70: Chapter 70 The First Allied Forces General Meeting

After the Psionic Void Network completed its third round of redundancy testing, the Coalition issued its first general military meeting notice. Sent in the name of the War Council to all Coalition members in the Ultima Segmentum, the meeting was codenamed "Dawn." The agenda was to finalize the formal integration of defense zones and command protocols among all members in the shortest time possible, under the dual pressure of the Tyranid main fleet remnants and the Tzeentch Chaos derelict fleet gathering in deep space on both flanks. The Brood Queen presided over the meeting from the Metallis Forge Temple via a quantum-state translator. Marcus Aurelian attended as the Coalition commander from the bridge of the Wrath of the Emperor. Nephilak's quantum-state communication was patched in from the Solemmnace Dynasty's core matrix, while Canoptek-7 represented the Eternal Echo and the Hammer of Silence synchronously online. Bern and Sebastian sat in the front row of the briefing room with several Terminator veterans. Oldenburg listened in from the Griffin IV command center, with the latest organization chart of the Third Assault Fleet spread out before him. Identification codes for humans, Necrons, and The Swarm flickered quietly on the living topological map of the Psionic Void Network, each light representing a command chain already connected or waiting to be established.

As the briefing room hatch slid open, a delegation from the Aeldari Craftworld Iyanden entered. Leading them was a Farseer draped in raven-black prophetic robes, without an armed escort, holding a Wraithbone Staff in his right hand that had been saturated a ghost-blue by prophetic psionic energy. He took his place at the lower end of the conference table and said in flawless Imperial High Gothic, "Iyanden's Council of Seers saw the reactivation of the Void Throat some time ago. Everything you have done on the Blackstone Defense Line has burned a hole in the Web of Prophecy. We knew this would happen long ago—not that you would win, but that the Old Ones' test would come sooner or later." Sebastian glanced at Bern out of the corner of his eye and whispered that the Aeldari were also afraid of tests.

The Farseer ignored him and pushed a replica crystal of the Web of Prophecy into the holographic projection, displaying it alongside the original text of the Old Ones' assessment protocol sent by the Brood Queen. The overlap between Iyanden's Web of Prophecy and the Old Ones' assessment protocol was extremely high—the next round of the campaign in the Old Ones' assessment protocol was described as "the collective holding the sealing keys must intervene proactively when the threat scale reaches the sector level or above," while the symbol at the corresponding position in Iyanden's Skein was a broken lock and dark purple tentacles being torn apart by The Swarm, followed by a string of undeciphered Aeldari runes. The Farseer translated it into Imperial Standard Gothic: "The Alliance of the Unfettered. You call yourselves the Coalition, but Iyanden's Web of Prophecy calls you the Alliance of the Unfettered. The time this name was woven into the Skein was almost synchronous with when the Void Throat was dismantled and sealed by the Necron Dynasty at the end of the War in Heaven. Our Craftworld Council has unanimously decided to stop bypassing prophecy, which is why I was sent to join the Coalition today."

Marcus projected the official Coalition documents onto the main screen, going through the existing military structure, command hierarchy, Psionic Void Network access protocols, and shared intelligence permissions for the Void Throat's Old Ones' assessment window item by item with the Farseer. The Farseer listened quietly, then used his Wraithbone Staff to draw the ancient star map crest of Craftworld Iyanden in mid-air, embedding it into the Coalition's shared tactical identification library. He then stated that Iyanden would station an Aeldari Farseer as a permanent tactical advisor to the Coalition, assign a Wraith-Ghost Strike Squad to the joint combat sequence, and the Craftworld's Web of Prophecy would open all non-encrypted precognitive data regarding Chaos and Tyranid movements to the Psionic Void Network. The Iyanden Council of Seers had already seen the Tyranid remnants and the Chaos derelict fleet gathering simultaneously on both flanks; they were willing to be the first to deploy for the exact time of the next campaign window.

Nephilak's quantum-state communication patched in immediately after. Without pleasantries, he projected a recently decrypted Necron Dynasty archive from the War in Heaven era above the conference projection, highlighting an ancient coordinate commonly marked in the overlapping regions of Iyanden's Skein, the Old Ones' assessment protocol, and the Void Throat—a nameless planet synchronized as the Star of Judgment by the Necron Dynasty, the Old Ones' remnant archives, and the Aeldari Web of Prophecy. The archive note had only one sentence: The Old Ones left a Final Sealing Protocol here to completely re-seal all Warp rifts after the War in Heaven; the activation conditions are extremely harsh, requiring Coalition-level coordination to unlock. After reading the note, Marcus turned to the Farseer and announced that the War Council had unanimously passed Iyanden's application for membership, and intelligence on the Star of Judgment would be included in the Coalition's highest shared database effective immediately. The Farseer nodded slightly and whispered an ancient greeting in Aeldari. The Brood Queen's translator lit up simultaneously, and the translation result was just a single short line: "Welcome to the network."