81: Chapter 81 The Void Throat reports an unfamiliar signal at the border; Heinrich volunteers to lead the reconnaissance team.

The lights in the briefing room remained on after Void Throat's emergency notification ended, but no one spoke. Marcus Aurelian set his coffee cup on the table, his right fingertips pressing down on several unnamed coordinates circled in cold green cursors by the Canoptek, remaining silent for a long time. Then he looked up at the veteran naval officer standing on the bridge of the Shield of the Emperor in the holographic projection.

"Heinrich, Joint Fleet Command approves your formation of a reconnaissance task force. The Shield of the Emperor will take two Strike Cruisers to the periphery of the sector where the unknown signal source is located and establish a forward reconnaissance post. Mission priority: confirm the nature of the signal source, assess potential threats, and do not engage the enemy proactively. The Psionic Void Network will provide encrypted communication relay throughout, and the Void Throat Defense Command will be responsible for passive navigation targeting. If the signal source proves hostile—don't be a hero, pull back."

Heinrich von Strauheim's mechanical bionic eye flashed red on the other side of the screen. He raised his hand in a standard Imperial Navy salute, his voice raspy, every word sounding as if it were being ground through an exhaust pipe: "Imperial Navy Admiral Van Strauheim accepts command of the Joint Reconnaissance Task Force. The reconnaissance fleet will depart from Gravity Reef Anchorage within the hour, cutting in along the outer lanes of the Ultima Segmentum border sector. If that thing is alive, I'll bring it back. If it's dead, I'll bring back the data. If it wants to fight—then it had better be tougher than the Tyranid Main Fleet."

Sebastian sheathed his Power Sword back into his belt clip, stating he would send a veteran squad of Terminators with the reconnaissance fleet to serve as shipboard boarding guards near the signal source. Bern said nothing more, merely resting his Holy Hammer on his knees, saying he would monitor the reconnaissance fleet's psionic channel with Holy Power from the Void Gate position; although the remaining Error-correction codes of Tzeentch had been purged, Chaos might still use the unknown signal for deception. The Iyanden Farseer's Wraithbone Staff tapped lightly on the edge of the star map; the Web of Prophecy showed no precognitive fluctuations of Chaos or Tyranids around the unknown signal sector, but there was a faint "precognitive blank"—the Aeldari Web of Prophecy was being blocked in that direction by some ancient shrouding layer, and he remarked that this shrouding effect itself was not a natural phenomenon.

The Brood Queen's quantum-state translator lit up after everyone had finished speaking. The Overlord sent his decision: "The reconnaissance fleet may depart immediately. A reminder—the Old Ones Evaluation Protocol has mentioned 'boundaries' several times, and the Sealing Logs of Void Throat also contain vague records of the Ultima Segmentum's peripheral regions. If the unknown signal source is related to the boundary markers left by the Old Ones, the Joint Fleet needs to obtain complete scanning data as soon as possible." Marcus forwarded this note to Heinrich and then signed the formal deployment order for the Reconnaissance Task Force.

One standard hour later, Heinrich's Shield of the Emperor, leading two Strike Cruisers, broke away from the Gravity Reef Anchorage and silently cut into the dark matter lanes outside the Ultima Segmentum border sector. He stood on the bridge, looking out the viewport at a stretch of deep space that had never been formally surveyed by any Imperial Fleet. The edge of the star map became a blank void here, with only the relay links of the Psionic Void Network casting a few extremely thin, cold green navigation lines on the tactical projection. He whispered to his first officer that the last time he had led a fleet into unsurveyed space was several years ago; that time, his entire fleet had been neutralized by The Swarm at Dead Silence-42. This time, he returned with The Swarm's fire control protocols and the Joint Fleet's emblem—the Emperor's arrangements were far more reliable than the minds of the Inquisition.

After the reconnaissance fleet had sailed through deep space for some time, the passive navigation data provided by Void Throat gradually pinpointed the coordinates of the signal source. It was not a planet, nor a space station, but an extremely ancient asteroid belt. The composition of the asteroid belt was not rock or metal, but ancient man-made materials that had been pulverized and then re-aggregated, with each fragment retaining an extremely faint resonance of a quantum-state broadcast. Canoptek-7's long-range scan confirmed that the material of these fragments shared homology with the living metal of the Necron Dynasty, but dated back even further than the Necron Dynasty. He stated over the reconnaissance channel that this might be the discarded product of some creation experiment from the early era of the Old Ones, or even earlier—so early that the Necron Dynasty had not yet learned to use quantum-state encryption.

Heinrich ordered the fleet to deploy into a defensive formation at the periphery of the asteroid belt, with the two Strike Cruisers moving forward to deploy Void Shield barriers, while the probe team boarded Thunderhawk Gunships to enter the interior of the asteroid belt for a close-range scan. In the area where the fragments were densest, the probe team discovered the core of the signal source—a spherical broadcast station encased in several layers of ancient composite materials, with a diameter roughly half that of an Imperial Frigate. Its hull was covered with ancient symbols that belonged neither to the Old Ones, the Necrons, nor the Aeldari. The broadcast station was still sending the same set of signals at extremely regular intervals; the energy level was very low, having clearly persisted for an immense amount of time. The probe team's Terminator Techmarine reported after the close-range scan that the broadcast station had no weapons, no Void Shields, and no defense systems whatsoever; all of its energy was being used to maintain that loop of broadcasting. The content of the broadcast currently could not be decoded, but its structure was extremely simple, resembling a letter being repeated endlessly.

Heinrich packaged the preliminary reconnaissance data and sent it back to the Joint Fleet Command, attaching his recommendation: the Joint Fleet Technical Committee should dispatch an expert team as soon as possible to perform a deep decryption of the broadcast station; it held no hostility, it was simply speaking. After receiving the data, Marcus stood in the briefing room and remained silent for a moment, then said to the communications officer, "Reply to Heinrich. The reconnaissance fleet is to transition into a forward observation post on the spot and await the arrival of the technical team." He paused and added, "Tell Heinrich that since he was the one who put on the Joint Fleet emblem himself, this broadcast station counts as the first unknown civilization contact target discovered since the formation of the Joint Fleet—let him guard it well."