The first to step through the gate were, as always, large numbers of bio-weapon Hellhounds.
Iterated and upgraded many times over, now clad in exoskeletal plating, they looked like iron beasts—limbed thick and powerful, with various tethered systems mounted along their backs.
Close behind them marched a file of recon-type Terminators.
These machines stood roughly two meters tall, their exteriors sheathed in titanium alloy and carbon-fiber composite armor, their frames cut in stark, sharp lines.
Their eyes burned with crimson light. Every unit's steps were perfectly synchronized, cadence cold and exact.
They showed no emotion, no hesitation, no delay—heavy rail rifles and plasma cutters in hand, every motion precise.
They too bore tethered links to guarantee real-time contact with the Empire even beyond an unknown horizon.
As the bioforms and machines advanced in turn, ripples quivered across the gate's face, like lakewater broken by a thrown stone.
Technicians watched their boards and listened in on comms, confirming the stability of the feed.
"Energy flow is smooth. Signal link stable."
A tech's voice sounded.
The Emperor still did not move—only watched that door into the void. Without a word from him, every branch understood what they meant to carry.
On the other side of that light might lie a barren waste—or a xeno world hiding lethal snares.
But the Empire's iron order had already taken its first step.
Soon, with telemetry locked and stable, images from the far side came streaming to the recon force's holo-screens.
There a hellscape unfurled in slow panorama.
The ground was spiderwebbed with countless fractures, like a world's veins split apart, and from those fissures spouted not water, but molten rock.
Red magma coursed like blood, racing down the rifts, bursting now and then into gouts of fire; even before a projection, the blazing heat seemed to sear the skin.
Conical volcanoes reared in ranks across the land, belching fire and smoke to blot the sky.
Preliminary environmental analysis scrolled fast across the panels—
Atmosphere complex and toxic, with nowhere near enough oxygen for human respiration;
Radiation levels anomalous—every metric past the redline;
Extreme instability in gravity fields, as if the planet's core had suffered irreversible damage and lost the shelter of both magnetosphere and atmosphere.
In short, humans could not live there unaided.
At once the recon officers and scientific monitors reached a common view: the far side was unfit for the Engineering Corps to cross and set up a forward base immediately.
To establish a foothold, large-scale recon would have to secure the perimeter first.
"Gate perimeter stable. No external interference."
"Confirm no hostiles."
Calm reports echoed through the command center.
And so, under the Emperor's silent regard, over a thousand recon troops in powered rigs began to cross in elements.
They rode not only light assault boats and ground armor carriers, but also low-flight platforms built for rapid strikes skimming the terrain.
Engines rose to a steady roar, a deep vibration that set the air of the Relic Zone humming.
With orders passed, columns advanced toward that "void-door," and at their head strode Gary "Roach" Sanderson.
As a senior commander, Roach could have remained in the rear, keeping to the command post.
But he had never been content with comfort. He led from the front, setting foot himself on the wastelands where Imperial light had yet to fall.
Only on the battlefield could he verify every datum with his own eyes.
At the gate's lip the white brilliance filled his vision.
As always, the light did not bite; it was purity distilled, warm and quiet.
It smoothed taut nerves, scattered doubts. A strange calm rose in the heart.
Roach felt every inch of skin wrapped in that glow, bathed in a gentle warmth. No fear, no agitation—only a fleeting release.
It lasted a breath or two.
Then his sight cleared, he stepped through—and the other side hit him full—
A blast-furnace wind like a demon's breath;
Fountains of lava thundering up from the rift's depths;
Overhead, clouds reddened by flame, a dome of ash all but burned away.
Gravity lurched—now heavy, making hydraulics in powered joints groan; now suddenly light, throwing steps off balance at touchdown.
The ground's pulse came through the soles—an entire world in a death struggle.
"Watch your footing."
An officer's low warning spread across the squad net.
Roach swept the scene, confirming echelons were moving in sequence, Hellhounds and Terminators ranging ahead, probing with their cold, biological and mechanical order.
Crimson machine eyes and crimson magma glared at one another, as if two alien "lives" exchanged stares.
Even with advanced filtration and vacuum-capable life support, the air might as well have reeked of sulfur. Through the suit, you could almost "smell" the corrosive burn.
Alarms flashed red across helmet HUDs—but formations did not waver.
This was the Empire's recon—facing a world like hell and, in the first minute, imposing order upon it.
Roach drew a long breath. This was only the beginning.
His adjutant's voice came over the net: "All units—establish a hasty outpost around the gate, secure the follow-on corridor."
Confirmations followed.
Teams broke outward into the glare, laying a temporary defense.
Deployable shield projectors punched into scorched ground, humming low as energy fencing unfolded into a semi-transparent ring, a sheen of light around the gate.
Ground carriers dropped modular watchtowers and sensor arrays, knitting a first line.
On cue, drone racks on the armored hulls opened; hundreds of aerial and near-orbit recon drones fired blue ion tails, knifed through blistering haze, and climbed.
Their hulls caught the firelight in cold metal gleam—the Empire's "eyes" punching through a dead sky.
Roach himself kept his usual quiet.
He was not one for long words. He set direction by moving first.
Now he and his adjutant, with a handful of close escorts, boarded a low-hover assault car.
Engines boomed in the magma heat. Maglevs lifted the chassis a few feet and carried it out from the core perimeter.
The car "cut" the hot air and sped along broken land.
Around them a dirge for a dying world played in sights and sound.
A lava geyser burst not far off—red fire spearing a hundred meters up, ripping the sky, then falling to splatter on black stone in a spray of sparks.
Rivers of melt streamed down the fractures, snaking to the far horizon, like blood veining the dead land.
Vapors of toxic haze boiled from seams and lay in a low pall.
The car's filters ran hard, pumps gasping, keeping flesh-eating fumes at bay.
They drove on—leaping a fallen stone bridge here, skimming a rift's lip there.
In the distance a chain of volcanoes sent up black-red plumes; the sound was hell's roar, shaking the air and thudding through the armor into the chest.
A few kilometers seemed stretched to eternity.
At last the car reached a tall rise. The maglevs throttled down. With a deep residual shudder, the chassis settled firm on the crest.
Roach and his adjutant dismounted. Mag boots struck char-black rock with a hard report.
They looked up—and the view blew open.
Below lay a true inferno.
A basin drowned in magma—a rolling lake of fire.
Its skin seethed and blistered, burst at once into a column of flame a hundred meters high.
Fire painted the sky blood-red—like the planet's flesh and blood all set ablaze.
Around the lake, scree piled in hills. Each tremor sent them slumping, to be swallowed again by the melt.
Ash and poison rode the air.
From deep seams the toxic vapors welled, tinted in eerie reds and purples—like curse-mist breathed by the underworld's grudging dead.
Even behind the visor you could feel the death and venom in it.
The adjutant frowned, voice low: "Sir, this planet's structure is critically unstable.
"To build a forward base here, Engineering would have to deploy planet-class construction ships—stabilize crust and magnetosphere. Otherwise the next quake or eruption will turn any structure to ash.
"Or, safer still—place a large station in near orbit as the command and logistics hub."
Calm, his words admitted no denial.
Roach stood on the ridge and watched the firelake, the mask reflecting the red.
He waited a moment, then answered in his clipped way: "When the drones return enough imagery and data, we'll set next steps."
Short the words, but leaving no room for doubt.
Far off, hundreds of drones hunted between flame and fume, the Empire's silent gaze mapping a dying world to its last inch.
Before long, the near-orbit swarm began streaming real-time downlink.
Data flowed across the net and Roach's HUD, frame by frame composing a grand panorama like none before it.
The view jumped; Roach's sight rode a climbing lens to heights.
Through the drone's eye, as an "overseer," he looked down on the planet—and caught his breath.
It was not only inferno at the gate. The whole Earthlike sphere had transformed into a "hell-star."
Plains and mountains alike were drowned beneath seas of melt.
Where continents ought to lie, nothing but torn, shattered plates—like a jigsaw wrecked—segments misaligned and canted, with fire surging up from every wound.
In places an entire range slid under a lava flood, turning in moments to collapsing crimson ash. Aloft, toxic mists layered in lurid reds and purples, overlaying each other—death's own palette smeared across the sky.
But what struck minds hardest was not the hellscape entire. It was what the drones found on the dayside.
There the surface looked as if an invisible hand had ripped it open.
Vast blocks of crust and bedrock hung whole in the space just below near orbit.
Great fragments floated in the void, their faces still running with molten red—like flying volcanic isles.
And most shocking, those torn plates had not fallen to pieces, nor plunged; they were held in a stalemate by some woven "cage."
Around them, beams of blue-green energy crisscrossed like chains, binding the planet's remains.
The beams flickered, energy surges wild, as if wrestling a force out of control within the world—holding it just this side of collapse.
The drone zoomed. At last it found the beams' source.
A ship lay across the orbital path.
By sensor measure, it ran some 1,700 meters in length. Its hull bristled with massive energy emitters—those were firing the blue-green beams into the planet, weaving that unnatural net.
At the sight, the adjutant snapped his gaze to Roach, heavy gravity in his voice: "Sir—is that a human engineering ship from Universe-20? Are they mining this planet—or trying to keep it from breaking apart?"
Roach kept quiet a beat, eyes locked on the image.
Blown up, the hull showed split plates and burn scars everywhere—as if raked in an extreme energy storm.
Where alloy once ran smooth, now it was a field of wounds, layers of structure cracked and torn.
The bridge section stood out—the viewports dead black, no lights, no sign of life.
In the silence, Roach spoke at last, steady: "Maybe. But by the look of her she's dead in the water.
"No glow in the bridge glass. The whole ship looks like an abandoned corpse.
"If it is a Universe-20 human engineering ship, then they likely met an uncontrollable accident mid-operation on something colossal."
______
(≧◡≦) ♡ Support me and read 20 chapters ahead – patreon.com/Mutter
For every 50 Power Stones, one extra chapter will be released on Saturday.