Orpheus Sector.
Mandeville Point.
The power of the Warp suddenly surged through the void. The boundary between reality and the Empyrean grew blurred and fragile, like a membrane stretched too many times until it finally gave way.
A vast rift tore open, spilling the Warp's hallucinatory light into space.
Through that curtain of light emerged a massive fleet of the Imperium of Man.
The fleet's sensor arrays soon completed an all-directional scan of the system.
What they revealed silenced everyone.
It was a vision of hell.
Metal fragments and the wreckage of countless ships filled nearly the entire field of view. There was so much debris that it blotted out the distant stars.
The wrecks loomed like countless twisted shadows, choking every navigable route.
This was clearly the site of a tremendous battle.
The Imperial fleet, however, seemed to have expected it.
Once the orders went out, the smaller escort frigates advanced ahead of the formation. Cutting Lasers mounted on their bows burned straight corridors through the sea of wreckage, opening routes for the heavy ships behind them.
The Battle of Orpheus Sector had ended only weeks ago.
In the original timeline, this war would not have taken place for another century. It would have become the Imperium of Man's first full-scale war against a vast Necron Dynasty.
In Orpheus Sector, the Necrons of the Merokh Dynasty had awakened from their long Great Sleep.
Unfortunately, their Mind Cores had been damaged during that slumber.
They had joined the Destroyer Cult.
Under the influence of this mental plague, all too common among Necrons, the Merokh Dynasty's warriors had lost even the most basic understanding of living beings.
They had frantically modified their mechanical bodies, erased every lingering trace of Necrontyr emotion from their minds, and come to regard every organic life-form