An artist’s rendition  of rebels involved in the train robbery in Golgenna.

Mutants rob train in Golgenna underhive

Rebel mutants have robbed a cargo train in the lower hive of Golgenna, the capital city of Morkai, and stripped it of valuable cargo, including military-grade cogitators used in the manufacture of small-arms weapons.

Approximately 50 rebels took part in the attack, according to authorities. Rebels jumped the train crew after it stopped at a red warning light—an unauthorized electronic command likely instigated by rebels who breached the security protocols of the hive’s transportation system.

A sizable amount of cargo was removed and transported by vertical cargo movers to the city’s underhive, according to authorities, who added that they cannot determine what happened to the nearly 10 metric tons of goods after it descended.

“This is an outrageous act of thievery and insurrection that will not go unpunished,” announced High Marshal Albus Sundvar, commander of all Adeptus Arbites forces on the planet. “The perpetrators will be hunted down and punished.”

That will be easier said than done, underhive residents say. By the time Arbites Enforcers arrived at the scene, the rebels had disappeared into the depths of the city with their ill-gotten gains. Except for the testimony of the unharmed train crew, and security footage, investigators have little information to go on.

Indeed, the only reason authorities know mutant rebels were involved was a public statement released by  “The Twisted Helix,” a known rebel group who claimed responsibility.

Armored vehicles of the Iconia PDF come under artillery fire by ork invaders.

Fighting continues on Iconia

The growing ork population on Iconia is putting immense pressure on the local Planetary Defense Force (PDF), and the world’s governor has taken the desperate step of appealing to regional authorities for off-world reinforcements to help deal with the threat.

“The request is untimely,” said Commodore Lucious Antonius, commander of the Nguyen Naval Base, who also serves as public liaison for the Imperial High Command.  “The launch of the Damocles Gulf Crusade to rid us of the Tau threat has diverted almost all of our military reserves. Iconia must stand on its own for now.”

So far, the Iconia PDF is holding its own. A war band of Speed Freaks—essentially an undisciplined mechanized force—has proven a formidable foe. Known as the “Red Runnas,” this war band wiped out two battalions earlier this year in a battle for a small manufactorum in the planet’s southern hemisphere.

Since its capture, the PDF has launched multiple attacks in a bid to regain the facilities. Imperial officials worry the orks will use the manufactorum to create their own “scrap yard,” the greenskin equivalent of a vehicle- and weapons-assembly  facility.

“The manufactorum has become a focal point for the war, and as the fighting continues, more orks are being attracted to the site,” Antonius said. “Unless a resolution is reached soon, we can expect the orks to work themselves into a frenzy—and that will only increase the xeno threat.”

A pict-recorder on a nearby freighter in orbit caught an image of the traitors’ criminal attack on the planet’s capital.

Heretics fire orbital lasers at Lexicon

A cabal of heretics managed to infiltrate an orbital defense platform over the industrial planet of Lexicon and fire one of its defense lasers at the capital city.

At least 6,000 people were killed, and thousands more were  injured as the plasma beam incinerated an area slightly less than half-a-kilometer in area—and caused lesser damage outward to approximately 1.5 kilometers. Scores of munufactorums, hab buildings, and other city infrastructure were destroyed, and many more suffered damage.

“Since the rebellion of 739.M41, we’ve known that a small number of traitors have remained at large,” Planetary Governor Milos Cavarus announced in a public broadcast after the tragedy. “A handful of these traitors spent years infiltrating the Orbital Defense Force (ODF) until eventually gaining deployment aboard one of our defense platforms.”

According to preliminary reports, the traitors struck during the night shift, overpowering security servitors and gaining access to the controls of one  laser array. Fortunately, authorities say, security forces were able to shut down power to the lasers before the traitors could fire a second time.

ODF personnel were unable to capture any of the traitors alive, Cavarus said, but added that “we are launching one of the most extensive investigations in our planet’s history to cleanse our world of all traitors.”

Meanwhile, rescue operations continue. More than 12,000 citizens are being treated for injuries, ranging from life-threatening to minor cuts from flying glass and debris.

One of the many gelatinous lifeforms that are plaguing the gas-extraction platforms over Furia.

Floating wildlife clogs refineries on Furia

For more than three millennia, orbital gas-extraction platforms above the gas giant Furia have been exporting billions of metric tons of  acetylene, hydrogen, helium, and xenon to Imperial manufactorums across the Corvus Cluster.

A tidal-locked world, Furia orbits close to its red dwarf star. Orbiting refineries circle the twilight zone, a narrow band of temperate weather between the high temperatures of the  sun-facing side of the planet and the icy cold night side.

But the supply of these important industrial gases have been interrupted in recent weeks by millions of gelatinous creatures that are swarming these platforms, fouling intake valves, clogging mechanical devices, and attaching themselves to the platforms’ plasteel hulls.

“These creatures, ranging in size from microscopic to 50-meters across, have shut down all operations,” reported LutherThaxx, prefectus of Administratum operations on Furia. “A more serious concern is that the mass of bio-mass is adding drag as the platforms move through the upper atmosphere, slowing their orbital speed and dragging them slowly deeper into the atmosphere.”

An attitude decline of even 200 kilometers, he added, would raise the atmospheric pressure to the point that a refinery’s hull could implode.

The only magos biologis  on Furia—and who has been studying the planetary fauna for decades—said that untold trillions of indigenous lifeforms thrive in the upper atmosphere of the planet.

Called the “glowing daemon” by platform menials, these two-centimeter lifeforms have entered gas-extraction vents by the millions and clogged the fans and jets that keep the refineries working.

“These creatures have evolved very diaphanous bodies—with thin wings, gaseous sacs, or other anatomical features—that allow them to float in the atmosphere at an altitude where temperatures and water vapor make life possible,” said Magos Veltrek-Theta-2.

For millennia, these creatures largely have ignored the orbiting platforms, and their current migration and their bizarre efforts to attach themselves to the platforms are inexplicable.

It is a fascinating phenomenon, Veltrk-Theta 2 said. “The behavior of the bio-forms is self-destructive, yet there must be an evolutionary basis for this unprecedented behavior. We have yet to find it.”

The challenge for station operators is that the high pressure of the atmosphere does not permit the use of flamers against the creatures. Menials equipped with heavy pressure suits must venture outside and literally scrape the decaying biomass from the hull.

Yet that is not a viable long-term solution, Prefectus Thaxx admitted. “Even a thousand menials working a 12-hour shift can only clean a few hundred meters of hull, and every orbital station has a surface area in the hundreds of thousands of meters.”

—

The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our gaming adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.