The alarm klaxons echoed through the bridge of the New State, the rotating red lights casting a deathly pallor on everyone's faces.
On the main screen, a colossal shadow had already claimed half the view. The enemy's macro-cannon batteries were adjusting their pitch, their dark muzzles pointing directly at them.
Andy knew full well that this ship—fresh from a crash landing, with a damaged keel and stalled engines—could never survive a bombardment of that caliber.
"There's no time for repairs."
Andy's fingers flew across the console, issuing the only command left in this desperate situation.
"All hands, abandon ship! Emergency evacuation!"
At the command, the massive hangar bay doors at the belly of the New State slid open with a hiss of hydraulic pressure.
Waiting there were twenty heavy engineering shuttles.
This was the entirety of Magos Saul's inventory brought from the Mid-hive—the heavy lifters the Heart of Gears industrial park used to transport super-heavy equipment. It had to be said: a Rogue Trader's armed transport ship was truly unparalleled when it came to cargo capacity.
Back then, to fit these twenty behemoths, Andy had painfully discarded a vast amount of industrial scrap and spare parts salvaged from the Acid Swamps. He had even left several lower-quality stamping presses behind in the orbital dock.
At the time, Roger had winced with regret, thinking Andy was being far too wasteful. Now, he could only weep and praise Andy's foresight.
"Move it! Everyone move!"
Andy's voice broadcasted throughout the ship. "Man or machine, I don't care—move!"
The hangar erupted into chaos. Hundreds of workers, servitors, and heavy engineering drones equipped with anti-gravity pallets rushed toward the cargo holds and workshops like madmen.
Andy didn't give them time to think or categorize.
"Forget the supplies and the old clothes! Bring me the equipment, the core logic boards, and that damned xenos tech! If it's worth anything, shove it in! Fill them until the doors won't close!"
The heavy engineering drones proved invaluable. Their powerful mechanical arms grabbed heavy precision machining components and shoved them directly into the shuttle holds. If there were no locking clamps, they used welding torches to fuse them to the floor. If space was tight, they ripped out the foam padding.
It was a race against the Reaper; every wasted second courted total annihilation.
Meanwhile, at the lowest level of the ship—the core area of the main keel.
Several drones of strange design, with lines too sleek for this era, hovered in mid-air. They extended razor-thin mechanical arms, and monomolecular cutters began to glow with a blinding white light.
"Deconstruction protocol activated," Little Six's voice echoed in Andy's mind. Though calm, there was a hint of tension at the prospect of being dismantled. "Severing physical connections."
Zzzzt!!
A piercing screech rang out as the drones began cutting through the New State's main keel. To any Captain or Tech-Priest, this was absolute madness—suicide, and the murder of a Machine Spirit.
But even this wasn't fast enough. As a man plagued by a chronic lack of security, Andy had long anticipated this day. He was always prepared to scrap the ship and run.
"Detonate."
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
A series of dull explosions rocked the lower decks. These were dense, directional melta-charges Andy had previously ordered the engineering team to pre-plant. The arrangement and load of these explosives were original designs, precisely calculated by Andy and Little Six specifically to slice through thick adamantium armor and keel structures.
Jets of high-temperature molten metal erupted, instantly melting through the reinforced joints.
When Andy first ordered these charges planted, Roger, Bauer(Gamma-9), and Magos Saul had all protested vehemently. They thought he was destroying the ship. Who plants thermite in their own home's load-bearing walls?
But now, as the technicians watched the perfectly severed keel sections fall away, they fell silent. Their eyes held nothing but awe for Andy's prophetic decision-making. Without these pre-set measures, those cutters would have taken until next year to get through that adamantium spine.
Clang!
A massive block of metal, twelve meters long and five meters wide, broke away from the hull.
This was Little Six's physical host—a Warp Sextant mainframe array from the Golden Age, with the Black Box Key still plugged in. Heavy engineering drones immediately rushed forward, catching the heavy mass with anti-gravity pallets and sliding it toward the hangar.
Andy stood on the hangar command platform, his brain calculating rapidly as he watched the frantic scene. Little Six's host was too large and too heavy. To move it, they needed a dedicated shuttle. Furthermore, that shuttle couldn't carry anything else; the seats had to be ripped out, and extra bracing and dampening systems had to be installed.
"Clear out Shuttle 1!" Andy pointed to the craft closest to the exit. "Rip out all the seats! Move!"
Workers rushed in with plasma cutters. Amidst a shower of sparks, two hundred seats were violently removed and tossed out of the hatch. Little Six's host was slowly pushed into the empty cabin.
The core assets were secured. As long as this shuttle made it out, Andy would have the capital to rise again even if the New State was blown to atoms. Ships could be rebuilt, or even stolen.
But now, a more realistic and cruel problem stared Andy in the face.
The heavy engineering shuttles Saul had brought were designed to transport workers and parts within a Hive city. Their lifting capacity was excellent, but their space was limited.
Standard capacity: 200 people per shuttle. Total shuttles: twenty.
Currently, to accommodate the precision lathes, raw materials, tech samples, and various production line components, seventeen shuttles were packed so tight a fly couldn't squeeze in. Add to that the shuttle occupied by Little Six.
How many were left?
Two.
Only two empty shuttles remained at the end of the runway.
Andy turned around to look at the crowd gathered behind him. This was his entire foundation. The engineering team from the Underhive, the Storm Squad, the heavy guards. Then there were the servitor technicians, apprentices, and Sisyphron's shrewd business agents recruited from the Mid-hive.
A sea of heads.
A population count flashed on Andy's retina:
[Current personnel awaiting evacuation: 632]
And those two shuttles, even with the aisles packed to capacity, could hold 400 people at most.
That meant 232 people would have no place. They couldn't get on.
Andy looked at the workers still straining to move cargo, and the crew members waiting anxiously for the evacuation order. They didn't know the cruel math yet. They thought everyone was leaving.
"Boss Andy!" Bauer ran over, drenched in sweat, holding a checklist. "The cargo is loaded! Sister Six is secured! When do we pull out? I see those bastards' cannons on the radar—they're practically touching our foreheads!"
Andy said nothing. At a time like this, words were hollow.
Toss the cargo to make room? Impossible. Those machines and materials were their only hope of survival at their next destination. Without these means of production, even if all these hundreds of people escaped alive, they would quickly perish in this predatory universe. Moreover, much of the equipment was already welded to the holds; there was no time to cut it loose.
Tell everyone to squeeze in? That 400-person limit was the "squeezed in" number.
"We can't avoid it. Someone has to stay behind."
But who to leave? Who to take? The technicians, the combatants, and the core management had to go.
Which meant the rest... the ordinary laborers, the unskilled apprentices, the drifters picked up in the Underhive with no special talents.
They were the expendable ones.
BOOM—!!
Just then, a massive roar cut through Andy's thoughts. The entire hangar shook violently as dust and rust rained from the ceiling.
The first large-caliber macro-cannon shell had struck the New State's outer armor. Though it didn't penetrate, the massive kinetic impact sent everyone stumbling.
"They're firing already?!" Bauer jumped in fright. "Boss! We can't wait! Any longer and the runway will be blown apart!"
Andy looked up, blue light flickering in his cybernetic eyes.
"Gamma-9."
Andy made his decision. "Assemble the teams. We begin boarding now."