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The '''Ikaros Contingency''' was a secret agreement between the [[Emperor of Mankind]] and the [[First Legion|First Astartes Legion]] devised by the Emperor to counter a potential uprising by the [[Mechanicum]] during the [[Great Crusade]].{{Fn|1}}

Devised ==Overview==The [[Mechanicum]] sat at the heart of the Emperor’s new [[Imperium]]. It was the beating heart of its military and industrial base, supplying the industrial might by which the armies of the [[Great Crusade]] were forged and maintained, its far flung [[Forge World|Forge Worlds]] were the cogs around which the campaign to liberate the galaxy turned. Without the [[Tech-Priests]] of [[Mars]] there could have been no Great Crusade, for the Mechanicum had become an essential part of the Emperor 's plans. It was also the greatest threat to them in the years before [[Horus]] turned to treachery, for the Mechanicum stood apart from the careful order the Emperor had established. Of all the Imperium's institutions, they still worshipped a god openly, worked to their own rituals and creed that had little to do with the [[Imperial Truth]]. Worse, should they ever rise up against the Emperor, they could turn to their own formidable armies to prosecute a war against Him and turn the very technology of the Great Crusade against His servants. Such a war would be the end of the Imperium.{{Fn|1}} To counter such a potential uprising by threat, the Emperor had established a number of contingency plans, several of which remain shrouded in mystery to this day. Of those known to history, the '''Ikaros Contingency''' is perhaps the most dire. A directive issued only to [[MechanicumLion El'Jonson]]and the warriors of the First Legion, the Ikaros Contingency had consisted of two distinct clauses. The first was a an Imperial warrant empowering the Dark Angels to keep in their possession a [[Dark Angels Armoury|number of forbidden and sinister relics ]] from the period of history known as [[Dark Age of TechnologyStrife|Old Night]], technology that had long been forbidden to any other institution as dangerous and unstable. It was, however, a technology that shared few similarities with that of Mars and as such as was resistant to the wiles of the [[Excindio]]techno-magi and anethematic to their machines of war. The second clause gave , had it become common knowledge, would have been cause enough to start the war the Dark Angels Emperor sought to avoid, for it empowered Lion El'Jonson and its his warriors permission to conduct a preemptive strike against pre-emptive combat operations to neutralise elements of the Mechanicum elements that deemed to have been deemed "become 'contrary to the needs of the Imperium"'. This second final clause is known to have been enacted invoked eight times in the historyof the Imperium, though the details of most of them are not known. However one instance these incidents remain sealed within the vaults of the contingency being enacted was against Dark Angels, with the corrupted [[Automata]] employed by encounter at the [[Dark Mechanicum|Traitor Mechanicum]] [[Forge World]] of [[Galatia]] during the [[Thramas Crusade]] being the only openly acknowledged occurrence at this time. It would not be the last, for the Lion would not stay his hand now that open war had consumed the Imperium, and would bring censure to many more Forge Worlds he deemed 'contrary to the needs of the Imperium' before the end of the [[Horus Heresy]].{{Fn|1}}