Xana Incursion - False War: The news of the attack on the Xana System had inevitably reached the Sons of Horus, whose own vessel had detected the incursion from the Warp of the Imperial forces and bore witness to the apocalyptic response from Xana's defences.Koraddon demanded answers. He was met with profuse apologies for any alarm caused, and assured that the matter would be dealt with promptly and without risk to the Warmaster's delegation, and that there would be no need to alter the planned exchange of gifts and demonstration of the Ordinatus.For Xana II both the demonstration and the impending void battle had become a necessary display of strength before their future allies in ways they had never planned, but no less vital because of this. The Vodian Consistory would not lose face before Horus.So it was that even as the Loyalist and Mechanicum warships and torpedoes hurtled at unimaginable speeds towards each other in the void far beyond, the matter of Xana II's formal alliance with the Traitor cause proceeded with much ceremony and clockwork precision. By prior arrangement the Warmaster's cargo was delivered from orbit, even as Xana II's planetary interceptor batteries fired, cycled and fired again, sending torpedoes speeding into the night on columns of fire.The gift-cargo was landed between the barrage launches, still sealed in consignment to the landing ports of several of Xana II's major forge-fanes: Tephra, Escorial and Setna, no doubt to prevent discord in the Consistory itself by dividing the spoils between the archmagi, to be released by code key transfer as the accord was formally made.Meanwhile, the Sons of Horus warship, Cicatrice Tyrannis, was permitted into close orbit of the moon of Xana-Tisiphone, sheltered from the waves of fire unleashed from the Forge World itself, and Koraddon, with Unvacar Noon at his side, descended with a full company-sized honour guard of Sons of Horus to the surface via wings of fully armed Stormbirds and assault landers; a display of force and perhaps of displeasure that could not be lost on the waiting Mechanicum delegation.Ready to meet Koraddon's party on the edge of the great proving grounds, a vast artificial battlefield outside the half-kilometre high walls of the great prison-forge of Tisiphone-Shaol, was Archmagos-Procurator Gilim Raijan, the prime arbiter of Xana II's ruling Vodian Consistory and his personal covenant of magi, guardian-servitors and lexmechanics.Such records that remain of this meeting are fragmentary and uncorroborated, and suggest a cold and tension-laden encounter between the barely contained arrogance of the Sons of Horus warlord and the chill, precise civility of the archmagos of Xana, with the strange and macabre figure of the Davinite priest acting as intermediary. Of the impending void battle nothing was mentioned, and after the initial diplomacy and greetings were concluded, the nature of the planned demonstration was detailed.What was presented to the Warmaster's emissaries was to be a false war of sorts, but one in which the carnage would be very real. Thousands of armed slaves and Human chattel, some of who abhumans, others forge serfs and Adsecularis, while others were military prisoners taken in raids by the Xanites -- soldiers from the Loyalist cause for the main -- were unleashed onto the kilometres-wide proving grounds.Controlled by remote-detonated suicide-collars and spurred on by auto-injected chemicals where needed, this damned regiment was equipped with a panoply of weapons ranging from small arms up to and including even heavy tanks of Imperial pattern, and they had been given a simple but impossible task -- to survive what was coming.From within the armoured observation cupola of a hulking Mechanicum land crawler, flanked by a pair of Sons of Horus Mastodon carriers forming escort, would the Warmaster's emissaries and the Archmagos Raijan observe the bloody game that was to follow, inviolate behind their void shields but within the thick of the contrived battle.It was to be a thing of sheer destructive spectacle -- a massacre made to order. The vast black vaulted gates of the prison-forge opened and the three Ordinatus Ulator monsters emerged into view, Mithrax, Nepothax and Ashurax, each Ordinatus fully armed and operational, and each with a coterie of Sons of Horus Techmarines on board to observe their operation first hand.With a coded signal which promised instant death if compliance was not given, the first wave of enslaved soldiers attacked, hundreds and then thousands of infantrymen pouring across the broken, shell-pitted ground. In response, the Ordinatus spread out and deployed, advancing, forming an echelon, half-seen clusters of humming automata hovering to guard each huge war engine's flanks should anything close to endanger their mighty charges.Like a vast ground-swarm of insects, the infantry wave surged and began to encircle the rumbling metal beasts, the Ulators' vast and baroque cannon beginning to crackle and glow with building energies of savage force, building until flares of sudden lightning arcs and shimmering surges of distorted air spat from their barrels and coils like angry ghosts.The first of the desperate attackers' weapons fire -- Heavy Stubber rounds and unguided rockets -- had only just began to patter harmlessly from the Ordinatus' all-encompassing protective power fields when at last the Ulators' sonic destructors spoke. There was a brief, blinding flash. A roaring, all-consuming silence that devoured all sound, the surface of the world itself seemed to ripple like a tortured sea, and in that instant a thousand lives were snuffed out.Bodies, torn to red rags by the all-destroying waves of sonic energy, were blasted across the battlefield as if driven by a hurricane, and beneath them three great trenches now gouged the earth to mark the unleashed blasts. Beside these furrows scores of bloodied men staggered on broken limbs, their senses devoured and minds shattered. Those fortunate to be far enough away saw the fate of their comrades and fled if they were able, or simply collapsed in shock.The Ordinatus, implacable, rolled on, the observer column behind them in their wake, towards the ultimate goal of a shattered cityscape some nine kilometres distant; a city that had been built and rebuilt many times in the past, only to be destroyed in the testing of Xana II's guns. The signal went out and the second wave was ordered in, this time a mixed force of armoured infantry and supporting armour.The attack was even more desperate, the storm that erupted across the Ordinatus' shields more violent, but the outcome was the same: an army wiped out as by the hand of an annihilating god.The signal was issued again, and again and the bloody charade of war continued, now armoured forces alone, now jump troops, now battle-servitors, now a column of super-heavy tanks to test the mighty Ulators' defences to the limit. The killing went on for solar hours.