26: Chapter 26: Adamantite Chitin + Living Metal = New Armor with Hardness That the Imperial Fire Control System Cannot Calculate

Nephilak's promise began to be fulfilled on the third day after the agreement took effect.

The Necron engineering vessel "Hammer of Silence" descended into low orbit over Dead Silence-42, and the regeneration beams at its prow were no longer targeted solely at Nephilak's underground hall.

The beams split into hundreds of finer green rays, illuminating the carapace surface of the leviathan mothership, the remains of damaged Brood Lords in orbit, and the gene-analysis sacs still under reconstruction in the underground hive.

The Necron's living metal smelting technology was not a bio-synthetic path familiar to The Swarm; it did not rely on protein folding or cell division, but rather on quantum-level atomic reconfiguration, directly rewriting the metal's lattice structure.

The Brood Queen monitored the entire process within the Hive Mind. She saw a sampled fragment of adamantine chitin carapace, under the illumination of the green beam, begin to adjust its internal molecular arrangement on its own—no high-temperature furnaces, no biological enzyme catalysis, just light.

The metal rearranged its atoms within the beam like a living thing, fusing the hardness of adamantine and the toughness of chitin in a ratio impossible to exist in nature.

"This is not metallurgy," the Brood Queen forwarded the observation data to the Overmind. "This is using light to redefine materials at the atomic level. The efficiency exceeds The Swarm's current bio-smelting capabilities by at least three orders of magnitude."

The Overmind did not reply.

He focused all his computational resources on another interface—the navigation system of the leviathan mothership was being integrated into the Necron's quantum-state communication network.

Prior to this, the hive ship's navigation relied entirely on inertial flight and orbital mechanics calculations; every trajectory change required Brood Lord relay stations to transmit data in segments, with delays reaching up to several seconds.

In ground combat, a few seconds of delay was nothing; in fleet engagements, a few seconds of delay meant being locked on as a target by Imperial Lance Weapons.

The Necron's quantum-state network solved communication latency in another way—entangled-state real-time transmission.

No matter how far apart two entangled particles were, changing the state of one would instantaneously synchronize the other.

The Necron implanted a pair of entangled particles into the navigation neural center of the leviathan mothership and the communication array of the Eternal Echo, respectively. From then on, the navigation data received by the hive ship at any distance shared the same time reference as the Necron fleet.

Latency dropped to zero.

The synchronization precision reached the limit of Necron engineering.

The Brood Queen tested the new navigation link.

She sent a set of course data from the Eternal Echo, leading from Dead Silence-42 to the Mandeville point at the galaxy's edge. The leviathan mothership's neural center completed the reception, parsing, and course correction within a single Planck time.

The download of the route data also began at the same time—the Necron uploaded his Warp route mapping data from his database in batches, covering the Dead Silence-42 sector and seventeen surrounding Imperial Forge Worlds.

Each route came with a complete map of gravity reefs, predictions of Warp storm cycles, and the routine trajectories of Imperial patrol fleets.

These data were strategic assets accumulated by the Necron over tens of millions of years—older than the Empire's own route charts, and their completeness exceeded the Empire's current version by at least several orders of magnitude.

The Overmind marked the coordinates of the seventeen Forge Worlds one by one on the Hive Mind's interstellar map.

For the first time, The Swarm possessed a star map more precise than the Empire's.

It was not through reconnaissance, nor through the confessions of prisoners, but through original survey records dug out from the database by an ally who had lived for sixty million years.

The blueprints for the anti-Psyker weapon platform arrived on the evening of the third day.

Nephilak did not package it as a "gift," but simply provided a short note: "This is a prototype anti-Psyker weapon platform developed by the Necron Dynasty during the War in Heaven. It is specifically effective against the Grey Knights-class Psyker units and the high-level psychic projections of Chaos Daemons you encountered previously. Your adamantine chitin composite material already meets the manufacturing requirements."

After the blueprints were decoded by the Brood Queen, they revealed a complete living weapon design—based on the Necron blackstone resonance principle, but recompiled into protein coding, allowing it to be directly integrated into The Swarm's existing biological weapon systems.

Its core mechanism was an anti-psychic wave—when a Grey Knight activated a psychic ward, this weapon platform would generate a frequency-matched, inverted-phase resonance, turning the psychic ward from a protective layer into a weapon that destroyed the host's nervous system.

The Overmind stored the blueprints in the weapon development sequence, with an estimated production cycle of forty-eight hours.

In the intervals of technology transfer, the Overmind repeatedly deliberated on his previous decision: opening core orbital and core communication protocols to a non-Zerg civilization, and pinning the future strategic mobility of The Swarm on cooperation with another race—this was completely different from the strategy The Swarm used when dealing with the Protoss and humans in the Koprulu Sector, and risk assessment could not yield precise conclusions using existing models.

Ultimately, he marked the risk as "under observation" and added no further restrictions.

Every technology Nephilak submitted came with complete principle annotations and basic experimental verification reports; the delivery speed even exceeded the Overmind's budget for the Brood Queen's repair cycle.

At least for now, the Necron had not cut corners in the definition of an "ally."

On the fourth day, the Overmind convened the first formal strategic meeting of The Swarm in the Warhammer universe deep within the underground hive of Dead Silence-42.

Attendees: The Overmind of The Swarm, the Brood Queen, and the Necron Overlord Nephilak of the Void Covenant, who joined remotely via the quantum-state link.

There was only one agenda item for the meeting: which Forge World to strike next.

Nephilak unfolded the holographic projections of the seventeen Forge Worlds one by one in the operations room of the leviathan mothership.

Each world came with a complete defense assessment—the number of orbital defense platforms, the density of Imperial Fleet patrols, and the deployment status of ground-based Titan Legions.

His voice was calm and precise: "Graia is the target with the weakest defenses among the seventeen worlds. Its orbital defense platforms are at only forty percent of their pre-war scale, and the ground-based Titan Legion was transferred away twelve years ago to reinforce the Cadia sector. Capturing Graia will sever the Empire's armored supply lines in the three surrounding sectors."

The Overmind incorporated all data into his analysis and issued an order after completing the assessment.

Not Graia.

"Forge World Metallis. Orbital defense assessment: Medium. Garrison: one Imperial Navy cruiser detachment, ground armored forces at full strength. Threat level is four levels higher than Graia."

As soon as this correction was issued, even the Brood Queen fell silent for a few milliseconds.

Metallis's Imperial Navy garrison was nearly three times that of Graia, and its orbital defense platforms had never suffered attacks from Chaos or Orks, remaining in a completely intact state.

"Reasoning," the Brood Queen asked, following the Overmind's customary habit.

"The orbital defense platforms of Metallis are directly controlled by the local Fabricator General. The General himself is a conservative of the Imperial Adeptus Mechanicus and trusts only his own closed-loop systems. Such a person will react slower than a regular naval officer when facing non-Imperial technological incursions. Its orbital fire response time window is three times that of Graia's defense system. Its ground armored forces are at full strength, which means there are plenty of armored units being dismantled, repaired, and tested in the factories; after capturing it, The Swarm can directly take over a complete heavy armor production line. Its defense intensity is classified as medium-high in Imperial archives—with no high-level Psykers stationed there. The Necron's anti-Psyker weapon platform can disable its primary defense nodes in the first strike, without needing to spend days wearing down Void Shields as we did at Dead Silence-42."

He marked the target on the star map.

"Graia is a low-risk target. Metallis is a high-risk target, but its spoils are ten times that of Graia. The Swarm does not want low-risk targets. The Swarm wants targets that can generate a qualitative change. Prepare the fleet. Target—Forge World Metallis."