Chapter Text
Time: 005.M42 | Location: Delta System Debris Belt | POV: Captain Castell, Imperial Navy Patrol
"What in the hell is that? Maximize Auspex gain!"
On the command deck of the patrol ship Indomitable Horizon, Captain Castell pointed at the anomaly beyond the observation port, his fingers trembling.
Ahead lay the debris belt of the Delta System, ravaged only last month by Tyranid remnants. Logically, this place should be a silent graveyard of floating meat and twisted ship wreckage. But instead, a strange fleet was "feeding" amidst the ruins.
The ships were finished in a uniform lead-gray, devoid of Legion livery or golden eagle reliefs. They appeared as geometric blocks cast from raw iron—no Gothic spires, no hymn-broadcasting arrays, only lines of extreme utilitarianism. They hung in the void like silent, efficient scavengers.
Castell witnessed the impossible: five engineering vessels clustered around the wreckage of an Imperial cruiser like parasites. Countless tiny, cold-glowing drones swarmed through the wounds of the ship.
Cutting, welding, restructuring—the speed was illogical.
"The scan results are in..." The Auspex officer’s voice was thin, his face pale. "Reporting, sir... there are no life signs. No heartbeats. No brainwaves. Not a single living person inside."
"No living people? Not even servitors?"
"Data shows the interiors are flooded with high-temperature radiation and toxic industrial gases. It is uninhabitable for humans or servitors. Everything operating in there... is pure automated machinery."
Castell felt a sudden chill.
The Lex Imperialis strictly forbade Abominable Intelligence. Yet, these things seemed to evade detection; the Auspex caught faint, intermittent Omnissiah frequencies, re-coded into ancient pulses.
"Have they spotted us?" the Captain whispered.
"Certainly. But... they are ignoring us."
It was the ultimate insult, and the ultimate fear.
The lead-gray fleet treated the Imperial patrol ship like a pebble on the road. They were focused entirely on their task: repairing and reinforcing the Imperial wrecks before dragging them into massive ship-bellies like scavenged trophies.
"Communication attempts failed, sir. Our signals are being filtered out as background noise."
Castell’s finger tightened on the firing stud, but he did not press it. His instinct screamed: fire one torpedo, and these cold scavengers would dismantle the Indomitable Horizon just as easily, sorting her into parts for recycling.
"Turn around. Full speed out," he finally commanded, sweat soaking the back of his uniform.
"Record this in the log as a Warp-induced hallucination caused by the Great Rift. We saw nothing. Understood?"
Behind them, the lead-gray fleet continued its work in the silent void. They were sacred yet blasphemous—the only cold, functioning order in a chaotic universe.