Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Dagraii looked again at the walls of the ancient tunnel, deep inside the edge of the ruins of what obviously once had been a functioning Hive, before something had blown it up. The whole continent was ruined now, and that meant a big bomb. The place must have been pretty big, to have even these edge parts survive. The whole mudball world .. provencial ...place .. the word he used was impolite, and better suited to the lower classes, but accurate. They farm potatoes on the soil here, with their hands, and think that's a good life. What a war they must have had, when they killed their abominable intelligences off. Things that once lived here.

Idly he watched the walls, clean as a whistle, oddly, probably because of the ebb and flow of almost pure water and whatever archaetechnological coatings the surfaces had. Dirt just didn't seem to stick to them. It was beneath his dignity as an Inquisitor of the Empire of Man, but, once more, he reached out to touch the surface and felt a slight tingle. Was this a thin layer of ancinet poop? Or a clean wall where none should be. It made sense they had built their Hive on this continent, after all, how many worlds with a functioning Hive seemed to have an endless supply of clean water just bubbling up in the sewers?

That question felt wrong. It felt so wrong he froze.

None of them. There's no such source of pure water in nature.

Not for the first time since his arrival on this dustball he reached out with his Psykasenses to send a message, telepath style, back to the small scout he had orbiting. Not for the first time did it occur to him how unusual it was to not be able to sense his astropathically inclined acolyte, not to be able to sense the warp at all. It...
...
Dagraii looked again at the walls of the ancient tunnel, deep beneath the ruins of what obviously once had been a functioning Hive, before something had blown it away down to the planet's core. The place must have been pretty big, stretching across an entire ruined continent of this little provencial .. the word he used was impolite, and better suited to the lower classes, but accurate. They farm potatoes on the soil here, he thought, with their hands, and think that's a good life. What a war they must have had, when they killed their abominable intelligences off.

Idly he watched the walls, clean as a whistle, oddly, probably because of the ebb and flow of almost pure water and whatever archaetechnological coatings the surfaces had. Dirt just didn't seem to stick to them. It was beneath his dignity as an Inquisitor of the Empire of Man, but, once more, he reached out to touch the surface and felt a slight tingle. It made sense they had built their Hive on this continent, after all, how many worlds with a functioning Hive seemed to have an endless supply of clean water just bubbling up in the sewers?

That question felt wrong. It felt so wrong he froze. Not for the first time, he tried to touch the Warp in his mind's eye, struggling even to perceive it. Nothing. This freaky planet with clean water ALSO has no easy connection to the warp? That's crazy.
...

Dagraii looked again at the walls of the ancient tunnel, a strong sense of deja vu, as he stood deep beneath the ruins of what obviously once had been a functioning Hive, before something had blown it away down to the planet's core. They farm potatoes on the soil herewhat a war they must have had, when they killed their abominable intelligences off. Were these his thoughts? They seemed only familiar now, like he had ...
Idly he watched the walls, clean as a proverbial whistle, oddly, as the water sloshed emptily in the ancient sewer. Dirt just didn't seem to stick to them. Where were the rats and bugs of even a dead Hive? Well, this Hive is dead, right? It was beneath his dignity as an Inquisitor of the Empire of Man, but, once more, he reached out to touch the surface to check for the thin layer of poop that most hivewalls had and felt a slight tingle. What did he mean by "once more" surely ... It made sense they had built their Hive on this continent, after all, how many worlds witheven a functioning Hive seemed to have an endless supply of clean water just bubbling up in the sewers?

That question felt wrong. It felt so wrong he froze. His mind bucked in fury as he tried to reach the warp, and nothing. His strongest telepathic screams didn't rouse his acolytes from their slumber in orbit.

Dagraii looked again at the walls of the ancient tunnel, deep beneath the ruins of what obviously once had been a functioning Hive, before something had blown it away down to the
planet's core.

That question felt wrong. It felt so wrong he froze. Wait, what question? He hadn't asked a question, had he? Ok, that question feels wrong now, that's for sure..
He touched the wall again, remembering what the admech group had talked about when he asked them what they were studying. "We just want to learn how to keep plumbing clean like this so long after the bombs fell here, its obviously an ancient tech." Obviously, the radiation had killed all the rats. And roaches. And slime molds. "But we can't detect any radiation, there should be something alive in here after ten thousand years. There isn't, and whatever does this, is causing lung disease in our rangers. Like they breathed invisible soap?"

Something was killing roaches, ten thousand years after this planet killed off all its abominable intelligences? His heart rate raised, his lungs sucked in air, he panicked. WAKE UP YOU WORTHLESS BASTERD. WHERE DID THE WARP GO? REPORT!
nothing.
stupid acolytes. Sleeping on the job.
Dagraii looked again at the walls of the ancient crypt, deep beneath.

Bullcrap.

Dagraii stood again in the entrance of an ancient crypt, deep beneath... Where IS the Warp NOW? WHAT IS GOING...

....

up like that, its all the simulators can do to block his psyk actually sending out a warp pulse. We run it again and again and apparently, he doesn't understand where the clean water comes from, or he can't understand how the walls self clean actively. The Empire he comes from must be a grimy hell. is just too grimy, i do not support .. my faction does not support ... no pollution. Not for even that, we have better tools to hide
He sees it as odd. Others will.
we won't support putting pollutants in the water just so the next inquisitor finds it normal. What are the odds he will even come down here?
Pretty good, actually, Dagraii mumured, cause he will be looking for the last one .. wait .. wait.. wait, who am I talking to?
...

Dagraii's body hung limply in a circle of water in a tube. Nutrient paste oozed into his belly down a tube. Air reached his lungs down a tube. He saw this all clearly for just a microsecond and wondered "whose voices WERE those?" and "how do I poop in there?" A thousand wires ran to tiny plugs that seemed to meld into the skin of his head.
...

Dagraii stood in ... bullcrap. This isn't a tunnel. This isn't real. What stops me calling the Warp? He screamed, not a physical scream.

Dagraii's image bucked suddenly in the tube.
... his nicotine blockers. nanites for clean out of his GI tract manually, but if he damages himself enough, maybe the nocciception will kick in and he won't buy. We need to know how he figured it out in the sewers.
I still believe it was the clean water. residual radiation, rotting plant life, that sort of thing, maybe rats with 9 heads, even tested with a subject check on that admech ..
WHO is TALKING are yyou ABOUT ME? WHO IS TALK? WHERE WARP? So angry. Something not right.
...

Dagraii stood in the tunnel, its clean walls oozing tiny traces of freshly purified water. Somehow, this wasn't a feature he expected a planet that damn near got blown to its core to come with. Who was tidying it up? That .. .that was something he needed to pass on to base. A fortunate escape, if he could reach his little flitcar, he would be there in no time.
...
Not long after, he paced a tiny room in the Skyneedle, as neared the Oort cloud of this nightmare system. The warp pulsed dully in the distance, muted, like something still made it hard to sense. Residuals? Was I drugged somehow?
Soon, the techpriest and navigator of Skyneedle raced back to the nearest base the Inquistion kept, what was its name? He forgot. His astropath smiled and flashed a thumbs up as the security protocols were passed, and the guns didn't blow Skyneedle out of the sky. It seemed only seconds later he was standing in the report room, as the admech servitors passed drones and sensors over his body, "You were lucky to escape" one of them seemed concerned by something "and just as soon as we have a clean bill of health on your, we will start our debrief." "hemustbeputin a diagnosistube for a weekofstudy" the servitor mumbled "his beta/wave/coefficients showdamage to his psykerabilities" "possibly a lung infection, its like a partial atalectic failure of surface active chemicals"
Lord Armass stared at him, surprised. "Dagraii, can you .. reach the warp?"
"No, Dagraii said" Its not right, but I seem burnt out."
"that shouldn't be possible."
...
Dagraii stood in the tunnel, his hand on the smooth cool wall, each finger feeling an odd tingle. The wall seemed to ooze clean water out of the moisture that landed on it. Other than the soft sounds of water sloshing in the ancient crypt, this was the quietest quiet he had ever seen. Or felt.
Where was the warp? Why can't I feel the warp? Is this a flashback?
...

...keeps looping back. The admech characters don't get anything out of him either, he meets them, he talks, and he loops back...
Something we done isn't real to him.
No, I don't think the sim, his last eyeRo behavior pattern was exactly like this. He spotted something and that's pretty impressive in his case. I mean, him alone, and such a slow thinker...
... not support pollution, even if that WERE the case, simply isolate and kill the inquisitors as they come, we can ...
some won't be psykers, either, more amenable to the pod, question signifier Easier to imprint, questionsignifier
Is It because he is Psyka? Put in more dopamine and try altering the agonism of the D3R subsets especially, make him feel contentment t
...

Dagraii's body was in a tube. Why was he in a tube? Where was he looking at himself from? Even for the Admech, this was arcane stuff. The liquid was new, how often do the admech pull out a new technology just to interrogate a sick psyker? And blue. That was wierdest part, it was blue. That question seemed off. And why blue? Answer is, they don't.
...
Dagraii touched the wall of the crypt. Screw this, he thought, and screamed.
Not human screamed, unless you think of psykers as merely human, but SCREAMED. and screamed and screamed. The dull ache of the warp's ... for lack of a better word, attention to his efforts, spread through him like pouring diarrhea on his soul. Hot, freezing, nasty diarrhea, oozing across his brain and out his ears. Something shattered, and he could feel its ill embrace again.
Bits of glass tumbled down in the broken room, as he struggled to breathe around a tube in his windpipe. He ripped it out. Things were hazy and fuzzy like he was on heavy drugs, but this was no whorehouse on RnR week.
His psyker powers burned like a dull flame far away, and he finally spoke at his ship.
" BOMBARDMENT"
"of what, Sir?" Dalo allways had that informal tone in mental speech.
"EVERYTHING"
...
Dagraii stood in the tunnel, touching the cool, open wall. Soft shapes moved below the water and promised a likely death to anything that touched its muddied banks, god emperor, much less stepped into a hive sewer 10,000 years out of maintenance? Must be warp on earth by now.
No. Where was the .. demonfire, again? The clean water burbled past him. Time to run.
...
looping back. He keeps calling for the bombardment but the little ship in orbit, I assume, he wants to relay it to that cruiser for their support. There is minimal threat even ...
...
Dagraii screamed silently in his mouth as his stiffened body fell over in the entrance to the crypt. EXTERMINATUS! EXTERMINATUS! EXTERMINATUS!... HIT THE PANIC BUTTON YOU APeS HIT IT!. Somewhere on the craft, a jokaero probably was getting ready to fuss at him for unsensitive language. And, he hoped, firing a burst of ship core weapons into this ...
...
Does not appear to be reaching the psykers he left up there. Concurr minimal threat. Damage to the examination room is impressive, novel parameter pulse. He appears to have largely shaken the ...
...
Dagraii moved one hand, then another, inch by inch. The clean walls of the crypt and their pure water faded from his vision, and he saw the blurry imagines of a row of shattered glass tubes, with dead admech beside and within them. Blood and oil appeared to clean themselves off the floor of the room and flow, slightly uphill, towards a drain.
He finally spoke.
"In the naem of the Emroer osa Man I sfof exterminatus ousn"
Well, he didn't spoke very coordinatedly, he felt drugged as all git.
One of the admech twiched.
It spoke.
"This place a...live." "You should kill heresy." "abcedefghijklmnoprstuvwzyx self diagnose fail 550" "alive.alive" It seemed to be having trouble speaking, at that.
....
Dagraii's body was like lead, or even plombium, and badly uncoordinated. His vision had a sort of dark circle around the middle that was, nice, slowly fading. The part he could see spread. Like back in handto training, with that catachan monkey of a sargeant. He picked up one of a half dozen admech weapons just lying on the table and with a clumsy trigger pull, blew the far wall out, knocking himself to the ground from the pressure front. Although he waited a bit, nobody responded, nothing. Soft breeze of cool air, and the smell of the underhive of the ruin came to him, clean, pure air.
Echoes of the explosion had tuned his hearing into a dull whine. Moving with less grace than a sick servislave, he fumbled across his own weapon -- a tiny inscription on the barrel of the inferno. What a simple world it was, when he put that sticker on. How bold it was of him to personalize his weapon, but how reassuring in this wierd day. His head hurt. The pistol's soft hum told him it was primed.
Sensations were returning slowly. Tired. He staggered out, after making a stretcher for the head of the wounded admech out of his ruck. What civies would call a backpack. He stood, carrying his new companions's upper torso and spare weapon. You, witness. survive!." Each word was like it carried a 10kc bill and he a poor potato farmer... like hangover, maybe, this headache.
At the entrance he had blown, he stopped to ponder his options. Dagraii looked at the walls of the tunnel, streching into the dark and quiet. This wouldn't be easier when he left the lights of whatever mad lab he was in now.
The mind's eye feel of the warp pulsed evilly in the sky, and the warm presence of his astropath was like a distant noise chattering. He would contact him .. later. Either would help him navigate.

He put one hand against the wall of the crumbling crypt, and it tingled his fingers slightly, it sure seemed clean. Now, all I need is my flyer, such a report I will make back at the base.

A number of years passed.

Well, a small number. While it wasn't going to shake the Throne, this chain of events did invite investigation. Inquisitors are like that.
One of the smallest scoutships in the Black fleet had gone missing, apparently, lost in the warp, which was not a surprise to anyone. What WAS a surprise to everyone was that the best psykers and scryers and sensors had registered it as out of the warp, but been unable to locate it, when it didn't reappear. It isn't every scoutship that's monitored that way, but Daml Sigru and Dagraii had found long ago covering each other's backs was better than becoming 2 more numberless statistics.

A slightly larger ship was sent on the same vector through the sector. Daml Sigru's engines and guns were better, for he was a slightly more experienced Inquisitor in charge, a slightly better rating of navigator. In other words, not significantly more powerful, in the galactic scale of things.

They were caution incarnate. The plan: careful approach to every star system near the last one the Dagraii's man had reported from, appear in deepspace well away and scan passively for any evidence, whatsoever, of cultists, necrons, tyrannidal hiveships, deepspace threats, madmechs from the dark Imperium, oks, dorks, guys with forks, radio waves, wacky pointy eared terrorists. Anything. Then ever so slowly slip forward into the system and scan for debris. Unlike much of the Empire, these few ships that had fallen under the influence, if not the permanent command, of the Inquisiton had gradually standardized their approaches and exits from star systems. Treachery is not uncommon. Ships get blown up, and if you are going to look for rubble from the last guy, it helps to be able to use the same algorithmic logic to come in on the same angle. Or leave from it.

The arrival at FDA1 (who named these places, Emperor!) was uneventful.

It was the most terrifying unevent Inquisitor Daml Sigru had ever witnessed.

"Tell me again, where the Star is?"

"Right there. I am sure that's its supposed to be."

"Where ... I know you keep saying we aren't miswarped, but I am going ot ask this again, and I don't want you to answer with I don't know, on pain of your ... just where is FDA1?"

"I don't know."

"Well, where are all its planets? Didn't the survey fleet describe it as having a bunch of planets? So even if someone stole the star, where are the planets? Even the nids leave poop when they've eaten a planet." Crap on the Emporer's Holy throne, he said that outloud to insecure bridge personnel. Daml grimaced. If the astropath realized what this meant too soon, or the bridge commander, or the navigator...

"I wondered if you would ever admit that" the bridge commander finally said "I mean, every bridge officer knows about it. Its not something we discuss outside but if you go to a place where a few planets are basically gone, you start speculating. Rumors happen, and it has to be the nids, who else can steal a planet?"

"Yeah, the psykers all know about it too. Something about the stains in the warp and the rubble smells like nids." The astropath tried to keep his game face on. If Daml so much as suspected that he knew about the ork habit of moving planets like armageddon around, or that thing that pointedly was classified knowledge nobody knew about in the Holy Terra System, or,

"YOU KNOW I CAN READ MINDS, RIGHT?" Daml looked frustrated.

think about bunnies think about bunnies think about bunnies. The Navigator's terror was almost comic relief if you looked at it that way.

"I know already what you know, you know I know what you know, stop trying to hide that you know what you know, the star isn't gone, we just misjumped, back to the fleet." Bluffs like this were why the good inquisitor never lost at cards, the man was so easy to read when he was trying to not thing about what he was thinking about and you could, well, READ.

Thank Emperor none of them read minds, nobody can be sure I don't believe a word of that. Or how surprised I was that two of the three on my command bridge knew enough to get a summary execution. (Although right now, he just wanted competent underlings, but if he was in a bad mood. Crap on the Golden Stool, now three of them knew enough to justify it. Good thing Inquisitors don't feel stress (humor!) in this universe.)

"All quarters all quarters, this is bridge captain Tonsen. Prepare for a return through the warp, we have misjumped and our location is unclear. I want diagnostics run on all our ... no, I want all our navisensors ripped out and replaced with fresh components, they are obviously damaged by some unexpected warp effect. Destroy them with extreme prejudice." Tonsen managed to sound bored and routine while he gave the unusual order to kill part of his own ship to the admech below him, who (on a tiny monitor they could all watch him) hesitated only a few moments before pulling out an electric goad weapon. And advancing towards the line of servoskulls in the wall.

Bridge Captain Tonsen was a very practical man, who just plain didn't see a mystery so far above his security clearance he could get killed for seeing it, even if it meant junking half his ship.

What a mystery this was. The Warp here, it felt wierd. Not like he expected the effect of a Tyranid infestation at all, it felt... well, maybe.
it felt.... ah ...

It felt deadened. The whispers of demons didn't seem to be here. Sort of like what you got near that Darkstone fortress line.

Daml Sigru didn't have a word for it. It wasn't as dead, perhaps, more like, calmer, or even, lonely. He sensed it again as the ship began to move back into warpspace, and the actual warp he was used to oozed across his skin like a bad dream. His mind's skin itched with the unwelcome touch.

It felt like... well, whatever, it must be nids, my sector has nids, I should let the Ordo know that they do in fact surpress the warp a bit.

We got ourselves a bug hunt.

Now killing bugs? For that, Daml Sigru had plenty of words.

Kak 3 Dro Rah would be a good approximation of his name, if it were translated from the series of machine squirts and squiggles in shorthand he and his comrades used to designate him. The cold surface of his face and his glowing green eyes, the lack of flesh, the gigantic cannon he carried, they would be the details most people fixated on from the Empire of Man, right before their sudden demise. K3DR, to his friends, but of course, he didn't really care for the luxury of friends. Perhaps only he called himself that.
In any case, K3 (well, that was a bit familiar, even for him (or it) self, stared at the "model" of the stars. It had taken more energy than he cared to calculate to move one, physically move one, out of the way of the probing Empire ships. Several of which had been reported now, close to where it had been.
Ink quis it tor. What an ugly, human word. He (or it) did not will it so at all.
The Empire fleet was not yet thick in the skies of the sector, but show it an hour of delay, it would be. What horrible things would happen if it started looking in every planet there, beneath the soil, and ...
Well, what horrible things would happen to himself (or it) were the duty of the eternal watch over his assigned area to fail. Prying Empire fleets couldn't just be left alone to pry. Not in a territory as vast (in terms of the only ones who mattered) and potentially as important economically, if it was just woken up.
His cold intellect was almost greedy at the thougth of bringing all that production back online, of building so much more than currently was being built. Of nanites grinding away at the cores of planets and uncountable trillions of tons of ceramic plating crawling off the assembly points to rip human flesh with tiny, cold claws. Of gigantic battle barges, resplendent in their forms, drifting across a hazy mass of destruction, showing not incidentally that his duties were performed in a very competent and very personally rewarding manner to protect the sleepers.

By awakening the sector.

Why, he finally thought, didn't I process these cognits sooner? I will go down into the emptyness that was system .. the humans called FDA1 for some reason .. ridiculous. K3DR would have grinned, if such were possible behind the armored parody of a face he wore. Perhaps his eyes flashed a rapid series of light variations to indicate profoundly satisfying emotional moments.
A84SDk Agon Rah Sul ... he (or it) of the pretensious name and expressive facial artwork ... noticed this, and made comment. K3DR explained, and A8 (privately, such a short and ignomious name was used to designate A8, which was all the designation so junior a helper SHOULD be thought of. Publically? Not so short.) nodded in agreement. A shared eagerness to pay back the humans for some slight, some damage, perhaps some destruction of a world's colony of the People.
Precious resources long horded must be released. The sleeper must awake. A trap can be set to entirely remove the vaunted human Black Fleet from this sector of the galaxy. By the time they are aware of it, many of their ships will be gone, and they no longer replace them well.

Nor do we. A9, another canoptek, intoned.

K3DR might not have thoughts permitted to discuss weakness among the people, not even in his own mind. Were they not masters of the galaxy itself? Next to the full might of the Necron race, a moved star was an insignificant amount of energy, if it cost the humans that fleet.

For an ape hunt, Kak 3 Dro Rah had plenty of thoughts to think. Awaken just enough sleepers in the least important worlds to hold their interest, to split their effort.

Concur! Concur!

Bring in elements of siegecraft and prioritize starcraft reawakening to then destroy their ships when they disperse to cope. Attack human worlds preferentially. Cause the sort of racket that forces them to deploy their hated marines. Extirpate marines and their support craft.

Destroy, enslave, or convert into machine form, all the humans in this sector.

Concur! CONCUR! Both canoptek ... advisors .. seemed onboard.

Only probability of danger is the interference of the psyker race. We shall of course observe them carefully for signs of mobilisation.

A tiny part of Kak 3 Dro Rah's vast and cold intellect wondered if sending in scouts to probe the eldar's intentions might waken them in the sector, too. It did not care. The People's great engines of war had the excuse they needed now, to clean everything out of the sector. Perhaps once that is accomplished it will be time to construct additional pylons, and bring the aberration of psy energy at the galactic core down in power a bit more.

Yes. concur. Laudable goal. Appropriate investment level.

Awaken peripheral and space combat assets at this time only.

By your will, Kak 3 Dro Rah replied, it shall be done.

Scouting elements of Ultramarines (mostly those new vangaurds) became aware of the necron threat a bit too late, and were largely eliminated on three worlds they had small bases or presences on. This shifted power inside the very local forces of Man's Imperium towards gaurd and planetary defense forces, for it was not a sector with a lot of marines in it. What this might mean for the future of marine presences in the sector was a variable the Lords of Ordo Xeno didn't know, and didn't care. What did grab their attention was a series of attacks across the whole area of space, by necrons who, apparently, infested it like cockroaches in the proverbial cupboard. What had been a suspected presence was now a very real one, world after world crashed and burned. Tiny colonies of man fought desperate defenses against the foe. A major force of skitarii on some desert planet was suddenly invested by robots that looked suspiciously like unknown necrons, and only a few desperate survivors got back to report on it. Warpships appearing and disappearing across the sector suddenly had to fight past clouds of Doom and Night Scythe fighters.
Somewhere out there, a Tomb Fleet must be active.
So a hypothetical Xeno war, even perhaps a cold war with an unknowable foe suddenly went hot, odd, curved warships of unknown design sweeping the skies of the local defense flyers, longer, strangely bargelike monstrosities burning city after city of the worlds Kappan, Darnmor, and Sigmatikus. Uncounted millions died. This in Imperium terms hardly mattered, as the Imperium kills untold millions of its own people just to make snacks every second of the day. In a variety of flavors, no less, and made and enjoyed in untold numbers of Hiveworlds across untold numbers of star systems. But to those worlds, one supposes, it mattered, and so, defense nets and pacts among the local powers went live. The invading fleets began to see casualties, here and there, as they began to face more and more active opposition. Even the old model tanks of the PDF can shoot, if the locals don't mind basically dying to the return fire. And every human hand seemed to carry at least a lasgun of some sort, or similar. Perhaps merely competence and alertness became more important than a cushy job, perhaps extra troops were called up, but the landings and bombardments ceased to go easily. Void shields were turned up from standby levels to full, and even a bit beyond. The next wave of attacks, even those unthinkable energies of the spinal weaons tended to simply vanish into another dimension, when fired at them. Anti-ship weaponry from the Hives started to cause casualties, too. It looked like the only way the necrons were going to clear this sector was by landing on those worlds and killing each monkeyboy until the Hive shields fell. More surprisingly, it looked like they were numerous enough, and willing, to do it that way.

Cries for help -- one starship capable freighter vanishing into the warp -- brought attention of the matter to the Inquisition itself, percolating up countless layers of bureaucracy to send, finally, a message out into the field directing one of their agents to investigate.

"Dagraii or Daml Sigru are in that area. They should look into it, also, they should look into rumours of the sudden disappearance of the star designated FDA1. This has been a shocking uptick in necron activity. They are up to something big there, I can smell it." (Lord Right Over Inquisitors for the Ordo, one assumes, develop a nose for Xeno activity over the centuries.) "If someone has stolen a star. This isn't unprecedented, the Necrons have a technology that can cause supernovaing." "Look for residue, maybe it blew up and they missed it, somehow."

"Also be sure to scout out any worlds we suspect harbor the Eldar in that sector. The mechamen come, you know the Eldar will be there too. Eventually."

"Yes Lord Inquisitor, I will." Someone fairly faceless turned to the skull in the wall and began dictating notes to it. They included the usual blathering about things that weren't in any way realistic, but that the Empire of Man's bureaucracy found the words reassuring to imagine it so.
"Send a missive to the Fleet elements in that area, direct them to concentrate forces and begin the final eradication of all non-human life and lifelike forms. Kill everything that isn't us." "And this time, make sure they know we mean it. Request they do it or we will have to inquire them. Also I expect some of the worlds involved are probably contaminated by alien contact and may need pruning for the good of the peace of the Empire." "Also pass copies of the case file for the FDA1 incident to all other Ordo, that's just odd, someone stole a star. Nobody steals stars." This was unusual, at least, unusual enough that the staff guy almost sounded like a regular human for a sentence"
"Find and return the star back to its rightful position, its Imperial property, after all, everything in this galaxy is."

Only a staff guy in HQ can say things like "the peace of the Empire" with a straight face. Or sentences as illogical as "find and return the star"
So, it was a pretty normal day, back in HQ.

Fleets were sent. And not just by the worlds of Man.