A/N: Hello folks, another new story! You can blame my Beta, Aperture Zero, for planting this idea in my mind unknowingly until I brought it up. Check Aperture Zero's stuff out if you'd like. My writing this has made him begin writing his own 40K crossover, even though this is technically speaking, a 30K crossover.
Pain was nothing new to Arcturus Magnus. He had served beside his Emperor for an untold number of years; even now, he had been pulled out of the Webway at His behest. This was largely in part due to having been impaled and near death's door when he had finally been recalled. If it were up to the Sagittarum, he would have tried to stay and fight.
But that was his duty. As a Sagittarum Guard of His creation, he would do his duty. Even if it required leaving Him behind upon the Golden Throne to bring more soldiers to hold the Impossible City.
But none of that explained his current migraine, feeling like his skull was ripped asunder by a Bloodthirster's vile blade. A lone hand rose to his forehead, covered as it was by his helmet, ensuring that something close to that hadn't happened. His breathing grew more steady as he did so, and he became more confident once he felt no imperfections upon the golden Auramite that encased his head.
Once he was sure that he hadn't been physically harmed, he began to compartmentalize the pain, rising to his feet as he did so. Opening his eyes allowed him to look upon the familiar controls of his Orion Dropship, looking as innocent as they ever had. Clearly, whatever had occured hadn't destroyed the cockpit of his ship. This left him confused as to what could have happened. So he focused on recalling the events of the last moments before he lost consciousness.
Parts and pieces were fuzzy, but he clearly recalled being sent to Fabricator General Kane to acquire a heavier Mechanicum force to reinforce the Imperial defenders within the Impossible City. The orders came from Tribune Jasaric himself, and seeing as Arcturus could not protect with his current injuries, he was sent to secure the presence of those who could.
It took some time, but the acquisition of his Orion was hardly an issue. Such dropships were not in use within the webway, leaving a relative abundance of them to be requisitioned for the very reason he had taken the helm of his own ship.
He remembered what had been stowed upon his ship clearly, but he went through his troop and equipment manifest that he kept out of habit. A Vulturax had been loaded in with little difficulty, followed by a Castellax. The Myrmidon watcher in command of them then managed to push in a five-man cohort of Thallax shock troopers, and finally, another five-man cohort of Ursarax. Along with them came everything needed to perform repairs upon the automata and Lorax-armored soldiers, as well as the tools needed to begin fabrication of thralls and what was needed for maintaining Custodian equipment. Along with the Myrmidon Lord came two of his subordinates, and with them several tech-thralls to handle the heavy-duty lifting.
The Myrmidon, Magos Lexus, was a strange being all in themselves. They (for the Magos had little flesh remaining, and a gender for them held no purpose in Arcturus's mind) insisted upon bringing a rather unique selection of equipment with them. Arcturus didn't care what eccentricities the Martian wanted to bring so long as it didn't slow them down, and it seemed the Magos took advantage of that fact. Half of the equipment in the ship made the Custodian believe the Martian intended to start an entire fabrication unit within the Impossible City. His thoughts were further bolstered in this direction by the knowledge that this Magos was indeed quite capable of setting up such a facility with the right resources at their disposal, having known them for a large number of years. The other half was dedicated to the maintenance of Custodian equipment, with the Magos himself being one of the privileged Martians to have knowledge of such equipment. He had even displayed it by repairing the Sagittarum's armor before they started their return to the Palace.
Even as he pondered recent events, he moved back into the Orion's pilot seat and manipulated the controls with a dexterity born of a thousand years of experience. The ship responded instantly, giving him a readout on its systems. Everything was running smoothly, and with no damage from whatever happened. But he did discover something more important than his ship's status.
The Orion's systems had attempted to extrapolate where they were in space - for they were in the vacuum, much to his dismay - and found that they were somewhere not even its advanced scanners could deduce. Not good.
A familiar mechanical knock upon the cockpit's door signaled the arrival of the Magos, who came in standing upon a variety of mechadendrites in silence. Arcturus had known the Magos long enough to know that the Martian only used its two mechanically enhanced legs when it needed to fire any of the large weapons it kept around. Otherwise, the silent mechadendrites had long been its preferred form of mobility.
"Lord Arcturus, I have detected an anomaly in our -" the Magos began, pausing when it gained a view of the stars that now surrounded them. "My apologies. You are aware."
"Quite. Have you any memory prior to our… 'anomaly'?" The Custodian inquired, pausing as he began to sift through his own expansive memory of the stars. If the ship's systems were unable to figure out where they were, then he would do it himself one way or another.
Magos Lexus turned slightly, allowing its overly flamboyant robes to flutter in an attempt to conceal the writhing mass of mechadendrites that Arcturus knew covered most of its body. Then, one of the mechanical constructs rose and opened, revealing a writing utensil. Arcturus took it without hesitation. The holopen would record upon a hard surface for no longer than two hours; he would only need one to finish his calculations.
"My memory banks are complete and uncorrupted. Approximately nine minutes and twenty eight seconds ago, we were over Terra when a Warp anomaly pulled us from the material plane. My instruments detect that it originated from within you, Lord Arcturus."
The Magos's words caused the Custodian to pause in his physical calculations, though his mind did not stop. A moment later, his physical body kept working.
"That's impossible unless you have something further to add to it. I am aware of your penchant for theatrics, Martian."
The robed mass of whirring machinery that was the Magos shook in what Arcturus knew to be laughter, though no physical noise was audible until it spoke again.
"Within you, Lord Arcturus. Not from you. It is my hypothesis that your wound held more purpose to it than merely to wound. Without someone with psychic potential to experiment on, I can not be one hundred percent certain of this. But it may be that being around your Sisterhood of Nulls prevented whatever trickery from occurring until you were of a sufficient distance away. And then it may have needed time to manifest once such a distance was established."
Even as Arcturus's hand idly performed the calculations he needed to establish where they were, his mind pondered what he knew about the Warp, Nulls, and anything else he had discussed based around those subjects with both his fellow Talons of the Emperor, and the Emperor himself. He quickly came to the same conclusion as the Magos, though he could not prove it. It wasn't until nearly a half hour later when the silence in the cockpit was broken.
"Pardon the interruption, Lord. But there seems to be void-bound activity upon the nearby planet."
"Details, Magos."
"Two transport vessels detected making entry into the planet's atmosphere. Initial scans of the planet indicate it to be habitable with small atmospheric adjustments and would be excellent for a mining world. Will mark its location as soon as you're able to extrapolate our location in the stars."
Silence reigned for several more minutes until the Custodian spoke.
"It seems we have a bigger problem than we initially imagined, Magos Lexus. According to these calculations, we should be in the middle of the Belic System. This planet should be a minor Forge World. I've been here before, but the planet bears no signs of your Mechanicum."
"Perhaps we should gather more information? The previously detected vessels seem to have landed in some form of small mining operation. Hacking into communications network now… connected. Not as hard to crack as an encrypted vox channel."
At once, Arcturus could hear through his helmet what was being said on the hacked comms.
"The girl's coming back to the pits. Direct her to land outside the secondary slave pit. Commander wants a moment of the human's time."
"Dammit. I was hoping to have her over my way. Commander always gets first dibs; why can't he settle with a slave girl for once?"
"Stop complaining, Corlin. Commander's orders."
"Yeah, yeah. Raising her now."
The Sagittarum's limbs were moving at the controls for the Orion before the Magos could make any comment, causing the engines to hum to life.
"Ready your Thallax for suppressive action, Magos. I shall breach the facility myself. No xenos shall have Humanity as their slaves."
"By your command, Lord Arcturus."
As the Kodiak settled into the small dock, the pilot let out a yet another extended sigh as she thought about what she had seen.
She was human, one of the few that was part of this mining facility and wasn't one of the slaves that kept it producing the raw materials that the Blue Suns liked having on hand.
Her sigh was caused by having detected some form of activity on the nearby planet named Virmire. A giant ship, one she slightly recognized from news reports that managed to make it all way out to this shit-hole of a planet, was involved. And while her sensors never picked it up, she was certain that she saw the first human Spectre's ship, the SSV Normandy, as it too fled Virmire. And she wasn't the only one who saw it; the pilot of the only other Kodiak stationed here also noticed them as they returned from their salvage run. So they had played it smart, and turned off all power in their ships per her partner's orders. They relied on their suits' air reserves for nearly an hour to make sure they were in the clear before powering their ships back up, marking where they had seen the giant vessel leave from for a future salvage run.
But that was then. Now, Sheela had to focus on unloading the salvage taken from a Kowloon freighter. Her dingy Kodiak had seen better days; she was impressed that it hadn't fallen apart on her yet.
Nearly four hours later, the exhausted woman finished lugging the last heavy crate from both hers and her partner's transports. She said little to the primarily Batarian Blue Suns mercs that stuck around purely to keep the slave miners in line. Truthfully, she was afraid of saying the wrong thing to them and being thrown into the mining pits. It wasn't as if her salvage was particularly valuable to the Blue Suns. They humored her simply because there were at least a hundred slaves already. For a group of twenty mercenaries, they had their work cut out for them as it was without adding her to the load.
Instead, she was used for another purpose. One she hadn't liked, but had put up with for years being stuck here as she was. It didn't matter that she was human, and almost none of them were with the exception of one. By now, she knew them by name. People talked in the throes of passion, even if it was just sating their lust.
But she would prefer this over being forced into the slave pits. It didn't stop her from hoping for a way out though. Maybe some wrecked freighter wasn't as wrecked as it appeared. A patrol from the Citadel, or the Alliance, or the Republics even. She would even settle for some other pirates that just didn't care for slavery.
Ultimately though, she wished for a savior. Someone to come here, free the slaves, kill the mercenaries, sweep her off her feet and treat her as a woman instead of as a piece of meat. It never happened, no matter how much she prayed and wished. She wouldn't lie to herself; she desperately hoped that the first human Spectre had noticed something and followed her back to Nemata.
Sleep came the moment her head hit her pillow, but it didn't last long. She had probably only been asleep for a couple of hours when the facility's proximity alarm woke her up. Thankfully, the Commander of the Blue Suns was not present next to her as he had been when she did fall asleep.
Attempting to rub the sleep from her eyes, she sat up and slowly began to put on some clothes. She had just pulled on her scuffed and torn pants and was working on her bra when she began to process several of the foreign sounds coming from outside her door.
Shouting.
She dropped her bra and rushed up to the door, activating her omnitool to run a sound enhancer app. She was startled as a loud bang was heard, followed by a scream and an explosion. The wet sounds that followed only a moment after made her stomach turn.
"Brayloc's dead! Kill that thing!" She heard the batarian Blue Suns commander roar.
"Ashlo's team ran, and Corlin's entire team is already dead! They hit it with a damned anti-tank missle and it didn't leave a scratch. We need to get out of here, not fight- it's coming, get down!" the voice was definitely Minwick, one of the only kind Blue Suns mercs that had interacted with Sheela; the Salarian had been her partner in her last salvage run. She felt her heart stop as a wet thud was heard just behind a meaty impact.
"How fast-"
"The fuck?!"
"That can't be possible!"
The barrage of disbelieving voices was heard, though the single loud bang and explosion that followed was the only thing that was heard afterwards.
Sheela fought to control her breathing as she turned off her omnitool and backed away from her door. The unnerving silence besides her increasingly panicked breathing lasted for nearly a minute, until a single voice was heard just outside her door.
"I have no wish to slay you, human. Open your door and surrender yourself. The alternative means death."
And then Sheela could feel something break within her as her panic reached an entirely new threshold. She screeched in fear, diving for the door to open it despite her state of undress. Maybe, just maybe, she could somehow slip past whatever was out-
The instant her door opened, she knew that it was impossible. A massive figure in golden armor stood. It must have been standing at ten feet tall, a single trunk of its armored leg nearly as thick around as her entire body. A single hand which was the same size as her torso stopped her run without budging, making her feel like she had just ran straight into a wall. Held in the other hand, she noticed a gun that was nearly as large as she was. The armored creature's golden chest plate was decorated with a single-headed raptor and lightning bolt, engraved all around with what looked to be some form of archaic writing. Some parts were readable, using letters from the English language of Humanity. Others looked to be some form of Greek, and others Latin.
But most importantly, she noticed the creature's head as it stared down into her own eyes.
And she felt herself fall to her knees in awe. Fear definitely still existed, but this golden creature, this… savior, she felt the need to bow down and worship. Instead, she felt herself hauled to gently to her feet.
"I- what- who-" Sheela sputtered, but her tongue was halted as she heard it speak again.
"At ease, human. The xenos have been purged. Even now, my companions move to secure this facility and those forced into its mines. Would you tell me your name?"
Fighting the urge to fall to her knees once more, she answered slowly in an effort to please her savior.
"My name is Sheela. I-I… What can I do to serve you, sir?"
She was stopped by a simple finger rising from the figure's hand.
"Reverence is unnecessary, Sheela. My first name earned is Arcturus; you may refer to me as such, or as Lord if you are so inclined."
A slow nod followed.
"As you wish, Lord Arcturus. How may I serve?"
"Finish donning your garments and environmental suit. I have questions that need answers."
Sheela nodded enthusiastically as she darted back inside her room to do just as Arcturus asked. Upon returning to the doorway fully clothed, and her hardsuit sealed to withstand the blazing heat of Nemata's surface, she paid little mind to the blood and gore-soaked halls behind her savior as she began to answer any and all questions to the best of her ability.