Warhammer 40K in a box

Chapter 542

A matte black transport ship without any markings landed like a ghost in the outermost quarantine port of the Rostov III Forge World.

The cold metal deck stretched out beneath the giant dome, the air thick with the pungent smell of ozone mixed with engine oil.

The hatch slid open with a hydraulic hum, and a slender figure wrapped in a heavy gray robe covered with dim runes silently stepped onto the adamantite floor.

In the shadow of the hood, her gaze was sharp and wary as she scanned the unfamiliar world before her, filled with the roar of machinery and the scent of incense.

Maria, who had been waiting by the berth, felt an invisible chill instantly grip her heart the moment Liz stepped out of the cabin.

It wasn't a physical cold, but a suffocating emptiness and rejection that came from the depths of the soul.

It was as if the colors of the world around me had vanished in an instant, and the sounds had become distant and distorted. An indescribable sense of nausea and a cold emptiness spread from the depths of my bones.

She endured the intense physical discomfort and struggled to stand firm. This was the first time she had faced the "emptiness" force field of an untouchable being so closely.

“Welcome to the Rostov III Forge World, Sister Liz.” Maria’s voice was slightly tense as she tried to make her words clear. She knew the other person was unable to speak.

Liz slightly raised her face, which was hidden in the shadow of her hood, and looked at Maria.

She raised her hands and made a series of complex gestures smoothly and precisely, her gaze focused and calm: I am Liz, Sister Silent, here to offer assistance as instructed by the Governor.

Maria understood the gesture and nodded: "Understood. Please come with me, I will take you to the prepared room."

She made a guiding gesture.

She noticed that after talking to Liz, the discomfort seemed to subside, but she could still feel the influence of the empty energy field.

Liz's presence was like a drop of boiling oil thrown into water, its impact extending far beyond Maria's close proximity.

Even through the thick shielding wall, the low-level laborers moved stiffly on the assembly line, the servo joints of the machines hummed uneasyly, and they instinctively felt a cold panic deep in their souls.

High-level technical priests gathered in front of the suspended data station, their mechanical eyes flashing at high frequency as they processed the abnormal data stream, as if analyzing a dangerous, unidentified source of radiation.

A tense atmosphere pervaded the entire area.

Liz was led by Maria and quickly settled into a specially made room.

The walls and floors were made entirely of anti-psychic black stone, the cold surfaces covered with suppressive runes, and the doorway shimmered with the light of multiple force fields.

This is a standard safety protocol: in order to protect personnel within the research facility from the continuous effects of her "empty" force field to the greatest extent possible, and also to provide her with a stable, minimally disturbed environment to perform her duties, her activities are strictly limited to this extremely small grid within the core research area.

Her code name was registered as "Nightingale".

In the core design room, Sage Aurejana personally explained her responsibilities to Liz.

They stood face to face, with a huge holographic projection displaying complex mechanical structures all around them.

Aurejana's voice carried the characteristic flatness of the Mechanicus: "Sister Liz, your key responsibility is to operate the 'Ciricrux Anima' device, the driving core of future psionic knights. Your 'empty' force field will be the 'silent anchor' for harnessing raging psionic energy and ensuring its safe release."

Previous experimental data detected subtle traces of what appears to be subspace contamination that are difficult to explain, and its source must be completely isolated.

At the same time, certain key aspects of the device require your manual operation to ensure stable operation.

Liz listened quietly, nodding slightly under her hood.

She raised her hand, her gesture steady and clear: "I understand the crucial role of this device. Utilizing my special abilities to isolate the risk of contamination and provide a stable node is one of the duties of the Silent Sisters. I will operate it as instructed."

Her gaze swept over the complex structural diagrams with a calm scrutiny.
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Upon Liz's arrival, Kaul immediately began designing a prototype restraint unit control core that integrated Liz's "empty" force field.

The biggest challenge is how to make her "empty" force field act precisely on the dangerous psionic flow without interfering with the unit's sophisticated sensors and logic circuits.

This is like lighting a candle in the eye of a storm without it being blown out.

His workbench was surrounded by a dense array of miniature projections and a waterfall of data streams.

Maria was assigned to test a small force field buffer device in the secondary laboratory.

During a test near the perimeter of Liz's Black Stone Room, she suddenly felt a strong physical discomfort, not pain, but a sense of emptiness as if her soul had been emptied and a cold sense of rejection, and the device readings instantly became disordered.

Through the observation window, she watched the heavy gray-robed figure standing alone in the center of the cold, black stone room, her feelings a mix of emotions.

A living, breathing person is fulfilling a vital duty here, yet he endures immense loneliness and rejection.

However, Maria's sentiments did not affect the overall project.

Based on Liz's characteristics as the Silent Sister, Ferrus personally led the design of the "Emptiness Force Field Generator" interface.

At the main design station next to the core furnace area, her massive silver-gray body stood like a silent fortress, with multiple mechanical arms rapidly sketching blueprints in the void.

Her solution was efficient and direct: treating Liz’s “empty” force field as a powerful physical field, directly guiding, shaping, and controlling it through precise energy conduits and field focusing arrays.

This idea provoked strong opposition from Oregana.

Inside the design studio, Sage Aurejana stood before Ferrus's massive workbench, her voice carrying a rare emotional fluctuation, a suppressed unease beneath the metallic sheen: "Ferrus, Caul, I must emphasize again! 'Nightingale'—Sister Liz—is a valuable personnel seconded by His Excellency the Governor to assist in the research!"

She is the Silent Sister, an ally with her own will and life! She is not a cog in the machine that forges the world, nor an experimental subject that can be modified or consumed at will!
Forcibly extracting her field through a conduit would place an irreversible burden on her nervous system, which is too risky!
Looking at the vital signs monitoring data, she's been under stress beyond the safety threshold! His Excellency the Governor will not tolerate this kind of strain!

Ferrus stopped what he was doing, his silver-grey eyes turning to Oregana with a sharp, knife-like gaze that carried a natural impatience with inefficiency, but not the coldness of a machine.

“Efficiency is the truth, Olegana,” her voice was deep, with a metallic quality. “The previous approach was inefficient; the organism’s reactions were redundant variables. Maximizing its characteristics is the only logical path to completing the project.”

Her discomfort was a necessary price to pay for accomplishing a great creation. The court needs results, and results require efficiency. This is the optimal solution.

(End of this chapter)