Some of the ships of the Fleets took us up on the offer. Others considered it a trick of the Warp, or a plot by treasonous rebels.

We couldn’t save them when the Deathships arrived in the system under FTL, and sent out the kill codes. They died screaming in disbelief that the Emperor would betray them so, but it didn’t matter. They were even more loyal in death than they were in life, after all.

Following that, worlds began to die.

It wasn’t just the surge of the Warped, feeling the momentum shift and the crumbling coherence of the Imperial defenders, sweeping them away and then going on to bomb and flash-burn worlds for fun and pretty pictures before heading onto the next system.

No, the worlds died from within.

Sometimes it was multiple self-defense missiles and munitions going off and targeting the world itself. Sometimes it was hidden virus dispensers, clouds of death rolling across the worlds that their supposedly secure shelters didn’t stop at all. Sometimes it was Blacklight Beamers, raining down from space as Deathships appeared in orbit at unstoppable speeds, and proceeded to kill everything down below.

Sometimes it was nega-bombs going off, souls being eradicated, and the corpses left behind filled with something else. Sometimes it was Spectre Bombs sweeping across worlds in waves of killing incorporeal undead, unstoppable, mad for revenge for their torment, and thirsty for the rush of draining souls.

What was left behind were worlds that rose as undead, obedient to the lich emperor on His Crystal Throne... and which were deuced hard for the Warped to get rid of.

Burn away the atmosphere? The undead didn’t breathe. Virus bomb? They were already dead, disease was useless. Warp Events to Summon in demons? There were no souls to sacrifice to bring them in, that was already done. Nuke them? They didn’t care about normal radiation left behind, and unless it was hot enough to burn away bone, it didn’t actually kill them.

Given the roiling amount of negative energy about, it was passing easy for the Warp Sorcerers among the invading fleets to Summon in large amounts of demons, which was fortunate for dealing with the incorporeal hosts that could strip a non-Possessed ship of its crew in literally minutes. Luckily for the Warped, demon-Possessed ships couldn’t be passed through by the incorporeals, and indeed would be treated as snacks if they tried...

The undead fleets and populations were absolutely fearless, of course, and far harder to put down than normal humans. The Warped couldn’t rely on vivus, of course, as it would also feed on them, but in no time at all, world after world was buried in mad conflicts of undead against demons, both ignoring all the destruction done to the worlds about them as they fought mindlessly to slay the other.

The jeering mockery of the Six Demon Princes was a little forced. Of course, they mocked the Empire and its people for their loyalty to the dead thing on the Crystal Throne. However, they were also watching an undead force of total loyalty and tenacious staying power growing around them with appalling speed.

The living fleets of the Imperial Sector were aghast at this turn of events, and could only reel in disbelief at the scale of the treachery going on. If they believed in the Emperor, they were killed and re-animated. If they chose to fight the death ships, they were generally killed in battle, re-animated and put back into service, although here and there ships with vivic munitions actually managed to make a go of things.

They watched the worlds they were protecting die from within, even before the Warped could reach them. Billions of souls were turned into undead at a time, and whole worlds went black with undeath swallowing them.

That being said, the factories didn’t stop working, although they were rapidly being repurposed down alternate tech lines, which sprang into being with a speed that the cyberzombies and necroborgs managing didn’t bother to explain to the workforce, who just followed orders tirelessly and didn’t think much at all anymore.

------

The Outer Sectors, despite eradicating the vast bulk of the Emperor’s forces, were hardly spared his heavy and deathless hand.

It took only one ship to enter a built-up system and transmit the codes that could destroy worlds and ships, and not all of the system governments had broken from the Emperor, or even believed what had been sent them in warning.

Too, there was no way the Imperial Forces could catch the ships dispensed to deliver the Emperor’s Judgement. They were both at a higher TL and could go inertialess. Mere Helldiving couldn’t possibly keep up with them as they flitted from system to system, spreading death... and undeath.

They did run into a small problem called the White Fleet, and the Alias-class Scouting fleet... and some very impressive sensor ensembles for tracking refined negative energy.

Those ships that had turned to us naturally had the kill-codes removed, which often required a full purge of the ship’s computer cores and melting them down for scrap. The worlds that had sworn to us were notified of the danger, and Rantha-teams went looking for the virus dispensers, munitions overrides, power core breachers, and all the similar things put in place long, long ago by faithful Mechanists who had no idea what they were doing, only that it was all blessed tech of the Empire and to mess with it was anathema.

Such good tools...

For all their lethality, and the lack of preparation and power the systems had, we had truly dealt the undead forces of the Emperor a massive blow before they could be deployed, or it was certain that every primary world in the Empire would have turned into a Tombworld pumping out Deathships for His service.

The Forgeworlds, Crownworlds, and Throneworlds in particular had many, many layers of traps. The most startling of them would have been the ability of the Steiners to trigger mass Dead Walking Events, which surely would have caused horrendous casualties in the Underspires. Alas for them, the mass Purges that were undertaken of them before they could set those pre-programmed plans into motion were soon followed by the Tekron-inspired leeching technology, charged up by siphoning energy off the Soylent feeds, being tossed into a vivic inferno.

Worlds did die, if they chose the wrong people to believe... and a good number of those people were Cult of Man religious leaders, long programmed and sent out to prepare their flocks for this day. Whole worlds fell when the Cult of Man subverted efforts to stop the Emperor, and either triggered the Judgements themselves, or awaited the Deathships with open arms, and the black light coming down from above to bless them with undeath.

---

The Deathships didn’t get too far in the Outer Sectors. The kids went hunting for them with grim eagerness, and the White Fleet in particular was on the case.

Stripped-down Alias-class scout ships that were basically all sensors and engines followed the Deathships as soon as they learned of any system where they had been spotted, and even if the Emperor had managed to duplicate the inertialess drive of the Tekrons, he hadn’t improved on it at all.

The Tachyon Drive didn’t lose out to inertialess on top end speed whatsoever, and was constantly being tinkered with. Combined with Phlos and Gravity Rifling, it was indeed even faster, so one ship could keep up the chase while others could jump into Phlos and outrace them to their final destination once they had a course.

In their wake came grim Ruk Citadel ships, cracking open planetary defenses now manned by undead soldiers, and the White Fleet, there to cleanse the planets of those damned by His Judgement.

Planets burned white in their wake, as did the sarcophagus Fleet ships betrayed and conscripted to service once more.

The Dead Forgeworlds of the Imperial Sector were now slaving away to create more ships, more mechs, and if their workforce was suddenly redirected into infantry, none of them complained at all. The numbers of soldiers the Emperor had available was now definitely in the scores of trillions... after the majority of his plans had been stopped.

Awesome in scope, terrifying in execution, lethal in finality, unflinching in choice... when the Emperor moved, the galaxy did indeed burn... black...

-------

“Madame Lolith, how unexpected to find you on a human world out in the middle of nowhere.”

The queen of the drow arenas looked a little bit grim as I flicked up a Disk table, unloaded a picnic basket of wine and munchies, spread it across the table, and gestured her to a seat as I poured for her.

As stylish as ever, the bladewitch queen slid onto the floating Disk, took her glass, and claimed a plate of cruzion pate crackers for herself.

“Nyssulof, mmm, the western slopes of the Magrimmers,” she judged after a taste. “There is less rain, and it concentrates the grapes better.”

“Indeed it does. It has a zest of Light-zinc to it that is a bit sparkly on the tongue. Thought you might enjoy the change of pace.” She inclined her jet-skinned head in acknowledgement. The other bladewitches keeping a carefully respectful distance looked like they very much wanted to sit at the high table and exchange cultural quips haughtily, too...

“That being said, this is very definitely not your kind of place.” The place was basically a bucolic, pastoral paradise, full of farms and fields and gardens and trees and other bright, cheerful things that the drow would find endlessly tedious and want to set on fire, among other things. This was obviously not a fighting world, its inhabitants only suitable for slavery and being bossed around, and they were probably irked that she wasn’t letting them loose to play.

“We identified one of your daughters as being in charge of the place, and thought the information would come in handy someday. Although what one of your ilk is doing on a place so... dull is somewhat of a puzzler.”

“Oh, Pixali is a bit scatter-brained, so she flits around the galaxy here and there doing weird stuff wherever her sisters need her, and comes back here to tend her flowers in between. Assassinate a governor here, beat on Kundi there, sing support in a big production there, lab assistant over here, lay a new track bed there, hunt this monstrosity down thereabouts, add -akkK! verses with enthusiastic Gobbers over plasma exchanges,” I waved my hand airily. “She just can’t commit to one type of world-changing, and she gets very mundane with her down time. She, like, throws bake-outs and hoe-downs and fishing contests and beach parties and all the odd stuff.”

“Ah, the pleasures of the simple-minded,” she sniffed, and I didn’t take offense. My main vocal thoughtstream had a big Stupid Stat attached to it most of the time, after all. “Still, I would not have come here without good reason.”

“Please. All your reasons are very bad, and we both know it.”

“Well, someone who understands such things.” She lifted a toast, and I returned it. “Did you know your Emperor has taken Gloomheart?”

“Really?” I ignored some of the convulsions in Markspace as Anatolia cursed and went down the possibility trees, and the Strategos cheered and got to throw away zillions of possible scenarios. I eyed the clouds as I considered the fact. “Did he turn everyone undead, or just chase you off?”

He had to have done it from his Palace. La la la... he had vented the kinetics of the Bergenholm sub-dimensionally, probably caused a minor groundquake in Gloom, and then made his move after returning to an inertial state.

Well, the drow had been annoying the Emperor for a long time from their little Underweb. Him not returning the favor with all kinds of interest definitely wasn’t like His Undead Majesty, after all.