Chapter - 20

LATER...

Anastasia was standing in front of the several Diclonius she had recovered from Schicksal, under her orders, the Adeptus Mechanicus took them in one of Vers' medical facility.

During her escape, she had changed their DNA in order for them to not be homicidal towards normal people though she could only redirect them. She was now waiting for the results of a certain investigation she ordered to clarify a doubt of her.

"Omnissiah" A tech priest said as he slowly made its way towards the woman "Your doubts were truthful, the gene-seed of your mutated gene-stock is within the bodies of these women" he said as he looked at the unconscious living beings "The youngest of them are naturally developing the new organs as it's written on their DNA...Their body strength is superior to a normal human but isn't the same as the Astartes but that is probably due to the gene-seed being meant for male subjects...something like this is truly a blessing from the other Omnissiah himself, this has the potential of creating fully-fledged Astartes since birth...if only we could remove the taint of Chaos from the gene-seed..." Anastasia sighed at those words causing the tech priest to look at her with a puzzled expression "My Empress'?"

"As I feared, this means that on Terra there are humans who are giving birth to superhuman killing machines" She said causing the tech-priest to stumble back as he realized what danger this could lead to "Do we have someone good at stealth operations?"

"Yes, your highness" the tech-priest quickly said nodding "The crimson slayers have been trained by the other Primarchs prior to being sent here, those trained by Corvus Corax are familiar in the ways of the silent approach..."

"They are kept inside several Schicksal bases, take them away and bring them to Mars" Anastasia ordered before starting walking away "When they wake up, feed them and keep them busy...I shall depart for Orion's arm now"

The tech-priest nodded as Anastasia walked away.

Several weeks later, Orion's arm, UNSC Infinity

Thanks to the projects left by the people of the Vers Empire, the Adeptus Mechanicus were able to construct several communication satellites, which were placed by the mechanicus fleet while the Imperial Army made its way to the sector where their future allies were waiting to be awakened

The Eternal Protector along with its escort fleet was floating next to the smaller deactivated spaceships, the size difference was immense but the real contrast was the one between the high-gothic structure of the Imperial vessels and the slicker design of the smaller vessels.

Anastasia had already made her way through what Merlin told her was the flagship of the fleet, she was walking through the corridors of the long asleep vessel, beside her there was only Merlin who silently followed her inside what looked like a tomb.

"You took your sweet time Merlin" A female voice said as the illumination of the ship turned on

Anastasia looked at Merlin with a raised eyebrow as he just smirked and shrugged "What can I say BB? Finding the Primarch took quite a while" he replied "Can you please take us to her?"

There was a sigh in reply as the doors next to them opened itself.

"Who is she?" Anastasia whispered as both of her and the half incubus walked through the corridors and the various sections of the ship

"Well, she's one of the copies installed on these ships of a heroic spirit called BB, she's an advanced AI and she kept active the life supports of several installations during these agreed to join us in exchange of the protection of someone she holds dear, like this she gave access to the Moon Cell." Merlin explained while nodding "The UNSC fleets use AIs in their ships but many were those AIs that were corrupted by the honkai or by rampancy, the UNSC quickly found themselves out of manpower and out of AIs so I gave them copies of BB which, due to her nature, can't be corrupted. In secret, I took accords with the person you're going to meet, she understood that the war with the Honkai was a war that humanity couldn't win in that moment" Merlin explained as they finally reached their destination

Anastasia once again found herself in front of a pod, but unlike the one on Mars, this was still in a good shape. The Primarch slowly walked towards it and expelled its inhabitant. She had grey hair, was missing an arm and looked old but still pretty.

Merlin didn't waste any time and brought a wheelchair closer to the pod as he cast the same sleep he cast on the Empress of Vers on the woman before placing her on the wheelchair.

"Good Morning Doctor Halsey" BB said as the woman slowly opened her eyes "I'm sorry but due the time spent inside suspended animation your body needs some time to recover even with me giving it stimulations during these years"

"It's okay" Halsey replied before coughing a few times and then looking at Merlin and Anastasia "So...you're the Primarch?"

Anastasia nodded "Yes, my name is Anastasia Apocalypse" she replied

"Doctor Catherine Halsey...I would shake your hand but I'm missing an arm and I can't move my body" the doctor replied sighing

"It's okay, I understand doctor" Anastasia replied

"Is the Honkai still a problem?" the woman asked getting a nod from both "Then it's time to wake up the others..."

"Indeed" Merlin said as he started pushing Halsey's wheelchair.

"Did this guy told you what happened?" Catherine asked as she coughed a bit more.

Anastasia shrugged a bit "He explained something but nothing in particular"

"Well, it will take a while to get to the others so might as well tell you everything that happened" Halsey said before gazing at the empty corridors ahead "The human-covenant war, the flood and everything else had left everyone tired and then the Honkai showed up...they were different from everything we faced so far which always followed a scientific logic but not them, they just appeared out of nowhere, corrupted our AIs, zombified our soldiers. But even though the Emperor-Class Honkai were a pain to be dealt with, we managed to hold our own against them...until the Herrschers appeared, at that point physical laws were thrown out of the window. The Herrscher of Death killed entire cities before being stopped, the Herrscher of the void destroyed our ships but then...it appeared, a being bigger than planets with immense power..."

"The Honkai God" Anastasia muttered getting a nod from the doctor

"Yes, it cost us a lot but we barely managed to repel the Herrschers but it destroyed all life on Earth, the fleets, our colonies...The UNSC got desperate and all Spartan programs were re-opened once again, all the equipment that never got to see the light of the day was issued to all personnel in hoping to defeat it...It was at that time that this other science-defying entity appeared" Halsey said

"Wait...are you talking about me?" Merlin asked

"He arrived and started stating the obvious like 'This operation will lead to your slaughter' and so on" Catherine continued "And then told me about his little plan and...it looked better than getting my Spartans killed by the Honkai...The only problem were the remaining higherups of the UNSC who were convinced that we could win...I did something that will accompany me for the rest of my life...I ordered a group of a friend to kill them before they could get all of us killed...and they did" she said as looked out of the window where the Imperial ships were navigating next to the inactive UNSC vessels "I ordered to relocate where this man told me to and then when I made sure that everyone was ready with the help of BB...I went to sleep myself"

Without realizing, the group had reached their destination. It was a long corridor full of pods, in each of them had an armored figure inside of them.