"We won?" Alexei was stunned for a moment when he heard Abathur's report. How did they win? He had originally planned to let the Swarm wear down the enemy first, and then take the Aiur fleet to hit them from behind. Now, only a day had passed and he was being told the battle was over.
By the time Alexei brought the fleet to the scene of the engagement, illuminated by the light of the star, a massive amount of nauseatingly large chunks of shredded flesh and rusted scrap metal wreckage floated quietly in the void. Clearly, that Nurgle warband—of unknown origin and purpose—had become part of the space debris.
As for the Swarm fleet, aside from losing three Leviathans due to being focused down by the enemy, they had only consumed a bit of biomass. When Alexei asked Abathur about the course of the battle, the result was exactly as he expected.
The enemy felt the situation was critical.
The enemy staked everything on a boarding action.
The enemy was completely wiped out.
Alexei sighed softly. Fortunately, the Swarm did not possess independent thought; otherwise, constantly making them eat this kind of stuff would surely make them start throwing a fit.
Afterward, Abathur also informed him that the Swarm had found an unusual object on the enemy and hoped that Alexei would come to see it in person.
"An unusual object?" Alexei frowned. What was it? There weren't many things that could make Abathur take notice. He immediately planned to go take a look.
Passing by the prayer room, Alexei stopped in his tracks. After thinking for a moment, he decided not to bring Thor along, saving himself from having to explain everything. However, just as he reached the end of the corridor, he ran straight into Thor.
"Is the biological fleet outside the enemy?" Thor's face was grim; he had clearly mistaken the Leviathans for the Tyranid Hive Fleet.
Alexei wore a strange expression. After hesitating for a moment, he still explained to the fully armed and combat-ready Son of Lion, "No, the enemy has already been defeated by them."
A look of confusion appeared on Thor's face, and then he heard Alexei in front of him say, "Those outside are a Swarm fleet controlled by the Adeptus Mechanicus Archmagos, Belisarius Cawl. They will not attack us."
"What?!" Thor looked incredulous. The Tyranid Swarm could be controlled by humans?!
"Yes. The Archmagos is currently on our home planet, Aiur, conducting scientific research and investigations. This is his latest research, and it is still in the experimental phase. It was handed over to me to test its reliability and to deal with enemy attacks. When the time comes, you might even get to meet him when you go to Aiur with me."
"Then those smaller fleets are too?"
"Yes." Alexei patted Thor's arm with an expression of righteous indignation, "It's all for the sake of humanity. I need to go inside this bioship now. There are spoils of war left behind by the Great Enemy of Chaos in there."
Let's just tell him that for now, and let him go settle the score with Cawl himself when the time comes. With that, Alexei turned to leave, but suddenly Thor called out to him from behind, "Wait, I'm going with you."
Alexei turned his head and looked at him with a helpless gaze. After a sigh, he said, "Alright, let's go together then."
At Aiur, inside the medical biological laboratory, Cawl suddenly shuddered twice. Kran, who was beside him, asked, "What's wrong? Hardware aging, or an electrical leak?"
"That's not right. I always feel like something is off." Cawl buzzed. He had felt this way before as well. After briefly thinking about it for a moment, he stopped dwelling on it and dove back into the experiment in front of him. In his eyes, the current Aiur was a treasure trove, with countless technologies waiting for him to research.
Inside the Leviathan, two figures walked through it. Thor looked with disgust at the larvae crawling all over the place, "Ugh, to be honest, this is a bit different from the Tyranid Swarm I've seen."
"Perhaps the Archmagos of the Mechanicus made some genetic modifications," Alexei answered absentmindedly. He was now much more eager to immediately find out what object Abathur had captured.
Before long, the two arrived at the central Hive at the very center of the Leviathan's abdomen. "Gods, this is the most disgusting creature I have ever seen." Thor sighed with revulsion as he looked at the various Zerg and the purple creep.
Meanwhile, Alexei had Abathur bring the object out. Soon, a massive Zerg body walked out of a flesh cavern on one side, one of its appendages holding a yellow-green object that was constantly dripping liquid.
As the distance closed, Alexei and Thor got a clear look at the object. It was a normal human-sized skull, with dense text carved into the very top of the cranium. It was covered in a layer of constantly writhing rotting flesh, with small white maggots continuously squirming on top of it. Every time they went in and out, they brought out an unknown liquid that dripped onto the creep and was absorbed.
"What is this?" Alexei examined the skull, trying to find what was special about it. Abathur told him that he had already tried to destroy the skull several times, but could only remove the rotten meat on top; the skull remained completely unscathed. Neither the cutting of a disruption field, the acid of a Roach, nor the high-temperature plasma liquid of a Bile Roach could destroy it. Furthermore, after a while, the rotten meat on top would grow back again.
"Wait!" Thor suddenly shouted from the side. "I know what this skull is."
Alexei turned to look at him. "You know what this is?"
"This is the skull of a Living Saint that was stored inside an Ecclesiarchy cathedral on a Garden World," Thor said in a heavy voice. "That Living Saint was posthumously canonized by the Ecclesiarchy after death. His skull was removed, processed, and meticulously preserved."
He had been to that world before and was very clear about the text carved on the skull. Those were the most devout prayers to the Emperor.
"A meticulously preserved sacred relic appearing in the hands of a Nurgle warband," Alexei's brow furrowed slightly. "That Garden World has probably met a grim fate."
"But this Nurgle warband definitely had some purpose in coming to this star system," Alexei continuously rubbed his chin as he thought. He didn't think the other side had brought over twenty strike cruisers and battle barges of various classes just to go sightseeing.
Suddenly, the effects caused by that unknown C'tan shard popped into Alexei's mind: decay, withering, and the warp anomaly of this head bringing its own continuous revival and rebirth. "Could it be that they also wanted to capture this escaped C'tan shard?" he muttered in a low whisper.
Immediately after, he used the psionic network in his mind to call those few Ghost squads, but after a long time, there was still no response, and he could not find their locations either. Just when Alexei thought the Ghost squads were completely wiped out, he received a response via an extremely weak psionic transmission.
"Danger, do not come, leave quickly!"
Alexei's face turned grim. He glanced at Thor beside him. "It can basically be confirmed now. That C'tan shard is in this star system." He then immediately walked over to Abathur and took that sacred relic, twisted by the power of the Warp, from its appendage.
"I am going to take care of Him."