There was an unsettling atmosphere in the air as the battle to decide the fate of the planet progressed into unknown territory.
On a frontline stretching 300 kilometres long, the grand army under the banner of Kaithan von Klaeus, the half-brother of the current planetary governor, was rolling down from the north after weeks of preparation, hoping for a decisive engagement.
With Kaithan’s forces moving towards the capital city of Nusquam, to retreat would mean ceding several key planetary infrastructures to the rebel forces, losing both prestige and any advantage held. Strategically Khatalina could not avoid this battle.
Kaithan’s mother was from the northern part of the planet, belonging to the more hardy bunch of the populace whose military tradition went further back than their southern counterparts.
This was reflected in the military divisions on the planet itself, the north had long since prided itself on the fact that most elite and celebrated battalions were from their side. Due to that, while the armies facing off against each other was comparable in strength on paper, Kaithan’s faction was confident in the final outcome of this matchup.
The grand northern army was made up of roughly 4,000 battle tanks and 10,000 combat vehicles separated into 3 battle groups. The bulk of the army was in the centre group with 2 other smaller groups on each side to prevent flanking manoeuvres.
‘... choose wisely when the opportunity to return to the right path presents itself. The Emperor protects.’ The speaker blared with a gentle female voice repeating the same message again and again inside the confined compartment of a Taurox armoured transport.
‘What the frak is that?’ Trooper Mattius asked.
‘Like hell I know, maybe it is your mother talking on the speaker?’ Comm Specialist Lantos replied.
‘I will be damned, you can actually compliment. If his mother sounded that beautiful, I would not mind meeting her one bit,’ teased Trooper Silas.
‘Shut the hell up all of you, sounds like all the long-range vox channels have been taken over. Anybody still wants to do your last vox rite, do it now, I am cutting off that privilege after one minute!’ Barked Sergeant Gerhartte as he supervised Lantos working on the communicator, but regardless of his efforts the same message was repeating on the vox speaker and it was beginning to unnerve them.
‘Losing out on vox war on our big day? A bad omen if you asked me, but at least they had the decency to pick a speaker with a beautiful voice.’ Another trooper added his voice.
‘I don’t know about you guys, but this war ain’t feeling right for me from the get-go,’ chipped in a low voice. It was from Ignatham, the quiet but capable person in the squad who seldom spoke, but when he did, people listened.
‘What do you mean, Ignatham?’ Silas asked. That got everyone’s attention. Ignathas eyed his squadmates for a while before talking, ‘that day, I saw it, on one of the fights when they attacked, they had Sororitas with them.’
‘Trooper Ignatham!’ Sergeant Gerhartte gave his warning but it was too late.
‘Is that true sarge? The Sororitas are with the governor?’ ‘So that is not a rumour?’ ‘That message even got the inquisition involved now, no one in their right mind would mention the inquisition if it ain’t real…’
Lately, there was a rumour going around that the initially neutral Sororitas had shown up alongside the forces of the incumbent governor in the civil conflict.
Nusquam was a civilised Imperial world that held the seat of the planetary governor as the highest office and other branches of the Imperium as ruling subsidiaries. As such, the fact that a whole Order Minoris was here despite the world not being under the direct control of the Ecclesiarchy was a rarity indeed.
Even so, like the rest of the Imperium, members of Adepta Sororitas were widely viewed as symbols of piousness on Nusquam, the Order held enough sway on the public’s opinion and their recent support towards Khatalina had been largely downplayed by Kaithan’s faction.
But this suppression could not keep going on for long, which was part of the reasons they had pushed for a swift conclusion. Once Kaithan held the office there was little the Sororitas could do as against the host of the planet but to file protests, but such actions might as well be spitting at the sea.
For the common soldiers on the planet though, the Sororitas enjoyed an idol-like status with their reputation of being well trained for combat, zealous ferocity in battle and access to usage of iconic wargear like power armour and bolters. That was why a blanket gag order was in place forbidding the common troopers from discussing the matter in an attempt to prevent it from eroding the troops’ morale.
‘Specialist Lantos, turn the communicator off if you can’t switch around that message! The rest of you shut it! Or I will be forced to-’ Sergeant Gerhartte was dropping another warning when the Taurox transport suddenly came to a halt. Losing his balance, Gerhartte toppled to the side, a loud thud was heard as he banged his head on the inside of the truck with his prized Cadian pattern helmet.
‘Throne damn it! Driver, what the hell are you doing!?’
The sudden stop had made the big man divert his wrath while the rest of the squad kept their silence as they knew better than to be on the bad side of the sergeant when he got really pissed.
‘Sorry sir, but the Indomitable Fury has suddenly stopped moving.’ The driver replied.
That got the rest of the squad to check on the leading Baneblade super-heavy tank from their visual slit. ‘Yeah, she has stopped moving, sarge.’
‘What the..?’
Suddenly there was a loud thud on the roof of the Taurox and an explosion of sorts happened. Everyone flinched at the sound and someone cried out, ‘WE ARE BEING SHELLED!!’
The whole squad panicked and expected massive explosions to follow, but none came. In the eerie silence inside the compartment, a constant popping sound could be heard outside of their transport while the same message asking them to choose wisely was repeating itself.
‘The Emperor protects… the Emperor protects… ’ Gerhartte muttered to himself with a shaken voice for a while before finally turning to his subordinate to vent his frustration, ‘Specialist Lantos! Didn’t I order you to turn that thing off?!’
‘I did turn it off, sarge.’ Lantos replied meekly while adjusting his spectacles with a trembling hand.
‘Sarge, you need to take a look at this.’ Ignatham’s calm voice had everyone’s attention. Gerhartte took a look at what the trooper was indicating and he gasped.
‘What in the name of…’ the Sergeant said while opening the rear hatch of the vehicle.
Outside the vehicle, everything on the ground level was covered with a layer of white smoke. Above them, some unknown flyers flying in formations could be seen.
‘Sarge, I am afraid to ask but have we been bamboozled? This does not look like an easy victory for me.’ Sila asked.
‘Where are our flyers? Why does it look like they have total air superiority over us?’ Over their head up in the sky, a few flyers could be spotted flying and the same message they had heard repeatedly inside their vehicle could be heard reverberating across the field.
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‘Are those… the Nuntius Hailers? Those things only ever came out during special big church events.’
‘So we are really going up against the sisters and the inquisition? This is MADNESS!’
Meanwhile, inside the leading Baneblade Indomitable Fury, Lord General Luthor von Norden, Supreme Field Commander of the Northern Grand Army, was hit by a grim realisation something was really amiss with the development of this battle.
First off, communications between his army with the rear elements was suddenly lost, no one from his battlegroup could make contact with the headquarters nor Rearguard General Borrin.
Then their long-range vox network seemed to be hijacked, broadcasting the same repeating message asking them to surrender. Their enemy had even bothered to send laud hailer flyers to bombard them with the same message, signalling their loss of air superiority.
Just moments ago they were shelled by artillery rounds, thankfully those were just smoke screen shells but the shelling was so accurate he had a distinct feeling they were being taunted.
With the realisation that the whole army could be moving into a trap, he ordered the battlegroup to a grinding halt. Sure enough, after his battle formation halted their movement, forward observers reported the path in front was hit by the next wave of smoke bombardment, rendering everything in a blanket of white smoke and confirming his hunch that their default route had been anticipated.
Have we been totally outmanoeuvred? Luthor could not fathom such a thing happening at this very moment. Khatalina’s side had never displayed such expertise and Kaithan’s camp had had the upper hand on almost every engagement until now.
‘Lord General,’ his right-hand man, a junior officer, approached him gingerly, breaking his thought process, ‘someone is on the line and wishes to talk to you.’
‘Who?’
‘She claims to be a daughter of the Emperor, currently representing the combined will of Adeptus Sororitas, Adeptus Mechanicus and the Holy Inquisition in supporting Lady Khatalina.’
‘Talk, huh?’ The lord general’s eyes narrowed, ‘that means they do not possess enough leverage to deal with all of us yet and wish to buy time. Have you all worked out where the smoke shells originated from yet?’
‘My Lord, from the evidence so far, we believe the shells originated from our backline.’
‘So, General Borrin has betrayed us or somehow Khatalina’s forces actually took over his command? At any rate, they could not have sent more than an elite strike force to do the job.’
‘I agreed on that assessment, lord. Your orders?’
‘Send Colonel Arnuld’s 144th mobile infantry division to find out what is happening back there. Make sure we take back control of our artillery battalions. If found to be at fault, General Borrin does not have to survive.’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Something fishy is happening, without stable backend support dragging this engagement will be a great disadvantage to us. Prepare to move the whole battlegroup forward, we are diverting from the original plan and going straight in. In the meantime let me talk to whoever this person is.’
* * *
I turned off the communication line and let out an inward sigh.
It was too optimistic to think we could have resolved all this without further bloodshed.
So the talks broke down and it seemed like we would be doing this the hard way. Lord General Luthor von Norden was not intimidated by us dropping smoke screens on his forces one bit, the general had also refused my request for holographic communication thus my halo trick was denied and we negotiated via voice only, as a result I did not have much to work with on him.
From his profile I could see the man was a fierce-looking, hawkish individual who had spent his entire adult life in the military, climbing his way through the ranks with a combination of competency and a tireless work ethic. Background wise, he came from a family with deep ties to the established noble houses of the planet and was a distant uncle to Kaithan, Khatalina’s half brother.
Luthor was proving harder to deal with than I expected, but then again I knew for the lord general, this war was more than a civil dispute, it was personal.
From the information we dug out on him, it was widely known decades earlier Luthor had lost his beloved and only son in what was a messy love affair that had involved Khatalina. The general had hidden that grudge well but apparently, it had secretly manifested into his life’s mission to bring the governor down. Now that he had the one and only chance to see it into fruition, no amount of reasoning could sway his resolve.
Even the fact that Kaithan von Klaeus had retreated from the theatre of war did not seem to bother him much. It might even have the opposite effect since that meant Luthor literally answered to no one but himself on this battlefield, with close to half a million troops and a lot of battle tanks under his command.
From the brief talk, I had the impression he was convinced either our actions were some form of trickery or we did not really have the means to stop his forces. At this point, nothing short of the Emperor himself in his full glory with a whole great crusade fleet appearing in the sky will change his current course of action.
This stubborn old geezer is going to get a lot of people killed.
The same rigid military structure that had enabled us to take over the rear line of the rebel forces now prevented us from convincing the bulk of the main force to surrender.
Shivering slightly from the accumulated strain of ceaselessly using my ability to manage the operation, I gathered my strength before resolving myself for the inevitable big battle that would result in mass casualties for the rebels.
But better the rebels die than dragging the safety of me and my associates together with the future of this planet down the drain. I am sorry a lot of you guys will have to die a wasteful death.
A system chime sounded, signalling Thaberus’ participation.
‘Dominus! Has the engagement with the rebel main army started yet? Can you get Syrine in here too?’ The inquisitor’s voice barged into our virtual communication, something about the way he sounded made me realise this could be serious.
‘I am here, inquisitor. We are just about to make contact with the rebel main force. What is the urgent news?’
‘Syrine? Good! You must listen to what I am about to say carefully. We have just uncovered important leads to the chaos cult working behind the scene. I believe they are planning to use a blasphemous ritual together with an ancient artifact to summon powerful warp entities over.’
Oh, this is serious, seriously bad.
Chaos cultists cooking up long term schemes to bring down worlds is totally a thing in this universe, I was so busy preparing for the war I had totally overlooked the very reason Thaberus was on this planet – chasing insidious chaos cults.
‘To my understanding, this particular ritual utilises the recently departing souls who had died of violent deaths to fuel its potency. In short, everyone on the planet involved in this civil war is but a sacrificial pawn in their scheme! If possible, do not engage the rebel army until this is resolved!’
Stunned by the news, I took another look at the tactical overview and watched in horror as the grand rebel army started moving again, this time they were going straight to our defensive line.