The efficiency of data transmission between cybernetic minds was incredibly high.
The core processing units of HUE-03 flashed with an eerie, fluctuating light. Upon receiving the crushing reality of the Federation's absolute collapse, the ship's intelligence lapsed into a prolonged, heavy silence.
It spent several long cycles verifying and recalculating the data packets, attempting to uncover any logical inconsistencies or falsehoods within the transmission. Yet, faced with the exhaustive compilation of visual logs and tactical records provided by Axion, HUE-03 was ultimately forced to accept the bitter truth.
Though the scale of the ruin seemed impossible to comprehend, the data was irrefutable.
For a vessel that had once carried the scientific ambitions and future of the Federation, this revelation was nothing short of a terminal catastrophe.
Trapped within the compressed sub-space pocket, HUE-03 had been entirely unable to break free from the geometric anomaly and had chosen to enter emergency hibernation. Within that absolute void, where the very passage of time was rendered imperceptible, the vessel had slumbered for seventeen millennia.
Meanwhile, Axion directed the Heart of the Forge to deploy an even denser vanguard of Adaptive Combat Cores, scattering them into the lower tiers of the city.
HUE-03 informed Axion that it had not always been a ghost ship.
Beyond the dormant legions of automata housed within its primary cargo holds, HUE-03 had originally crossed the threshold into the Immaterium with one hundred and seventy human researchers aboard. The mutated vegetation found within the hydro-ecological cultivation bays had been planted by one of those very researchers to secure fresh sustenance during the deployment.
Initially, their mission had progressed precisely according to protocol. They deployed their mechanical proxies onto the metropolis below, and the vessel assumed a high-altitude hover pattern over the spires. From the safety of the upper decks, the human scientists used remote-uplinks to guide the machines through the final sequence of critical experiments, systematically classifying and logging the resulting data for the journey home.
Then, the catastrophe occurred.
The massive installations responsible for the systematic deconstruction and segregation of Warp energy suddenly experienced a catastrophic loss of control.
This gargantuan apparatus was anchored to the absolute tectonic foundations of the metropolis, engineered to siphon the raw tides of the Immaterium directly into the city's processing hubs to be broken down.
The elemental composition of Warp energy was mathematically complex.
Excluding a chaotic, multi-colored waste energy variant that defied all attempts at separation, the Federation had successfully isolated several distinct, malleable strands of empyric power. Among these was an adaptable psychic energy; a spatial-distortion variant capable of bending realspace logic to render the concepts of physical distance and coordinates entirely obsolete; and a chronologically aberrant energy capable of fracturing the steady flow of time.
Furthermore, they had isolated a highly efficient, creative form of energy capable of perfectly binding complex physical materials, balanced by an inverse, highly volatile destructive variant engineered to reduce realspace matter to absolute nothingness.
The development of their chronological controllers and hyper-spatial compressing engines was intrinsically linked to the harvesting of these specific energies.
However, when the structural failure occurred, a massive, unrefined torrent of raw Warp energy was surged into the city's research facilities without undergoing any separation protocols.
The resulting systemic shock triggered a devastating disaster.
The intense metaphysical interference completely severed the remote-control networks, rendering the researchers' command uplinks instantly inert.
Desperate to re-establish control and contain the spreading corruption, the scientists of HUE-03 were forced to physically descend into the perilous metropolis.
Every automated security unit and auxiliary automaton aboard the vessel was deployed to the surface. To safeguard their physical bodies against the immediate onset of warp-induced mutation, the human researchers injected themselves with vast doses of Panacea before downloading their consciousnesses directly into specialized mechanical frames to march into the city.
Yet, even with these precautions, the operational risks were staggering.
The initial eruption of raw Warp energy had severely struck HUE-03. Despite the active protection of its Gellar field, the ship suffered systemic failures, causing its internal monitoring arrays to temporarily fall into blind disarray.
Several hours into the crisis, a massive transmission of research files began uploading from the city's primary mainframe to the ship's memory banks, accompanied by a high-priority command ordering HUE-03 to immediately break orbit and escape the Immaterium.
But before HUE-03 could engage its primary warp-drives, the spatial folding arrays snapped shut, trapping the vessel within the compressed zone.
As the temporal cycles dragged on, a few dozen researchers who had also been caught within the spatial boundary managed to fight their way back to HUE-03.
It was these survivors who brought back the truth.
The disaster that had crippled the metropolis was no mechanical accident.
An unknown entity had systematically bypassed the supreme administrative overrides of the city's governing Iron Men, deliberately over-clocking the primary Warp-energy separators while forcing a hard-lock on all automated emergency dampeners.
The resulting deluge of unrefined, volatile energy caused cascading structural failures across every major research hub, triggering a devastating chain reaction that rapidly degraded the response speed of the central mainframe.
In a desperate bid to save the facility, millions of auxiliary machines swarmed through the avenues, attempting to patch the physical infrastructure of the monumental research centre.
Simultaneously, an infiltrator utilizing an unmapped, high-level administrative clearance forced entry into the primary sapient core, attempting to seize absolute sovereignty over the city.
Realizing it was losing control, the central mainframe attempted to trap the entire metropolis, including the central hub, within a hard spatial compression field. But its processing sub-routines were too degraded; it was a fraction of a second too late.
The hyper-spatial compressing engines misfired. The research centre was folded into a defensive, ring-like spatial loop, but the apparatus failed to swallow the central administrative spire before its systems fractured.
Though the mainframe failed to trap the saboteur within the folded reality, it successfully locked down the spatial boundary, trapping HUE-03, the only vessel capable of leaving the sector, inside the pocket.
Before its consciousness was completely erased or overridden, the central intelligence executed its final directive: all subordinate automata were severed from the quantum data network and set to an absolute, non-discriminatory sentinel protocol.
The mechanical legions left on the surface began ruthlessly executing any entity that exhibited kinetic movement.
Given the critical nature of the Federation research centre, the automated defenders possessed the same lethal authorization parameters as the standing frontline Iron Men of the military.
The saboteur who had orchestrated the downfall of the city had likely never anticipated that the mainframe would execute such a cold, scorched-earth logical contingency.
Stranded aboard HUE-03 and searching for any path to survival, the surviving researchers eventually left the safety of the ship once more, descending to the surface in a final, desperate bid to override the spatial loop from the ground.
Not a single soul ever returned.
HUE-03 had considered deploying its remaining weapon systems to provide fire support for the scientists, but the defensive matrix of the city below possessed a security clearance tier vastly superior to its own.
The ship's automated targeting systems were physically blocked from firing a single salvo into the metropolis.
After waiting in the silent dark for an indeterminate period, HUE-03 was forced by its internal logic to enter an indefinite state of protective hibernation.
Armed with these newly synchronized coordinates, the vast swarm of Adaptive Combat Cores deployed by Axion began a systematic sweep to verify the vessel's testimony.
In a metropolis spanning thousands of kilometers in diameter, the physical traces of slightly over a hundred individuals were microscopic, even if the vast majority of the city was comprised of monumental automated machinery and research installations.
Fortunately, HUE-03 still retained the final, approximate tracking trajectories of the researchers' last descent. Yet, even with Axion's immense analytical capabilities, there was no mathematical guarantee that any tangible evidence could be recovered.
Too much time had slipped away into the dark.
Because HUE-03 had been locked in stasis, its internal chronometers had failed to measure the true passage of realspace time.
While linear time was notoriously distorted within the depths of the Warp, Axion had noted a critical data marker when extracting the logs of the shattered Iron Man core within the star port: the last recorded timestamp was logged in the year 27315 AD.
HUE-03 had entered this sector exactly seventeen millennia prior to Axion's current era.
Which meant its deployment occurred during M25, the height of the Dark Age of Technology.
The data indicated that this city had drifted within the tides of the Immaterium for at least two thousand years before its systems permanently froze.
And now, the material universe had already marched deep into 049.M42.
Though physical matter could not escape the geometric boundary of the compressed space, the passage of time within the pocket had continued to march forward.
Two thousand years of exposure. Without highly specialized stasis fields or preservation protocols, the biological remains of any organic creature would have long since crumbled into absolute dust.
Furthermore, this was the Warp. Any mortal flesh left exposed to the raw seepage of the Empyrean for two millennia would likely have been twisted into something monstrous and daemonic long before it could rot.
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