{oOo}

Space around Alaitoc burned as Imperial warships hurtled towards the craftworld. In comparison to the elegant eldar frigates with their wraithbone hulls and solar sails, the grand cruisers and battleships were ugly and crude, but there were a lot of them.

Inside the layered defenses of the fleet, dozens of transports carried regiment after regiment of the Imperial Army, but the spearhead of the transport fleet was a battlebarge and four strike cruisers, all in the white and blue of one of the most infamous of Astartes legions.

The seers of Alaitoc had been alerted many cycles previously of this attack. Not, unfortunately, early enough to prevent the campaign of piracy by a band of outcast Alaitoci rangers from provoking the attack. And not in time to avert the wrath of the Imperium by assassinating a few key members of the local chain of command and leaving the mon-keigh in disarray until the whole matter had blown over.

(If quizzed, most of the Eldar on Alaitoc would have catagorised the Imperial attack as a gross over-reaction. Certainly thousands of mon-keigh had died and billions more suffered as a result of the economic damage, but what of the dozens of Eldar who had died carrying out the attacks? Who would answer for their deaths and the furthering of the Eldar race's slow slide towards extinction?)

Beset by visions of soldiers over-running the halls and domes of Alaitoc, of mon-keigh tanks crushing the gates to the Dome of Crystal Seers beneath their tracks, of hundreds Eldar children being marched off by grim Astartes for re-education on those Exodite worlds that had chose to subordinate themselves to the short-sighted Emperor and his lunatic Daughter, the seers had devoted many cycles to measuring the tactics and strategies to be employed against them and on their advice counter-plans had been laid by the autarchs.

Every possible reserve would be called in. Small bands - all that could be spared - of warriors from the aspect shrines of other Craftworlds had arrived through the webway, as had warbands from the similar Exodite worlds as favours eons old were called in. Pledges and bargains had been made, calling in aid and farseers had not hesitated to subtly influence even outcasts and the accursed fiends of Commarrgh to assist them in their time of need. Without them, Alaitoc was doomed.

And as the warfleet closed towards Alaitoc one of those groups was being positioned neatly to take advantage of the mon-keigh predictability. Reaching out through the skein, one junior seer reached out to the leader of the pirates who'd caused this mess in the first place. It had taken the firm persuasion of a Harlequin to convince the renegade to make the dangerous attack but no one more expendable was going to take the job. "Now."

In an instant the webway portal opened and a dozen raiding vessel plunged out, deep inside the Imperial formations, the frigates already firing lasers and distortion cannon into the vulnerable transports. The pass had been carefully calculated: the pirates had only a few precious moments to wreak havoc before returning to the webway, the honour debt paid.

Unfortunately those moments had been planned on the basis of unarmed transports. Not on vessels that were busily ejecting panels over weapon systems and spitting out boarding torpedoes in a black and white livery similar too - but lethally different from - that of the World Eaters.

The seer screamed a warning - Comes The Raven! - but it was far, far too late. At point blank range all but one pirate vessel found itself with boarders breaking through the wraithbone to enter their interiors. The one exception found itself targeted by a tremendous barrage from the armed merchant vessels and disintegrated long before it could reach an escape vector.

Aboard the other vessels, Eldar pirates rallied in the defense of the ships that were also their homes, but they were facing experts in the same hit and run operations that they themselves favoured - experts with all the advantages of Astartes.

There could only be one outcome and ship after ship fell out of controlled flight with no Eldar left aboard free to handle them, and quite unable to be piloted by 'mere Mon-keigh'. That didn't bother the Raven Guard: they didn't want the ships. Just the crews. With the imperial ships moving into a defensive formation, the Astartes reboarded their torpedoes and began to return to their motherships. Each abandoned vessel was pounded to ruins before the Imperial fleet reversed course away from Alaitoc.

"What... what is happening?" one Farseer mumbled, predictions all askew.

"We have what we came for." The seers turned and saw a tall, robed figure emerge from the shadows of their chamber. Her hood fell back, revealing long jade green hair.

The alien word came to a dozen lips: Senshi.

She bowed her head, key-like sceptre in one hand. "Alta, of Caliban," she acknowledged. "Your predictions were correct. Without the pirate, Alaitoc was doomed. By playing bait for them, you have served our needs."

"You used us?"

"Indeed. Take this message." Her face was stern. "Clean your messes before they draw our attention and we will endeavour to do likewise. Fail to do so and an attack like this will not stop with the immediately guilty, but also the system that enables them."

In moments the woman vanished in the distinctive flash of a mon-keigh teleporter, leaving the Council of Seers to digest that they - the arch-manipulators - had expended favours and resources at the manipulation of another, younger race.

{oOo}