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GCU The Right Hand of God
The mercenaries have, through the warp device, made contact with an alien race in a distant part of the galaxy. It is looking likely that the artifact operates as a method for instant communications across the warp.
We bribed the mercenary ship to remain in system, although also some distance from the inhabited planet, with the provision of antimatter torch missiles and a single purpose missile constructor. They will mediate communications between us and the Durfan Empire using the device they have taken onto their ship. The Durfan Empire communicates using Eldar, which the mercenary does not understand.
This GCU will maintain a safe margin from the mercenary ship. The hyperspace disruption effect is too dangerous to go near. Not to mention the Warp effects on the communications array detected by a Warp scanner given to the mercenary.
The Durfan Empire introduced itself as a race that came into conflict with the Eldar some time ago, in between the Great War against the Necrons and the rise of humans / fall of Eldar. They possess great warp sensitivity, just like the Eldar, and in fact have many of the same warp capabilities, like future visions and warp powers, that the Eldar have.
Being driven into the outskirts of the galaxy by the Eldar, the Durfan Empire has made communication using the Warp a priority, as well as survival through extreme secrecy with the aid of future sight.
The Durfan Empire explains that it is due to this future sight that they and the Eldar have become aware of our presence except that they had no method of contacting us since the rise of humans have prevented their activities in most of the galaxy.
This explains much of how the Eldar have managed to contact us as well as much of the capabilities and behaviour of the Eldar. While the Eldar have had no mention of the Durfan Empire, it is doubtless that the Eldar have existed long enough for multiple species to have risen and fallen in their time.
The Durfan send us a warning regarding the Eldar. While the Eldar appear waning in strength but generally agreeable to a large extent, the Durfan Empire warns that the Eldar are treacherous and proud. After the Durfan Empire started to surpass the teachings of the Eldar, the Eldar destroyed them.
--- This GCU is unsure of what to make of this warning. We are still awaiting more news regarding the exchange program to know if this is a real warning or if the Durfan Empire is just attempting to worsen relations between us
We expressed a wish to meet and discuss a cultural and information exchange. The Durfan equivocated on the details.
Discussions with the Durfan are going nowhere beyond vague warnings regarding the Eldar. They regard their secrecy to be of the highest order.
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Three days later
Three IoM warships have arrived at the edge of the system. From their appearance, two of them are mercenaries also aiming to investigate the artifact while one was listed as an Imperial Navy patrol frigate.
From effector scans, it appears that these three ships are working together. The Imperial frigate contains an inquisitorial team and is apparently in command of the mercenary ships.
Upon arrival, the mercenary ship holding the artifact began heading towards the warp limit of the system. Due to the geometry, the incoming trio of ships would be able to intercept the mercenary ship well before the warp limit, a course which they proceeded to take.
The Inquisitorial team contains a psyker, who apparently is able to forecast the future very vaguely, but he was able to pinpoint the artifact's location to the mercenary ship. Their ships will attempt to engage and destroy the mercenary.
We communicated this to the mercenary, who began to prepare for battle. We also notified the Durfan Empire of the situation and indicated a potential disruption in communications.
--- From prior records, it was obvious at this point that the mercenary, normally a cautious person, was acting considerably out of character, but this GCU did not notice the changes at that time.
Warp Sorceror
So THERE was where it all fell apart. The Inquisition was onto him already. Drat their psykers and their Emperor's Tarot.
Well, might as well attempt to take what technology he could from the Culture before the mercenary could get away with both the tech and his bait. The Culture had, oh so kindly, informed the 'Durfan Empire' about their arrangement with the mercenary and even offered the same antimatter missiles in exchange for information.
A warp jump this close to the star was unsafe for the Imperium but it wasn't that far to the limit. It would just be a "small" matter of being impossible to jump safely, where safely meant being able to maintain a working Gellar Field through the power surge.
That, of course, wasn't going to be a problem for him. He just wanted that missile construction bay. Never had anyone short of the Necrons managed to squeeze an antimatter containment into something the size of a missile launcher, much less an entire missile fabrication facility.
He flexed the Warp, sending a burst of hostile scrapcode through the Array, a Chaos artifact that let him channel his power through a simple ground link. Next, time to take over the crew. Corrupting people wasn't easy for a sorceror by himself, but with a Chaos artifact in tow? No harder than stealing candy from a baby.
He reached out through the Warp, through the Array, into the minds of the crew of the mercenary ship. The sorceror closed his metaphorical fist and they were his.
The Culture
As the Inquisitorial ship approached the mercenary frigate, the sphere of hyperspace-nullification appeared to expand many fold. Remote cameras and nanotech bugging the mercenary's ship began to go haywire and the three minute long light-lag (no hyperspace communications) confirmed that the equipment had been taken over by scrapcode.
It appears that the array has been corrupted by Chaos. Some of the last transmission from the cameras were of the bridge of the mercenary ship being overrun by minor warp rifts and spontaneous Chaos-linked mutations appearing on the crew.
Standard scrapcode prevention measures were taken. This GCU placed a massive static screen between itself and the ship to block all communications. This made its rough position visible to the Inquisition ship but that was secondary to the problem.
Warp drive powering signatures were detected (3 minutes old) despite the fact that warp jumping so close to the star would generate a Warp surge that disabled Gellar Fields. This served as confirmation that the ship had been taken over by Chaos.
A decision was made then to destroy the ship as soon as possible. The modified relativistic accelerator was loaded with compressed antimatter and fired at the ship, along with a number of prolonged CREW beams. Using the Pancaker in wide area mode to generate gravitational waves capable of destroying the ship from outside the no-hyperspace sphere was forgone as it was projected to have, while not fatal, extremely disruptive effects on the local planet.
Three minutes later, before the warp drive could be charged, the mercenary ship was completely destroyed. The location of the Array was the target of the relativistic antimatter and it is presumed to have been destroyed based on the following results.
A massive warp rift appeared in the space, occupying a sphere nearly a light-minute in diameter. This was considerably bigger than the zone of no-hyperspace and this GCU retreated to 1 lightyear distance at maximum safe acceleration. The rift was observed to close after just over one hour.
This action has, without a doubt, been noticed by the Inquistion team. We are considering contacting them but at this point, this GCU feels that further consideration of courses of action is recommended.
Warp Sorceror
The sorceror stared at the dust that was his sigil circle. The visions burned him with the displeasure of Tzeentch. He was so close.
It was obvious in hindsight what the error was. It was him. If only he hadn't leapt to conclusions, hadn't thought that he had mastered the prediction and known its meaning so easily.
It was in his attempt to salvage something from the 'problem' that was where things were going wrong. With the antimatter missiles, the mercenary might have won the battle and he might have been able to continue working on the Culture.
Instead now, his own efforts had derailed his original plan.