Chapter 363 – Hive Mind: Wait… This Whole Thing Was for Me?!

Baal Orbit.

No one knew how long the space war had raged on.

Macro cannons roared, fire lanced from lance batteries, and torpedoes streaked across the void with burning tails, smashing into Tyranid bioships.

Walls of Imperial fire clashed against the writhing alien tide.

Though these defensive lines were tight and punishing, some attacks inevitably slipped through, detonating within human fleet sectors.

Void shields twisted under the pressure of living missiles or were outright breached. Tyranid biohunters dashed through bio-plasma fire, launching barbed spikes that tore through ship hulls.

At the edges of larger warships, fleshy tendrils clung tightly.

These tentacles, through rhythmic muscular contractions, extruded massive, segmented chitin fangs that latched onto hulls and spewed swarms of metal-eating Tyranid organisms.

They clung to the ships like barnacles, gnawing at every scrap of adamantium.

More and more living weapons were blasted apart, their fragments—along with gore and biomass—scattered into the void.

But even in death, they drifted toward Imperial ships.

These space-adapted Tyranid organisms expelled gas from their backs, slowly propelling themselves toward the fleet.

Once there, they would wriggle into every crevice and crawlspace they could find—corrupting, sabotaging, and killing.

Hiss—

One slimy Tyranid hunter slipped through a breach and into a corridor, tearing apart a startled crewman.

"Savior above! These damned bugs just won't stop!"

A gruff voice bellowed.

Then came a roar of bolter fire. The xeno was shredded—but more oozing shapes crept forward.

"Brother, we should be grateful we're still breathing. This is safer than the surface—so long as these bastards don't blow us out of the void."

Another added, "This ship is our lifeline. And our duty, granted by the Savior. So let's stuff these crawling freaks full of bolts!"

A squad of blue-armored combat troopers stormed in, heavy boots clanking against the deck.

Gunfire lit the corridor in a deadly crossfire, cutting down the xenos with brutal efficiency.

These were the Savior's armored kill-teams, sweeping the halls to purge any Tyranid that made it onboard.

Elsewhere—in a vast reactor chamber aboard a heavy cruiser—

"For the Golden Sun and the Savior!"

A battle cry rang out as a thunder hammer crackled and smashed through a snarling Tyranid skull.

A squad of red-armored War Angel Terminators surrounded and eliminated a Hive Tyrant, then doused its corpse in flames to prevent corrosive acid from damaging critical ship systems.

But the power cogitators still ground to a halt—smoke and sparks erupting.

The squad leader immediately patched into the engineering comms:

"Maintenance crew, we've got a problem—A34 reactor cluster's dying fast. Might go critical. You'd better get down here yesterday…"

With that, he led his squad out, heading toward the next hotspot.

Some huge thing had breached another section—they could only hope it hadn't done too much damage yet.

BOOM—

The cogitator burst into flames, casting dancing light across the shadowed room.

The blaze spread rapidly.

Luckily, Magos Rena and her engineering team arrived just in time.

"By the Omnissiah, get those flames OUT!"

Rena snarled, cursing in binary: "010—Why don't these meatheads just smash the whole place during battle?! That way, we wouldn't have to fix it!"

Sensor data poured into her mind.

If the damage worsened by even 5%, the entire reactor section would be beyond repair. The ship would lose 20% of its power output.

That meant a 10% higher chance of the entire ship being destroyed in battle.

Rena grimaced.

"At this rate, I've only got a 60% chance of surviving tomorrow…"

She wasn't ready to die.

Not when she was just a Terra-standard month and a half away from earning her rare, collector-grade Omnissiah sigil.

She'd sunk everything into a wildly obscure tech project for that badge—soon, it'd finally bear fruit.

Rena touched the two dull sigils already on her chest—standard Mechanicus marks. Soon, she'd forge a brilliant rare sigil to wear as a sanctified relic.

With it, she could join elite circles, gain access to high-level archives, and earn true recognition.

"Ugh… I just hope I survive long enough…"

But even as the depression crept in, another thought brought her solace:

If she did die here, she'd at least be awarded a shiny war-honor Mechanicus badge.

Not a bad legacy.

That would make three badges on her grav-marker—not too shabby.

Still… surviving would be better.

She recorded damage reports into the mech-brain while musing to herself.

Fire suppression efforts continued.

"Move it! It's spreading again!"

Tech-adepts yanked hoses from the support cart and sprinted toward the flames—now licking three, four meters high.

They opened the valves.

A foam mixture, laced with high-temperature sanctified oils, sprayed across the blaze.

The fire snuffed out quickly.

It was the sacred oil that did most of the work—its resonance calmed the angry machine-spirits tormented by fire.

Signal lights blinked on the engineering crawlers, and speakers chanted soothing binary hymns to the Omnissiah, further pacifying the engines' wrath.

With the danger passed, Rena rode her octopus-like mech-drone to the damaged cogitator stack to begin repairs.

Her mechadendrites worked fast, clearing debris, welding new components into place, sealing them shut.

Suddenly—another tremor shook the ship.

Rena turned toward the source. Through reinforced glass, she could see the cruiser's massive macro-cannon, its muzzle trailing smoke.

The barrel—half a kilometer long—adjusted angle.

BOOM—

Blinding light erupted. The macro-shell fired, slicing through space toward the Tyranid fleet.

It weaved between snarling bioships.

A massive tentacle lashed out, trying to intercept—but missed.

In silence, the shell soared straight into the gaping maw of a Tyranid Kraken.

Next second—

The beast exploded from within. Fire burst from its gut, tearing it to gory chunks that scattered into orbit.

But other tentacles reached out, pulling those giant meat-chunks back in—salvaging biomass.

And behind those tentacles, looming in the starlit void…

A monstrous, bone-white shadow.

Leviathan.

Thirty kilometers long. Nearly five wide. The great void-beast.

It dominated the battlefield—every bioship, every weapon, every strain of Tyranid gene-beast had been spawned from it.

Its value was beyond measure.

And it was the Savior's true prize.

But as of now—not a single shot had penetrated its bio-shields.

Every human salvo had been stopped by the Tyranid wall of flesh.

On its armored chitin, a wound tens of meters long remained—a scar left by Ka'Bandha, the daemon beast.

Dozens of worker organisms toiled to seal it.

Their gut-sacs full of thick organic paste, they oozed it through pipe-like maws onto the wound, layer by layer rebuilding its carapace.

Once hardened, the material would be strong enough to withstand void-lance strikes.

One small, gaunt worker spent its last drop of glue and scurried back inside, down a muscular tunnel.

It needed to refill.

...

Within Leviathan – Transport Channels.

Inside the living behemoth, countless Tyranids scurried about—each on their grim, predetermined task.

The tunnel walls were lined with soft, grass-like tendrils, gently waving in the subtle airflow.

The small worker was bumped hard by a larger beast, sent sprawling into a cluster of tendrils.

It showed no anger.

No resistance.

No self.

Within the bowels of the void beast Leviathan—

The worker drone, lowest of the Tyranid castes, possessed neither combat rights nor the concept of war itself. Its genetic chain simply lacked that data.

Whether on the battlefield or deep within the bioship, these drones existed only to serve, to function. To labor in silence.

Its only purpose: follow the encoded instructions and keep the living ship operational.

That was enough.

The frail little drone scrambled back to its feet after being knocked into a bed of soft, waterweed-like tendrils. With sluggish paddling limbs, it returned to its track, gliding toward the biomass reservoir.

It was the route most familiar to its DNA, one it had traveled back and forth countless times over the centuries.

But this time, something was different.

In the nodal junctions of the tunnel, sharp limbs and tentacles swiped indiscriminately.

Tyranid Lictors and even wounded Hive Tyrants were hunting worker drones—biting into them with gory fervor, their tendrils dripping with thick red ichor.

And yet, the drones didn't resist. They didn't even react.

Even as their siblings screamed in agony beside them, they just continued down the memorized paths.

This behavior was highly irregular. These elite war-forms should have had dedicated biomass feeding zones.

It could only mean one thing:

Something was wrong with the ecology of the void beast. The internal hierarchy was breaking down.

The little drone was lucky. Though spattered in its siblings' blood, it passed through unharmed—seemingly unaware of the carnage around it.

It reached the biomass pool—

And for the first time in its short, unthinking existence, a flicker of uncertainty passed through its neural net.

The pool… was dry.

Once brimming with nutrient-rich slurry, it now lay empty.

The entire chamber reeked of hunger.

…

In the Leviathan's Core Chamber—

Zzzrhhhk—

Bio-arc flashes lit the mind-node array. Psychic currents coursed through linked synapse pods.

Within one massive spore sac, surrounded by arcane living cables, lay the core of the Hive Mind—

A withered, ancient beast. Its eyes snapped open.

Its chest heaved. In the depth of its compound eyes—fear.

Yes.

This ancient intelligence, a relic of the galaxy's predatory past, was afraid.

Because of him.

Because of the Savior.

He had struck the Hive Mind with psychological blows far worse than any bio-plasma.

The Hive Mind now understood—this entire campaign had been a mistake.

From the war-torn sectors to the scorched Baal system, the shadow of the Savior had hung over the swarm like a sword.

Unyielding. Unrelenting.

It had left a trauma.

Its thoughts began to stir:

"The losses have become… unacceptable. The tendrils of the Great Devourer must retreat from this cursed domain."

Biological data streamed in—hunger surging across the swarm, biomass pools evaporating one by one.

Worse still—

In both space and on the ground, the Tyranids were losing. There was no hope of victory.

The Hive Mind gave the order to retreat.

It instructed the bioships to contract their lines, regroup, and prepare to withdraw from the Baal system through the warp-fold tunnels.

Yet the Hive Mind did not feel sorrow over the defeat.

For in truth, this war had not been without gain.

Throughout the long front and even the failed assaults on the central fortress, Lictors had consumed many elite humans—military commanders, tech adepts, even ecclesiarchs.

One had even consumed a member of the Savior's own Thunder Custodians.

Through their minds, the Hive Mind extracted vast amounts of data—information about the Savior's domain, and the Savior himself.

It learned of their command systems, tactics, doctrines—even rare technologies and philosophical constructs.

Knowledge never before seen in the galaxy.

It had digested all of it.

And from this nourishment, it would spawn something new.

Tyranids breed fast.

Once the bioships escaped, the Hive Mind would use this precious treasure to nurture a more evolved swarm.

One that would be unstoppable.

That is the terror of the Tyranids: they learn. They evolve.

The stronger the enemy—the stronger they become.

Leviathan had once been a mid-tier hive fleet.

But after consuming a vast Ork empire, it became one of the greatest threats in the galaxy.

Now, having tasted the Savior's realm and absorbed its secrets, it would become even more horrific.

"Perhaps," the Hive Mind mused, "I should thank the Savior. He has given me the opportunity to evolve."

The fear in its mind was gone—replaced by anticipation.

It had catalogued this hatred. It would remember.

When the swarm returned, it would show the Savior the true depth of the Great Devourer.

Because now—no one understood the Savior better than it did.

Among the hundreds of absorbed minds, the Thunder Custodian's had been especially valuable—revealing top-secret information about the Savior.

The Hive Mind stripped away the fluff—religion, loyalty, emotions—and reconstructed an accurate psychological profile of the man.

And what did it find?

A terrifying, cunning, utterly ruthless human.

It had learned everything.

Now it needed only time—to rebuild, to grow.

"Stay calm," the Hive Mind told itself. "Be patient. One day… we'll win."

Then—

A new signal jolted across the array.

"The Savior has left Baal. He is… approaching the Hive Core?"

HISSSSS—

The Hive Mind shrieked. The brain-node array flared. Its organic CPUs overheated.

Panic surged.

According to its analysis, the Savior was hyper-cautious, even timid. He refused to appear unless the odds were overwhelmingly in his favor.

And that was exactly what made him so terrifying.

Armed to the teeth—yet cautious. He always won. Always.

And now—he was coming here.

Which meant…

He had already won.

This wasn't the Hive Mind's imagination. This was real.

He wasn't just repelling the swarm.

He had decided—to end it.

Unthinkable!

Had it been any other human, the Hive Mind would not care.

But this was the Savior.

If he was making a move—everything was already in place.

Nothing could be worse.

If the Savior dared leave his fortress to personally strike… then there was no telling what horrifying tricks he'd prepared.

"RETREAT!

GET OUT NOW!!"

The Hive Mind screamed.

It no longer waited for the rest of its fleet.

It ordered the Tyranid navigation organism—the Narwhal Bioship—to lead the Leviathan Hive Core into warp compression immediately.

The rest of the swarm?

Expendable.

So long as the Hive Core escaped, the swarm could be reborn.

In the void—

The Narwhal Bioship surged to the front. The surrounding Tyranid ships formed a protective cordon. Its complex organs scanned for an escape point.

Space began to ripple. A horizontal funnel-shaped rift emerged.

A wormhole.

And then—suddenly—

BOOM—

A single, unimaginably powerful plasma warhead struck the rift—at a perfect, surgical angle.

KA-KRASH—

The plasma detonation blazed like a miniature star. The surrounding space twisted.

Tyranid ships shrieked as fire engulfed them.

When the light cleared—

"The jump failed?"

The Hive Mind stared in stunned silence.

Chunks of charred flesh floated in the void. The Narwhal Bioship had capsized, scorched, its innards twitching.

It had never seen this weapon before.

The Savior… had held something in reserve all along.

(End of Chapter)

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