Warp Drift

After cleanly destroying two Iron Warriors warships, the Red Alert reached the Mandeville Point and immediately engaged its Warp engines, leaping into the Empyrean.

The world before him began to warp and blur; even Lox had to shut out the twisting visions.

Realspace and the Warp were two different realms. Entering the layer between them meant enduring the clash of two sets of rules.

In this inconceivable Sea of Souls, there were no strict concepts of time or space. Even the physical laws necessary in realspace could be twisted at will.

All kinds of bizarre, fantastical sights here could be genuinely real occurrences.

"Is this the Warp of this era? So twisted, so polluted. The cost of normal navigation must be far heavier." Lox glanced at the data filtered by the ship's AI and felt a jolt of alarm.

The predictions of the Chief and the others were correct—the Warp was heading into an irreparable state of chaos.

In the twenty-first millennium, the Warp had been calmer. Activating the Gellar Field was usually enough for a safe Warp transit.

But now, as the Red Alert entered the Warp, Lox immediately sensed something off.

At the edge of his hearing, he caught faint, almost imperceptible whispers.

For a split second, hallucinations flickered before his eyes—as if he had stepped into a realm of gods, hearing the call of some ancient entity.

He told himself it was all false.

The AI boosted the Gellar Field's energy output, and the illusions dissolved.

"Warp travel has become treacherous. When humanity scattered across the galaxy loses contact, the dark age naturally descends."

The most terrifying thing about the galaxy was its sheer scale—a diameter of a hundred thousand light-years, a number that drove all intelligent life to despair.

Even at light speed, crossing that distance would take a hundred thousand years. For a human lifespan, it would require a thousand generations to reach the end.

And Warp travel—leaping into the Empyrean and exploiting its chaotic, timeless nature for faster-than-light movement—was practically cheating.

"Maybe those warriors know something. Ten thousand years—everything has changed." Lox mused, then used the AI to open the sealed hatch.

Soon, Nykona and the others followed the corridor's guidance to the captain's quarters.

Wayland stepped ahead of the group, bowed his head slightly, and gave a special salute of the Iron Hands.

"Emperor's warriors thank you for your efforts, sir."

Lox smiled inwardly. These perpetually stern, augmented warriors still had the capacity for a smile. He had almost thought the one called the Emperor had stripped them of every instinct beyond combat.

"Rest assured, we will follow your orders aboard this ship. There will be no more reckless actions." Wayland thumped his chest, his mechanical limb striking the new-material power armor with solemn gravity.

Hearing this, Lox offered a friendly smile. As long as they were willing to cooperate, everything could be negotiated.

After all, he happened to need some guides who understood the situation.

"We only want to return to Terra and make the damned traitors pay in blood!"

Hatred burned in every Astartes' heart. The flames of betrayal had not died. The vengeance for brothers who fell on Isstvan V would be carried by the living.

Lox couldn't fully grasp such deep-seated hatred. He came from ten thousand years ago and had known these warriors for only a few hours. Their common goal was simply to reach humanity's homeworld—he wanted to see what it had become.

"Wait—you have no Navigator? How will you cross the Warp to reach Terra?"

The captain's quarters were spartan, nothing but a command console and wall-mounted displays.

Wayland scanned the room, then suddenly demanded.

"Without a Navigator, how can we glimpse the Astronomican's light? Warp travel is so dangerous—without guidance, we will surely lose our way."

"Navigator?"

After some exchange, Lox learned from Wayland about this special group of people who could see through the Sea of Souls with a third eye.

Navigators were a type of Psyker. A third eye grew on their foreheads, and with this unique gift, they could provide direction for Warp travel, preventing starships from losing their way.

But the large-scale emergence of these Psyker mutants occurred between M22 and M25—meaning in Lox's time, no stable Navigator population existed yet.

"As you can see, the era I come from had no need for Navigators. The Warp back then was as calm as a lake under a spring sun, not this churning storm."

"And don't worry—we have an AI to provide navigation."

As Lox spoke, the AI, which had been in stealth mode, revealed itself.

A small creature about thirty centimeters tall, with yellow fur and a lightning-bolt-shaped tail, appeared on Lox's shoulder. Symmetrical red electric pouches lined its cheeks, faint arcs of electricity crackling between them.

"Xenos!"

At the sight of an alien creature before them, the Iron Hands' gene-deep instincts flared.

Emperor had etched into every Primarch's and every Astartes' genes a profound hostility toward xenos. Faced with one at such close range, if not for Lox's earlier show of force, Wayland and the others would have already drawn their bolters and blasted the abominable creature to shreds.

"This is just the AI's body. Calm down, warriors." Lox was a bit startled by their reaction. In his long life, the first millennium had left the deepest impression.

In the distant past, an anime character named Pikachu had left a deep mark on his heart, which was why he had the ship's AI take this form.

"It's an Abominable Intelligence."

Lox didn't notice that, even after he clarified his pet wasn't a xenos, the Astartes' tension didn't ease—it only grew worse.

Wayland stared at the Pikachu grooming its fur, his gaze complex, but he suppressed his displeasure.

Emperor's Angels of Death now stood aboard a starship piloted by an Abominable Intelligence with a xenos appearance, belonging to a human who didn't serve the Emperor, with no known destination in the Warp.

The warriors of the Shattered Legions felt their prospects bleak.

"The Abominable Intelligence once brought endless pain and sacrifice to humanity. In that dark age, it was the Abominable Intelligence that rebelled against humanity, leading to the end of the Dark Age of Technology."

Wayland murmured, repeatedly begging Emperor for forgiveness in his heart, but trapped aboard this heretical starship, he could only grit his teeth and acquiesce.

Ignoring the pained, penitent expressions on the Astartes' faces, Lox stroked Pika's soft fur and sank into thought about his plans upon reaching Terra.

He was the sole executor of the Future Reinforcement Project. The Red Alert contained the vast majority of STCs and scientific knowledge from his era. From these Astartes, Lox had already understood that a terrifying technological regression had persisted for millennia.

The warships built from degenerate matter were gone, replaced by bizarre vessels that mounted cathedrals on their engines and exchanged fire with macro-cannons.

The Stone Men and Iron Men were gone. A terrible betrayal called the Iron Rebellion had destroyed the Dark Age of Technology, leaving humanity with nothing but fear and vigilance toward their once-perfect creations and trusted aides.

Humanity's ambition and reason were gone. A peculiar religion called the Adeptus Mechanicus had monopolized science and technology. Humans no longer sought innovation or progress, only buried themselves in ruins and relics, scavenging for the creations of old.

This filled him with a deep-seated dread.

It seemed this grim truth was the reality of the universe. What people had seen before was merely the reflection on a lake's surface—and when the monster lurking beneath emerged, they finally understood what they had done wrong.

Peace and prosperity felt more like an illusion from some historical era, and they had mistakenly taken peace for granted.

No matter what, the mission he bore must be completed. If humanity was doomed to fall into ignorance and a dark future, he had to seize that thread of hope.

Nine standard Earth days had passed on the starship's Cesium Atomic Clock, though according to these warriors, Earth was now called Terra.

Voyages through the Warp were tedious. The surging Sea of Souls absorbed the emotional fluctuations of every living being throughout history, giving rise to all kinds of indescribable, bizarre phenomena.

Witnessing these sights—so utterly contrary to reason and logic—caused severe physical discomfort, even death.

Lox had grown somewhat familiar with the warriors of the Shattered Legions, but comparatively, he found himself more at ease talking with the Raven Guard warrior named Nykona Sharrowkyn.

Among the Shattered Legions, aside from Nykona and Tassa, all the rest came from the Iron Hands Legion.

In the Battle of Isstvan V, the Iron Hands' primarch, Ferrus Manus, had been defeated and killed in combat against the Emperor's Children primarch, Fulgrim. Their gene-father's head had been severed. The Iron Hands' morale was abysmally low.

They preferred to stay with their battle-brothers from the Legion, expressing grief and rage over their gene-father's death in the traditional ways of Medusa, rather than interacting with outsiders.

Nykona was a solitary Astartes, even somewhat reclusive. The Raven Guard's peculiar low presence could make even Lox overlook his existence, even when he was in the same cabin.

What surprised Lox was Nykona's evident curiosity about the past. When he learned that Lox came from a bygone era, his first question was:

"What was Terra like in the past?"

Terra—the most common pairing was "Holy." In the hearts of all Imperials, Terra was the Throneworld, the homeworld of all humanity, the seat of the Holy Emperor.

But the vastness of the galaxy meant only a fraction of people knew what Terra looked like, and only the luckiest had a chance, in their brief lives, to lay eyes on it once.

Even Nykona, an Astartes of the Raven Guard, had never achieved this.

"I was born on a satellite world called Lykaeus. I didn't see the sun for the first time until I was thirteen."

"Later, I followed my gene-sire to liberate my homeworld. Then, by Emperor's command, we set out to liberate the galaxy."

An unusual light flickered in Nykona's eyes. Astartes were genetically instilled with obedience to their primarch and Emperor's commands, but a free heart could not be shackled. He, too, had pondered what he and his primarch bled and sacrificed for.

Naturally, he harbored a deep curiosity about Holy Terra.

"I once saw a painting—Serena de Angelos's depiction of Terra. Though I know the real Terra is a world covered in brown and steel-gray, no different from the planets I've fought on."

Sharrowkyn continued: "But in the past, when it was still called Earth, it was a blue-green planet, covered in oceans and forests. The life it nurtured included the ancestors of humanity. A great race rose from there."

"I wish I could see what Terra looked like."

Lox gazed at Nykona's slightly melancholic eyes and said, almost incredulously: "I thought you were all weapons created by that man calling himself Emperor—cold-blooded killers. I never expected you to have such a delicate soul."

A living weapon of war, an existence born for battle, had actually developed a longing for humanity's homeworld.

This made Lox reflect: had he been arrogantly prejudiced, assuming these Astartes struggling across planets were all bloodless, tearless monsters?

Clearly, this time, he was wrong.

"I'm sorry. Then let me show you what Terra—Earth—used to look like. It was the most beautiful world in the galaxy, even though it's long been transformed beyond recognition by humanity." Lox offered a sincere apology.

In truth, by M21, Earth was no longer the world of his birth. Overpopulation and the growing pains of technological development had heavily polluted and damaged its environment, until humanity reflected on its mistakes and began remediation.

Under the control of the intelligent brain Pika, precious images stored deep in the database were projected onto the smooth walls of the cabin.

It was an extraordinarily beautiful planet. Abundant water provided a cradle for life, and vast green vegetation was a symbol of thriving biology.

Hundreds of millions of years of life's evolution, several terrifying apocalypses causing mass extinctions. Life developed and was destroyed; after destruction, the seeds of life gave rise to entirely new forms.

Until a million years ago, a species called Homo sapiens emerged from the crowd. The first Homo sapiens looked up at the stars, and civilization was born. That starry sky the first Homo sapiens gazed upon would, a million years later, be conquered by his descendants.

In Nykona's eyes, those deep black pupils condensed a single, sincere, hot tear.