It was a strange sort of time in the Empire.

The Goblins seemed to have cut their depredations and raids in half or less, as if uncounted numbers of them had picked up and left for greener (hotter?) pastures. None of the Empire’s strategists could come up with a reason for the sudden cessation, but all of them were happy not to have to deal with the Triple Tide’s unstinting aggression.

Oh, there were still Goblin Tides under way throughout the galaxy, ignoring the call to an older and greater crusade of vengeance, and endless worlds of their own to fight over. Wars were fought, billions died, and the Triple Tides rolled on, dried up, or vanished burning into the stars, laughing as they plundered and conquered and laid waste to all before them... or got wasted, conquered, and burned themselves, it was all good.

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The Federation of the Way had collapsed under the assault of cellulocusts. That simple fact ratcheted the threat level of the starflower swarms way up. Only the most scattered remnants of the Federation’s native species survived, babbling about the Starflowers harnessing the power of whole stars, and madness spreading among their commanders...

They were judged mad and summarily shot, in most instances. In any event, the cellulocusts had stripped those systems of biomass, Seeded them, and departed. It would be ages before they were able to bear life at the human level again, without massive investment in terraforming... which all too often was corrupted by the Warp right from the beginning.

That said, there were viable mines in some of those systems, but some megacorps actually got there faster than the Empire’s own fleets did, filed claims, and had them recognized. The captains and admirals of the incoming fleets could only salute their opportunistic industriousness and leave them to their successful claim-jumping attempts after duly-required exchanges of munitions and losses of a squadron or two or six of ships.

It took less than five Solar Years for the seven Races of the Federation of the Way to be judged successfully eradicated and extinct, and the book closed with satisfaction on their idealistic, foolish notion of a Federation of equals.

The paranoid, very worried at the power displayed by the cellulocusts in this obliteration of the Federation, found that many of the known cellulocust swarms seemed to have vanished. Given how they usually remained in a system for up to a hundred years before immigrating to a new one to feed and Seed, this was rather astonishing. In virtually no time at all, dozens of cellulocust Swarms had vanished from the galaxy...

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For some reason, overt raiding and confrontations with the Elvar also seemed to have quieted down... or seemed more focused on the more fringe elements of the Empire, especially the Marquis ships, explorer/raider/colony ships, and those fleets that went surging out into unknown space to conquer anything and everything in the name of the Empire, and eradicate what was left.

Indeed, the number of those sorts of ships being removed from play seemed to spike sharply, which was worrisome. Those greedy explorers and raiders were also some of the advanced eyes and ears of the Empire, and if they went missing, so did foreknowledge of possible alien moves...

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The void-dwelling and truly ancient Mythos races seemed to alternately step up and step back from their wars with humanity, as if taking a great and unsteady breath. It seemed that they had internal conflicts going on out in the darkness between stars, something the reedy diviners claimed was about religious conflicts with their cold and dread gods, and it was distracting them from their unreadable motivations and conflicts with the worlds of Humanity.

Whole sections of the Empire were breathing easier than they had in centuries. Even some ongoing wars were resolved more quickly when the species on the other side were drawn away in pursuit of unfathomable goals and purposes elsewhere, giving no clue why they suddenly decided to pull away.

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The Gatherers, those demented and mad machine-swarms that came boiling out of void to strip worlds to their cores and turn them into more machines, seemed to have vanished from the galaxy entirely.

Nobody missed them, and since information wasn’t widely circulated about them regardless, their absence only noticed in the highest corridors of power.

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The Tekron, always an unsettling presence, had not been heard from in over a decade. An intrepid explorer (and total fool) who intruded into one of their known Crecheworlds had come out babbling tales about endless caves and caverns once occupied by impossible amounts of machinery of great and terrible power... all fallen to ruin and corroded away. Whole moons and worlds were stained white... and seemed to have been Seeded in passing.

That set off some very careful exploration of Cemetery systems. Nobody was told why, which was very useful when said forces were eradicated, and the nearest human systems were abruptly wiped clean of life soon afterwards with horrifying speed and thoroughness.

Others were found to be cold, empty, and Seeded, with no remnants of functional Tekron technology remaining, even after considerable exploration by Mechanist teams eager to acquire the alien technology.

Still others were found to be carved open, and any remnant of viable materials removed with extreme precision and skill, leaving only dead, un-Energized rocks in the system behind. It was a clear sign of the passing of Gatherers. Naturally there were no remnants of the mad machine swarms, who quickly cannibalized their own dead, and whose Planet-Eaters were totally capable of cutting open worlds...

Had the Tekrons fallen afoul of the two alien horde races, or vice versa? If they had destroyed one another, that would be one of the very best things that could happen for all races extant in the galaxy... and especially humanity, who felt often stifled and curtailed by the presence of the Crecheworlds of the Tekron here, there, and everywhere, always seemingly too near arms and clusters of worlds that might be capable of sustaining life...

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In direct contrast to these receding waves of activity, spurred by who knew what inexplicable forces out there in the void, the activity of the xenosyms doubled and more. Planet-stripping waves of biovores departed from the great fleets underneath the galaxy, rising to assault subsector after subsector seemingly indiscriminately, and the fleets of humanity that thought they had entered a rare period of relief found themselves desperately retooling to take on another implacable foe seemingly limitless in number.

There was one subsector that seemed notably free of such raids, and that was the Corunsun subsector of the Noble Sector, home to some of the oldest settled worlds of humanity, populated and united before the Emperor rose to power, and even today afforded greater leeway and freedom than most worlds were allowed to. The noble families, ancient guilds, and megacorps there had tendrils extending throughout humanspace, and could be said to exceed the influence of the High Council of the Peers in many ways.

The Corunsun Duchy suffered not a single incursion, although all the neighboring subsectors were treated to at least one, and often several or more. That said, curious observers noted that the Duchy’s ships were seen regularly marked with the acidic stains and paralightning scarring typical of combat against the Xenoswarms, and they had more than a few battle trophies of such fighting.

However, no record occurred of any such Swarm reaching a system in the Duchy, and indeed the Corunsun Fleet was often moving to reinforce their neighboring forces in battle after battle against the Xenos invaders. Their unstinting devotion to their duty, even coming to the rescue of Houses, Guilds, and Corporations that had long-standing feuds with them, won them the admiration and respect of those old powers despite themselves... and opportunistic as many such worlds and systems were, moving to pay fealty to the Corunsun Foundation was suddenly a very stylish, yet pragmatic thing to do.

Whole evacuated planetary populations found themselves being transported to various Corunsun worlds to develop and rise in importance. That some of those worlds weren’t on any Imperial Map would have only surprised some of them, before they understood the Great Game was still being played, and they just went about their lives, secure that politics and life was going on as normal.

The incredible efficiency and thoroughness of the Corunsun Ducal Fleet was soon being admired across the Empire, and their expertise fighting the Xenovore threat noted upon. Their widespread use of Vakkertech, Beacontech, and Angeltech to thwart the massive psychic influences of the Xenovore fleet soon led to its adoption in ever more ships of the line, and the engineers who could work in the searing heat of the vakkerboard pits became some of the most prized professionals in the fleets.

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I was aboard the Dojo and watching as the Shadowgate opened at the edges of the system. It had to build up power over two entire days to make the connection to a place this distant, for which we could only blame the fact that we didn’t want the drow to find out what we were doing, and were limited in the raw power we could install to charge up the Gates.

It wasn’t a bad thing, really. Too much reliance on Gate technology bred laziness, and vulnerability. We had the wherewithal to build system-wide Interdictions now, which locked out Gates as much as Helldiving. Tachyon Drives were the way to go.

The tenth Gardener Cluster came flowing through the Gate at orbital speeds, joining the nine others already waiting patiently at the edge of the heliopause, just inside it so the Anti-Life that were within a few light years and might flit over at any time could not see them.

Their objective was a moon-sized entity with a carapace shell a hundred meters thick, silently orbiting an old orange star on the fringes of Canis Major.

A Xenosym Wombworld, a living store of biomass the size of a small planet, capable of birthing multiple Xenoswarm Fleets all by itself.

The Gardeners were naturally interested in taking all that biomass for themselves.

The last Cluster had arrived. They were all from different gene lines and patterns, different colors and formations of bodies and leaves apparent among the different clusters of living plants.

The Wombwold was alive and intelligent, but it was currently engaged in timeless thoughts and mediations in enslaved thrall to the Anti-Life that truly controlled it, perhaps linked to the slumbering minds and dreams of its children currently stretched out across thousands of light years below the Milky Way.

It was time to bring it a nightmare of its own...