The Kopluru Sector Comes to Warhammer 40k Chapter 2: The Tyrador Incident Part I, a StarCraft + Warhammer Crossover fanfic

The Tyrador Incident.

"Though the discovery of the mechancius ship was very eye-opening, and the countless independent forays into Imperial space bringing back both stories of wonder and horror already gave quite the impression on the Kopluru sector None would be as influential as the Tyrador incident. It put the Kopluru sector into context and showed how truly unprepared it was for this galaxy of war. It also served as the thing that would kick the Kopluru war-machine into overdrive, and firmly turn public opinion. A single Imperial cruiser, Dauntless-class, nearly wiped out a entire system.

3 months 13 days AS (after-shift).

(local time M41 991)

Laurence was bored. He sat in his command chair in the stark, gunmetal room aboard one of three of the Tyrador system's Patrol battlecruisers, the Fletcher, a shiny-new Minotaur class battlecruiser, at 900 meters long. Tyrador IX was jewel of the system, the other planets being lackluster residential and resource worlds. The cruiser class was pumped out like liberty ships in under a month from laying it down to completion. Around him, machinery hummed quietly, crunching the innumerable amounts of data required to coordinate inbound and outbound travel. The room was illuminated with harsh white LEDs. At least this place had air conditioning unlike the other wing.

He was one of the sub-commanders of Tyrador's Planetary Defense force, subordinate to Commander Abrams, a semi-autonmous military body that was supplied by the Dominion and their own means. The commotion regarding the "universal shift" was initially met with a lot of commotion, Many people had taken their own ships or hired ships to travel to the "Imperium of Man" as they called it. However, most came back with disappointment, only finding rather primitive worlds that had varying levels of development. Some were almost like Terran worlds, others were literal stone-age tribesmen. One guy saw a huge, cathedral-like ship arrive at one of these planets, collect resoruces, and leave. It seems that at the edge of this Imperium, it was just normal people paying taxes to the big old' feds. But one person came back with a rather disturbing story. He had landed on a industrialized world, and snuck into a factory with a big symbol of a skull, half bone half metal, only to find something out of a horror movie, half-men, barely sentient amalgmations of flesh and machine conducting menial tasks, cyborgs with no human will whatsoever. "servitors" he said. Later, he heard UNN bought the rights to his footage and it was aired on the 6-o'clock news good old Dony ranting about the horrors of the Imperium.

Interest didn't die down, but sort of plateaued, replaced by a sense of….hopelessness. It was smart for the Dominion to not try and seize all FTL ships or something, prohibition only increases demand. Terran citizens saw what the Imperium was, and it spoke for itself. No one really wanted to defect, what really was there to defect to? The Imperium seemed to be so big that these forays would be the equivilant of a rabbit nibbling on the vegetable patch on the edge of a person's yard. At most it was more real-estate for colonization. Not even mentioning the supposed tyrannical and anti-technological views. Nevertheless, he had began seeing "new products" in the markets these days, ranging from trinkets to technology so advanced that you would see two Dominion marines quickly escorting the salesman away. One of them was this "lasgun" a revolutionary advancement in small arms. A Directed energy weapon carriable by one person? It was like something out of sci-fi novel, and everyone wanted to get their hands on them. There was also this religion, regarding an emperor? That he increasingly heard about as people began jokingly saying, "emperor protects".

Sometimes he wasn't sure they were joking or not.

Personally, life hadn't changed muched. He was content with his position.

He poured over data, serial numbers, product lists, import and exported goods, spatial coordinates and vectors in a 3-D environment, it was mostly uneventful, even boring.

One thing he noticed was the quiet retiring of some of the newer, smarter ajudants and AI-systems for "technical issues" and more and more human staff being added. Why they wanted to reduce automation was beyond him, but at least it provided more career opportunities for the Tyradorian population.

After finishing the authorization signature for another incoming transport, he leaned back in his seat. He pulled out a cling-filmed wrapped sandwhich and his data-pad and began browsing the holonet.

Suddenly, a blip appeared on his screen.

Leaning forward, he was about to intiate contact, when he noticed a few things were wrong. First of all, it was… almost at the edge of the solar system, the standard arrival point was just a few million kilometers out from Tyrador IX. Next, it matched no previous terran signatures. Third. It was Four kilometers long.

Lauence quickly did a confirmation check that made sure that it wasn't just an asteroid, but it too unique movements to be one.

"contact one of the outer-system monitoring probes, get me a visual" Laurence said, now worried. It would take a few minutes to process the request. Fortunately, the FTL communication suite made the signal instantaneous, as opposed to the 45 light-minutes it would take normally.

As the system processed, he quickly flipped through his manual. There were protocols on encountering Protoss or Zerg craft. It could be a small leviathan, or a protoss mothership…

Then, the feed was established. Looking up, Laurence's Jaw dropped. Rubbing his eyes, he zoomed in on the craft.

The best way he could describe it was a cathedral in the most literal sense of the word. It had a ram-shaped bow like a old trireme, it's body was like the main hall of a cathedral, bristiling with weapons emplacments that had cannons the size of small buildings. It was adorned with gothic architecture, statues of winged angels, an imposing and awe-inspiring ship.

Then, his stomach fell, his wonder replaced with horror. He slammed on the intercom button and shouted.

"CODE Alpha-7, I repeat CODE ALPHA-7, Imperial warship sighted, I repeat, Imperial warship sighted!"

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The series of events that followed Laurence's actions was a endless cascade. He passed it onto the the Commander of Tyrador's defense force, Abrams.

"Is this confirmed?" He asked, his voice barely hiding a terrified excitement.

"yes" one of his staff replied.

"Then it's begun, call get me the Dominion fleet, scramble our current defense force, have emergency invasion protocols on standby."

Minutes later, through several relays, Valerian Mengsk himself on Korhal read the message with a restrained nervousness. He was privy to information revealed on that Mechancius ship. He knew that Imperial vessels completely out-classed anything the Dominion navy had. This was official first contact. He read the report with growing dread, the crackly phonograph's classical music not calming his nerves.

He had discussed a scenario like this with the other council members of the Kopluru sector, and they had planned for it. Given the Imperium's vicious expansionary policy, there was only one choice. Eliminiate any witnesses to the Kopluru sector with overwhelming force. Negotiation as an attempt to divert attention would be near impossible, almost every piece of terran technology would be considered tech heresy.

He pressed a button on his desk, bringing up a holoscreen. A priority line to initiate an emergency meeting. After a few tense minutes, he was greeted with the face of ann almost-human woman, her visage surrounded by a corona of glowing veins. Her hair like dreadlocks, only they were tentacles. Her eyes a blazing violet.

To his left, the face of an alien, with no facial features other than two pericing glowing eyes set in a helmet of golden armor.

"Hello Kerrigan, Hierarch Artanis"

"We received your message Valerian" Kerrigan interjected.

A patrolling leviathan fleet of Broodmother Kalisa is already en-route, four Leviathans and specialized void-combat zerg.

"An element of the Golden armada is also en route, Valerian" Artanis's ethereal, yet still young-sounding voice said.

Valerian nodded

"That is all very good. We knew that this would happen sooner or later. The Imperium is vigilant if anything else. But I hoped we would get more time…."

"Valerian, I was human, and so are you, and you know how pushy humans are, this was not a if, but a when" Kerrigan responded

"Nevertheless, We need all the time we can get to prepare for that eventually. This situation can still be rescued with our timely intervention. Every year of delay is another year where we can build up more forces, more weapons, and more power to have a chance of standing against an inevitable invasion." Artanis sighed.

As the communication channel cut off, Valerian gave the order to divert the 7th fleet, standard formation, a gorgon-class battlecruiser with six minotaur-class cruisers, the closest to Tyrador, to change course and head to the system.

Tyrador has two minotaur-class battlecruisers and one behemoth-clss patrolling the system, it was now all up to them. The catch to this massive response was that they all would need to strike simultaneously to stop the ship from escaping, they were fast as the slowest fleet, that being the Zerg fleet. That meant Tyrador would only receive relief in the next 15 hours… Painfully slow response times.

Valerian sent a message back to Tyrador. While preservation of Terran lives was important, much more was at stake here. He, as the emperor, didn't even have much sway over colonial government, but he had executive military power that most of the Dominion respected. Tyrador was to stall for as long as possible, even engage the cruiser in combat. Just buy time.

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Dauntless-class Cruiser "Axius"

"We have exited the Warp, Inquisitor" A tech-priest

"It seems the Emperor has once again smiled upon us" Inquisitor Friedrich responded. The meter-thick adamantium shutters over the Bridge's windows, etched with a thousand litanies and prayers to brave the tides of the Immaterium ground open at the command of the Tech priest, humming the rites of revelation.

The soft light of the Baryonic Universe, pure, clean, illuminated the interior of the bridge. It was virtally a 100-meter long cathedral hall lit with promethium flame in braisures, with Inquisitor Friedrich standing at the front of the hall, as if he were an ecclesiarch about to give a sermon overlooking banks upon banks of tech adepts and crew watching cogitators. Above them, the tall ceiling was adorned with murals to his immortal glory upon his throne.

Friedrich, after seeing the return to realspace with his own eyes turned heel, and returned to the command chamber.

They had been patrolling the segmentum obscurus, jumping from system to system to do routine checks for heretical activity. The pull of Chaos was very much strong in this reigon of space with the Eye so near.

Friedrich considered himself a more zealous inquisitor. He had routed out many a cult and systems planning to defect from the Imperium in his century as an inquisitor. The inquisiton could be loathed by many, but the fact of the matter was it was vital to maintain such a large structure like the Imperium. Independent agents acting on the world of the Emperor, combating sin of desertation, the infohazardous and cognitoharzardous nature of Chaos, the virulent scourge of the great devourer. They were necessary, and the Imperium wouldn't be here if it were not for them.

Anyways, the navigator hit an area of warp turbulence, while space becomes a non-concept in the warp, they were skirting the edge of the eye of terror, the massive warp storm, like skirting the edge of the event horizon of a black hole. And like a black hole, they nearly fell into it. A particularly ambitious entity made a concerted attack on the Gellar field, nearly puncturing it. The navigator, now a long time friend of his, fought a long battle against the temptations of the great foe, and finally, broke free of the pull. That sent their ship rocketing through the warp for the next several weeks. Unable to drop out of the warp until the navigator recovered. Now. Out of the warp, the Inquisitor had to ask himself, where were they?

His tech priest, Adept Lucan, had soon after told him that the star chat indicated that they were on the galactic fringe of segmentum obscurus, very far out, far from any Imperial world with a starport according to the most recent star charts, (153 years old, the administratum was quick this time)

Approaching the command desk, projecting a 3-D hologram of space, Friedrich was greeted by. his aide.

"I hope you are in good spirits, Inquisitor."

"I would be in better spirits if there was some good news in this emperor-damn chain of events," he said, jokingly.

"In fact, we do have some good news, we are at the fringe of a inhabited system, and intial auspex scans show that there are three habitable planet sin this system, one of which has spacefaring capabilities!

"The ship is very low on rations, recycled oxygen, munitions, and reaction-mass for the ship's blessed plasma core, we must seek aid from this colony"

Friedrich was at first elated at the thought of finally finding a place to rest, but it was quickly replaced by….suspicion.

Any imperial world this far out usually was a feral world with little technology to speak of. The last fortress world was nearly six thousand light years towards terra. There were no patrols, there was little sign of anything Imperial in this reigon of space. From here on out, there were only early-warning stations and established inquisitorial bases that he would know about, none of which were in this reigon. An inhabited world this far out would be hard pressed to see any imperial delegation in decades, even centuries. In fact, this would be the ideal condition for…..possible thoughts of independence. It was a one in a million chance they were even here in the first place.

After some deliberation, he spoke:

"Helsman, put us on a course to the inhibatited planet, 0.1 C, reasonable acceleration. Continue auspex scans on any and all pieces of technology they possess.

"Have weapons crews on standby"

The engines of the 4.1-kilometer long ship roared.

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Behemoth-class Battlecruiser "Norfolk"

Captain Ryan frantically flipped through the guidebook on how to act like an "Imperial". He and captain Laurence, had an argument with Commander Abrams about who was going to meet the Imperial ship. The third cruiser captain was a new Junior officer, so he was out of the picture entirely. The behemoth-class battlecruiser was the largest by far, at 1.4 kilometers long, and being the showpiece of the Tyrador defense fleet, was plated with all sorts of shiny, chrome plating, meant to look intimidating and regal. Now Ryan felt like it was a piece of cheap plastic jewllery compared to the incoming vessel.

Afterwards, he had been given a crash course by Dominion intelligence on how to act Imperial, and carry out one task: Stall for the next 14 hours and keep the cruiser at least 3 million kilometers from Tyrador. Simple.

He had to pretend to be an officer of the Imperium, and do what they did best: Stall and make the procedure so unbelievably slow that the counterstrike fleet could arrive.

The issue here was that the Kopluru protectorate needed to engage this monster with WMDs. Strategic nukes, protoss purification beams, virulent near-uncontrollable bioweapons that corroded steel in a chain-reaction that could melt a battlecruiser into a slurry of iron solution. And that's not to mention the Imperial weaponry. The collateral damage of even a single misfired shell could end millions of lives, and Tyrador IX itself. It was not a militarized world able to sustain fire for long.

"Tyrador was within the territory of the Dominion, how the hell did a ship end up this far Dominion Space?" He thought himself

Now, his battlecruiser, a 1400-meter-long behemoth-class, was slowly approaching the 4-kilometer cathedral ship.

They had to make the approach on sublight speeds, revealing their FTL would be a huge red flag, so they had to pretend to be a system monitor ship. They had ordered a Aquila and some gold paint to be slapped on the sides of the ship. Unfortunately, they also had to use normal radio and not FTL communications, which again would make them suspicious. Hence why they needed to close within lightspeed-communications distance.

They knew the Imperial vessel had been aware of their presence for a while now, and they were heading on courses that would soon have them be able to be in live-time communication distances, less than 30 thousand kilometers.

"Captain, they are hailing us, shall we respond?" Ryan heard what he had been dreading for a while now. Finally, he took a deep breath, and turned to the communication's officer.

"yes, open up channels" Ryan sighed, slamming the manual shut.

Approaching the video screen, he adjusted the golden Aquila pin that had been pressed out by engineering bay minutes ago, still a bit hot, and sighed.

"Open up channels"

After a few seconds of static, Captain Ryan came face to face with a human. He had greying blonde hair, with no headgear. Both his eyes were still there ,(a surprise, considering the rumors had him believe that every single Imperial had a bionic eye). wearing a regal overcoat adorned with all sorts of Imperial symbols. His face was steely, betraying nothing.

"Hail Captain. I am Inquisitor Friedrich of his Emperor's most holy inquisition. I believe those words have meaning to you?"

"Yes, of course, err- despite our longtime isolation from the Imperium proper, we have nevertheless maintained our….faith and dedication to his throne."

"Who say's I think you're isolated?" The Inquisitor asked.

Ryan began to sweat profusely.

"And this ship you are in, corvette class, my tech priests see that it dosen't follow any pre-existing Imperial design or STC, if you were able to develop this on your own, then my tech priests must come aboard and investigate it."

" Of course, we will eventually. As for the present, what reason do you have for arriving at our humble system?"

The Inquisitor looked over The captain for a few moments. Ryan tried to maintain a emotionless expression, but the discipline of the Inquisitor was that of a century of iron and steel, while it was only decades for him.

"I thank you for your consideration, Captain. Yes, our ship was….diverted from our previous heading. We have been lost to the tides of the warp for weeks now, who knows how long in realspace, but I doubt the Millennium calendar here won't say much about the actual time. We require basic necessities that you could provide. Food, water, raw materials and reaction mass for our ship. However, I doubt you have adeptus Mechanicus protocols to maintain the more….esoteric pieces of technology. But I am nothing if versatile. If you have any native technology that could substitute, the Inquisition would gladly take the….Donation. My tech priests have told me that a low-orbit dock would be suitable."

"Of course" Ryan responded.

"That can be arranged as soon as possible, but currently our spaceports are quite occupied, we will not be able to accommodate your ship for the next two days." Ryan wasn't lying, the Space station was full with recent transports arriving from the core worlds. But that was his biggest mistakes

Freidrich Narrowed his eyes:

"Occupied? I thought you were an isolated planet."

"Oh Sh++" Ryan thought to himself.

"Sorry, I meant the station is under maintenance, pardon the euphemism".

"That is…. unfortunate, Captain. I that case, you wouldn't mind if we were to hold in low orbit, captain?"

Ryan was about to say yes when he remembered something. The Imperial ship was travelling at 0.1C, one tenth the speed of light at SUB-LIGHT mode. Even if they assumed that that was their maximum speed, there was 47 light-minutes between here and Tyrador. They would be here in less than nine hours. And it seemed like they were accelerating even more. What was their maximum speed? 0.2? 0.3?

The battlecruiser had terrible sub-light speeds, With maybe a 0.0006C maximum speed after hours of acceleration with the fusion reactors burning at maximum capacity and the defensive matrix. They were reliant on their FTL drives.

But what choice did he have?

He suddenly realized that the Imperial ship would also be doing auspex scans to see if the station was actually damaged.

Silently, through another terminal, he whispered

"Have an empty Hercules transport ram the main space station. No, I'm not insane, JUST DO IT!"

Turning back to the main screen, he would at least try the Beaucracy argument.

"I'm sorry, inquisitor, but we have very strict docking procedures, paper work, and-"

Inquisitor Fredrich raised his Inquisitorial rosette, and Ryan froze.

"Need I REMIND you captain? You have already said that this symbol has meaning to you. I hope I will not have to back up my symbol with FORCE."

"My most sincere apologies, Inquisitor. That will not be a problem."

Ryan's mind was racing. There were only two things left to do now. One, was to engage in interesting conversation with the Inquisitor, and second, give them a faulty course route that would send them through asteroid fields to slow them down.

"Anyways, we will send you're the navigation route to best-"

"Captain, I am almost insulted by your condescension and would have probably already opened fire if it not were for that inkling of humility in your words. We can travel on our own. Prepare your planet's resources for us."

Ryan sighed, nodding, and them responded.

"Understood Inquisitor. We will show you the hospitality of this wayward settlement, dedicated to the Emperors. Light. On that note, how is the Imperium at large currently? I know you will give details to our planetary governor, but just on a one to one basis, how are things going? Jeez, the last time we were visited was nearly a century ago!"

Inquisitor Friedrich stared coldly. Then, he smiled, almost craftily.

'Of course, my good Captain. The Imperium goes very well. Not much has changed. Chaos is repelled, the Orks are being held at bay. Since you said a century ago, I can assure you the tyranids have made no real progress-"

Inquisior Friedrich had humored this obviously stalling conversation for more time. He had ordered his tech priest, tech-adapt Lucan, to begin to subtly, hack into the monitor's systems. So far, their systems were quite primitivie for what he heard, all natively developed. Almost no signs of Imperial technology….

Friedrich was almost certain in his suspicions. This was a independent planet. They had been isolated from the Imperium for so long that they even began to develop their own technology. These planets were inevitable, but still dangerous. They were bacterial infections. Every piece of space, every bit of resource not fed into the Imperial war machine were resources wasted.

Friedrich even fancied the idea of personally subjugating these cretins to serve as his own Inquisitorial outpost.

Turning back to this captain Ryan, he began to engage wit him in phony conversation.

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+++System access granted+++

TA-L6468U-4, or Lucan's mind was plugged into this renegade vessel's systems. Currently undetected, He sat, almost as an invisible observer. The ship was called the Norfolk. A odd name that seemed to ring with the tones of gothic, but was still unfaimilar. By looking at the data streaming by him, he gathered the total computational storage of the system was around 12 petabytes of data. He personally was able to nearly match the storage capcity and computational power of this entire ship.

Around him, unfamiliar and unblessed machine spirits swirled around him like fog, one even approached him, and he petted it.

But now he set to work. He unleashed a plethora of the Omnissiah's blessed viruses, worms, trojans, while he himself took a deep dive into their systems.

Automated firewall defenses came up, but were either bypassed or brute forced down, the Inquisitor emphasized discreet actions, so no alarms were triggered. He swam through data, a mix of the data of crew (omnissiah's grace there was a lot of pornography)

And all sorts of data, spreadsheets, timetables, archived recordings and video footage, scanner data, all sorts of systems to maintain the large ship. He flew by several blueprints that just at a glance made him light up in delight and shudder in disgust at the same time.

These "Terrans" were very advanced, all of it without mechanicus assistance. In reality the Mechanicus was quite lenient with native technological development, and this independently made system monitor ship was a very commendable achievement.

However, inquisitor had given him one job, to access the systems, preferably even take control of the cruiser, at which point he would reveal his true knowledge about these ignorant hethens.

Suddenly, Lucan felt something. Something…off. "stopping" his advance to the core, he turned, and took another data pathway. This information around here was too coordinated, too organized. Too orderly. There had to be a central processor in charge of all this data. This was usually a super-cogitator abord imperial ships, a tech adept permanently embedded into the ship, serving as it's mainframe.

But this was. Different. It was cold, it was intelligent.

Lucan began to feel a sense of dread. No, omnissiah no.

Breaking down defenses and scans with ever increasing urgency, he finally accressed the data-core. And he froze.

There it was, an intelligence of pure steel and iron. With not holiness, no soul. An abomindable intelligence.

No…. Lucan restrained himself. It was not a true AI yet. He was privy to a primordial truth. AI was surprisingly easy to make. A few centuries after the dawn of the information era of a given planet, increased connectivity and automation almost necessitated AI to be created. This was why the mechanicus was afraid of advanced independent civilizations. AI had a near demonic attraction to those invested in the works of the Omnissiah.

This was not true AI. It had lateral thinking, independence, managed multiple automated systems. It could respond or even argue with the human commander, but it wasn't true AI. There was no real sentience. It was more like a powerful cogitator with an extremely sophisticated voice-communciation inteferace.

But it was on the absolute precipice of becoming one.

Suddenly, Lucan noticed something else in this AI data-core. Until now all the technology was familiar, metal, steel, transistors, quantum computational sturctures and other components he was familiar with. But this data core had some differences in material. The storage was….crystaline. Arranged in a fluid lattice, within it, quantum interactions occurred, billions per second. The exact trajectory of particles stored information, was tracked and used as data storage. This was not Imperial tech, this was not anything they could have made.

He quickly read a system tag, saying "Protoss computational core, experimental application #T-6B,

It was….Xenotech.

Lucan screamed. This civilization had xenotech AND were on the absolute precipice of making true AI. His priorities rested with the inquisitor, but he had orders ingrained into his systems from when he was a mere sack of flesh borne into the arms of the omnissiah.

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Lucan screamed, and like a wave, the full force of the omnissiah lunged at the AI.

"Sir!" Catostrophic system breach, our adjudant has been compromised!" One of the technicians shouted.

Ryan, who had just poured himself a glass of scotch nearly split his drink. Turning to the Inquisitor, who seemed to have an equally shocked, then angry face. He shouted in the weird "high gothic" language at someone off-screen, before turning back, obviously very disgruntled.

"What is the meaning of this!?" Ryan shouted

"While this was not part of my plan, heretic, I didn't know you secessionists also harbored AI and Xenotech!"

"Wha-?"

"Silence, I knew this was a façade from the start Captain. You wanted to be independent from the Imperium, I understand, I have seen this on a dozen worlds. But you fail to understand that every human not serving the Emperor is against his will! Surrender your ship to interrogation, your planet is forfit, property of the inquisition!"

Lucan came to his senses, alarms blared. His attack had killed the near-AI and crushed the Xenotech, but he was found now. Swarms of antivirus countermeasures atttacked him. The core, he needed to complete his mission.

Around him all manner of systems tried to stop his approach, but he brute forced through. Aboard the Axius, Lucan attached a mechadendrite to his ship's main cogitator. After a shock of power, he now wielded brute force computational power greater than that of the entire terran battle crusier, and renewed his assult. His virtual rape of the system going uncontested.

"Evasive maneuvers, now, power up the Yamato cannon and ready the jump drives!" Ryan shouted.

Technicians scrambled around him, bringing the ship around, but it felt like they were fighting the ship itself. System after system fell as the tech priest smashed through the battlecruiser's innards. Scanner arrays were disconnected, the bombardment arrays shorted out, the fusion reactor containment measures were nearly overloaded. Ryan's personal mini-fridge shorted out and then exploded.

"Sir! We Can't stop the digital attack, we need to cut it off from the mainframe before it arrives! It will shut down almost every not essential function, but we have no choice!"

"Do it. Helsman, shift to complete manual controls, send teams down to the Warp drive rooms and Yamato cannon bay and begin manual firing sequences!"

In the data room, more technicians frantically tried to cut of the connection, but their shut-down systems had also been compromised. Then a marine ran in the door, and raised his Gausss rifle. The technicians without ear protection would need surgery later, because the Gauss rifle roared with a deafening sound indoors. The 8mm hypersonic spikes, a 10-centimeter long, 8mm wide spike set inside a 12.7mm (50cal) APSFDS round, fired with propellant then accelerated to hypersonic speeds smashed into the connection cables each with the kinetic force of 25mm Cannon rounds, capable of punching through 2 inches of neosteel or 16 inches of reinforce concrete. At 30 rounds per second, the rifle shredded through the connection with a screaming hammering.

When the dust cleared, the Marine raised his visor.

"what? It worked!"

Mainframe isolated!

Fire the Yamato Cannon! Ryan shouted.

The battlecruiser, more maneuverable than the Dauntless-class cruiser, turned. The spinal mount running almost the he entire length of the battlecruiser gathered energy. Megatons of TNT-energy equivilant was bled from the fusion reactor of the battlecruiser into an electromagnetic containment field.

Over the course of a few seconds, the concentration reached critical mass, and with a screech of 300-meter long rails firing, the blast of energy, the fireball of an 8 megaton nuclear weapon screamed from the barrel towards the Imperial ship.

The explosion engulfed the cruiser's bow in a nuclear fireball…

but as the fire cleared, the ship, was untouched.

"void shields at 92 percent and recharging,"

Lucan said in his monotone voice, still connected to the battlecruiser

Friedrich blinked, then laughed.

This was their most powerful weapon?‼?

Stepping forward, almost casually, he raised his hand.

Bring the Axius around, fire macrocannons one through three, salvo style.

Engage tactical Jump! Ryan shouted, after seeing the damage, or lack of damage done to the cruiser.

However, unbeknownst to him, he would not live to see another day.

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Lucan was praying. He was still in the Battlecruiser's system, completely locked out. But impossibility was not a impediment for those truly dedicated. While esoteric, the Mechanicus had almost turned prayer and religious offerings to the machine god into a science. It was standard protocol.

And through the the omnissiah's grace, their prayers were answered. Was the Omnissiah a warp entity? The void dragon? No one knows. But as Lucan finished his praying, for a split nanosecond, requiring only a tiny amount of warp energy, reality…..relaxed. The air between the frayed cables had it's conductivity suddenly rose for a nanosecond, an alterting of reality, so minute that it was practically unobservable. And they didn't need to be observed. All the mechanicus knew was it worked.

And with that, the signal jumped in that tiny reality blip, and Lucan was in. He metaphoically took a thunder hammer to the central mainframe.

"System's unresponsive, engines down, power's down, fusion reactor cut off, communications down, and-

The battlecrusiser's lights went out.

"The power's gone out. There's just no power, not even the manual teams can get the FTL jump operational.

Ryan stood, frozen with fear in the darkness of the bridge.

Looking upwards, he saw a bolt of light. Then, infinity took him.

A macrocannon shell was a kinetic monster. It was a 5000 kilogram projectile launched at 0.1C, from zero to 0.1C in mere seconds. This bolt of infinity was meant to crack mountains like eggshells.

The Norfolk, the 900-meter-long cruiser, was reduced to Atoms. All 4000 crew killed in an instant. The largest piece leftover were maybe only a few feet across.

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Inquisitor Friedrich smiled.

This planet was rich in resources and had quite the sizable labour force. And it was virtually defenseless against his might. The power went to his head. His early ponderings about subjugating this system personally were coming to fruition, his own personal planet in Segumentum Obscurus.

Turning to Lucan, he announced:

"excellent work tech adept Lucan, you never fail to disappoint"

"Thank you, Inquisitor."

"Now, broadcast this to this….Terran world. : Your entire planet is guilty for attempted desertion from the Imperium, and your military has attacked our ship. This sin is punishable by mass execution, but I am nothing but merciful. You will be put into indentured servitude under my rule for as long as you live. You don't exactly have a choice. You will see the benevolence of the Emperor. But of course, you will first need to be punished for your crimes. Your populace will be selectively decimated and all technology confiscated."

Finishing the broadcast, he commanded the navigator:

"Ahead full, 0.2C cruising speed, we will be above the planet within five hours." (In-system warp jumps were too risky)

Laurence and Abram's blood ran cold after hearing message, and seeing the ships accelerate to 0.2C.

They would be here in 5 hours. The relief fleet would be here in 11 hours.

Just as hope was about to be lost, Laurence snapped his fingers. I've got in idea, it's a long shot, but it just might work.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Tyrador was being locked down. There was no point really, they couldn't stop the cruiser, and any protection was useless. But a false sense of security was the citizens needed.

But in space, prepations were being made for a last-ditch effort.

The two cruisers, the Fletcher with Captain Laurence, and the Gearing, With Commander Abrams. The junior officer in charge of the gearing had resigned upon hearing the news and was honorably discharged, and Abrams had taken command. Laurence couldn't exactly blame him for not wanting to participate in his insane plan.

Currently, they were above Tyrador, waiting for a special delivery from a bunker warehouse out in the desert of Tyrador.

Apocolypes-class nuclear weapons were banned under the Confederacy, but with the coming of the End War and all sorts of insanity, the Apocolypes-class was re-instated. In reality, it wasn't hard at all to make big nukes, you just needed more Uranium or plutonium. 30, 60, even 100 megaton nukes were often seen in the hands of civilian contractors for terraforming, mining, and, well, some recreational purposes. Nukes were a essential part of any terran's life.

But these were rather cumbersome with no real military application.

But the Apocolypes class was different. It had special technology that compacted the mass for the same amount of explosive force. Even then, it was nearly 30 meters long and five meters wide, a rod, the size of a battlecruiser's hangar from the front to the back. It had an explosive yield of Two Gigatons of TNT, Two BILLION tons of TNT, nearly 400 times the power of a typical tactical nuke. able to glass a small country. A thousand of them turned Korhal to Glass, and several of them could easily restructure moons or asteroids.

After the End war, they were stored in bunkers, intended to be used as mining and moon/planet re-structuring tools. But they were still there. Five of them were mothballed on Tyrador.

The only problem was that due to their sheer size, there were almost impossible to deliver effectively. It was easily intercepted by even rudimentary point-defense systems.

That was where that Terran Ingenuity Came in.

As Laurence and Abrams watched the drophsips bring them into orbit. Abrams shook his head.

"Laurence, I hope you really know what you are doing."

"I do, but I can't garuentee success. Sir, I was hoping for a peaceful day just like you. But looks like the universe hated us in particular today. In fact, it seems like the universe has been REALLY hating on us Terrans since I don't know, when we first came into existence. Zerg. Protoss. Space gods. The UED. Now this Imperium of man?

"It seems to be so…" Abrams muttered.

"But." Laurence added, causing Abrams to turn back to him.

"We're still here, and I'd say we're thriving. The one thing that has carried us through has been our ingenuity. The Terran free and libertarian spirit and our rapid advancement of technology and adaptation."

"In some ways, the Imperium is worse than almost everything we've faced. They're diametrically opposed to everything we stand for. Rapid technological advancement, freedom, exploration, no wonder there has been next to no defections."

"Laurence, don't go philosophical again." Abrams groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. The dropship docked with the hangar of the Fletcher, Laurence's ship.

"I have a very simple question, are you ready to go through with this?"

Laurence paused.

"yes."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The two commanders marched into the hangar, marines and technicians saluting them as they walked by.

Entering the hangar, they were met with four Giant metal cylinders. They ran the entire length of the battlecruiser's hangar, with the ever omnious black and yellow nuclear symbol stamped on the side. They also had a series of limpet-like attachments connected by tight strung-wires bound around each of the bombs.

"Capt' Laurence!" A voice shouted.

"Hello Jericho, how goes preparations?"

"Good, well, as good as you can get when you're working with these giant metal barrels

We have the four apocolypes class weapons in place. Our SCV's have quickly turned our hangar into a pseudo bomb-bay, nanotechnology and fusion cutters really do the trick with these things."

Jericho motioned to several rails and tracks stamped into the ground for easy unloading of the bombs the moment the hangar door went down. They had also smashed section of hull out to accomodate the weapons better. There was a hastily set up magnetic catapult to launch the behemoth weapons out of the hangers as well.

So yeah, they're on rails and wheelers and will deploy safely and not get jammed in the hangar. Now…

The three turned to see several technicians operate a consel, with a woman standing behind them, obviously very unhappy.

Even if we follow through with you dive-bombing plan, the weapons could still be destroyed. Because of that, we had to gut around 20 banshee attack craft, virtually Tyrador's entire squadron, for their cloaking devices, all of which will be destroyed, obviously.

That's close to forty-million credit's down the drain (the Credit was quite a valuable currency). Laurence muttered.

"That, and a few dozen drums of radiation deflecting paint" Jericho responded "But at this point, I think the Dominion will happily reinburse us for our troubles. At least that's what I tell her." Her pointed to the woman.

That's Wing commander Sophia, the banshee pilots know the cloaking tech the best, so they'll have to help with the installation.

"Wait, you're saying that you're going to turn these nukes-"

"Invisible? Yes." Jericho responded. "Hit it!"

With a crackling whine, the air filled with the smell of Ozone, and in a hexagonal matrix of light, the nuclear weapons disappeared from sight.

"How did you do all of this in THREE HOURS?" Laurence wondered, staring up at the build, from the inivisble nukes to the converted hangar bay.

Smiling, Jericho responded "Commander, with the stuff we can pull, building a command center in 12 hours from scratch, the standard factory able to pump out a siege tank in one day, nanotechnology, and pure ingenuity allows us to think on our feet. Besides, converting this bay into a bomb-bay was simple, next to no real technology. And repurposing the cloaking devices was simple as sticking the components onto the nukes with duct-tape.

"Impressive Jericho, I didn't think this would be possible," Abrams said, raising his hands to touch the empty air, only for his hand to stop when he touched the cold metallic surface.

He then smiled.

"This plan of yours just might work."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Laurence stood at the bridge of the Fletcher with its deadly payload. All non-essential personell were evacuated, cutting the battlecruiser's crew to a skeleton 200. They had also stripped off all valuable tech in the time they had. They simply couldn't remotely pilot such a huge ship, as AI had been rolled back recently, and due to the high-velocity and precise manuvers, remote control was too unreliable.

The Imperial cruiser was now only over an hour away, cruising at 0.2 the speed of light.

Laurence looked to the stars, and thought: Don't mess up Abrams.

EXITING WARP IN 3, 2, 1,

The Minotaur-class battlecruiser, the Gearing, shot out of FTL, and immediately picked up the Imperial cruiser, which also immediately noticed them, and began decelerating to engage them. They were extremely close, only 20 thousand kilometers apart.

Abrams smiled. He had already accomplished his mission: slow the thing down.

"fire everything!"

As the gearing got within firing range, it unleashed storm of ATA/ATS fusion-laser batteries, along with a barrage of a dozen nuclear weapons, all of which would tickle the void shields, but they weren't meant to destroy anything.

+++Axius+++

"Bold, but foolish, move to engage, NOW!"

Friedrich shouted. The Auxius decelerated, and lance batteries and macro cannons turned to the battlecruiser, a shot from any single one able to annihilate it. It was a poor ambush by this monitor ship, but how it appeared well within the auspex range was still unknown. They were monitor ships without warp travel, it wasn;t like they had FTL…..

Point defense weapons sythed the nuclear missiles out of the air easily, and the few that made it past engulfed the cruiser in nuclear fire, but the sub-megaton weapons were more like smoke-grenades than anything else. The Laser batteries were the equivalent of firing a lasgun at it.

The battlecruiser began taking insane maneuvers as it approached the Crusier.

"Slow down and stabilize the firing platforms, fire now!" Friedrich shouted.

Jump!

Abrams felt the ship underneath him shake, before the battlecruiser shot into FTL once more. A minotaur class battlecruiser only had a certain amount of energy they could store at any given moment. They could either do two-jumps in quick succession, or one jump and one Yamato cannon blast, or two cannon blasts.

They had succeeded.

Friedrich's eyes widened as the battlecruiser shot forward in a green flash of light.

"Target has disappeared. Lucan reported," also flabbergasted.

Friedrich began thinking about cloaking devices when it suddenly clicked.

These humans had tactical faster-than light travel. No wonder they were met so quickly by that battlecruiser when they arrived.

"Navigator, did you sense any warp signature?" Friedrich asked.

After a Pause, he turned to see his navigator with a shocked face.

"…..No….. inquisitor. That was not warp travel."

Friedrich stood there, now almost frightened. The last time he saw FTL like that was an encounter with NECRON ships. What the hell was happening here? Did these humans have Dark-age of technology ships and STCs?

Who were these people?

As Friedrich stood there, the Dauntless-class cruiser now at at a relative snails pace, with a constant speed, The fletcher struck.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

NOW! The fletcher burst out of FTL, and Laurence saw the Dauntless class cruiser, huge, imposing. They came out extraordinarily close, virtually knife-fighting distances in void-combat terms and they were on a head-on collision course with it.

The adjudant crunched the numbers in the seconds they had as the two ships approached each other, now only less than a few thousand thousand kilometers away from each other.

"deploying weapons" the adjudant said in it's monotone voice.

The hangars opened and the four apocolypes class nukes were deployed behind the ship, along with a bunch of flares and jamming drones.

"Pull up!" Laurence shouted, "engage FTL drives!"

"What in the Emperor's name….." Friedrich stared as the battlecruiser approached them head on.

They were going to ram them!

All void shields to the prow! Friedrich shouted. There was not enough time to maneuver away from this ship. Honestly, given the speed of the incoming ship, the ram would probably not even faze the dauntless-class . Even so….

They were already out of the Arc of the main batteries, they couldn't hit it. Then Friedrich remembered:

"Open up all anti-star-fighter weapons!"

Laurence was thrown off his feet as the battlecruiser pulled upwards at the last minute, they passed each other at less than a few dozen kilometers, virtually scraping each other's paint. They were out of the firing arc of the primary weapons, but they forgot one thing.

The Anti-starfighter weapons.

A hundred high velocity cannons similar to Vulcan megabolters, a hundred heavy multilasers and lascannons lashed the cruiser with unending fire, shrapnel shells burst around it.

A low-yield nuclear weapon, usually used as a flak shell, the radiation frying starfighters, exploded against the battlecruiser's hull.

The anti-starcraft weaponry was more akin to titan weaponry once put into scale.

The Fletcher's shields were already at low power, and were quickly destroyed. The hull was punctured in a dozen places, piece were blown off, and it's superstructure turned to molten slag, punctured sections of the hull turned to blow torches as oxygen rushed out to fuel the thousand-degree fires.

In short, the battlecruiser was being nearly destroyed by ANTI -STARFIGHTER WEAPONS.

In the few seconds as the two ships rushed by and the fletcher entered the anti-starfighter range, the battlecruiser's 900 meter long frame was a pitted mess.

"JUMP DAMMIT!"

The battlecruiser's engine screamed, and reality began to warp, but the moment they left, another anti-starfighter nuclear weapon exploded against the battlecruiser's hull, close to the bridge, Laurence was thrown across the room, and things went black.

The battlecruiser jumped, despite its damage, away from the combat zone.

While the expirence was quiet exhilarating, Friedrich still managed to laugh. Anti-stairfighter weapons nearly destroyed their system monitor ships. They had heretical technology, their FTL travel, and only used it to bluff, and when those bluffs failed, they used to to run, like the cowards they were.

While Friedrich celebrated, the Axius, still along the same vector, continued to go forward.

Right into the apocolypes-class nukes placed in it's path.

There was no way for the Imperials to have known any different.

Space lit up like a second star had appeared. The four nuclear weapons exploded mere kilometers away from the Dauntless-class cruiser. Each able to glass a small country.

Abrams aboard his cruiser, now out of FTL, shielded his eyes from the bridge of the Gearing. The combined nuclear blast that would have cracked the crust of a planet engulfed the Dauntless-class cruiser.

He sighed a breath of relief.

Pressing the communication's panel, he said.

"Fletcher actual, do you copy, Laurence, are you there? Laurence?"

There were a few tense moments. Then:

"I'm stil alive you sonofabitch, Laurence croaked." And Abrams nearly shouted in joy.

"But…. I think they might be too."

"what?"

"look at the fireball…."

Abrams scrambled to a scanner terminal, and ordered the technician to zoom in on the blast. It was dispersing now, and-

"Nothing could have survived that…. How-"

A black obelisk slid out of the nuclear fireball. The Dauntless class crusier was still intact.

….And looked completely fine.

Abrams was about to have a heart attack. That ship was….more or less fine. There seemed to be scortch marks, superficial damage, a few weapons batteries were crippled, but not nearly enough. Heck, even the statues, glowing and slightly molten from the blasts, were still standing proud. But that's when Abram's realized it. There was HULL damage. Which meant the nukes were able to strip off all the shields of the Imperial Cruiser, but there was only superficial hull damage.

The only saving grace of the situation was that the Imperial cruiser wasn't accelerating. Abrams watched as minutes passed by, gripping the railing so tight that his knuckes were white. He saw some engines sputtering to life, but as time passed, it was clear that the Cruiser, for whatever reason, could no longer travel at any meaningful speeds. It was stranded light minutes away from Tyrador.

Maybe the nuke's sheer intensity destroying the shields caused feedback to their main reactor? That was the only plausible reason.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Axius

light cast a dour glow over the bridge. Friedrich sat on his throne, seething with rage.

"Is there ANYTHING that still can move us Lucan?"

"Negative, inquisitor. The majority off internal systems are fine, , macrocannons, torpedoes, lance batteries, are all operational. All internal life support systems functional. True Hull integrity at 95.43%. Void shields at 0.5 percent and re-charging slowly.

But as I said, the nuclear weapons these traitors Employed, caused a phenomenon seen in medium to long range detonations of Nova Cannons. The sheer radiant energy overloads the voids shields so quickly and so intensely. Void shields shunt energy away into the warp. While the warp is infinite, the technology facilitating the connection to the warp is not. Too large of a volume of energy can destabilize the tech supporting the portal to the warp, and to make sure the warp dosen't spill back into reality, a failsafe closes it shut. It can cause backflow into the ship's plasma core, feedback, and it can overload the core. Radiant energy really dosen't do anything to our hull, we could fly through the outler layer of a star with our void shields down and we would be fine. We normally have measures to prevent this backflow, but they were disabled as redundant systems when we entered this system.

We will not be able to draw enough power to achieve a significant percentage of the speed of light speeds. Warp engines are even more out of the question with the low power output. We are effectively stranded for the next several weeks.

Freidrich stood there, in the bowels of the stricken ship, furious, but unable to do anything. Then he calmed down. A few weeks delay was good in most cases, this would be a minor setback. The planet was still there, and they couldn't do anything to the Cruiser. All they needed to do was wait.

Unfortunately, Friedrich was still used to The timescales of the IMPERIUM. Not the Kopluru sector

"At least they're wont be any more reinforcements for these heretics…."