The Repulsor-Minefield was the throat of the Strong Shield-01 defense network. These were not crudely made powder kegs floating in the void, waiting for a collision; such primitive methods were for barbaric races. This was a work of art, a death maze built from mathematics, physics, and absolute logic.
Every Repulsor Mine-IV smart mobile mine resembled a silvery metal sea urchin, suspended in the faint turbulence of the stellar wind. Their surfaces were smooth as mirrors, but inside each sat an independent AI core called "Watcher."
Watcher had no emotions and knew no fatigue, only pure logic. Every microsecond, it scanned all matter within a radius of five thousand kilometers-mass, velocity, energy signatures, and spectral characteristics. Its database was linked to the central intelligence, Pure Thought, and contained the most comprehensive friend-or-foe identification list in the entire T'au Empire.
In its logical world, the universe was neatly divided into two halves:
Anything matching the characteristics of the greater good was friendly; it should proactively avoid it and clear its flight path.
Anything that did not match, or was marked hostile, was an obstacle to be eliminated.
Simple, efficient, perfect.
Until today, when those green agents of chaos reached out with their filthy, logic-defiling hands and touched the switch on this precision instrument.
Ghazghk stood before a workbench piled high with scrap metal. In his hand was a newly completed device shaped like a metal starfish. Its weld seams were as rough as a centipede, and several strips of tape, plainly torn from Imperial Guard ration crates, were wrapped around its surface.
"Simple... means stupid."
Ghazghk let out a shrill, devious cackle. His modified mechanical eye spun wildly, shifting its focus between the device in his hand and the bewildered Sharpfang before him.
"Sharpfang, take a look at this thing." Ghazghk