Aurelian's Tremors

Three days passed in the blink of an eye.

The brutal engagement in the industrial zone of the Crimson Bright Wasteland, followed by the subsequent outbreak of Warp-tainted heresy, acted like a massive boulder thrown into a calm lake, sending monstrous waves through the entire political ecosystem of Aurelian IV.

Hisman City, headquarters of the Simans Chamber of Commerce, emergency meeting of the Supreme Council.

"...In summary."

"Under the decisive command of General Caspar Alru, our Chamber's armed forces successfully thwarted the conspiracy of the Siclaman rebels and the Warp heretics."

"By containing the contamination within the industrial zone, we secured a precious seventy-two-hour early warning for the planet's overall defense."

The speaker was the Chamber's Chief Public Relations Officer, a middle-aged man whose face was plastered with a professional expression of tragic indignation.

Behind him, a holographic projection played carefully edited footage:

Alru's troops charging heroically, tank fire blanketing rebel fortifications, and soldiers executing an "orderly withdrawal" after the Warp heretics appeared...

As for the routs, the massacres, the betrayal of the psykers, and the fact that the Basilisk artillery fire failed to eliminate the heretics but instead fueled them?

Those were merely necessary sacrifices under the fog of war and the treacherous tricks of the Warp heretics.

"We must emphasize," the PR officer's tone was ironclad, "that the root cause of this incident lies in the fact that eighty years ago, when the Imperial Iron Hands Legion purged the Black Royal Family, they failed to completely cleanse the Warp-tainted hazards left behind at the crash site in District 7!"

"And our Chamber was the first loyal force to discover, warn, and commit heavy troops in an attempt to contain the disaster!"

"We have paid a heavy price!"

"Thirteen Leman Russ Tanks, sixteen Sentinel Mechs, and casualties exceeding four thousand loyal soldiers!"

"All of this was for the overall safety of Aurelian IV!"

Around the round table, representatives of the other three major factions listened with expressionless faces.

The representative of the Adons Knight Family, a middle-aged knight wearing half-body power armor with a power sword hanging at his waist, let out an imperceptible scoff through his nose.

His family controlled the majority of the armed forces and mining operations on Aurelian IV, and they had always looked down on the Chamber, a bunch of upstarts who started out as medicine peddlers.

Furthermore, the Knight Family had their own intelligence network; they knew exactly what had happened in the industrial zone.

Successful containment?

It was clearly a botched operation that had woken up the Warp heretics buried underground. Now that they couldn't clean up the mess, they were crying foul and shifting the blame.

The representative of the Khomo Psionic Family, a veiled female psyker wreathed in a faint, shimmering light, tapped her fingertips lightly against the tabletop.

Her psionic perception was sharper than anyone else present.

She could hear the heretical whispers spreading from the direction of the Crimson Bright Wasteland, like the stench emanating from a rotting wound.

The Chamber's claim in their report that the contamination was under control was simply laughable.

But the Psionic Family was currently more concerned with another matter: those traitorous psykers.

How could the computational psionic servants of the Cult of the Machine Thought be corrupted by heresy?

This shattered the delicate balance they had long maintained with the Mechanicus branch. If mechanical constructs could not even guarantee their own order, then why should psykers trust them?

The representative of the Cult of the Machine Thought, a Tech-Priest with half his face mechanical and the other half covered by a respirator, had his mechanical ocular sensor flickering with steady red light as data streams scrolled across his visual interface.

A fierce logical debate was currently raging within the Cult.

One faction of Tech-Priests argued that the traitorous psionic servants were a design flaw that needed to be recalled and completely dismantled for study.

The other faction argued that this was an unpredictable Warp variable, proving the superiority of pure machinery—look, the tanks and artillery hadn't betrayed them.

But regardless, the Cult had to take a stance.

His mechanical arm lifted, and his synthesized voice was cold:

"The Cult of the Machine Thought acknowledges the Chamber's assessment regarding the historical legacy of District 7."

"The current priority is to contain the spread of the contamination."

"The Cult will dispatch five Purifier-class Heavy Combat Robots, ten Exterminator-class Walking Turrets, and provide a squadron of Combat Servo-skulls for support."

"At the same time, the Cult demands priority research rights to the District 7 ruins and all post-battle wreckage in the industrial zone to analyze the Chaos contamination mechanism and perfect subsequent purification protocols."

The representative of the Adons Family finally spoke, his voice booming:

"The Adons Family will dispatch two companies of Knight-class Battle Armor, along with supporting infantry."

"But command must be led by our side. When it comes to war, you Chamber people are not professionals."

The female representative of the Khomo Family added softly: "The Khomo Family will dispatch thirty combat psykers and thirty psionic support personnel to be responsible for establishing psionic barriers, interfering with heretical whispers, and attempting to locate the core of the contamination."

"But we require the Mechanicus to provide Psionic Suppressors, just in case."

The meeting continued in an eerie atmosphere of we all know you're full of it, but now is not the time for infighting.

In the end, the four parties reached a temporary agreement:

1. Immediately establish the Aurelian Warp Heresy Threat Joint Response Command.

Composed of personnel sent by all four parties, the Adons Family would hold military command, the Khomo Family would be responsible for psionic affairs, the Mechanicus would provide technical equipment, and the Chamber... would be responsible for logistics and coordination.

2. Immediately submit an emergency report to the current Planetary Governor, that Imperial bureaucrat who only showed his face once every five years and was primarily responsible for collecting tithes.

3. In the name of the Planetary Governor and the four major factions, transmit a highest-priority distress signal to the Eastern Sector Command of the Imperial Expeditionary Force and any Imperial Navy patrol fleets that may be in the vicinity.

4. Before Imperial reinforcements arrive, assemble all available forces to establish a blockade along the perimeter of the corrupted zone in the Crimson Bright Wasteland to prevent the spread of contamination, and assess the feasibility of a final purification.

Planetary Governor's Palace.

The obese Governor Harrington stared at the four stern and contradictory reports before him.

Along with the joint distress document awaiting his signature, he felt as though he were sitting atop a Promethium reactor on the verge of detonation.

He did not understand Warp heresy, corruption, or the arrival of daemons, but he understood how the Imperial bureaucracy functioned.

If he reported this matter upward and it was handled well, he might earn some credit.

If it were handled poorly, he would undoubtedly be the first to take the fall.

But not report it?

If it were discovered later that he had concealed the truth, it would not just be a matter of taking the fall; he would be placed directly on the Departmento Munitorum's purge list.

"Sign it, sign it immediately!"

Governor Harrington picked up his pen with a trembling hand. "Send it out through the fastest, most encrypted channel available!"

"File copies with the Sector Governor's Office, the Departmento Munitorum, and... and the Eastern Sector Command of the Imperial Expeditionary Force! Send it to them all!"

"Furthermore, issue a planetary state of emergency in my name, authorizing the four major factions to take all reasonable measures within the framework of Imperial law to defend Orian..."

"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 to turn, slow and heavy.

The reports were converted into data packets and transmitted via the Warp communication array toward the distant sector capital.

The distress signal was like a stone cast into the deep sea; whether it would stir any ripples depended on whether an Imperial Navy fleet happened to be nearby, and whether they were willing to heed the cry for help from a frontier world.

Meanwhile, within Orian, the gears of power ground together under the pressure of the crisis, emitting a harsh, grating sound.