Editing The Tales of the Emperasque: Part Fourteen (section)

==9-118-001-M42==
“JOB WELL DONE,” the Emperor said, staring at the radar map in the command center. The Guard officers clustered around him nodded sycophantically, watching as the last few red Tyranid icons on the map vanished under a tidal wave of Imperial blue. The techpriest at the controls read off his tally counter.<br>
“Eight regiments sortied, eight regiments retrieved at approximately twenty percent casualties, two Armored Fist columns retrieved with thirty percent losses. No Titan losses.”<br>
“It would have been far worse for your absence, my Lord God,” the portly Lord General at the front of the room said, making the sign of the Aquila reverently. “The scourge will still need to be purged from the worlds’ civilian population, of course, but…”<br>
“WITH NO MORE CARNIFEXES APPEARING IN THE SKIES, YEAH, YOUR MEN SHOULD BE MORE THAN CAPABLE OF PURGING ANY LINGERING GENESTEALERS,” the Emperor finished. “ALL RIGHT. IN THE MEANTIME, I THINK I’M GOING TO CHECK OUT THE WEBWAY GATE I FOUND.”<br>
“So it was a Gate, then, my Lord God?” the techpriest asked. “Do you know where it goes?”<br>
“WELL, ALL GATES ARE THEORETICALLY CAPABLE OF CONNECTING TO OTHER GATES, BUT IN REALITY, THEY’RE LIMITED BY THEIR RELATIVE SIZE,” the Emperor said. “I’D BET THAT WAS A SMALL GATE USED FOR DARK ELDAR RAIDS.”<br>
“What will you do with it, my Lord God?” the Lord General asked, staring at the spot on the map where the Gate lay hidden.<br>
“FOR NOW, GO THROUGH IT,” the Emperor said. “I’VE GOT A BIT OF AN IDEA, REGARDING GETTING THOSE ANNOYING DARK ELDAR OFF OUR BACKS FOR A WHILE.”

Asdrubael Vect stared at the two reports in his hands with a mounting rage. In one, a scout team had reported that the Emperor of Humans had possessed a daemon, and was tearing through the Tyranids. In the other, one of his own men had sighted Isha herself, alive and well, on an Exodite world.<br>
Vect didn’t care about Isha, very much. His attitude towards the Gods was more or less the same of that as the rest of the Dark Eldar: loathing mixed with antipathy. What reason did he have to care for a failure? She hadn’t the strength to fight She Who Thirsts like Khaine, and hadn’t the foresight to flee like Cegorach, so what did she matter? It was her alliance with the Exodites that truly bothered him. The Craftworlders, in their arrogance, were of little importance in the longest term; transitory and fleeting. But the Exodites…they were not shrinking in number. Instead, they had managed to thrive in their self-imposed solitudes and barbarity. And now that the Imperium was reported to be fleeing from the Maiden Worlds as fast as they could…<br>
By the same token, though, it was the very same Exodites who barely mattered in the more immediate sense. According to a Harlequin ‘friend,’ the Emperor of Humans had used the Webway to travel to Ulthwé. How, he didn’t know. But if he had managed to travel to a craftworld using the Webway…Commorragh was vulnerable, too.<br>
Not that that was his problem. The Dark Eldar numbered in the tens of trillions now, with technologies more advanced than any left in the entire galaxy, even if not all of the power of the Eldar before the Fall had been preserved. No one Human sorcerer, no matter their power, could threaten him.