Traveling from orbit over Amnes Minoris to Arctoros 5 took two weeks, a journey through the dreaded Warp being, as ever, unpredictable; ours was shorter than anticipated, which was a good thing in trying to reach the world before news of Amnes Minoris could, though there was still no guarantee of that. Once there, highlevel scans of the surface went underway; the Heretek prisoner from the Space Wolves company had described our target as a ‘fortress’ and I had little intention of treating it as anything short of that. Unfortunately, surface scans revealed little. We did get a good idea of where the ‘fortress’ in question was, but only by revealing little else across the barren tundra of the planet’s surface save for an anomalous ‘warp storm’ not unlike that which the Maletek Stalker appeared to emanate from above. I prayed to Blessed Terra and the Holy Throne that the Phaenonites had not conjured a second such depravity. With no visual of the fortress itself, it would have been unwise and likely wasteful to begin a blind orbital bombardment, especially when I still wanted to interrogate someone on the inside to ensure we cut off the head of this Phaenonite cell once and for all.
What we could discern was that the tactical layout of the fortress was like that of Avrodam Prareus’s station on Canicus. Several ‘forward detachments’ dotted the surrounding area around the warp storm where we suspected our target laid. Unlike with the Canicus operation, I did not feel we had the time to waste with a covert operation in injecting Bliss amidst their ranks—if that was even possible to begin with given what may have been a tighter-security planet. No, I felt the best option available to us was to hit the forward detachments as hard and as fast as possible in simultaneity to limit the response time and awareness of the main fortress. Yet again, while an orbital strike would have been both unnecessarily hard and overwhelmingly fast, it was far from subtle, and would have alerted the main fortress of our presence and attack all the same.
No, putting boots on the ground seemed to be a tactical inevitability, unfortunately.
Thankfully, I had surrounded myself with a number of very capable individuals for such a job. With the goal being to eliminate the forward detachments quietly, Bliss volunteered to take one on her own, believing in her abilities to infiltrate and dismantle their operational effectiveness regardless of the number of bodies they may have featured. I did not disagree, and assented with her request to take Jack Harr as her spotter. Better to keep the two together than longing for each other when apart.
Luther also believed he and his Harakoni could get the drop on a trio of forward detachments, and Gradshi likewise felt he and a small contingent of psykers could make short work of a handful more. I was not about to get in the way of the way they did things; the flexibility of their autonomy was always the point of why I had appointed them to their roles. Not unsurprisingly, Galen volunteered himself and the Eximus Convictor to flatten the front door of the main fortress when the forward detachments had fallen, and I agreed to follow suit from the opposite side of his approach, deploying with Silas, Lucene, her Sisters, Varnus, a few of his fellow techpriests, and my own Crusader duo. Our plan was to converge upon and pincer the main fortress from all sides all at once.
Of course, things rarely go according to plan.
Especially where the Warp was concerned.
***
The forward detachments fell with relative ease, though with some variance, and even having said the former, they were either well prepared enough or otherwise knew we were coming to put up notable resistance. It did not matter. There is little that they could have wielded against my front of combined units, or the overwhelming psykana levied by Gradshi’s, or the shock and awe offered by Luther’s Harakoni. Likewise, an undercover Callidus Assassin would have made short work of most forms of opposition in the galaxy, and Bliss continued to claim she was better than most of her ilk; she had not given me reason to disagree yet.
Where things went awry was in the siege of the main ‘fortress’ to follow. As our ground forces converged upon the ‘fortress,’ each reported of something different. My detachment saw an abandoned and repurposed Schola, perhaps formerly of the Progenium, but monolithic and unmistakable all the same, the twin-headed eagle of the Aquila boldly protruding from the structure’s front. It would have taken us days to explore and fully clear out such a structure. As to be expected, a number of artillery and anti-air hardpoints were embedded throughout the structure’s exterior.
However, this Schola was not viewed by all. Gradshi’s detachment did see a Schola, but it was not the one mine witnessed; his was identifiably of the Scholastica Psykana. Most importantly, the weapon hardpoints he observed differed from ours. Luther and the Harakoni, meanwhile, viewed perhaps the purest structure of all, a towering spire straight from Harakon itself, if thrust into the snowy tundra of Arctoros 5. Yet again, the weapon emplacements differed still. Bliss did not tell me what she saw, nor did Galen, but they did confirm differing arrangements of the enemy’s arsenal. I had to assume we were all shown places of our pasts, if vaguely nondescript and haphazardly chosen by the vile mind-shifting of the Warp.
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Had our choice to split to multiple fronts damned us? Could we risk requesting for air support? I was sure Mirena would have obliged if we asked, but what opposition would she and her squadrons face? Would it be ours or hers, and if ours, would it change as she swung from front to front?
Where concerned the Warp, logic did defy. One could question the ‘what ifs’ of such a siege indefinitely, until such a time as their defensive cover weathered away and the obscured lascannon encampment reduced them to jelly. What mattered was making a choice, quickly, and sticking to it. My choice, then, was to order Gradshi’s and Luther’s units to reconvene as soon as they could, and for Galen to join them, whilst requesting Bliss and Harr to move to my front—that she could operate beyond the view of the majority of our allies. Rather than nearly a dozen fronts from the execution of the forward detachments, I wanted to wrestle with the Warp’s games and consolidate down to two.
In addition to Bliss and Harr, I also requested air support for my front and my front alone—I made clear to our logistical and aerial insertion teams that they were not to strafe our target or operate on longer bombing runs. If Gradshi or Luther requested air support, then that support would aid them and only them. In any case, as Mirena—still piloting the Bird, for transport purposes—neared, my unit sprang from cover to target the anti-air installations we could see with our own armor-penetrating munitions. Lasguns would not suffice—much to Silas’s dismay, but he knew it as well as I—so we turned to Bolters, Arc Weapons, and Rocket-Propelled Krak Grenades (courtesy of Silas) for the task. While we did risk exposure to the anti-personnel encampments installed on the ‘Schola’ we were sieging, our attack was carried out in near-perfect unison with the arrival of the Hellstrike Missiles from the Bird which devastated that which we had not targeted ourselves.
Mirena landed shortly thereafter, with Silas, the techpriests, and the Sisters securing the area around her transport. Lucene, Varnus, and my Crusaders accompanied me to the lowering bay doors of the Bird, where we helped Zha to the ground. She and I agreed to spare her the initial fighting and subterfuge, but I very much wanted her presence in the halls of the fortress itself, that she might deduce our foes’ tactics and plans, as well as figure out what in Terra’s name we were up against to begin with.
“Mr. Blackgar, from listening to voxchatter, it sounds as though the target differs in composition and in form from front to front?” she asked to clarify as she disembarked from the Bird, one hand in mine.
“That’s correct. More on that in a second—Mirena!” I shouted, my favorite pilot exiting from her roost at the helm of the Bird. Her eyebrows raised. “If you’ve wanted to serve at my side, now’s your chance. This is an all-hands operation, and I can keep a better eye on you on the ground than in a Warpstorm,” I explained to her. While not responding in words, the smile that spread across her lips said enough, and she jumped toward her combat gear. “The same applies to you, Castecael,” I added, turning to Mirena’s partner, who was until then standing at the top of the bay doors. “We could use a field medicae, if you’re willing.”
“What’s the alternative? Sit here and eat up resources in the form of others guarding me?” Castecael frowned. “Pass on that, I’m in. I assume you haven’t been giving me combat drills for nothing, Cal,” she agreed, pulling a laspistol from a holster near the doors of the Bird. “I’ll try to keep out of your way.”
“I don’t imagine you could get in our way in the first place. Thank you, Castecael,” I smiled to her as Mirena ran up, wrapping an arm around her girlfriend’s waist.
“So, what, we’re leaving the Bird here?” Mirena asked, already suited up in her bodyglove and ready to roll with a laspistol of her own.
“If the enemy reaches our flank to destroy the Bird, we’ve got bigger things to worry about than our ride home,” I answered, and as I did so, I spied Bliss and Harr rounded a bend behind us, joining our unit. “Come on, time is of the essence today.” I then turned back to Zha as Mirena and Castecael crept off the Bird, abandoning it. “Ms. Trantos, about the target—”
“Yes. You see a Schola, as do I. The Harakoni saw something of Harakon, and that Knight of yours saw something else altogether. I have confirmed with their units. I have also confirmed that upon their mingling, they now all see a Schola, though it does differ from the one before us now,” Zha explained.
“It changed in front of Galen’s and the Harakoni’s eyes?” I clarified, astonished, while gesturing to all the rest around us to form up on my position. We were going in, regardless of what it was we were going in to.
“Yes. I have a theory.”
“Please.”
“Whatever this structure is, it maps its visage to that of the most potent psyker present. On our front, I assume that is you, and we see your Schola. On the other front, the whole lot of Gradshi’s psykers would have visited a similar destination. When Galen and the Harakoni joined Gradshi’s psykers, their psychic presence overruled the prior visual mapping,” Zha suggested.
“But it hasn’t just been visual,” I objected. “Weapon hardpoints have differed.”
“Yes, I haven’t worked that one out yet. As I said, just a theory, but one I am 81% confident in. I see…119 possibilities as to why the hardpoints may differ. I will be more certain once inside,” she suggested.
“I concur with your savant-Inquisitor’s assertions so far,” Varnus chimed in. “That there are tactical irregularities is—while bothersome—not an underpinning of the nature of what we face. I further postulate that there may be multiple structures present and the Warp is, by some as-yet-undetermined mechanism, choosing with which to present against us.”
“What’s the likelihood of that choice having consequences on the interior? Am I sending our second front into a building that is not the one we are about to waltz into?” I asked them both.
“I give it 50/50,” Varnus replied, which was a strikingly—and would have been amusingly, were it not for the horror presented by the odds—mundane answer.
“I could flip a Throne, if we want,” Mirena piped up from behind our group.
“The tossing of coin is unlikely to have tangible repercussions on our tactical scenario,” Varnus noted, which earned an eyeroll from my pilot and a grin from me.