Battle of Phora

When a tyranid splinter fleet from Leviathan came to the world of Phora I, it was a vicious and brutal fight. For months, battles raged in orbit and on the surface of the world, and the outcome hung in the balance. The scales began to tip against the Imperium as the war dragged on, and eventually they were forced into full retreat, with extermination surely to follow. Ultimately, however, the tyranids would not conquer the world, nor the Imperium pull some last minute miracle.

 

Instead, victory would go to the Necrons.

 

Completely unknown to the inhabitants of Phora, they had made their homes upon a necron tomb world. The battles raging above triggered the awakening protocols, and after spending a couple of months mustering their forces, the necrons sallied forth. The tyranids were the first to feel the force of the newly reawakened dynasty. As ever, the Necrons proved almost perfectly suited to do battle with the Great Devourer; their Gauss Flayers prevented the tyranids from reclaiming the biomass of their own dead, and resurrection protocols meant the Necrons would win the war of attrition. Soon enough, the tyranid footholds on Phora had been exterminated, leaving lifeless desert behind. The bioships remaining in orbit, emaciated from the effort of trying to reinforce their beachhead, fared no better once the Necrons reactivated their warfleet.

 

One threat destroyed, the Overlord turned his attention to the other. He was not inclined to totally exterminate the population, but tolerating an industrial civilization literally on his front lawn, posing a potential military threat, was simply out of the question. The ragged remnants of the PDF and Guard garrisons were smashed in swift and decisive battles, and the Necrons turned their attention to destroying any technology that could potentially be turned to war. Tens of thousands of humans were abducted over the course of this de-industrialization, for interrogation and experimentation.

 

Then the relief fleet arrived.

 

A tense standoff ensued. The Overlord had a good idea of the size and power of the Imperium from interrogation of captured humans, and had little desire to get in a fight with them. Especially not with an Imperial fleet potentially armed with cyclonic torpedoes already in the system. The Imperial commanders, for their part, had nothing like the forces needed to fight a tomb world, and the relief fleet did not in fact have cyclonic torpedoes. More Imperial reinforcements arrived, and more Necron warships were activated.

 

Thanks to some quick thinking, and with Nemesor Zandrekh acting as a go-between (much to the bemusement of the local Overlord), a deal was hashed out. The population of the world would be evacuated and resettled, and the Imperium would recognize Phora as a necron holding.

 

The deal done, the Imperium evacuated around a billion survivors from Phora. Just a year earlier there had been five billion inhabitants. It was not quite a victory, but also not quite a defeat.