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====Treachery at Port Maw====
The artificial planetoid of port maw was normally home to huge swarms of vessels - a score of battleships, dozens of squadrons of cruisers, countless hundreds of escort craft, and thousands of servitor-drone tenders, provision ships, troop transports and orbital lighters. These would soon be joined by reinforcing fleets from the rest of the commonwealth, from warships of the distant [[Agathean Domain]], pirate-killers from the [[Cerada Nebula]], and three huge [[Ark Mechanicus|War Arks]] from [[Forgeworld]] [[Cyclothrate]]. In addition to this, a great wave of refugee ships, from mercantile ships fleeing systems under threat, to ragged survivors of the battles in the [[Cyclops Cluster]], and even a handful of survivors from the void battles at [[Istvaan V]], though the Astartes vessels would not remain long. Many such ships were barely operational, while others had to be scuttled or set to drift lest their perilous state of disrepair pose a threat. Such numbers of vessels would be impossible for the normal human mind to bear, so coordination of the assembling armada was channeled through Port Maw's [[Mechanicum]] Astra Cantrol Panopticon - a powerful broadcast tower ten kilometers high on Port Maw's southern pole. [[Cogitator]]s would calculate ship movement data and feed instructions directly to the helms of the vast number of ships at port to prevent collisions. Anticipating this vulnerability, Port Maw had strengthened the encryption and defenses multiple times throughout the war, each stronger than the last. Deemed impregnable, they could not anticipate the fatal flaw in the system which would be the betrayal of [[Archmagos]]-Astral [[Leit Mercuric]], cyber-Ordinator of Port Maw, who had secretly sworn to Horus, as well as several of her acolytes and officers of the Imperialis Armada, all of whom were corrupted when they had served alongside the [[Word Bearers]] in the past.{{Fn|3d}}
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