By the ti midday rations were distributed in New Kato, the construction of the orbital shipyard had begun.
Massive drone legions mobilized, their piston-limbs hauling tonnage beyond human limits. Colossal industrial lifters transported entire landmasses of alloyed tal toward the staging area.
On the surface, the project seed insane—a shipyard, not just built in planetary orbit, but designed to move with the fleet.
It would not be a static dock, but a war engine—
An orbital citadel that could fabricate and repair capital ships in the midst of battle.
This was not Imperial doctrine.
This was sothing else entirely.
And if the chanicus ever learned of it, they would burn entire worlds to claim its secrets.
....
The tal comprising Tyrone Hive could be alloyed with other planetary minerals, producing incredibly durable materials.
Even the people of Tyrone Hive did not fully comprehend what they lived upon.
The Hive was ancient beyond record, its tallic foundations older than the Imperium itself.
So whispered that Tyrone had once been a world-spanning city, long before the Imperium’s rise.
When the Emperor first set foot upon its soil, the Hive’s structure had already been nearly identical to its present form.
It had endured.
It had persisted.
It had never fallen.
Until now.
....
Qin Mo stood atop a hovering transport drone, surveying the vast sea of alloyed tal that had been gathered.
He closed his eyes, calculating.
The shipyard hull would span over 100 kiloters.It needed to house Matter Printers capable of simultaneously producing capital ships.It required Dinsional Stabilizers, capable of sustaining a Dinsional Drive—an FTL system far beyond Imperial technology.If Qin Mo could acquire Gloriana-class Battleship schematics, this shipyard could manufacture three 28-kiloter-long warships at once.The outer hull needed Void Shielding, capable of withstanding planetary-scale bombardnts.
This was not just a shipyard.
It was a fortress.
A monunt to the impossible.
....
Qin Mo activated his internal comm-link.
"You're going to shape the entire shipyard hull alone?"
Gray’s voice crackled through the channel, laced with disbelief.
〈"Didn't you say my strength would only increase over ti?"〉
Qin Mo ignored Gray and instead reached out to Shapeshifter, his enigmatic, semi-conscious ally.
〈"When did I say that?"〉
A faint, distorted voice replied—glitching, fractured.
〈"Apologies… My consciousness is… unstable…"〉
〈"Doesn’t matter."〉 Qin Mo dismissed the excuse.
〈"I called to ask for advice."〉
〈"No advice."〉 Shapeshifter's tone turned irritated.
〈"Just build it. I’m busy with sothing important—don’t bother unless necessary."〉
Qin Mo exhaled, then added:
〈"Fine. But before you go—next ti you give a prophecy, be specific.
Don’t just say ‘a Chaos worshiper’—tell which god they serve, what their capabilities are, and when they’ll act.
I want a structured report, like a data log. Understood?"〉
A brief pause.
〈"...Understood…"〉
The link cut out.
Qin Mo smiled faintly.
Then he raised his hand—
And began reshaping reality.
....
He did not need to think.
He did not need to hesitate.
The knowledge of the universe was written into his very being.
He extended his awareness across the entire construction zone.
He felt everything.
The tal beneath the earth, the hovering drones, the hauling transports, the piles of alloyed material stacked for assembly.
All of it existed within his grasp.
His power unfolded.
Gravity warped.Solid tal liquefied into a flowing river of molten silver.Structures collapsed—not from destruction, but from being deconstructed atom by atom.Raw elents purified themselves, fusing at a molecular level into sothing stronger than ceramite, denser than adamantium.
No impurities. No weaknesses.
This was not fire-forged alloy.
This was cosmic tallurgy.
The laws of physics themselves obeyed his will.
....
The tallic tides surged, forming the shipyard’s skeletal fra.
He manipulated heat and energy at will—pockets of invisible fire flickered, altering the atomic bonds of the material.
Light bent strangely around the colossal structure, as if unsure how to behave in the presence of such power.
So areas were pitch black, absorbing all illumination.
Others glowed with eerie brilliance, as if radiating ghostly starlight.
The drones' sensors malfunctioned, their optics unable to process the shifting environntal anomalies.
Gravity was nullified.
The shipyard’s skeletal fra floated mid-air—a colossus in the making.
This gravitational distortion would remain permanent—
Until the shipyard was completed and transported to orbit,
It would never touch the ground.
And at the center of it all—
Qin Mo stood motionless, eyes glowing with crackling blue energy, molding reality itself.
....
For a brief mont, he saw sothing else.
A figure standing amidst the void of space.
Planets floated around it, yet they did not orbit a sun.
They simply existed, motionless, untouched by gravitational force.
At first, Qin Mo thought it defied reason.
But then—
He understood.
The Star Gods were not beings bound by physics.
They were physics.
They did not observe reality.
They defined it.
....
The maelstrom of cosmic energy settled.
The anomalies faded.
Only then did Qin Mo see what he had created.
And he realized—
He had made a mistake.
The shipyard was not a traditional dockyard.
It was a colossal, black sphere, spanning 100 kiloters in diater.
A perfectly symtrical construct, so flawless it could serve as a scientific reference model for absolute geotric perfection.
Qin Mo stared at it for a mont.
Then—
He shrugged.
"It’ll do."
He turned away, completely unbothered.
If anything—
This might be even better.
It was no longer just a shipyard.
It was a fortress, a command center, a monolithic war platform.
A Doomsday Moon.
As he left, the drones marched inside, their directives clear.
The internal construction would begin imdiately.
And soon—
Tyrone Hive would no longer just be a Hive city.
It would be a capital.
A rising power.
And for the first ti in a long history—
The Imperium would not be the only Human force in the void.
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