Events gradually began to exceed Lox's expectations.
When the augurs found the exploration vessel that had traveled here, all that remained was a mass of twisted metal floating in the cold void.
An unknown force had completely destroyed the exploration vessel's overall structure.
Its two-kilometer alloy keel had been twisted into unrecognizable, corkscrew-like wreckage. High-strength glass, metal polymers, and servitors had become thousands upon thousands of tiny fragments, suspended around the wreck of the exploration vessel.
"It isn't strange that this exploration vessel was destroyed, but this state... who did this?"
Lox was not particularly surprised by the destruction of the exploration vessel. These mass-produced starships were consumables to begin with, their costs squeezed to the absolute limit from the moment they were designed and built.
In Sotha's asteroid belt, the mobile shipyard produced hundreds of exploration vessels every day. These ships contained only an engine, an automated navigation system, and a low-level starship cogitator; they had barely any defensive weapons installed.
Even races that had only just left their homeworlds and remained confined to their own star systems were capable of destroying such starships with little ability to fight back.
The Red Alert released tractor beams, drawing in and cutting apart the wreckage of the exploration vessel. Though the hull had been severely damaged, its destroyer had not cleaned up the battlefield, and the real-time backup navigation log remained intact.
Lox recovered the most important navigation log and ordered the Cogitator to decrypt its information.
Hill, Barabas Dantioch, Fafnir, Gantula, and other Space Marines arrived. Magos Lawrence of the Adeptus Mechanicus and the commander of the mortal auxiliary forces also came to the meeting room. Everyone was curious about what had reduced a two-kilometer exploration vessel to such a state.
They found no traces of common human weapons such