Sea of Stars Most Holy Human Empire, western Iron Purifier Sector, XT.489 star system.
As the former capital of the Determined Exterminators, this system had retained its name. The desert world once covered in rogue robots had now been transformed into a Nanomachines Ideal City dedicated to power generation. Countless reactors were buried deep underground, tirelessly extracting zero-point energy day and night to produce energy credits.
Yet in a place this deep within imperial territory, which should have been perfectly safe, large numbers of Nanite Fleets remained active. An especially massive fleet, composed of several Titan warships and numerous Whisper Escorts, constantly patrolled the system's edge.
There lay an unremarkable barren world. Like other barren worlds throughout the universe, it had no life, no water, and no atmosphere-only rock and darkness.
But a Nanite Storm was raging in its orbit.
More precisely, a dense swarm of nanites was orbiting the planet. The nanites projected a psionic barrier, cutting off all contact between the planet and the outside world.
There were no electronic signals whatsoever. Even the massive fleet patrolling the planet had shut down all electronic communication links, relying entirely on psionics for control and communication.
The planet was under strict imperial surveillance and quarantine. All forms of signal transmission were blocked, with only the purest psionics permitted, and no matter other than nanite materials was allowed near the planet.
On the desolate, dimly lit surface, hundreds of millions of nanite swarms were hard at work. Nanites formed living metal, living metal became human bodies, and those bodies were filled with psionic energy, within which consciousness resided.
These workers were rapidly assimilating the planet using nanites and psionics, shortening the immense amount of time assimilation would ordinarily require. Overhead, the Nanite Storm constantly monitored the surface, letting no anomaly escape