The vibrations of the shuttle's landing gear contacting the ground transmitted into the cabin.
Regan Lazarus curled up in the absolute corner of his seat, pulling his oil-stained collar up past the bridge of his nose.
The cabin door's pressure valve let out a whistling hiss of released air before slowly swinging open.
The noise and heatwave from outside rushed in instantly.
Yet this failed to bring Regan any warmth; instead, his hands and feet turned ice-cold.
Two soldiers dressed in yellow-and-black uniforms stepped aboard—they were Aishi's private troops.
Holding datapads, their eyes swept across the faces of everyone inside the cabin.
Regan held his breath, his right hand quietly creeping toward the Magnum pistol hidden beneath his heavy coat.
In his head, he calculated distance and firing angles.
If the other side made a move, could he take one down with him before getting turned into a sieve?
The lead soldier walked right up to Regan.
His gaze fell.
Regan felt his heart skip a beat; the sensation of being locked on by a predator made all the hairs on his body stand on end.
He recognized this face! This soldier had once boarded the Scavenger to make a trade—he definitely knew him!
It's over!
Regan's finger hooked around the trigger.
However...
The soldier merely glanced at him, his eyes entirely devoid of emotional fluctuation, carrying even a faint trace of indifference.
Shortly after, the soldier shifted his gaze, looking toward the next passenger.
"Headcount verified without error. Clear them."
The soldier spoke a line into his comms unit, then turned and stepped off the craft.
Regan was stunned.
His finger was still hooked around the trigger, turning somewhat white from excessive force.
He left?
He just left like that??
The other guy clearly recognized him—that look was without a doubt recognition!
Yet the guy didn't even bother to interrogate him for a single sentence!
This utter disregard filled Regan with more terror than being arrested on the spot ever could.
In a godforsaken place like Zais, being targeted by an enemy wasn't scary; what was terrifying was not even having the right to be targeted.
What on earth was that woman Aishi thinking?
Did she feel a small fry like Regan wasn't worth moving a finger for, or was she concocting some even larger conspiracy?
The fear of the unknown instantly turned Regan's mind into a scrambled mess.
"Let's go. What're you dazing off for?"
Sisyphron patted his shoulder as he passed by.
Regan trembled all over, nearly jumping out of his skin.
He hastily stood up, dug out an even thicker and larger hooded robe from the very bottom of his backpack, and wrapped himself up tight from head to toe, leaving only a pair of bloodshot, terror-filled eyes exposed.
Regardless, creep in first and figure it out later!
---
The Kolembik Trade Zone.
Beneath the colossal ruin dome, densely packed stalls stretched all the way to the horizon.
Merchants hawking various industrial goods were everywhere, and the air was thick with a mixture of engine oil, roasted meat, and unknown spices.
Sisyphron walked in front, followed by fifty fully armed heavy guards behind him.
The visual style of this team stood completely out of place with their surroundings.
The people nearby were dressed in rags and tatters, while this bunch wore brand-new black exoskeletons.
The people nearby held crude guns and improvised cannons, while this bunch slung high-explosive crossbows that looked expensive at a glance.
The stark contrast made the originally noisy crowd automatically part to make a path.
Sisyphron thoroughly enjoyed this feeling.
Holding the procurement list Andy had given him, he initiated sweeping-spree mode.
"Boss, how much for this pile of junk?"
Sisyphron stopped before a stall, pointing at a pile of off-white fragments.
The stall owner was a mutant whose face was covered in sores. Seeing a big client arrive, he rubbed his hands together with a grin.
"This is good stuff! Thermal tiles stripped right off the engine of a crashed shuttle!"
"One piece—just five rounds of ammo!"
Sisyphron looked back at Regan.
Though wrapped up like a dumpling, Regan's professional instincts were still intact.
He leaned close to inspect it, even extending a finger to dig at the cross-section.
"High-density zirconium ceramic," Regan's voice came muffled from beneath the hood. "Though shattered, the purity is high. Our facilities can take it, and it'll come in handy for modifying engines."
"We'll take the whole lot."
Sisyphron waved a hand grandly.
The guards behind him stepped forward, tossed the stall owner a box of ammo, and packed every single fragment—worthless in the eyes of others—into their crates.
The trades continued.
Sisyphron's team was like a shopping machine, plowing through the trade zone.
As long as it was something Regan nodded at, Sisyphron never asked the price; he paid cash and took the goods on the spot.
What they bought was a mixed bag, but mainly various types of condensates.
The Boss had said: get more condensates back so he could climb the tech tree.
The reason Andy could develop so fast was precisely because he knew what was useful, whereas these locals had no clue.
However, there were also things money couldn't buy.
Adamantite.
Sisyphron asked virtually every metal merchant and agents of several major warlords.
The responses he got were eerily consistent: "Adamantite? Stop joking! There was a bit of that stuff two years ago, but it's been extinct for a long time now."
"It was all swept up by Fortress Odin to the south. They don't even let go of slag containing trace amounts of Adamantite."
"You wanna buy Adamantite? Heh, unless you go raid Odin's storehouses!"
Sisyphron's expression turned somewhat grim.
This was the number-one mission assigned by Andy!
"Looks like we can only think of another way."
Sisyphron closed the list, shaking his head with a touch of helplessness.
Just as the team was preparing to turn back toward the next area...
Regan suddenly stopped in his tracks.
He stood before an inconspicuous little stall situated in a corner, his eyes staring blankly at an item on display.
The stall owner was a human so old he looked ready to crumble, half his body cybernetically replaced—and with very low-grade, clockwork-type mechanics at that.
The goods he sold were also very mixed, mostly discarded datapads and hand-drawn maps.
"What's wrong?" Sisyphron walked over and asked.
Regan didn't speak. He simply squatted down and picked up a datapad covered in black oil stains.
"This thing... I want to take a look."
Regan's voice quivered slightly.
The old stall owner raised a murky electronic eye, emitting a harsh burst of noise: "Brought back from deep within the Great Western Desert. It smells of dead men."
"Two units of high-potency pharmaceuticals. Non-negotiable."
Without a second word, Sisyphron pulled out two vials of "Andy's Biochemical No. 1" and tossed them onto the table.
Regan picked up the datapad, pulling out his portable reader terminal from his coat.
Interfaces connected.
The screen lit up, and lines of green code began scrolling.
This was an exploration log; the recorder seemed to be an explorer who had already perished.
> "Day 42, or Day 43... I cannot be certain. The stellar radiation here made my chronometer fail."
> "The sandstorm in the west stopped—stopped without any warning. The dust in the air no longer drifted, and gravity seemed to double in that single instant, pinning me dead against the burning sand."
> "And then, I witnessed a miracle."
> "Space at the edge of my field of view distorted; the horizon was forcibly snapped by some invisible force."
> "A colossal black obelisk, its surface flowing with a green halo, squeezed itself out of nothingness just like that."
> "It didn't rise from underground, nor did it fall from the sky; it appeared right there in a place where nothing had existed, abrupt and defying all logic."
> "My Geiger counter is screaming; readings indicate the surrounding spatial structure is collapsing and recombining, and the gravitational wave readings are high enough to tear a man's internal organs to shreds."
> "Yet I feel no pain. I feel only a grand, sacred tremor! I think this must be the legacy of the Golden Age! It is the favor bestowed upon me by an unknown god!"
> "Those damned peers of mine all said the west was a dead land—they were wrong! They are all blind! Blind!"
> "They are ignorant! Only I—only I, who persisted in walking all the way here—am worthy to see this gateway to truth!"
> "Only me!!!"
> "Day 44... I heard a voice. Not through my ears, but a humming acting directly on my cerebral cortex."
> "My water is gone. My leg snapped in the previous tremor, but none of that matters."
> "The door has opened. The eerie green light is calling to me. I am going in. I will bring this great legacy back to the world. I am its discoverer! I am its master! This is my fortune, and my destiny."
> "Log ends. I shall step into the brilliance."
The data was extremely messy, and most image files were already corrupted, leaving only the last fairly intact signal log.
Displayed on it were several segments of complex, disordered, noise-filled waveforms.
An ordinary person looking at it would think it was just gibberish or static.
However, Regan was a tech guy, and during his time at Deep Space Industries, he had been forcibly crammed with massive amounts of xenos technology signature databases by Andy.
He stared at that set of waveforms, his pupils gradually dilating.
The frequency of this waveform was extraordinarily stable, and its energy peak exhibited a very bizarre geometric pattern.
This was clearly no natural phenomenon.
In a database Andy had given him titled High-Value Target Identification Manual, this exact waveform corresponded to something exceptionally rare:
[Gravitational Wave Beacon — Standby State].
Furthermore, this frequency signature belonged neither to humanity, nor to the Aeldari, nor to the Orks.
It belonged to an ancient xenos species that, up until now, existed only in legends within this sector, having never been seen in the flesh.
Regan's hands began to shake uncontrollably.
A gravitational wave beacon still on standby meant that facility was still operating.
And the output of gravitational waves was extremely stable, indicating its power core was intact.
Which meant...
Deep within the Great Western Desert—that place everyone considered a death zone...
Lay a pristine, still-functioning high-level xenos outpost!
Andy had said that wherever there was a xenos facility, there was definitely good stuff inside that the "Analysis Station" could consume.
Regan was just about to stand up and shout for Sisyphron, but he held back.
There were too many eyes and ears around right now. If he blurted it out, whether it was Aishi's people or Odin's, they would definitely pounce over like sharks smelling blood.
He took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the wild pounding in his chest.
His fingers operated rapidly on the terminal, initiating the decoding program.
The waveform flashed a few times and began converting into readable text information.
Soon, the progress bar reached its end.
The screen turned green.
A line of High Gothic text carrying a distinct sense of warning popped out:
[WARNING: Gravitational Wave Beacon Detected.]
[Affiliation: Necrons.]