“Are the reports true, Schultz?”

“I would ask you what you meant, but I have a feeling I know what you’re referring to.”

Commissar Langrin’s angry accusation tore through the comm unit and replied, “You offered those Imps five jump credits if they make it out of that mountain. Not to mention there is a High Ender about to finish his tenth with that lot!”

“Men can only be whipped so far, Langrin. I gave them a little hope with the offer,” Schultz sighed and felt the old feeling of self-loathing crawl on his back. “Besides, they may not even come back.”

“And if they do? Then what? Then you’ll have every other Imp in regiments they get attached to wondering why don’t they get extra cred too. On top of that, you’ve got that High Ender mess up!”

Schultz had to compose himself, though heat traveled up his neck and threatened to explode out at the voice on the comm.

“They aren’t stupid. The men know that High Enders have a high mortality rate, you’ve heard the recordings too. Let’s say they make it back and let’s say the High Ender does too, then not only does the Final Order get further hidden from discovery, but the men’s morale improves because they’ll believe that maybe they can make it past ten jumps too.”

“Too many maybes, Schultz. Maybe you’re right, but what about your Stormtroopers? How many of your precious tin pots would have volunteered if they thought they had a chance to make it ten and out? I don’t like it, not one bit, and if you don’t clean up your mess, then I’ll do it for you.”

Black hatred slithered further and gripped Schultz, the same kind that he always felt when he tallied his dead at the end of a mission, but usually, he was alone in an office when these flights of rage threatened to overtake him.

Before he could show Langrin why they called him “Iron Jaw”, the ground shook underneath Commissar Schultz’s feet and he knew that those fools had finally awakened the beast inside the mountain complex. He keyed a new channel on his comm and started barking orders, “Tellaz, make sure all void shield generators are offline for our emplacements and alert the forward positions that they are about to have company.”

While Tellaz replied on that comm, the other lit up from Langrin. He had also temporarily forgotten the topic they had been discussing. “Schultz, did you feel that? This planet is not supposed to have tectonic activity! Get your men on alert.”

“Already done, Langrin. I recommend activating your void shield. Who knows what’s coming.”

“It’s already on, worry about your own defenses and be ready. We’ve just lost contact with the MG teams and I don’t like it.”

Schultz could have cared less for those pompous Magical Girls and their silly knights, but the thought of his men dying in that mountain chilled his blood. Before he could reply to Langrin, the top of Hemlock Mountain blew up in an eruption of stone and sand. From the peak of its vast height, a giant metal hand was ripping out of the earth and grasping for the sky like a baby breaching the womb. The slumbering giant was here.

A second hand joined the first, pulling at the lip of the mountain and dragging the rest of its girth from out of the tons clinging stone and soil. When its head breached, a giant glowing eye beheld the small army of stormtroopers arrayed before it and analyzed for targets.

“Mother of the Emperor,” Schultz heard Langrin swearing forbidden curses over the radio. “Is that an Eidolon?!”

From the research Schultz had personally conducted of the ancient war machines of the Empire, the behemoth before them was indeed an Eidolon. Its metal bipedal form and steel sinews were unmistakable, as were the array of deadly missile pods, cannons, and laser turrets that adorned it. The only noticeable difference was the giant fleshy mass that covered its back and sent swathes of tentacles wriggling from it like some symbiotic parasite. Whatever changes the Yabanchi has wrought on it beneath the surface of Paradise, Schultz had the cure, but there was one crucial moment that hung in the balance.

“Take that thing out, all defenses, fire at will!”

Langrin’s command became shrill in his panic, the enemy never having come so close to him before, but none of the weapon emplacements fired at his order, except for a lowly autocannon next to his command tent on top of the mountain and underneath the only activated void generator in the valley. The autocannon rounds bounced off of the thick-plated armor of the Eidolon, too weak to even activate its automatic void shield response. Yet the great eye of the machine finished its analysis and looked down from its mountain perch at the brightest source of energy below: Langrin’s shield generator.

The Eidolon’s shoulders opened up and a pair of shoulder-mounted laser cannons fired at Langrin’s position. Though the void shield generators were strong, cannons of the size the Eidolon was using were rated for capital ship combat and so Langrin only had a handful of moments to start screaming more orders until his void shield flared and collapsed like a bright bubble popping. In an instant the top of the hill his command tent was on was turned to glass by the waves of energy from the Eidolon’s guns and his voice abruptly stopped coming on the comm.

Sparing no moment to appreciate the triumph of a rival gone nor the tragedy of the men lost, Schultz began to calmly relay orders to his waiting gunners.

“Generators one, two, and three. Activate now.”

Near the mountain, but far from any gun emplacements, three void generators activated. The Eidolon saw them flare up in its electronic vision and switched its fire to these targets, unaware that they were minimally manned. Meanwhile, every heavy weapon in the valley aimed at the metal behemoth and waited for the order. Schultz grinned, preparation paying its dividends, and gave the word.

“Stormtroopers, attack!”

Gauss cannons launched magnetic payloads and plasma mortars screamed through the air. Accompanying these fireworks, dozens of missiles and autocannons traced the sky and landed on the half-machine, half Yabanchi nightmare. The mountain around the Eidolon erupted into a giant plume of dust and fire so large that it looked like Hemlock was an active volcano going off. Yet the dust eventually cleared and the men of the valley saw the horrendous truth before them. The Eidolon still stood, the air shimmering around it as the void shields absorbed whatever damage that might have pierced its shell. Behind it and from the crater it had crawled out of, a host of smaller Yabanchi poured out of Hemlock mountain and streamed between the legs of the Eidolon, charging to the Stormtrooper machine gun positions waiting below.

“Sir,” Tellez’s voice came over the comm. “Enemy cyborgs have been sighted along the eastern forward positions, augmenting Screamer attacks. We need to reinforce that flank.”

As if in response the Eidolon’s cannons fired and another void generator popped. The beast lumbered forward, its grace robbed by the weight of so much wriggling alien flesh on its back. Schultz walked away from the sight and into his cave, a much more defensible position that needed no shields. Before him was a holographic display of the field and the lines blinked red as the occupants of this small patch of land fought.

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“Negative, Tellaz. Let that position fall and regroup towards the center, retarget the autocannons at the enemy heavy units. Keep the reaction teams ready to support individual emplacement defense, especially those gauss cannons. They cannot fall.”

Schultz only minimally heard his second's response, his mind and attention focused on the map again.

“Very well,” Schultz said to the multiplying red dots on the projector, “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

----------------------------------------

“Kildenstalt!” Snell swore and covered his head as plumes of dust and small rocks rained from the top of the intersection ceiling, “What in the Emperor’s name is going on out there?”

“Sounds like they’s trying to blow up the mountain,” Mad replied and Tanlon could not help but agree. First, there was the rumbling and swell of strange wind earlier, and now this. He didn’t know which was worse, to be here in the dark or out there with whatever was going on.

“Oi! Someone’s coming,” a trooper who was standing guard at the blast doors shouted. Every man came to and readied their rifle, prepared to blow away whatever came through those doors, but it turned out to only be one of their own if they could even call him that. Commissar Gourke.

“Commissar, are you ok?” Haylock asked since the Commissar looked far from it. His power armor was scratched in dozens of places, gouged near his collar bone, and his red visor had the remnants of quick-repair glue that was used to seal up leaks.

“You’re still here?!” Commissar Gourke ignored Haylock’s question, hands balled in fists, and stalked toward them. Tanlon wasn’t sure if he was speaking to the group or directly to Haylock himself.

“Commissar, sir,” Haylock’s voice had an edge of defiance. “You told us to stay here.” At Haylock’s words, the Commissar stopped and looked at all the men around him. His eyes were panicked and glanced at everything for hidden dangers from the shadows.

“You need to go in there now, find the Magical Girls, and save them!”

“Magical Girls? You mean those witch women?”

“Yes, you Imp idiot! That’s an order!”

Haylock looked around at the other Vanguard troopers, but aside from a shrug from Tanlon, no one knew what to do. Seeing it was a direct order, he had no choice but to comply.

“Aye aye, sir, we’ll get them. Will you lead the way?”

Gourke barked a laugh, a short manic thing, and started heading toward one of the tunnels they had cleared. “As if. Go on your own. I’m going to get reinforcements.”

Before Haylock could protest, the Commissar darted into a side tunnel and left them in silence. Snell broke it with a comment that only made Mad laugh, everyone else was too afraid that if the Commissar heard it, they’d be shot.

“Alright, that’s enough you two,” Haylock told Snell and Mad, “Both of you’s are my seconds. Take nine men each and form a squad. Tan, you take the remainder and I will be the wave leader. Do I hear any objections?”

It was Sten, the man from earlier who spoke, “Are we really going in there?”

“Do you think we have a choice?”

Sten shrugged, “Not really, but we don’t know what’s down there. I mean, what happened to all those stormtroopers and knight-looking guys? If they got merked, what chance do we got?”

He asked the same question that was on everyone’s mind and Haylock was at a loss for words. Tanlon stepped into the awkward silence, picked up one of the torches, and shined it into the hole on the blast doors.

“We’re the Imperial Vanguard brother, we carry the light and lead the way.”

“Oorah,” Snell guttered and whether it was sincere or sarcastic it had the intended effect. Sten nodded and some iron came back to his spine, the other troopers did not grumble or complain as they formed several squads.

Tanlon of course found himself as the head of the first squad to breach the hole of the blast doors and his own words did not provide him with too much comfort, but as the light of his torch burned the dark before him, he felt some semblance of hope and remembered the voice from before. The others may have thought he was crazy, but if he learned anything from that near death experience, it was that the night does not last forever.

Haylock gave the command and the Imperial Vanguard marched forward and into the crawling darkness.

Beyond the first few feet past the ancient blast doors, death greeted the scouting troopers. The burned corpses of Yabanchi Screamers were partially fused to the floor, their skeletal hands still grasped the air in front of them for eternity. Tanlon was glad for the filters of his mask, for he had no doubt the place would have had an acrid and sweet-smelling scent of burnt flesh and fat that would have had them all retching.

Seeing then that no enemy assaulted them, they advanced further into the mountain and came to realize that it was no mere hollow made by monstrous hands. The floors were linoleum and the walls were shaped into rectangular hallways, too geometrically perfect for natural formations. Snell at one point ran his hand absently across the wall, heedless of the filth and dust caking his glove and the trooper behind him spotted the writing revealed by his act.

“Hey there, shine the light over here.”

Tanlon heeded the request and when he did, he saw what the other fellow saw.

“MAINTENANCE HALLWAY 3”.

It was unmistakably written in the Imperial tongue and not random scratches on the wall. The more they looked around, the more it dawned on the Vanguard troopers where they were.

“This is some kind of Imperial base, ‘innit,” Mad gasped. “But it looks like no one’s been here for centuries!”

“Aye, they told us we’ve been on ice for a long sleep,” Snell replied, “But they didn’t go telling us that we’re retaking one of our own worlds.”

“The Empire would never let a planet fall to these beasts,” Mad shook and pointed at the wall. “This has to be some kinda demon trick.”

“A trick that they set up a few hundred years in advance, Mad,” Haylock replied, “but whether it’s a trick or not, the mission has not changed. Everyone keep an eye out for more information that may help us.”

The troopers, all visibly shaken, got back into their squad formations and continued down maintenance hallway three. As their steps carried them farther, the signs of previous battles fought came more frequently.

Fortunately, the majority of the dead they passed were the enemy. Hundreds of dead Drones, Screamers, and other nameless things in various states of dismemberment. Tanlon almost screamed at one point when they went into a side room and found a big beast of Yabanchi staring at them. It was pinned to the ceiling by a massive spike of ice. The pressure from the wound to its chest was so great, that the beast’s cyclopean eye was nearly popped out of its skull. As it was, it hung there, smiling at the investigating troopers with a permanent death grin.

“Witchcraft,” Mad whispered. “Has to be. What kind of weapon can do that?”

“I imagine the same kind of weapon that torched all those Screamers we saw in the first room,” Snell replied.

“I’m just glad they’re on our side,” Tanlon said. “Can you imagine fighting those women?”

Evidently, they could, as the piles of dead Yabanchi grew and grew the further they went into the mountain. Of course, there were some human bodies along the way, but of the five they found, they were all stormtroopers.

“Poor grot looks like he took a blast to the face. Least it was quick.” Snell searched the latest fallen soldier for his tags, but they had evidently been taken by his fellows. To their chagrin, each of the dead stormtroopers had been relieved of their weapons as well. They did not begrudge their fellow soldiers this, it was standard procedure after all, but the weight of an automatic shotgun or plasma caster would have helped settle any man’s nerves at least somewhat.

In the half hour or so that they carefully made their way into the facility, they never found anything living, friendly, or otherwise. It was almost unnerving, the quiet of the dead, to the point that the troopers tried telling a few jokes back and forth to break up the silence. Haylock put a stop to it but relented when it started up again, for if he was being honest, the silence was getting to him too.

So it was that when Tanlon was taking point with an illuminated torch, that he almost did not notice a strange visual distortion ahead of them. Yet when he did, he grabbed the next man by his collar and pulled him back toward where they came, screaming for each man to back away. The others had thought he snapped for a moment until they noticed it too.

Tanlon’s torchlight was powerful enough to light up a whole room at a medium setting, yet as he pointed it ahead of them into the darkness of the corridor, it stopped like it was hitting a wall of darkness and went no further.

They heard the noises then and scrambled into firing positions, though nothing came from the impenetrable darkness to greet them save the sound of something snapping, crunching, and ripping accompanied by soft giggles within.

“Mortals,” a voice like sandpaper driven over nailbeds hailed them,” You’re late to the feast, but you’re more than welcome to join us.”