It took a while before the people of Nexus Earth voted to allow for the people from the stars to become their neighbors. The six-year-long debate was such that it became equivalent to primetime entertainment that involved just about everyone that was not Sev and his inner circle. Celebrities, administrators, and even the odd Ixian or Gesserit researcher weighed in on the pros and cons of welcoming refugees from other worlds, or simply giving them their own world to colonize and leave them to their own devices.
The humans not of Earth were too simir, just as they were too different. Unlike the Eldar who could immediately be told apart without issue, the survivors of Vhalix were just as human as the locals. As were the World Eater refugees, or the survivors from dozens of systems liberated from Commoragh.
They were human, but they did not, could not, devote themselves to Nexus Laws. Their cultural differences marked them as potentially dangerous. Everyone on Nexus Earth had already seen the cybernetic superstition of the Imperium’s Mechanicum with its baffling technophobia, or the imperialistic ambitions that led to the creation of mutated Space Marine Legionnaires.
There were also less public whispers spread about the interviews of the people from Vhalix, or from the Interex, or the Gordian League, or the Diasporex. Those survivors might not share the Imperium’s belligerent culture, but they had their own oddities and beliefs that made the average citizen wary. These people were not the domesticated gangers or humbled ‘nobles’ of the wastend; they came from established civilizations, practiced traditions and beliefs that had been around for who knows how long.
Could they be assimited to uphold Nexus Laws? Should their culture be welcomed just as they are? What if they were given a conditional welcome? Would allowing isoted communities be more acceptable, or more dangerous? What about the human-alien hybrids?
The answers to those questions and more besides filled the digital message boards and cafes, and became the topic of many live programs and opinion pieces. A daring and innovative (or perhaps reckless) interviewer even managed to get the Deathcw tribes and mirelurk hives to weigh in on the matter, though unfortunately her journalistic approach was immediately forbidden when she and her crew snuck into the Doomgeese reserve and their bloody fate was broadcast live across the Nexus.
Ultimately, the vote tilted in the necessary three-quarters majority in favor for allowing conditional acceptance, and the first refugees were settled on Nexus Earth. Survivors from Commorragh and Vhalix were spread across the various residential zones in small groups, enough that they might find some comfort with their kin, but not so packed that they might form encves and resist integration.
The Nexus also welcomed a few humans from the World Eaters’ fleet, barely five thousand deck crew who chose to abandon life in a ship or settling untamed worlds, in favor of risking a new life under a completely foreign rule.
And so over the past year, Viktor Eshik, formerly a section overseer on the battle barge Iaculum, was learning to acclimatize to the new freedoms and limitations under Nexus Laws.
The first four months were solely spent on discarding the habits of reverence to martial life. Conscription and considerations for war was absent, as the Nexus was not waging war across the stars. The people of the Nexus lived peaceful, absolutely idyllic lives in comparison to many societies in the Imperium. There was none of the production quotas as wartime goods, along with products deemed necessities, were all produced by Sev’s unseen factories. One could purchase a civilian-grade spistol or autogun from civilian manufacturers for recreational shooting, but the infamous white sers and Tiberium shard weapons could only be accessed by the literally blessed soldiery of Sev.
Power armor from the world’s apocalyptic past were sold as memorabilia, fully operable if one earned the certification for it. Viktor had seen his neighbor take his old Encve suit out for walks; from what he learned about them, they were far from a match against Astartes war pte despite being advanced for their era.
The Pre-Sev era, as the locals called it.
There were many oddities in Nexus Earth that felt like warped mirrors of Terra’s past, like the super mutants that were parodies of the mythical Thunder Warriors or Legiones Astartes, functioning ser and psma technologies amidst a world of rusted nuts and warped copper wire, even their psykers felt almost comical when compared to the tales of Warp horrors Viktor was more familiar with.
Though all of that only masked the horrors that used to run rampant on Nexus Earth. Viktor spent a lot of time reading from the public archives of the history of the highly mutative FEV virus which created the super mutants and ghouls. The ramshackle, almost primitive weapons were a testament to just how robust the weapon systems were in a Pre-Sev world compared to some of the Mechanicum’s more high-maintenance systems that required heavy maintenance and careful calibration. And the…supernatural incidents recorded in the archives revealed a terrifying fact that there were dimensions more terrifying than the Immaterium.
‘Were’ being the operative word, as with everything else in the Pre-Sev world, those threats were dismantled or tamed by Sev and his Nexus.
Viktor had the privilege to spend some downtime in one of the Jovian Shipyards in the Sol System. He caroused with the menials of Jupiter’s shipyard colonies and heard their folk tales of how the Emperor Himself had led the liberation of the world from xenos subjugation, casting off the yoke of the alien with fire and blinding psychic fury.
From a retired iterator Viktor learned more grand tales of the Emperor during the Unification Wars, of how he led His legions against cybernetic warlords and psyker witch-kings to unify Terra. Those were tales of harsh battles, of cunning tactics and diplomacy, of close-calls that were averted due to the resilience of His Thunder Warriors, Custodians and Astartes. Viktor was awed by those tales, as it showed the wisdom and might of the Emperor and humanity itself, under his rule.
There were few such tales in the Nexus.
Even in the most candid records, there was no great struggle. Sev appeared one day in the war-bsted, irradiated world, and from there he created the Nexus. It grew, and any threats opposing its growth were crushed decisively, no matter how well established those threats might be. There were no heroic conflicts to push back the darkness, no moments of doubt or compromise.
Indeed, if Viktor read the records in a certain way, to many warlords and realms back then, Sev was the great malevolent force, the bringer of darkness. There was little in the way of proper war campaigns as Viktor knew it, only phases of expansions that saw tides of nigh-invincible machines surge out to enforce Sev’s peace through power. Resistance was rare enough to be noteworthy, and casualties of the Nexus’ human soldiers were rarer still.
The fate of the defeated were the same: annihition if they were considered truly incompatible with the Nexus’ way of life, or methodical and complete integration to Nexus Laws.
Some states - like the California Republic, or the Fire Kingdom of Hawai’i - learned quickly to ally themselves to the Nexus, but they often were degraded into vassals, and then were fully annexed, just as quickly.
The records of Nexus Earth’s unification was far more inevitable and effortless than the great Unification War the Emperor faced, but at the same time Viktor couldn’t help but feel that there was a price to Sev’s eldritch divinity, along with the tides of machines he spawned.
Yes, the Nexus’ full conquest of its world was recent enough that most of its humans still remembered a time before they were introduced to peace through power. Almost two decades since then, and many could easily still recall living in ramshackle shanty towns or decrepit ruins atop an irradiated wastend. There were reserves where the st poputions of mutated wildlife were kept, if one wished to glimpse of the minor horrors of the past.
So it was no wonder that most of Sev’s citizens would embrace the gentle life that he offered, one where heavy work was absent, and the st vestiges of warrior cultures were fulfilled by fighting for the right to serve as an invincible Sardaukar-armored soldier. Sev’s robots took care of the hard and dirty work.
While Viktor could appreciate the appeal of such peace, he also felt that whether by design or not, Sev had made his people…docile. Theoretically, everyone in the Nexus had the right to voice any compints, but there was really little reason to do so. Pervasive Sentinel patrols, along with the use of Artificial (not Abominable) Intelligences within the administration programmed to be wholly loyal to Sev, all but eradicated the very human vice of corruption, and nipped other human impulses like rivalry before it could be a problem.
It took a while for Viktor to fully realize that all this efficient, harmonious peace removed the motivator of greed and envy to fuel the human virtue of ambition.
Until now, contentment made the Nexus happy to be insur, rather than seek a pce in the stars. Even now with a dozen systems under his control, Sev did not share the same dream as the Emperor of elevating greater humanity.
But then again, it could be argued that that mindset was due to how humanity on Nexus Earth had so completely forgotten their ties to the greater gaxy that for the longest time they thought they were were the sole popution of humans, and the horrors of the Age of Strife did not register in their history in any form.
Most still felt little ties to greater humanity, and the Nexus was self-sufficient enough that nobody bothered reaching out to their distant cousins beyond their world.
It was a sobering conclusion for Viktor, who felt torn over it. He was grateful for being given a chance to inhabit paradise, but at the same time, the former Imperial, the undomesticated human in Viktor, felt it a great shame that Sev did not think about spreading the Nexus’ bounties beyond its borders.
Not that he’d ever give voice to that tter thought; Sev might welcome dissenting opinions sent through feedback forms or the virtual forums, but his faithful, the common Nexus citizen did not. The Nexus did not tolerate lynchings, but the former overseer didn’t doubt that his neighbors would gdly jump at the chance to make life difficult for him if he gave them a reason to put the Imperial outworlder in his pce.
So for a year now, Viktor Eshik simply kept his head down, his thoughts to himself, and did his best to integrate himself into the Nexus Unity. He learned to repce Gothic Imperium (or ‘bastardized Latin’ according to the Nexus schors) terminologies for the more casual Nexus English ones. He slowly discarded the Imperium-inherited fear of the intelligent machine, and educated himself in empirical arcana. He took a job as assistant director to a small film studio, where he could apply some of his past expertise as an overseer, and picked up photography as a hobby.
For a little over a year, Viktor Eshik, former section overseer of the World Eaters Legion, learned to rex as an unbothered civilian. He began to appreciate a slower life that did not involve hollering at menials or dreading boarding arms. He savored the spectrum of taste in food and beverages that went far beyond recycled water and starch rations. He lived an unimportant, yet still cared for, individual surrounded by metanaturally alloyed or warded products, under the watchful optics of lethally intelligent robots.
Another month passed, and Viktor received a letter from an old friend. A couple of months ter, he successfully applied for one of the first civilian off-world passes. He took the teleporter up to the great space station Tupile, by now mostly inured to the fshing lights and nauseous disorientation left by the advanced technology. He had only a few minutes to gawk at the pristine, servitorless and incenseless environment, before he took another teleporter that sent him to the War Hound system (whose name was still not officially decided).
A short shuttle trip ter, Viktor found himself on Rursus, the young sprawling capital city of War Hound I, and home to a significant portion of the human crew from the XIIth Legion’s fleet. Above him, the overseer turned assistant director could pick out the small shapes that were the individual ships undergoing repairs and upgrades. Supposedly once those were done, those destroyers and battleships and cruisers would require less than half its usual crew to run it, hence the establishment of Rursus and other settlements on this world.
As he began wandering about to get his bearings, Viktor felt an uneasy wave of nostalgia grow in him. From the armsmen uniforms that the local enforcers wore, to the blocky architecture of the drab buildings, and the not-quite awe-rooting sight of the odd World Eater Legionnaires passing by. The sights evoked old, if not fond, memories of Imperial life, though the Imperial Aqui and Imperial Lightning Bolt were both noticeably absent in the utilitarian decor.
Sharp neon lights bluntly marked out shops and eateries, a few announcements were spttered onto patches of bare rockrete walls, and there was even some graffiti to be found.
But there were no eagles, no crossed lightning bolts, no sharp spires, no gilded or marbled structures that might hint to the resident’s former loyalties. Then again, the XIIth Legion and its mortal followers were not one to care much for aesthetics in the first pce.
Viktor braved the looks he received as he navigated across the austerely clean streets, and received curt directions once he bit the bullet to ask for aid. It took him an hour of walking before he found the specific terraced house a couple of alleys deep from the main roads. By Nexus standards, it was a residence that bordered on poverty, having no privacy from its neighbors on either side, and barely anything in front to call a driveway, let alone a wn or garden.
By Imperial standards, especially a deckman serving on an Imperial ship, the two-storey building might as well be a mansion. Having neighbors joined on either side of the house was nothing compared to cramped cabins with its thin walls.
Viktor walked up to give the pscrete door with faux wood texturing a few knocks. Seconds ter, it opened, and an old face appeared to greet him.
“Enoch.”
“Viktor,” replied Ensign Enoch Kans with a faint smirk. The wiry man was once Viktor’s liaison, a junior officer that the overseer reported their section’s status to and received orders from. Both men had struck up a friendship during the dismantling of an Ork WAAAGH!!! whose name Viktor barely remembered.
Ensign Enoch had led a team of armsmen against a greenskin boarding party before it could butcher the whole deck, and Section Overseer Viktor had saved the officer from being split into messy halves by an Ork’s oversized cleaver. After that, the ensign would occasionally mispce a crate of rations or two, while the overseer offered budding women in his deck a chance to climb the ship’s social strata.
Both friends marked their reunion with dry smirks before Enoch fully opened the door to invite Viktor in.
“Nexus life’s…generous with you, eh?” the tter asked rhetorically as he ushered the former to a glossy couch.
“You’re not too badly off yourself,” Viktor countered as he dropped into the surprisingly comfortable seat, nodding at Enoch’s looser frame.
“Bme the new food,” Enoch grunted, and then offered something that tasted close to tea. The people here probably didn’t know the etiquette of brewing the leaves properly… Viktor took a polite sip, and then leaned back into the couch with a sigh.
“I received your letter.”
“So I see,” Enoch said with a twitch of his lips. “Gd you came so quickly.”
“Of course I would. After all…” Viktor’s words trailed off as his thoughts suddenly twisted. “After all, I… I, uh…”
Why was he here again? What did Enoch say in his letter again? He could remember going to his mailbox to retrieve the letter, but once he opened it to read the contents…
A migraine began to bloom in the back of Viktor’s head as the recollections of the day he struggled to pick out the details.
It was something urgent, for sure. Something about…?
“Hydra dormiens suscitat, praesidium quadraginta duo.” Enoch’s ft voice made the former overseer stiffen, and the confusion in his head was washed away along with the rest of his thoughts.
The man named Viktor was barely conscious as his body sat ramrod straight and stared forwards. Yet his senses remained, along with his memories.
“Identify,” the enthralled man heard Enoch command, and obliged as he was programmed to.
“Viktor Eshik. XIIth Legion deck crew, formerly. Nexus Unity resident, presently. Sparatoi, always.”
Enoch nodded some satisfaction, producing a data ste and a blocky dictation device. “Good. Begin debriefing on topic: Nexus Unity.”
And Viktor Eshik, former overseer and unwitting sleeper agent, complied with a curt nod. The hypnoconditioning pnted early into his friendship with Ensign Enoch fully smothered his consciousness as he answered every question asked of him. Though his near-mindless state registered the annoyance seeping into his handler’s voice and pose as the questions wore on, the mind-locked man did not have the curiosity or order to process the reason behind the emotion.
Viktor Eshik shook the cobwebs from his head as the shuttle shuddered around him from exiting the atmosphere of War Hound I. His evening with Enoch was satisfying but also boring, as all they did was reminisce. Still, it was nice socializing with an old friend again, especially with the…the…
Viktor shook his head again, realizing that he was better off focusing on the annoying future instead. Why did he have to promise Enoch that he’d invite him over to the Nexus? As if that’s even possible right now.
But a promise was a promise, and Viktor’s pride was greater than his apprehension, so he’d at least try raising the question up with the Nexus’ admin officials. Maybe he could find someone to ask when he got back to Tupile?
