78: Chapter 78 Terra's Secret Letter: The Astral Knights are Coming to Hope Star

The moment a pale golden light exploded in the center of his vision, Lin Mo jerked awake from his light slumber.

It was not a dream.

The afterimage of the mirror of the emperor was still pinned to his retina—an Astral Knights transport ship was crashing into a purple nebula, three chaos energy bolts embedded in the ship's armor, their warheads slowly spiraling in like vipers burrowing under skin.

The next instant, the bridge observation window shattered from the inside out, glass shards scattering into the void like thousands of flying daggers.

In zero gravity, blood congealed into dark red beads, floating amidst the damaged cabin.

There were roars from deep within the bridge, incoherent, just the agonizing howls of the dying.

A chainaxe bounced off the blood-stained deck and slammed into the bulkhead, electrical sparks exploding amidst a mist of blood.

Sporadic gunfire came from the lower deck, intermittent, like a heart about to stop beating.

Then came dead silence.

The image shattered into a sky full of pale golden light spots, dissipating along the edges of his vision.

Lin Mo braced himself against the edge of the table for two seconds, his cold sweat already soaking through his undergarments.

The oil lamp on the table was still lit.

The pitch-black of early morning pressed against the window, and the steam forging hammer at the Arsenal in the distance finally stopped—or rather, he had finally waited for it to stop.

Looking down at his hands, his right hand gripped a charcoal pencil, while his left hand pressed down on a blank Imperial logistics report, the paper bearing the unconscious sketch of half an emblem's outline.

He did not recognize its origin, but for the first time, he was certain that the mirror of the emperor was not issuing a warning.

It was telling him to wait.

His gaze fell upon the envelope at the corner of the table, wrinkled from being soaked by rain—a Terra Secret Letter, delivered by Yang Shitou who had chased after him for half a street through the heavy rain.

Encrypted Imperial Military Channel.

These few words had forced him to hold off for three days.

The communication relay station in Blackstone Town, cobbled together from scrap metal, had no qualifications to access the military channel; either the signal was fake, or the relay station had long since been tampered with;

in the traces of high gothic blurred on the envelope, two prefixes that should have been in military documents were missing—it was not an omission, but rather looked like the person who wrote it was completely unfamiliar with these regulations;

and what made him most alert was the word carved into his instincts from his previous life in the traces: [Priority].

Out of ten requirement documents with these two characters, eight were traps.

In the early hours of the fourth day, Lin Mo bolted the door of the Intelligence Center.

Spread out on the table were the secret letter, a letter opener, a blank report, and a cup of herbal tea so strong it was bitter.

He went through every possibility in his mind before using the knife to carefully pick open the envelope along the edge of the wax seal.

The letter paper was standard Imperial military parchment, yet it was much thinner than ordinary official documents—either the amount of information was immense, or the sender was in a great hurry.

Unfolding it, the entire page was in high gothic.

He had studied it intermittently over these four years; Alice had taught him basic grammar, and he had chewed through the official documents left by Cassius with a dictionary, but the professional terminology throughout still forced him to pull out that tattered reference table, line by line, like deciphering a secret telegram.

The content was simpler than expected.

Announcement from the Eastern Star Sector division of the Imperial Military Affairs Office: An Astral Knights transport ship will be passing through the Hope Star airspace for routine redeployment in the near future; all Imperial settlements along the route with search and rescue capabilities must set up signal guidance stations below the main flight path.

In the event of a crash, the territory has an obligation to organize search and rescue.

It was just an announcement.

Not a secret order, not a conscription, just a piece of paper.

However, Lin Mo's gaze lingered on [Astral Knights transport ship] for a long time.

Alice had once been a member of them.

Back then, she turned off her communicator and stayed behind, and ever since, she had never mentioned anything related to it.

He did not know if she didn't want to talk about it, or couldn't.

He only remembered that once, while passing by the Medical Station, he caught her polishing that silver badge, her movements very gentle, as if she were hiding something that could not see the light of day.

Turning the letter over, there was writing on the back.

Handwritten, not official printed text.

The handwriting was hurried and sloppy, with a few letters crossed out and rewritten, the ink uneven in depth—the person who wrote it was standing in a turbulent ship cabin at the time.

[The following content is not an official announcement, burn after reading. Chaos activity frequency on the Imperial eastern border has increased by 35% recently; the passing ship carries important military supplies. If the ship is found to have lost contact, do not rashly approach the wreckage; first, confirm signs of chaos contamination. Without an official Imperial order, no settlement may dispose of Astral Knights relics without authorization.]

The signature was not from the Military Affairs Office.

It was a name—or rather, half a name; the latter half was blurred by rain, leaving only the first few letters: C-A-I-N.

Cassius?

No.

Cassius's full name was not spelled this way.

But some details in the handwriting—the low gothic abbreviations mixed into the high gothic, the small dot habitually added after the number 35—were exactly the same as the markings on the logistics reports left by Cassius.

He did not burn the letter.

He folded it and tucked it into the innermost layer of a waterproof file bag, writing one character on the front: Investigate.

That afternoon, when Locke pushed the door open, Lin Mo was hunched over a map of the southern hemisphere, circling flat plots of land.

The charcoal lines were as dense as tree roots, spreading across the paper.

"Who built the signal relay station in the southeast?"

"The Third Construction Group, the team led by Yang Shitou." Locke sat down across the table, the dust on his armor falling onto the wooden floor with a rustle. "The materials were all salvaged from the military parts left by Cassius. Is there a problem?"

Lin Mo didn't answer directly, pushing the announcement over.

Locke had limited knowledge of low gothic, but when his gaze swept over the words [Astral Knights] and [Search and Rescue], his Adam's apple bobbed heavily.

"An Astral Knights ship, passing over our heads?"

"Possibly. It might also just be passing through."

"Do you believe it?"

"I don't. But the announcement is real. The paper is military issue, and the seal format is correct—at least on the front. So regardless of who sent it or what they want to do, the fact that the ship is coming is likely not fake."

Locke was silent for a moment: "What do you plan to do?"

Lin Mo drew three circles in the southern hemisphere—the very three open areas that Locke had previously marked on his tactical map.

"Astral Knights ships usually take the equatorial route; if they really pass Hope Star, the flight path will most likely be between twenty and forty degrees south latitude. These three points are the most suitable locations on this line to set up guidance stations."

Locke stared at the map for a few seconds, his finger tracing from the first circle to the third, his expression darkening.

"These three points are all outside our patrol range. There are at least three groups of orc remnants along the line, stragglers that weren't wiped out during the last sweep. The brush is too dense; my men retreated halfway there last time."

"How long to clear them out?"

"Depends on how many people you send." Locke looked up. "Are you really going to set up stations in these three places?"

"One guidance signal tower per station, three people on duty, rotating every five days. Plus the escort team for clearing the route—" Lin Mo scribbled quickly on the scratch paper, "At least thirty people."

"Thirty people." Locke chewed on these three words. "Pulling thirty out of two thousand to be stationed abroad, stretching the logistics line over sixty kilometers, with food, water, and ammunition all needing to follow. Are you sure?"

"I'm not."

Locke paused, then let out a low chuckle, the kind of short, dry laugh peculiar to veterans, without a hint of mockery.

"You're certainly honest. Fine, thirty it is. I'll go pick the people; I'll assign two veterans who have fought orcs to lead at each station, with newcomers following to gain experience."

"Each station also needs a literate liaison who can operate communication equipment." Lin Mo flipped through the register. "Out of two thousand one hundred people, less than fifty are literate, and those who can touch a communicator—"

"Even fewer, I know." Locke stood up. "Yang Shitou counts as one, and there are two from Riverbend Town; one used to be a tax officer's assistant, and the other two did odd jobs at a local communication station before fleeing. Is that enough?"

"Enough."

Lin Mo looked up at him: "There is one more requirement—the three stations must be connected. Each station is to be equipped with a portable communicator with a signal coverage of at least twenty-five kilometers. If any station encounters an anomaly, the other two must receive an alert within five minutes."

"Portable communicators aren't enough." Locke frowned and shook his head. "Only six of the batch that Old Tom modified can be used stably. Three for the signal stations, and the patrol team itself needs to occupy two of the remaining three."

"Then have Old Tom modify four more, within ten days."

"He's definitely going to curse."

"Let him curse."

Locke snorted through his nose: "Fine, I'll go tell him—he listens to you the most. But be prepared; when Old Tom starts rambling, he can go from the temperature of forging iron to the corruption in the logistics department. Last time, for a batch of bolt tolerances, he blocked my door and lectured for half an hour."

"Then give him half an hour." Lin Mo closed the register. "Communication is the lifeblood of the signal stations. Without communication, thirty people are just thirty blind men."

Locke walked to the door and paused. He rested one hand on the doorframe and looked back: "Lin Mo, you say 'might just be passing through' with your mouth, but in secret, you're already making preparations for search and rescue."

"Because the letter wrote 'in the event of a crash'." Lin Mo didn't look up, his charcoal pencil drawing a dashed line next to the third circle, the supply line from the station back to Blackstone Town. "In announcements from the Imperial Military Affairs Office, they never write hypothetical words like 'in the event of'. They only write 'must' and 'strictly prohibited'."

Locke stood at the door without moving. The oil lamp stretched his shadow long, casting it onto the map of the Eastern Star Sector on the wall, just covering the location of Hope Star.

"You suspect this letter—"

"It's not suspecting the letter." Lin Mo finally looked up. "It's suspecting the person who wrote it. He is warning me."

"Who?"

Lin Mo didn't answer.

Locke waited for three seconds, not pressing further. He tapped the doorframe twice with the back of his hand and turned to walk out, his voice left behind the door: "Thirty people, leaving early tomorrow morning. Within five days, I'll have all three stations set up for you."

The door closed, and the Intelligence Center returned to silence.

Lin Mo opened the drawer and took out the crystal with silver veins—ever since Alice gave it to him, he took it out to look at every night.

The silver veins inside the crystal flowed slowly under the oil lamp, like a living thing, as if waiting for a triggering opportunity.

He held the crystal up to eye level, letting the light pass through it and fall onto the star map on the wall.

The light passing through the crystal cast a very faint yet regular line on the star map—it was by no means a random spot of light.

The line started from Hope Star, passed through the edge of the Eastern Star Sector, and finally disappeared into the blank area beyond the markings of the star map.

The crystal, the metal wall under North Mountain, the Terra Secret Letter, the Astral Knights ship about to pass through.

He didn't yet have enough clues to string these points together, but he could clearly feel that the gravitational pull between them was becoming stronger and stronger.

Locking the crystal back in the drawer, he spread out the hand-drawn organizational chart again and added a line under the [Defense] branch: Signal guidance station construction—thirty people—five-day duration.

Note: One liaison per station, must be literate and proficient in communication operations.

Two thousand one hundred people; on any planet in the Empire, it wouldn't be worth mentioning.

But what he cared about was never the scale, but the foundation.

The Imperial system was an iron chain from top to bottom; under the governor's order, the common people had only one path: obedience; Chaos was another path, leading to eternal damnation.

And the path he wanted to walk on Hope Star was neither the iron fist of the Empire nor the temptation of Chaos—it was to let everyone be able to stand tall and speak in front of the rules.

He wrote a word in the top right corner of the organizational chart, then casually crossed it out.

He knew that one day, this word would be written into every document on Hope Star.

In the evening, when Yang Shitou arrived at the Intelligence Center, his work clothes were stained with oil from the relay station.

He wiped his hands vigorously on his pants before entering the door—this was his habit; before every report, he always had to get his hands clean.

"Sit."

Yang Shitou didn't sit, standing straight—not out of nervousness, but because this person felt that standing to report was the proper way.

"The receiving module of the relay station was indeed tampered with. Someone added a set of signal amplifiers."

"What kind of amplifiers?"

"Imperial military issue. The model number was ground off, but the interface was a standard communication module interface, which matched the batch of Imperial parts at the Arsenal perfectly."

Yang Shitou took out a piece of rag, inside which was wrapped half of a coil he had removed, and handed it over. "This was removed from the gain circuit. Triple-stacked winding, standard Imperial craftsmanship; it can't be made locally."

Lin Mo took the coil and flipped it over by the light of the oil lamp.

The surface of the copper wire was covered with a thin layer of oxide film—it wasn't newly installed; it had been used for at least a month or more.

"Time of modification?"

"At least a week ago. But looking at the degree of oxidation—" Yang Shitou pointed to the darkened film on the copper wire, "possibly even earlier, as early as the first few days when the relay station was just built."

Lin Mo leaned back into his chair, his fingertips tapping lightly on the table.

"Besides you, who else knows the internal structure of the relay station?"

Yang Shitou frowned and thought for a while, as if flipping through a roster in his mind.

"Wang Defu, one of the first batch to debug the relay station with me; he has a copy of the transceiver module wiring diagram." He paused. "There is also Zhao Laosi from Riverbend Town, who repaired Imperial communication equipment before fleeing; he took the initiative to help out twice. At that time, we were short-handed, and he knew his stuff, so I didn't stop him."

Lin Mo wrote the two names on the corner of the register without comment.

But he noticed that when Yang Shitou said the words "Zhao Laosi", his brows furrowed even tighter.

Yang Shitou stood where he was, hesitating for a good while before speaking up: "Lord Lin Mo... that letter, does it have to do with the relay station modifications?"

"Why do you say that?"

"The position where that amplifier set was added is in front of the gain loop of the receiving module." Yang Shitou traced the circuit path in the air with his finger. "This thing isn't for amplifying transmission power; it's for increasing receiving sensitivity. Someone wants the relay station to receive stronger signals—or rather, to receive weak signals that couldn't be received before."

He glanced at the coil in Lin Mo's hand, his voice dropping slightly:

"It's as if... it was specifically waiting to receive this letter."

Lin Mo placed the coil on the table: "Shitou, say it again, which port in the receiving module is the gain loop in front of?"

"The third one counting from the back end of the power amplifier, labeled RX-7." Yang Shitou answered without hesitation; he had dismantled that interface no less than ten times. "Adding an amplifier at this position doesn't affect normal transmission and reception; it only raises the signal-to-noise ratio by two to three decibels. To put it plainly, it's like installing a big ear on the relay station, specifically to listen for a very distant and weak signal."

"A signal from the Imperial encrypted military channel."

Yang Shitou nodded heavily: "So this letter isn't a standard transmission. It's someone intentionally keeping the signal strength at the exact level where we can receive it—too strong and it would be caught by Imperial monitoring stations; too weak and we wouldn't be able to pick it up."

Lin Mo was silent for a long time. The flame of the oil lamp flickered, casting shifting shadows of light and dark across Yang Shitou's honest face.

"Shitou."

"Yes."

"From now on, the relay station duty roster is changed. Add an internal patrol shift at night—not patrolling the perimeter, but patrolling the equipment room. No one is allowed to work two consecutive night shifts."

"Understood." Yang Shitou paused. "Then Zhao Laosi... should we remove him from the schedule for now?"

"No need. Keep the schedule as it is." Lin Mo flipped to the page for Zhao Laosi in the register. "If he's innocent, removing him would be unfair. If he's up to something—let him keep thinking that we haven't discovered anything."

Yang Shitou thought for a moment and nodded vigorously: "Got it. It's the same principle as fishing; if you pull the line too tight, the fish will run."

"Correct."

"The fact that the relay station has been tampered with is known only to you and me for now; don't tell anyone else. Including Wang Defu."

Yang Shitou's Adam's apple bobbed, as if he had realized something, and he nodded heavily: "Understood."

"Thank you for your hard work."

After Yang Shitou left, Lin Mo stood in the Intelligence Center for a long time. He picked up the half-coil again and examined it repeatedly by the light.

Triple-layer winding, Imperial standard, installed at least a month ago.

In other words, shortly after Alice turned off the communicator, someone had already laid out a plan on this planet. It wasn't targeted at Alice; it was targeted at this letter that was bound to arrive sooner or later.

He locked the coil in the drawer.

Less than a quarter of an hour later, Wang Defu knocked on the door.

One of the earliest settlers of Blackstone Town, known for his experience, he never came to the Intelligence Center empty-handed—today he was holding a coarse ceramic teacup, with a few dried leaves of a plant Lin Mo couldn't name settled at the bottom.

"Yang Shitou was just here." Wang Defu placed the teacup on the table and pulled up a chair to sit down; there wasn't much empty formality between him and Lin Mo. "His expression was off."

"Relay station maintenance, some parts need replacing."

"Parts." Wang Defu took a sip of tea, slow and leisurely. "Shitou has good technical skills, but he can't hide his feelings. If it were truly just a matter of parts, he wouldn't have stood at your door for so long."

Lin Mo glanced at him.

Before fleeing, Wang Defu had served as a chief mechanic in the Imperial transport fleet for eighteen years; in terms of experience, no one among the two thousand people could compare. He had the sharpness of the old guard—he didn't pry, but he saw everything.

"You didn't come to see me just because of Yang Shitou's expression."

"Correct." Wang Defu set down the teacup. "Locke was picking people this afternoon, twenty-seven of them, for three signal stations, nine per station. They are all veterans who have fought Orks, not a single rookie among them. This is not a configuration for normal patrols."

"What do you think he's planning?"

"I don't think anything." Wang Defu shook his head slowly. "I've been in your position—supposedly managing two thousand people, but back then I managed one hundred and twenty technicians on a transport ship. If your subordinates do something you don't understand, it's either because they don't want you to know, or because they think you shouldn't know. Locke is not the former."

Lin Mo was silent for a good while: "It's the second one."

"Then that's that." Wang Defu stood up, picked up the empty teacup, and paused at the door. "Old Tom asked me to pass on a message—the crankshaft of the steam forging hammer at the Arsenal is loose, and the furnace will have to be shut down for maintenance the day after tomorrow. If you have any urgent parts you need, get the blueprints to him by tomorrow."

"Tell him, communication equipment is the priority. At least four more portable communicators need to be modified."

"Four." Wang Defu nodded, and as he walked out, he dropped a remark: "He's going to curse at that number."

The door closed. Lin Mo picked up the coarse ceramic cup; there was still half a mouthful of warm tea left at the bottom, with a few dried leaves floating in it. The things Wang Defu brewed every time he came were different. But he knew that this old fox would not mention to anyone tonight that Yang Shitou had been to the Intelligence Center.

The evening wind blew from the West Mountain into the square.

Lin Mo stood at the window and saw Alice coming out of the Medical Station, holding a stack of washed bandages in her arms. Her silver-white hair was scattered by the wind, with a few strands covering half her face. As she walked across the square, her footsteps faltered, and she looked up at the Intelligence Center window.

Through the oiled paper window panes and across the twilight of several dozen meters, she might not have been able to see his face clearly.

But that pause reminded Lin Mo of the signature on the back of the secret letter—C-A-I-N. If it wasn't Cassius, could it be a code name of someone she knew, yet who had a deep connection to her?

He wasn't sure. He only remembered what Cassius had said before leaving: "Some things are safer left here than taken with me."

He didn't know if Cassius was referring to the batch of military supplies or something else.

He pushed the door open and walked down the steps.

Alice was almost at the door of the Medical Station when she heard footsteps, stopped, and turned around.

Her ice-blue eyes were unreadable in the twilight, but her voice was steady: "You look terrible."

"Didn't sleep well."

"It's not because you didn't sleep well." She looked at him for a few seconds, her gaze shifting from his face toward the Intelligence Center, then falling back, "It's that letter."

Lin Mo didn't deny it. He fished a peppermint candy out of his pocket—made on Earth, only the last three left. He handed it over.

Alice took it without unwrapping it immediately. She looked down at the candy, then looked up at him: "Astral Knights, right."

It wasn't a question.

Lin Mo's silence was the answer.

She clutched the candy in her palm without eating it. "You will tell me, won't you? When the time comes."

"I will."

"Not because of the letter." Alice turned the peppermint candy in her fingers, the white candy flipping over between her fingers. "It's because of the person in the letter. There is someone on the Astral Knights' transport ship who knows me."

Lin Mo didn't ask who. His silence was a form of waiting.

"I am not sure if that person is friend or foe." She looked up, and a ripple finally spread in her ice-blue eyes. "But if the ship really crashes... don't send unnecessary people to their deaths because of me."

"I won't send unnecessary people," Lin Mo said, "but I will send enough people."

She looked at him for a few seconds. The twilight plated her silver-white hair tips with a thin, warm light.

"Are you always like this?"

"Like what?"

"Translating other people's 'don't' into 'need'."

"A basic skill for a product manager," Lin Mo said.

She didn't understand the term and didn't ask. She turned around with the candy in her hand and pushed open the door to the Medical Station.

"That's enough." Before entering, she paused without looking back. "Lin Mo—Imperial Military Administration notices never say 'Burn after reading.' The person who wrote those four words is using their own future to save your life."

The door closed.

Lin Mo stood in the twilight for a long time.

Back in the Intelligence Center, he added another mark to the map covered in lines—30 degrees south latitude, 17 degrees east longitude. Beneath that location was the metal wall Old Tom had buried two years ago.

The mark was drawn very small, almost just a dot. He held the charcoal pencil, pausing on that dot for a long time.

He didn't know if the Astral Knights' ship would actually crash, nor did he know how far Terra's reach could extend to this frontier planet. He didn't know what shape these scattered points would eventually form.

But he knew one thing: the day they connected, Hope Star would no longer be a forgotten agricultural planet on the edge of the Empire.

It would become a piece on a grand chessboard that could not be ignored.

Fog rose in the night.

The fog on Hope Star always carried a hint of sulfur—not the smell of the mining area, but geothermal steam rising from the bottom of the distant swamps. The flagpole in the square was wrapped in fog, and the flag of the Broken Dawn appeared and disappeared in the mist. From the direction of the relay station in the distance, a very faint, rhythmic pulsing sound came—it was the equipment Yang Shitou had fixed, re-scanning the airspace. The forging hammer at the Arsenal hadn't stopped, striking the steel plate again and again, drifting through the fog and into the window.

Lin Mo sat at the table and closed his eyes.

A pale golden light flashed across the edge of his vision again.

The mirror of the emperor lit up actively for the second time, more intensely than in the early morning, and also shorter. The image exploded—it was still the Astral Knights' ship, still that strange emblem, diving deep into the purple nebula. The number of Chaos energy projectiles on the ship's hull had increased to five, more warheads drilled into the armor, and more sparks exploded inside the cabin.

Someone was roaring on the bridge; this time he clearly heard a word, in high gothic, fragments cut up by electromagnetic interference: "—Crash—Hope—"

In the last instant of the image, a light shone deep within the bridge.

It was not an explosion, not gunfire. It was silvery-white, a light identical to the patterns inside that crystal.

That light broke through the shattered observation window, traveled through the void, and passed through the atmosphere of Hope Star—

Lin Mo opened his eyes abruptly, his heart pounding painfully in his chest.

He grabbed the charcoal pencil and completed the details of that emblem on a blank report sheet—the one in the early morning had been drawn too sloppily; this time, every arc was drawn with extreme precision.

He didn't know what it represented. But the fact that the mirror of the emperor had shown the same ship and the same emblem twice could not possibly be a coincidence.

He stood up and walked to the innermost filing cabinet, inserted the key into the lock, and turned it twice.

The secret letter in the waterproof file bag, and the silver crystal in another compartment of the same pocket.

Both items were placed side by side on the table. Under the oil lamp, the silver light of the crystal reflected on the high gothic handwriting on the parchment, like two lights of different textures, recognizing each other.

The secret letter said the Astral Knights' transport ship would be passing by Hope Star in the near future.

The mirror of the emperor said that the ship would be pierced by Chaos and crash here.

The amplifier with its serial number filed off, the secret letter that had been chased for half a street in the heavy rain, Cassius's words about "leaving it behind," Alice's judgment about "trading one's future for a life."

The fragments were coming together.

He picked up the charcoal pencil and added a very small line of text next to the mark at 30 degrees south latitude and 17 degrees east longitude: Search and Rescue Preparation—Highest Priority.

Then he walked to the window.

The fog was thicker. The flag was just a blurry outline, but the sound of the forging hammer and the pulsing sound were still clear. The two sounds intertwined, like this planet slowly calibrating its own coordinates in the darkness.

The mirror of the emperor shimmered with a very faint golden light deep within his consciousness—it was a fragment of sealed memory, a past that did not belong to him, yet it was resonating with him at this moment.

A solitary lamp lights the wall, the ink not yet dry; the secret letter is like iron, the night like a rock. Across the galaxy, a thousand sails pass, sitting alone in the frontier town, waiting for the dawn.

Lin Mo locked the secret letter and the crystal side by side in the bottom layer of the filing cabinet and hung the key back around his neck.

The crystal pressed against his chest through his shirt, cool. He could already recite the high gothic on the secret letter backward.

The two items had lain deep in the cabinet without interfering with each other for so long; when that emblem fell from the sky, they would have to meet in the same pocket.

Deep in the sea of stars.

The golden transport ship engraved with the same emblem was passing through the purple nebula.

On the bridge, an armored figure closed a yellowed personnel file. On the first page, a line of text was circled: [Imperial Psyker Genetic Experiment, Batch 17].

He looked up and said something to the communications officer.

The communications officer was stunned for a moment, then slightly adjusted the course by two degrees.

The plasma engine at the stern of the ship suddenly flared for a moment.

—And on that remote planet, someone was walking a path that neither the Emperor nor Chaos had ever walked before.