N-A-A Chapter 38, Target 3
Chapter 38, Target 3
The Black Pearl is still docked.
The first batch of crew members on leave have already left the ship, and the second batch will leave tomorrow, leaving more than 300 people on board. The only sounds in the corridor are the white noise of the ventilation system and the footsteps of the maintenance crew during their regular inspections.
The third coordinate wasn't provided by Marcus Ambrose. Or rather, it wasn't in Marcus's data core—or even if it were, it would be a vague record devoid of any practical value. Liu En found it in another database. That database from his past life existed in his mind, transcending dimensions, species, and death. The blurry, residual images he was browsing the forum were already indistinguishable from that time-traveling memory.
Istvan III.
Liu En leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a while.
In the official archives of the Imperial administrative system, Istvan III was a world precisely marked with an "extremely dangerous" signal on interstellar charts. The Grand Inquisition listed it as a high-risk forbidden zone. Some had said that traces of the Chaos Cult's corruption remained there, and that at least a few fanatics who went looking for death could be caught every now and then. But strangely, the official reports made no mention of the viral bombs, the Primarch's betrayal, or any record of the great plague and purge between the Loyalists and the Loyalists.
The Imperial archives locked those disgraceful files deep within the Ministry of the Interior's archives. Only the core members, at the level of the Terra High Lords, retained the actual access codes. Those on the throne might know some, and the Empire's enemies might possess fragments. But even if these documents were laid word for word on the Imperial Navy Commander's desk, no one would consider it a military objective. A betrayal eleven thousand years ago, a Gothic tragedy in the early stages of a rebellion, had been forgotten in some high-gothic dusty archive within the Empire's bloated bureaucratic machine. Human memory, within the Empire's standard ten-thousand-year timeframe, had an average lifespan of only a few centuries; the starlight of generations of Astrologers burned and died out in the galaxy. In the public versions required to be made available to the public, the files of Istvan III were intentionally or unintentionally erased. Only that vague "extreme danger" was preserved in the form of a security prohibition, like a warning sign nailed to a black stone—"Eternal closure to heretical doctrines," "No entry without a pass," while much more has been obliterated by the torrent of history.
The Black Pearl's database was, of course, empty. Liu En entered the code "Istvan III," and all that popped up was a brief notification: "Imperial records are blocked. Please check your local court branch." It was nonsensical, and he couldn't even understand which level of court the notification was referring to.
Liu En tapped the target coordinates on the star map. The planet's surface was resolved into a nearly gray, blurry spherical outline. There were no active space facilities in orbit, no Imperial Navy deployments, and no interstellar power recorded its location on its usual routes. A gray, ghostly ruin; something happened there ten thousand years ago, and no one cared about it afterward, no one returned.
In his previous life, Liu En had seen numerous fragmented pieces of secondhand information: the campaign involved twelve interstellar legions composed of different personnel being dispatched to suppress the governors of rebellious planets. In reality, it was a purge by Warmaster Horus of loyalists from his own legions and the other three interstellar war legions. Four legions—Sons of Horus, Sons of the Emperor, Deathguard, and World Eaters—were all sent to carry out the suppression. Four Primarchs, along with the rebels from the four legions, stood by in orbit. They sent hundreds of thousands of loyal Astartes into the vacuum of the Istvan III. After landing, communications were cut off. The orbital fleet sealed off the skies. Virus bombs silently slid from the warships' torpedo tubes, and bacteriophages devoured all organic matter on the surface within minutes, causing billions of civilians to be reduced to blood and flesh within seconds. The surviving soldiers retreated from the exposed surface works into underground bunkers, where they faced over three times the strength of their traitorous brethren—elite forces, Land Raiders, Rhino troop carriers, Stormbird assault boats, and rebel Titans—in the ensuing weeks of rubble warfare. The rebels deployed some of the most formidable war machines of the era, including the Imperial Titan Deathhawk. Remnants of entire Starfleet chapters included Thunderhawk gunships, various types of Land assault boats, and elite guards clad in Terminator armor, their genetic seeds preserved in the bodies of the massacred loyalist Astartes. The loyalists lacked such heavy firepower, but at least their vast Legion underground fortifications contained considerable basic infrastructure. Their few remaining Dreadnoughts were gradually destroyed, buried beneath the rubble along with their pilots.
Those were the remains of nearly ten thousand loyal Space Marines: Deathguards, Sons of the Emperor, Sons of Horus, World Eaters. The wreckage of thousands upon thousands of Mark IV power armors, hundreds of various troop transport vehicles, and possibly abandoned heavy engineering equipment and Legion-specific supply depots. In the deepest bunkers and air-raid shelters, there might be some rare, discontinued parts from the Great Crusade era, and high-energy field principles that dozens of Tech-Priests could never fully comprehend in their lifetimes. Beneath them lay the reserve supply systems and support bases of the four Legions.
The truly valuable things are buried beneath that desolate, glassy wilderness.
Furthermore, he could find a complete set of remains of loyal Astartes who died in battle. By cross-referencing and corroborating multiple sets of remains, he could completely archive the atomic blueprints for the entire set of nineteen genetic modification surgeries. From the second heart to the black carapace—the Empire lost its original template tens of thousands of years ago, and the current chapters rely entirely on the seeds passed down through generations to survive. What if he could obtain the parameters of every microstructure? The industrial world of Garros already has the foundation of an Astartes chapter.
The Legion's legacy doesn't stop there. Rumors suggest that during the lull in the rebel withdrawal, a General-class Titan was indeed destroyed in the vicinity, its armored body buried deep beneath the surface, beyond recovery. If he could detect differences in the buried signals near the ruins, and use his scale of field sweeping to penetrate the strata and analyze elemental residue, he might be able to reverse engineer and archive the General-class Titan's production sequence and material composition. The blueprints for a single General-class Titan—the Imperium currently lacks any alloy formula in its Forge World capable of producing the armored body. This single recovery operation alone would have immeasurable technological and strategic value.
One more thing: a Dreadnought from the Sons of the Emperor's Legion—Ritual Master Rellano—was trapped in an emergency fortress outside the main defense zone during those weeks of underground defense fighting, surviving alone in that fortress until the final orbital bombardment phase. The Empire couldn't send anyone, the rebels couldn't send anyone, and neither could humanity for the next tens of thousands of years. No one knows how many years he waited for his rescue in that little box. This information is too shrouded in mystery; Liu En is merely a recycler who needs to recover technological assets. If he can rescue him, it's icing on the cake; if he can't, it doesn't matter. He won't lose out in this deal anyway.
The risks associated with these coordinates are too great. If the Black Pearl enters orbit, and there are indeed any remnants of chaotic corruption on that gray rock plate that was removed from the Imperial Star Gallery, we'll only know if its field can be completely decomposed once we arrive.
So he hesitated for a long time about this third coordinate.
He went through Marcus's list of options again, and found that they were either too risky or too low-reward. The only candidate path that might find a balance between safety and productivity was Dulob Sand.
Dulob Sand is located on the eastern frontier. Marcus's records state that in the late M37 period, the Empire dispatched a multi-fleet expeditionary force to advance into the sector, engaging in decades-long combat with an unidentified alien scientific legion. After years of fierce fighting, the Empire found it unable to push the battle lines into the alien legion's rear areas and was forced to withdraw from the airspace, close the occupied outposts, and leave a large area of unmanaged military facilities in planetary orbit.
That alien legion was presumed to be the elite scientific research team of the Earth Clan, the most advanced technological development force of the Tau Empire. Within the Tau Empire, professions were traditionally divided based on racial attributes—the Fire Clan handled military affairs, the Wind Clan managed transportation and fleets, the Water Clan dealt with diplomacy and administration, and the Earth Clan was responsible for technology and industry. This research cluster, comprised of the Tau's most outstanding technical officers, was stationed on that planet, secretly developing blueprints and prototypes for autonomous artificial intelligence. The technological prototypes there were believed to have surpassed the technological level of most of the Ark technology controlled by the Empire. According to Marcus's speculation, the Earth Clan geniuses of the Tau Empire broke through limitations in the development of the original AI prototype, designing a fully functional prototype AI core—which they called the "Silent Core."
The reason the Tau Empire didn't spiral out of control later on was because the Fire Clan and the Aether Clan discovered the potential threat posed by the prototype and forced the Earth Clan to implement targeted logical blockades in their AI programs—they added an insurmountable cognitive inhibitor to the underlying code of all subsequent AI systems to prevent them from evolving independently and developing autonomy. The prototype, however, did not. The prototype represented the upper limit of the entire Tau AI technology pipeline.
The situation took a sharp turn for the worse when the expeditionary force withdrew. Ground troops, pursued by the alien legions, hastily boarded ships, unable to completely destroy all the facilities of the command post. The armory was buried under the collapsed ruins and remained untouched for the next three thousand years.
The ruins of that expeditionary force headquarters still stand, untouched for three thousand years, and the Tau have not sent anyone back to retrieve it. That airspace is outside the armed patrol range of any faction, allowing the Black Pearl to enter undetected, take its core logic module, and then disappear.
Liu En marked two coordinates on the voyage plan: Dulob Sander and the derelict spaceship. Dulob Sander was the primary objective; the core module would be retrieved from the ruins of the expeditionary force's command post. The derelict spaceship was a military-grade supply depot that had drifted in subspace for over three thousand years; the gene-stealers there, having evolved over thousands of years, also made the ship dangerous. On the return journey, during resupply and adjustments at the eastern forward transfer station, the next course would be decided based on the situation.