Not long after—
The dropship completed its landing inside the massive hangar of the cruiser, releasing a long hiss from its hydraulic braking system.
As the hatch slowly opened, Jim Raynor's helmet visor adjusted automatically—and the scene before him momentarily stole the breath from him, Tychus, and the accompanying Rangers.
This hangar was far beyond their expectations—over a hundred meters tall, with lateral space enough to accommodate more than a dozen Thunderhawk gunships neatly parked in two rows of five.
The enormous vaulted ceiling was supported by interlaced alloy girders, lined with rail systems for mechanical repair arms.
The floor was paved with honeycomb-patterned anti-slip metal grating, its gaps streaked with traces of dark oil and faint-blue coolant residue.
Thousands of autonomous mechanical units were operating in synchronized rhythm, their multi-jointed limbs clicking with mechanical precision.
In the left maintenance area, three Achilles assault tanks were undergoing repairs. Their composite armor was riddled with plasma-burnt cracks like spiderwebs, some ceramic coatings completely peeled away to reveal the metal beneath.
To the right, over a thousand recovered drop pods were arranged in rows. Their black-gray shells bore severe ablation marks from atmospheric reentry.
"Gentlemen, please follow me."
A synthetic being in a dark gray uniform approached. The shark-tooth insignia on his chest glinted coldly under the hangar lights.
His face and body were designed with high-end biomimetic detail—nearly indistinguishable from a human. Only the occasional flicker of data streams within his pupils betrayed his true nature.
The synth led them through the bustling operations area. They passed gunships being rearmed with new thermal missiles by ground crews and drones.
They arrived at a transportation hub deep inside the ship—a platform for the internal rail network.
Streamlined in design, the edge displays showed elegant calligraphy:
"Orbital Rail – Command Bridge Line / Non-Astartes Use Only."
The platform floor was covered in anti-static composite materials. Real-time tactical feeds were embedded in the walls.
With a nearly inaudible electromagnetic hum, a silver-gray train slid silently into the station.
The cabin doors opened soundlessly, revealing a spartan military interior.
Shock-resistant seating with high-strength polymer frames was covered in flame-retardant synthetic leather, worn to a unique texture from long use. Soft white lighting filled the ceiling and walls.
When the pressure-sealed doors shut, the train accelerated with uncanny smoothness.
Through the nano-reinforced windows, the ship's interior unfolded like a painting—
On the lower weapons deck, automated loaders fed shells into a massive macro cannon, each round glowing with a deadly red light.
In the living quarters, auxiliary troops—now out of armor and back in fatigues—ate quietly in the mess hall, their trays neat, with no waste.
In the central training arena, five Man-Eater recruits clashed in hand-to-hand combat, power armor sparking violently with every blow.
Five minutes later, the train began to decelerate and finally stopped smoothly at the command bridge platform.
The walls of the platform bore bas-reliefs of the Man-Eaters' battle history, their bronze sheen glowing faintly under special lighting.
After disembarking, passing through the final airlock, Jim and Tychus stepped into the bridge—and both men came to an involuntary halt.
Even the war-hardened commander of the Rangers was stunned.
The bridge resembled a medieval cathedral, majestic in scale. A thirty-meter-high ceiling was supported by interlaced alloy ribs, from which hung enormous crystal chandeliers that cast a soft golden glow, imbuing the room with a solemn and mysterious aura.
Light refracted through precision-cut prisms, scattering shifting patterns across the walls, which were inlaid with battle history murals.
On both sides stood memorial walls, each displaying over twenty battered suits of power armor—
These relics belonged to fallen Man-Eaters. Every suit preserved its final battle pose.
Some had breastplates melted through by plasma; others still bore alien bone spikes in their pauldrons. The most central one stood frozen mid-swing, forever captured at the moment of death.
In the center hovered the command console, projecting a slowly rotating holographic starmap of nearby space.
Two tech-sergeants clad in red robes over their power armor worked silently, their mechanical limbs extending webs of glowing data cables into the system.
One's visor pulsed with light as it rapidly parsed data from the starmap.
"Welcome to the Abyss Hunter," a deep, metallic voice rumbled from the command throne, resonant with the vibration of steel.
Cass Rory slowly rose. His three-meter-tall figure cast a towering, oppressive shadow under the lights.
This assault squad commander wore pitch-black power armor. Only the dark-red inner layers of his hydraulic joints were visible, like flowing blood.
His shark-gill-style helmet vents opened and closed in rhythm with his breathing, making faint hissing noises. The shark emblem etched into his chestplate still bore faint traces of dried blood—
Clearly, this captain had just returned from battle.
"Holy shit…"
Tychus involuntarily took half a step back, his boots scraping loudly against the floor. "What the hell does this guy eat to grow like that?"
Jim, equally stunned, glanced between Cass and the other Man-Eaters.
Standard Astartes in power armor stood around two and a half meters tall. Some legions, like the Fire Drakes, were slightly larger.
But Cass Rory was beyond standard—his bulk rivaled that of the Custodes and Grey Knights, which they'd only heard of in rumors.
"The artifact."
Cass ignored their reactions and held out a gauntleted hand to Leon. His armor's finger joints hissed softly with precision hydraulic motion.
Immediately, two Special Ops agents stepped forward, carefully lifting the lead-sealed containment unit.
Cass accepted it with one hand. Despite weighing nearly 200 kilograms, the container felt like nothing in his grasp—like lifting a feather.
"My company will take custody."
His voice, transmitted through his helmet's vox system, carried the weight of unquestionable authority.
He turned and handed the container to the nearby tech-sergeant. The armor's servos purred as he moved. The tech-sergeant instantly initiated the encryption protocol, activating runes that lit up in sequence with blue light. The internal locks clicked shut with crisp finality.
The entire handoff felt like a sacred ritual. Even the air seemed to freeze.
Once secured, the containment unit was taken away. The holographic starmap abruptly changed.
Cass Rory stood at the command console. From his left arm extended several neural cables, glowing with blue light, which slithered into the control ports like living things.
A flood of data shimmered—on the main screen, a classified holographic dossier appeared.
"The true backer of the Mobius Foundation has been confirmed." Cass's voice rumbled with a low, metallic friction, every syllable like a hammer against their hearts. "It is none other than the heir to the Terran Dominion—Valerian Mengsk."
The bridge fell utterly silent.
The light from above seemed suddenly harsh and blinding.
?!
Jim Raynor's armored left hand clenched audibly. He slowly turned, eyes burning with suppressed fury—his gaze stabbing toward Tychus Findlay like an unsheathed blade.
"Wait! Whoa, little Jimmy!"
Tychus reflexively raised his hands. Ash from his cigar tumbled onto the steel deck.
The usually unshakable brute looked genuinely flustered, his thick brows twisting in alarm.
"I swear to God!" His voice rose involuntarily. "I had no clue that the bookworm prince was behind all this!"
He gestured wildly in the air, trying to make his case. "Those Foundation bastards always used encrypted comms. Even face-to-face, they wore those damn masks! How was I supposed to know their sugar daddy was that Mengsk brat?!"
Jim didn't respond immediately. Instead, he took a deep breath, letting the frigid recycled air flood his lungs, forcing himself to stay calm.
He had fought alongside Tychus long enough to know the man better than anyone—
Crude, reckless, greedy perhaps, but since the day they blew off that "walking coffin," Tychus had never hidden anything critical. He sure as hell wouldn't cover for anyone tied to the Mengsk family.
Just as the tension reached its peak, Leon stepped forward. The sound-dampening nano-suit made his movement near-silent.
"We in the Intelligence Division have already located the final artifact fragment." His voice was as steady as if delivering a training report.
The hologram shifted—an image of a crimson storm-wracked planet slowly rotating appeared before them.
Its surface was gouged with savage fissures like a beast's torn flesh. Massive mining pits dotted the landscape like festering sores, and derelict industrial structures rose like rusted bones.
Lightning occasionally pierced the heavy atmosphere, casting fleeting flashes of white.
Most ominous of all—the star illuminating the planet seemed close to supernova, ready to consume everything in fire.
"Typhon." Leon remained calm. "A mining world at the Dominion's outer edge. According to high-level intel, the final artifact fragment is located on this planet. We've confirmed the approximate coordinates."
"Helmsman."
Cass Rory issued the order with absolute authority. "Set course for the Typhon system. Activate Condition One combat readiness."
"Aye, Captain!"
The helmsman's fingers flew across the console. The holographic starmap zoomed in and highlighted the target system in red—a glowing slash across the void.
Cass turned. His armor's servos growled with weight.
He looked down at Jim Raynor, his shark-helmet's vents flexing rhythmically.
"Return to the Hyperion immediately. In three hours, you will join my company in retrieving the final artifact fragment."
His gaze shifted to Tychus. The red glow in his visor intensified. His armor's neck hydraulics hissed.
"Once the mission is complete, you will contact the Mobius Foundation. Inform them—"
He paused deliberately.
"—that the merchandise is complete. They are to come verify it in person."
A savage grin spread across Tychus's weathered face. His cigar curled dangerously at the corner of his mouth.
"Ha! A sting operation to net the big fish? Now that's my kind of job!"
His laughter echoed through the bridge, jarringly at odds with the grim atmosphere.
Jim stood still, brow furrowed, eyes locked on the rotating image of Typhon.
The planet was wrapped in rust-colored clouds, bolts of lightning exploding within them.
"I understand," he finally said, nodding.
As he turned toward the airlock, his eyes passed over that death world one last time.
What awaited him there wasn't just another artifact—but the beginning of a reckoning with the Mengsk family.
The deck trembled softly—the Abyss Hunter's engines began their warm-up. Energy readings spiked wildly on the control screens.
Jim felt the subtle vibrations beneath his boots, like the awakening of a steel giant.
As the airlock doors closed, Cass Rory stood before the starmap, a motionless titan.
His shark-helmet glinted in the alarm lights.
At the same time—
On the agricultural colony of New Canaan, located at the edge of the Terran Dominion's core systems, annihilation was unfolding.
Billions of Zerg surged across the continent like a living tsunami. Zerglings formed waves of death, while Hydralisk spines rained down like hellfire.
Sticky purple creep spread at a terrifying pace, consuming golden wheat fields at three kilometers per hour. Alloy buildings twisted and collapsed like melting wax.
From orbit, the last surviving cameras broadcast the final images—
Sector Seven's anti-air batteries were crushed by Ultralisks. Their operators were torn in half. In the central plaza, a mother clutching her infant sank into the swarm. Evacuation shuttles in the spaceport were melted mid-air by Mutalisk acid, trailing smoke as they crashed.
Desperate cries flooded the public comms—
"This is the New Canaan Colonial Governor! The Zerg have breached the final line! Requesting orbital supp—"
"Please... my baby is only three months old..."
"Damn you Imperial bastards! You're abandoning your own citizens?!"
And the Dominion fleet's response was chilling:
"Per Article 37 of wartime protocol, this region is confirmed to be compromised by Hive Mind contamination. All Imperial units: evacuate immediately. Repeat: evacuate immediately."
Battlecruiser engines blazed blue, leaving fleeing civilian ships behind in their radiation trails.
The Dominion had chosen to abandon New Canaan—and its billions of citizens—to save its fleet.
But at that moment, the channel was forcefully overridden.
A voice with divine resonance rang out like a morning bell:
"In the name of the Emperor."
Each syllable was forged in the fire of adamantium.
"This is the Ninth Company of the Blood Angels of the Human Empire—'The Mourners.' We are en route to aid New Canaan."
(End of Chapter)
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