Vicar Star Colony Surface
Numerous facilities for mining the unknown Black Ore had already been established. These massive structures, used for prospecting, extraction, or providing workers with rest and living quarters, were connected together and had already reached the scale of a city.
Earth Clan members, Kroot, Gou Weisa who had surrendered from former Imperium mining worlds... miners from the Tau Empire and its allied races remained in the residential districts.
Because neither the purpose nor the extraction method of the Black Ore was known, mining operations had never been successfully carried out.
The unpaid miners had previously demanded that the Ethereals arrange Transport Ships to send them all home. But when an Ethereal came to the mining site, delivered an impassioned speech, and concluded with "for the Supreme Good Way," miners of every race obediently remained at the extraction station, patiently waiting for the day mining could begin.
But that day would never come.
A roar from the sky drew the miners' attention.
It was the sound of an unimaginably sturdy and extremely fast object scraping through the atmosphere.
Looking out from the high-rises of the residential district, the miners saw a meteor falling from the sky, but this meteor was clearly unlike any ordinary one.
By the time the Tau with the sharpest long-distance vision saw the meteor descend and reacted, it had already crashed into the mountains far from the mining site.
The impact kicked up a sandstorm, launching countless enormous boulders into the sky and scattering them in every direction like raindrops.
The otherwise invisible shockwave became visible through the traces left by its rapid expansion. In an instant, the glass of the many extraction facilities, which together formed a city-sized complex, shattered all at once.
Then came a deafening roar, nearly bursting the eardrums of