to various sectors to execute the orders issued by the Warmaster.

For the traitor legions, once the massacre that claimed three legions had concluded, the value of this planet reached its end. The remaining warships and Astartes were left behind merely to continue strangling the loyalists hiding on the surface.

The Iron Warriors' battleships and strike cruisers opened fire rapidly. Their massive broadside macro-cannons erupted with devastating shells, and countless lances streaked forth, predicting every possible path of evasion.

A bloody smile had already surfaced beneath the Iron Warriors commander's helmet. Void warfare was not a complex affair; with more ships and bigger guns than the enemy, the outcome was self-evident.

Even Wayland and his companions in the ship's cabin felt their hearts tighten. With such a disparity in strength, the probability of escaping alive was nearly zero.

Yet, this mysterious starship, suspected to be from the Dark Age of Technology, had become the only variable between life and death.

They could only pray that this starship's speed was sufficient and its void shields were strong enough.

Inside the command deck, however, Lox remained calm; to him, the enemy ships before them were no threat at all.

A generational gap in technology meant an absolute disparity.

Although Red Alert was not a dedicated warship, it was, after all, a carrier for numerous STC templates. Since the Chief and the others had made their decision, they naturally would not leave this spark of humanity without the ability to resist.

As long as sufficient resources were obtained, the STC on the starship could continuously manufacture technological creations. Even forbidden weapons capable of extinguishing stars or massive warships hundreds of kilometers long would not be difficult to produce.

Those were gargantuan vessels that could be described in celestial terms, with masses reaching that of a planet, or even a star.

Compared to those behemoths, the warships before them were truly nothing more than small skiffs in the void.

"In that case, let's just ram them. There is no need for flashy counterattacks."

Red Alert ignored the incoming macro-cannon shells and lances. In fact, their accuracy was pitiful; the vast majority of attacks were dodged through maneuvering, with only one lucky lance strike hitting the starship's bow.

The lance flashed. This type of giant energy weapon could not only output energy continuously, but the secondary shockwaves and high-intensity thermal rays it generated posed a great threat to warships.

For a pocket-sized starship only one kilometer in length, a single lance strike should have been enough to destroy it completely.

Lox watched silently as the lance left a trail across the cosmos. With such light-speed weapons, the moment they were observed was the moment of impact.

A massive amount of energy slammed into the bow of Red Alert, and the silver-white hull seemed as if it had been polished, the energy shields on its surface merely flickering slightly.

The lance vanished!

The observers' brains momentarily stalled. Even if it hit the void shields, there should have been some reaction, right?

Red Alert did not slow down in the slightest, tearing through the enemy formation like a giant shell.

Like a meteor from the depths of the universe, the starship rammed straight into the flank of a strike cruiser, triggering a violent chain of secondary explosions and ship disintegration. It then continued on, undiminished, and plunged into the largest battleship.

"What are they doing?!"

The Iron Warriors exclaimed, for this appeared to be nothing short of a suicidal act.

Imperial warships did indeed carry rams, but it was only on the rarest of occasions that such an ancient tactic was employed.

Impact! Impact!

For a tiny one-kilometer starship to collide with an eleven-kilometer-long battleship—the sheer disparity in mass alone should have rendered this brave but foolish act into nothingness.

Wayland stood with the Iron Hands warriors, his expression solemn. If they could destroy a strike cruiser and the traitors aboard, they would not have shamed the name of the sons of Ferrus Manus.

Since their gene-father had perished on this tiny planet, let his sons follow in his footsteps!

In a trance, they seemed to see the smile of Ferrus Manus blooming amidst the flames of Medusa.

A more brilliant fire erupted in the pitch-black void. The wreckage of the strike cruiser was still burning in the void, but in the face of this far greater conflagration, it paled into insignificance.

The eleven-kilometer-long shuttle-shaped giant ship saw its wedge-shaped prow and the layered architecture of its hull burst apart in what looked like slow motion. It looked like a fuse being ignited, burning rapidly from one side to the other.

The massive warship burst from the center, with vast amounts of macro-cannon ammunition and reactor engines detonating. In the silent universe, it was soundless, yet it was enough to make every witness tremble to their core.

Amidst the cloud-like debris, the silhouette of Red Alert reflected the light of the flames, as if mocking the Iron Warriors whose auspexes captured the scene.

With just a ram—without even needing to use the forbidden weapons carried on the starship—this Iron Warriors fleet had been more than half-destroyed.

Their warships were completely shattered in the void, to say nothing of the flesh-and-blood Astartes and mortal auxiliary troops aboard.

Only the adamantium keels, the hardest parts of the hulls, retained their general shape after such a devastating blow. These keels, which could only be forged at the temperature of a star, drifted and fell amidst the aftermath of the explosion.

"Omnissiah!"

The Iron Hands, who had witnessed everything through the viewports, were completely conquered by this crushing style of void warfare.

They could have accepted this giant ship of the Dark Age of Technology using various forbidden means of attack from that era, such as antimatter bombs or black hole bombs, to destroy the enemy ships.

But this simplest of impacts contained a chasm of technological difference between the two sides. The giant ship beneath their feet likely possessed a structural integrity even more terrifying than vessels forged of adamantium.

A total victory, a total crushing.

Wayland stroked the bulkhead of the starship, this Iron Hand completely intoxicated by the joy of fighting alongside such a powerful vessel.

He even followed the ritual procedures of the Adeptus Mechanicus, praying and offering blessings alongside the other legionnaires.

"Praise the Machine Spirit!"