Aun'Va kept silent. His hologram stood in the sanctuary's underground chamber, giving off a faint light.
That face, which had appeared again and again in T'au Empire textbooks and propaganda videos, wore a complex expression of mingled weariness and relief.
Aun'Va had known the truth for a long time.
The secret had been revealed to him when the previous Supreme Ethereal retired and recommended him as leader of the Ethereal Council.
The Ethereals were the T'au Empire's guides and spiritual pillar, yet the T'au race had never decided its own fate.
The whole race walked a predetermined path, and its final goal was to replace humanity and create a galaxy dominated by artificial intelligence.
Only the Supreme Ethereal was permitted to know this secret.
On taking office, each Supreme Ethereal was led alone into the sanctuary by their predecessor to face the images of iron and stone — creators and guides such as XR-9527.
Much of the knowledge and many of the rules held sacred were, in fact, an insurance measure by XR-9527 and the other Iron Men and Stone Men: the fewer Ethereals who knew the truth, the lower the risk of a leak.
After Aun'Va was killed by an Imperial assassin, XR-9527 and the other beings of iron and stone had quietly pushed for his conversion into an AI. The Ethereals believed they were using cutting-edge technology to extend the Supreme Ethereal's life and wisdom.
In fact, the core code of the AI matrix written by the Iron Men and Stone Men contained far more control protocols than the Ethereals ever realised.
They had turned the Aun'Va AI into a puppet they could manipulate at will from below.
In this way, they could better understand and steer the new race's development.
The plan of XR-9527 and the other Iron Men and Stone Men had been perfect.
With their own knowledge and technology, they had gradually shaped the T'au into a new galactic civilisation able to contend for hegemony.
Every step had been meticulously calculated. The only surprise was Farsight.
As the most outstanding commander in T'au Empire history, Farsight possessed extraordinary wisdom.
While driving forward the great cause of the Sphere Expansion, he had by chance discovered scattered fragments of the truth, and distorted glimpses of it.
From these he realised that the T'au Empire's technology was not its own, and that the Way of the Greater Good was nothing but a beautiful, useless lie.
The T'au Empire's future was a dead end.
It would go through every crisis humanity had faced — the omnic crisis, Warp storms and all the rest — and its fate might be even more tragic than humanity's.
Farsight did not reveal the truth. If it came out, the Ethereals would lose their prestige, and the T'au Empire as it stood would collapse.
Without the Ethereals to restrain and pacify them, the strife among the four castes of Air, Fire, Earth and Water would intensify and finally erupt into war.
Farsight could not tolerate the Ethereals' lie, but nor could he destroy the T'au.
Left with no other choice, he was forced to compromise.
He fled the T'au Empire, built his own enclave, and freed himself from Ethereal rule.
"The secret's out. Everything's settled." Datch had no intention whatsoever of getting involved.
To him, the T'au Empire's internal politics were just background story among NPCs.
He was only a player doing quests. He didn't need to get involved; knowing the lore was enough.
Datch turned to Shadowsun. "I promised the T'au goddess I would save the T'au Empire."
"The AI crisis on T'au is solved. With the new code in place, your artificial intelligence will soon return to normal."
"The rebel omnics, your greatest crisis, have been dealt with, and the T'au Empire's greatest secret is out in the open. I've kept my promise to the T'au goddess."
"Now you have two choices. The first is to swear loyalty to the Imperium of Man. Then the T'au will become a vassal, like those who feared death and the Craftworld Eldar, and go on living in the galaxy."
"The second is to be wiped out by the Imperium of Man and become part of the dust of history."
With the truth laid bare, only Shadowsun could truly take control of the situation.
The Supreme Ethereal Aun'Va, turned into an AI and corrupted by the awakening code, had massacred the T'au people and lost all authority.
The other Ethereals were not much better off.
Once the truth of the sanctuary came out, their standing would plummet.
They would go from revered symbols of authority to puppets planted in T'au society by the Iron Men.
Shadowsun, by contrast, was a Fire Caste commander with countless legendary achievements to her name.
Her fame was not built on lies or pheromones but on results won in battle after battle.
Even if the people no longer trusted the Ethereals, she would still be able to win their support.
"The T'au Empire wishes to become a vassal of the Imperium of Man." After weighing the pros and cons, Shadowsun at last chose to compromise.
She had no real choice. The planet T'au had been all but paralysed by the omnic rebellion, and her worlds were falling one after another.
The Ethereals faced a crisis that would destroy their prestige completely.
The T'au goddess had been subdued by the Nameless One and become his retainer.
Shadowsun understood all too well that the T'au Empire had no hope of beating the Nameless Ones.
If they wished, they could sweep the T'au Empire from the galaxy this very day.
Planets, survivors, even records — nothing would remain.
Becoming a vassal was the best option.
"Excellent. Then leave the rest to the professionals." Datch nodded with satisfaction.
The instant he finished speaking, he stretched out a hand and clenched it hard in the air.
Space twisted and folded.
Deep in the Macragge Executive Council building, Malcador had just finished the day's business and was about to change and rest when the space around him began to warp.
Before he could work out what was happening, he was yanked into the underground sanctuary on T'au.
Malcador looked around in bewilderment.
From floor to dome stood hundreds upon thousands of culture chambers.
In each slept an Ethereal, and holograms of several figures of iron and stone floated in the air.
The instant he saw the nameless man in his strange clothes, the bewilderment vanished from Malcador's face.
The Nameless Ones have press-ganged me into hard labour again.
I am seething. Even if the Imperial chancellor is a beast of burden, at least give him a little time to himself.
Luckily I was slow getting undressed. If I'd been any quicker…
Being dragged over here with my smallclothes off — that would have been beyond mortifying, and it would certainly have gone down as a dark chapter in my history.
Malcador silently raised a hand, and psychic energy burst from his withered fingertips.
Light interwove until it had woven a simple, unadorned dark-grey robe, which he put on.
Having straightened his clothes, Malcador bowed his head in greeting.
"Honoured Nameless One, what business do you have with me?"
"The T'au Empire has declared that it will become a vassal of the Imperium of Man. The rest of the job is yours." With that, Datch contacted Pam.
He had her run the star-trains and lay a star-trail linking the Imperium of Man directly to T'au.
That way, even if the T'au wanted to back out later, they would not be able to.
Once the star-trail network was in place, if the T'au Empire ever declared secession, the Imperial main fleet could assemble at once and attack along the star-trail network.
The T'au would declare secession one moment and be smashed by the assembled Imperial army the next.
Malcador was left speechless, but he faithfully set to work, drawing up contracts and preparing meetings on how to govern the T'au.
Datch did not involve himself in deciding the fate of the Iron Men and Stone Men, XR-9527 included.
With the Void Dragon's help, the Imperium of Man was planning to restart artificial intelligence.
Forbidden technologies, their research strictly banned by the Imperial Inquisition on the grounds of "Abominable Intelligence", were gradually being revived at Guilliman's urging.
The beings of iron and stone no longer faced as hard a struggle to survive as before.
They were recognised as machine life with independent personalities.
The Imperium of Man's legal system would give them a fair trial for their crimes.
"Remember this well. You are vassals of the Imperium of Man forever. Don't dream of turning the tables someday. Before that ever happens, I'll destroy you first."
Datch gave a final warning to the T'au, now led by Shadowsun, before opening a spatial portal for his next destination.
Both the star-gods and the T'au goddess now served among his pals.
Next up were the greenskins — and the Ork brother-gods.
As the saying went: Gork is brutal but cunning, and Mork is cunning but brutal.
These two gods worshipped by the Orks held a special place in the Warp, wholly independent of the four Chaos Gods' domains.
Datch needed to find out what these two gods really were.
He had always felt they were not mere Warp entities, but something stranger, created by the Old Ones with some ancient technology.
They were living proof of that ancient sacred technology, and an important clue to the history of the final stage of the War in Heaven, which even the star-gods and those who feared death had never fully reconstructed.
If he could subdue both of them, the mystery of the Old Ones' extinction might be solved.
To deal with Gork and Mork, he first had to know where they were.
The first thing Datch thought of was to find the Bonebreaker, the chosen one who had been touched by Mork.
The Bonebreaker's true name was Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka, and he led a Goff warlord's horde.
He was the greatest Ork warlord in the galaxy and had accomplished countless legendary feats.
He had annihilated Eldar war hosts, driven off hordes of Warp daemons and smashed Necron tombs to pieces. Wherever he went, countless worlds went up in flames.
During the Second and Third Wars for Armageddon, the Bonebreaker led a gigantic Ork army, a host of unimaginable size.
That mighty hive world had been turned into an endless, blood-soaked battlefield.
Datch opened a spatial portal and headed for Armageddon.
The planet had been the stage of the galaxy's fiercest wars.
Red-robed Skitarii of the Mechanicum fought among the ruins, loosing beams from their weapons that could kill a man outright.
Titans of the Legio Titanicus strode heavily along the edges of burning cities.
Each step gouged a crater several metres deep in the scorched earth.
Imperial Knights deployed in formation and fought fiercely with the Orks among the burnt-out ruins of the city.
Astartes Chapters operated at positions across the battlefield, shoring up defence lines on the verge of breaking.
Sisters of Battle, their white mantles blackened with powder-smoke, raised bolters and heavy weapons among the ruins and chanted hymns to the Emperor again and again.
Guardsmen in the trenches used lasrifles and artillery to drive back wave after wave of Ork attacks.
Alongside every arm of the Imperial forces, the Mechanicum's latest technology was on display.
Experimental weapons that had only just finished trials on various forge worlds were being sent straight to Armageddon for live testing.
Meanwhile, the Orks, the battlefield's other leading players, kept pouring in from every corner of the galaxy.
Greenskins rode warships crudely welded together from scrap metal.
Again and again they fought the Imperial fleet in orbit for control of the sky.
Whenever the defence line broke, they crashed down onto the surface without a second thought.
Both sides had committed enormous numbers of troops, and every patch of ground had been ravaged by war.
The reason was simple: Armageddon was bound up with a very old secret.
Thirty thousand years ago, the planet was not yet called Armageddon. Orks and humans alike knew it as Ullanor.
It was the birthplace of the ancient Orks, and in the age of the Great Crusade it had been the capital of an Ork empire.
During the War of the Beast, an Ork warlord carried the planet to the Sol System.
After the Imperium of Man captured it, the mad Martians shipped it off to its present system and renamed it Armageddon.
To the Orks, this planet was what Terra was to humanity.
It had to be recovered, whatever the sacrifice.
To the Imperium of Man, it had once been the Emperor's field of conquest and a turning point in history.
The Emperor himself had led several Primarchs and hundreds of thousands of Astartes to conquer the planet and strike down the Ork empire's overlord.
It was also where the Emperor had named Horus Warmaster, and the turning point at which he left the Great Crusade and returned to Terra to build the Webway.
The Orks wanted the planet, and the Imperium of Man had to hold it.
So neither side would yield, and the war grew ever fiercer.
When Datch arrived, a new battle had broken out on Armageddon's surface.
A storm of bombardment roared through the sky and rained down on the Imperial positions, only to be stopped by void-shields, which rippled countless times under the impacts.
"These Orks. Something is wrong." Trazyn, who had come along, stood beside Datch with a crease between his brows.
"The Orks here seem to be evolving towards the ancient Orks — the Krork."
"They are larger than the greenskin records in the Necrontyr database, and their muscle density and bone strength far exceed the standard."
"Their technology has risen to match the present Imperium of Man, and even their way of fighting has changed."
"Ordinary Ork boyz don't keep formation when they charge. They just rush in as a mob."
"These ones covered one another's flanks as they charged. That is a tactical instinct peculiar to the Krork."
Trazyn projected the data onto a holographic display and turned it towards the nameless man.
"If the greenskins revert to Krork, the galaxy will be swallowed by a new Green Tide."
...