Several days later, in the city of Macragge.
The smoke of battle had finally cleared.
Days of chaos, explosions, and firefights had receded like an ebbing tide from the streets of this classical city.
Charred wreckage was cleared away, shattered glass replaced, and bullet holes and energy burns in the walls carefully repaired by artisans.
Ultramar Auxilia patrols swept the streets at three times their usual density. Figures in deep blue power armour stood silently at key locations, their eyepieces flashing with vigilant scanning lights.
Order returned with a lingering ache. The city breathed, but its breath still carried faint traces of burning and cleansing agents.
Once the Cabal's meticulously planned uprising lost the advantage of surprise and the concealment of its internal infiltration, its true nature lay exposed.
In the end, they were a secret society that moved through the shadows.
When endless ranks of the Ultramar Auxilia were urgently recalled from their garrisons, when Ultramarines companies responding to the highest alert raced back from neighboring star clusters and orbital fortresses to unleash their thunderous fury, when the war machine of all Macragge—and indeed the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar—was fully activated and turned inward...
Those hidden pawns, controlled puppets, and the few genuine core operatives of the Cabal evaporated like frost beneath a blazing sun, swiftly collapsing and being uprooted.
The purge was thorough and efficient.
Against absolute superiority in numbers, force, and home-ground advantage, every scheme seemed feeble.
Scattered resistance in the streets was quickly crushed, hideouts were surrounded and cleared one by one, and most who tried to escape through secret passages or in disguise were intercepted.
Of course, a few of the most cunning core members might have escaped amid the chaos and vanished into the vast sea of stars, but that could no longer