Chapter 839 - 838
Among the stars.
The Savior’s virtual projection, majestic yet carrying a trace of pity, gazed upon everyone as countless banners waved.
People cheered and wept, their blood surging hot through their bodies.
They roared at the black tide, pouring out their will. Humanity did not fear the black tide!
Scenes like this were unfolding across many regions of the galaxy at the same time. One Imperial citizen after another gathered together and threw themselves into the wave of resistance against the disaster.
"We... we can win. Oms will never fall!"
Ork looked at the scene, tears filling his eyes.
Together with the other workers, he cheered and prayed toward the Savior’s projection beyond the porthole, even kneeling and prostrating himself.
The fear of disaster in the hearts of these workers from Oms gradually faded. Unity and faith allowed them to gather strength as a group.
That fervor slowly subsided only after the ship had finished replenishing its supplies and personnel and set off for the disaster zone.
Many people were so excited that their strength gave out. Some even fainted on the spot.
"Savior..."
Ork was dizzy from lack of oxygen and had to grip the handrail beside him, but his gaze remained fixed on the great projection of the Savior.
He hoped to receive protection from that being, and he truly did feel strength.
It was as if something invisible were protecting him and his family.
They could all survive this disaster.
The disaster-relief engineering team had expected this. Very soon, medical teams arrived to treat people and help them recover their strength.
This was not a major issue. Proper emotional release could ease fear, and compared to exhaustion, fear was far deadlier in the disaster zone.
That kind of emotion could cause a person’s soul to be completely devoured by the terrifying black disaster.
Only by standing firm in their faith and trusting the Savior could people survive in the disaster zone, continue their work, and ultimately suppress the spread of the dark rifts.
Once the ship began running smoothly, Ork drank a restorative potion, recovered his strength, and returned to his seat.
He was reading the manual distributed by the engineering team. It listed certain precautions for the disaster zone.
For example, they were not to deactivate the barrier on their work suits. They were not to look directly at the sun, especially after it turned black. And they were absolutely not to flee from the battlefield. Not under any circumstances. Anyone who fled in battle would face severe judgment.
"Pah!
"The bastards who wrote this manual are all pampered soft-asses who’ve never been down a mine. Are they looking down on us?
"If we dared go to the disaster zone, then we never planned to run, even if we leave our lives there!"
Across from Ork, a bearded miner spat.
The man was loud and boisterous, and his beard was full of mineral residue, some kind of corrosive substance that could not be washed away.
As a worker from Oms, Ork looked much cleaner and more respectable than him.
"Friend, you’re from Tskamelo, aren’t you?" Ork glanced at him and greeted him with a smile.
A beard corroded by minerals was practically the symbol of a Tskamelo miner. Anyone could recognize it at a glance.
Those marks had been formed by the corrosion of an extremely rare mineral and could not be removed at all. The only solution was to shave the beard off.
But for the miners of Tskamelo, shaving their beards was unacceptable.
They even took pride in their corroded beards. When a beard completely turned the color of the mineral—dark gold—it earned the respect of everyone.
It proved that the beard’s owner was a truly seasoned miner, someone whose skill others could not hope to match. Even the local mining group would award him a medal.
"Hah! You’re from Oms, right? Only people from your place are that clean and pale."
The bearded miner stroked his beard, clearly pleased that someone appreciated it.
Perhaps in another ten or twenty years, his beard would fully turn dark gold. That would be an honor.
"Kid, try our liquor. My own secret recipe."
As the bearded miner spoke, he shoved a metal flask over, then pulled out some cured meat and nuts.
Ork did not refuse, because that would disappoint the warm and hospitable people of Tskamelo.
But after he accepted the flask, he still could not help sighing inwardly.
Tskamelo really was wealthy. This flask alone, made from rare metal, was worth a considerable sum.
The environment there was a little worse, but whether in terms of wealth or material supply, it was much better than Oms.
Some wealthy senior miners were even rich enough to travel beyond the sector to paradise worlds. It made others envious.
Unfortunately, only the people of Tskamelo could enjoy those things. Their queen and governor had formed a friendship with the Savior.
When she obeyed the Savior and accepted reform, she had preserved quite a few rights for Tskamelo.
Of course, the most important reason was that Tskamelo had extremely rare mineral deposits, the sort that were uncommon even across the galaxy.
Very soon, that planet grew rich as trade routes opened and became one of Charadon’s core mining worlds.
It provided the Imperium with a continuous stream of rare minerals.
Ork had been to Tskamelo once. Although he had stayed only briefly, the brilliant minerals on the planet and the sacred statue left behind by the Savior had left a deep impression on him.
Three hundred years ago, the Savior had deployed his Terran God-Engine Legion here and annihilated the Chaos abominations ravaging the planet.
He had saved Tskamelo and the queen of that world.
Some rumors claimed the Savior had even left behind certain romantic stories with the queen, but those had never been officially confirmed. They only circulated in private.
"Cough, cough, cough!"
Ork took a gulp of liquor and immediately felt as if something were burning in his throat. Then he began coughing violently.
His body soon heated up as well, warm from the inside out.
"Good stuff, isn’t it? You can’t go down into the mines without something like this," the bearded miner said.
Those rare minerals were buried deep underground and had the trait of absorbing heat, causing the mine tunnels to become extremely cold. The magnetic fields they produced also interfered with machinery.
So using manpower to mine them was the best method. Local miners often liked to drink specially brewed liquor to warm their bodies.
After Ork recovered, he could not help taking another sip.
The liquor really was good, probably the best he had ever tasted. Of course, it was not cheap to make either, and ordinary workers could not easily afford it.
Perhaps only those generous, rough Tskamelo miners were willing to drink it every day.
"I knew you’d like it, kid. This flask is yours. I’ve got more!"
The bearded miner was quite bold. He forced the flask into Ork’s hands, then pulled out another one to drink with him.
There were still more than ten hours before they reached their destination. They had time to drink properly.
After that, Ork and the bearded miner drank and talked, and Ork learned about the situation on Tskamelo.
Because the terrifying black tide was too close to Tskamelo and posed too great a threat, the entire planet had stopped work.
Their queen and governor had also led the entire mining group into the disaster-relief campaign against the black tide.
That brave queen had already gone to the very front line, where she and Tskamelo’s Imperial Knights and warriors resisted the threat of the black-tide daemons.
She had declared that she would fight to the final moment. Nothing would take Tskamelo from them, and nothing would take away the precious mineral deposits they relied on to survive.
"Hey, I’m going to the disaster zone with my lads this time. No cowards among us. We’ll fight that damned thing to the end!"
The bearded miner took a fierce swig of liquor, looking open and fearless, as if nothing could frighten him.
They had committed everything to protect their homes and those rare mineral deposits.
They also knew what they would face if they lost their home. They did not want to wander again.
"For the Savior! For Her Majesty the Queen!"
"For Oms!"
The miner from Tskamelo raised his arm and shouted. Soon, cries rose one after another throughout the cabin.
The people were so sincere and fervent, eating the food and fruit wine provided by the ship as they spoke with one another.
They enjoyed what little warmth they had and strengthened their resolve.
They all shared the same purpose.
In the void ahead of this engineering fleet, a black scar twisted in an ugly shape.
It was like a wound torn open among the stars, far more terrifying than the previous Warp rifts, filled with the most extreme malice toward humanity.
It was the deepest darkness, and it had swallowed an entire sector.
Countless lives were screaming.
The moment the fleet reached the outskirts of the afflicted sector, it was affected by the black tide.
Every ship shook violently, as if they would be torn apart in the next second and reduced to wreckage drifting through the void.
And this was with the Imperium having already established a defensive line of Blackstone Fortresses. Without it, the black tide would not merely tear apart ships. It would tear apart planets.
In the sectors that had suffered direct impact, only a small number of people had managed to evacuate. Most had been destroyed together with their planets. It was horrifying.
Inside the cabin, alarms shrieked.
The vice-captain used the shipwide vox to warn the people.
The ship had encountered an energy turbulence. Everyone had to immediately find a secure space and fasten themselves in place.
Some unlucky souls were thrown away and suffered severe injuries.
This was far more turbulent than traveling through the Warp. One careless mistake could put their lives in danger.
"Black tide, the people of Tskamelo will never submit to you!"
The bearded miner gripped the arms of his chair tightly and roared at the black turbulence beyond the porthole.
He was resisting.
Ork tightened the safety belt on his seat, fixing himself firmly to the chair. He did not dare relax in the slightest, afraid he would be thrown out.
He felt the world spinning. Everything in his stomach rushed up into his throat, while countless vicious whispers surfaced in his mind.
For the first time, this worker from Oms felt how terrifying the black tide truly was. He also regretted eating so much earlier.
But there was nothing he could do. He could only endure.
Suddenly, the Savior’s hymn reached Ork’s ears. He did not know who had begun singing, but more and more people joined in.
The singing gathered into a flood inside the cabin.
"When the stars fall, when the earth cracks, when the abyss devours the light of day,
"We once knelt trembling among ruins, replacing hope with silence..."
Ork violently vomited everything in his stomach into a special bag, then began singing along.
"Savior, you are human, not a god, not an illusion, not a dream.
"It was you who raised your hand within the flames. It was you who built a bridge of flesh and blood, leading us through the black flood..."
Their voices grew louder and clearer. They faintly felt themselves merging into some kind of collective will.
When the hymn to the Savior reached its climax, they seemed to see a brilliant golden light ahead of the route in a vision, like some form of guidance.
It was both real and unreal.
They could not tell whether it was the beacon light of the voidport control tower or some kind of sacred descent.
At some point, the ship had become steady and entered the protection range of the Blackstone Fortress force field.
Dozens of Blackstone Fortresses had formed a vacuum zone in orbit around the area. This was also the disaster-relief construction site.
Now, the engineering fleets were continuously towing more of the same fortresses in order to quell the dark rift across the entire region.
The main task of the engineering personnel was to activate the fortresses and maintain their machinery, or to establish camp defenses.
Billions of people were working here.
Under the Savior’s rule, the Imperium, with its terrifying organizational power and material strength, had forcibly constructed one temporary gathering point after another in the disaster zones, each one almost a small world, scattered throughout the galaxy.
Within these temporary gathering points, people sheltered refugees, resisted the black tide and threats from the Warp, and stationed armies.
Some Chaos lifeforms had gone mad under the influence of the black tide and could attack this region at any moment.
An endless stream of supplies, personnel, and machinery was carried in from outside through the logistical engineering fleets.
They would use blackstone technology to stop the expansion of the dark rift bit by bit and eliminate it, completely severing the Dark King’s tentacles.
"Praise the Machine Father!"
Belisarius Cawl had once sighed in admiration at the Imperium’s current operational efficiency.
He declared that if not for the Savior’s reconstruction of the Imperium, then with the old Imperium’s organizational ability, there was a 99.9 percent chance that the various regions of humanity would have completely fractured and never restored contact.
Then they would have been devoured by the black tide one after another.
In other words, the prophecy had been correct in a certain sense.
The old Imperium would have collapsed beneath the Dark King’s first cry, and humanity would have fallen into eternal darkness.
Fortunately, the Savior had changed all of that. He had changed humanity’s fate. People could defeat the Dark King and survive.
In addition to this, Archmagos Belisarius Cawl had also spent tens of thousands of words praising the Savior in an extremely nauseating way.
It was text he had calculated from data to make the Savior nod in approval.
Of course, his main purpose was still to squeeze more gold coins and funding out of the Savior so he could build an even grander technological laboratory.
This most senior Archmagos of the Adeptus Mechanicus was still extremely pragmatic. He had integrated into the atmosphere of the new Imperium very early on, and he greatly enjoyed the Mechanicus’s atmosphere of change and innovation.
Otherwise, the Mechanicus would not previously have treated him as an eccentric freak, avoided respectfully by the Tech-Priests.
Bzzz.
The engineering fleet from Charadon docked at a crude voidport.
Because of the slight pressure from the ship, the metal let out creaking sounds, and the entire voidport swayed with it.
It looked very shoddy, even worse than a pirate black port.
However, this port had been temporarily built in the disaster zone in only a few days and was still constantly expanding and being reinforced.
That alone was enough to prove the Imperium’s terrifying construction ability, as well as its determination to resist disaster.
Ork and the bearded miner walked out of the transport ship and descended the swaying gangway.
They could see people coming and going across the voidport, transporting all kinds of relief supplies. It was extremely noisy.
The view in the distance suddenly opened up, revealing one floating asteroid base after another.
"This... is the disaster zone?"
Ork was very surprised.
The disaster zone was different from what he had seen in the materials. Too many changes had taken place. Many regions had already raised human structures.
Although this place was still ruined and still faced the danger of the black tide, the clamor of the disaster-relief workers and the roar of all kinds of construction machinery displayed a vigorous vitality.
It allowed people to see hope.
As Ork and the others looked at this scene, their previously tense emotions relaxed considerably, and they could not help smiling.
Perhaps they really could defeat the black tide and defend Oms, along with even more homeworlds.
These support personnel from Charadon followed the instructions of the servo-machines and boarded the rail train suspended between asteroids, heading toward their own camp.
...
At the outer edge of the disaster zone’s temporary gathering area.
The Chaos storm triggered by the black tide still raged, sweeping up planetary debris and bringing objects and lifeforms that had originally belonged to the Warp.
Thud.
Suddenly, a humanoid lifeform was thrown out and slammed hard onto a fragment of a planet.
Only remnants of armor remained on that humanoid lifeform’s body, something like a blacksmith’s apron, making him look like some lost warrior.
He was burly and tall, his skin as dark and deep as obsidian. His faintly red eyes were profound, filled with silence and compassion.
"Father, I have returned..."
That seemingly fearsome being propped himself up and stared straight at the real soil before him.
His voice was low and warm, and tears fell from his eyes.
(End of Chapter)
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