"Two Astronomicans, disrupted Warp travel..."
Lorgar tapped his fingers against the report on his desk, jointly submitted by several Navigators, his gaze sweeping over the ink.
"We can't contact Terra, the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar, Olympia, Barbarus, Baal, Nuceria, Nostramo, Caliban..." His voice sank lower with every name he spoke.
Those names had once been the brightest coordinates on the star chart, worlds that stood at the heart of the Imperium's authority and power, worlds that had radiated order into every corner of the Milky Way Galaxy for countless centuries.
Now, however, one by one, they had fallen silent on the communications channels.
Millennium World seemed to have lost contact with every world in the Imperium.
Lorgar set down the report and walked to the viewport, looking out at the stretch of space being rebuilt in the distance.
In orbit around Colchis, the lights of the shipyards under repair flickered like fireflies in the darkness. Occasionally, a warship cruised slowly past, its bow lights tracing a fleeting arc.
The newly repaired defense platforms had yet to deploy fully and were still only half finished.
Farther out in deep space, in the direction once packed with rebel fleets, nothing remained but deathly silent void.
In the aftermath, the loyalists had no choice but to consider a question: aside from Millennium World, did the Imperium still control any territory at all?
Had the traitors already surrounded Terra?
Had the loyalist homeworlds already been destroyed?
Had those once-impregnable fortress worlds, those former Legion homeworlds, all fallen beneath some unfamiliar light amid the turmoil brewing in the shadows?
Was Millennium World the only survivor of this storm?
This was no alarmist speculation.
The intelligence they possessed was pitifully scant. They could even be said to have gone from a world of the Imperium