Three days passed in a flash.
The tragic battle in the Redblaze Wasteland Industrial Zone, and the subsequent outbreak of the Warp contamination incident, hit the political ecosystem of Aurelian IV like a massive boulder plunging into a calm lake, stirring up monstrous waves.
In Ximans City, at the headquarters of the Ximans Trade Consortium: an emergency summit of the Supreme Council.
"...In summary."
"Under the decisive command of General Kaspar Aru, our Consortium's armed forces successfully thwarted the conspiracy between the Siclaeman Insurgency and the Warp Heretics."
"We contained the contamination within the industrial zone, buying the planet seventy-two precious hours of early warning time for global defense preparations."
The speaker was the Consortium's Chief Public Relations Officer, a middle-aged man whose face was plastered with a mask of professional, indignant grief.
On the holographic projection behind him played heavily edited footage:
The heroic charge of the Aru forces. Tank artillery bombarding rebel fortifications. Soldiers executing an "orderly retreat" while fighting a delaying action after the Warp Heretics appeared...
As for the parts involving the rout, the slaughter, the Psyker mutiny, and the fact that the Basilisk artillery barrage not only failed to destroy the Heretics but actually fueled them?
Those were "necessary sacrifices under the fog of war" and the "deceitful tricks of Warp Heretics."
"We must emphasize," the PR Officer stated, his tone absolute. "The root cause of this incident lies in the fact that eighty years ago, when the Imperial Iron Hands Legion purged House Blaec, they failed to completely purify the hidden Warp Heretic threat left behind in the ruins of Sector 7!"
"And our Consortium was the first loyalist force to discover it, sound the alarm, and commit heavy forces in an attempt to contain the disaster!"
"We paid a catastrophic price!"
"Thirteen Leman Russ tanks, sixteen Sentinel walkers, and over four thousand loyal soldiers dead or wounded!"
"All of this was done for the overarching safety of Aurelian IV!"
Around the circular table, the representatives of the other three Great Factions listened expressionlessly.
The representative of the Atens Knight House—a middle-aged knight wearing half-plate power armor with a power sword at his waist—let out an almost imperceptible snort.
His House controlled more than half of Aurelian IV's military forces and mining industries. They had always looked down on the Consortium, viewing them as nothing more than nouveau-riche pharmaceutical peddlers.
Moreover, the Knight House had its own intelligence network. They knew exactly what had happened in the industrial zone.
Successfully contained?
You clearly fucked around and found out. You bombed the subterranean Warp Heretics awake, and now that you can't clean up the mess, you're crying victim and shifting the blame.
The representative of the Conmo Psyker Dynasty—a veiled female Psyker surrounded by a faint, glowing aura—tapped her fingertips lightly against the tabletop.
Her psychic perception was sharper than anyone else's in the room.
She could hear the heretical whispers broadcasting from the direction of the Redblaze Wasteland—a spreading contamination that reeked like a rotting wound.
The Consortium's claim that the contamination was "contained" was laughable.
However, the Psyker Dynasty was currently much more concerned with something else: the mutinied Psykers.
The Computational Psy-Servitors of the Order of the Omnissian Mind had actually been corrupted by heretics?
This shattered the delicate balance they had long maintained with the Mechanicus branch. If mechanical creations couldn't even guarantee their own order, why should Psykers trust them?
The representative of the Order of the Omnissian Mind—a Tech-Priest with half his face replaced by machinery and the other half covered by a respirator mask—sat in silence. His red mechanical eye blinked steadily, data streams scrolling across his visual interface.
Within the Order, a fierce logical debate was currently underway.
One faction of Tech-Priests argued that the mutinied Psy-Servitors possessed design flaws and needed to be recovered, completely dismantled, and studied.
Another faction argued that this was an unpredictable Warp variable, which only proved the superiority of pure machinery. Observe: the tanks and artillery did not mutiny.
But regardless, the Order had to make their stance known.
The Tech-Priest raised his mechanical arm, his synthesized voice icy:
"The Order of the Omnissian Mind concurs with the Consortium's assessment regarding the historical legacy issues of Sector 7."
"The current primary objective is to contain the spread of the contamination."
"The Order will deploy five Purifier-class Heavy Combat Automata, ten Eradicator-class Walking Artillery Platforms, and provide one squadron of Combat Servo-Skulls for support."
"Simultaneously, the Order demands priority research rights to the Sector 7 ruins and all post-battle wreckage within the industrial zone, in order to analyze the Chaos contamination mechanics and perfect subsequent purification protocols."
The representative of House Atens finally spoke, his voice booming:
"House Atens will deploy two companies of Knight Armigers, along with their accompanying infantry."
"But the military command must be led by us. You Consortium people are not professionals at fighting wars."
The female representative of the Conmo Dynasty added softly: "The Conmo Dynasty will deploy thirty combat Psykers and thirty psychic auxiliaries to establish a psychic barrier, disrupt heretical whispers, and attempt to locate the core of the contamination."
"However, we require the Mechanicus to provide psychic suppressors, just in case."
The summit continued in a bizarre atmosphere of 'We all know you're full of shit, but now is not the time for infighting.'
Ultimately, the four factions reached a temporary agreement:
1. Immediately establish the Aurelian Warp Heretic Threat Joint Response Command.
2. It would be jointly staffed by the four factions. House Atens would assume military command. The Conmo Dynasty would handle psychic affairs. The Mechanicus would provide technical equipment. The Consortium... would be responsible for logistics and coordination.
3. Immediately submit an emergency report to the current Planetary Governor—an Imperial bureaucrat who only showed his face once every five years, primarily to collect the tithe.
4. In the joint name of the Planetary Governor and the Four Great Factions, transmit a maximum-priority distress signal to the Governor-Militant of the Eastern Fringe and any Imperial Navy patrol fleets that might be nearby.
5. Prior to the arrival of Imperial reinforcements, muster all existing forces to establish a blockade line around the perimeter of the Redblaze Wasteland Contamination Zone to prevent the spread of the contamination, and evaluate the feasibility of a Final Purification.
–
The Planetary Governor's Palace.
The obese Governor Harrington looked at the four severely worded yet contradictory reports placed before him, along with the joint distress petition requiring his signature. He felt like he was sitting on a Promethium reactor that was about to explode.
He didn't understand Warp Heretic contamination or daemonic incursions. But he understood how the Imperial bureaucratic system worked.
If he reported this up the chain and it was handled well, he might get a little credit.
If it wasn't handled well, he would definitely be the first scapegoat.
But not report it?
If it was later discovered that he had covered it up, he wouldn't just be a scapegoat; he would be put straight onto the Departmento Munitorum's purification list.
"Sign it! Sign it immediately!" Governor Harrington picked up his pen, his hand trembling. "Transmit it through the fastest, most heavily encrypted channels!"
"Send it to the Sector Governor-Militant, send it to the Departmento Munitorum, send it... send a record to the Eastern Fringe Command of the Imperial Crusade Forces! Send it to everyone!"
"Also, issue a Planetary State of Emergency in my name. Authorize the Four Factions to take all reasonable measures within the framework of Imperial Law to defend Aurelian..."
"Wait, is the phrase 'all necessary measures' too sensitive?"
"Change it to 'all reasonable measures within the framework of Imperial Law'..."
The bureaucratic machine began its slow, ponderous grind.
Reports were converted into data packets and transmitted toward the distant sector capital via astropathic relays.
The distress signals were like stones thrown into the deep ocean. Whether they would cause a ripple depended entirely on whether an Imperial Navy fleet just happened to be nearby, and whether they were willing to bother with an SOS from a frontier world.