A Light Not Extinguished

Chapter 10: Intrigue

"The Servant Council has reached a unanimous accord. Send an emissary to Medusa."

"It is time to reawaken the Telstarax Engine."
-Excerpt from classified record of Servant Council meeting, M24. 218.

***

M24, 213

Catallus Warp Rift

The Catallus Warp Rift was a scar across the galaxy's fabric, weeping tears of bloody unreality. And yet it remained only that; a scar, nothing else. No daemons erupted out of it, no Warp beasts hurling out of the portal seeking souls to devour. It was frozen in place, only held open by esoteric generators that fed it the bare minimum of energy needed to operate.

Above the rift a planet-sized ball of glass hung like a disco ball, with thick coral-white extending down into the portal below. This was one of the Federation's most resource-exhaustive projects; the hollow sphere was made of psychically insulant material on the outside, while the inside was lined with psycurium. It had taken years for the Federation to secure such a massive amount of rare materials, but ultimately they deemed it worth the cost. The shell served to protect against the madness-inducing effects of the Warp Rift, while amplifying psychic activity inside, making it an essential part of this facility. Orbiting the superstructure were three Star Fortresses, each one bristling with rows of guns, fleetkillers that could themselves disgorge thousands of starships to defend the station.

Within the sphere, a long, crystalline space station hovered, bigger than most starships. Vaguely rectangular, its design was bizarrely alien, fractals shifting and dividing across its surface. Designed with cutting-edge Federation technology, the Dark Glass station was the pioneer in Webway research. Long had humanity envied the Aeldari's ownership of the labyrinthine dimension, the elder species using it to transverse the stars safely and quickly. In the Age of Conquest, several human nations had tried to unlock the Webway's secrets, but they all failed due to lack of resources or Aeldari retaliation.

But now, as Man's scientific knowledge reached unheard zeniths, such a thing was no longer impossible. Like ancient Prometheus, so too would they attempt to steal fire from the gods. Except that this time, they would use that same fire to burn the gods themselves. Within the command room of Dark Glass, nine thrones of Blackstone stood, each one having millions of hair-thin wires connecting them to the ceiling. On each throne a human psyker sat, channeling their psychic power to carry out the station's intended purpose. Through experimentation, the builders of Dark Glass had determined that nine was the perfect balance; enough to proportionately distribute the stress of maintaining and building Human Webway tunnels.

The men and women who sat on the command thrones were all personally handpicked from the best of the Psykana Militant. Aside from meeting the power requirements, they had to possess a keen strategic sense. Researching and expanding the Webway was no simple experiment; it was a grand spectacle of war, invading another dimension itself. It was they who oversaw the construction and maintenance of new Webway tunnels, and coordinated with Iron Minds to defend the slowly-growing Human Webway.

Within Dark Glass, thousands of STC manufactorums continued to churn out legions of machines for the unending grinder on the other side of the rift. Titan Legions faced down gargantuan dream-leviathans, while squads of mech-assassins disposed of any daemonic infiltrators in the network. As human-made tunnels slowly expanded into the Warp, mechanical might was tested against the endless daemonic hordes that awaited, and the occasional Eldar raiding party.

Alone, the station could never conquer the Webway, nor was that its purpose. The Aeldari had near-total control of the dimension, and could close and open Webway gates at will using the command nodes scattered through the Webway, and even sever entire passages from the main network, as a failed invasion proved. The tunnel that started from Dark Glass led to a secondary command center on the other side of the Warp, built on a discarded section of the Webway. From there, multiple man-made passageways were built, each one leading to the outside of an important Aeldari-held Webway City. Even with hundreds of years of research, the Human Webway was primitive compared to that of the Aeldari's; it was not malleable, and was slow to expand. A section that took months to grow in the Human Webway, the original one could do in hours. But it would suffice.