Pyrrha slipped between security cordons with the ease of long practice. She’d been caught out, named a witch, and hunted across so many Imperial worlds… that the habits of how to avoid them were ingrained. That she hadn’t used them in years hardly mattered once she got going again.
Their failure was simple: Imperials were overly reliant on both servo skulls and metals which responded to her soul for all their advanced technology. While there were some metals and alloys that couldn’t be affected by her Semblance, most equipment had at least some of those that did and a running current.
Disrupting cameras and frying servo skulls was simple compared to trying to sabotage forming plasma containment fields.
It was once she was out of the Spires that the real choice was upon her: from the moment she’d left Fenksworld, Pyrrha had carried a number of “just in case” contingencies. “I knew retaliation would come, the Imperium can’t stop itself from trying to ruin any good thing that happens.”
It was a matter of balance. In every sector, every subsector, each planet, there was a careful and delicate balance of power between all the Adepts. In some places, that balance was a roiling, boiling sea of plots and infighting, in others it had long since ossified when it went unchanged for millennia. “For good or ill. I’ve seen Shrine Worlds where ironclad tradition kept PDF that had never fired a shot in anger crisp and ready for total war and Administratum offices where no report was ever lost. Incorruptible Arbites Troopers…” but she’d also seen plenty of the other side of that coin.
Corrupt nobility, completely disconnected from reality and the needs and burdens of their duties and charges. With equally corrupt factors, stewards and managers doing all they could to keep their “betters” uninvolved in day to day matters while both sorts sucked a planet dry. Plundering their own people for their own coffers, struggles and frivolous luxuries while doing the bare minimum they could get away with. All the while framing others and blaming patsies for their own faults and failures. Leaving while most common labourers and menials to survive and rot under a forever growing burden until they rebelled and were slaughtered for it.
In an Imperium with so many cities, so many worlds… the best and worst of people happened all the time, somewhere.
The colonel and commissar which had tried to arrest her were hardly the least competent or stupid she’d ever met. Their competence and training was deliberately limited to render them into instruments of war, that was all. Theirs was not to think or wonder why, and that they’d questioned their orders enough to actually attack her was, in some ways, a show of initiative and good sense in recognising when someone was keeping them in the dark about the truth.
Not that it would help them. The same paranoia that had driven them to attack her would have those who judge them assume the worst for why they did so.
“I should not have let my soul stretch out in the arena.” Pyrrha chided herself. After so long spent in those caverns of steel, buried under billions of hivers, it had felt nice to be under an open sky again. To fight in an arena with no innocents and no worries of hurting any person undeserving of it.
And Orks were monsters, she understood. They were an alien kind of people she could fight with no remorse, as Pyrrha could almost feel their joy in battle, winning or losing. But they were relatable monsters for the girl who once was called Invincible for her own performance in battle arenas. Every Ork wanted to fight. That’s what they wanted more than anything, it brought them joy, gave their lives meaning.
Being in “a right, proppa scrap” was the happiest any Ork could be. Give them a choice between charging a soldier and chasing a fleeing, unarmed family, and they’ll charge the soldier every time.
Orks were pure, that way. Pure violence, because once all the soldiers nearby were dead, being a bad fight wouldn’t stop the innocents from being slaughtered. It was not that Orks were malicious or cruel, it was that the very idea of compassion was alien to them. That had been clear to Pyrrha after less than a week among them, when first she’d met their kind.
Orks and grotz beat and killed each other the same way they attacked and killed other peoples. To them, different aliens were different in if they gave good or bad fights, no more, no less. “Well that, and how “snazzy” the guns and gear they could scavenge off their conquests were.”
Grim were malicious, cruel and they wanted every other living thing to suffer. They were attracted to negative emotions. Orks were attracted to the biggest challenge, the best battle.
It made them simple to deal with, with how much she’d grown since coming to this hateful, war torn galaxy. Several weeks spent doing nothing but lazing around, competing with Orks and then fighting them all? Being just Pyrrha, the Huntress, and not the Lady of Sanctuary? All while bathing in the purity of their purpose, in clean violence without malice or hate, one that was joyful even?
It was just the vacation Pyrrha had needed after dealing with Imperial politics for so long.
“But Duty calls.”
The only real question was how quickly she needed to get back to Fenksworld. How much she trusted her Guard and students to hold on without her. “There are many harsher trials ahead of us.” Any favour she called in now would be one she might need in the future. Getting favours out of Eldar, Craftworld or Corsair, was often harder than slaying deamons.
The hardest part of dealing with a Farseer was getting the damn woman to admit there even was a debt. The Farseer preferred to see everyone around them, especially non-eldar, as tools or animals, not people.
“Or at least the one I’ve met so far has. I hope the others are not like her.”
It was a foolish hope. From what little the few other Eldar acquaintances Pyrrha had met over the years, they’d told her they were all very much like that. For many formerly Craftworld Corsairs, it was why they left.
***
In a kinder, gentler galaxy, Pyrrha would have rushed back with all possible speed to Fenksworld to defend her people. As it was, living in this one, she boarded a Skaelen-Har Hegemony transport to Scintilla. From there, she could switch to one going out to the Navy orbital yards above Nova Castillia.
Angelika Krivanec, being a purveyor of oddities for the nobility and affluent herself, had taken the chartered flight out to the Mandeville Point, saving her at least a week of travel time. She’d browned her hair, put in clear sky blue contacts and put her hair up in a professional, severe bun, complimented by a few loose braids with woven gold thread that was fashionable on Piety last time she’d checked.
“It’s the little things that trip up disguises.” her mentor’s voice reminded her.
As they disembarked, Angelika was deep in conversation about noble fashion with some traveling scion of the failing Hives, and thus perfectly unremarkable. The fate of this world was sad. Ever since the War of Hubris, Sinophia has been in steady decline, which has turned to ruin. Once an independent Hive World, these days the once booming Hive World is starving. “Not literally, thank the Brothers.”
But it is in inevitable decline, the hives emptying out, one by one, and being abandoned. That Pyrrha had dug out the Feral Ork tribes that had started moving into the empty, rusting and rotting edifices may have bought Sinophia more time, but how much more?
The former Hive World had lost its designation and privileges, while losing none of the obligations, being downgraded to the status of Civilised World. No doubt, the request of the Planetary Governor to adjust the tithe was “lost” somewhere in the offices of the Administratum on Scintilla.
“A few more centuries of this abuse, and the once vibrant planet will be all but abandoned. All for daring to challenge the rise of Scintilla in a covert trade war it lost.”
That was the fate of independents in the Imperium. They only survived at the edges, and only long enough till either some massive threat, or the Imperium itself, consumed or subsumed them.
That was why Pyrrha came all the way out here. The Calixis Sector was still young, in Imperial terms. Less than a full millennium old. Old enough to be established, somewhat respected and mostly stable, in this war torn galaxy… while young enough that new players among the Nobility could still rise without the stigma of being newly raised, as they were all fresh faced to the old Nobles of other sectors, let alone Solar.
While Angelica discussed the newest hairstyles on Scintilla and arranged to exchange cultural advice on the capital into a better berth with the traveling noble scion, Pyrrha wondered for the hundredth time if she’d judged it right.
If Huntresses and Huntsmen could carve a place for themselves among the cracks, become indispensable to enough Adeptus quickly enough, to make such blatant attacks against their Sanctuaries unthinkable.
“It starts with the first assault. History and precedent sets the tone of future conflicts.”
So Pyrrha couldn’t drop everything and run home. They had to win and they had to win publicly, obviously, and overwhelmingly. Not just beat their opponents but humiliate them. That’s why her Huntsmen and Huntresses didn’t kill the imperials that came against them, if they didn’t have to. It was far worse to force them to report to their quartermasters disarmed, without armour, and near enough naked.
That? That left an impression. It made rumours, started a reputation.
They needed to leave such an impression with this invasion that every Sanctuary that came after them could point to this event and ask: “Are you ready for that? To be the laughingstock of your Adeptus, of the whole Sector? Will you risk not only your lives but the reputations of your whole House/Adeptus?”
“Give them hell everyone. Win this fight in such a manner that we don’t have to fight the many, many others.”
That was the plan. As soon as she was back, Pyrrha would do her part in orbit.
They just had to hold on until she got there. And hope her red robed subordinate’s projections on how traditional and against progress and change the Lathe Tech-priests were was pessimistic… not optimistic, as he’d claimed.
Pyrrha really would prefer to demonstrate how pointless fighting her was and talk them down after.
***
The main problem Sanctuary had was that most of their forces capable of taking the fight up into the enemy fleet were off world. Of the 20 Huntsmen and Huntresses of the Second Generation, only four had shown the potential and inclination to become Elites. Of them, only one had finished his Fourfold Trial. Losing Kiran last year to the Fourfold Trial, an Expert in his own right, had cooled passions among the rest of her generation.
Bouncy, being half-way done with hers, was third in line of those four, on her new team. The last member of their forming Elite team was still on his first step. Erica Hatten, or “Bouncy” as some called her, still woke up some mornings missing her old team, but she was glad Furnace had decided not to take the Trial in the end.
She wasn’t sure he would have passed Khorne’s Trial.
“Better a living Expert Hunstman than a corpse.”
However, when Erica had stepped forward to become an Elite, she hadn’t properly considered what that would mean, in a full muster. With three of the Mentors away, and the last guarding Sanctuary against deamons in the Warp, her near Elite team were the highest ranked Huntress in Sanctuary.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
As an army was currently trying to find their way into Sanctuary to burn it to the ground, it made them the first line of defence and the tip of the spear in any clash with the metal men. They’d probed them on the outskirts of the hive, as these “Skitarii” started entering the Underhive.
In the open, the mecha-men were hellishly accurate. Lasguns didn’t hurt much, but even those could add up when enough of them hit. That’s why a Huntress wasn’t supposed to fight an army in the open!
If not for all the murder, Bouncy would be having fun wreaking havoc in their ranks. Erica had grown, over the years since taking her first step into Elite. Both of the Trials she’d passed had left her Aura deeply unsettled and turbulent, requiring months of practice, honing and meditation to regain her skill. And learn to manage the newly expanded reserves.
“Every step along the Huntress’s path is somewhat risky, but the Elite path is something else. And so are the rewards…”
It was almost addicting, feeling herself grow stronger, tougher, faster. Her Aura had nearly doubled already, and would double again if she could finish the other two Trials. And Erika had to finish them. The voice of the Professor as she told them the risks was still fresh in her mind, so clear the impression the Prof had left on her during that lesson:
“Once you take the first step on the path of an Elite Huntsman, there is no going back. You must complete the Fourfold Trial. Hesitating or trying to turn back will only doom you, as facing only some aspects of the Enemy will leave your Soul unbalanced. By now, I hope everyone well knows how deeply you will have linked aura and body by then. Usually, our Auras protect and heal us. An unbalanced Aura will instead, given time, turn to sickness. With treatment, we can buy you time, extend your Trial from three or five, to fifteen, maybe twenty years.
But if you take this step, you must take the others too eventually… or your very soul will kill you, unable to survive in the materium without completing the transition.”
Erica was supposed to be resting. Meditating and training for her next Trial.
Not fighting a bunch of stubborn cyborgs too stupid to tell the difference between Witches, a Huntress, hereteks and servants of the Enemy. The attacking Skitarii were treating them like servants of the damn Four!
“Which, to be fair, we are.” Erica concluded her lengthy internal talk. She was just trying to distract herself. Her old team understood her need to fidget, but Irea had really sensitive ears. Erica’s habit of bouncing her feet when nervous to distract herself drove the other woman on her team absolutely bonkers.
“We are what?” her teammate and partner asked, sprawled as she was in her bedroll, one arm thrown carelessly over her eyes. They were supposed to be sleeping, but Erica couldn’t sleep. She kept seeing all the blood and oil she’d spilled during the last couple of days.
“Hereteks.”
“You only now figuring that out?” Irea asked her, her regularly caustic voice merely bored. Irea was a bit of a bitch, to be clear. Best scout in their generation, but bitchy as hell.
“No, I knew. Like, the surviving Founder, Magos Michiko Kappa was a Logician, right? Those were all proclaimed hereteks, and everyone in Sanctuary is his student. His and the Prof’s, right?”
“Right.” Irea agreed in her sexy drawl, but Erica could hear her roll her eyes. Like what she was saying was obvious, which, ok, yeah, but not the point!
“That voice is wasted on you.” Erica repeated herself.
“So you keep saying.” Irea re-tread the same old grounds of their years long argument. Erica wished she could make her voice sound like that. Every man in the room would be riveted. Irea just used it to mess with them, most of the time. Again, bitchy much?
“What I mean is… they had to expect this, right? The Founders, the Prof-Lady, you know what I mean?” she correct herself before her teammate could again remind her about the whole Lady thing. That she hadn’t already was what passed for tact with Irea.
“Obviously.”
“But they did it anyway. And with Mentor Goodbook stuck at home… it means they’re counting on us to stop them. Right? Right?”
This time, Irea took some time to reply. “Makes sense to me.” she laconically concluded, unconcerned. As if it didn’t bother her at all.
“Damn it, Irea! It’s like you don’t care! Aren’t your worried? Concerned we’ll mess this up, doom Sanctuary? Worried you’ll disappoint your Lady!?” Erica asked.
Irea scoffed. “I will not disappoint her, so I have nothing to worry about.”
That was just so, so, Irea!
The elbow lifted form Irea’s eyes and Erica found herself pinned in place by a serious look: ”You will do your part to ensure the team does not disappoint either… or I will be telling your mom all about your latest “accident”. Irea threatened.
For a moment, Erica couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. She tried to imagine her Mom hearing about it and she couldn’t help herself. She broke down into helpless giggles.
Her teammate only indulgently smiled at her as she muttered: “Now go to sleep you neurotic, bouncing ball of issues. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow. I need my distraction fresh and full up on her Aura.”
That was her partner. She was bitchy and sometimes she could be a proper bitch. But she did care.
“Her face.” Her Mom’s utterly befuddled face left Erica gasping for breath in her own bedroll. By the time she calmed down, her need to shake and tap her feet was gone and sleep didn’t seem so hard to find. Her worries and concerns the last thing on her mind.
***
Katrolarax 4th found this all terribly tedious. He had come to Fenksworld, volunteering for the deployment with the plan to add to the archives of the Omnissiah for all Skitarii. To introduce new tactics against novel enemies. Maybe the Legion headquarters would even get attacked, and he’d have a chance to fight himself at least. That plan had not born out.
“These hereteks are no different than any other.”
The Skitarii Marshal ceded the truth that scrap-code was missing from their jamming patters, meaning that they were just hereteks, not traitors as well. That didn’t stop the first war cohort deployed. They had been filled with scouts, a number of pict-servitors and a wide variety of other means of gathering data about the enemy.
His briefing had included a warning to expect novel forms of witchery in use, and he had seen that. Unfortunately for his plans, these hereteks fought primarily with mundane if high quality equipment, in a disruptive, head-hunter and sacrificing of lesser life forms manner. A few elites, a smattering of highly disciplined and high morale regulars, and plenty of mutants and monsters as chaff.
These hunters drove the masses of monsters and mutants from the Underhive into his ranks as distractions, deployed jammers and smoke to cover their approaches, then used ambushes, mines, traps, headhunter tactics and FOF disruptive measures.
From the recovered war material Katrolarax 4th could watch from the perspective of his officers as his 13th war cohort was severed from command links, lost local command nodes, then had its disparate parts, servitor and Skitarii turned against one another with false heretical signage that looked close enough to Traitorous creations to make it seem parts of the cohort had succumbed to scrap code and trigger purge protocols.
In the end, most of the casualties taken by the 13th were self-inflicted, before the enemy swept in and eliminated the survivors. Between the sacrificial pawns, the strike and fade away attacks, the number of traps already found and triggered and their occasional unnatural powers?
Katrolarax 4th found a better than 70% match for these tactics. While he longed to fire his own weapons, to directly make the hereteks feel the wrath of the Omnissiah, his Legion was his chosen weapon for he was a Marshal.
“Implement Rho-Theta-6.” Katrolarax 4th ordered. If these hereteks were going to use their heretical powers and technology to fight him like xenos raiders, then he would treat them as such.
“Bring forth the Vanguard.”
The damnable Eldar xenos were not able to hide if the whole field of battle was irradiated. The same principle should apply to these lesser threats. Only the Skitarii were made to walk under the Omnissiah holy light and heated touch. By saturating the bowels of the Underhive in His might, the enemy would be forced to face them in battle. And perish.
The marshal watched as the Vanguard advanced, spreading their fire and His touch preventively. That the invisible fire made many of the monsters and mutants flee before them was only right.
It was only a matter of time. His calculations showed a greater than 98.3649748385 chance of reaching this false “Sanctuary” by the end of the month.
***
“How is he?” Erica asked.
“Miserable.” Vivar, her team leader, answered. “The rad drugs are making him barf and spew both ways.“
“Nasty.” Erica couldn’t help but comment, the image of their last team member in distress making her feel bad.
“Well, he should have noticed he had a couple of burning bullets lodged in his armour before his Aura broke, shouldn’t he?” Irea griped. “Now we have to deal with these metal men without him. How long is it going to take his dumb ass to come back?”
“They don’t know. Could be a couple of days, could be a week.” Vivar explained, his eyes shifting about, like he was reading a book only he could see. That was their fearless leader, always one step ahead. He’d aced his tactic’s classes and was easy to get along with… on top of being the only one of them to finish his Fourfold Trial. The guy was a perfect hunk and unfortunately taken.
His girlfriend was one lucky gal. Erica had met her and while jealous, couldn’t hate her. She was the kindest, most patient woman she’d ever met, which served her well as a teacher of little kids.
“Figures. He gets to take a break while we wade through the muck. Lazy ass.” Irea derided, which was her way of showing how much she missed him.
“Hey! I’m sure he was trying his best. With so many bullets in the air, it was easy to get distracted.” Erica defended their missing teammate.
“Whatever.” Irea shook her head and strode off, her footsteps soft despite the metal floors.
The news from the front wasn’t good. Less and less mutants were willing to run into the sights of the advancing Skitarii army, and while they had been slowed down by their new tactic of “irradiate everything”, there was only so much Sanctuary could do to slow them down.
The Sanctuary Guard and the Huntresses and Huntsmen were still killing squads and lone scouts with ease, but the main force was no longer stalled. They were bridging and patching, where they couldn’t just break through. The advance wasn’t quick, but it was steady, over the past two days since switching it up.
With more of them coming in behind, fortifying each step with bases and bunkers in mutual support range, harassing their supply lines was becoming really dangerous. Erica couldn’t understand how the Skitarii soldiers were surviving in that irradiated hell they were making. Just crossing down a hall in there would impact her Aura, and that was the good news.
“I’m never complaining about environmental Aura training ever again.”
One of the Guard trap teams had been caught out last night and overrun by enemy armour, before they could be reinforced. They didn’t have the numbers to fight this kind of war, if they started trading attrition like that.
“Look on the bright side.” Vivar told her with an amused smile. “They’ve been so arrogant and high handed, not to mention isolationist, that no one has told them yet where Sanctuary is. Word is the new red robes are making a real mess of things with the locals. The way they’re going, they’ll come out the other side of the Underhive without going within several kilometers of Sanctuary and they might need to direct half their numbers up Hive to quell dissent.”
Erica heard what he was saying, but those yet and might were doing a lot there. Someone, somewhere, would tell them, sooner or later, and there were plenty of local tech-priests that agreed with the Lathe invaders. They could delay, they could distract… hells, if they pushed their own vehicles forward from the walls and gate patrols, they could give them one hell of a fight… but looking down at a number disadvantage of at least 30 to 1 in total was not what anyone would call “good odds.”
Sure, the Guard and the Huntsmen knew the Underhive much better than their enemy, and many, many monsters and mutants could be driven into their ranks or supply lines to disrupt or delay… but given enough time, they couldn’t really stop them without calling up the militia and arming regular people in Sanctuary to make up the odds.
Erica really didn’t want to do that. She’d seen the projections. If the militia was called up, casualties wouldn’t just spike, they’d multiply by two orders of magnitude.
Nobody sane wanted that.
“Yeah. All we have to do is buy time, right?” Erica responded, calling up a smile of her own.
Worse case, once they got close, Vivar would go back to watch over the newly awakened and Mentor Goodbook would take the field. Teach them the difference between an Elite and a Master Huntsman. Vivar could lay low squads on his own.
Mentor Goodbook would bring down hundreds.
“That there are thousands marching on us won’t matter when their front ranks are being slaughtered. They’ll break, they’ll have to… right?”
Erica hoped so. But seeing how few of these Skitarii had ever hesitated to go to their deaths, chants and cants to their Omnissiah in their voice boxes… a part of her doubted it would be that easy or simple.
“I hope the Mentors come back soon.” With reinforcements, they’d be able to hold out much longer. Long enough for the Prof to come back and solve this mess, as she’d been all the way out in the Periphery when the Lathes attacked.
Unfortunately, with how unpredictable Warp travel was, no one knew when either one of the away parties would be back. Erica wasn’t one for much prayer. Most of the Gods she knew were the sorts she fought against, not for. It was times like these that she envied those who had faith.
Less so, for the Emperor botherers, but… “Once I get back to Sanctuary and this is all over, I could look into the temples and churches. See if anything fits, maybe.”
Erica was not going to worship the Golden Throne, she’d seen enough of the nonsense that cult spewed. But maybe one of the others?
The Lady’s Brothers and the Life Mother were the two most popular other religions in Sanctuary, for all that education on the chants, cants and proper ways to worship the Golden Throne were mandatory. The Brothers among the common folk, and the Life Mother among the awakened, not that either had a majority over the traditional Emperor worship.
Worship of the Emperor was not mandatory in Sanctuary. Knowing enough to fake it or answer questions if anyone asked about it however? That was. The rest of the world and the Imperium took the whole “heretic” thing deadly seriously and not poking that issue was just good sense. Kids raised in Sanctuary, or survivors rescued from the Underhive or the lower hive floors could look past their prejudices to develop at least some tolerance for their new neighbours, when surrounded by clean buildings, green gardens and parks and breathing clean air.
That was miracle enough to convince most Sanctuary had to be blessed by their Emperor.
Going through her pouches, Erica found one of the sugary snacks her Mom had packed for her. She was hoarding those, spreading them out to make sure they lasted through this mission/deployment.
But with all this talk bringing down her mood, she needed a pick me up. After all, as much as Irea griped about how her and Vivar were the ones that had to “manage team morale”, Bouncy was the one that made the rest of them smile.
“We can all use a little levity right now.”
But first she had to take care of herself. It was the first rule of medicae: “If I don’t take care of myself, no one else can.”