Andy's finger hovered over the control panel, his movements freezing.
The red light wasn't intense—faint, even—but in the pitch-black depths of the launch shaft, this sliver of illumination was exceptionally piercing.
The light source was moving.
It wasn't fast, but it was steady, possessing the distinct characteristics of a patrol cruise.
Without a moment's hesitation, Andy immediately issued a silence command to the "Firefly" drone.
The palm-sized black disc instantly stopped its rotors from spinning. Utilizing the micro-suction cups on its underbelly, it locked itself tightly against the cold, dust-covered alloy wall of the shaft.
All active detection radars were shut down, leaving only a passive optical camera active.
A few seconds later, the luminous object drew near.
Aided by that faint red glow, Andy made out the silhouette of the thing.
It was a craft.
More accurately, it was a creature that had been modified into a flying vehicle.
Its wingspan was roughly five meters, sporting a flat, triangular structure with a surface covered in a pale, bone-like hard carapace.
There were no propellers, no thrusters. It relied on some sort of bio-electromagnetic organ beneath its wing membranes to glide silently through this shaft, which was otherwise choked with radiation and magnetic interference.
The red light from moments ago originated from a massive, single eye beneath its head.
The bio-craft drifted lazily past the drone. It didn't notice the tiny object clinging to the wall; its red cyclopean eye merely scanned the darkness below with mechanical precision.
Only after it had flown far away, and the red light had completely vanished into a massive annular breach, did Andy restart the drone.
"Follow it."
The drone released its suction cups and, like a falling leaf, slipped noiselessly toward the "mid-section maintenance base" occupied by the Lesians below.
Passing through the massive annular blast door, the view ahead suddenly opened up.
Andy had already prepared himself psychologically.
In his expectations, an alien hive—especially one utilizing biotechnology—would certainly be covered in mucus, with purple creep carpeting the walls, throbbing blood vessels lining the floor, and the air thick with the stench of rot.
After all, that was exactly how the Tyranids operated.
But when the camera fed the footage back, Andy froze. He even briefly doubted if the sensor's white balance had malfunctioned.
There was no mucus, no creep, and none of that sickening, bloody stench.
What lay before Andy was a world of white.
Deathly pale, cold, and starkly geometric.
"Interesting."
Andy adjusted the focal length.
The Lesians' bio-engineering was clearly on an entirely different path from the Tyranids.
Tyranid bugs relied on a massive Hive Mind and absurd psychic power to brutally force flesh and blood into functional shapes, turning organisms into cannons and tanks. Their approach focused on overwhelming mass and a savage, raw vitality.
The Lesians were different.
Andy figured they followed a "bone mechanics" philosophy.
Within this massive annular space, every structure, facility, and even the pipelines hanging from the ceiling were constructed from some high-strength bone material. This bone material possessed a smooth surface and a hard texture, looking much like polished ivory.
On a purely sensory level, it wasn't disgusting at all. Instead, it carried a bizarre sense of order that felt reminiscent of an industrial civilization.
Andy spotted a massive crane.
Its boom was reinforced by a single, massive spine, with black keratin bearings embedded at the joints. It wasn't driven by hydraulic pumps, but rather by exposed bundles of dark-red, powerful muscle fibers.
The muscles contracted, lifting the boom. The movement was precise, powerful, and completely devoid of any shuddering.
He then looked toward a conveyor belt.
Countless tiny phalanges were linked together to form a chain, rolling over several thick leg-bone rollers, emitting crisp clicking noises.
"Now this is fascinating."
The Lesians used bio-enzymes to regulate bone growth, forcing the bones to develop into gears, levers, and pistons according to predetermined industrial blueprints.
If humans manufactured machines, then they were "growing machines."
Compared to the squishy flesh of the Tyranids, this bone machinery clearly possessed higher strength and stability. It also aligned much better with the conventional aesthetic of the word "industry."
The drone ventured deeper.
Andy began to observe the structure of Lesian society.
The entire underground world featured a thoroughly maddening layout. There was no zoning.
In a human Hive City, the industrial district was the industrial district, and the residential district was the residential district. Even if the environment was atrocious everywhere, at least boundaries existed.
Here, however, production and daily life were completely fused together.
A bone conveyor belt transporting ore cut right through a dense cluster of residential nests. Many Lesians slept directly beneath the conveyor belt, while others hung from adjacent bone scaffolding.
They would reach out to work the moment they woke, and lie down on the spot whenever they grew tired.
Andy watched with his own eyes as a Lesian sat eating right next to an active bio-reactor. It stuffed a black, paste-like substance into its mouth with one hand while using its extra limbs to adjust the valves on the reactor.
There were even a few juveniles playing and wrestling right next to rapidly spinning gears, entirely unconcerned about the risk of being dragged into the machinery.
To the Lesians, work was life, and life was work.
This all-hands-in-the-factory mentality and extreme optimization made the human model—with its need for separate dormitories and cafeterias—look somewhat "primitive."
"Talk about a toxic grind culture," Andy couldn't help but marvel.
If this system were brought to the Imperium, those servitors who still needed two hours of low-power mode a day would die of shame.
"Sol, take a look at this."
Andy suddenly remembered the Tech-Priest beside him. As a professional cogboy, Sol should have some unique insights into this alien mechanical structure.
Andy shared the drone's feed to Sol's data-slate.
Sol leaned in to take a look.
Just one look.
"Retch—!!"
His entire body violently recoiled, letting out a dry heave laced with static.
Priest Sol acted as though he had laid eyes on something profoundly filthy and sacrilegious, violently flinging the data-slate away.
"Heresy! This is heresy!!"
Sol clutched his vocalizer, his voice trembling violently. "How—how dare they?!"
"They dare use foul bones to mimic the sacred mechanical structures?!"
"This is the most malicious mockery of the Omnissiah! An insult to gears and levers!"
"It is an abomination! Imprisoning the sacred Machine Spirit inside a vile corpse!"
Sol's reaction was terrifyingly intense, his cybernetic eyes wide with a mix of horror and fury.
In the dogmas of the Adeptus Mechanicus, machinery was sacred and possessed a soul. To Sol, the Lesians' act of using biological tissue to simulate mechanical structures was akin to sculpting statues of the Emperor out of excrement—not just disgusting, but a mortal sin of the highest order.
"Alright, alright."
Andy cut off the feed to Sol, lest the old man actually short-circuit himself out of sheer rage.
"If you won't watch, I will."
Controlling the drone, Andy bypassed the bustling production area and flew deeper into the complex. He wanted to find where the core area of this base was, and get a headcount on just how many troops these aliens possessed.
A massive bone archway appeared ahead.
Complex biological patterns were carved into the arch, indicating it was a gateway to the next zone.
The drone carefully hugged the ceiling, attempting to drift past.
The moment the drone crossed the archway—
Thwip.
An incredibly faint sound of tearing air rang out.
A brief burst of static suddenly filled Andy's field of vision. Immediately following that, the screen tumbled violently—clearly the drone spinning out of control after being struck by some force.
In the final tenth of a second before the feed cut completely, Andy caught a glimpse of the attacker: a biological sentry turret embedded in the wall.
It looked like a massive flower bud, its petals peeled back to reveal a deathly pale bone barrel within. Wisps of faint white smoke were still drifting from the muzzle.
Snap.
[Signal Lost.]
Andy disconnected the feed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
Spotted.
It looked like an automated defense mechanism that fired the moment any non-Lesian biological signature crossed it. The bone turret's reaction speed was incredibly fast, and it seemed to pack a serious punch.
Though he had lost a drone, he had gathered plenty of intelligence.
Andy quickly reconstructed the images he had just seen in his mind, running a data modeling sequence.
The mid-section maintenance base was vast, housing an immense number of production facilities and residential nests. Just from that brief glimpse, Andy had spotted at least several hundred Lesian artisans, along with dozens of visibly robust warriors out on patrol.
And that was just one tier of the launch shaft.
Extrapolating based on this density—
"There are at least three to five thousand Lesians hiding down in that shaft," Andy delivered a conservative estimate.
Three to five thousand.
That was a formidable force.
Furthermore, these Lesians weren't mindless beasts that only knew how to charge blindly. They were organized, disciplined, possessed a division of labor, and ran a distinct, highly mature industrial system.
By contrast, Deep Space Industries currently had fewer than seven hundred people, with only about two hundred capable of fighting. Even throwing combat servitors and drones into the mix, they were at an absolute numerical disadvantage.
Andy did feel a slight pressure.
But only a slight one.
What did numbers matter?
This was a launch shaft, and right above their heads was a blazing sun.
Safe to say, the advantage was firmly on his side.