A single dropship screamed through the turbulent skies of Crucible; its surface still searing hot from its plunge from orbit. It was an older model - a [i]Dremyte-class[/i] troop carrier - with the xeno-skull sigil of the 51st Tagma emblazoned upon its hull. The dropship, upon reaching a certain altitude and atmospheric density, unfolded its winglets from within recessions in the hull and began its glide through the ashen skies of Crucible.

Captain Brelgam Narmassus stood inside the cockpit, overseeing the drop over the pilot's shoulder. Through the windshield of the cockpit, Captain Narmassus surveyed the dismal hellscape that was the horizon of Crucible. Against the perpetually-overcast skies, massive thunderheads roiled in the distance. Constant flashes of bright blue lightning from within the sheer wall of black stormclouds gave proof to the intensity of the approaching storm. Below the clouds, a desolate wasteland of soot and black glass rolled on endlessly to the horizon. Directly below the dropship, stormwater churned violently through muddy ravines that coursed their way through the ruins of some xeno city that had been melted from orbit when the Imperial Authority had originally glassed this planet a decade ago. The half-collapsed structures directly below unnerved the Captain. Despite the fact that the indigenous race that built these structures had long been exterminated, it was quite possible that some tribe of degenerates had taken residence in the ruins since then.

"Open the doors," Captain Narmassus ordered. The pilot acknowledged with the flip of a switch on his console. The cabin depressurized with a violent hiss as the side doors of the dropship swung open. Crucible's cold, humid air howled violently through the cabin, causing the Captain's red cape to flutter wildly and prompting the ten legionaries under his command to fix air masks over their noses and mouths. Terraformation of Crucible progressed at a geologic rate, and while the planet's atmosphere was now somewhat breathable, strenuous activities such as combat necessitated self-contained air supplies. The soldiers moved toward the open doors and with rehearsed efficiency drew down pintle-mounted laser cannons from the ceiling  and pointed them out the doors toward the ruins below.

"There should be no colonists out this far," the Captain declared as he affixed his own mask. "Kill anything that moves."

In the years following the Imperial Authority's extermination of the indigenous aliens, warlords and pirates had discovered Crucible and settled within its ruined xeno structures. The 51st Tagma had rooted out the large pirate settlements and executed the pirate warlords, but even five anni after the initial crackdown bands of pirates still remained in the unsettled reaches of this world. With their starships confiscated or destroyed and a constant Imperial Authority presence in orbit, those remaining pirates could no longer strike out against worlds on the Empire's fringes. Though they were stranded on Crucible, remnant pirates still posed a threat. Marauders on speederbikes would sometimes cross the ash plains to pillage small colonial settlements, and the occasional potshot from portable anti-orbital artillery pieces suggested that those pirates that remained were well armed and dangerous. And so when a recent orbital scan detected a significant energy anomaly on Crucible's surface emanating from within a dense cluster of xeno ruins, the possibility of the cause being pirate activity necessitated investigation by forces of the 51st.

Captain Narmassus had been dispatched to these sorts of events enough to know it was probably nothing. Often, it was some alien construct running on auxiliary battery power sending out a sort of warning signal or something equally benign. Those pirates that had survived five anni under Imperial Authority occupation knew enough to keep a low profile. But it was not inconceivable that the energy source might be pirates charging large anti-orbital artillery for an attack on the [i]Lucifer[/i]. As such, the Captain and his cohort of legionnaires were ready to eliminate anything they encountered with ruthless efficiency.

The [i]Dremyte[/i] skirted the leading edge of the thunderstorm. Even over the sound of the wind screaming through the cabin, the legionnaires could feel each tremendous thunderclap in their chests. Narmassus frowned as the billowing thunderheads passed by the open door to his left. Storms on the planet Crucible were exceptionally dangerous; their investigation would have to be hurried lest they be caught in the middle of the tempest.

Through the cockpit, the destination had come into view. A ruined xeno city, with towers half-collapsed in on themselves, radiated out from a giant dome-like fortification that must have once been the city's center. The dome was half-destroyed by an orbital laser strike that had reduced much of the structure to a crater of slag. Despite the extensive damage, much of the fortification was still more-or-less intact, and a large elevator shaft descended far underground from an exposed stretch of the ground floor.

"That's the source of the energy anomaly," the pilot declared, tapping on a screen on his console that flashed wildly before pointing out to the yawning pit. "I'm getting the strongest signal coming from that opening in the ground."

"Then put us down over the pit," the Captain ordered.

"Legionnaires!" The Captain barked as he seized his laser carbine from a rack at the front of the cabin. "Check your jetpacks! Medar, Verim, stay with the the vessel and man the laser cannons! Everyone else, prepare to jump!"

"Aye, Captain!" The legionnaires acknowledged in unison.

The dropship had descended within the ruined alien towers, now just a hundred meters above the rubble and cinder-strewn thoroughfares of the city. Lightning flashes reflected against the burnished metal of the xeno-built buildings as black stormclouds churned menacingly above. As it approached the dome, the pilot pulled back on his joystick, pushing the dropship's snout up toward the sky and slowing the glide to a hover. Captain Narmassus peered out the doors, waiting to see the elevator shaft appear directly below. In the middle of a floor covered with thick rubble, the vertical shaft appeared ten meters beneath his feet, opening into a deep, black abyss.

"Now!" The Captain barked. "Jump!"

Feet-first, Captain Narmassus leapt from the dropship into the darkness of the pit. The red cape fluttered over his head as he and eight of his legionnaires dropped into the blackness. Twenty meters down, the Captain could just barely make out the floor in the dim light from above. Just moments before he would have hit the ground, a jet of fire coughed forth from the thrusters of his back-mounted jetpack, casting flashes of orange-red light on the walls of the vertical shaft. His careening plunge slowed to a gentle descent. The Captain's cape fluttered down behind his back as his boots met Crucible's surface for the first time. His fellow legionnaires touched down around him, riding plumes of fire down to the ground. In the absence of the hiss of their jetpacks, thunder rumbled in the distance as the roar of the dropship's engines faded into the distance. They were alone in unfriendly territory now.

"Move deliberately but do not tarry," Narmassus said to his legionnaires as he lit the flashlight on his carbine. "Find the source of this anomaly quickly that we may leave this miserable place that much sooner."

The Captain led the cohort down a corridor radiating out from the elevator shaft. Their bootsteps echoed through the hallways of the alien bunker, shadows danced across the walls cast by the flashlights of their carbines. Every creak or drop of water from the ceiling froze the imperial soldiers in their tracks, prompting them to take firing positions against an imagined ambush by pirates. Each time, it was a false alarm. There was no living thing to be found in this ruin.

At the far end of the corridor, however, the soldiers saw a light. A sickly-green glow against the absolute blackness of the ruin. They approached cautiously, gathering on either side of a bulkhead door opened wide for some inexplicable reason. The legionnaires burst forth, scanning the chamber beyond with their carbines for any sign of movement. When they saw no evidence of any living being, they surveyed this new chamber more thoroughly. It was a large rotunda, whose outer walls were lined with a dense network of alien conduit. Dense coils of conduit and umbilical tubes gurgling with strange, liquid ran from the outer walls and ceiling of the rotunda to the source of that pale, green glow. Situated atop a pillar of coiled conduit and umbilical was a perfect sphere of silvery-gray metal perhaps a meter and a half in diameter. From some source the legionnaires could not discern, a pale green glow pulsed rhythmically from the sphere, giving the impression of a breathing creature.

"By Ankh-Sah, what [i]is[/i] that?" One of the legionnaires exclaimed.

"A xeno construct," the Captain declared, his eyes fixated upon the glowing sphere. "I have seen many in my time on this world. The indigenous savages built many such devices, but I have never seen one like this. Something about this one is different, but I do not know why. This one unnerves me."

The Captain lowered his carbine, and drew closer to the construct. The machine seemed to respond in kind. The rate of its pulsing glow grew faster, as if excited by the approaching man. The eyes of the legionnaires widened as they witnessed the structure seeming to react."

"Is it alive?"

"No," Captain Narmassus affirmed, running his fingers against the conduit coils running up the base of the structure. "It's a machine. It must be."

"A [i]thinking[/i] machine?" A legionnaire asked.

Stunned silence overcame the rotunda as that implication dawned on the imperial soldiers. Man had not built thinking machines in thousands of anni, not since the War against the Machines. Attempting to build such a machine was punishable by death, and the science of building such devices had thus been lost for millennia.

But perhaps this race of xeno had no such prohibition.

"Legionnaires, stand guard here while I recall the dropship," Captain Narmassus ordered. "We must notify Governor Hellefax of this finding at once."