Chapter 3: Huh? Black Bean Sprout and the creepy uncle are fighting!

“Mayday! Mayday! Aaaaaah—!”

The lead bomber slammed head-on into a spore mine.

Pilot and craft melted together in acid.

The auxiliary servitor tried to regain control.

But it too dissolved into pus in silence.

The spore mine ambush instantly downed two bombers.

The surviving one fled the field in panic, dragging a corroding hull back to the ark mechanicus.

“Yes! Got ‘em!”

In the virtual command pod, the white-haired loli and light ball high-fived.

Chen Xing watched the battered bomber limp away, eyes sparkling.

In this Warhammer 40K universe where every transmigrator did crunches in their graves, survival was uncertain.

But at least now she saw a glimmer of dawn.

Then a vast shadow eclipsed the distant sun.

The ark mechanicus Seeker cast a heavy pall over the planetary ring.

This Cult Mechanicus starship stretched 12 kilometers.

Chen Xing, who had finally grown to Blue Planet carrier size, was a mere shrimp before it.

Worse, the colossal vessel slowly rotated, aligning its broadside weapon arrays on her.

“Aaaaah, we’re screwed!”

Facing an unwinnable foe, Chen Xing and the system hugged and wailed.

Even reborn as a hive ship, must she crunch in this war-torn cosmos?

Next transmigration, anywhere but here!

Meanwhile, aboard Seeker, command bridge.

Biologis Magos Oberius sat enthroned.

Servo-skulls hovered around him, issuing orders to servitor crews.

Behind him, in an ornate shrine, a cogitator array ran silently.

Its machine spirit governed all, constantly optimizing the ark’s parameters for perfect operation.

“Kukuku,” Oberius stared at the hololith, chuckling low.

“This Tyranid bio-ship is truly unique. Record it—its behavioral logic differs entirely from known Tyranids. It evades danger instead of mindless devouring.”

Scritch-scratch!

A scribe-servitor embedded in a metal plinth began writing on parchment.

Its mechanical arm held a fine quill.

Line after line of pleasing Gothic script flowed—like hymns to the Omnissiah.

But as Oberius drowned in boundless curiosity, battle alarms blared.

Six entropy torpedoes struck Seeker’s void shields, blasting a breach.

Star-pulse cannon shells hammered the exposed hull, cratering district-sized holes.

Four translucent shadows skimmed the gas giant’s edge.

As they closed on Seeker, they launched assault pods.

They landed precisely in the damaged zone.

Seconds later, alarms screamed throughout Seeker.

Black-armored shadows appeared in corridors.

One servitor crewman hauled cargo, ignoring the hull-breaching pod—until a blade pierced its skull.

Yet its body kept executing prior orders.

“What is happening?” Oberius paled, checking internal hololiths.

“Damn it—Dark Eldar! Order Skitarii to assemble immediately. Prioritize gene-vaults and bio-labs—do not let them ruin my collection! Activate all weapon arrays, in the Omnissiah’s name! Exterminate these xenos!”

His body shook with rage.

Cables connected to his back quivered.

A servo-skull flew in, injecting a vial of red alchemical agent into a spinal port.

As crimson fluid coursed through, his mood steadied.

Pulse cannon beams carved the dark void, rippling blue against Seeker’s void shields.

Under holofield cloaks, Dark Eldar raiders stayed hidden.

Even the Mechanicus’s most advanced auspex could not lock them.

Macro-cannons and lance turrets fired nonstop.

Torpedoes launched like pocket change.

But aimless barrages did nothing beyond thrilling Dark Eldar captains.

Pirate-Captain Kaelas the Threadweaver stood on Paradox Venomblade’s command bridge.

He wore ornate black armor, every detail a masterpiece.

On the holoscreen shrouding the bridge, Mechanicus fire lit the void.

Holofields shielded his ship, evading nearly all Mechanicus sensors.

He piloted through the storm, striking with pulse and star-pulse cannons.

His Cabal elites had boarded the ark mechanicus.

They reveled in bloody slaughter.

The thought boiled Kaelas’s blood.

He licked his lips with a serpentine tongue, twisting into a pleased grin.

“Pain! Rend! Harvest souls! For Commorragh!”

He raised a fist, claiming the ark mechanicus as prize!

Stray shells and beams struck the ring, carving circular voids.

Mechanicus and Dark Eldar fought to mutual oblivion.

But on the ring’s far side, Chen Xing suffered collateral hell.

She swung her two broken psionic tendrils, propelling her hull behind ice and rubble as far as possible.

She refused to eat stray fire—star-pulse or macro-shells would shred her.

Aaaaah, must I crunch in this damned universe too?

Thinking of dying before debut, Chen Xing shed two noodle-wide tears of grievance.

Yet compared to box-landing or underhive-spawn transmigrators, she felt lucky.

At least she was a shipgirl with a system.

Though a Tyranid hive shipgirl, and the system a wrongly-bound female-frequency one—useless.

Sigh, the transmigration god was blatantly digging her grave.

[Host, host, 2 o’clock—what’s that?]

The system’s voice snapped her from melancholy.

She looked.

Visual neural bundles swiveled hull eyes.

A small moonlet, roughly 300 kilometers diameter, cruised the ring.

Its mass cleared a pocket, leaving rippled wakes behind.

Chen Xing instantly grasped the hint.

She could hide beneath it, using it as cover to escape the battlefield!

With that, she thrashed her tail psionic tendrils like an Olympic swimmer, racing toward the moonlet.

She soon matched pace.

Then Chen Xing flipped her hull, pressing flush beneath it.

Tentacles and abdominal feet clamped tight.

Both sides fought blind with rage.

No one noticed a small moonlet drifting away.