The Lost Fleet

Maeleum Datum : 758.M33

While it is their names that history remembers most, the Traitor Legions were far from the only forces Horus rallied to his banner during his rebellion against the Emperor. From the Knight Houses to the Rogue Traders, from the Imperial Army to the bloodlines of the Navigators, all who had once held Imperial allegiance had been forced to choose between the Emperor and the Warmaster – and those who had attempted neutrality had often learned its perils at the latter's hands. Even the loyalists hadn't been above forcing the hand of those who sought to remain uninvolved, once the war had become desperate enough.

Arguably the greatest of the forces that were divided during the Heresy (with only the Mechanicum itself contending for that position) was the Imperial Army. Re-uniting the scattered kingdoms of Humanity in the Great Crusade had been the effort of untold billions, from the soldiers charging at xenos walls to the pilots of fighter squadrons. The Imperial Army had been an incredibly complex organization, a behemoth composed of many parts that had worked together to bring the galaxy to heel before being torn asunder and turned against itself. And none of these parts had wielded as much destructive power as the branch of it that manned the hundreds of thousands of ships needed to carry the armies of Humanity across the stars and battle the armadas of the xenos and the uncompliant.

In the Imperium, that branch of the Imperial Army had become the Imperial Navy following the sundering of the Great Crusade's mighty host after Horus' rebellion. Within the Eye of Terror, things were at once simpler and more complicated. The fleets that had fled from the defeat at Terra had gathered once more in the Eye under the banner of the Traitor Legions and the Dark Mechanicum, with a few remaining independent as raiders under the command of charismatic warlords.

In the beginning of the traitors' exile, with the invasion of the Eye of Terror and the Legion Wars raging, there had been plenty of work to occupy these ships and their crews. But as the Long War shifted to intrigue and long-term corruption, the fleets that had once set fire to the Imperium found themselves losing the favor of their transhuman overlords.

Instead of the glory and conquest they had been promised, the Captains and Admirals had been relegated to what amounted to guard duty in a space where their beloved ships were slowly being warped around them, their corridors infested with manifested Neverborn that needed regular purging lest they overtake entire decks. With the great minds of the Traitor Legions focused on finding new ways to destabilize the Imperium from within, the brutes and failures were sent to oversee ships whose only sight of action was the occasional engagement with enemy scouts or unaligned raiders.

Slowly, far from the sight of the Chaos Marines, discontent grew among the Chaos armadas. Daemons whispered into the ears of captains and bridge officers, murmuring of the glory and riches they were being denied, of how the Warmaster's change of tactics had left them behind. Oh, one day their time would come – when the Imperium was breaking apart from within and the gates of the Eye were thrown open wide. But why should they wait on the pleasure of fallen Angels who had already failed once ?

To the ship officers of the Horusian Dominion, things were even worse. Under the effects of the Theft of Time, age was catching up to them, although at a slowed down rate. Rejuvenat treatments improved upon by Apothecaries and Sorcerers kept those veterans of the rebellion whose expertise was too valuable to lose alive, but they were few and far between – new academies had been built to replace the rest, where knowledge was extracted from the brains of the dead and forcibly implanted into the minds of their successors.

Over the course of centuries, those few ageless officers formed a great conspiracy aimed at reclaiming their freedom. They were lead by Admiral Yraeg, a decorated veteran of the Great Crusade and the Heresy. Yraeg had been there when the fleets of the allied Traitor Legions had opened fire on the Iron Hands, Raven Guard and Salamanders at Istvaan V, and had fought under the Warmaster's banner during the Siege to break the Imperial Fists' defense spheres.

As charismatic as he was cunning, Yraeg extended the conspiracy, reaching out to those few independent raiders who remained. He played the Chaos Marine overseers of the fleet against each other, preying upon their own resentment and grudges. Caught in their own intrigues, the Sons of Horus did not notice the betrayal being planned under their noses until it was too late.

When Yraeg judged he was ready, his first move was devastating. Across dozens of warships, those loyal to the Warmaster were assassinated. Chaos Marines were cut down by focused las-fire, high explosives, or daemons summoned and bound by paid warlocks. The assistants of Sorcerers sabotaged their masters' rituals, and Legion vessels attached to former Imperial Army flotillas were obliterated as their erstwhile allies turned on them without warning.

Using the very properties of the Theft of Time, Yraeg was able to synchronize these acts of rebellion across a dozen systems of the Horusian Dominion. Within a few days, thousands of Sons of Horus had perished, dozens of ships had been lost, several fortresses and centers of industry had been reduced to molten slag, and an armada of over three hundred vessels was mustering under the banner of Admiral Yraeg.

"The age of the Astartes is over.
The Legions have failed. We need not heed their commands any longer.
Horus is a petty tyrant, sitting on his throne on Maeleum – no different from his father. We must take our destiny into our own hands if we are to claim the glory that is our birthright."
Admiral Yraeg

When word of the rebellion reached Maeleum, Horus' fury was beyond measure. The Prince of the Eye summoned his son Abaddon before him, and tasked him with destroying this uprising – but Yraeg himself, warned the Primarch, was to be delivered to him alive, or if that wasn't possible, his shackled soul. Accompanied by Ahriman of the Cabal, the First Captain of the Sixteenth Legion left Maeleum at the head of a massive Legion fleet, where every ship's crew had been culled of any who may symphatize with the rebels.

For three years, Abaddon's fleet hunted down Yraeg's rebels, but the Admiral managed to elude the First Captain at every turn, leaving behind him a trail of plundered and razed strongholds. Scouts separated from the main bulk of the rebels were caught and destroyed, but Yreag's numbers actually grew as new ships rallied to his banner. Flotillas from the Night Lords, Iron Warriors and Dark Mechanicum allies of the Warmaster came to Abaddon's assistance, eventually cornering the rebel Admiral.

With his back against the Sundered Tides that walled off the Horusian Dominion from the rest of the Eye of Terror, it seemed Admiral Yreag would be forced into a last stand. Despite his prodigious talent at void warfare, the Admiral's fleet was outnumbered three to one and had no Astartes to defend against boarding actions – something which had been its most glaring weakness during the entire campaign.

"This needs not be the end, Admiral."

"What do you want ?"

"Only for you to realize your full potential …"

By this point, Abaddon's desire to crush the rebel Admiral was almost as great as his Primarch's fury at the man's rebellion. The First Captain was determined to lead the attack on Yreag's flagship in person – but he also wanted to make sure none of the rebels would survive. An example needed to be made so that none would ever dare emulate Yreag's treachery in the future. The entirety of the rebel fleet would be killed, down to the last deck ratling, and every ship would be torn asunder and its debris left to float in the system, cursed by Sorcerers so that no scavenger would ever touch it. Abaddon made sure his prey knew this, broadcasting his intent on an open vox-channel.

Leaving no path of escape, the Legion fleet closed in on the rebel armada, ready to begin the greatest battle within the Eye of Terror since the end of the Legion Wars. Then, on his command bridge, faced with the prospect of defeat and unending torment at the hands of the Prince of the Eye, Admiral Yreag made his choice.

"I … sacrifice."

Last recorded transmission from the Unbridled Fury, Admiral Yreag's flagship.

All of a sudden, Sorcerers across the Legion armada cried out as the Sundered Tides erupted. Planet-sized gouts of Warp-stuff engulfed the entire rebel armada, while the Legion ships desperately retreated from the cataclysm. And then, just as suddenly as it had happened, the Tides surged back – taking with them any trace of Admiral Yreag's rebel fleet.

The aftershocks of this event echoed across the entire Dominion, and the Cabal had to work hard and sacrifice thousands of slaves to correct the anomalies that appeared in the sorcerous architecture of the Theft of Time. Abaddon returned to Maeleum and knelt before the Warmaster's throne, confessing his failure behind closed doors. What punishment Horus inflicted upon his son remains unknown, but a week later, the doors of the throneroom opened and the First Captain emerged, seemingly unwounded, never to speak of what had transpired within.

After repairing the damage to the Theft of Time, the Cabalites began to search for the Lost Fleet, as Yreag's rebel armada had since come to be called. They did not believe what had happened to be a random event – it had been too powerful and too localized. Spies across the Eye searched for any trace of the Lost Fleet, while Sorcerers interrogated Neverborn and cultists across the galaxy.

Finally, they found it. Not long after the disappearance of the Lost Fleet, the Imperium had experienced a sudden surge in piracy in the region near the Warp Storm known as the Maelstrom. Entire merchant convoys had been slaughtered, most of their cargo – which was vitally needed by half a dozen hive-worlds – not even plundered, but simply blasted into space. As starvation and disorder spread across the sub-Sector, the Imperial Navy responded by intensifying its patrols, assisted by a local White Scars flotilla.

After several small-scale engagements, the Imperial forces encountered the full might of the Chaos fleet present in the sub-Sector : an armada hundreds strong, composed of daemonships of ancient and twisted design. An entire Battlefleet was assembled to deal with this threat, but the Chaos armada withdrew before the hammer of Imperial retribution, fleeing into the Maelstrom where none dared to pursue them.

Before this retreat, however, several of the infernal vessels were boarded, and much information was collected by agents of the Inquisition. It was from these reports, once Horusian spies had gained access to them, that the servants of the Warmaster pieced together what had happened – though the how and why of it all yet eluded them.

Admiral Yreag had been elevated to daemonhood, one of few mortals to claim that honor since the Traitor Legions had dedicated themselves to the Ruinous Powers. Those who had followed him in his rebellion against the Prince of the Eye, however, had not been so lucky. The Warp had turned them into hollow-eyed automatons, their wills annihilated and replaced by unquestioning obedience to their Daemon Prince Admiral. The similarities between these wretches and the damned souls of Kerlazium did not go unnoticed by the scholars of the Eye, who pondered at the implications of this at length without coming to any clear conclusion.

The last transmission from the Unbridled Fury – which was now a titanic daemonship, its captain having become fused to it and utterly enslaved to Yreag's will – seemed to indicate that the renegade Admiral had willingly submitted his followers to this fate, whether to escape the Warmaster's wrath or to secure his own ascension.

Upon learning of the Lost Fleet's fate, Horus ordered his servants to influence the Imperium in order to ensure its destruction, while also looking into ways to reach the Maelstrom from within the Eye of Terror. Although the Webway Network had been damaged beyond repair when the Fall of the Eldar had occurred, entire sections remained accessible if one was willing to risk the perils of the Neverborn infesting them, and the Warmaster believed that one such path might lead to the Maelstrom – and to the one who had dared break his oaths of loyalty to the Prince of the Eye.

Despite those efforts, the Lost Fleet continued to haunt the Imperium for centuries. From within the Maelstrom, Yreag dispatched his deathless servants on raids across the neighbouring Sectors. In time, rumors began to spread among pirates and cultists. Though their source was never identified, these rumors claimed that, if one were to journey into the Maelstrom and swear one's soul to the Dark Admiral who dwelled there, they would be granted eternal existence as one of his servants – as well as their heart's desire. Other rumors spoke of the treasures Yreag had accumulated, plundered from the Horusian Dominion itself and from his years of pillaging since his ascension.

Thousands of greedy and ambitious fools made the journey to the Maelstrom in search of riches and immortality – whatever its form. Most were destroyed by the storms, but those few who successfully made their way to Yreag's fortress – the location of which was a secret seeded in fragmented hints across the Ultima Segmentum by the Daemon Prince – were richly rewarded. Desperate nobles and would-be pirate lords entered the Maelstrom and returned as Chaos Lords, holding the Dark Admiral's banner and plunging entire worlds into ruin.

So began a dark time for the Ultima Segmentum, which so far had benefited from the presence of the Five Hundred Worlds and Guilliman's leadership. The Ultramarines dedicated considerable resources to purging the Lost Fleet and destroying Yreag, but even the warrior-kings of Maccrage could not brave the tides of the Maelstrom. Guilliman commanded the construction of dozens of fortress-stations along the principal shipping lanes of the Segmentum and increased Navy patrols, but those measures could do little to stop the wave of heresy that spread under Yreag's influence.

So it was that the Daemon Prince Yreag became another thorn in the Imperium's side, and a sworn enemy of Horus and his servants. Whenever the Lost Fleet encountered agents of the Traitor Legions, it immediately attacked them, without regard for any Imperial presence. And even when one of its daemonships were destroyed, they eventually came back, their hulks vanishing into the aether and reforming within the Dark Admiral's kingdom in the Maelstrom.

AN : IT LIVES !

Who will be the first to get the inspiration(s) for this chapter ? I was not subtle.

Against my better judgment, I have made a lot of progress on a Choose-your-own-adventure style story for the city of Aftermath. It will probably end up published here at some point, so we will see how this goes. There are a lot of stories I want to write set in Aftermath, but I am already spreading myself too thin, so ... we will see.

Zahariel out.