The Heart of the Capital, Talon II
The central command hub of the heretic forces was fortified like a last bastion against extinction.
Every few meters, makeshift barricades of scavenged plating, shattered ferrocrete debris, and wrecked vehicles had been strategically placed, not just to slow attackers, but to disrupt teleportation strike tactics.
Auspex disruptors pulsed with jamming signals, clouding vox-traffic and blinding psychic augurs in a haze of static interference.
A crude, but effective measure.
At that moment, the defenders, a mix of heretical soldiers and cultist guards stood in a tight, paranoid formation, weapons trained in all directions, their faces pale beneath warpaint and blasphemous sigils, anticipating an attack from any angle.
Then the attackers arrived.
Qin Mo and his Thunderborns materialized directly inside the heart of the enemy formation, within the confines of an armored battle tank.
During the teleportation sequence, Qin Mo manipulated the molecular phase state of himself and his Thunderborns, rendering their bodies and armor incorporeal for a split second.
This ensured they wouldn't merge with solid objects upon arrival.
The tank crew barely had time to process what they were seeing, as six heavily armored warriors phasing out of thin air, their forms overlapping with the tank's control panels, seats, and adamantine bulkheads, yet completely unaffected.
As soon as they fully materialized, Qin Mo extended his hand, and fire erupted like a miniature star.
The tank's interior was instantly consumed by a roaring inferno hotter than a plasma burst, the oxygen flash-fried into superheated vapor. The crew did not scream. Their bodies were reduced to cinders before their nerve endings could register pain.
Then the tank itself melted, its reinforced plating sagging and liquefying into slag.
The sound of the tank's superheated armor liquefying alerted every soldier in the area.
They spun around, aiming their weapons at the molten wreck. Six figures emerged from the dying machine, wreathed in the dancing heat-haze of destruction, their crimson and gold armor gleaming like the heraldry of forgotten gods through the rising smoke.
"OPEN FIRE!"
"KILL THEM!"
Gunfire erupted.
The combined roar of lasguns, heavy bolters, and plasma rifles filled the air, but before a single shot could land, Qin Mo raised his hand.
Lightning arced from his fingertips, leaping from body to body in a chain reaction of obliteration. Flesh boiled, armor ruptured, weapons exploded.
In an instant, every heretic within sight was reduced to smoldering husks, their blackened silhouettes still clutching their weapons as they collapsed.
"There are hostiles beneath us," Grey reported, sharing biometric scan data through the neural link.
The outlines of countless enemy troops appeared in their HUDs.
The enemy was not just below, they were on multiple levels beneath them.
"Prepare for descent," Qin Mo instructed.
The Thunderborns barely had time to brace before the metallic floor beneath them warped like liquid mercury.
And they fell.
They plunged through ferrocrete and steel, phasing through reinforced bulkheads as if they were mere veils of water.
First floor.
Then the second.
Then the third.
After falling nearly 700 meters, their thrusters engaged, slowing their descent and they landed in the deepest vault of the Hive city.
It was vast. A subterranean chamber the size of a manufactorum, filled with thousands of enemy soldiers, an arsenal of heavy weaponry bristling at every angle.
At the center of the cavern a massive artifact loomed.
Even at a glance one could feel its age.
Unlike the crude, industrial relics of the Mechanicus and the Imperium, this construct was seamless, smooth, its obsidian-black surface half-translucent, pulsating with an eerie internal light. A massive sphere, hovering effortlessly above the chamber floor.
Within the sphere, a detailed projection of the entire Hive city flickered, alive with shifting data and runic overlays.
....
"PROTECT THE RELIC!"
The defenders turned their weapons on the Thunderborns, unleashing a torrent of fire.
Enemy reinforcements flooded in from reinforced blast doors, a tide of zealots and traitor elites, scrambling to defend the ancient artifact.
None of them understood how the intruders had arrived.
But that didn't matter now.
Qin Mo responded with fire and lightning, melting heavy emplacements and vaporizing elite troops in a single gesture.
The Thunderborns activated their Bullet Time protocols. To their enhanced perception, the battle unfolded in lethal slow-motion. Las-beams and kinetic rounds crawled sluggishly through the air like drifting embers.
They precisely targeted key enemies; officers, psykers, and heavy gunners.
Each shot was a perfectly timed execution.
A psyker's skull burst before his lips could form a syllable. A traitor commissar reached for his sword, only to disintegrate in a flash of quantum fire.
To the enemy, the Thunderborns were unstoppable. One moment, they were aiming; the next, their squadmates lay in bloody ruins, never knowing what struck them.
In three minutes, the enemy force had been reduced to fewer than a hundred survivors, shivering amidst the corpses of their kin, their morale broken, their faith shattered.
Anruida handled the remaining prisoners.
Grey and Yoan held the bulkhead doors, creating a barrage of suppressive fire.
At this point, they didn't even need to aim.
Anyone stepping into the corridor was instantly shredded by scatter lasers or blasted apart by shoulder-mounted cannons.
The chamber was secured.
....
Anruida approached the hovering sphere, gazing up at it with awe.
"This must be the ancient relic," he murmured. "It's a marvel... I expected something much larger to generate a void shield of such magnitude."
Qin Mo stepped beside him, armored fingers trailing across the sphere's surface. The moment his gauntlet touched the smooth obsidian, understanding poured into his mind like a data burst from a mind link itself.
This wasn't just a shield generator.
The city's projection within the sphere wasn't just a display, it was actively altering reality.
The capital city wasn't truly in its current location.
It was anchored in another dimension, a pocket of unreality maintained by this construct.
- The void shield protected the city.
- The artifact ensured the city remained "real."
Even if a nuclear warhead were to detonate within the shield, the buildings would remain unharmed, because they technically weren't even "there."
Qin Mo exhaled sharply.
"Whoever created this… was a genius."
The only part of this technology that touched the Warp was the void shield.
Everything else was based on dimensional manipulation, untainted by daemonic influence or psychic instability.
Qin Mo suspected it was a relic from the Golden Age of Technology.
An era long past, when the Imperium had yet to be forged in the fires of the Great Crusade, and mankind stood as equals to the Aeldari Empire at its zenith.
A time when the forges of Mars had not yet succumbed to the dictates of the Machine-God, when the secrets of Standard Template Constructs (STC) were still known, and humanity's dominion stretched across the stars without the taint of the Warp choking its every advance.
But only suspected.
Because if the Adeptus Mechanicus or the High Lords of Terra knew of this artifact.
They would have mobilized an entire crusade to retrieve it.
"Is something wrong?" Anruida asked, noticing Qin Mo's silence.
"No," Qin Mo shook his head. "I'm just… amazed."
"Should we destroy it?" Anruida asked.
Qin Mo didn't answer immediately.
Instead he raised his hand.
The sphere trembled, then rose from its pedestal, severing its connection with the glowing conduits embedded in the chamber floor. The soft pulse within the construct intensified, as if recognizing its new master.
Qin Mo smiled coldly.
"Their relic was impressive…"
His fingers tightened.
"But now, it belongs to me."