CHAPTER 18: The Xana Incursion

"A man behind the enemy is worth one thousand men in front of him"-Unknown.

Official time and date: REDACTED.

-Edge of the Xana System. -

Warmaster Mortarion's ship, the Endurance, exited the Warp at the Mandeville Point of the Xana System.

This was not one of the normal expeditions of the Lord of Death. He had not come to Xana to conquer or annihilate it.

He had come….to negotiate. He knew it was almost ironical, for him. First the battle fought alongside the Eldar, now this. But the situation warranted it.

The Forge Worlds in the Segmentum Solar were all loyal and running at full capacity, but they could only keep a delicate stalemate between the Loyalists and the Traitors, who possessed Forge Worlds of their own, on the borders of Segmentum Solar.

The planets on the frontlines would come and go, like cities and hills in the ancient Great European War of 914-918.M2. Many systems would be freed and lost in the same Terran month, with immense casualties on both sides.

Emblematic of such a state of affairs is the Forge World Alernat III and its industrial facilities, which had the double misfortune of sitting exactly on the frontline between the Emperor's Children and the Word Bearers and of falling into civil war between Traitors and Loyalists. It had been conquered by the Traitors nine times, and nine times it had been reconquered by the Third Legion under Marius Vairosean, each time ending up more damaged than before. Word was coming that the Seventeenth Legion and the Alernat Mechanicum Traitors were raising another Skitarii army for the Tenth Conquest of Alernat III.

Warmaster Mortarion had long slated Alernat III for an Exterminatus action. Whatever potential the world possessed had probably been destroyed in the series of battles. It was only because of Fabricator-General Lukas Chrom's insistence that the Treaty of Mars required the Imperium to defend the Forge Worlds that the Loyalists kept fighting on the Alernat Pocket… and because this kept at least 15.000 Word Bearers tied there. 15.000 Legionaries the enemy badly required elsewhere.

His defense-based approach, supported by Perturabo and Vulkan, was allowing Segmentum Solar to fortify for an inevitable massed Traitor offensive, but was sitting ill with some aggressive Primarchs, like Ferrus Manus, who advocated an offensive against the Dark Angels domain in the north.

Yet, he had irrefutable proof of how such a campaign would end….

-Yostraenus VII-

The Strymean Host had made a mistake…and now they would pay the price.

A coalition of Blackshields, 4000-Astartes-strong, under the command of the former Ultramarine Captain Atreus, who had rejected the Goddess that Guilliman had discovered in the ruins of Theminarae, was making its final stand on the nuclear-blasted plains of Yostraenus VII.

It was facing a numberless army of the Forge World M'Pandex and the Dark Angels, commanded by Merir Astelan, the Sibran Grand Master, the Butcher of Fraoliv II, the Conqueror of Agathon and countless other titles, bestowed upon him by the fearful populations he had conquered.

The Strymean Host had tried to retake Agathon and free its people after the Dark Angels had conquered the planet…but they had only succeeded in attracting the Sibran Grand Master's attention.

They had retreated to their fortress, built inside a mountain and prepared for the inevitable assault…which in reality never came.

Astelan had a great campaign in mind…and could not be distracted by the "Pitiful Raids" of a Blackshield warband, no matter how numerous it was.

So he had dispatched his trusted friend, Zahariel El'Zurias, to take care of the problem.

Zahariel ordered that a heavily damaged Cruiser be shot towards the planet. The ship crashed…and its Warp-Core destabilized, allowing a powerful army of daemons entry into the Materium, led by a powerful Keeper of Secrets. Its name was N'Kari, and it was hungering for the soul of the son of Guilliman who had dared to reject the Goddess his Father had bowed to.

The loyalist Astartes died within hours, torn apart by the daemonic armies born of the depravity of the Eldar race, spitting their defiance to the last.

Massive casualties for no real gain, and the Solar defenses crippled by the irreplaceable losses, open to the Traitor counterattack.

On the eastern front the situation was identical. Apart from the occasional Ultramarines and White Scars raids, the Prosperine Front was quiet. Not even the Alpha Legion knew why Magnus himself was not attacking. This made the situation even more troubling. According to Ferrus Manus, this was because Magnus was a coward Sorcerer …. but Mortarion knew better than to underestimate the Fifteenth Legion.

The Burning of Fenris proved the strength of the Fifteenth Legion. More than that, Magnus' diplomatic talents had secured strategic alliances with several human domains, first among which a non-Compliant realm called "the Auretian Technocracy", which had sworn itself to Magnus the Red, giving him a solid logistic base.

In his opinion, Magnus did not fear the Solar defenses. No, he was probably massing troops and increasing the size of his own Legion as much as he could, while whittling down his own allies' strength to absorbe the loyalist ammo... before commencing his own offensive. Coupled with the Lion's attack from the north, it would have made for a massive charge against Terra. One that no present defense could possibly hold back.

And so become the Crimson King, unchallenged by none, not even among his own allies...callous, but smart. He had to give him that. Why would a Traitor, in full possession of his mental faculties, trust other Traitors during a war for galactic domination?

This made his mission here doubly important...if Bile could not complete in time what he had asked him to do, then defending Terra might prove impossible without Xana II's armies.

Xana II was a Primaris Grade Forge World on the very edge of the Galactic West. Discovered a few years before the Rangdan Xenocides, the advanced cyborgs and the robotic armies of the Forge World had played a significant role in those conflicts and beyond.

More than that, Xana could count upon not one, but two Titan Legions, the Legio Kydianos and the Legio Vulturum, which, when assembled together, could rival the famed Triad Ferrum Morgulus of Mars in strength. Also it could call upon the Knight House Malinax, which was equipped with patterns of Knight which were extremely lethal and equally rare. Together, these formed the Triple-Tailed Scorpion, who had played a critical part in rescuing the Imperium from the Rangdan Cerabvores, the aliens who had even once attempted a final, all-out strike against Terra, and had been stopped, at a grave cost, at the star named Wolf 359.

But most importantly, the local Mechanicum had the rare capability to build and repair the Ordinatii.

Weapons of mass destruction based on lost technologies, they had been assembled into the famed Centurio Ordinatus by the Martian Mechanicum. Even one of those weapons was worth a demi-Legio of Titans.

The Centurio had split with the onset of the Heresy, with many weapons falling into Traitor hands or lost. Thousands of Loyalist lives had been destroyed by the Ordinatii…and thousands of Traitors died exactly in the same manner.

The number of Ordinatii was dwindling month after month, due to them being priority targets for destruction for both sides, and the Traitors could replace them by calling upon the Ruinous Powers or by having their fallen Techmarines build Warp-based WMDs and machines, which some Astartes had begun to call "Daemon Engines", due to the strange …sentience…. some of these abominations displayed. The enemies also could invoke the support of the very daemonic armies, which fought by their side as allies.

The Loyalists did not have the same luxury, or better, did not dare to invoke those powers. Those few that did soon joined the Traitor side, their sanity forever lost...or killed themselves in the throes of complete madness. Sure, the Death Guard possessed terrifying weapons, but most of those were world-destroying weapons recovered and reverse-engineered from xeno technologies the Loyalist Mechanicum hardly understood. They could not be expended on a tactical level.

And the Fourteenth Legion could not be everywhere at once.

Thus he had chosen to go to Xana, which had earlier declared its neutrality in the conflict, defining it "an internal matter of the Imperium." The Triple-Tailed Scorpion had the capability to tip the balance of the war in one direction or the other….

And, if he could not convince Xana to join the Loyalists, he could at least deny the Traitors a massive asset…

Mortarion chuckled. The old him, the one who wanted to purify the galaxy from deviancy and tyranny was resurfacing...for a time. He increasingly felt him as a distant memory, a naive man so different from the one Malcador, Magnus and Fate had forced him to become...

-Xana II-

The Vodian Consistory met into the Synod Chamber, to discuss the upcoming meeting with Warmaster Mortarion.

The Consistory had vowed to stay out of the war, instead seeking to play both sides against the middle…until the arrival of Ahmuz Temekh.

The Emissary of Magnus the Red had offered them the rule of the entire Western Halo Zone, free of the strictures imposed by Terra and Mars. An empire to call their own, united with Magnus' New Kingdom in the pursuit of knowledge.

It was an offer they could not refuse…

They knew the Loyalists would try to entice them to join their side, but that Warmaster Mortarion himself would come…that was entirely unexpected.

This could throw their plan into disarray. The Consistory agreed, after a hour-long binharic debate, to delay the Warmaster until the Traitor fleet arrived, then they would turn upon Mortarion and deliver him as an offer to the New King of Mankind.

Thus they had dispatched their fleet to meet Mortarion's battlegroup, feign openness, and then stab them in the back when he least expected it.

Then alarm klaxons began to blare. Arch-Magos Arcanus Hoyal-Omicron turned towards the source of the alarm, consulting the System Auspex-Grid…

What he saw caused an overload of one tertiary processor, the Mechanicum equivalent of a shriek.

An 80-ship fleet had just exited the Warp above Xana-Tisiphone, the prison moon where the newly-completed Ordinatii had been stored prior to final field testing and delivery to the armies of the New Kingdom.

The fleet was led by a Gloriana-class Battleship…and bore the mark of the Hydra.

-Aboard the Alpha-

Harrowmaster Kel Silonius examined the Auspex. As he had expected, the Vodian Consistory's fleet had rushed to meet Warmaster Mortarion's battlefleet, leaving Xana-Tisiphone without defenses. They would not have expected someone to strike directly at them.

Good. Exactly as he had predicted.

"Operation: Shadow Hand is a go. Begin drop pod assault."

From the Alpha Legion fleet departed hundreds of Drop Pods, which landed in the Xanite Defense Center located upon the moon orbiting the gas giant Xana Prime.

The local Skitarii guards, caught totally by surprise, did not put up any meaningful resistance. All fell, annihilated by the Hydra's power reinforced by countless hours of hypno-training. The Tisiphone Defense Grid was rebooted and under the control of the Ghost Legion.

The Vodian Consistory debated what to do, before sending one of the few ships left in Xana II's orbit-the Emperor-class Battleship Argentia- to mount a counteroffensive, and become a base for continual Attack Craft runs upon the moon.

The Argentia launched its Attack Craft, ordering them to attack the Alpha Legion forces upon the moon. But the Alpha Legion expected such a move, and countered it accordingly...

-Attack squadron Argentia-Beta (translated from Binharic)-

Beta-20 activated its vox signal.

"Beta 20-1, to Mothership. Alpha Legion squad sighted. Beginning Attack Pattern Epsilon 2.

"Copy."

The Bomber squadron dropped High-Explosive Bombs upon the Alpha Legion Predator, destroying it.

"Good. One down…"

Suddenly a red light flashed upon Beta-20-1's viewscreen. "Enemy fighters spotted."

"How many?"

"Three—four-five…-AAAH!"

"Beta 20-2 is destroyed! Ret-"

The Wrath Starfighters of the Alpha Legion, lying in ambush, unseen due to cloaking screens...borrowed...from the Raven Guard, destroyed the entire squadron, allowing the Alpha a clear line of fire towards the Argentia.

It took three minutes for the Argentia to become a cloud of dust and debris, annihilated by the broadside of a Gloriana-class Battleship.

-Aboard the Endurance-

Mortarion was astonished. Why the Alpha Legion had attacked the Xanites? This could -and most probably had-derailed the negotiations, and put Xana II firmly in the Traitors' camp!

The confirmation of that came when the Xanite Warfleet opened fire on his fleet.

Well, they want a battle? I will give them one they will never forget.

The Endurance responded in kind, attacking the Xanite war-fleet, keeping it in place, unable to respond to the distress calls sent from Xana. Mortarion's fleet was strong, capable of matching the Xanite fleet 1-on-1 and more than enough capable to force it to remain in place.

Thus the Alpha Legion were able to reach the Ordinatii storage room unhindered.

"Secondary Targets secured."

Kel Silonius looked at the chronometers. Exactly on time.

"Good. Initiate Phase 2."

From the Alpha Legion fleet dozens of dropships descended towards the moon, their objective: the Prisons.

The Prisons were the site where the Vodian Consistory held those it deemed "dangerous for the stability of the Forge World". They believed that execution was a "waste of potential useful material", so they left them there, awaiting their "repurposing".

Kel Silonius planned to show them how foolish such thinking was.

The troops garrisoned inside the Prisons were well-made cybernetically augmented humans, but were designed to keep prisoners inside from escaping.

Defeating an assault from the outside was another matter entirely.

With Astartes leading the way, it would be very difficult.

With the Alpha Legion, the Ghost Legion, among the attackers, supported by a fleet led by one of the great battleships of the Gloriana-class, it proved insanely difficult.

As the troops were gunned down mercilessly by the Alpha Legion Astartes, the cells were opened, and the prisoners within armed themselves with looted weapons and helped the Alpha Legion.

The Vodian Consistory activated the Emergency Measure Alpha.

Meaning an entire squadron of Krios Main Battle Tanks powered up and rushed inside the Prisons, firing at will. In the closed environment, they would pin down the Legionaries, stalling their invasion forces.

However, the Twentieth Legion did not want to conquer Xana. Their Primary Objective was another.

There was a prisoner inside that the Alpha Legion required. An extremely valuable prisoner the Consistory had kept there for years. Securing him could change the entire war…

-Main Temple of the Consistory, Xana II-

Emergency Measure Alpha was not stopping the Twentieth Legion. The Astartes were securing more and more of the Prisons with each passing minute. The Consistory had realized what they were trying to do.

They wanted to free the Unpredictable Variable, or as he called himself, Anacharis Scoria.

He had been a Magos Dominus of the Xanite Taghmata for decades, and had won scores of victories for the Imperium, securing hundreds of worlds into Compliance, and single-handedly annihilating the four-hundred world strong Eisturean Sovereignty, humbling the survivors and making them swear loyalty to Xana and the Imperium. With every victory, his legend had increased…as well as his ambition.

Assuming he desired to take control of Xana II, they had arranged a fake accident on his ship in which he was "killed". In actuality, they had stripped him of his rank and his implants and had incarcerated him in the darkest, deepest hole of the Prisons, hoping to extract from him more knowledge…and that he would starve to death in that prison. Yet, surprisingly, he had endured all that time.

Were he set free, he would cause a mass revolt among the Xanite military, who had been deceptively told that their leader had died, while instigating purges of those who had seen too much...or believed that something was wrong.

Thus they triggered Emergency Measure Delta, sending a battleship to bombard the Prisons to dust…but the ship would not comply, it being engaged in battle against the Death Guard fleet. The Alpha Legion fleet then closed in, trapping the Xanite war-fleet between them and the Fourteenth.

The Consistory began to calculate how best to respond to the rapidly deteriorating situation…when a vox-message reached them. The Legio Vulturum had rebelled, along with House Malinax.

This could only mean one thing. The Unpredictable Variable had been set free, and was now broadcasting his existence to the Xanite forces, who would undoubtedly be furious at the deception played upon them by the Consistory.

The Xanite war-fleet was shutting down all weapons, rejecting the authority of the "heretekal Consistory" and proclaiming themselves "loyal servants of Anacharis Scoria, True Leader of Xana."

Thus they came to the logical conclusion. They had lost. "Commence evacuation."

As one, they entered a lift, which brought them down, into the deepest forge on Xana II. There, the Exodus awaited them.

Originally a standard Sword-class Frigate identical to millions of others, it was converted by the Vodian Consistory exactly for such an extreme situation. The ship carried an arcane device of xeno origin that allowed it to fully cloak, making for a rapid escape into the Warp. Its engines had been upgraded to a level which would have been deemed acceptable by the great Khans of the Fifth Legion.

The Consistory triggered the activation sequence. The ship launched into space and hiding from view using a wrecked Cruiser as a cover, entered the Warp. Their destination…New Vodia, located on the edge of intergalactic space.

There, they would rebuild…and one day, have their revenge.

When I was imprisoned, I thought I had failed. I thought that my cover identity had been compromised…in reality, I had played my part so well that the Consistory had imprisoned me thinking I was aiming to take control of their world by a military coup. As often happened in history, that turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The armies of Xana had relied on me as their inspiration, and had never really accepted the inefficient, easily controllable leaders imposed upon them by the Consistory. All the Twentieth had to do was allow me to reveal my existence to them, thus reawakening their ancient loyalty protocols, which overrode any type of reconditioning…as well as what was left of their biological brains, who yearned to have me back.

The rest followed naturally. Also, possessing the emergency override codes for the House Malinax Throne Mechanicum systems helped to tilt the balance in my favor.

Now, I will give my forces…my world…the order to fight on the Loyalist side, as the hated Consistory was negotiating with the Traitors to eventually join them. And I shall not rest until Magnus the Red, who has led followers of the Omnissiah astray with promises of untold power, is defeated and executed.

So swears Anacharis Scoria, Magos Dominus, Tyrant of Xana, follower of the Omnissiah …

…son of Alpharius Omegon.

After the Xana Coup and the taking of power by Anacharis Scoria, Xana II entered the war on the Loyalist side.

The balance of war on the western front changed drastically, through the injection of new, fresh, forces. On countless planets, Warhosts bearing the emblem of the Triple-Tailed Scorpion landed, laying waste to the armies of the Traitors. Emblematic of this is the Razing of the Duchy of Vedelyag. The Traitor-aligned realm, spanning three solar systems and supported by a Chapter of Word Bearers, had resisted a Raven Guard task force for weeks, forcing the Astartes to withdraw in shame.

The warhosts of Xana II annihilated them within hours, their fleet swatting away the Traitor defense ships like flies. With hosts of battle-automata and Autonomous Flying Units obscuring the skies, the Vedelyag authorities submitted their unconditional surrender.

In a week, the entire southern part of the Colchisian Dominate, who had resisted the efforts of the Emperor's Children for years, was under siege and whittled down system by system by the unrelenting armies of Xana II, which were reinforced by the Atar-Median Taghmata, whose far-flung Forge World had finally ended their neutrality and entered the war on the Loyalist side after the Xana Coup.

The Seventeenth Legion put up a valiant fight, one that even Fulgrim himself admired, but in the end, it was useless.

The robotic armies of Xana, backed by arrays of powerful Ordinatii Sagittars (stockpiled by the deposed Consistory or taken from still-unfinished Titans) and the fearsome Ulators, were simply unstoppable. The Sarissa, a formation of dozens of Belicosa pattern Volcano Cannons mounted upon Ordinatii-class transporters could overwhelm any type of Void Shield through sheer firepower, while the arcane Sonic Destructors mounted upon the Ulators simply shattered any type of target through massive sonic power.

The Strategic Missile Units of the Xana II Taghmata could deploy extremely powerful road-based mobile ICBMs, called "Deathstalkers" (coincidentally, the name is identical to the Eldar name for a Super-Heavy Tank) loaded with 40 Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Units, each one carrying a variable kind of warhead, mostly thermonuclear, but also EMP or Vortex Warhead.

Entire planets were scarred by a single battery of those missiles...But Xana also had access to much more horrifying weapons…weapons the world had no qualms about developing and, most importantly, deploying…

-Leinwand IV-

The 31st Leinwand Armored Battalion was arrayed behind the Void Shield generators of the capital city of their world, while technicians were trying to get the Super-heavy tanks back into fighting strength.

Colonel Gedwin could not understand what the frak had happened. One day, they were comfortably holding the line against the Third Legion, the next they were running back to their homeworld to resupply after having been mauled by an army of impossibly-advanced robots.

Well, this time the forces of Xana II will find a tough nut to crack.

On their return journey, the Leinwand Regiments found and captured a Star Galleon belonging to a Rogue Trader. They brought it back to their homeworld and disassembled it, reusing its weapons and Void Shields generator to reinforce their homeworld's Defense Grid.

Colonel Gedwin was certain he could force the Xanite fleet to withdraw in shame.

As the Xanite fleet arrived in orbit, they transmitted their standard hailing message.

"Enemies of the Triple-Tailed Scorpion. Deactivate your Shields and surrender. You will become subjects of the Xana II forge world. Resistance…is futile, but welcome."

Colonel Gedwin responded simply. "You want the planet? Come and take it, bolt-heads!"

"Your choice to resist is irrelevant to the Triple-Tailed Scorpion. You shall fall."

Soon, the Void Shields were subjected to the impacts from the Ordinatus Sagittars. Colonel Gedwin ordered the Defense Grid to respond. The artillery duel continued for an hour until the Xanite forces stopped firing.

A flight of bombers rose up into the sky, too high for the anti-air defenses to respond. From one of them, A large cylindrical package was dropped upon the capital city of Leinwand IV. It was a Xana-pattern Hypersonic Bomb. Using a prototype Unstable Tachyons emitter, it successfully bypassed the Void Shields as if they weren't there.

When the shockwave had cleared, all that remained of the city, and its defenders…was just dust. It was impossible to distinguish what was once ferrocrete, steel …or bodies. All was reduced to the same thin dust.

The world was repurposed by the Xanite authorities as a Penal World, with the area where once stood a bustling city, with millions of inhabitants, converted into a Promethium mine, where to send convicts from the entire breadth of the Imperium.

The area is still known as the Dust Plains or as Gedwin's Folly in the planetary maps.

-Villirier-

Once, the system was a paradise. Now, it was an hell…of pain and pleasure.

Lord Vared the Lacerator, of the Thirteenth Legion, had chosen it as the place to start his Pain Crusade to honor Slaanesh.

The experiments he was running using the slaves were…fascinating to behold.

The 11th Chapter of the Ultramarines, originally 25.000 Astartes strong, had been whittled down to 19.000. Two thousand he had to kill because they would not follow the True Goddess. The others died in battle against the Emperor's Children. Lorgar Aurelian was not a very good general, but he could inspire those under him to fight to the death. Even so, he had been sent by Guilliman to help him. And he had set himself to the task …very efficiently, as the millions of excoriated humans of Neirona could attest.

A group of Xanite ships had just entered the system. He would now destroy them, and teach them about Slaanesh's plans for them…

A vox-transmission reached them. Vared ordered to let it through, so that he could terrorize the Xanites and revel in their fear…

From it, came out nothing more than a meaningless stream of code…which caused an instant overload of the fusion reactor of the ship.

As Vared was blown out into space by the consequent decompression, he clearly saw a group of Alpha Legion ships. Vared cursed them….

…. then he saw nothing more, as he crashed against the Void Shields of a Twentieth Legion Strike Cruiser, disintegrating in the impact.

The system was reclaimed in just two hours, as the now-leaderless Ultramarines fled into the Warp to face Guilliman's wrath rather than die and the Villirier Militia chose to surrender in the face of the Twentieth Legion's victory.

Villirier was left to the Xanites to repurpose.

Now called Vostok, it is a major production center. The Forge World Vostok Prime, founded using the hull of a damaged Xanite Galleass of War, has established productive facilities in the entire system. Imperial history books say Vostok Prime joined the Imperium alongside Xana II in the aftermath of the Coup.

The only inkling to its past is the uncommonly large asteroid belt which is located exactly between Vostok V and VII, which a Shipyard mines for raw materials to build Vostok-pattern starships for the Imperial Navy, which are well-regarded as durable, if unsophisticated, ships.

Official Xanite word is that the planet located there suffered a "catastrophic structural failure due to natural causes".

A keen eye, can however recognize among the thousands of asteroids, some sporting the tell-tale signs of a Two-Stage Cyclonic Torpedo Detonation….

One month after the Xana Coup, the world of Urdesh, a Secundus-grade Forge World who had backed the Word Bearers ever since the start of the Heresy, was blockaded, besieged and conquered by the Xanite Legio Vulturum, reinforced by a 2000-Astartes strong Twentieth Legion complement.

After two months where the Traitors suffered one defeat after another, the Word Bearers ordered their Legion to fall back to the northern part of the Colchisian Dominate. The Tenth Conquest of Alernat was aborted, all available forces pulled back to protect a ten-Sector spherical region around Colchis itself. This being the optimal region of space the Seventeenth could realistically hope to defend.

Artemia Majoris, the other main Forge World of the Dominate, sued for peace with the Loyalist authorities. The punishment was severe: all heretekal followers within the hierarchy of the Forge World were executed. Not even the Fabricator-General of Artemia Majoris, Drakken Kokubus, was spared from the axe of the executioner.

In addition, they had to turn over to Xana II their major forges, which would be occupied by the Xanite armies for two centuries. The minor forges were allowed to produce on their own only logistical items and small escort ships, up to Sword-class Frigate.

It was a steep price to pay. But, as the Emergency Triumvirate of Archimandrites of Artemia, who had launched the coup that deposed Kokubus said: "Knowledge can be rediscovered. Forges can be rebuilt. Even trust can be regained. Existence cannot."

The Xanite onslaught also allowed the Loyalist forces to regroup and launch a devastating offensive against the Traitor Mechanicum forces on Mars.

-Olympus Mons-

Kelbor-Hal was distressed. If he still had biological skin, it would be sweating profusely.

The reports from his emissaries had been confirmed.

The Triple-Tailed Scorpion had been unleashed. Xana II had joined the Loyalists.

His allies from Urdesh and Artemia Majoris had all been terminated. His forges were suffering damage from a renewed loyalist bombardment.

He estimated a 99.99% chance that they would land again on Mars, trying to retake it. And a 81.33 (3 periodical) % that Mars would fall.

Thus he did the logical thing to do. What every true machine, blessed by the True Fourfold Omnissiah, would do.

"Melgator…"

"Yes, Fabricator-General?"

"Signal our forces. We are evacuating Mars."

"My Lord…we hold 90% of the planet…"

"It will not mean anything if the Loyalists attack. They will bomb us to dust. With Xana on their side, the Martian knowledge can be seen as expendable. Our calculations predict we can and will return later, when Magnus the Red's forces arrive in Sol. We will return. But to remain on Mars now…it is illogical."

Melgator bowed to the infallible calculations of the Fabricator-General, whose components had been augmented with additions from the STCs donated by the Auretian Technocracy, who had sworn themselves to Magnus the Red before the Heresy, after a week-long diplomatic effort.

"Very well."

It would be known in history as the Evacuation of Mars. The Mechanicum ships, launched using rockets from subterranean shipyards, tried to escape the blockade lain by the Loyalist fleet, and successfully escaped, despite losing 35% of their strength in the evacuation, and another 3% in a space battle against the Saturnine Fleet.

Kelbor-Hal ordered the Dark Mechanicum fleet to head for Prospero. The tides of the Warp, favorable to them, rapidly delivered them to a planet named Feltuon Prime, located on the coreward border of the Prosperine Dominion, where Magnus the Red received the terrible news…

-Feltuon Prime-

On the surface of Feltuon Prime, the local humans were celebrating the crowning of the new king. The people had long suffered under the tyranny of King Razid III the Cruel, who reduced the people to poverty and misery to enrich himself and his family. He desired to expand his domain to encompass the entire Baiz-so Continent, which was to the local humans the limit of the world. They did not know any other land beyond the Great Ocean.

To do so, he raised armies to conquer all other Kingdoms in Baiz-so.

While he was away for war, fighting, a new people had come from the Great Ocean. A people of raiders, who sought to pillage and raid what their legends described as a land of shining gold…yet they were dismayed at finding a population just as destitute as they were.

So they chose to attack the local capital, and the local people opened the gates for him. Tired of straining under oppression, they believed the raiders could not be worse than King Razid. And they were right.

When the King returned, he found a city sacked. The raiders awaited him, knowing of the treasure he always carried with himself.

The Battle of Razidia was swift. The raiders had no fear of death, and cut a swathe through the demoralized royal army, while the King fled…only to be shot by an arrow and killed.

The local people crowned the leader of the raiders Thoraldr Breakshield, the new King, Thoraldr I. Celebrations for the end of the tyranny went on day and night.

Little did they know, that above them, in space, a being far more powerful than the one which they gave the crown had reawakened an ancient terror, and would pronounce their doom….

-In orbit-

The Magi of Zhao-Arkkad looked with pride at the weapon platforms of the Main Pyramid of the Black Star. The massive station, discovered orbiting this backwater world, possessed power beyond imagination, and with the ancient weapons they had grafted upon it, they had created the most powerful battle-station in the galaxy. Even the vaunted Phalanx of Rogal Dorn would be dwarfed by this behemoth. A fine gift to the New King of Mankind.

Magnus the Red looked with satisfaction at the weapon the Magi had found for him. The station was ready to fulfill its purpose, despite millennia of inactivity. It was as pristine as it was when it was forged.

He did not know who had created it and why, and it did not matter. All that mattered was that it would provide him with the upper hand in the conflict, after Khalophis' failure at Betalis III.

The Arch-Traitor turned to the Magi. "Is the Warp-cannon ready to fire?"

"Yes, sir. Commencing charging sequence."

The station opened like a flower, its petals being however arrows of xeno metal. When it fully opened, it formed the most unholy symbol of all. The symbol that struck terror in the hearts of countless civilizations and was the banner in the name of which the Imperium had been torn asunder and the Heresy was being waged by the Nine Enlightened Legions.

The Eight-Pointed Star of Chaos.

"My Lord, do you have a target in mind?"

"Yes, I do. Target Feltuon Prime."

"Yes, sir."

The Warp-cannon aimed at the verdant planet below and fired a single, massive beam of Warp-energy. From space, Magnus could see the beam create a new ecosystem, one vastly altered from the one which existed before. The entire planet was becoming a frozen wasteland. An Ice Age which should have taken centuries to begin was now happening in seconds. And it was not stopping there.

"Planetary temperature dropping rapidly. 200 K….130 K….111 K….70 K….58 K."

The planet had changed incredibly. Where oceans of water once stood, there were now vast masses of ice, circled by seas of liquid nitrogen. The rock that made up the continents had frozen solid, in some points shattering due to the sudden freezing process it had endured.

"Life signs?"

"None. All 78 million human beings below have been terminated. As well as all other native life-forms. The planet is completely dead."

"A perfect test. Well done, my honored servants. When we will reach Terra, the Tyrant-Emperor will die at the hands of this mighty weapon!"

The Magi soon resumed simulations. The world had been chosen due to its remoteness and because it was much larger than Terra. If it could cause such a disaster on a Super-Terra…Terra would be forced to surrender or die, frozen to death by the might of the New Kingdom.

His train of thought was interrupted by the arrival of the Martian forces. This could mean only one thing. Mars had fallen

With the fall of Mars, and the near-simultaneous collapse of the Colchisian Dominate, the Loyalists could gather new supplies, reorganize and go on the offensive.

The tide was turning against him. He had to strike now, lest the war drag out for years. "Ahzek…"

"Yes, Father?"

"We have to strike now. Alert your brothers. The time has come. The Fifteenth Legion must unleash its full power. Tell the Athanaeans to contact all my brothers."

"All of them?"

"All of them. We must attack Terra now. We must use everything we have to breach Segmentum Solar and reach Terra.

"I will relay your orders." He then left.

-ORDO MACHINUM FILE: The New Vodian Empire.

WARNING: This file details a threat declared Extremis Maxima. Consult with due caution, or you will be terminated…for your own soul's good.-

"Universal laws are for the lackeys of dead or false gods. They are utterly meaningless for those who follow Kalugura, the One, True, God." -Transmission intercepted from a New Vodian Empire Battleship during the Ebodold War.

We of the Ordo Machinum had assumed the Vodian Consistory, the deposed leaders of Xana II, had been annihilated in the chaos of the Cyclopean Heresy, another group of Traitors lost forever to history as they deserved.

It was not so.

In 592.M39, an Imperial Exploratory Group was lost in the Ebodold Sector, the last Imperial sector in the Northwestern corner of the galaxy before the limit of the Astronomican and the dangerous Halo Stars. All hands were lost.

Follow-up surveys conducted in 620.M39 discovered an entire region of space dominated by an human entity self-styling itself "the New Vodian Empire". It rejected offers to reenter the Imperium, firing against Imperial forces. According to the Interrogators and the Alpha Legion teams sent to investigate, it seems the New Vodian Empire has cast aside the Martian theology, rejecting the Omnissiah as a false god, but has not turned to the Ruinous Powers. They seemed to worship instead an unknown entity they called "Kalugura". The nature of this entity, even if it is real or not, is still unknown to the Ordo. It is known, however, that an entity by the same name is mentioned in Eldar legends as a "weapon of mass destruction, one of the most destructive among the Yngir."

In light of this new discovery, a series of unexplained events, chief among which is the loss of the entire 2232nd Expeditionary Fleet in the area while it was on the way to Terra in the last year of the Heresy, and a series of exploratory missions in the area never returning and the complete loss of contact with the nearby Shardani Sector in M37, could finally be explained by this long-thought lost remnant of the Cyclopean Heresy.

The Imperium prepared an offensive to be launched against this entity...but it preempted us.

In 630.M39, the Ebodold War was launched. The New Vodian Empire's armies, made out of humans augmented with "liquid metal" and wielding reality-warping weapons which distorted time itself, captured the entirety of the Ebodold Sector, converting thousands of people into new types of Servitors and running horrifying scientific experiments upon the billions-strong population of the Sector, seeking to create or perfect ever more dangerous Weapons of Mass Destruction in the name of Kalugura. The Xanite forces and the Raven Guard were forced to work together against this foul enemy, and in the successive fifteen years, managed to push back the New Vodian Empire to its pre-war borders and to reclaim the Ebodold Sector. The entire area which was declared Quarantined by writ of the Ordo Machinum, which was elevated to become fifth of the Ordo Majoris in the wake of the war and the contemporary loss of Samech, located on the opposite side of the galaxy in the Jericho Reach, to the forces of Uraniborg 1572 in 659.M39, one thousand years before the appearance of the Hadex Anomaly.

Access to the Ebodold Sector is strictly restricted, with the ranking Conclave having the last say on whoever enters the Quarantine Zone. Not even Space Marines have been exempted from this strict oversight, such is the Ordo's paranoia about the New Vodian Empire's corruptive capabilities. The local population, descended from the survivors of the War, has been moved to specially-selected Quarantine Worlds and is constantly monitored for Vodian sleeper mind-programs. A special detachment of the Raven Guard was dispatched there from Kiavahr, and eventually authorized to begin autonomous recruitment by the High Lords, becoming the Death Spectres Legion, or Legion XXII, permanently stationed in the Northwestern corner of the Imperium to watch over this new enemy and to provide a backup base for the forces deployed around the Eye of Terror and the northern Tamarian Gate.

This dedicated Legion Founding, unheard of since the Cyclopean Heresy, had direct approval from the Inquisitorial Conclave of Sol, which overrode the High Lords' objections. It is even rumored that a minor Eldar Craftworld, Arach-Qin, has helped the Imperial forces in some battles and has accepted to join the Pact of Bethalmae upon hearing of the kind of foe that the New Vodian Empire worships, but there is no definite proof of that.

At the same time, the nearby Calixis Sector, only recently founded after the Angevin Crusade, was subjected to stringent Ordo Machinum and Ordo Hereticus oversight, to ensure no smuggler managed to bring forbidden technology from the foul realm. This resulted in several families and cults of Heretics being discovered and eradicated from existence and history, with the Purge of Malfi being the most prominent. Many more escaped into other Sectors, where the eye of the Inquisition is unfortunately less present, less vigilant. Some escaped into the Koronus Expanse, braving the strong Navy presence or bribing susceptible officers who looked the other way.

None of those were ever heard of again within Imperial space. The Calixis Sector, which was becoming a haven of renegades and ever-conspiring nobles, was put under de facto direct Inquisitorial rule, with the Calixis Conclave seated on Malfi (after proper Historical Revision by the Ordo Historia personnel) becoming de facto Sector Governor. Such an arrangement was considered highly unorthodox by the Puritans, but the threat of the New Vodian Empire warranted such measures.

In Ebodold X's orbit was established a Watch Fortress of the Ordo Machinum, based around a rebuilt Ironside-class Starfort dating back to the time of the Heresy and rediscovered during the war.

Watch Fortress Ebodold, along with Watch Fortress Prefectia near the Damocles Gulf and Watch Fortress -REDACTED-near the Medusa system, is one of the main strongholds of the Ordo Machinum. The Xanite Tech-Priests stationed here conduct research upon this new enemy and designing new weapons and testing new, reverse engineered patterns of Great Crusade era-war-machines under strict Ordo oversight. At the same time, those individuals who deal in Vodian technology are brought here to be interrogated for knowledge. Any kind of knowledge.

Because the question is not if the New Vodian Empire returns.

The question is when it will return….and if the Imperium can triumph over it when it does.

-Inquisitor Lord Voross Salcedo, Ordo Machinum.

END FILE. DEATH TO THE THINKING MACHINES, FOR THEY ARE THE DEATH OF MAN.