First Exchange of Fire

Nykona had briefly suspected that he and the Legion warriors had fallen into an illusory nightmare created by some hateful xenos.

Everything they had witnessed was too bizarre.

When the mortal calling himself Lox had dissolved into light and shadow, passing through the wall and vanishing, the Astartes finally realized that he had merely been some kind of illusory projection.

Even their superhuman powers of observation had failed to distinguish truth from falsehood.

Yet the sensation of their power armor being completely disabled and controlled by a mortal left the Iron Hands warriors in silence.

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

What came next was even more shocking. Several mechanical arms extended from the surrounding bulkheads, their tips emitting beams that solidified in the air, seemingly printing steel components, fragrant food, and drinking water out of thin air.

"Are these... power armor components?!"

Wayland's electronic eye flashed green continuously. In less than thirty seconds, he watched a suit of armor identical in appearance to Iron Hands Legion power armor being printed out of thin air.

Even its serial number and markings were exactly the same as those on the armor he wore.

The newly printed power armor dropped to the floor with a dull thud. Its weight clearly matched what the Astartes required.

Wayland stepped forward in disbelief and ran his fingertips across the brand-new armor. An unfamiliar texture was relayed to his brain through his sensors. This was undoubtedly a material different from ceramite.

"By the Omnissiah..."

Trusting the instincts of an Iron Hand, Wayland was certain that this suit's defensive capabilities far surpassed those of the one he wore. When more than a dozen suits of power armor were laid out before the Astartes, everyone fell into an eerie silence.

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

An Astartes warrior muttered. Even on Medusa, the Iron Hands' Chapter homeworld, or Mars, the heart of the Adeptus Mechanicus, they had never seen anything so miraculous.

The construction of a suit of power armor required a complicated process. Every component had to be painstakingly forged, and holy oils had to be applied to bless the Machine Spirit. Under normal circumstances, a suit took more than a decade to complete.

Yet now, in merely a few breaths, every warrior had new armor to replace their old suits.

The months of guerrilla warfare on Isstvan V had left these warriors with one most obvious wound: their battered, ruined armor.

In that unequal war, Titan bombardments and orbital strikes from warships had destroyed most of the Legion warriors, while that abhorrent betrayal had cast them into a desperate state of isolation.

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

Even Nykona, the most agile among them, bore several deep craters in the chestplate and pauldrons of his power armor from non-direct bolt impacts. That was already the result of his desperate evasions.

The Iron Father was not polite in the slightest. With the aid of his battle-brothers, he removed his battered power armor. As the new servo systems activated, a glimmer of understanding rose within him.

The warriors of the Iron Hands Legion had always shared close ties with Mars, and knew more fragmented information about the era before the Age of Strife than other Legions.

Ancient records stated that, before the Age of Strife and the rebellion of the Iron Men, human civilization had once stood in an enlightened and immensely prosperous age of strength.

The STC, which the Adeptus Mechanicus valued beyond measure and sought at any cost, had once been a legacy of that age.

But after the long Old Night and darkness, those treasures of human wisdom had either vanished without trace or shattered into fragments. Even a single fragment could draw the fanatical pursuit of countless tech-priests.

This was very likely a starship left behind from the Dark Age of Technology. Only then could it possess such unbelievable capabilities.

After changing into their new power armor, the Astartes swiftly consumed the food supplies produced through printing technology.

Their acute taste-detection nerves could not distinguish these foods from those they had once eaten aboard Legion warships. They even possessed a tender freshness absent from the industrial products harvested and manufactured on agri-worlds.

They ate in silence. Long-term malnutrition had left them exceptionally hungry. Whatever the circumstances, maintaining peak combat readiness was the best choice.

Through holographic projections, Lox took in every movement of these genetically modified warriors. At the same time, he reviewed the information obtained by the Cogitator's intrusion into their servo systems, some of which was simply incomprehensible.

"A bunch of lunatics with both religious fanaticism and mental illness. Listen to what they are saying—the Omnissiah? Why do they worship machines? Humanity created machines. Since when did creators worship their creations?"

"What kind of genetic brainwashing did that man called the Emperor carry out? Has humanity regressed into a feudal monarchy?"

Having awakened from slumber, Lox felt that his nerves had been challenged again and again.

Look at these modified warriors calling themselves Astartes. Their physical augmentation certainly had its own unique merits, but could even the strongest flesh compare to the Iron Men, created entirely for slaughter?

Power longswords loaded with disintegration fields—why, in the thirty-first millennium, were warriors in power armor still fighting with cold weapons?

"And these warships built like Gothic architecture—why mount macrocannons along their broadsides instead of on rotating turrets? Why did their designers build warships so archaic they resembled vessels from the Age of Sail?"

Everything before him gave Lox a disorienting sensation of temporal confusion. These people used advanced technology to do things that only primitives would do.

In mere seconds, the Red Alert broke through the atmosphere thick with nuclear dust, trailing sonic shockwaves as it entered space beyond Isstvan V.

Missiles from the Iron Warriors Legion's ground fortresses arrived immediately afterward. Within those Fourth Legion fortresses, cherubim-servitors flashed frantic alarms as scanning arrays revealed an unidentified vessel that had burst through Isstvan's crust and now broken out beyond the atmosphere.

"Damn it, where did that warship come from?! Where on this damned planet did a starship emerge from? How did it overcome the planet's immense gravity and keep its structure intact?!"

"Destroy it! Otherwise, Father will twist our heads off!"

The Iron Warriors commander furiously crushed the mortal servant beside the cherubim-servitor. The servant's bloody head burst apart, spraying blood, brains, and tissue everywhere, while the surrounding Iron Warriors and mortals remained expressionless.

The lobotomized Servitors rushed forward to clean up the mess across the floor.

The warships launched a massive barrage of missiles, attempting to destroy the exceptionally agile unfamiliar starship.

The Cogitator controlled the starship, evading the pursuit of those primitive, obsolete missiles. Lox simply remained where he was and waited quietly. He even had time to open several viewing ports for the ship's new passengers, allowing them to witness the situation outside.

The Red Alert was only one kilometer long, making it seem tiny beside the strike cruisers and battleships closing in from planetary orbit.

At the center of the enemy fleet stood an eleven-kilometer battleship. Together with several strike cruisers, it formed a formation that surrounded the ship which had escaped from Isstvan V.

The warships remaining on Isstvan V were only an insignificant portion of the rebel Legions' military strength. After backstabbing the Loyalist fleet, they had followed their respective primarchs to carry out the Warmaster's commands across the galaxy.

To the rebel Legions, once the massacre that had buried three Legions was over, this planet had no further value. The warships and Astartes left behind existed only to continue hunting down the Loyalists hiding on the planet.

The Iron Warriors' battleships and strike cruisers opened fire swiftly. Enormous broadside macrocannons unleashed devastating shells, while countless lances flashed forth, predicting every possible evasive route.

A bloody smile had already appeared beneath the Iron Warriors commander's helmet. Void warfare was not so complicated. I have more ships and bigger guns than you. The outcome is obvious.

Even Wayland and the others aboard the ship felt their hearts tighten. Against such overwhelming disparity in strength, the chance of escaping alive was nearly zero.

But the mysterious starship beneath their feet, possibly from the Dark Age of Technology, had become the sole variable between life and death.

They could only pray that the ship was fast enough and its void shields strong enough.

Yet in the command room, Lox remained calm. To him, the enemy vessels before him posed no threat whatsoever.

The generational gap in technology meant an absolute gap in power.

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

As long as enough resources could be acquired, the STCs aboard the ship could continuously manufacture technological creations. Even forbidden weapons capable of extinguishing stars, or colossal warships hundreds of kilometers long, would not be difficult.

Those were vast warships that could be described as celestial bodies. Their mass could rival that of planets, even stars.

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

"Then let us ram straight through them. There is no need for any flashy counterattack."

The Red Alert ignored the incoming macrocannon fire and lances. In truth, their accuracy was pitiful. Most of the attacks were evaded through maneuvering, and only one exceptionally fortunate lance struck the starship's prow.

The lance flashed. Such colossal energy weapons could not only sustain their output, but also produced secondary shockwaves and intense thermal rays, posing a tremendous threat to warships.

For a miniature starship only one kilometer long, a single lance was enough to destroy it completely.

Lox silently watched the lance's trail streak across space. With weapons that traveled at light speed, the moment they were seen was the moment they struck.

An immense quantity of energy slammed into the Red Alert's prow. The silver-white hull seemed as though it had merely been polished, while the energy shield across its surface rippled faintly.

The lance vanished!

The observers' minds instantly went blank. Even if it had struck void shields, there should have been some reaction, should there not?

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

Like a meteor from the depths of space, the starship rammed straight into the flank of a strike cruiser, setting off a violent chain detonation and tearing the vessel apart. Without losing momentum, it then plunged into the largest battleship.

"What are they doing?!"

The Iron Warriors cried out in alarm. To them, this was undoubtedly suicidal.

Imperial warships did indeed possess rams, but such an ancient tactic was employed only on the rarest occasions.

Ram! Ram!

The collision between a tiny one-kilometer vessel and an eleven-kilometer battleship should have rendered this courageous yet foolish act meaningless through sheer disparity of mass alone.

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

Their gene-father had fallen upon this insignificant planet. Let his sons follow in his footsteps!

In a daze, they seemed to see Ferrus Manus's smile blooming amid the flames of Medusa.

A brighter blaze erupted across the black starfield. Fragments from the strike cruiser were still burning in the void, but before this vastly larger fire, they had already faded into insignificance.

The eleven-kilometer spindle-shaped giant warship's wedge-shaped ram and the layered structures behind it exploded in a scene that resembled slow motion. It looked like a lit fuse, burning with incredible speed from one end to the other.

The enormous vessel ruptured down the middle. Countless macrocannon shells, reactor cores, and engines detonated in succession. Though utterly silent in the void, the sight was enough to make every witness tremble.

Amid the cloud-like wreckage, the Red Alert reflected the firelight again and again, captured by the Iron Warriors' cherubim-servitors as though in mockery.

It had merely rammed them. It had not even needed to use the destructive weapons carried aboard the starship, yet more than half of the Iron Warriors fleet had been crushed.

Their warships had completely shattered in the void, to say nothing of the flesh-and-blood Astartes and mortal auxilia they carried.

Only the hulls' hardest adamantium keels retained their general shapes after such devastating impacts. Those keels, which could only be forged beneath stellar temperatures, drifted and fell amid the aftermath of the explosions.

"Omnissiah!"

The Iron Hands who witnessed everything through the viewing ports were utterly conquered by this crushing display of void warfare.

They could have accepted this immense Dark Age of Technology vessel using all manner of forbidden attacks from the Age of Strife, such as antimatter bombs or black hole bombs, to destroy enemy ships.

But this simplest of ramming attacks revealed the immense technological disparity between the two sides. The vessel beneath their feet was likely even more durable than ships forged from adamantium.

Absolute superiority. Absolute domination.

Wayland stroked the starship's bulkhead. This Iron Hand was 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 Legion warriors.

"Praise the Machine Spirit!"