Dimension 467-H, UNE space, Earth, Oramin, .785 hrs before ork attack

The sun shined down upon the senate hall with the bustling members chatting amongst themselves. The president felt comfort in the familiar smell of the sea.

The sea city of Oramin shined brightly down upon Nicholas, but the cheerful and sunny day quickly faded as he pressed further into the senate building. A 'quick' trip through three security checkpoints and two teleportations later he entered the private room of the security council.

The council was made up of presidentially approved members,each of which were related to the various civilizations that made up the Cosmic Alliance. The members excluding the president himself were spy-masters, grand-admirals, and generals, all of which had more time in active duty then the average lifetime of an unaugmented human.

Upon seating himself at the table all eyes rested upon the President, who in turn eyed each member trying to understand the unusually quiet veterans. Deciding to take the initiative he began the meeting.

"Well-"

The room exploded into argument.

Unbeknownst to Nicholas this had started since the first two generals sat down half an hour earlier. The argument itself was which civilization the Cosmic Alliance should focus on first.

"The Necrons have technology that surpasses our own and could outgun, or outmaneuver our ships with their means of teleportation! We need to take out the strongest players before a main assault force can sweep up the rest!" The cries from the Raltekian spymaster were met with a barking voice from a Jas'gavas general

"We should focus on the Imperium! We could easily overpower their planets one by one while boosting our own soldiers with new recruits!"

"You assume that these imperials wouldn't stop defending their worlds unto death. This human empire has proven to disallow rationality and base their decisions on unguided faith, not mention they have years of brainwashing and a fear of god sometimes surgically implanted in them, so our recruitment efforts might be... ineffective" Another Tyankese spymaster replied calmly.

The one diplomat of the council decided to intervene on the current train of thought, "Why are we focused on our enemies right now? We already have an ally with other possible partnerships. We should focus on reconnecting the Aeldari craftworlds and escort them to safety, before we attack the clear enemies" This time the Cockratienchian admiral from the UNE spoke up.

"Rendezvous with what route? The fabric of space has been ripped apart tearing away our foothold of their space from the rest of the galaxy. The only way through is to battle daemons from space hell... again"

Nicholas who had his patient and calm attitude completely smashed by the argument stopped the never ending disagreement by choosing one most would agree with as the first target.

"I propose we attack the biggest violation of sentient life rights ever recorded in history. The Drukhari slaves would easily join their saviours, and the concentration of their populous means we end it in one battle. Their city is secluded from the warp and we have a webway gate nearby, plus I believe the Aeldari would help us in navigation of their home world to get back at their brethren"

The final vote was 16-14 in favour of the operation.

Concanid system, Vancouver, bridge, 4 hours after ork attack

"The last ship has been destroyed completely ma'am" The ork fleet had been... surprisingly interesting to admiral with their singular tactic of charging straight ahead guns blazing.

Now came the fun part of coordinating a massive contagion cleanup across multiple ships including the craftworld, but first came some help.

"Light is green for safe transport. Friendly reinforcements coming through the portal" turning her gaze to the blue rip in space, the empty void of space glowed as the fleets of CA filled the system.

"Ma'am you're receiving a private communication. Sending it to your room"

"Thank you. Captain Allack hold the ship down while I'm gone" moving to her quarters the admiral collapsed into her chair as the old woman was exhausted, but was pulled to her hologram projector with the fact that soon she would be able to sleep fully"

The blue shimmer of grand admiral Tokaki Wontit appeared before her, with the small Raltekian appearing troubled as he skipped over the pleasantries "Why is it that your fleet has been in battle twice since you've arrived? This is supposed to be on the edge of the galaxy"

"In a galaxy of only war there is no rest. I thought I was supposed to retrieve only thirty fleets? I'm reading over fifty"

"News spreads slowly through the wormhole. The extra twenty shall be under my command for defending the wormhole, and the rest shall be given under your command to commence operation Dusk Shatter".

Sarah's eyebrows raised in confusion as her new operation started to scroll on her data pad. Battle plans, rendezvous, army transports waiting for clearance filled her array. This was an invasion.

Councillor's room

H'aras sat in the middle of his room and began to focus his psychic powers into a smaller and smaller radius, with the many voices of the ship slowly fading out of his mind. Soon the ship itself lost its presence in his mind and the psychic retreated into his core.

The open window of his old home let in the summer breeze which made the curtains flutter like a dying fire. The worn couch showed the popcorn like stuffing popping out of the worn out seams, that his children had on many occasions tried to eat.

While enjoying his time here he had to refocus his powers, as he hadn't had a chance since the demon's infiltration.

Bringing his focus even smaller he focused onto his heartbeat, and the rhythmic tapping of his two hearts. One, two, three, four... One, two, three, four.

Then inch by inch he expanded the intense focus, slowly enveloping his body's limbs and the floor. Seeing through his eyelids was part of the deal as a psychic. He saw the warm golden outline of all the objects in the room as his focus expanded.

And as his focus expanded he saw something peculiar.

A quick flit of some kind of energy dissipated throughout the room. Almost as fast as its predecessor another blew up like a firework scattering it's shards like glitter along the floor before merging with the outline.

Waiting for only a few slivers of a second H'aras's upper hand darted out and caught the next shard.

Feeling an intense surge of pain in his hand he opened his eyes to the real world, and saw a lightning bolt with the diameter of a bicycle shoot out from newly opened hand.

The bolt hit the wall with the thunder following ten times louder than it should have, frying multiple wall mounted systems and scorching the impact zone with a pitch black mark.

The stunned, old, psychically exhausted, and fainting Jas'gavas warrior let one phrase passed down since the first psychic escape his mandibles before he fell into unconsciousness, "Fuckin' space magic"

Craftworld Kaelor, Council Room

"You what?" Ela'Ashbel knew exactly what the human had said but was still in disbelief

"The CA is preparing an invasion of the Drukhari home world, and we would like to ask for your assistance in navigation" The small blue hologram of the envoy repeated his statement

"You just got here and are already preparing for war? Against an enemy as intrenched as this? Would you even understand what you'd be condemning their souls to?"

"It's an invasion not extermination, but we understand that in order for their survival they'll need soul stones. Since we don't have a supply of those we'll transfer the prisoners to an empty penal colony outside of Slaneesh's reach until they can be transferred into your jurisdiction".

"You would give scum like them a recluse from torment after all they've inflicted unto others?" They clearly didn't understand the horrors her Craftworld kin had to allow for their species's survival

The hologram's eyebrow raised at her response "Not all those in a bad populous and practices are evil, farseer. While we can sort out the truly titanic judicial problem we'll have after the invasion we need a place to sort out the good from bad".

Ela'Ashbel was a mixture of sorrow and relief. How could such merciful people come only after so much tragedy had befallen their race.

"But while we're talking about it our offer to cross the wormhole still stands for your craftwor-"

"Not yet" She interrupted. "I've called a meeting with my kin. Our race fell due to unrestricted excess... if we treat this haven poorly or fail to prevent the same mistake before we cross..."

The hologram shifted its posture, telegraphing the envoy's mind working to piece his words together "I understand... our door won't close to you"

A silence held for a few seconds before Ela'Ashbel had come back to the conversation, "I'll bring up the topic of our assistance for your operation to the council, but we'd taken a big hit before you arrived so we can't support much".

Holding cell block 4

Across from Valkyrie Strongfield were four guardsmen who'd been discussing plans of escape with varying amounts of absurdity over the last hour. Next to her in the cell was the techpriest and the inquisitor who'd shown the same amount of disheartenment as she had.

A pair of soldiers stopped before their cell "Vargas, prepare yourself for transport" the techpriest hadn't moved since they were thrown in there and that stance remained with no reply given to the soldiers.

"Hey buddy we need you to get up and answer some questions with our engineers" No response, one of the soldiers looked to the other in confusion "What, is he frozen or something?". The two soldiers shrugged and began a quick game of Rock Paper Scissors with the loser sighing in defeat and the winner moving over to open up the forcefield

Valkyrie saw the inquisitor's eyes dart over to the winner soldier's hand as he punched in a code to open the door.

The harsh humming of the forcefield cut out and one of the soldiers stepped inside the cell to pull out Vargas.

Seeing his chance the inquisitor tackled the soldier outside the cell to the ground before he could put up the shield, and techpriest's metal hand shot out to the closer soldier's neck and squeezed, snapping his neck instantly.

A shout from down the hall and the alarms had started to blare out warning with the inquisitor using the soldier's hand to pull the trigger on his gun after jamming it under his neck killing him instantly.

The inquisitor then darted over to the four guardsmen's cell and mimicked the hand movements of the soldier who'd opened the door while he threw a gun to Vargas.

Hearing a harsh beep backwards at the Inquisitor's attempts to open the cell he grabbed the soldier and slammed its head into the door controls until the lights shot out and even more emergency red alarms began blaring down the entire block. Eventually the shield yielded with a few shots at the exposed emitter

Vargas furiously fiddled with the inner workings of the guns "I've infiltrated their inner systems over the last few days to buy us some time!" Throwing a security-cracked gun to Valkyrie. More and more guardsmen and crew of the Final Judgement began pouring out of the free cell block

The mob began to run in the other direction though, as large thumping sounds and yells came from the original direction.

Turning her head out the cell she saw xeno soldiers emitting large blasts of air out of their rifles, and levelling the rifle at the lead xeno she pulled the trigger.

The first round out of the rifle slapped against the shield, and the repeating shots turned its bright blue to a pale yellow and that to a deep orange. A sickening crack brought the infernal device to fizzle out and die.

The rounds were met with concentrated fire from the four xenos, which blasted the sister's right shoulder pauldron causing the rifle to fling through the air.

Behind the four armoured, shielded xenos she recognized some kind of command officer. Ducking back into her cell clutching her damaged shoulder, she waited until she could hear the metal clanks of their footfalls.

Tackling at where she thought the xenos would be she steeled herself to give them the emperor's fury.

Instead she crashed into the hard blue shield which prevented her from grappling the xeno.

The guard turned on her and kept the rifle trained on her head as the command personnel glanced over at her.

Turning his back to the opposing cell and facing her as if to talk to Valkyrie. She saw the inquisitor slink out of the empty cell, and put the jury rigged rifle to the back of its head.

Putting out a cry of alarm in some kind of chittering language, the other soldiers began to yell at the inquisitor to put down the weapon.

Realizing he couldn't have his focus in two places the soldier that'd been guarding Valkyrie took the butt of the rifle and went to hit her unconscio-

Captain's ready room

Sarah continued to plan with her fellow admiral until a red alert was given to her conference. Hoping it wasn't another hostile fleet she read the warning: RIOT IN PRISON CELL BLOCK 4, INTERNAL SHIELDING DISABLED, HOSTAGE TAKEN: SERGEANT MOLJUT DREWS

The moment Sarah's brain began to formulate a riot control plan PAU appeared on her holographic table in clear distress, "PAU what happened? Why are our internal shields offline?"

"That dammed priest disabled our shielding with the lighting fixtures!"

"What? How?" Those crafty buggers had outsmarted PAU?

"He overloaded the power intake of the lights to completely fry all the surrounding systems which include our internal defence shield projectors!" The perfectionist AI was in hysteria as his many contingencies he created in his spare time were forced into action

"Do we still have camera fee-" before Sarah finished the eight cameras showed prisoners using the guards to unlock their captured gear and free more imperial crew and soldiers.

The inquisitor was shown in a standoff at the head of the riot with four guards and retrieved bolt pistol pointed at the hostage.

While the AI and the admiral scrambled more guards who began quarantining the cell block with barricades and non-lethal turrets another took interest on what was happening

The Vancouver had recovered from her slight pang of pain and looked upon the rioting people inside her with interest, but that interest quickly turned sour as she saw one her passengers get pummelled by the interesting man and heard the pain of her children in the walls and ceiling

Motherly instinct took over and all of her children's sub-routines and processors were moved elsewhere their whimpers being taken care of. Moving to the next problem she heard the voices of the weapons.

Unlike her polite and well tempered whispers of her children these new foreign green guns were loud and bashful, with each firearm competing for superiority in their boasting.

This would not do and she began to discipline her guests on manners. She began by convincing the uncaptured passenger's boots to lock, and turned the gravity to the cell block off

Unbeknownst to all though was the message that techpriest sent out in binary, a vain attempt to reach others of his kind. Perhaps the metal man didn't know that he would accidentally hijack the broadcast array of the Vancouver and boost his signal much, much farther then he meant it to be

Kaelor craftworld, F.O.B. Delta-14, supply closet

Florence sat in the darkened corner of the closet pondering his predicament. This golden magic was definitely related to Erebos somehow, but why it was there still eluded him. Lae'hareil had said she wanted to check for something, but what she was looking for he didn't know.

Worse still the fact that Erebos put weird fucking shit in his body without telling him had stirred worry about the entity's methods. He felt angry at himself for letting Lae'hareil get hurt, but more so on the variables he just didn't know

His quiet contemplation let his mind run around in circles, chasing after answers he couldn't possibly catch. He went through everything that'd happened till now, especially his conversation with Erebos

he didn't know what to do until he recalled one line in particular "The girl is about to awaken her power to save you". Male'ora had something going on psychically, well all eldar did but something was going on with her in particular.

Feeling resolved in what to do next he set out to find the only non eldar psychic he knew: H'aras, his therapist. Feeling a sudden sense of shame at possibly abusing his right to medical care, but lacking a better plan Florence left the closet

Imperial Naval station, Footfall, Vox communications array

"It just ends there sir" The attendant replied. The manager scowled at the message.

"Bloody tech-priests an' dere stinkin' 'language'. Put it through to my console I'll have it translated" moving back to his array he printed out the message from the machine which gave him an indecipherable punch card. After slotting the card into the receptor and nearly getting a purity seal sucked into the receptor as well, the message began to translate.

The short message caused the manager's pupils to shrink into near obscurity, and almost falling over himself he sent a hastily assembled message to the station's council and began to sprint to the next person in the chain of command.

The Warp, The Ravager, command bridge

Bacheal was displeased.

For the first time in millennia his forces were a threat, an actual threat to that damned corpse emperor. His fleet now numbered in the hundreds, the gods now pleased with his sacrifices and worlds offered in their names, and Bacheal had grown, yes finally grown in power.

But where did the despoiler decide to send him? Where to use his powerful armada in their time where they had the advantage? To push deep into the heart of the imperium to start the fire and watch it burn? Maybe to clean through the whole sector and sacrifice all the worlds to chaos?

No. Bacheal was sent to go to the edge of the galaxy and kill some Eldar. Bacheal hated fighting against those who had masterful plans but no guts to back it up and the Eldar was that incarnate.

Bacheal hated this assignment, Bacheal hated how he knew that the despoiler wanted to just get rid of him. Bacheal hated the stupid mechanical whirring noise that the Heretek who never left the bridge emitted constantly

But Bacheal was pulled back from his hatred of the whirring to what the Heretek was saying. He was sure it was important but he just couldn't hear it over that infernal fucking whirring.

It was an annoying nagging sound that seemed to steal all of the chaos marine's thought and attention, and Bacheal decided that he needed his thought and attention

Pulling his bolt pistol out he shot the whirring Heretek in the face which ended the conversation quite abruptly. He turned to the other metal Heretek.

"You. Repeat what he just said"

"We've detected too much movement in the Concanid system for it to be the Eldar fleet. It could be an entire hive fleet from the amount of ship signatures we're seeing on display".

"Ship signatures? From this distance? Are you testing my stupidity you piece of metal scrap!" He was about to shoot the other Heretek when his first in command, Kjoplin intervened.

"Brother, if there truly is a large fleet of unknown ships in that system should we call for reinforcements? I believe the Death guard aren't too far away for one their fleets to assist us".

"... No, we shall gain the favour from the gods in this battle for ourselves, and not sully it with other thieving hands" Bacheal lowered his gun and began ordering his fleet to get ready for slaughter

Accessing UNE database... ... ...

UNE file found, file name... ... ...

Hyperlane Drive

The Hyperlane drive was the final push the UNE needed to fully commit to space travel in the late 22nd century, being invented by Dr. Paula Henderson who had solved the one question: how can safely travel faster than light?

The simple answer is... we can't, it's impossible. But it isn't impossible to move faster than light which is what Dr. Henderson discovered.

The Hyperlane drive charges up an electrical pulse behind building for a set amount of time calculated by distance and iteration of drive, and when ready throws injects matter into this electrical pulse causing a contained detonation. This detonation propels the craft through space faster than light, however at that speed is where they discovered the main flaw of the drive.

When going at even the minimal amount of speed needed to travel across the stars, if the ship were to come into contact with even a molecule it would puncture through the ship going faster than light, as there's no way for the molecule to move during that time.

Deflectors and shields were able to mitigate this problem somewhat but the ships had to use pre-planned courses at specific edges of solar systems in order to avoid getting shredded.

As shields got stronger the Lanes got more relaxed, but even the mightiest of fleets had to stick to the courses laid out, thus creating the hyperlane network.

"Space is terrifying. Filled with unknown wonders and horrors at every star system. Now we're strapping men and women into a tiny spacecraft and planning to fling them across the stars with the barest of protection praying to god... the balls of our race to take such a stupid idea and commit to it both astounds and terrifies me... but I think we scare space more than it scares us" -Prof. Dr. Dorothy Grant, speaking to her research team upon their eve of their first manned test run

Holy fuck, this took me awhile and a bunch of bullshit happened

So I failed to get isekai'd by a dodge 2014 grand caravan and broke my hands, ribs, and my pride so I was stuck and couldn't write for a long time.

When I recovered I got slapped by school and had to focus on that, while beginning my new obsession: DnD

And when I finally got out of burnout and writer's block a major death in the family happened and I've been helping my family and my cousins family so they can focus on funeral arrangements (I literally spent two days just folding laundry because that's how much there was)

I'm so glad I finally got this chapter out as it has been plaguing the back of my mind for months, and the whole story which I'd planned out during that time (Not a whole lot to think about while folding laundry).

I'd like to say I'm going to be getting back on schedule, but no promises because I might just get hit by lightning or something.