The Bizarre Adventures of the Oil Man, but Starting with Warhammer 32K

Cooper was surprised: "Black Legion? Why are they here?"

"No, not the Black Legion."

Leon corrected him: "Son of Horus."

Abaddon had changed their logo long ago after taking over the Sons of Horus, and the Terminator in front of him obviously had nothing to do with Abaddon.

The Iron Knight Terminator plus the Eye of Horus made the situation clear. This fallen Son of Horus belonged to Gastlin. That was the First Company of the Sixteenth Legion, once one of the most famous Iron Knight elites.

But the question is, why is Gastlin here?

Leon recalled Gastlin's experience.

These elite cavalry followed the Warmaster Horus all the way to Terra after the massacre at Isstvan, and were eventually killed on Terra by a wave of pig attacks from the invincible second Warmaster.

This wave of destruction was a rare tacit understanding between Perturabo and Dorn.

The remaining Gastlin no longer formed a complete army. They still existed after the Black Legion was rebuilt, but only as the guards and personal followers of the second Warmaster.

This warship that was boarded by Gastlin... What on earth did they go through to be boarded by a team of elite soldiers who had always followed Horus?

This ship must be hiding a secret greater than itself.

The special situation aroused Li Ang's curiosity, but figuring out the problem could not rely solely on remote command.

He had to be there in person.

"Send back the Thunderhawk gunship."

"Are you going to retreat?"

Occam asked Leon.

"No, I want to increase the stakes. Ockham, you have to help me too."

Cooper and his BT were also mobilized, and a special heavy transport aircraft transported the Pilots and ten Titans to the strike cruiser.

Also arriving were a hundred Astartes and Leon. Armidel flanked Leon, accompanied by Efron and Malik.

Ockhamsian, who had just undergone surgery, was obviously unable to join the battle directly. He handed over his two men to Leon, and let the Fallen Angel and Batman temporarily obey Leon's orders.

"The ship's exact condition must be recorded in the Thinker. Even if the Thinker is broken, I can still extract some data from it to answer our questions. Therefore, our first goal is to reach the bridge."

Leon explained, then looked at Malik and Efron: "You two should be able to shoulder the responsibility of exploring the way, right?"

Malik snorted coldly and didn't answer. Efron had to speak up and say, "Of course, he's a professional."

"how about you?"

Leon was curious.

"I'm responsible for supervising him."

Efron said helplessly, "I am sometimes responsible for being his scapegoat."

It seems that fallen angels have a hard time no matter where they are.

"Cooper, you and the pilot will be responsible for holding the perimeter. If there are enemies inside the ship, you must ensure that none of them leave alive. Armidale, you follow me. We will slowly work our way in from the perimeter until the Expellers determine where the bridge is."

After giving the two instructions, Leon gestured to Efron to start: "Now, please begin your professional division of labor and cooperation."

-

Efron's boots pounded the metal deck, and even though he tried his best to imitate the Night Lords' gait, his footsteps still echoed dully on the eerily silent warship.

He was once again aware of the difference between him and his cousin's different gene-seed, but his main focus was on the ship itself.

The battleship wasn't completely shut down, but the occasional flicker of its automatic sensor lights only accentuated its stillness. The same was true on both sides of the corridor they passed through.

There were no bullet holes, no scorch marks from energy weapon burns, and there were very few traces of blood or even gore.

"This damn place..."

Efron muttered, "It's like time has frozen."

Malik, who was walking in front, didn't even look back. The Night Lord almost merged into the shadows.

His voice was as erratic as a ghost, but still carried his usual sarcasm:

"Time is inherently unstable in the Warp. How could the Dark Angels be frightened by such a common occurrence?"

"Afraid? I'm just worried about whether the mission can be completed!"

“It doesn’t matter if it’s not completed.”

Malik said lightly, "If the situation is not right, I will just retreat."

Efron was so angry that his teeth itched, "Is this how you Night Lords do it?"

“That’s called being pragmatic.”

Efron wanted to say something, but Malik suddenly stopped and raised his hand to signal silence.

Efron tensed immediately and followed his gaze. His darkvision helped him pick out the markings on the hatch at the end of the corridor.

Bridge.

Malik turned his head and said, "See, even if I'm 'slacking', it's still easy to find the target."

Efron rolled his eyes but didn't argue.

The two men approached the cabin door cautiously, and Malik skillfully checked the door lock system.

"Locked," he whispered, "but locked from the inside."

Efron frowned: "Is there anyone inside?"

"Or used to."

Malik placed his hand on the terminal next to the door, and a data interface emerged from his wrist armor. The virus that Leon had given him began to invade the system.

After a few seconds, the hatch made a heavy hum and slowly opened.

A stale air, mixed with the pungent smell of engine oil, hit him. The bridge was dark, and the Thinker arrays were all destroyed.

—and there was no one there.

There wasn't even a corpse.

Efron went forward to check the situation and found traces of dragging in front of the captain's command seat.

"It seems someone was previously sitting in the captain's seat, but was then dragged away. There are no signs of resistance, which suggests this person was already unconscious when they were dragged away, or was knocked unconscious by the other party while they were defenseless."

He judged, then looked at Malik, "Did you find anything?"

"Yes, and it's much bigger than yours."

Malik pointed to a line of words in the bridge, and Efron looked and found that it was a name.

Sisyphus...?

"Sisyphus? Is that the name of the ship?"

This was indeed a significant discovery. Efron had to admit that the Night Lords had grasped the key points better than he, who had been analyzing it for a long time: "I thought you were being sarcastic."

Malik looked a little smug: "I don't need to be sarcastic, do I?"

The two continued to search the bridge and found that the damage inside the bridge was quite serious, but there was no pattern to it.

"It looks like they were simply venting their anger. It's like whoever invaded here was searching for something, and when they found nothing, they destroyed this place in anger. Was the person in the captain's seat taken away after that?"

Efron was unsure, so he checked with Malik and realized that it was impossible for them to find any useful information alone, so he decided to inform Leon.

Using the guide beacons they had laid out earlier, Leon quickly reached the bridge.

"Sisyphus?"

Leon confirmed with Cooper who was far away outside, and the answer he got was negative.

He had never heard of this battleship, which meant that this battleship, which had been modified by the Iron Hands, had no records left within the Iron Hands.

The Thinker on the ship was also severely damaged. Leon tried to restart it, but all he got were some fragmentary and broken navigation records.

"Istvaan V, Hydra... and finally Terra?"

He didn't know what the place in the middle was, but the two places in front were very famous.

There is no doubt that this is a warship from the period of the Great Heresy, and it even participated in the entire process of the Great Heresy.

Leon put aside the navigation log and began to read another part of the text that looked like a diary.

"Father Frat promised us that the experiments he was conducting in his labs on the upper deck would give us some advantage, but an error in this experiment exposed us to the sight of the Iron Warriors and the Emperor's Children..."

"We escaped and found Captain Meduson of the Sorog clan, who was planning an attack on the Alpha Legion's outpost and invited us to join. When we joined the attack, we discovered that our opponents were those Alphas who were still loyal to the Emperor, and Meduson was a traitor Alpha in disguise..."

"Thankfully, our Raven Guard assassinated Meduson, and we escaped this trap. I don't know what else we could have done. Artestrasza of the Salamanders told us that even if we could do nothing else, we must go to Terra."

"We arrived on Terra, summoned by the Lunar Gene Cult. We all perished on the Moon. I don't know if it was worth it, but the last thing I could do was to use this ship to lure the enemy away."

All records come to an end here, with only a short line of text left.

"May the Emperor bless you, Sabik Vilandriu."

Although it was also incomplete, the information revealed in it was enough for Leon to make some judgments.

Iron Hands, Salamanders, and Raven Guard...

These were the three loyalist legions that had been ambushed and nearly annihilated on Isstvan. Only a few of them had escaped from Isstvan, and this ship was clearly one of them.

Is it the Broken Legion?

Just like the ship's name, Leon could see their futile efforts from their log.

The warriors who had fled Isstvan and gathered together were engaged in a desperate struggle. The complex post-Heist environment left these leaderless warriors unsure of what they should and could accomplish. They were even exploited by traitors, ultimately achieving little.

Considering that the ship finally drifted in the warp and not even a single body of a loyalist soldier could be seen on it, Leon felt that their end must not have been good.

"Pity."

he sighed.

It's always sad to know the story of the past. But the dead are gone, and Li Ang is now more concerned about the value of the ship itself.

He managed to activate the ship's self-inspection program and found that although the outer armor and airlock were damaged in many places, the keel was intact and generally intact, and the degree of warp corruption on the ship was quite minor.

In particular, as Cooper said, there are some special weapons on it that are obviously not of Imperial technology.

Leon is not sure what these weapons are yet, but as long as he can drag the ship out of the subspace, he will have the opportunity to learn about these special technologies.

He could also repair the ship itself, fitting it with new Cogitator systems, and in a few years it would be a brand new strike cruiser.

This is much faster than building it directly.

In addition, Leon was also interested in the laboratory on the upper deck mentioned in the log.

That is the laboratory of the Iron Father.

The Iron Fathers of the Great Crusade had a knowledge base no less than that of the current High Sages of the Mechanicus. What is the value of the experiments he sees as "giving the Loyalists an advantage"?

Fifteen hundred years had passed since the Great Heresy, but judging by Gastlin's corpse, only a hundred years had passed on this warship, which had been in the Warp. Leon felt that the results of those experiments were likely still alive.

He turned around and handed Efron and Malik the rough structural diagram displayed during the ship's self-inspection, and marked the possible location of the laboratory on the diagram.

"It seems this ship doesn't hold the enemies we expected, only an endless maze. Can you help me find this laboratory?"

"It won't be harder than the bridge."

Malik replied coldly, then slinked into the shadows.

Efron shrugged and followed reluctantly.

With the rough structural diagram as a guide, their progress was smoother than before, and they found the location of the laboratory in a short while.

Efron realized something was wrong by the humming of equipment that was completely different from that on the bridge.

"Something's wrong..."

Efron lowered his voice, "Things in here are still functioning. Maybe there are still people alive inside."

Malik snorted disdainfully. "The entire ship's engines are still running, the Gellert stand is operational, and the boarding crew apparently only went to the bridge. Is it surprising that a few pieces of equipment are still working?"

"This isn't an equipment issue. We should contact Li Ang first—"

Efron tried to argue, but Malik had already found the entrance to the ventilation duct.

"waste time."

The Midnight Lord went in without looking back. "If you're willing to wait a few more minutes for the sage to arrive, then you can wait. I'll go in and take a look first."