M42
— Moon Tear Station, Command Sanctum
At the galactic fringe, where ancient suns dwindled to dying embers and the void clung to everything like a grave-shroud, the darkness was absolute. Even here, the light of the Astronomican flickered like a dying flame.
And within this abyss, the Moon Tear Station made its final preparation.
A relic from mankind's forgotten Golden Age, its titanic form dwarfed even the largest Imperial voidships.
The void around it bristled with defense arrays, detection augurs, and relic weapons from an era before superstition.
Meteor impacts left no mark; even cyclonic warheads would struggle to breach its shields.
In one of its command sanctums, Nusa — the man now called the Machinist — stood before a vast hololithic display, crimson light dancing off his warplate. The sigil of the machinist, a skull inside a cog on his draped cloak.
Around him, bridge officers relayed constant, clipped reports. Data-adepts manned command stations. Vox relays crackled with burst-transmissions from distant scout vessels.
"Void anomaly flare in sector 93-Lambda. No hostile trace detected. Asteroid debris only," intoned Shizuka, the station's core intelligence, her voice cold and precise.
Nusa barely reacted. His mind swam through cascading data streams, parsing endless Imperial transmission captures. The truth of what the Imperium had become scalded worse than any plasma burn.
Savage zealotry. Institutionalized ignorance. A bureaucracy devouring itself.
The Adeptus Mechanicus — once his Archivists — had become a death-cult of tech-priests clinging to millennia-dead myths. Knowledge hoarded, progress forbidden. Innovation declared heresy.
His gauntlet clenched at the memory of the recording mechanicum council's final declarations before spiraling into the way they are now.
"The Omnissiah's design is sacred. All deviation must be purged."
Idiots. Blind men strangling the very future they were meant to safeguard.
"Do they not realize," Nusa had once roared in this very sanctum, "that adaptation and learning is humanity's greatest weapon?"
Now, ten long years in the void had reshaped his plans. The flood of Imperial records had left him no choice.
At his back, Martin, the new chief steward, approached — his bearing identical to his late father's, every word, gesture, and ritual precise.
"All personnel are standing by, my lord. Fleet assets await deployment," Martin reported, voice crisp.
Nusa nodded once. "Transmit confirmation."
Martin bowed and withdrew.
The hololith shifted, displaying the parade-grounds and void-docks: war machines and battalions in flawless ranks. Ten million gene-clones clad in advanced void armor. Las carbines, auspex scanners, personal shielding — the battle gear of the Great Crusade era, refined, unshackled from religious filth.
In orbit, warships gathered: Gloriana-hulled battleship, battlecruisers, and destroyer phalanxes are among the whole fleet. The flagship's prow bore only one mark — the sigil of the machinist.
Steel Cordon.
The name of his first wave.
Pushing the station fabricator to overdrive, in one year, a whole fleet has been build.
But it was not the weapons alone that mattered. Nusa knew: to unleash Golden Age technology outright would only feed the Mechanicus machine and spark a civil war.
Even a single compact energy weapon could obliterate an imperial greatest tank, Baneblade's frontal armor.
So, he rebuilt, slowly.
And he forged new tools.
The hololith flickered again, focusing on his Shinobi strike forces. Special-forces columns, two ten-thousand-strong divisions. Agile gene-clones, armored in fully sealed, space-grade combat suits with void-silent movement systems wearing a blank mask with slit like eyes. Monoblades, rail-flechette weapons, micro fusion shields — the tools of war in both shadow and light.
At their flanks, five thousand psyker gene-clones in fox-faced masks waited. The Sealing Corps, each carrying a prototype Empyric Field Actuator upon their arm — a device designed to siphon, convert, and repurpose warp energy in controlled combat applications. The result of decades of theoretical work… and old 2nd millennium media inspiration.
The core bridge lit crimson as proximity alarms sounded.
"New vox-echo, my lord," Shizuka reported. "Signal origin: Maelstrom-infected sector. Cross-referencing chrono-beacon Delta-Seven."
Nusa's brow furrowed.
"Confirm source," he ordered sharply.
[Confirmed. Anomalous subspace distortion consistent with Imperium signature code.]
The vox-capture stabilized. The message was fractured, but one fragment cut through:
"…Primarch… XIII… captive… alive…"
The word hung in the chamber like a pulse from the distant past.
Nusa's posture remained unchanged — but those closest saw the tightening of his jaw.
A memory surfaced unbidden: the solemn oaths sworn beside the Man of Gold when the galaxy was still young.
Nusa had always called him oath-brother, even when mankind was still living in hut.
If the Primarchs were his gene-sons, this one… by blood-right or oath, was kin.
He said nothing of this aloud.
Instead, his voice carried absolute authority.
"Prepare a strike contingent. Shinobi 13th and 15th Battle Companies, 4th Sealing Corps attached. Taskforce command: Jonin Seiji of 15th battle companies aided by the 13th battle company and 4th sealing corps captain."
Martin relayed the order as klaxons sounded and fleet personnel mobilized.
"And inform all commands, I will brief the taskforce leaders myself" Nusa added coldly.
"From this moment, we are the Exiled."
[Affirmative. Designation updated, my lord.]
The last thing Nusa did before turning toward the launch bays was murmur — in a voice like steel rasping on stone:
"Nephew… you will be my opening move in this war."