









Warhammer 40000



Adeptus Mechanicus - Ark Mechanicus



Commission for a client via E-mail.





Speranza











”Multiple firing solutions have presented themselves to me, archmagos. I am unable to ascertain their source or the nature of the weapon systems, but they all have a lock on the alien vessel.” Great Resolution 14000 x 9000 pixels Warhammer 40000Adeptus Mechanicus - Ark MechanicusCommission for a client via E-mail. Speranza”Multiple firing solutions have presented themselves to me, archmagos. I am unable to ascertain their source or the nature of the weapon systems, but they all have a lock on the alien vessel.”

..

A vast gun tube rose from the angled planes of the Ark Mechanicus like the great menhir of some tribal place of worship being lifted into place. Power readouts, the likes of which had rarely been seen in the Imperium since before the wars of Unity, bloomed within the weapon and a pair of circling tori described twisting arcs around the tapered end of the unveiled barrel.

Elements of the technology that had gone into their construction would have been familiar to some of the more esoteric branches of black hole research and relativistic temporal arcana, but their assembled complexity would have baffled even the Fabricator General on Mars. Pulsing streams of purple-hued anti-matter and graviton pumps combined in unknowable ways in the heart of a reactor that drew its power from the dark matter that lurked in the spaces between the stars. It was a gun designed to crack open the stately leviathans of ancient void war, a starship killer that delivered the ultimate coup de grace.

Without any command authority from the bridge of the Speranza, the weapon unleashed a silent pulse that covered the distance to the Starblade at the speed of light.

But even that wasn’t fast enough to catch a ship as nimble as one built by the bonesingers of Biel-Tan and guided by the prescient sight of a farseer. The pulse of dark energy coalesced a hundred kilometres off the vessel’s stern and a miniature black hole exploded into life, dragging in everything within its reach with howling force. Stellar matter, light and gravity were crushed as they were drawn in and destroyed, and even the Starblade’s speed and manoeuvrability weren’t enough to save it completely as the secondary effect of the weapon’s deadly energies brushed over its solar sail. Chrono-weaponry shifted its target a nanosecond into the past, by which time the subatomic reactions within every molecule had shifted microscopically and forced identical neutrons into the same quantum space.