As the transports drew closer, the finer details of the vessel became agonizingly clear.
High, vaulted gothic domes, soaring cathedral-like spires, massive arrays of macro-cannons and lance batteries, and the colossal, unmistakable heraldry of the Ultramarines.
"Is it truly the Macragge's Honour?!" The exclamation rippled through the Space Wolves and the Tech-Priests alike.
A peculiar, massive platform on the flank of the gargantuan ship had already docked with the hull. All the transports were directed to land on this platform first before transitioning into the ship itself. Though this redundant maneuver puzzled some, no one dwelled on it.
As the personnel and materiel were transferred onto the platform, the transports detached and returned to their respective Iron Men carriers.
At the Wolf Lord's signal, a vanguard consisting of Techmarines, Tech-Priests, and a squad of Space Wolves entered the ship to conduct a preliminary inspection.
The second wave followed; surviving mortal crewmen from the transport ships and battle barges. These ordinary humans had served as rear-guard logistics during the surface campaign; now that they had a ship, its operation would rely on their expertise. Under the guidance of the Tech-Priests, they would assume control of the vessel.
However, the discoveries that followed nearly paralyzed them with shock.
"Wolf Lord... this ship... these iron husks..."
"There was a reason those transports didn't drop us directly in the hangars."
The Techmarine who had entered first contacted the Wolf Lord, who was still waiting on the docking platform. His voice was thick with an unnameable tension.
"What is it? Speak," the Wolf Lord replied, his brow furrowed in confusion.
"We just crossed the boarding ramp. In the adjacent hangar, we found rows upon rows of Thunderhawk Transporters and Gunships, fully stocked. I accessed a nearby logic-engine to query the ship's manifests. The data is... staggering. Every weapon system is at maximum capacity. The armories even contain Cyclonic Torpedoes for Exterminatus protocols."
"The ship's Machine Spirit appears to be in a state of hibernation, or rather, we cannot find the presence of the Spirit at all. The ship feels... soulless."
"By the Allfather!"
The sudden cry of amazement over the vox caused the Wolf Lord to lose his patience.
"What has happened? Where are you? I am coming to your position now."
Receiving no immediate reply, the Wolf Lord led the rest of his sons through the access corridors, racing into the hull. Guided by the tracking systems in their power armor, they navigated the labyrinthine halls and soon found the Techmarines standing frozen at the entrance of a grand hall.
Then, the collective gasp of the newcomers joined the silence.
"By the Allfather's beard! How is this even possible?"
Before them lay a hall filled with dense clusters of small glass canisters, each containing a minute, preserved fragment of flesh. Automated machinery hummed as it moved through the rows, maintaining hundreds of these vessels.
Though only five Apothecaries were present, everyone in the room recognized the contents.
"There are at least two thousand Progenoid Glands here."
A Tech-Priest, snapping out of his stupor, pointed toward several massive, sealed metallic vats. "Those vats connect to the lower decks. If they are also full, there could be five thousand glands here, if not more."
No one could fathom the sheer magnitude of such a hoard. It was a fortune that could sustain a Chapter for millennia.
One Apothecary stepped forward, removing a transparent container from an automated stasis-suspension rack. He produced a specialized diagnostic tool, a device used to detect Warp-taint, genetic integrity, and viability.
The other Apothecaries followed suit, randomly sampling several glands for testing. The results were terrifyingly consistent.
"No signs of Chaos corruption. Viability is optimal. Genetic purity is... exceptionally high. They appear to be first-generation glands, direct from the Primarch's lineage. The only question is... how can there be so many?"
Axion had no idea of the psychological trauma his actions had inflicted.
He had previously seen the gene-seed vaults aboard the Dawn of Fire, which contained new stock synthesized from Guilliman's own biological data. Axion had recorded that data in its entirety.
Furthermore, during his visit to the Macragge's Honour to meet the crawl-proxy of Belisarius Cawl, Axion had not only subverted the proxy's hardware but also mapped the entire Gloriana-class battleship.
Ever since he had mastered various fabrication modules and nanite-tech, Axion's method of construction had reverted to the standards of the old Federation. When a machine was reconstructed, its internal inventory was generated simultaneously.
When a mechanical unit was fabricated, it was birthed in a state of full combat readiness. When a ship was printed, its hangars were filled with drones and strike craft, and its magazines were topped with munitions.
The copy of the Macragge's Honour received no less.
Axion had replicated the state of the original vessel as it was when he accessed its data, one-to-one. However, because he had never personally entered the actual gene-vaults of the real ship, he had reconstructed the laboratory equipment based on ship schematics and populated the inventory based on his own records of the genetic data he possessed.
The result was a vessel carrying a quantity of high-quality gene-seed so vast that it likely exceeded what could be produced if one were to literally grind Roboute Guilliman himself into a pulp.
Leaving the Apothecaries to continue their bewildered examination, the Wolf Lord led the remaining crew deeper into the ship. Following the detailed structural maps retrieved from the logic-engines, they visited the armories, the strategic reserves, and the Reclusium.
As reports filtered back, a collective numbness set in.
Thousands of suits of Astartes power armor and weapons were neatly racked in the armories. The warehouses were overflowing with ammunition and heavy ordnance. Even in the Reclusium, within rows of stasis fields, the ancient relics of the Ultramarines and various arcane weapons were all accounted for, not a single pedestal was empty.
The Wolves had no way of knowing if these relics were "authentic," but every stasis field held an item of immense power.
The only difference between this ship and the true Macragge's Honour was the absence of a specific, sealed chamber. Axion was not foolish enough to reconstruct that unstable Cawl-proxy. That thing was a liability; he had no desire to birth a "Chaos Intelligence" that might subvert the ship later. To avoid any future complications, he had simply bypassed that idiocy.
The Wolf Lord looked upon the vaults of relics and fell into a profound silence.
Meanwhile, feedback continued to pour in from other teams: they had found "mint-condition" Dreadnought chassis, pristine Knight suits, crates of factory-new Mark X Tacticus armor...
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