Caitlen station 12.025M42

Excerpt from the Caitlen Station War Record, Aleph Sector Archive

Recorded: 12.025.M42

In the final month of 025.M42, violence continued unabated across the vast, labyrinthine corridors, docks, and sub-structures of Caitlen Station. The shattered megastructure, already fractured by years of neglect and infestation, had become a shifting mosaic of short-lived victories and brutal reversals, where no faction could hold territory for long.

Skirmishes in the Inner Decks

Imperial Astartes strike elements—operating without heavy support and cut off from sustained reinforcement—launched a successful purge against a Death Guard patrol in the station’s inner maintenance levels. The engagement was swift and brutal, with the Plague Marines annihilated in close-quarters combat and their corrupted war-gear destroyed.

For a brief time, the Space Marines secured a series of strategic junctions and access corridors, marking one of the few clear Imperial victories within the station’s interior zones. The victory, however, proved fleeting.

Within days, a roving Ork warband surged through the same sector. Overwhelming the depleted Astartes force through sheer numbers and ferocity, the greenskins drove the Space Marines from their newly claimed objectives. The Orks seized the area in a storm of violence, looting equipment, fortifying scrap barricades, and transforming the corridors into crude strongpoints.

The Federacy Consolidates

Elsewhere on Caitlen Station, the Tau–Federal Alliance adopted a markedly different posture. Rather than committing to direct confrontation, Federacy forces—primarily Votann Hearthkyn elements—conducted organised training exercises within their secured zones. These drills focused on void-combat manoeuvres, corridor clearing, and rapid redeployment tactics, suggesting long-term strategic intent rather than short-term opportunism.

Imperial intelligence interpreted this as a sign that the Federacy was preparing for sustained operations on the station, rather than mere raiding or looting.

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By the end of 12.025.M42, Caitlen Station remained a fragmented and contested battlefield. Control shifted constantly between factions, with victories measured in corridors and junction nodes rather than sectors or decks. No single power dominated the installation, and every gain was temporary.

The station had become not a prize to be seized—but a permanent warzone, where conflict itself was the only constant.

Tyranids breach Imperial defences

Excerpt from the Chronicles of the Rifts of Hecate, Segmentum Tempestus Archives

Late 025.M42

In the closing months of 025.M42, the Tyranid menace surged once more in intensity, marking a new and dangerous phase in the war for the Hadron Expanse. Confirmed elements of Hive Fleet Poseidon were detected within the Hecate Gap itself, signalling that the extragalactic invasion had breached what many Imperial strategists had believed to be a natural strategic barrier.

The Fall of the Plague Gambit on Haven

On Haven, the Death Guard had established a presence with a singular purpose: to unleash warp-tainted plagues in the hope of both halting the Tyranid advance and disrupting Imperial and Ork operations in the region. True to the nature of the XIV Legion and their patron god, the campaign was as much ritualistic as strategic, driven by Nurgle’s creed as much as by military logic. Yet the gambit failed.

Hive Fleet Poseidon proved utterly resistant to the latest pathogen unleashed by the Plague Marines. The Tyranids adapted with terrifying speed, their bioforms showing no measurable degradation. Despite a stubborn and disciplined defence, the Death Guard were eventually overwhelmed and forced into withdrawal. In their wake, the Tyranids established a new infestation zone on Haven, marking the world as another node in the ever-expanding Tyranid biosphere.

The Breaking Point at Helos Majoris

At Helos Majoris, the situation grew even more dire. For months, General Maximus had defied strategic logic and repeated counsel, holding the world through sheer will, attrition warfare, and the sacrifice of Imperial manpower. Again and again, his forces had repelled Tyranid landings, preserving the planet as the central operational hub of the Rifts of Hecate Crusade. But the cost was becoming unsustainable.

By the final days of 025.M42, the pressure from Hive Fleet Poseidon had become relentless. Imperial formations were exhausted, depleted, and stretched thin across multiple defensive zones. In a rare and desperate escalation, the Adeptus Custodes were deployed to Helos Majoris—an unmistakable sign of the gravity of the situation.

The golden warriors fought with legendary ferocity, cutting down vast numbers of bioforms and holding key landing zones far longer than any conventional force could have managed. Yet even their intervention proved insufficient.

For the first time, Hive Fleet Poseidon successfully established a permanent foothold on Helos Majoris.

This moment marked a strategic turning point. The Tyranids were no longer merely assaulting the world—they were rooting into it. The primary base of operations for Maximus’s entire Rifts of Hecate campaign now stood under direct existential threat.

Strategic Implications

By the end of 025.M42, the situation was clear:

• The Hecate Gap was no longer secure.

• The Tyranids were immune to Chaos plagues and increasingly resistant to all forms of conventional containment.

• Helos Majoris, once the anchor of Imperial resistance in the Rifts, had become a frontline world.

• General Maximus’s refusal to withdraw had transformed a strategic stronghold into a potential Tyranid beachhead.

What had once been a campaign of containment had become a fight for survival.

The Rifts of Hecate were no longer a buffer zone.

They were becoming a Tyranid domain.