Little more than vague rumors were found about the sudden meeting between the primarch of the VIIIth Night Lords Legion and Sev of the Nexus Unity. Imperial strategists and scholars knew that an agreement must have passed between the two, just as Sev had with other primarchs, but could only speculate on the details of it.

 

What was known was that after the meeting, the Night Lords as a legion were pulled from all theaters of war to reconvene at their homeworld of Nostramo. At the same time, a message was delivered to Terra, one that was more threat than request.

 

“The legion will govern its own.”

 

On his return to Nostramo, Konrad gave the Imperial bureaucrats and expatriates the choice of leaving his home planet immediately, alive and in whatever ships that would take them, or leaving much, much later, most likely in shredded pieces. News spread, and the people of Nostramo braced themselves as best they could for the return of the dreaded Night Haunter, the tyrant that had enforced bloody order on the corrupt and crime-ridden world generations ago before the Emperor took him to the stars. Criminal gangs and corrupt nobles who broke free of the shackles of fear found themselves scrabbling to seek refuge from the gory retribution that was sure to come.

 

A few were desperate enough to attempt an escape to the stars, but those ships were quickly shot out of orbit by the amassing armada. The lucky ones were destroyed instantly. The less fortunate ships were merely disabled, and left to the mercies of the occupants of boarding crafts that soon followed.

 

It was only after the whole legion had assembled did the Konrad Curze deliver his orders. The Night Lords descended in full force onto their homeworld, from the lowest battleline legionnaire, to Apothecaries and ship captains. Every member of the legion was ordered down to Nostramo, to partake in a planet-wide atrocity.

 

The Purge of Nostramo took a full Imperial week, and resulted in the planet being significantly depopulated, dropping nearly 80% to just under four billion souls once the Night Haunter was done with his homeworld.

 

Another message was sent to Terra right after that, one that not-so-regretfully informed of the Night Lords suffering heavy casualties in the re-pacification of their homeworld. Such was their losses, that the VIIIth Legion was now hovering at half-strength, and would require some time to reorganize their ranks.

 

Imperial observers that were hurriedly sent to the system confirmed the death toll, finding whole companies struck off the roster, and ships without Astartes crew. There were no bodies to study, and the civilian witnesses they interrogated provided little details about the massacre, most confining themselves in the meager safety of their homes out of terror.

 

Try as they might, the observers found could not link the purge to Nexus Unity, not directly. It seemed by all accounts that the Night Lords’ primarch had taken to this task on his own volition, and it was an atrocity that he had long wanted to enact.

 

Despite the outrage that ensued, the Imperium was still too occupied reintegrating Mechanicum forge worlds to invest manpower in sanctioning the VIIIth Legion. Instead, Konrad Curze was summoned to Terra to personally answer for his actions. Surprisingly, it was a summons the primarch answered promptly, and on his arrival to the throneworld, many noted the red gauntlets the primarch and his honor guard now sported.

 

None knew what actually transpired between Konrad and his Father behind the doors of the Imperial Throne Room, but the Night Haunter promptly returned to his ship after the private audience and headed back to Nostramo. 

 

The Emperor cleared the Night Lords of any crime, officially declaring his son’s bloody actions justified due to unfortunate Imperial oversight. Nostramo would henceforth be solely administered by the Night Lords, much like how Guilliman governed his realm of Ultramar, or Leman Russ with Fenris.

 

The Night Lords would return to the Great Crusade barely half a year later, all of its members now sporting the same red gauntlets as their primarch. Imperial Army generals and other legion commanders would note that the Night Lords’ methods remained sadistically ruthless, but gone was their wanton application of cruelty. The legion gained a new focus, a new drive that saw a marked increase in their effectiveness. Yet only time would tell if the change would amount to much.

 

*****

 

Another primarch’s cooperation was secured…to a degree, anyway. Like Angron, Sanguinius and Magnus, I didn’t fully trust him to stick to their end of the non-aggression treaty if the shooting started. Still, there was little to lose in stabilizing and putting the otherwise nihilistic/suicidal primarch in my debt.

 

I didn’t remove the precognition from Konrad Curze, I just refined it so that it only triggered when he wanted it to, and undid the subtle line of Warp fuckery that railroaded his visions. It’ll probably take him some time to get used to it, but that’s his problem.

 

Coupled with the prodding to seize his own destiny and correct some oversights caused by his nihilistic outlook, Konrad Curze and his Night Lords shouldn’t be a problem to the Nexus anytime soon. Whatever followed would no doubt involve a lot of bloodshed, but then again with that legion, that’s nothing new. Nothing to uselessly worry about anyway.

 

With that issue out of the way, I could return most of my attention to the…’stellarforming’ of my Earth’s solar system. The legion of bots had already fully consumed Pluto and its satellites, and were about to finish up with Neptune and Uranus. The raw materials would be funneled into the Webway where the new, yet-to-be-named capital would be built, as well as upgrading the system. On such a large scale, it was actually faster than cloning out stuff, logistically. Plus the devouring of all planets not Earth was also a measure to deny potential beachheads to future trespassers.

 

The first skeletons of our space superfortresses were already being assembled in the space between Mars and Earth. Designed to be oversized, nearly fully automated planetoids with an unreasonable amount of weapons, they would be over-the-top megaprojects that would make the Nexus fit right in in a galaxy that was rife with ridiculously exaggerated bullshit.

 

It wasn’t strictly necessary, considering we now had the Webway to move into, but I’ll be damned if I gave up the home I’ve conquered and rebuilt without a fight against the idiocies that were Ork WAAAGHs, Tyranid swarms and whatever else this unnaturally hostile galaxy has in store.

 

Eva had put the estimates to the first set of superfortresses to be completed in four years, so long as we didn’t get any of the bots rerouted away from the construction. 

 

The Webway capital on the other hand would be done by the end of the year, at least the basic core of it. We decided to leave the rest of the vast space empty to be awarded to promising urban planners to go practice their craft. Still, that’s a lot of space. Assuming nobody minded the lack of natural day/night cycle or living under a vast wraithbone roof, the Webway city could comfortably support the entirety of the Nexus’ population with all the necessary infrastructure like food factories and water distributors.

 

Speaking of the Webway, we were also finalizing the fates of Commoragh’s former slaves and prisoners. I didn’t recognize most of the alien slave stock, save for the insectoid Vespids and lizard-like Tarellians. Why they call them ‘dog-soldiers’ is beyond me. They look distinctively lizard-ey to me.

 

Anyway, it was a bitch and a half trying to establish communications with most of the aliens, considering that their Eldar masters only used the language of the whip. Some spoke telepathically, which got filtered out by our wards. The more mundane ones used pheromones, clicking, ultrasound frequencies… 

 

It would’ve been a bitch to fully decipher their languages, but we had literal magic on our side. Turns out that translation rituals worked well enough for most of the aliens. Some tweaks were required for the more exotic races, but all in all, the Nexus was introduced to several dozen interstellar races who were more or less grateful for their liberation.

 

The true challenge was trying to send them back home. Some races, like the Nicassar molemen (they look like moles to me, anyway) were nomadic, assuming that their fleet weren’t wiped out it’d be hell trying to send them back. Others were…weird. One sentient gas cloud was trapped in a crystal orb, speaking in flashing colors and giving really shit instructions home like ‘near the edge of the stars that shine’.

 

Yeah, fuck that.

 

Regardless, in most cases, the solution was to give the aliens Eldar corvettes and wish them good luck as they took the Webway gates supposedly closest to their homes. The Nexus also had an offer to open diplomatic channels with their civilizations once they got back. Some, like the Tarrelians, seemed at least intrigued, while only a few like the Nicassar were actually looking forward to establishing ties.

 

On the other hand, most of the human stock were willing to give the Nexus a try, and took up our offer to settle in. They would undergo probation, briefings and the works of course. The same offer for diplomatic ties were given to those that opted to go back home, and the reception to said offer was generally positive. If things go to plan, the Nexus would likely be hosting talks with stellar realms like the Interex, the Diasporex, and the Trans-Hyperian Alliance.

 

For that purpose, new Webway gates were being built into a megastructure that would serve as a welcoming lobby for envoys. The plan was to hook up these gates to those that would be built for friendly enough civilizations, for the sake of convenience in future interaction. And, considering the canon fates of the Interex and the Diasporex, they could also serve as evacuation portals in case the Imperium still gets genocide-y towards them.

 

Of course, I wasn’t allowed to just enjoy watching everything develop in peace. Already my barebones orbital embassy around Terra was relaying back rather curious intercepts. On public channels, an Ork WAAAGH! was detected not too far from Prospero, and curiously making a straight line towards the Nexus. They still invaded and pillaged any systems they came across, but from the details I leeched off Imperial networks, the greenskin crusade did not veer much in from their path.

 

Behind public channels though, my masked listening post also picked up rather intriguing scraps of related information; like how orders were being sent out to redirect Imperial fleets out of the way, or how an observation team would be dispatched to shadow the Ork fleet for ‘further instructions’. Encrypted messages were buried under vague codewords and shit Latin, but there was enough to make out the standby orders to a couple of Assassin Clades. 

 

I must’ve really left a bad impression to have the Sigillite’s office working furiously to delay the news of the greenskins being delivered to the Nexus.

 

Still, we eventually got the official message one week later, and only because Horus got the message and was being a good neighbor by checking with the embassy on what preparations the Nexus would take to face the incoming Orks.

 

I had kept the staff stuck in Terra in the dark, so their surprises were genuine, and that surprise spread to Horus. The surveillance cameras picked up the barely masked outrage bubbling in the primarch. He kept up a courteous facade as he suggested that the desk team inform me ASAP, and then stormed off.

 

The intercepts of an angry primarch demanding to know why critical information was being withheld from the Nexus was quite heartwarming. It was encouraging to know that I had at least one superhuman semi-eldritch warlord in my corner.

 

Of course, Horus’ message was quickly relayed to my desk as well, so I simply had the week’s worth of preparation carried out. The Nexus’ fleet would travel in force beyond the solar system for the first time, and we would greet the bloodthirsty fungi before they could trespass into our territory.