Meritech Wars

Without contest, the greatest danger that the Logicians posed to
the Calixis Sector was during the Meritech wars that threatened
to destabilize both Calixis and the bordering Ixaniad Sector
some six centuries ago. The Merates Cluster is a grouping of a
dozen barely habitable worlds caught in the empty void of space
between the two Imperial sectors, claimed fully by neither and
largely considered more trouble than it is worth. The cluster was
dominated by the scavenging Meritech clans, void-born families
who maintained ramshackle caravan fleets that plied the space
between the sectors, mining, trading, salvaging, and fighting off
attacks by corsairs and marauding Ork vessels as best as they
were able. Over the years the clans grew stronger and began to
monopolize much of the border trade between the two sectors,
and the size and sophistication of their fleets grew to be a serious
concern to the local authorities. Unfortunately, other crises and
events pressed and the matter was left to fester.
It finally came to a head when a Battlefleet Calixis patrol
squadron of frigates pursuing suspected pirate activity in the
cluster were ambushed. All but one frigate was destroyed by clan
warships---the Merates Uprising had begun as the clans seceded
from Imperial rule. The Meritech clans quickly took an aggressive
stance and launched scores of raids and strikes deep into both
sectors, causing widespread panic and discord. Their vessels
were small, but their advanced jamming systems and compact
yet powerful weaponry made them more than a match for their
Imperial Navy counterparts. In addition, their boarding parties
were made up of heavily cyber-augmented shock troopers that
smashed through the Imperial opposition with ease.
For a time the whole Calixis Sector reeled with the shock
of the Meritech assault and several worlds threatened to fall
into civil war as rumors of the rebellion spread. While the
powers of Ixaniad bickered and withdrew to defend their own
borders, a newly enthroned Sector Governess took charge in
Calixis. With the backing of the Calixian Conclave, she rallied
the defense with merciless intent, purging the Lucid Court
of dissenters and rivals in a single bloody night. Her plan,
rather than fruitlessly chasing a hundred smaller threats, was
to simply and mercilessly strike a blow from which the enemy
could not recover. Regis Sectora Myram Harvala, in what is
remembered to this day as the Proclamation of Scant Mercy,
ordered the Sector Battlefleet to mass into an “armored fist”
and smash directly into the heart of the Merates Cluster. With
the might of her armies pouring in behind, no pity, quarter,
or mercy were given to any found there.
As the seventeen year purge of the cluster went on,
Inquisitorial investigations revealed that the Logicians
had been both the instigators of the crisis and the source
of the clans’ newfound technological might. It appeared
they viewed the war that had cost millions of lives as little
more than a massive series of field tests. The Logicians had
maneuvered their conspirators into highly placed positions
within the logistical effort behind the Imperial response,
seeking to profit from whichever outcome might follow. The
Holy Ordos’ wrath was terrible, and in conjunction with the
Mechanicus faction known as the Divine Light of Sollex,
they systematically hunted down and scourged the Logician
influence from Hive Tarsus on Scintilla, Fenksworld, and
dozens of other commercial operations and military vessels
where it had taken root.
In the latter stages, much of the
Merates Cluster was laid waste as a task force hounded the
remnants of the Meritech clans and their Logician masters deep
into the Ixaniad Sector, causing a major diplomatic incident
and conjuring up the specter of inter-sector conflict---had the
Calixian Conclave not called upon the authority of the seat of
the Holy Ordos of Segmentum Obscurus to intervene. In the
aftermath of the Meritech Wars, it seemed that the power of
the Logicians in the Calixis Sector had been broken, and so it
remained at least for several centuries.
A thorough Inquisitorial investigation was conducted after
Sector Governor Harvala declared the rebellion at an end.
While laudable, the brutal zeal with which the forces of the
Imperium, and the Adeptus Mechanicus in particular, had
conducted the final phases of the counter-attack, had left not a
single witness or prisoner to be questioned or paraded before
the victorious processions along the avenues of Scintilla. Even
those prisoners who had been taken prior to the arrival of the
Mechanicum’s elite Crimson Guard were eventually lost to a
rash of unusual malfunctions and sudden, mysterious deaths.
The Inquisitors exhausted all possible avenues of inquest,
and soon followed whispered rumors of the Logician
Tech-Heresy to the very doorstep of the Lathe System
itself. However, rather than cooperate with the forces of the
Governor, Fabricator Davos Phar responded with a brittle
show of icy indifference, imperiously dismissive of the
envoys’ requests, and accused the Inquisitors, their masters,
and the very Sector Governor himself of blatant disrespect
and towering hubris. Referring to them as “the miserable curs
of a thankless master”, the Fabricator ordered the frontiers
of the Lathe System and all other Adeptus Mechanicus
holdings in the Calixis Sector closed, and all the force at
the Fabricator’s disposal was bent to keep outsiders from
penetrating the sovereign territory of the Omnissiah. The
ancient Iron Wall of Silence was re-instituted, and stood again
unbroken for over five hundred years with brief exceptions,
until the Malygrisian Tech-Heresy erupted across the Calixis
Sector, forcing the Adeptus Mechanicus once again into the
affairs of the Sector at large.