"This is really... so basic!"
Pausing for a moment, Datch picked up a strange-looking gun. It was the mission reward he'd just received—a teleportation gun from Rick.
The gun looked homemade, cobbled together using scrap from the garage and scavenged electronics—a mere toy. On the grip, there was a large, round button at the top. In front of it, a small screen glowed dimly, displaying a constant stream of unintelligible characters and what appeared to be coordinates.
Most notable was the clear glass chamber embedded in the center of the barrel. Inside swirled a thick, dark green liquid, bubbling as if alive.
Out of curiosity, Datch peered closer and realized: this liquid was none other than Rick's infamous Quantum Transport Solution, the very cause of many of his universe's disasters. There were three grades—gold, green, and blue. Blue was the lowest, used by Rick in his earliest teleport gun prototypes, and was unstable. Green was stable, but could only transmit within known ranges. Gold, however, allowed inputting of unknown coordinates, teleporting directly to them.
Datch toyed with the sandpaper-textured circular trigger, rubbing it absentmindedly for a moment. Then, with a sudden urge, he pressed the button down hard.
Buzz— The gun vibrated violently in his hand, like gripping a freshly-awakened metallic beetle. At the same time, his minimap automatically expanded to maximum size, projected in midair before his eyes.
On the map, his current position and an abundance of possible destinations, both lit and not, were displayed as countless points of light. His attention shifted slightly as his gaze fixed on a familiar coordinate: the strategic command center of the Macragge's Honour.
As he focused, a notification popped up next to the minimap:
[Target coordinates locked. Estimated teleport fluid consumption: 0.17%]
Simultaneously, the rapid scrolling of characters on the teleport gun's small display suddenly froze, and a series of complex spatial and time-space coordinate parameters was shown, precise and clear.
"This should do it."
Datch squeezed the trigger on what looked to be a hand-made toy.
Pfft— SHHH!
There was no deafening explosion—just an odd, almost comical hissing, like liquid forcibly compressed and expelled at high speed. A strange bright green substance, constantly writhing and changing shape, burst from the barrel. It didn't seem like energy. Instead, it resembled living slime, rapidly falling to the floor.
The moment it touched the ground, the slime flattened and expanded outwards. Within seconds, a perfect circular portal about two meters in diameter had formed, rimmed with dazzling green light, the interior a swirling vortex of green liquid.
"Just like in the videos."
Datch chuckled, then stepped directly into the swirling green light without hesitation. As his figure vanished, the portal on the floor collapsed inward as if wiped clean, disappearing without a trace.
…
At the same moment—far away, in the strategic command center of the Macragge's Honour, separated from Noble Discipline by half a solar system, Guilliman stood before a vast projection of the starmap, along with Archmagos Cawl and others. They were discussing optimization plans for an expeditionary logistics outpost.
Suddenly, a spinning green portal of light appeared without warning, half a meter above the gold-plated, reinforced floor at the center of the room.
"What is that!?"
Guilliman immediately sensed something was wrong, instinctively going on guard. The Hand of Dominion flared to life; a storm of explosive power at the ready. His other hand rested on the hilt of the Emperor's Sword, ready to draw at any moment. The others raised their guard as well, training their gaze on the green glowing hole.
In the next instant, a figure clad in brand-new MK-X power armor tumbled out of the portal—not exactly gracefully. With a dull thud, the newcomer landed soundly on both feet. It was none other than Datch—supposedly on his way to Hydra Fort with the Third Expeditionary Fleet!
Guilliman's eyes went wide in disbelief he couldn't hide.
Guilliman: "Nameless One?! Weren't you supposed to depart aboard the Noble Discipline?"
His Primarch's gaze swept over Datch's back, as the green portal rapidly vanished.
Guilliman: "And...what is that green spatial portal? How did you directly teleport inside, bypassing the void shield of Macragge's Honour?"
The Imperium of Man did possess warp-based teleport technology. With subspace interference and void shields enabled, such incursions could be intercepted, and the Oracle System would detect and warn of such events. Since a crisis with the Fifth Fleet, the void shields on Macragge's Honour had been left constantly online.
Yet this Nameless One ignored the Queen Glory-class void shields entirely, teleporting in without even triggering an alarm. Even that alone was astonishing enough to overturn everything they'd known. Let alone that the Noble Discipline, at that moment, was near the very edge of the solar system: the distance between the two warships was far too great for any short-range warp jumps.
Archmagos Cawl, nearby, was equally shocked. The instant the portal appeared, the advanced bionic eyes in his heavily modified skull targeted the dispersing green energy, activating all his built-in scanning arrays at full priority and power.
In a flash, a tidal wave of feedback data flooded his logic processing core:
[Warning: Non-standard spatial curvature folding detected. Curvature Constant: Undefined (Overflow).]
[Warning: Energy signature doesn't match any known warp engines or teleport patterns. Entropy pattern: reversible.]
[Warning: Local causality discontinuity detected, duration: 0.0007 seconds. Minor, but present.]
[Warning: Unknown energetic substance composition... analysis failed. Between "liquid light", conceptual fluid, and pure energy... Contradicts accepted physics. No database entry found.]
[Logic core load rising: 97%... 98%... 99.5%... Error! Overload protection triggered; several analysis threads force-terminated.]
Scarlet alerts filled Cawl's field of vision. Just observing the data, not to mention reverse-engineering it, threatened to overload his core modules. The great sage's titanic body shivered, and when he spoke next, his voice was full of shock and incredulity:
Cawl: "Impossible...how can such elegance exist? This is a teleportation that overturns the laws of both physics and subspace."
"No traces of warp energy pollution, and energy consumption is absurdly low!"
"This surpasses not only my database, but the entirety of mankind's current scientific understanding! By the Omnissiah—this is just... utterly beyond!"
This ancient sage—who once unearthed innumerable relics from the Age of Darkness and Technology, created Primaris Space Marines, and revived the Primarchs—now felt like a child collecting shells by the shore, mistaken in thinking a handful of shells meant mastery of the sea, ignorant of the ocean's bottomless depths.
Cawl (thoughts): All of this must be the Omnissiah's doing. No matter what glory awaits me in future, I must never lose humility. There is so much more to learn.
Meanwhile, in the Throne Room on Terra, the Golden Throne shook—the Emperor's psychic output soaring more than tenfold in an instant. Machine-sages in charge of maintenance were bewildered. Why had it spiked so suddenly? Failed to perform the rites properly?
The truth: the Emperor had always kept a close watch on Primarchs and Nameless. Upon seeing Datch's demonstration of instantaneous teleportation, the Emperor nearly leapt from the Golden Throne.
That teleport gun, that opened portal—teleporting in an instant from Noble Discipline at the Solar System's edge all the way into Macragge's Honour. And all of it without entering the warp, meaning this "Nameless One's" gun could achieve warp-level teleportation through some other means... a weapon not reliant on subspace, nor even the Webway.
If that technology could be acquired, why bother repairing the broken Webway Tunnel at all? Just build portals everywhere—or give everyone a teleport gun—and let the galaxy's villains eat their words.
The Emperor's vision of the possibility for mankind's rise nearly sent a destructive psychic wave ripping through the warp itself. He forced his emotions down, knowing just a stray thought of his could cause storm tides in the sea of souls, making Imperial navigation even harder. He looked away—though he knew he must carefully plan how to persuade this Nameless One to hand over such unique teleport tech.
…
Inside the strategy chamber of Macragge's Honour.
Datch glanced around at the strategic rune-sigils blinking on the walls, and the massive starmap hologram showing the Indomitus Crusade force deployment. He saw as well Guilliman's shock, and Cawl blinking wildly as logic cores reached critical load, along with dumbstruck Imperial generals and officials. All eyes were on him. They clearly feared the power of the teleport gun—it passed through Queen Glory's mighty defenses as if they were nothing.
Although at first surprised, the war room's officers quickly bombarded Datch with questions. He ignored them. Why waste time explaining to NPCs with no quests?.
Datch: "This really is amazing."
He looked down at the strange teleport gun, nodding in satisfaction. As expected of Rick—quality guaranteed. The whole process was seamless, taking less than three seconds to teleport him right into the flagship command center of the Imperial Regent.
Guilliman stepped forward: "Nameless One, can you explain this—?"
Datch, without answering, simply raised the gun again and pressed the button at the floor.
Pftt— SHHH!
The familiar, eerie sound echoed, and that bright green strange substance burst out, opening a second circular hole in the ground. Light and shadow poured within. Under the watchful eyes of Guilliman, Cawl, and high Imperial officials, before they could react, Datch simply stepped forward and disappeared perfectly into the green vortex.
As soon as he entered, the hole shrank and disappeared, the floor clean as if nothing had ever happened—leaving the war room plunged into dead silence, as if time itself stopped.
Guilliman stood staring blankly at the floor. His Primarch-level mind could command galactic-scale strategies, unravel countless conspiracies and epic plans. Yet at this moment, understanding what had just happened in those short ten seconds was almost impossible.
How on earth did this Nameless One teleport instantly, without the warp? Cawl and his peers stared wordlessly at the spot where Datch had vanished. How long would it be until teleportation could be this convenient, without going through the warp?
It took hours for everyone to recover from the shock and return to strategic planning, but the aftershocks of the incident would not end there.
After the meeting, Guilliman called Cawl for a secret conference, requesting a special Mechanicus team be prepared to study the principle of Nameless's teleportation ability. To teleport without the warp: even scratching the surface of that tech could change the fate of the Imperium.
…
Datch returned to the battleship Noble Discipline via teleport gun and put it away. The gun required teleport fluid. To recharge, he needed to exchange points earned from completing tasks—waste was not an option.
Datch: "We've got a long haul to our destination. Anyone up for a game of cards?"
He strolled deep into the ship, skipping and hopping, looking for crewmates enjoying downtime, card games, or drinks.
…
Elsewhere, Lady Cassandra, commander of the Third Expeditionary Fleet, was entirely unaware of these events. She sat atop Noble Discipline's command bridge, ordering the fleet to begin transition to Mandeville Point: the only spot where the entire fleet could enter the warp.
Under the protection of the Sisters of Silence, the fleet's navigators survived without incident as they plunged the ships through the warp. The Third Fleet reached Voles Node World, resupplied, then set off again toward their destination—Hydra Fort.
…
Read advanced chapters at patreon.com/AbsoluteCode