When in doubt, blame quantum mechanics.
That pretty much described Kain's current situation.
His "transfer" was built on quantum-related tech.
If he wanted to teleport into the ship, he first had to enter a designated safe transfer radius before the system would lock on and pull him in.
And the reason he jumped alone—without having the Astartes leap with him—wasn't because they lacked authorization, or because they weren't "logged" into the ship.
In a sense, they weren't logged in… but that didn't really matter here, and it wasn't going to disrupt whatever information "uptime" those guards were maintaining.
The real issue was that a person's body needed a kind of quantum-state marking—so they carried a particle entangled with the ship's internal system. Only then could the transfer occur through that so-called entanglement.
Of course, quantum entanglement supposedly can't transmit information. Two entangled particles share a special correlation—no matter how far apart they are, their states remain linked instantaneously.
But that link isn't "information being sent."
For example, imagine you're given a pair of gloves sealed into two separate boxes, stored in two different places.
Until you open one box, you have no idea which one contains the left glove and which contains the right.
The instant you open your box and see it's the left glove, you also know, immediately, that the other box must hold the right glove.
Or maybe that's still not quite accurate.
Some people would say it's more like this: you're told the two boxes contain gifts of the same category. When you open one and see a left glove, you can infer the other box also contains a glove—but not necessarily the right glove. The color might match, the type matches, but the exact pairing isn't guaranteed.
Quantum entanglement is something like that.
Still, if there's such a special correlation, then there must be something there to exploit.
And Kain's teleportation was exactly that—humanity of the Golden Age drilling deep into entanglement phenomena and turning it into a working transfer system.
Which meant that once he successfully returned to this Golden Age masterpiece, his survival odds skyrocketed.
…
As the leader of a Salamanders squad tasked with delivering a shipment on behalf of the Great Sage, Captain Aret wasn't going to hand over the goods just because someone claimed a name and happened to know who the sender was.
In truth, when the Great Sage gave him the delivery mission, he hadn't described the recipient at all—just provided a name.
With so little identifying info, how was Aret supposed to confirm the rightful recipient?
When asked, the Great Sage had simply said, "You'll know when you see him. Trust your instinct."
Still, the Great Sage did disclose a few things—enough that Aret wouldn't be completely in the dark.
First: the recipient was a very special Untouchable. As for what made him special, Aret would understand once they met.
And once they did meet, Aret immediately sensed something strange about this Blank. He seemed able to control the reach of his Null aura at will.
Sometimes, when the bugs got too thick, the field he released would spread wide enough to brush their own lines, too.
Second: the recipient had guessed who the delivery unit belonged to—which functioned as a kind of passphrase.
That, at least, was correct.
Third: the moment he put on the power armor, he didn't drop dead, and the suit ran cleanly.
That alone was abnormal.
He wore it and operated it like it was meant for him—no problems.
And finally, the Great Sage had left explicit orders: if the recipient was ever in genuine danger, then even if the entire squad had to die, they were to get him out.
That was why Aret had agreed to keep pushing into the objective zone once Kain claimed he had a way to deal with the hive.
Then Kain did something that left them all reeling—he jumped toward the massive abyss.
Even with the power armor's assisted thrust, there was no way he could cross a chasm several kilometers wide.
Worse, while he was airborne, a Tyranid bio-plasma beam lanced toward him.
Aret's expression changed instantly. Protecting the recipient was the Great Sage's command.
But at the exact moment the beam struck, Kain's body seemed to turn into a mirage—like a heat-haze illusion, something unreal, something that wasn't actually there.
Then, like mist being blown apart by wind, he dispersed.
It happened too fast. For an instant, Aret thought it might've been a trick of the eye—maybe Kain really had been vaporized by the bio-plasma.
No.
That couldn't be right.
With that kind of power armor, a single bio-plasma beam couldn't just erase him without leaving a trace.
And yet he was gone—completely. No debris. No smear. Nothing.
Something was off.
Aret didn't have time to dwell on it.
The swarm surrounding them surged forward in a full charge, forcing the squad to compress their perimeter as they were steadily pushed toward the abyss edge.
At the same time, the ground tremors worsened. The bugs were undermining the cliff lip, trying to break the earth under their boots and drop them into the void.
Then—
Something changed.
"Captain!"
Rawls, the one Aret had tasked with keeping a close eye on the recipient, signaled urgently toward the rear and above.
Aret felt it too.
His armor's rear pict-cam caught the image and projected it into a corner of his display.
It was—
Aret snapped a look back and saw something descending three hundred meters overhead—an object gradually shifting from invisible to visible.
Like transparency turning into opacity.
It looked like a vessel roughly two hundred meters long.
No—two hundred meters was barely a "warship." More like a large craft. Either way, it was a model he'd never seen before.
As it became clearer and more real, it resembled some kind of civilian interstellar cargo ship—but no civilian ship should've been capable of this.
Tyranid bio-plasma beams struck it… and passed through as if they'd hit a phantom image. The ship remained untouched.
As though it could be seen, but wasn't fully present in realspace.
The craft drifted closer. Its aft end faced them and split open, revealing a smooth metallic surface.
Aret blinked once, and understanding hit.
The outer hull was disguised.
Then the smooth wall turned transparent, forming a true hatchway.
"Fall back! To the hatch!"
Aret immediately directed the squad to withdraw toward it.
But just as they were nearly there, the ground beneath them gave way.
The cliff edge collapsed.
And everyone plunged into the abyss.
(End of Chapter)
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