After two hours on the road, the "Underhive Joyride" finally ground to a halt at the edge of a field of ruins.
The twin engines cut out, and the cooling fins emitted a rhythmic crackling sound as they shed heat. Though the vehicle was hideous—lacking paint and covered in weld scars—it was incredibly tough. On the way here, it had smashed through several waist-high concrete walls without sustaining so much as a dent.
Andy pushed open the heavy armored door and jumped down. The air was thick with a strange scent he had never encountered before: a faint, sweet aroma accompanied by the sharp tang of ionized ozone.
Gamma-9 followed close behind with several guards, clutching his autogun tightly, his single eye darting around frantically.
Fifty meters ahead, a Helios Group transport vehicle lay overturned in a massive crater. The front of the vehicle was completely crumpled, clearly the result of a high-speed impact after losing control. This vehicle was high-spec, featuring a fully enclosed cargo bay and cockpit glass made of thickened bulletproof polymer. Now, however, the heavy cargo doors were twisted and deformed, and a puddle of purple substance was seeping from the gaps.
Andy approached. The liquid on the ground was highly viscous and bubbling slightly. As it touched the rubble, the stones didn't corrode; instead, their surfaces became coated in a layer of shimmering crystals.
"By the Omnissiah..." Gamma-9 gasped from behind. "What happened here?"
Andy walked straight to the cockpit. The door had fallen off, revealing three purple corpses inside—or rather, three bodies forcibly fused together into a mass of crystal. These unfortunate souls wore Helios Group worker uniforms and sealed respirators, but their clothing had been shredded from the inside. Countless sharp, hexagonal purple crystal prisms were erupting from their flesh.
It wasn't just on the surface. Andy could see that one driver's eyeballs were gone, his sockets filled with clusters of purple crystal. His arm bones had completely crystallized into a translucent texture, with veins and nerves clearly visible, frozen inside the crystal.
Gamma-9 took one look and nearly retched. He backed away, gagging, his gun hand trembling.
"Heresy! This must be heretical sorcery!" Gamma-9 shouted angrily. "Is this a plague from Nurgle? Or the Chaos magic of Slaanesh? Don't go near it, Lord Archmagos! This thing is cursed—it turns the souls of men into stone!"
Andy didn't back down. His electronic eyes were scanning frantically. As an Iron Man, he had no room for superstition; he only cared about data. Red laser beams swept across the eerie crystals as the STC analysis module ran at full power.
If it were Warp sorcery, there would be psychic fluctuations or radiation residues that defied the laws of physics. But the results left Andy momentarily stunned. The readings were clean—excessively clean.
[Sample Analysis: Carbon-based biological tissue (reconfigured)]
[Primary Components: Silicate lattice, carbonized crystals]
[Abnormal Radiation Residue: None]
[Warp Reaction: None]
[Conclusion: Cellular-level physical phase change caused by prolonged exposure to a high-energy molecular reconfiguration field.]
It appeared that the molecular bonds of these three men had been forcibly shattered by an extremely powerful energy field and then rearranged according to a different set of rules. Their carbon atoms had been jammed into a silicate crystal lattice.
Andy reached out with a hydraulic mechanical hand and snapped a crystal off the driver's shoulder. Snap. It was incredibly hard.
"Well, the Helios Group is certainly playing with some fancy toys," Andy muttered, holding the crystal up to his eye.
This technology was definitely not something the current Imperium or the Adeptus Mechanicus could master. While Andy didn't deny that their basic materials science and biotechnology were advanced, he was certain they didn't understand matter reconfiguration at this microscopic level.
To put it simply, the current Imperial tech tree—whether it involved massive Titans or gene-enhanced Space Marines—still operated within the macro-範疇 (scope). It was about processing and assembling existing matter. Microscopic reconfiguration, however, didn't care about forging techniques; it reached directly into the subatomic level, dismantled protons and electrons, and rearranged them as needed. Understanding this required terrifying knowledge of quantum physics and Unified Field Theory.
For the modern Mechanicus, such knowledge was "Dark Taboo," long forgotten. They struggled to maintain a simple plasma coil; how could they be expected to understand kneading carbon atoms into silicon crystals? This wasn't just a technological gap; it was a civilizational cognitive chasm.
Just as Andy was wondering what this "Molecular Reconfiguration Field" actually was...
Ding!
A crisp notification tone exploded deep within his logic core. The radar map in the upper right corner of his vision, previously dark, now showed a golden dot flashing wildly. The signal was powerful—and it was within thirty kilometers.
Andy's frame shuddered. That direction... it was the exact location of the Helios Group's new sealed factory!
[Homologous signal detected...]
[Signal Signature Match: STC Standard Template Construct - Fragment - Matter Molecular Reconfigurator]
[Status: Operational (Parameters severely drifted / Safety thresholds failed)]
Seeing those lines, Andy's processor nearly overheated.
A Matter Molecular Reconfigurator! This was an industrial holy grail of the Golden Age!
In that era of infinite resources, humanity had invented this device to solve waste management and raw material recovery. Its principle was simple yet domineering: regardless of whether you threw in scrap iron, plastic, rocks, or domestic waste, the internal high-energy field would strip the matter down to its atomic state and reassemble it into pure raw materials based on a preset template. You put in a ton of trash; you got out a ton of pure iron, copper, or carbon.
It was essentially the front-end processor for a universal "Matter Printer"!
Everything clicked for Andy. Why Helios had come to the Underhive to build a factory. Why they insisted on total secrecy. Why the drivers had turned into those crystal monstrosities.
Helios had dug up this STC fragment—the Reconfigurator. But they didn't have the "Black Box" control permissions, nor did they understand how to regulate that terrifying energy field. The "Safety thresholds failed" warning told the whole story: the radiation field had leaked.
Normally, the Reconfigurator had a forcefield shield to keep operators safe. These people had likely dismantled the shield generator or simply failed to repair it. Consequently, the entire factory was flooded with reconfiguration radiation that turned people into crystal. A normal human entering would find their cells crystallizing within minutes before dying in agony.
That was why they needed Genestealers! Those purple-skinned hybrids possessed the insane adaptive genes of the Tyranids. Their cellular regeneration was fast enough to withstand the radiation for much longer. The Helios executives were using the Genestealers as expendable labor, forcing them to operate the machine until they died, only to be dragged out and replaced.
As for this transport, it was likely carrying a "special product" or a few infected workers who weren't quite dead yet, heading to the upper levels for research. Mid-trip, the infection had hit a tipping point, the passengers lost control, and the vehicle crashed.
"What a waste! A complete and utter waste!!"
Andy wanted to curse. Such a precise, magnificent creation of the Golden Age, and these people treated it like what? A man-eating monster? A sorcerous altar to produce disgusting purple crystals?
They had no idea of its true value. With this thing, Andy wouldn't need a blast furnace for steel. He could just shovel the surrounding ruins and trash into the machine, and out would come aerospace-grade aluminum alloy!
This was the ultimate farming artifact!