Warhammer: I am the Hammer of the Empire.

Chapter 258 The Falcon Spreads Its Wings
Predictive divination equipment, full name 13-gamma-67, the metal satellite of the empire, and added the bones of many martyrs, heroes and loyalists. The exquisite equipment and the souls of the emperor's believers enable it to detect and stabilize warp space fluctuations. The navigator on board is assisted, and at the same time provides general information about the area.

It has been hanging here for decades, and at this moment, exactly seventeen starships have shifted into real space under their vigilant visual receivers in decades.

Now, Ship No. 18, coming, that self-scripted data feed unfolded through the probe's artificial cortex, and the automated review responded to the pre-scan readings, but just as its Machine Spirit was about to classify yet another scan with no significant events, As a priority positive and negative instrument blocking signal roared from its auspicious instrument, the detector's contemplation was broken.

The divining probe's void-enhanced lenses refocused, and its positive and negative meters hummed, sucking in data on every frequency spectrum as reality warped.

The force field shifted and fluctuated across a vast area, and the light bent in a distorted ultra-wide-angle lens that the probe stared at, as if twisting at the core of a black hole, where many witchfires flickered and extinguished in the dark, each flame It's like scorching the shell of real space.

Until that rift between reality and unreality appeared, and the physical matter was stripped away like the flesh from a leper's face, and the aura spilled out, seething in fountains and emitting eerie light.

The real space vibrated violently, twisting and stretching at the same time, and then it was torn open like a cracked wound, and a starship rushed out of it.

The outside of its covered stand was tumbling, stimulated by wuli psychic energy, the engine humming and roaring in its efforts, the pistons continued, and the ship's geller field collapsed in the dancing discharge fireball, revealing a spaceship nearly several kilometers long, The battered hull panels of the reinforced Imperial warships were charred and dented.

Behind it, rifts in reality rolled wildly, tendrils of dirty light groping blindly like hounds trying to reclaim the ship's countless souls as prizes before it fled.

With the subspace anomaly coming to the physical barrier caused by the real universe and self-collapse, the wounded starship can finally sail freely, and the detection satellite Gamma is working quickly to compile and classify, scan and transmit.

The cowhide scroll hummed within its armored shell, preparing to launch a bundle of information through its array carved with aquila, and Machine Soul interrogated and quickly determined that the ship was an Assault Strike Cruiser, the Space Marine's ship.

Faster auto-scanning detects and classifies the sigil of the Doomhawk Chapter from the wild world of Ghost Peak in Damocles Bay.

The industrious Imperial Probe is constantly working, collecting, recording, analyzing, and storing. Those high-end storage units composed of artificial neural units and wetware have not noticed at all that in this dark universe without friction, this semi- The stalled ship was approaching it.

When the machine soul of the poor probe satellite realized something was wrong, it frantically ignited the thrusters on the flanks to pull away from the orbit, and packed the communication language to launch to the machine soul of the space fighter cruiser, but when the server roared continuously, the huge battleship Then across the void, this hard-working imperial engine turned into a ball of flames and exploded.

It left a slight burnt mark on the plating of the assault cruiser's starboard bow, just below the ship's name, and a small spot on Baptism of Fire.

This is a remote waterway, which was discovered by a few adventurer fleets many years after the establishment of the empire. Because of the poor subspace flow and constant undercurrents, it was regarded as a non-preferred road by the empire. However, in the era of war, On the contrary, this position can prevent oneself from being discovered, and its price can be roughly understood by looking at the current appearance of the Baptism of Fire...

Many mortal servants stepped anxiously on the metal deck of the ship. Those servants who have multiplied for dozens of generations on this strike cruiser have never even seen what a planet looks like, and have never left a single world, except for the beloved Servants, most people's lives are just a part, a very small part, of this baptizing fire combat strike cruiser.

This subspace travel is the first time that many people have seen such a serious loss in their lives. Compared with the calmness of the space fighters, the busyness and trampling of those mortals made the maintenance of order worse and slower.

And as time goes by, the gravity generation array inside the ship also has problems. Countless people are subconsciously like drowning fish. people were drowned.

But no matter how chaotic it was, as long as the space warriors walked past them, those mortals would stop and instinctively salute them with their slender arms.

At this moment, under the flashing emergency lumen lights in the ship, the Fourth Company Commander is urgently looking for someone. He doesn't need to hold on to the handrail or pull anything like those mortals. He is as stable as if there are suction cups on the soles of his feet. hair.

He slammed into the failed door valve in front of him, and the iron sheet was bent under its force. After the power failed, the small gap opened by his shoulder armor was held by his fingers, the power armor made a sizzle sound, and the power system was fully driven.

After the sharp buzzing sound that made people's teeth sour, the hydraulic iron door that was not capable of being provided by the battleship was actually pulled open by manpower one by one, revealing the main power control room inside.

Those sparkling and complex imperial machines were originally the core power to assist this strike cruiser. Those circuits and enhanced information processors or head servers should have been their boost to break through the subspace, but now they are completely persecuted.

Traces of power axes are everywhere, reliquary remains and servos, sage cortices or augurs, all paralyzed by the frantic onslaught, all at the same time.

The mechanical sage in the scarlet robe looked at the furious warrior with his emotionless pupil display, and the grid of the mechanical sound roared, chanting the demonic mechanical language from the subspace.

"0100100010010..."

The ironic thing is that this man still has the light of Om Messiah during his travels, and uses his weak metal body to maintain this extremely important room with all his heart The filth of space has done its own great work.

Now, in the eyes of the Fourth Company Commander, the dedicated sage is dead, and his loyal soul was swept away by the torrents constantly reverberating in the subspace, leaving only the metal body, which is pitiful.

But no matter what the heretic wants to say or do, the captain of the space warrior at this moment tenses his muscles like a wild beast, lowers his body, and shoots, like flames, like projectiles, piercing through the space that only has crazy machine language.

As a veteran, he has experienced the days when heresy bewitched his comrades-in-arms, and he also tasted the test of faith. When his extremely fast thoughts and two strong hearts beat to encourage blood to flow, his muscles screamed, he held the heresy with ten thousand catties of strength The pathetic throat, the force of the fingers gripped the grille in his throat whole, letting the whisper die away.

He took off the entire metal head, sprayed blood-red engine oil, and dyed the company commander's white cloak and beautiful armor red, but the soldier didn't care about himself alone, and threw the head off, shot it with a bomb, and put it in the ship's inner warehouse. It left deep bullet marks and fragments of the exploded head.

Will the souls of the faithful go to worship the Golden Throne before the Lord of Men?But it seemed that he was hopeless, that kind of sadness and pity flashed in the hearts of the few mortals who followed the space soldier, but it was only a flash.

They rushed forward to collect the bloody oil and debris, and what followed was a massive heresy check and hundreds of deaths before the ship stabilized.

Sacrifice, blood, and changes are all that are required to make this precarious ship dock, but the Fourth Company Commander doesn't need to be safe, he needs to move, he needs to leave, he needs to go to that rebellious free port, and use Space Marine raids to lay down for the Imperial Guard. A camp that can be stationed.

The great maneuverability of the Doom Eagles allows them to pierce into places that lack air defenses like sharp spears, and the only enemies are mercenaries and pirates. The clumsy civilian ships cannot effectively hinder the Space Marine warships. Break in and destroy those enemies to gain the upper hand.

But now, their astropaths died, their astrologers lost their arrays, and at the same time, the sage priests in the master control area were also corrupted and cleaned up. The possibility of subspace travel was destroyed, and most of the systems failed. If they can travel at sub-light speed, then they're space hulks...

The company commander who had just returned on the bridge was stopped by the technical sergeant, the hissing sound and his third arm reminded the company commander of the mechanical sage who had just been torn apart, and this brother who believed in Om Messiah said The words that gave the company commander a headache. "There are still about 80 light-years away from the free port. It takes at most two days for a subspace voyage, and a week in the real world at most."

"I know! Then you let the ship enter the subspace?!" The company commander cursed angrily, and many brothers working here stopped their work because of this. His gaffe was witnessed by many people, it was terrible, and Very inappropriate for now.

The company commander quickly calmed down and muttered. "what's your name?"

The tech sergeant replied. "Callum, brother."

he asks. "Brother Kelham, how much do we still have to lose?"

The tech sergeant replies "We've had fires and ammunition explosions on several gun decks, and the aft void shield generators are inoperative. Ship-wide communications are down, and we've lost over half of our hull oracles."

"What about our subspace engine?" the fourth company commander muttered.

"The dead sage Ramdax was forced to freeze for fear of a celestial feedback or overflow of evil, and it has now been shown that it cannot be restarted," replied the sergeant.

"Then we're paralyzed," the company commander said angrily. "Without the power of the warp engine to penetrate the Veil, we are limited to conventional engines. Our journey through the warp would take days with this conventional power and it would take years. We have no way of reconnecting with the large force, or even getting our Comrades know we are alive!"

"How long will it take us to implement the fix?" he continued.

"We don't have any equipment, large-scale equipment, and the death of the technical sage also brings a definite vacancy. The core technology of the subspace engine can only be mastered by the foundry sage above the civilization level of 15." The technical sergeant read.

In his heart, the company commander slammed Technical Sergeant Kelham to the ground during those years of training in the Martian Academy. The reality is true. The Mechanicus will not hand over the core to any outsider, let alone a smart space warrior, which is even more dangerous .

"Then what is our current course of action?" The Master Chief who successfully walked into the core area of ​​the Fourth Company listened for a long time and asked.

He also said. "Presumably we have been unable to pacify the enemy, and can only drift in the darkness of the interstellar, but that will not serve the Emperor's will."

said the company commander. "Activate the divination device." After listening, the technical sergeant pressed a rune sequence into the holotable, whispering the awakening ceremony as in the past.

The device flickered actively, creating a three-dimensional map of the local space from light to dark in the air. The "Baptism of Fire" was located in the center, represented by a red and white rune, and the map around it followed the ships. The remaining oracles slowly expand, weaving their surroundings into data murals.

Ironically, the satellite that provided the information had just been hit by them, and now it can only rely on the slow scanning of the ship's own instruments, making every minute and every second seem tormented.

"There's machine-spirit confirmation from deep space satellites," Kelham said. "That puts us at least on the edge of a galaxy."

"There!" said the Master Chief, pointing out as more runes flashed. "An asteroid belt. A gas giant. A dead world."

"More planets," said the Captain, "and with Imperial symbols. By the Emperor's Grace, we've come to a settled system, brothers."

Aerospace data is expanded to one side of the map.Names began to flash, written in High Gothic as the bridge crew struggled to triangulate.

"Loander System!" Techmarine Kellum read aloud. "And there, the capital world, the main star of Loander, the tithe level two (low-level hive world), which shows that there are sufficient orbital docks to speed up our repairs."

"Even better..." the Master Chief said cheerfully, typing the command into the rune keys on the holotable.The display focuses on Callides Prime, expanding the world into a slowly rotating sphere and projecting additional information in a halo around it.

"A star language array for a planet," said the company commander with a stiff smile. "This is good news. Not only will we be able to repair the Baptism of Fire, but we can rely on that planet's spiritual chorus of astropaths to penetrate the Warp and send messages to Skadi."

"We'll let them know we're at our destination, and coordinate our rendezvous with Pangea's expedition fleet. We'll get back to the heart of the war!"

The Master Chief suddenly interrupted the company commander's words. "Sorry, but this is in the Freeport control area, I think the enemy already knows we will attack, so..."

"Always longing to kill and sharpen the blade, I understand, brother," replied the captain. "Issue an order to all brothers in the fleet who are still able to act."

"We found a world that might serve the Empire, but now we're deep inside the enemy, like spears into the enemy camp, so we can face anything!"

"Get ready for bombs! Land, kill, eagles strike the sky, death falls from the sky, for the Emperor!"

"For the Emperor!" shouted the warriors of the Doomhawk Chapter who heard the order, their deep and sonorous voices carried down the corridors of the ship and through the deep compartments, filling their mortal servants with pride and courage!
(End of this chapter)