The shrinking of the Rift put a duration on our efforts, but in the end, it was not unexpected. We could expect the Warp to be total cads, and they were, hoping to start a massive civil war, and teasing the threat with the Rift, so as better to savor the anticipation and fear on all sides.

We ended up basically ignoring it. We had to do what we had to do, and the Warp wasn’t going to throw off a Source from their path, only become extreme Karma helping them get it done.

Those Sources were cementing control over the human worlds of the whole Khagan Sector with unprecedented speed and solidarity. Given that people on one side of the Sector could, through Faith and support, influence a battle on the far side of the Sector, and see what those battles involved in almost real time, there was more empathy and support of their leaders and their actions than they had basically ever enjoyed under the Empire... and since the Marked generally weren’t greedy except in the faces of the greedy, they enjoyed better standards of living, too.

Heck, just employing the people to actually start taking care of the environment was a nice economic infusion and morale raiser. The Juris actually going out and removing zwilniks and others who abused the laws, and then shipping them out to a battlezone against goblins or xenosyms to appreciate the sacrifices of those who they’d once despised was another one of those mild changes. The corruption crackdown in their hierarchy, the immediate advances in technology that started to get put into place, and teaching people to make them and use them...

Yeah, the Sources were Making Fate, destiny was marching along, and the people were piling along for the ride, which only made it a stronger and faster movement.

That was good, because this was still a slog of years.

Endless xenosyms to fight, and Compact of the Black getting active. The Anti-Life running about here, there, and everywhere, trying to avoid the waves of Warp Storms irregularly and spectacularly washing over random areas and starfields, sometimes catching them, usually not. If they hovered too close to some star, maybe to watch a Xenosym Fleet eat a system down to the bedrock, they might get Sun-sniped and Heliopause’d, and the Ruk would gladly pop them and create a brand new sun for that system.

Such intervention was the next big news that rocked the galaxy... the Ruk had returned!

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The Ruk are not our allies.

Those words came out of the Imperial Palace, and quickly put an ominous and foreboding twist to the news of the ancient overlords’ return. Their cool rebuffing of the Imperial Fleet in the systems where they appeared did not make them any more friendly... but still, they were seen to fight the xenosyms, if not risk themselves for Imperial ships and worlds.

Their lack of a desire to set up diplomatic relations was not good news. The Empire was facing repeated xenosym assaults, even as the Warp and Goblins seemed to have largely ceased to become a problem. That there was someone out there who hated the xenosyms and was willing to fight them was positive news, but the Empire’s abysmal record of dealing with alien species was now coming back to bite them in the ass.

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The Xenosyms are guided by creatures of mythos, and Elder Evils in the void.

This little bit of news came out of research done by several Marquis who’d discovered some alien tech capable of tracking Dark Matter creatures, and adapted it for use. The Mekkers had promptly confiscated all of it that they could, replicated it, and then proudly proclaimed it their own invention, while not really understanding how it worked at all.

But the news that there were massive alien and hostile intelligences guiding the Xenosym fleets was most unwelcome news, and the fact they were working with the Compact of the Black, judging by recorded observations of the vessels of that alliance of elder races interacting with Xenosym fleets, was even less welcome.

The Ruk acting against the xenosyms was now easy to explain, as the Empire had long known the older race was besieged by the Compact... and the Ruk knew that they knew...

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Because the Emperor has not become a god, the Faith of his people is being used by the Warp Gods.

This insidious truth started circulating out of a strange collection of calculations and measurements of Mentats and Mechanists in a rare confluence of ideas. Censors immediately tried to stamp it out, but it proliferated across the galaxy at an unreal pace, and as it did, it sowed doubt.

There was no doubt that in terms of worshippers, the Emperor indeed had the most in the galaxy as of now. However, he was not a divinity, and could not wield Faith. That Faith was being lost in the Warp... and the extremes of it were naturally taken by the Warp Gods, since none could lay claim to it.

Because the Emperor was not a god, worshipping him strengthened the Great Enemy....

The fact it was truth was irrelevant. What it did was create doubt, and an opening for the contracts with the God of the Machine, who was rapidly suborning the more open-minded Mechanists, and their Cult of the Machine was growing into a Faith of the Machine God, promising to create all sorts of troubles for the arch-conservative Mechanist leaders in the future...

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The Rift is shrinking.

This news created more quakes across the Empire. Save for that one message of things that had gotten through, news from the Khagan Sector was always unreliable words from the mouths of aliens, not anything that could be properly verified.

The shrinking of the Rift was definitely something that could be observed and measured!

Immediate plans were made for messenger ships to start heading around it when it shrank to appropriate size, re-establishing contact and the rule of the Empire when it was made. They did not know what had happened, but surely the intervening generations had not been enough for too much change, and who could defy the Empire?

If it had fallen to aliens or the Warp by some massive gambit, that would be unfortunate, but it merely gave the Empire something else to reclaim in the future. The Empire would certainly survive without it.

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The Corunsuns have a massive hidden fleet that is safeguarding them from the Xenosyms.

There were many, many rumors going around concerning the ability of the Corunsuns to stave off the Xenosyms, ranging from pure valor to outright collusion with the enemy, depending on the vitriol of the speaker regarding them.

This truth took hold and root rather quickly, as the complete lack of ability of the xenosyms to even invade a Corunsun system was statistically impossible. It allowed the Corunsuns to aid all their neighbors, and their House Fleet was always on the move from world to world, their shipyards and factories churning out replacements for the battles.

The unity of Foundation and Family was utterly astounding to all outsiders; they hadn’t been shooting at one another for literally decades now. No one knew how deep their roots really were, and suddenly they had turned on and revealed a martial side to both of them that was completely at odds with the indolent infighting that had characterized them for centuries.

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Ranthacorp is deeply intertwined with the Corunsuns. Countess and Contessa Rantha likely have active connections beyond the Rift.

With all the ominous connotations, that judgement came out of the Imperial Palace, and spurred the machinery of the Empire to eager work. Traitors and treason were always the most righteously fun things to prosecute, and the Mechanists were particularly happy to help out the Umbrans, Assassins, and Juris assigned to take them out.

There was a small problem in that when they went raiding the companies, they were always hours late. Cash, capital, and many production assets seemed to vanish overnight... as did their employees. Across the Empire, literally billions of people were gone and evacuated, entire bloks were emptied out, sections of mega-cities and even entire kiloplexes or two literally seemed to evaporate.

There was no ship traffic, no routing, nothing that could possibly take away so many people and their belongings so quickly and quietly, yet that was exactly what had happened.

Left behind were production lines, instructions, and the equipment to make all their products, with cheerful admonishments for them to go right ahead and try to replicate what Ranthacorp had done.

They belatedly noticed that the G&G Blok Organizations had also vanished, along with the suppressive pressure they brought to the underworld organizations. The zwilnik organizations naturally exploded into the vacuum now that their predators were gone.

One interesting development was the Death Collectors installed in so many cities. Not learning from their first lessons, the Mechanists tried to disassemble and move them, and they exploded, creating a massive Death Walking Event that included pretty much everyone gone to get rid of the devices, and the surrounding five miles of territory. The death toll was in the hundreds of millions.

They tried to just destroy the things after that, but that simply detonated them, and the deaths went seeking the living. Then they decided to leave them be... until they reached capacity and weren’t emptied, and they blew up again.

The Mentats went screaming about their missing Beacon psions, too. It seems the entire force of minor psions meant to keep the Beacon going had vanished. That many of them had been working on Beacontech for Ranthacorp was no secret, but the implications of having no Beacon psions to power the Beacon meant that responsibility now fell upon the Mentats... who had interesting expressions when they learned they needed to serve eight-hour shifts in modulation duty while dumping most of their PSP for the day into it, just to keep the Beacon active and moving.

The Umbrans naturally followed the money, and were unsurprised when it basically vanished into the Corunsun Sector... where eventual communication with the branches located there revealed that Ranthacorp was still in full production of vakkertech, Beacontech, and the much-coveted Angeltech.

The Mechanists once again found out that they could not replicate the technology of the Ranthacorp, despite using the exact same machinery and facility, and some of their most skilled workers, even bringing in Mentats to achieve the same level of quality. None of it worked.

Even worse, the Deadshot ammunition that could indeed one-shot a Xenosym bioship if it detonated internally was quickly drying up. Ranthacorp was no longer collecting the death that was required to make the shells, and the stockpiles were vanishing quickly.

The Twilight Orders were naturally torn. The sudden evacuation of the Ranthacorp people and facilities was indeed very suspicious. On the other hand, there was no denying how effective their technology was, and the Mechanists insisting on confiscating it all on suspicion of alien and Warp influence were denied so vehemently the cyborgs never dared bring it up again. Ranthacorp had always been completely open about their operations and their finances... and even the funds quietly left in black accounts for use by their Orders had remained completely untouched when they withdrew...