chsdbacks Chapter 56 Destroyed Spaceship
Chapter 56 Destroyed Spaceship
After the Black Pearl jumped from Mandeville, it continued its regular cruise for a day.
The deep space at the edge of the galaxy was cold and solidified. A distant star burned as a dim point of light, far weaker than Lucis's artificial sun, leaving only a faint, cold white halo as it fell over this area. The armored portholes of the bridge were open, and the sensor arrays, under the command of the Thinker array, were scanning the surrounding airspace at full power.
Liu En stood in front of the porthole.
The first batch of scan data was transmitted back shortly after the jump. There was something in the target airspace, so large that even the depth scan mode of the sensor array couldn't capture its complete outline in one go. Marcus pulled up the preliminary image on the holographic projection table, and the outline of the wrecked ship slowly emerged from the blurry pixels—not a single ship, but countless ships crammed together, fused together, welded tightly together, then welded on with new debris, then asteroids, then space junk ejected from some unknown star sector by subspace.
Some parts of the hull still barely retain the outline of an Imperial ship, but they are twisted, the armor plates folded, torn, and folded again like crumpled paper. Some parts are completely unrecognizable, leaving only corroded metal skeletons and crystallized subspace deposits. Dark purple deposits have solidified into a thick shell on the hull surface, like festering scars.
The mid-section report from the sensor array piled up on the data board for dozens of pages. The main structure of the wrecked ship—over a thousand kilometers long, and hundreds of kilometers wide and high. This was merely the outline the sensors could delineate. The edges continued to extend in all directions, with countless tiny fragments trailing behind, like a metallic nebula that had floated in space for thousands of years. Some fragments were as fine as grains of sand, others as large as frigates, all bound together by subspace sediment.
This is not a warship. This is a grave.
For millennia, countless ships wrecked in the warp have been swept together by chaotic currents, drifting, colliding, tearing apart, and fusing at the boundary between the warp and the real universe. What welded them together wasn't a weld seam, but a layer of radiation deposits from the warp, a crystalline coating formed over millennia, harder than adamantite. Each ship carries a story of its wreck—the navigator's desperate screams, the Geller Field's overload and collapse in a warp storm, the psionic batteries in the engine room ignited from within by demons, the Thinker array on the bridge recording the crew's final, maddened prayers in the final seconds. Those ships drifted in the warp for countless years, then crashed into another wreck, into the pile of debris, welded together, then crashed into more, and welded together again.
The size of the wreckage continued to expand. Each entry into and exit from the subspace coated its surface with a new layer of debris, and each impact piled up new fragments on its outer perimeter.
The data from the seventh batch of bee-machine servants has begun to be transmitted back.
The bee servants were small, with six mechanical arms folded on either side of their torsos, even smaller than the service servants. A wet core processed sensor data, allowing them to navigate autonomously without remote control. After being ejected from the Black Pearl's hangar, they flew towards the massive wreckage, trailing faint ion plumes of flame.
The first wave of bee servants advanced along the entry points marked in historical records. The transmitted data streams were aggregated into a structural profile on the Thinker array's monitoring panel—not a holographic model, but a jumble of signal points, each representing a passable passage node. Collapses and dead ends were marked in red, areas exceeding radiation limits in yellow, and passable sections in green. The bee servants lacked visual sensors; they used short-range radar to scan the distances to the passage walls, laser rangefinders to determine obstacles ahead, and radiation sensors to delineate safe zones. The passage's direction was pieced together from radar echoes, not images, but numbers. The numbers were sufficient.
Data flooded back. The drones navigated the passageways surrounding the wrecked ship; some passageways were passable, while others were blocked halfway through. Not by collapsed bulkheads, but by sediment. The transmitted signals were timestamped, and the end of each passable passageway was marked with a coordinate.
There was a cavity at the end of a passage. Radar echoes showed that the space beyond was large, possibly the remains of a supply warehouse.
The radar echo from the other channel is abnormal. Something is moving. It's not airflow, not structural loosening, but moving entities—not just one, but a group.
The bee-like servant continued to climb inside.
About ten minutes later, its signal disappeared. Not interrupted, but destroyed. In the last few frames of data transmitted back, the sensor readings recorded multiple close-range shockwaves and thermal signals. Not some advanced alien, but Green Boys. At least three moving entities were rapidly approaching from the corner of the passage, their outlines indicating standard Green Boy physiques. They were carrying weapons. Not melee weapons, but ranged weapons. The sensors recorded continuous energy pulse characteristics and ballistic shockwaves. One Green Boy was holding a crudely made pistol—the Greens' favorite shoulder-fired weapon, capable of firing heavy bullets or explosive casings, or even both. The Greens believed a good pistol should be able to fire many rounds at once and produce a loud noise. The gun was made of sheet metal and copper tubing, the magazine was wrapped with duct tape, and the impact marks left by the cheap metal projectiles from the muzzle when they hit the armored shell of the Bee Servant were clearly visible. Another green-skinned kid carried a small gun, the standard green-skinned pistol, less powerful than a musket, but sufficient for the narrow passageways. Yet another green-skinned kid held a laser gun salvaged from some ship; the green-skinned collectively called these captured human weapons "bang-bang," and the Imperial double-headed eagle insignia on the gun was covered in rough graffiti. These were plundered weapons; in a space wreck like this, the green-skinned kids had scavenged far more over thousands of years than a newly landed reconnaissance team. They fired indiscriminately around the corners of the passageways, the musket's gunshots like pile drivers pounding steel plates, the bang-bang laser pulses leaving charred holes in the bulkheads. Occasionally, if it jammed, they would smash someone with the butt of the gun, or pull out a machete and charge forward—the green-skinned kid always carried two things on his waist: a ranged weapon and a melee machete.
The Orks nest in wrecked spaceships, turning them into fleets that roam the galaxy. This is perfectly in line with their nature. Wrecked spaceships are the Orks' primary means of interstellar travel. Whenever a wrecked spaceship appears in an Ork-controlled system, the Tech-Boys quickly transform it into a massive invasion ship, crammed full of Orks and war machines. The Tech-Boys are natural-born armorers; with their innate knowledge etched into their genetic code, they can always conjure or repair various weapons and equipment from scratch using all sorts of materials. And for them, wrecked ships are an inexhaustible warehouse of spare parts. This particular wrecked ship has been drifting here for thousands of years. How many Orks are inside? Are there any Tech-Boys? Are there any Pimps running errands for their bosses? Has it been modified into a functional state? The sensors can't answer that.
The Beehive found a relatively intact section of the hull structure on the wrecked ship. It wasn't the entry point marked in the historical records—that entrance had been buried by later-accumulated debris, and digging it out would take too much time. The new entry point was on a section of hull debris on the side of the wreck, partially buried—the bow section of an Imperial Navy cruiser. The flybridge deck was relatively intact, the armor plates still in their original welded state, not completely covered by subspace sediment. The entrance was a blown-open airtight door, the frame twisted, but the passageway was barely passable. This door wasn't recently blown open. Judging from the thickness of the sediment at the scene, it might have been left by an exploration team, or perhaps by the Greenskins using explosives. The passageway was filled with thick dust and corroded debris, with no footprints—no one had walked this area for a long time.
Sensor readings indicated that radiation doses would increase several times over after advancing several hundred meters deeper into the wrecked ship from the entry point. The power armor's filtration system wouldn't last long in that environment. The veterans of the garrison regiment could only remain on the perimeter, unable to venture further. The wet cores of the intelligent mechs and bee servants were protected by multiple layers of shielding.
That's why he had to be at the forefront. Not because he was better than the veterans. It was because only his domain could ensure safety in that environment.
Marcus updated the wrecked ship's scanning model at the holographic platform, marking the walkable paths confirmed by the bee-like servants in green, the collapsed and impassable sections in red, and areas with excessive radiation readings in yellow. The network of paths on the model resembled a tangled mass of blood vessels, with branches in some places, dead ends in others, and points leading to deeper, unknown areas. The end of the walkable paths was still a considerable distance from the supply warehouse in the core area of the wrecked ship; the sensors couldn't reach that far, and the bee-like servants hadn't been able to advance to that depth.
The number of bee servants is still decreasing. It's unclear whether they were destroyed by the green-skinned soldiers or are stuck in the collapsed tunnels. The signal relay servants are establishing communication nodes at the landing site more slowly than expected; the sediment on the wrecked ship's hull is absorbing most of the signal, and the relay servants' uplink bandwidth is barely enough to transmit heartbeat packets.
Kara inquired about the landing time and personnel configuration in the garrison's channel. Liu En did not reply immediately. Radiation compensation calculations for the core area of the wrecked ship took time, so the veterans of the garrison could only wait on the edge. The protection of the intelligent mechs was not indefinite either; the wet core would begin to experience signal attenuation in a dozen hours. The route of the passage, the location of the collapse, the distribution of the green-skinned soldiers—these questions could only be answered definitively after he personally traversed the area.
What is certain is that: the entry point has been found, the passageway has been cleared, the presence of the green-skinned soldiers is confirmed, and the weapon configuration is clear—a mixed formation of rifles, small guns, and mortars, posing at least a ranged weapon threat, with radiation levels within a controllable range. However, the passageways inside the wrecked ship are so narrow that two people cannot walk side by side, and the height is barely enough for soldiers wearing power armor to walk upright. The depth is unknown, the fire-fighting pipelines are unknown, the sealing status of the airtight doors is unknown, and the location of the supply warehouse in the core area of the wrecked ship is only a guess based on radar echoes from the Bee Servant.
The walkable passageway ends some distance from the supply warehouse, beyond the reach of the sensors. What lies further in, whether the passageway is blocked, what remains in the warehouse, and how many green-clad soldiers are inside—we'll only know once we reach it.
Liu En stood up from his commander's seat and stood by the porthole for a while. The outline of the wrecked ship became clearer in his field of vision. The drones were still crawling, and data was still being transmitted back. The sensor data was insufficient, so the drones could only move along the outer perimeter. The core area needed to be explored by humans once they got close enough.
He turned off the projector and turned to leave the bridge.
The corridor lights were still in daytime mode, casting a cool white light across the floor and ceiling. He walked past the garrison's training area, through the hangar, and into the private workshop, the hatch closing behind him. The workshop lights were dimmed to their lowest setting, casting a thin layer of silver-gray light across the metal walls.