A vast renegade Adeptus Mechanicus fleet was advancing toward the Millennium Worlds.
The immense fleet comprised hundreds of warships of every kind, from the smallest scout craft to the largest Ark Mechanicus, arrayed in a torrent of steel stretching tens of thousands of kilometers.
Their hulls were painted deep crimson and adorned with the Adeptus Mechanicus's distinctive cog-and-skull Insignia, but that Insignia had been twisted by some power. Spikes sprouted from the edges of the cogs, and dark red flames burned in the skulls' eye sockets.
Those were the marks of Chaos corruption, the symbols of the heretics within the Adeptus Mechanicus who had betrayed the Emperor and pledged themselves to the Chaos gods.
The fleet was led by Eloil, a renegade Adeptus Mechanicus Archmagos from the Forge World of Xana II.
Eloil had been one of Xana II's Archmagi. After a secret communication from Utio, the Fabricator-General of Mars, he had chosen to side with the Traitor Legion.
Utio had painted a glorious vision for him—a new Imperium, a future ruled by machinery and logic, a new era freed from the shackles of the Emperor and the flesh.
Eloil had been moved by those promises. He had also succumbed to his own hunger for power and knowledge, and in the end, he had chosen betrayal.
He had brought the vast majority of Xana II's fleet to help attack the Millennium Worlds.
As he understood it, the so-called Millennium Worlds were merely the handful of planets within the Colchis Star System—no more than a dozen habitable worlds at most.
He believed that the immense fleet at his command would be enough to crush those believers' resistance in short order, after which he could return to Xana II laden with plundered technology and resources.
What he did not know was that