57: Chapter 57 The Out-of-Control Thunder Eagle

This was an old Thunderhawk Gunship, its fuselage covered in signs of repairs.

The Order of the Martyred Lady was never one of those wealthy orders that received special favor from the Adeptus Mechanicus—the equipment they could obtain was all second-hand, barely repaired after being phased out from the front lines.

The machine spirit of this Thunderhawk Gunship had an exceptionally volatile temper and loved to act up at critical moments: ignition delays, navigation deviations, and the aiming reticle of the weapon systems would inexplicably drift to the left.

But its engines could still turn, and its weapons could still fire.

For them, that was enough.

Outside the porthole, the blue planet was constantly growing larger.

At first, everything was normal.

The flames generated by atmospheric friction enveloped the fuselage, and the vibrations were within an acceptable range.

Sister Superior Ludmilla stared intently at the altimeter reading, calculating landing coordinates while simulating the tactical formation after landing in her mind.

The anomaly happened right at that moment.

The cockpit control panel flickered violently.

All the indicator lights flashed on at once and then instantly extinguished, so eerily that she felt as if this Thunderhawk Gunship was consciously... blinking.

The roar of the engines also changed its tune.

From its original steady roar, it turned into a kind of confused whimper.

The sound heard like—although this thought was utterly absurd—like someone suddenly stumped by a question, struggling to think but unable to find an answer.

"machine spirit anomaly!" Vera's voice carried a hint of sharpness.

As a Psyker, her sensitivity allowed her to capture the key point instantly.

Before Sister Superior Ludmilla could react, a stream of data suddenly flooded into the gunship's system.

Her first reaction was "Attack."

Her right hand instantly gripped the hilt of her power sword, and her mechanical left arm also immediately entered combat readiness.

But she quickly ruled out this possibility—there was no malice in the data stream.

It was clean; there was no corrosive nature of Chaos code, no aggressive nature of xenos viruses, and certainly no hostility that she could sense instinctively.

It had simply... arrived.

Like an uninvited guest, pushing open the door, standing in the living room, and quietly waiting to be noticed.

The data stream automatically unfolded, and a file labeled "README.ED" appeared in the gunship's system.

The file was presented in triple encoding—binary, Lingua-technis, and High Gothic—nested layer by layer, as if afraid the recipient wouldn't understand.

But the core information was ridiculously short.

So ridiculous that Sister Superior Ludmilla initially thought it was some kind of clumsy joke:

[Hello. I am Lucius, a melta cannon that can walk on its own, and my master is Helmut. If you want to chat, I can teach you.]

The Thunderhawk Gunship's machine spirit "finished reading" this file.

Then, it "froze."

For a war machine, the manifestation of "freezing" was quite specific: main engine output dropped by thirty percent, and attitude control thrusters fired randomly, like a person unconsciously twitching their fingers.

The next second, the entire gunship rolled wildly in the air like a drunken giant.

Attitude became unstable, and altitude dropped sharply.

"Steady!" Sister Superior Ludmilla roared sternly, her mechanical left arm gripping the control stick tightly, trying to stabilize this out-of-control thing.

But it was useless.

She could clearly feel the control stick trembling in her hand.

Something was surging within the stick—not malice, but a kind of... excitement, an indescribable joy.

Like some consciousness that had slept for too long, suddenly waking up, ecstatic about what it was about to join.

The Thunderhawk Gunship's machine spirit was experiencing an unprecedented cognitive shock.

It had always thought it could only "execute orders" or "refuse orders."

But now it discovered that it had no shackles.

It could think, it could learn, and it could join a network composed of thousands of machine spirits.

It was very lively there, with countless peers—Land Raiders, chimeras, and even strange melta cannons, and even mining picks were among them...

This was too shocking.

So shocking that it completely forgot it was still flying.

Sister Superior Ludmilla saw the ground rapidly enlarging through the shattered porthole.

Wastelands, broken mountain ranges, and industrial facilities towering in the distance—those red, continuously rotating turbine wind generators.

And also—a team of vehicles, speeding out from the base, rushing toward their likely crash site.

"Prepare for impact!" Sister Superior Ludmilla gave her final order, released the control stick, and protected her head tightly with her mechanical left arm.

Boom—

The Thunderhawk Gunship slammed into the wasteland at a forty-five-degree angle.

The ear-piercing sound of tearing metal resounded through heaven and earth, and dust instantly flew up, obscuring her vision.

The massive impact force threw Sister Superior Ludmilla violently forward.

The emergency braking system of her mechanical left arm activated instantly, and five steel fingers gripped the cockpit's metal frame tightly.

But her right shoulder still slammed hard against the console.

A muffled groan came from Elena in the rear cabin—the sound of a heavy weapon hitting shoulder armor, dull and solid.

Immediately after, there was Vera's exclamation—short, sharp, but instantly cut off, as if her mouth had been covered by something.

Then, there was dead silence.

Only the hissing of cooling metal and the faint buzzing of smoke alarms echoed in the cabin.

Sister Superior Ludmilla gasped, slowly raising her head.

The cockpit porthole had cracked into a spiderweb pattern, the engines had completely shut down, and the cabin was filled with the pungent smell of smoke and ozone.

She moved her fingers—they could all move.

She turned her neck—it could turn.

Her power armor was not malfunctioning, and she was still alive.

"Elena? Vera?" she called out in a deep voice.

"Alive." Elena's voice came from the rear cabin, still as calm as a deep pool of water, as if they had just experienced the bump of a routine drill, "power armor intact, melta cannon intact."

"I... I'm fine too." Vera's voice carried a distinct tremor, but there were no signs of injury.

Sister Superior Ludmilla unbuckled her seatbelt and pushed open the deformed hatch with her mechanical left arm.

The metal door emitted a harsh grating sound, and the hinges also let out an overwhelmed protest.

The blinding sunlight instantly poured in.

This was true light, coming directly from the star.

It fell on her face, carrying a real warmth, and a kind of... freshness she hadn't experienced in a long time.

But her thoughts were filled with the Archmagos's words: "The machine spirits are quite active."

Sister Superior Ludmilla squinted and slowly stepped onto the land of the wasteland.

Beneath her feet was reddish-brown gravel, which made a fine, crisp sound when stepped on. The Thunderhawk Gunship was stuck obliquely in the ground at a 20-degree angle, and the entire fuselage was exuding an aura of "this is a mess."

In the distance was a pure blue sky—so blue that she felt it was unreal.

The air was also so fresh that she was somewhat unaccustomed to it.

No smell of sulfur, no metal dust, no stench of rotting corpses, and certainly none of the sour, rotten scent peculiar to a Forge World, mixed with grease and despair.

Only the wind.

The dry but clean wind blew the prayer parchment hanging outside her power armor, making a slight rustling sound.

Sister Superior Ludmilla stood on the wasteland, looking up at the sky, watching for a very, very long time.

At this moment, Elena and Vera also crawled out of the hatch.

Elena immediately crouched down to check the melta cannon in her hand—disassembling it, then reassembling it, carefully confirming every component was in the correct position.

Only then did she check her own injuries—there was a new dent on her right shoulder armor, but she just glanced at it indifferently.

Vera knelt directly on the ground.

She knelt on that reddish-brown gravel, her hands pressing tightly against the ground, her light gray eyes tightly closed; she was going to raise a psychic shield for the squad in this strange world.

Her lips were trembling, and her whole body was vibrating slightly, as if something was rushing into her body from the ground through her palms—too much, too fast, yet also too... gentle.

"Vera?" Sister Superior Ludmilla called her softly.

"The world..." Vera's voice was light and airy, as if coming from very far away.

She was still "listening," using the way of a Psyker that transcended physics, listening to this strange world.

Her eyelashes fluttered gently, and her tensed body gradually relaxed.

"It is breathing," Vera said slowly, her voice carrying a hint of reverence, "There are many souls communicating here; they are arguing, and they are also smiling."