The message delivered by the Vindicare assassin was as unexpected as his unforeseen appearance at Dolgath’s home base on the remote death world of Octalloron. Rather than a warrant of Excommunicatus as he was anticipating, the messenger bore an urgent formal Inquisition request for his services in thwarting a xenos incursion in a nearby sector. It seems the Ordo Xenos was caught unprepared with little to no resources in the region. Dolgath was a Daemonhunter and had little interest in matters Xenos, yet the fact that they had contacted him showed how desperate they were. And more telling, the fact that they had been aware of his location, but had made no attempt to apprehend or otherwise contact him over the years, he found perplexing. Either they had considered him too great a threat to confront, or too irrelevant to bother with…
In any case, Dolgath recognized an opportunity when he saw it. Solving the Ordo Xenos’ urgent problem would earn him dividends with the Inquisition in the long run. His contact would be Lord Nelthas, an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor he knew by reputation only; smart but unimaginative – as most of the Ordo Xenos tended to be. Thus Dolgath gave the order. His ship, the Subjugator, a converted Mars Class battle cruiser, which had been in hiding riding in antipode lunar orbit for the better part of twenty years, its systems and crew in hibernation mode, suddenly awoke.
It would take the Subjugator several weeks for its systems and crew to come fully on line. In the mean time, Dolgath turned his attention to his new objective. Two kilometers below the surface of Octalloron in the hidden inner sanctum of the temple of Arcana, Dolgath gathered his henchmen and turned his attention to the problem at hand. Rykien, his adjutant, had the Imperial data base on the Tau displayed on the central pictscreen. The Ordo Xenos classified them as an unenlightened, upstart race, yet they clearly possessed superior technological capabilities in several areas. Dolgath seldom made the mistake of underestimating his enemies. Despite their psychically dead status the Tau were never-the-less an interesting opponent. All sentient races were known to posses some latent psychic potential, this Dolgath knew, a race completely lacking in psychic potential suggested one thing – interference. Yet Dolgath needed more. After a moment of apprehension, he slotted his Rosarius into the cogitator and sent his coded access request to the Inquisition’s restricted data core…
The Cheimon Sphere Expansion, that’s what his new adversaries named it. Massitonia was the proper Imperial name for the region centered on the planet Trachis first settled in the great age of expansion, but since fallen into obscurity as a remote, unimportant outpost at the edge of Imperial space. Strange that it all of a sudden became a planet of importance to the Ordo Xenos, thought Dolgath. Stranger still that this planet was flagged in his own personal database as a planet marked as a possible location keyed to his old nemesis, Confessor Sylax. Two birds with one stone… Dolgath sent a second order: all Imperial forces at his command were designated to full combat status.
Objective: Cheimon Sector, Planet Trachis, New Boston.
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