Three days passed in a flash.
The brutal battle in the Crimson Bright Wasteland industrial zone, followed by the outbreak of Warp heresy contamination, was like a boulder dropped into a calm lake, stirring up towering waves throughout Aurelian IV's political landscape.
Hisman City, Simans Chamber of Commerce headquarters, emergency meeting of the High Council.
"...To summarize."
"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."
"We contained the contamination within the industrial zone, buying the planet's overall defenses a precious seventy-two hours of warning."
The speaker was the Chamber's chief public relations officer, a middle-aged man whose face was arranged into an expression of professional grief.
Behind him, a carefully edited sequence played on the holographic projection:
Alru's forces charging bravely, tank shells raining down on rebel fortifications, and soldiers conducting an "orderly retreat" while fighting as they fell back after the Warp heretics appeared...
As for the routs, the massacre, the Psykers' betrayal, and how the Basilisk bombardment had failed to eliminate the Warp heretics—instead making them stronger?
Those were merely necessary sacrifices amid the fog of war, and the result of the Warp heretics' sinister schemes.
"We must emphasize," the public relations officer said firmly, "that the root cause of this incident was the failure of the Imperium's Iron Hands Legion to completely purge the Warp heresy threat left behind at the District 7 crash site, eighty years ago, when they eradicated the Black Royal Family!"
"And our Chamber was the first loyal force to discover the threat, issue a warning, and commit substantial troops in an attempt to contain the disaster!"
"We paid a terrible price!"
"Thirteen Leman Russ Tanks, sixteen Sentinel Mechs, and more than four thousand loyal soldiers killed or wounded!"
"All of it was for the security of Aurelian IV as a whole!"
The representatives of the other three major powers sat around the table, listening without expression.
The representative of the Adons Knight Family, a middle-aged knight wearing half a suit of Power Armour with a Power Sword hanging at his waist, gave an almost imperceptible snort.
His family controlled most of Aurelian IV's armed forces and mining industry. They had always looked down on upstarts like the Chamber, which had made its fortune selling medicine.
Besides, the Knight House had its own intelligence network. They knew what had happened in the industrial zone.
Successfully containing the threat?
They had obviously lost control, blasted awake the Warp heretics buried underground, and now that they couldn't clean up the mess, they were playing the victim and passing the blame.
The representative of House Conmore, a female Psyker veiled and surrounded by a faint glow, tapped her fingertips lightly against the table.
Her psychic senses were sharper than anyone else's in the room.
She could hear the heretical whispers drifting from the Crimson Bright Wasteland, spreading ever farther, like the stench wafting from a festering wound.
The Chamber's claims that the contamination had been contained were laughable.
But the Psionic Family was more concerned about something else: the Psykers who had betrayed them.
The Cult of the Machine Thought's computational Psionic servitors had been corrupted by heresy?
That shattered the delicate balance they had maintained for so long with this Mechanicus offshoot. If their machines couldn't even guarantee their own order, why should Psykers trust them?
The representative of the Cult of the Machine Thought, a Tech-Priest with one half of his face mechanical and the other covered by a respirator, sat with the red light of his bionic eye blinking steadily as data streamed across his visual display.
Fierce logical debates were raging within the Cult.
Some Tech-Priests believed the rogue Psionic servitors were the result of design flaws and needed to be recalled and dismantled for thorough study.
Others argued that this was an unpredictable Warp variable, proof of the superiority of pure machinery. After all, the tanks and artillery hadn't turned traitor.
Regardless, the Cult had to make a statement.
His mechanical arm rose, and his synthesized voice rang out coldly:
"The Cult of the Machine Thought concurs with the Chamber's assessment that this threat stems from a historical issue left unresolved in District 7."
"Containing the spread of the contamination is our highest priority."
"The Cult will dispatch five Purifier-class Heavy Combat Robots, ten Exterminator-class Walking Turrets, and a squadron of Combat Servo-skulls for support."
"Additionally, the Cult demands first rights to study all wreckage from the District 7 site and the industrial zone after the battle, in order to analyze the mechanisms of Chaos contamination and improve future purification protocols."
The representative of House Altons finally spoke, his voice booming:
"House Altons will send two companies of Knight-class Battle Armor, along with supporting infantry."
"But command must remain in our hands. Your Chamber has no experience in war."
The female representative of House Conmore added softly, "House Conmore will send thirty Battle Psykers and thirty support personnel to establish a psychic barrier, disrupt the heretical whispers, and attempt to locate the contamination's core."
"But we'll need the Mechanicus to provide Psionic Suppressors, just in case."
The meeting continued in a bizarre atmosphere of We all know you're talking nonsense, but now is not the time for infighting.
In the end, the four parties reached a temporary agreement:
1. Immediately establish the Aurelian Joint Command for Responding to the Warp Heresy Threat.
The four parties would each appoint representatives. House Altons would take military command, House Conmore would oversee psychic affairs, the Mechanicus would provide technical equipment, and the Chamber... would handle logistics and coordination.
2. Immediately submit an emergency report to the current Planetary Governor, an Imperial bureaucrat who appeared once every five years and mainly collected Tithes.
3. In the name of the Planetary Governor and the four powers, send a highest-priority distress signal to the Governor's Office of the Eastern Galactic Sector and any nearby Imperial Navy Patrol Fleet.
4. Before Imperial reinforcements arrived, muster the forces currently available and establish a cordon around the contaminated area of the Crimson Bright Wasteland to prevent the spread of contamination and assess whether a final purge was possible.
The Governor's Palace.
The obese Governor Harrington stared at the four reports before him, each written in stern language that contradicted the others.
Along with the joint distress call awaiting his signature, they made him feel like he was sitting atop a Promethium reactor on the verge of exploding.
He didn't understand Warp heresy contamination or daemonic incursions, but he understood how the Imperium's bureaucracy worked.
If he reported the matter up the chain and it was handled well, he might earn some credit.
If it wasn't, he would certainly be the first to take the blame.
But if he didn't report it?
If an investigation later revealed that he had concealed it, he wouldn't just take the blame. He'd be put straight onto the Departmento Munitorum's purge list.
"Sign it! Sign it now!"
Governor Harrington trembled as he picked up the pen. "Send it through the fastest, most secure channels!"
"To the Governor's Office, to the Departmento Munitorum, and... and file a copy with the Eastern Sector Command of the Imperial Expeditionary Force! Send it to everyone!"
"Also, issue a planetary emergency decree in my name, authorizing the four parties to take any reasonable measures within the framework of Imperial law to defend Aurelian..."
"Wait, does 'any necessary measures' sound too sensitive?"
"Change it to 'any reasonable measures within the framework of Imperial law'..."
The bureaucratic machine began turning, slow and ponderous.
The reports were converted into data packets and sent through the Warp communications array toward the distant sector capital.
The distress signal was like a pebble cast into the deep sea. Whether it would stir even a ripple depended on whether an Imperial Navy fleet happened to be nearby—and whether it would bother answering the call for help from a frontier world.
Meanwhile, within Aurelian, the gears of power ground together under the pressure of the crisis, shrieking as they turned.
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