A/N: A re-write of my Story Resistance, in which I theorized what would happen if modern earth came to enter the 40K universe. It sucked. Why? Because realism sucks, it restricts the writer. Here, it's rule of cool, stuff we have now or will have soon, tech that could exist but doesn't because it was never developed upon.

I explain who the humans are and where they're from right off the bat. Because that's not the point of the story. Oh and there's now a point to the story.

And, last but not least; screw the average joe protagonist, this guy's a mix of Tony Stark, Catherine Halsey and Rodney McKay. Now, do we have a party or what?

Somewhere during the apex of mankind's glory, a colony vessel, one of millions, was sent to the edge of what is now known as Segmentum Ultima, deep within the east fringe. The vessel's name has been lost to history, as was its ultimate fate, for Tau Sedentis, its destination, never saw a human colonist.

The vessel, and its millions of passengers, were declared lost forever. In truth, a simple mistake, made by an overworked Navigator, had them land on another, similar world, five hundred light years into the inter-galactic void, just outside known space.

The solar system became known to its new inhabitants as Net, in reference to it catching them in extremis. Net had never seen life, despite one of its planetary bodies being a carbon copy of terra. The reason for this lifelessness is twofold; first, Nuevo, the system's star, could be defined as "retarded" by some of Net's physicists, the radiation background in all of the system being so low it might as well be inexistent.

Natural selection still occurs and the inhabitants of the system still evolve, but without radiation, there is no mutation, without mutation, DNA cannot change and there is only so much a species can modify in itself with the same DNA.

The second reason for this sterility, though the inhabitants were quick to forget all about the Warp, was quite close to the first; No warp.

Though there is no such thing as "No warp", Net's isolation from most of the galaxy and complete lack of mutation came quite close.

Twenty millennia after settling the earth-like world Shelter, or Shell, the human colonists went to show history does repeat itself, regressing into a dark age of feudalism, during which most of their history was lost, scientific progress halted, before emerging into an accelerated renaissance, lasting only twenty years and quickly followed by an industrialisation for most island nations.

What followed had no precedence in history; knights, on horseback and totting massive swords, came from the main continent to end the islander's heresy…

As mentioned above, never before had a human being seen knights Teutonic being strafed by fighter squadrons.

What followed, however, was equally without precedence and would shape Shell's future: The island nations pushed back the invaders, capturing much of the baffled knights, completely routing the largest army ever created. They had the whole world's back to the wall, a secure dominance over most of the planet's resources.

They did nothing of it. Prisoners were returned to their respective nations, given plans and instructions to develop technology to rival that of the islanders. In their haste to crush the heretics, the world's leaders had scientific development boosted to levels previously unheard of, bringing a medieval society into modernity faster than its inhabitants could follow. The need for savants and thinkers caused education to become a priority, such that in half a century, the mainland's technology and literacy far surpassed that of their foes.

Only, now aware of economic and political concerns, neither the populace nor its leaders wished for open conflict. Fortunately, for, when friendly relations were established, the islanders were revealed to have stolen every breakthrough made by their former enemies.

The pragmatic, liberal and intellectual islanders, now known as Rockwall Conglomerate, and their militaristic, pious and idealistic rivals of the Golden Throne League finally worked together.

Though some attempts were made during their twelve years of peace, Shell's inhabitants slowly lost interest in space travel, focusing their research on computers, artificial intelligence and genetics.

It was at that time that Isaac Garber, a recently graduated engineer from the southern end of the Conglomerate, became known for creating a plasma reactor in his basement using a micro-wave oven, tumble dryer and fifty pounds of aluminium foil.

The reactor failed after five hours, but Garber went on to sell the reactor's blueprints for a small fortune, which he used to create Garber Corporation, his improved plasma reactor designs soon rendering petroleum and nuclear power obsolete and allowing him to buy out most of the world's oil and energy companies.

At age twenty-eight, Garber owned the third most influent corporation on Shell, sitting on enough money to purchase a small nation's military.

And, as he sat in his private jet, viewing the thing's schematics on his spectacle-mounted 3D interface, he was utterly bored. He'd designed the plane ten years prior, on the back of a physics test. He had argued with his teacher over the cost-efficiency of smaller wings on commercial planes and used the plans to prove his theory.

Despite practically laughing in the boy's face, that teacher was now retired in a seaside villa and married to two mannequins, thanks to "inventing" a revolutionary aircraft design.

On the other hand, he'd sold the schematics to one of Isaac's company and advised his former student whenever Garber felt he needed a less morale opinion on something. An odd relationship, but the playboy and inventor hadn't had a normal relationship since his mother died, three years earlier.

As he sat in his private plane, gorgeous young ladies with no personal interest in him busily ensuring he had all he needed, Isaac wondered what to work on next.

Now that he had enough money to live four lifetimes in excess, the urgency that had pushed him to invent and patent a wide array of gadgets in his parent's basement was gone... And wide array really did not do justice to the ridiculous amount of useless items the man's brain had blurted out:

The glasses he wore, like the computer they were linked to, the Ion batteries powering both and even that sonic razor one of the flight attendant was looking for in her purse, all were Garber Corp. patents.

Nowadays, he was hard pressed to even complete one of the billion ideas floating around in his hyperactive mind. He needed something to focus his attention, someone to answer to, anything to motivate him, otherwise he would grow clinically insane...

Sweeping the schematics aside in a dismissive hand gesture, he grabbed a virtual phone from his belt, the thing deploying into a holographic rubik's cube, hovering under his right hand.

First, he looked up the personal chatter number of Rockwall Defence Force's head of research, then entered that number in the cube.

The chatter beeped eight times before somebody shut it off.

"Al, do we have any sats around… John Goldberg? Yeah, Colonel Goldberg's house?" Called the CEO, leaning back in the satin cushion to look at the ceiling while rows of ones and zeroes scrolled down his field of view. "Good! Find me a backdoor into his system…" He waved away an attendant carrying a glass of bourbon, eyes still fixed on the scrolling numbers.

He found a way in through the man's access to the PIN, Planetary Information Network. From there, he booted his PDA and broadcasted directly to the thing's speakers.

"Hello? Colonel Goldberg?" He called, before adding, in a sing-song tone, "Heellll-oooohh!?" He waited about half a minute then repeated the process.

"Who's this?" Barked a gruff voice, whom Al quickly identified as the Colonel.

"About time! What were you doing, rubbing one out?" This teasing question actually served to hide any hesitation, for Garber was unsure just what it is he wanted.

"It's two in the AM, you smug bastard, now either you tell me what you want, or I have a flight of Vultures take down that candy ass jet of yours.

Al warned that the Colonel, despite not having access to any decent network or hardware, had indeed traced the intrusion back to Isaac's private jet… And had a flight of Vulture interceptors on stand bye.

"Lesson learned," spoke the CEO, "you don't become Father Winter without knowing how to make toys… Now, Vultures, huh?" He brought up the aging interceptor's blueprints and gave them a critical once over, "Yeah… Yeah, good enough. Cost effective." And he got to work, incorporating many of his own half-completed projects to the design…

His silence only infuriated the Colonel further, "I swear, if you don't identify yourself in the next ten seconds," warned the old man, "I will personally find out who you are and have everybody you ever so much as shook hand with…"

"Done, check mail!" Called the playboy, smug satisfaction obvious in his voice.

Annoyance slowly morphed to incredulity in Goldberg's voice, "What are you on about? Where did you get… Hang on a second… This, this woul-" He apparently ran off to get something.

Al, Garber's personal Virtual Assistant , always double checked his work and performed minute corrections without being asked, but the Colonel did not have access to such technology and verified everything by hand. To the man's credit, he spent five minutes doing what would take a whole team of engineers an hour, all that without his morning coffee.

"Okay," Finally announced the old man, his tone far friendlier now, "I'm listening, who are you and what do you want?"

Garber was many thing; a genius, an athlete, a visionary, but he was certainly not a people's person. His whole career had been nothing but rejections or betrayals, followed by anger and a burning desire to get back at those who wronged him, by doing better, proving them wrong.

Basically, Isaac Garber had no social skills at all. He'd even spent a fortune getting rid of multiple speech impediments. "Glad I got your attention, Colonel! Now, might you be familiar with Garber Corporation?"

"Energy and electronics. We outsource a lot of our informatics production to them. Why?"

"My name is Isaac Garber, I'm sorry to disturb you at this time of the night, but it occurred to me I had multiple designs that would be quite beneficial to our armed forces."

"What? You want to make a donation?" Goldberg sounded dubious.

Isaac laughed at this, "I'm bored, Colonel, but I'm still a businessman. Think we could meet sometime soon to talk about possible defense contracts?"

"Not how it works, Garber." Despite his words, Goldberg clearly seemed interested, "We issue a tender, review different offers and take the best of the lot."

"Ah, I understand, sorry I woke you up, Colonel," Apologized Isaac, smiling despite himself, "I guess the Golden Throne will be interested then…"

It was the Colonel's turn to laugh, "Alright, kid, drop over by my office tomo… This morning, we'll talk then."

"Got it. Sweet dreams, Goldberg!" While they talked, Isaac had been working on many of his ongoing projects, a military application giving him a fresh perspective on these formerly stagnant projects.

First, he researched air support applications for his discontinued aerial drone project. One thing Garber Corporation had over all of its competitors was actually decent AI technology, because they modelled their AIs' processors after beehives instead of individual beings. A thousand rudimentary programs worked together, splitting the workload into tiny, manageable tasks, reducing the hardware strain and preventing a single bug from paralysing the whole system.

And now, he might just have found a marketable application for the technology.

He found an application for the aforementioned drone, originally meant to assist firefighters, as an autonomous gunship, cheaper, faster and, after some modifications, better armed than its current military counterpart.

Current military forces relied heavily on missiles for anti-armour duty, but countermeasures to those missiles abounded on the battlefield, so Isaac trashed the dorsal fire-retardant cannon and created a customized turret from scratch to put in its place.

The first model looked like a tank's turret, but was quickly scratched in favour of a dome-like appendage of smaller caliber, meant to have a three-sixty degrees horizontal reach and one-eighty degrees vertically. Using computer-controlled fuses and a laser rangefinder, this cannon would provide limited defence from enemy aircrafts.

Next, he removed the two secondary cannons from the bat-like drone's belly and, after some research, installed anti-infantry rotatory guns, loaded with 30mm buckshots that they would fire at a rate of thirty rounds per second…

This too he scrapped. Spray and pray is a human thing, computers don't need thirty rounds per second…

Instead, he installed swivel- mounted Anti-matériel rifles, both with their own independent targeting computers and selectable ammunition.

In the end, the frame unable to accept much more strain, he fitted the wings with four anti-tank missiles and a rocket pod each. To help bear the strain, he changed the frame for a lightweight carbon fiber honeycomb structure, added a third rotor on the tail and increased engine size, at the cost of ammunition capacity.

Then, he sent the design in a virtual reality and put it through various combat situations.

Only after the third simulation, all of which ended with the drone failing, did Al point out the prototype's lack of armour.

"Fekk me…" Was all the inventor could contribute to the remark. Armour weights a lot, one has to find the balance between firepower, engine power and protection…

Isaac cut both wings in half, leaving just enough room for the rotors and moving both missile and rockets to the drone's flanks. This earned him half a centimeter of titanium plating at most.

"Al, what are my alternatives for those rotors?" The assistant enumerated everything from helium sacks to wings. "Good, I'll take them all."

Hydrogen tubes built into the drone's chassis decreased the weight by a fraction, but enough to allow for another means of suspension to be considered.

Twin rocket engines, built in the wings' place, supported by the tail rotor, would fire sporadically, like a bird flapping its wings… Figuratively, that is; there would be no flapping rockets, more like machinegun fire.

A flight attendant leaned in his field of vision and he sat up, shamelessly ogling the pretty brunette's cleavage for a few seconds before looking at her fake smile. "Sir," she spoke, "we are about to arrive in New Koat…"

This hit him like a baseball bat. "What do you mean, Koat?" He jumped from his seat and made for the cockpit, "Prangley, we're not going home anymore, take me to the capital!"

Prangley, a retired fighter pilot from the northern islands, looked over his shoulder and to his boss. Few people could tolerate Garber's excess, which is why he had hired an ex-Red Star pilot discharged for pulling a few insane maneuvers too many.

"Got it, boss, you better fasten seatbelt… Tell pretty ladies to fasten seatbelts too," He added as an afterthought, breaking off his approach despite ample protest from the control tower, "and prepare check-book, Rockwall air traffic not too happy when you break flight plan…"

Isaac had to hold onto straps in the ceiling to drag himself in the cockpit, where he sat in the co-pilot's seat. "Don't worry, Oleg, you can't have your flight license revoked twice."

"With respect, boss," replied the other over the rumbling of straining engines, "you never pull crazy Ivan in heavy-bomber. They let you get flight license back just to revoke it again."

And that is why the co-pilot seat of Garber's private jet remained empty.