99: Chapter 99 The Ancient Saints' Immigrant Fleet Stopped at the End of the Channel

The Expeditionary Fleet's silent voyage along the Ancient Ones' backup route was shorter than expected. The navigation data from the route's protocol stack was so precise it seemed as if it had been calibrated only yesterday, with the avoidance coordinates for every Gravity Reef clearly marked. Standing on the bridge of the Shield of the Emperor, Heinrich von Strauheim aimed the Coalition badge, which had just resumed its faint cold-green glow, at the increasingly bright cold-green halo at the end of the route. As the first silhouettes of the Ancient Ones' migration fleet appeared simultaneously on all Coalition scanners, he keyed the fleet channel and ordered the entire fleet to line up—not in a battle formation, but in a welcoming formation. The Imperial Navy, The Swarm's Leviathan Battle Group, the Eldar wraith cruisers, and the Necron living metal regeneration pods—the bows of all four fleets aligned toward the entrance of the route.

The Ancient Ones' Mobile World slowly glided from the end of the route into the edge of the Milky Way. It was an ancient planet completely converted into an interstellar transport vehicle, with a diameter close to that of a small moon. Its surface was covered with hexagonal psionic resonance chamber arrays forged during the peak of the Ancient Ones, each ridge breathing slowly in cold-green light patterns. The Mobile World was escorted by hundreds of auxiliary ships, whose designs belonged neither to the Necron Dynasty, the Eldar Empire, nor any civilization humanity had ever seen—this was the second-generation engineering style developed by the Ancient Ones themselves over tens of millions of years in extra-galactic deep space, more mature than the defense arrays of the Origin Facility, more complete than the containment protocols of the Star of Judgment, and more ancient than the quantum-state arrays of the Void Throat.

"By the Emperor." Heinrich's bionic eye magnified the silhouette of the Mobile World on the main screen, and he spoke hoarsely into the fleet channel. In his life, he had seen Tyranid Hive Ships, the Chaos Eye of Terror, and The Swarm's Leviathan, but he had never seen an entire planet converted into a colony ship. Oldenburg sent scan data from the flagship of the Third Assault Fleet—the energy core output of the Mobile World was stable, the Psionic Void Network had automatically completed a synchronized docking with the Ancient Ones' fleet navigation array, and the Universal Void Shield Coordinator of all ships synchronously rippled with an extremely faint, cold-green welcoming light.

In the exact center of the Mobile World's bow, a pillar of cold-green psionic light slowly rose. The pillar expanded in mid-air into a quantum-state holographic projection spanning the entire Ancient Ones' fleet, revealing the full form of the Ancient One Emissary. The Ancient One Emissary was not human, not Eldar, not Necron, not Zerg, nor any known intelligent species in the Coalition's archives. Yet, every member of the Coalition understood his language at the exact same instant—it was an all-band compatible communication protocol preset by the Ancient Ones before the migration fleet departed, directly injected via the Living Psionic Network into the Hive Mind, Psychic Talisman, Web of Prophecy, and quantum-state receiver of every Coalition member.

"Latecomers. You have completed the Living Psionic Network, cleansed the residue of Chaos, and established lawful order. The Ancient Ones' backup route unlocked automatically after all preset trigger conditions were met. We return from extra-galactic deep space, not to reclaim dominion over the Milky Way—we have found a vaster universe beyond, where there is no need for the Astronomican, no need for Void Shields, and no need to answer war with war. We return to hand over the final legacy to you in person."

Bern took the Holy Hammer off his shoulder and gripped it in his hand. His voice was extremely low but very clear—the Ancient Ones did not say "takeover," did not say "evaluation," did not say "examination." They said "legacy," "latecomers," and "you." The Grey Knights had sworn before the Emperor to protect humanity from the corruption of Chaos, and the Ancient Ones had been fighting Chaos since before humanity was even born. To see the Ancient One Emissary with his own eyes today was itself a living miracle.

The Brood Queen's quantum-state translator lit up on the main screen. Cold-green text unfolded line by line: "The Overmind says that the legacy of the Ancient Ones will be received, deciphered, and distributed within the framework of the Coalition War Council. As a side note—the energy core output frequency of the Ancient Ones' Mobile World is synchronized with the initial calibration parameters of the Void Throat, and the Ancient Ones' migration fleet had completed a full-spectrum passive scan of the extra-galactic Tyranid Hive Fleets before arriving at the edge of the Milky Way. The distribution scale of the Tyranids in the extra-galactic systems far exceeds previous estimates, but the Ancient Ones' migration fleet bypassed all Tyranid Hive routes on its return journey. The Tyranids did not detect the return of the Ancient Ones."