The Road to Wilwatikta
By author Codae
The origins of the Infestation of Wilwatikta lie not on Wilwatikta itself, but on the planet Sxattaz, some eight-hundred light-years to the galactic south. As the Golden Age of Technology came to a close, Sxattaz was under the thumb of the Terran Federation, though not a part of it: the planet, which orbited a yellow dwarf star unremarkable except for its close proximity to a blue supergiant known as Happasqqa, remained in the possession of its native sapient species, a species of small, shaggy quadrupeds called the Za'ata.
The Age of Strife brought millennia of isolation to Sxattaz, during which the Za'ata developed independently, mastering spaceflight by the end of the 29th millennium. Two discoveries at that time uniquely shaped their history: that an ancient yet largely intact Terran hulk orbited in the outer reaches of their star-system, and that Happasqqa would shortly explode in a supernova.
The Za'ata turned to the relic starship, or more specifically her Warp Drive, for their salvation. Their science had not progressed enough to design such a device from scratch, but they had enough theoretical background to correctly identify its function, repair it, and eventually replicate it. Thirty-one starships, each smaller than an Imperial battleship but dwarfing any single construction the Za'ata had ever accomplished before, were completed before it was too late, and the cream of Sxattaz, the most worthy fraction of its population and its cultural heritage, outran Happasqqa's death throes in the only way possible to them: skimming the shallows of the Warp, the margin between Immaterium and Materium.
The Za'ata fleet still numbered thirty-one when it reached the first inhabitable world on its path, a planet the wayfarers named Pasxa'a. No consideration was made to settling it: apart from offering only a decade's respite before irradiation by Happasqqa, Pasxa'a was already inhabited by a sapient species. The primitive and disunited civilisations of the Pasxa'ans had not the capability to flee the catastrophe themselves, but a generous spirit took ahold of the Za'ata: having on their inaugural jump favorably refined their calculations of the margin of safety their engineering afforded them, they could redistribute their cargo and passengers to free up half of one ship for the alien refugees.
The attempted rescue, and thus Za'ata hopes of interspecies cooperation, ended in a mysterious tragedy. Only twenty-nine of the starships that had come from Sxattaz made the jump from Pasxa'a; the last of these, the Xataka Kkaspa, reported a distressing commotion from the last two vessels when they should have been breaking planetary orbit, but, having already guided his ship as far as the Mandeville point, the shipmaster judged taking the time to return to the inner system would have put the Xataka Kkaspa at undue risk of injury from the supernova. What he and other investigators concluded was that the Pasxa'ans, moved not by the Za'ata magnanimity in giving up space on their fleet at all but by their stinginess in offering a share small enough to be no sacrifice, had tried to seize an additional ship and a half by force. The outcome of the battle was unclear, except that it apparently crippled the ships and/or trained crew cadres beyond repair under the prevailing temporal and industrial constraints. The Za'ata fleet never heard from the two lost ships, nor the Pasxa'an species, again.
The remaining Za'ata continued onward in search of a planet to settle, but for a long time they found none that met their criteria. The thriving but still planet-bound human civilisation on Evergos III invited them to stay and share their technology, but despite those peaceful overtures the Za'ata now mistrusted the temptation of coexistence. Pazhaqaz, though once terraformed, had lost its atmosphere to solar flares in the subsequent millennia of strife. Hattaskkapa had plentiful air and water, but remained lethally radioactive following an internecine war a hundred years earlier. Pelysion VI made war against the Za'ata upon their arrival, costing them their fourth ship (the third loss was a Warp accident shortly beforehand). A'aqqasx was a pleasant planet in itself, but uncomfortably close to Pelysion VI. Xappasas bore a choking hydrosulfuric atmosphere; Hatahaqaz's small, scattered islands were wracked by hyperstorms; Ppasxppata was bitterly cold. Many other systems were inhabited, which disqualified them as permanent homes but permitted a vital trade in various equipment the Za'ata needed but lacked the infrastructure to produce themselves.
Paradoxically, the standards the Za'ata set for their new home were raised, not lowered, as their fleet sped across the void. Once the original generation of voyagers died off to be replaced by shipborn cohorts, having a planet to live on shifted from a visceral goal to a foreign concept applicable to distant ancestors and equally distant descendants. More insidiously, the Za'ata shipmasters found they had an interest in extending their voyage whenever possible. Allowing their people to disembark and spread across a planet would upend the society that afforded them ultimate power.
After more than three hundred Terran years of traveling, though, the surviving twenty Za'ata ships reached a planet so suited to their passengers that they eventually named it Sxattazta'a in honor of their lost homeworld. The leaders were dubious: Sxattazta'a had noticeably higher gravity than their standard, slightly more land than water rather than Sxattaz's slightly less, and a significant axial tilt. They intended to move on from the star-system once they had completed the necessary maintenance, as the fleet had done at hundreds of other inadequate planets. What stopped them was the so-called Great Mutiny, the worst breakdown of order in the entire voyage. Za'ata marginalised by the existing political system, as well as those convinced that Sxattazta'a was a worthy destination, rose up on all the ships of the fleet. On most vessels, the rebels were unable to take control, but they did manage to force a compromise: those who wished would settle on the planet, with the remainder keeping most of the starships and proceeding onwards separately.
The fourteen ships that left Sxattzta'a carried a much smaller but more unified society than they had brought. These were the fanatics, the Za'ata who kept the unquenchable faith that their purpose was not to evaluate the systems they passed through for permanent occupancy, but to continue to the limits of their ingenuity in the direction they had been travelling their entire lives: galactic west.
Let us not dwell on the fate of the final crews of the last five ships of the great Za'ata fleet, only to note that the Xataka Kkaspa was captured intact by the Rangdan, who pored over its thousand-year annals of discovery and found a target list. This was a list centuries out of date in some areas, but still better than almost all of the other intelligence they had regarding the unconquered regions of the galactic disc, which usually predated the Age of Strife. Thus the Rangdan focused their expansion in the region in a salient back along the Za'ata course, where they could be most sure of what to expect in their advance.
Out of the points of interest the Za'ata had recorded, the Evergos system was the greatest prize for the Cerebravores. Since the passage of the Za'ata, the Evergotes had multiplied and spread to other worlds of their system: their moon, Evergos IV, Evergos V, and two moons of Evergos VI. The orbital and interplanetary assets of all six of these worlds fell swiftly before the sheer destructive power of the 116th Rangdan War-Swarm, which then besieged them from above and deployed ground troops (primarily, for this campaign, composed of Thenstons, which, while humanoid in size and shape, bore scaled skin, independently rotating eyes, and fangs) against those positions depleted enough in morale and materiel to be captured.
The Evergos system became the centre of Rangdan operations in the sector, owing to its wealth in human brains and industry. Specifically, Evergos IV, the most populous of the outer worlds, which happened to be secured sooner than Evergos III. The Evergos system received particular attention when it was selected as the jumping-off point for a campaign against an Eldar Craftworld detected a thousand light-years down-southeastward. The Rangdan despise the Eldar—their ancient foes, who waged a thorough, merciless genocide that tried to wipe the Rangdan species from existence and came very, very close—with the force of more than ten-million years of mutual hatred. The Rangdan have not forgotten. Now it is time to repay the debt. The Rangdan go far out of their way to seek and slaughter Eldar at any opportunity. The moment the Craftworld was discovered, the 116th War-Swarm—swiftly joined by the 98th, 195th, and 232nd War-Swarms—pivoted to face this new objective, sparing less attention for other parts of its sphere of operations.
In particular, one small Rangdan scout ship exploring the northern flank of the salient was misreported among the lost destroyer escorts in a pyrrhic victory over the Rogue Trader Delilah Ju. She was in truth lost, but not in such a final way as the erroneous casualty list implied…