Chapter Eighty-Seven: The AI of the Starry Sky

Wang Xiaofa was sprinting flat out on his legs, dodging the huge, twisted, grotesque body of Darcy Oak as it slid toward him.

He darted aside at once, narrowly avoiding Darcy Oak’s deformed form, which reeked of foul steam. Darcy Oak slammed straight into the shattered metal wall with a crisp clack.

Seeing Darcy Oak strike the wall and stop moving, the transmigrators surged forward in a rush, leveling flamethrowers and melta bombs and unleashing them upon him.

In an instant, searing heat flooded the entire docking plaza. The air warped under the temperature, and the flames consumed the oxygen in the square. It seemed the crew who had fled had sealed off this area and cut the air circulation as well.

As the blaze gradually died down, the transmigrators watched the flames shrink, then all at once drew their plasma pistols and fired a volley at Darcy Oak, annihilating every last shred of flesh that could still move in the poor man now twisted into a monster.

With Darcy Oak dealt with, the transmigrators prepared to enter the ship and clear out the fleeing crew. They advanced across the docking plaza, where corpses lay strewn everywhere.

Looking at the mangled bodies scattered about the square, torn apart by bolt-round shrapnel, their hearts were filled with helplessness. For the transmigrators of the First Regiment, this feeling was no stranger.

They had felt it long ago in Macragge, when they fought the Tear Plague. They called themselves the Fourth Cataclysm, the Emperor’s demonic army, angels of mortals, yet they still could not save even one human life from the hands of the evil gods.

They had seen children infected by the Tear Plague, their own tears corroding their eyes from within. They had seen, during the Second Battle of Terra, cultists in Terra’s hive cities offering Imperial civilians in blood sacrifice.

But they would never forget the expression on those Imperial civilians’ faces when their transport aircraft appeared in the hive city before them, as though they had seen angels and salvation themselves.

Thud, thud, thud...

As Wang Lei walked, he stepped on something. He looked down and stopped in his tracks.

It was a doll, a cartoonish little Human Federation soldier.

Beside it lay the corpse of a little girl, her body twisted. She looked to be only seven or eight years old. She wore a skirt clearly made by altering the shirt of a Human Federation Navy uniform, and clinging tightly to her small frame was a woman so gaunt she looked like a skeleton, her dried-up body folded over the child as she held her in a death grip.

That must have been her mother.

Both the woman and the little girl had wounds in the back of the head and at the center of the brow, punched through by bolt-round fragments. The shrapnel had gone straight through their brains. They died in an instant, without the slightest pain.

Each of them held two Human Federation flags in her hands. On the flags was a simple outline of a blue Earth, with the letters forming the words Human Federation arranged around it. One could well imagine that until their dying breath, they believed the people entering through the docking hatch were surely a Human Federation rescue team come to save them.

Wang Lei stood before this scene and silently looked at the mother and daughter. The other transmigrators saw them too. They all stopped as well, and silently gazed at the pair.

Patter, patter, patter...

Wang Xiaofa was looking at them too. He patted Wang Lei’s shoulder armor, then continued toward the blast door leading into the ship.

“Once we’re inside, move fast. If they’ve been blessed too, try to finish them off before the body starts mutating...”

Wang Xiaofa’s voice came through the transmigrators’ helmet comms. There was a distinct tremor in it. Hearing him, the transmigrators all averted their eyes and headed for the blast door.

Just as they were approaching the blast door into the ship, two smooth black spheres suddenly slid out from the walls on either side.

One of the black spheres emitted a red beam of light, which struck a transmigrator’s head. The beam instantly melted through the ceramite helmet and vaporized his skull in a flash.

In the instant that man fell, the laser from the black sphere vaporized the heads of several more transmigrators. But the transmigrators reacted quickly enough, yanking out their plasma pistols and preparing to fire on the two black spheres.

The beam was faster, though. The moment the transmigrators tried to aim, it claimed several more of them. In the end, however, the two spheres were reduced to two heaps of scrap metal by twin bursts of blue plasma.

Yet they had still accomplished their mission. In only a few seconds, they had precisely vaporized the heads of four transmigrators and killed them.

Authorization detected. Initiating internal defensive weapons to repel the intruders.

In the AI chamber of the Starry Sky, several men and women in Human Federation Navy uniforms held datapads and stood around a holographic AI projection in a Human Federation military uniform, entering operational commands.

After the Starry Sky AI transmitted its feedback to the datapads, it began acting.

Hacking the intruders’ equipment systems and communication channels. Rebooting armor power systems. Jamming communication channels.

As this line of AI activity data appeared on the crew’s datapads, the transmigrators suddenly felt as though their bodies had grown heavier, and their tactical visors displayed: Power armor power pack initializing.

“What the hell is going on?”

Wang Xiaofa stared at the message on his tactical visor, Power armor power pack initializing, and asked over the comms channel. But the moment he finished speaking, a burst of piercing static came through his helmet speakers.

Just as the transmigrators were still bewildered by these sudden changes, two more spheres slid out from the walls and swiftly blew their heads off one by one.

“Damn it.”

Wang Xiaofa stared at the two spheres that were firing the lasers, slowly raised the arm holding his plasma pistol, and fired at one of them. Then, using the fastest speed he could muster, he shifted the muzzle toward the other sphere, preparing to fire again.

But just as he was nearly lining up the shot, a red flash suddenly appeared before his eyes, and he lost consciousness.

When he came to, he was already standing before Wang Ming.