Unbelievable as it sounds, I had refused to immediately take over the command of a whole Sororitas army. While my old gamer self might have strangled myself on that, a simulated sight of the battlefield had shown me how different things look when put into real practice.

I was not worthy, nor was I ready to take the responsibility for the lives of people under my command yet.

I spent the rest of the meeting briefed by the sisters on the details on the front and the upcoming decisive battle.

The Sororitas had attempted a few strategic operations to eliminate the rebel’s leadership but these always ended in failure due to superior tactical manoeuvres on the other side, or they could be too blunt a force with their modus operandi for such operations since they were hardly subtle, resulting in mass casualties.

Both sides had fought to an eventual stalemate and were now accumulating war assets on a frontline that was the size of a country. It was now a staredown contest with random small skirmishes happening constantly.

Diadinah passed me her dataslate to show me a current report of the forces gathering on the frontline. For a split second, I was lost looking at all the unfamiliar Low Gothic characters before something kicked in and I was able to read it as if it was my first language.

I took a look at the estimated numbers of forces on both sides and felt a bit dizzy. Due to the steady escalations on the scale of engagement, the sisters were eventually regulated to spearhead roles in the civil war and the mother of all fights was bearing down on both sides soon.

Since neither side had any major technological advantage over the other a confrontation would just be a numbers game of attrition that would result in catastrophic loss of life and material.

Then my curiosity plus old habits as a gamer kicked in and I requested to have a look at the current total war assets available to the Order. Diadinah obliged, taking back her dataslate and after accessing the information passed it back to me.

The summary was extensive, it was like looking at the dream miniature collection list of a Sororitas player on steroids. A full militant Order minoris was here, with active battle sisters in service numbering around three thousand and twenty-five thousand more either in training, non-combat or support roles.

The hardware section was equally impressive, even with the supposed heavy casualties suffered, the Order still maintained a sizable number of rhinos, immolators and exorcist tanks in active service, there were even a few rare repressor tanks in the mix.

Of the sisters active in combat roles, there was a healthy mix of all the standard Adepta units except for those with repenting elements involved like repentias and penitent engines. These were relatively few and far between their ranks, probably due to their doctrine or already being wasted on the frontlines.

‘Are you aware of Arch Dominus Kryptorer’s plan?’ I inquired while looking at the data.

‘I am afraid not,’ she replied, ‘we hardly talked in our brief meeting but he seemed determined to end this conflict as soon as possible.’

Scrolling down further on the asset list, I came across some unknown listing that was interesting.

‘What are these?’ I asked.

Diadinah took a look at the listings in question and answered, ‘The Nuntius Hailer flyers? These are low-orbiting aircraft with macro laud hailers used to project bellowed hymnals into the upper atmosphere to broadcast messages for repentance echo down over unbelievers. There is the Nuntius Imagifier variant which is used to project giant holograms instead.’

‘Are they operational?’ I was really curious.

‘Of course, our Order took the maintenance of its war assets as a matter of priority,’ answered Diadinah with a hint of pride.

Interestingly, these are the type of units one reads in the lore but never made it to the game. I took a closer look at the flyers operational capabilities and the power gamer inside me started turning at the possible cheesy tactics I could do with these.

‘Diadinah, if we show the rebels an overwhelming superiority in strength and righteousness, do you suppose we can convince the bulk of their army to surrender?’

The canoness pondered on my question for a while before answering, ‘I suppose so, it is not as if they were worshippers of ruinous power. I believe the bulk of them were merely grunts pushed into the civil war without knowing better.’

The path forward was suddenly cleared up. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath before issuing my first ever directive to the Order. ‘Sisters, if we are to have a better chance to stand against the oncoming darkness, the first thing we need to do will be winning the upcoming decisive battle with as minimal casualties and destruction as possible. To that end, we will need the full cooperation of the governor’s forces and the help of Adeptus Mechanicus from Arch Dominus Kryptorer Cykell.’

* * *

I contacted Tech-priest Dataliad who was still stationed inside the fortress and an hour later a holographic conference was securely set up again, Canoness Diadinah, Palatine Alicya and Celestian Superior Markeylla joined in this time.

Kryptorer’s giant hologram appeared in the meeting room, eerily recreating that iconic scene from a certain classic sci-fi movie again. He noticed the extra participants, bowed and waited for me to talk first.

‘Krypto, Canoness Diadinah is here representing the whole Sororitas Order. I have reviewed your plan and would like to make a few adjustments, but first please update us on the situation on the frontline.’

Kryptorer bowed again and began to speak with his crispy metallic voice, ‘as you wish, the opposition continues to accumulate war assets in the front, our surveillance network now registered close to half a million troops and 4,000 battle tanks on their side. Three super-heavy tanks are also noted within their ranks.’

The arch dominus then conjured out a 3-dimensional map with many many red and green dots and continued, ‘Governor Khatalina’s forces also continued to accumulate on the front line with close to 600,000 troops and 3,200 battle tanks. A statement had to be made regarding the quality of the forces, as while the governor has more listed manpower, the numerical advantage is superficial as a substantial portion of that troops are made up of substandard volunteers and reserve units, whereas the heretic side is boosted by a few elite battalions by this world’s standard. A direct confrontation would only yield us a nine percent chance of victory with over eighty percent casualties, a catastrophic result which we must avoid.’

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

‘The preparation for the plan is going well with elements of my forces doing the final adjustments. We are constantly updating the details to suit the changing situation on the frontline.’

‘Plan? What plan are we talking about?’ Diadinah asked.

‘It was developed less than twenty-four hours ago, only Inquisitor Thorn was informed of it to prevent it from leaking.’ I explained.

‘Krypto, please show us the updated plan, we could incorporate certain key areas with the full participation of the Sororitas Order.’

‘Very well,’ Kryptorer ran his presentation again with updated information and noticeable improvements on his grand cheesy plan. Diadinah soon caught on to the key factor in the whole scheme, ‘Arch Dominus Cykell, may I ask how are we supposed to collapse their communication network?’

Kryptorer turned to me silently asking if he should disclose my ability, I nodded in response, he proceeded with his explanation, ‘Lady Syrine here has the authority to overwrite most if not all primary functions of imperial hardware with a cogitator or machine spirit. Together with my assets, we can achieve the said action for a brief period of time, enough for us to totally incapacitate the opposition leader’s capacity to manage the battle.’

Shocked by what she heard, the canoness asked me, ‘Revered lady, is that true?’ Not gonna lie, getting called lady twice in quick succession had dampened my mood somewhat but I was sure [Regalis] will keep it out of my face. Trying to avoid further questioning, I carefully framed my answer to Diadinah.

‘Yes, it was a gift… from my father.’

As predicted, the mere mention of Syrine’s supposed father, i.e. the Emperor himself sent the sisters into quick silent prayers, opening my chance to present my objective for this meeting.

‘Krypto, what is the estimated number of troops left to defend this world after this operation is over?’

‘Around 400,000 with whatever leftover auxiliary forces not participating in the upcoming battle.’ He answered.

‘Will that be enough to defend the whole planet for whatever that will come after this?’ I pushed.

‘Hardly sufficient,’ Kryptorer admitted.

I nodded in agreement and finally got to my point, ‘in the light of that and for a better security of this world I propose we give them a chance to surrender, throw them a rope to return to the Emperor’s service before going down that senseless bloody path.’

I looked to the sisters to see if they had any objection to this, they simply bowed in agreement so I pushed forth with my crazy plan.

‘As of this moment, from now on please refrain from calling the opposition heretics, it is not as if they had officially renounced the Emperor. To do so will leave no room for their redemption. We have the means to give them a chance to return to the righteous path and this is how it can be achieved...’

* * *

A few hours later, it was close to the morning when I finally got out of the meeting and headed back to my room. Most of the sisters had left hurriedly to actualise the final plan we agreed on for the upcoming decisive battle.

My body still felt fresh as ever but mentally I was utterly exhausted, looking at the sisters grinding the details aways in the planning dead into the night as unaugmented humans had my respect for them went up a few notches. Darn, these ladies are tough.

Diadinah’s firm grasp on the finer details of the army units capabilities greatly contributed to the final shape of the plan, something I would be forever grateful for since I was basically just theory crafting from what I knew of the universe with no real hands-on experience.

The whole planning part reminded me of the late-night preparation for the Apocalypse scale games I had in my gamer days, except this was a thousand times bigger with real lives on the line, any planned movement of the pieces shown on the tactical display entailed thousands of lives into the meat grinder, you could say I felt a bit numb at the end of all the talks of statistics.

Suddenly, a psychic message from Arradus reached out to me. +Lady Syrine, I beg for your forgiveness for my rude intrusion but new developments are happening, I am at the chamber and need your guidance.+

Mentally exhausted and saddled with countless looming problems on my mind, I almost lashed out at him before recognising he sounded a lot like a hapless employee who was put into an impossible position, a position which I was not a total stranger with during my time working in a corporation.

I took a deep breath before replying, +Very well, I am close and just got out from a meeting, will come to see you now.+ While that was not exactly true but I needed a walk.

A short while later and I was at the makeshift Telepathica chamber Thaberus had set up for the astropath, in truth, it was little more than a controlled space with rudimentary psychic wards and security.

This was not my first time here, I waved and passed the black-cladding inquisitorial stormtroopers guarding the entrance to the chamber. A large display was on the wall with Arradus’ vital signs shown in real-time. Just in case the unthinkable happened these guys were given the authorisation to utilise lethal force.

Arradus was coming down from the primary altar when I entered, the stormtrooper sergeant who was in charge of his safety was here too with two other troopers, I understood it to be a standard procedure at the end of a work shift to make sure the astropath was not compromised by the warp.

The sergeant nodded at me and left the chamber with his subordinates. I turned to Arradus and was surprised to find him soaked with sweat as if just done with a gym session.

‘What happened?’ I asked while taking a closer look at the astropath, finding him looking exhausted but still indomitable in spirit.

‘Please excuse me for being less than presentable at the moment, there has been a sudden surge of telepathic messages reaching us and I was slightly taxed to the limit of my capability.’

He pointed to the servitors dedicated to recording telepathic sessions, some long scrolls were dragging on the floor from all the recording done. While most modern office dwellers would be puzzled at the sight of scrolls, the grimdark imperial bureaucracy loved their physical records.

I moved closer to take a look and was stunned by the contents. On the scrolls were rows and rows of recorded incoming telepathic messages from all the warp travelling starships operating in the area. Some were asking for the real space location of the beacon and others broadcasting their intent to breach into realspace near to us.

A realisation dawned on me, this whole sector was being cut off from the Emperor’s light, as a result, the psychic beacon lit up by Syrine had become the only detectable reference point for long-distance warp navigation for thousands of light-years across the entire region.

‘So how should we reply?’ asked Arradus.

‘Well, how was this usually done?’ I asked back, well aware of the many lives at stake here.

‘We never had this much traffic before, by default this should be referred to the governor but … the usual communication between the Telepathica chamber and her office were severed since the incident and she has been busy with the war.’

My mind was turning at the situation, this was the best description I could give for our predicament: this world was like a backwater town which suddenly found itself as the focal access point for all the traffic within the province while its mayor was busy having a shootout with close to half the armed folks living here.

Like it or not, a lot of things were coming to this world and it would become the epicentre of the entire subsector. I had my work cut out for me with this mess and my important appointment with Inquisitor Thaberus was but a few hours away.