“I’ll intercept it!” Alex didn’t wait for orders at all, flooring the accelerator.
The chimera let out another death-throed roar, charging down the slope of the river valley.
Its tracks crushed pebbles, and the chassis kicked up a spray of mud in the shallow water.
“mortal!
Be careful!
That is a vital asset!” Avitus roared over the comms, his voice filled with “no wasting allowed.” “Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing!” Alex said that, but in his mind: I know jack shit.
I’m going to go down in flames with that junked vehicle right now.
The chimera jolted wildly across the riverbank, the distance between the two closing rapidly.
Five hundred meters.
Three hundred meters.
The Orks spotted him.
The large-caliber dakka on the junked vehicle began to swivel its muzzle, bullets clanging against the chimera’s armor.
“A little closer…
just a little closer…” Alex didn’t dodge.
He held the melta carbine in his arms, operating it with one hand, and locked onto the fuel drum painted with a red skull on the back of the junked vehicle.
As long as he blew that spot up, the vehicle would turn into a massive fireball, engulfing itself along with the chimera.
He squeezed the trigger tight.
Zzt—!
However, at that critical moment, the driver of the Ork war vehicle seemed to swerve sharply to the left to avoid a massive boulder on the riverbank, causing the entire chassis to skid violently.
This skid didn’t just move the junked vehicle’s fuel drum out of the beam’s path; it also caused the thick iron chain trailing behind to snap taut, right in the path of the laser.
Alex’s laser, which should have ignited the vehicle’s fuel and caused a secondary explosion, sliced clean through the chain instead.
Clang!
A crisp sound of metal snapping.
The laser precisely melted through the thick iron chain connecting the junked vehicle and the core pillar.
The junked vehicle, moving at full speed, lost its multi-ton load and suddenly lunged forward.
Like an unleashed wild dog, it lost control and slammed into the nearby rock wall, exploding with a roar.
The heavy power pillar, losing its tow, used its momentum to roll like a giant bowling ball toward the cliff at the edge of the river valley.
Alex:…Fuck?
It can even miss like this?!
I was aiming for the fuel tank!
That huge red fuel tank!
“Good shooting!” Thaddeus’s voice boomed over the comms, filled with undisguised admiration.
“Using the terrain to force the enemy to turn, then precisely cutting the connection!
mortal, you’re a genius!” “I’m not!
I didn’t!
Don’t talk nonsense!” Before Alex could explain, Matellus’s voice cut into the channel like ice water on fire.
“Don’t let it fall!!” The core pillar rolled to the edge of the cliff, seemingly about to plunge into the bottomless subterranean river below.
“I’ll catch it!” Boom—!
A red figure soared into the sky.
Thaddeus activated the maximum thrust of his jump pack.
He traced a red arc in the sky, like a predatory eagle, diving down through the turbulence.
He used the jump pack’s reverse thrust as a brake, using his body and shoulder guards to withstand the momentum, turning himself into a living buffer.
Thud!
A dull impact echoed through the river valley.
The multi-ton adamantium cylinder slammed hard against the Space Marine’s breastplate.
The servo motors all over Thaddeus’s body let out a scream bordering on overload.
The hydraulic rods at the knees of his power armor hissed out white auxiliary gas, and his power boots plowed two deep furrows over ten meters long into the rock, sparks flying like rain.
He stopped just half a meter from the edge of the cliff.
The core pillar did not fall.
The blue light still flickered unstably—but at least it was still inside the shell.
Panting, Thaddeus crawled out from under the cylinder, patted the dust off his breastplate, and gave a thumbs-up to the dumbfounded Alex.
“Perfect coordination, brother!” …Just end me now.
Twenty minutes later.
The Astronomical Array’s base.
Matellus pushed the heavy power pillar onto the base as if treating a holy relic.
The servo arms advanced slowly and precisely.
He aligned it with the slot, and the rune locks closed section by section.
Click.
Click.
Click.
A low hum emanated from deep within the array, like a sleeping behemoth rolling over.
Matellus raised his data slate and began the activation ritual: “Guiding the machine spirit back to its place…
energy readings rising…
entering calibration sequence—” He pressed the final rune key…
no reaction.
No green light, no vibration, no sound of the machine’s waking breath.
Instead, the runes on the console all flashed red, like a row of cold eyes.
Matellus fell silent for a second.
In that second, his servo arms grasped twice in frustration.
“Poor contact,” he concluded.
“The slot was damaged by the Orks.
The lock hasn’t fully engaged.” He leaned over again, using a servo probe to recalibrate the interface while whispering prayers to appease the machine spirit, his speech even slower than usual.
Still no reaction.
Alex sat in the turret, listening to him pray, calibrate, and pray again, his head buzzing.
All he saw was: a giant slot, a giant battery, and a giant thing that wouldn’t light up no matter how much it was pressed.
The irritability of a modern repairman suddenly flared up in his mind.
“Is it…
not plugged in all the way?” Matellus’s eyepiece turned toward him, his gaze sweeping over him like a blade.
Alex shrugged.
“I’m just asking.” He jumped out of the vehicle and walked over to the base, stepping on the slippery moss.
The core pillar was still humming with heat, and there was a faint smell of ozone near the charred scratches on the shell.
He noticed a slightly upturned metal tab at the edge of the slot—like a burr pulled out by the iron chain—which was blocking the last notch of the catch.
His hands were itchy.
He swore, his hands were just itchy.
Alex raised his fist and slammed it hard against the upturned metal tab—as if striking at the entire godforsaken universe.
“mortal!
Stop!
That is a sacred—” Matellus’s terrified electronic voice hadn’t even finished shouting.
Thud!
A muffled bang.
Crackle—!
The blue light suddenly flared, like a choked fluorescent tube suddenly receiving current.
A low click came from inside the array.
Immediately after, the ancient circuits on the pyramidal shell lit up one by one with a faint green glow.
The entire array began to vibrate.
The cooling grilles hummed, dust fell from the vines, and the distant broken antenna spine emitted a slow metallic resonance.
The runes on the console turned from red to green, and rows of data streams began to race.
Matellus froze in place.
His servo arm, extended in mid-air, hung there awkwardly; the word “sacrilege” was stuck in his vocal unit, unable to be uttered.
A few seconds later, the Techmarine’s voice squeezed out of his throat speaker, carrying the confusion of a shattered worldview.
His servo arm twitched, as if he wanted to twist Alex’s head off.
But the runes on the console had already turned from red to green.
Matellus reconnected to the data slate, suppressing his emotions back into the operating procedure as if nothing had happened.
“Guiding the machine spirit back to its place…
energy readings rising…
entering calibration.” “Three minutes required to complete alignment.” He paused, then added a warning.
“The core pillar’s shell is damaged, thermal load is abnormal.” “During these three minutes—don’t let anything touch it again.”