Three hours ago, the battleship appeared near the subspace node, leaving a trail of plasma fog and engine flames behind it.
The ship is as dark as the midnight winter sky, its edges covered in a worn, gleaming bronze relief that embodies
A militarized beauty made of steel ridges and Gothic spine buildings.
If I had to describe it, it was like a barbed spear, with a mixture of black, blue, and gold bronze spurting out of the void.
There are no active ships nearby, Imperial, xenos or otherwise, and no one knows the name of this ship during the Horus Heresy ten thousand years ago.
This ship once hung over Terra in the dirtiest of times.
At that time, Terra's atmosphere was burning, countless warships roared at each other, filling the sky with flames, and the planet below, the cradle of humanity, was also ignited.
The ship was there, killing ships loyal to the Golden Throne, flinging them from their orbit and tearing through Terra's clouds and crashing into the Emperor's city.
Its name is in a dead language from a dead world, and in Imperial High Gothic it is translated as Canaanite Voice.
But now, it no longer serves the rebels, but the empire it once attacked, so it also has a new name——
Unbound soul.
The huge battleship moved forward with low-burning engines, cutting the space in a silent sleep.
In the center of the gorgeous cabin, there is a person sitting on a throne made of black iron and bright bronze.
He wears silver-gray battle armor, with the emblem of two crossed swords on the shoulder pads, and chains hanging on his shoulders and waist, with rosary beads and the Sky Eagle emblem strung on them. Every movement of the warrior and every tremble of the spacecraft he commands
All make these ornaments jingle.
And what he presents to the world is a serious face,
A group of people were moving around, officers wearing Imperial Navy uniforms without insignia working at various consoles, tables and monitors.
A man in red robe sat on the large steering wheel console, pushed a heavy steel rod to the locked position, looked at the display screen in front of him, and read the runes scrolling all over the screen - a massive amount of text.
Pours out mercilessly.
For the Mechanicus, this flow of knowledge is stress-free.
"Inspection completed, sir."
Loken turned around and shouted.
"All decks, all systems, are stable."
Astartes, who was sitting on the throne, nodded slowly, but he was still waiting for something.
Soon, another
A voice, calm but stained by exhaustion, emerged from the speaker at the mouth of a gargoyle carved into the metal wall at the other end of the bridge.
"Target retrieval successful."
Finally, the seated giant stood up and spoke for the first time in hours.
"very good."
The giant's voice was low and soft, but it also had a strange cold quality.
He is the owner of this battleship, Soshyan Alexey, the Chapter Master of the Astral Knights.
Three years have passed since the Battle of New Badab. This has also been a rare three-year period of peace for the Space Marines. Except for the supervisory messenger sent by Terra who never found a suitable opportunity to intervene and complained to Soshyan again and again, there were almost no
Something special happened.
Only a few small things were remembered by Soshyan.
First, the High Nun of the Ebony Holy Grail Order came to Naisen No. 4 in person and took away the body of the fallen nun. At the same time, she also took away Sister Velez - it is said that the Grand Nun and Velez were alone in the church for five years.
The content of the conversation between the two for hours is unknown, but before leaving, Velez told Soshyan that she would come back again.
Although he didn't know why the other party wanted to come back, Soshyan still sent her away with friendship and gave her an iron halo captured from the Huron Armory as a return gift for the rosary.
In addition, it is the matter of the recruits. The first batch of successfully transformed recruits have officially joined the ranks and begun training. Soshyan left this matter entirely to Armin and Thor, and believed that they can lead these new blood well.
.
And he himself is focusing on recruiting the second batch of recruits.
A year ago, the second recruitment screening began, and this time the number was twice as large as the first.
After rigorous selection, a total of 107 people successfully advanced to the end.
This batch of recruits has begun to undergo preliminary transformation. With the help of the experienced pharmacist Valier, Soshyan believes that the success rate of the recruits' transformation will be much higher than before - although he despises Valier's personality, but
I have to say that this guy does have a lot of skills on a technical level.
Especially the rejection reaction of gray marrow, he actually found a way to alleviate it.
The rest are some "chores", such as the repair of the orbital dock, the repair of the star fort, the replenishment of supplies, etc.
As for the "secret agent", he is now completely under Talos' control, sending some innocuous information to his master every day - as for when to close the net, Talos's attitude is very ambiguous.
The original saying is "Don't be impatient when catching a fox."
In short, although he knew that he was being targeted by every important figure in the Black Legion, Soshyan could only pretend that nothing was wrong.
It can be said that most of his time in the past three years has been spent on the war group and alliance, and even personal training has fallen behind a lot.
As for why he appears at the edge of the galaxy now?
Simply because of an alarm.
According to recent news from nearby galaxies, many unidentified hulks have appeared in the Storm Star Territory recently.
But this is not the key point. The key is that after inspection of some of these scrap ships, it was found that a considerable number of them came from a thousand years ago. Although the state of preservation has been extremely poor, there are still some valuable materials that can be recycled.
and technology.
But that's not the real point.
The point is that the "cargo" on those hulks is far more than just treasures - there are also a large number of extremely dangerous purebred gene stealers inside.
According to past experience, as long as a purebred gene stealer like this sneaks out and lands on a certain planet, a gene stealer cult will soon appear on the planet.
So after receiving the warning, Soshyan did not dare to take it lightly and immediately led his flagship to the warning location.
At the same time, representatives of the Mechanicus from the Trace of Victory also expressed to Soshyan before setting off that if he found any valuable ancient technology, they would be willing to pay a high price to recycle it.
Soshyan, who had been idle for a long time, rarely moved his muscles.
"Report, target does not have any electromagnetic or thermal energy readings."
In a niche on the west wall of the bridge room, the Lord of Survey read out his report.
Although he is human, his voice is mechanical, and half of his face, throat and torso have been replaced by fine bionics.
"Close to the target, turn on the full display."
Soshyan whispered, he kept staring at the eyeball monitor, but the large screen in front of the cab was half-dead due to violent interference.
He wasn't worried at all, he was used to this static annoyance after traveling through the warp.
Eyeball monitors always take a while to readjust and recover.
Sometimes, even faces can be seen in the gray storm of blurred signals from the crackling screen - the fallen, the lost, the forgotten and the cursed.