Summary: New Cardreans recruits join the rest of Imperium forces, the differences between cultures and discipline start to surface
Genre: Drama/angst/slice-of-life/action
TW: Foul language, violence, dismemberment, gore, crimes
Pairing: Gallius x Cardrean 958th (found family)
Goblin tag squad: @cardinalcanis @finchly-tintinnabulation @artemisareia
@echo-of-damnation @meervalv0 @jaghatai-khock
@druidwolf21 @beckyninja @gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan
@absynthe-mind @sylestine-redacted @saintsylestine
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Unworthy mongrels
There were hoards of files and maps piled up as high as the eye could see in the room, the stacks appeared more so like pillars holding up the walls and ceiling by the sheer size of it all, the servo-skulls present in the barely habitable space moved like moths or flies while plucking things off from those “pillars” and returning to a round table or a barely made bedframe in search for some content they had been instructed to find and transmit as soon as possible; the wax on the candles that lit the room were almost completely gone, their light casting long shadows on the wall making the unnerving sight of servitors even more unreal than usual. It was in the center of all this mess, hunched over the roundtable at the center of the room, where Elard had been staring at a star map for fifteen minutes without any success of discerning what he was looking at.
The lho-stick on his left hand, neatly rolled up for consumption, shook embers from time to time due to its slow, uneven movements; the fingers holding it trembled not from exhaustion so deep it had made the shaky movements something involuntary and routine, his other hand remained planted against the table to keep himself upright, the joints of the augmetic fingers clicked faintly whenever his weight shifted. There were bags under his eyes, accentuated not only by his age but by the long periods of insomnia suffered through the decades in which this campaign had taken a toll on his health.
A servo-skull drifted beside him, its optics flickering as it pointed to a small piece of parchment casualty estimates across the table’s surface.
“Projected losses for the Helican Front revised upward to-”
“Shut up…just shut up.” His hoarse voice came from his dried lips
Elard exhaled smoke through clenched teeth, his breath wheezed into a dry cough. He could not remember the last time he had slept for more than an hour uninterrupted, or let alone an entire night at all. Now he needed help whenever it came to time periods and which command he had given to which regiment at what moment of the campaign or the current war in some planet; the banners of the regiments had begun to blend in his mind too, no longer being able to identify commanders unless he was hushed into some hint by his right hand man or some other officer close to him in the chain of command.
He was getting old, too old and frail for this whole ordeal; but his chin was always maintained high, making the best of what he could of the greatest honor in all his lifetime, to accomplish the sacred order to reclaim that system in the name of the Imperium. He wouldn’t let his father down for trusting in him to accomplish this mission, nor would Elard back down and show any weakness in the course of his duties. Still, bravery meant nothing if it wasn’t accompanied by a sound mind, which was something that surely but steadily he was beginning to lose…very rapidly.
Outside the chamber walls, somewhere far down in the bowels of the flagship, the great engines groaned like dying beasts, the vibration carried through the deck plating and into his bones. Everything aboard the vessel sounded tired now, even the machine spirits seemed weary of war.
Elard rubbed at his eyes until sparks burst across his vision, the skin beneath them felt raw, soon he would be ready to make planetfall and assess by himself the situation on the front of Zurus, one of the last bastions of the T’au empire in the sector, which according to the reports by the Cadian Colonel Mihael Khorrost was almost ready to completely bend the knee to the Imperial might; but until then, he needed to reorganize, reshape, order and issue orders to other five or so distant regiments dispersed on the eight worlds that remained in the clutches of the Xenos foul power. Entire sectors blinked in pale hues of red and amber before his tired eyes, each mark representing another battlefield demanding men, ships, ammunition or attention he no longer had to spare.
The lho-stick had burned nearly to the filter between his fingers before he finally noticed, he hissed quietly as the ember kissed the skin of his glove and crushed the remains into an overflowing tray beside him, there were dozens there already, piled among parchment scraps and wax drippings. A loud buzz coming from the loudspeakers mounted on the edge of the four walls around him began to sound, insistent and alarming so it was attended as soon as possible, yet the clouded and drifting mind of Elard didn’t caught up on it submerged still in his own thoughts over what he would do and say to those below his chain of command; finally a servo-skull was the one to attend, connecting one of its tendrils to a vox receiver panel, it emitted a low hum as it received the data before turning its “head” in direction of the warmaster.
“Priority summons requesting aid from the warmaster,” Its robotic tone droned, “From Strategium authorities.”
Elard blinked twice as he snapped back to the present, sighing in tiredness when understanding the message; of course there was something, there always was something to discuss with those imbeciles who seemed to know nothing and act upon no orders of their own, they were worse than the very servitors Elard enjoyed having around for even those machines had a better understanding of their orders and did stuff without him having to personally supervise them 24/7. Elard slowly pushed himself away from the table, the joints in his back protesting with dull cracks as he straightened; for a moment he remained there in silence, one hand pressed against the edge of the roundtable while the other adjusted the large row of medals and insignia he had won in his years of service, then doing the same motions with the gold-threaded fabric that adorned the surroundings of said trophies earned while in service of the Imperium.
“Inform them I am on my way,” he muttered.
The servo-skull acknowledged with a burst of static before drifting back toward the vox panel. The Warmaster began moving through the cluttered chamber with measured steps, brushing past swaying parchment stacks and hovering servo-skulls carrying armfuls of reports in their rusted claws; the automatic doors parted sluggishly before him with a hiss of steam, revealing the dim corridor beyond.
He walked with his chest puffed out, rhythm steady as the men and women on his way saluted him with the clinking on their boots as they assumed the position; Elard didn’t salute nor acknowledged them back, nodding once or twice when some poor bastard had not gotten out of the way completely and needed a little encouragement to move. The ship was, too, just as magnific and basking in the glory of decades upon decades of service; the floors were beautifully polished and maintained, the strips of light above their heads always at maximum potency letting no shadow be left without illumination, busts of heroes from old or statues in the name of the Emperor decorated each passageway to the next sector of the ship. It was the pinnacle of Elard’s pride, and so it should be as refined and deserving of honor as he was. Two Tempestus Scions stationed outside a bulkhead snapped to attention as he approached, their hellguns held rigid against their chests.
“Warmaster on deck!”
The blast doors to the Strategium slowly split apart, giving way to the noise of discussion and warfare inside to come into the warmaster’s ears. Dozens of voices overlapped beneath the humming of hololithic projectors and the crackling chatter of vox traffic. The Strategium was enormous, circular in design, tiered with command stations and data pits descending toward the central hololithic display of the system; officers hurried between stations carrying data-slates while servo-scribes mechanically transcribed incoming transmission or the subject discussed there by the figures of power onto endless parchment reels. At the center stood Lord-Admiral Cestus, several Imperial Navy officers, and a collection of Astra Militarum commanders gathered around the projection of Zurus and its neighboring worlds; they all saluted to the approach of the warmaster, Cestus ceding his position to Elard.
“My lord Warmaster,” Cestus greeted with a respectful bow of the head. “Apologies for disturbing you.”
“If this meeting could have been settled without me,” Elard replied dryly while approaching the central display, “then you would not have called.”
The admiral wisely avoided answering by pretending to look down at a report. A hololithic image shifted before them, displaying the industrial world of Zurus covered in clusters of tactical markers.
“Colonel Khorrost reports continued advances through the southern hive districts,” Cestus began. “T’au resistance has fractured into isolated defensive pockets. Casualties remain acceptable.”
“A commendable advance, extend my congratulations to him via a short message, I do not intend for him to have that go over his head so quickly,” Elard answered in a monotone tone
“As you wish, my Lord,” One of the officers exclaimed, already immersed in the task without being asked to.
“However…several railgun batteries remain operational around Point Xray, Warmaster. Our forces there report the guns have been so far unable to damage the structures or even get close to them due to the long range weaponry of our foe.” Cestus continued
“Redirect our heavy artillery Cadian divisions there and bombard it over the course of the night. If by dawn the enemy has kept their stronghold, direct the Admirals batteries on the ship to erase that place from orbit, no matter how much terrain gets affected as well, just advice for impact to our forces there.”
Data shifted across the hololith as officers hurried to relay commands. Elard rubbed tiredly at his temple while more reports were fed into the display, numbers blurred together again; ammunition shortages, delayed reinforcements, food riots in occupied worlds or astropathic interference worsening near the outer reaches of the system; every single inconvenience at once that Elard needed to guide everyone through like toddlers waddling behind their father. Then another figure stepped forward from the edge of the chamber; a thin officer in grey administratum robes, clutching a stack of fresh parchments against his chest.
“My lord Warmaster,” the man said nervously, “there is another matter requiring your immediate awareness.”
Elard looked at him with visible irritation.
“Speak.”
“There have been reports of Cardrean reinforcement troops making footfall on Iopra Maximum approximately three hours ago.”
That caused several officers in the chamber to glance at one another uneasily, Elard’s tired eyes narrowed slightly.
“How many?”
“Current estimates place them at nearly five thousand or so; I am trying to get the numbers right my Lord, but they have just begun to arrive and enough to say they describe it as a “wave” of these…uh…convicts.”
Elard passed a hand through his face attempting to contain his rage. It wasn’t enough not having news from the commissar in charge of that blasted regiment of Cardrea, now he had to deal with a new batch of those ingrates creating more chaos against his structured and carefully planned mobilization between the regiments on his watch; with no “dog” to keep them in check, those barbarians could very well spoil all of his plans for the reclamation of Iopra.
“Who authorized their deployment?” Elard finally asked.
No one answered immediately, that on itself was enough.
The Warmaster let out a slow breath through his nose, weary irritation creeping visibly across his features. It was always the same with Cardrean units; they appeared where they pleased, fought however they wished and with whatever the frakk tactics they wanted and yet somehow still managed to achieve results sufficient enough that the Department Munitorum tolerated their excesses.
A dangerous precedent, one he had never liked but had to swallow his protest whenever that war started and that cursed regiment was thrusted onto him.
“Is there any senior officer currently planetside capable of supervising them?!?” He barked.
Several data-slates were consulted immediately, officers murmured among themselves while servo-skulls drifted overhead transmitting fragmented information streams. Finally, a broad-shouldered Astra Militarum general spoke up.
“General Anael is stationed within the Helsreach districts, my lord. He commands the 82nd Brimlock and portions of the Karsk armored divisions.”
“Yes, yes and although I find him a good soldier he wouldn’t last five minutes with those undesirables before he would start making summary executions; who else is there?” Elard waved his hand, anger starting to build up on his chest
“Colonel Mihael Khorrost remains active in the northern sectors. The Cadians have maintained discipline despite prolonged urban engagement.” Another officer raised his voice, checking a report.
Elard shook his head from side to side, smacking his lips together. Sure, the Cadians were good on their own and could very well ignore the attempts to gourd them that would inevitably spark from the Cardreans to them; but the risk of actually getting diminishing results from that portion of the Cadians essentially crippling their advance to babysit the whiny sons-of-bitches was truly a tragedy.
“He will suffice for now,” the Warmaster muttered. “Transmit immediate authority to Colonel Khorrost over all newly arrived Cardrean detachments until further notice.”
“My lord…with respect, it is unlikely the Cardreans will recognize external authority without direct confirmation from their commissar.” The administratum official hesitated nervously.
Elard slowly turned toward him.
“That,” he said coldly between his teeth, “is why I intend for someone in this Emperor forsaken room to get me Gallius on a vox caster!!! Now!!!” His patience was at its end.
The nearest communications officer blinked uncertainly.
“My lord?”
“You heard me!!!”
“At once.”
The officer hurried toward a nearby vox-station while servitors mechanically adjusted signal relays overhead. Static immediately began crackling through the Strategium as long-range frequencies were cycled one after another; the officer conducting the communication began to sweat as, again, there was still no signs of life nor response from the official channels that had been given to the Commissar in charge of the Cardrean 958th. to respond to; that had been going for years now, when the connection suddenly severed with all astropathic activity the moment their signal was reported near Xanthera VII.
Then, when all the hope inside of the officer seemed lost, a faded barely audible voice began to transmit from the last channel possible; it was so distant and distorted that the caster had to be amplified and the volume turned all the way up. What was more surprising, however, was that the voice was from the Commissar Gallius, but more raspy, unnatural…wrong, somehow.
“-Thisss…ck…isss Commissar Galliusss-ck…can anyone hear-ck thisss?”
Every head in the Strategium turned toward the vox station instantly, the communications officer nearly stumbled over himself in shock.
“Signal confirmed,” he stammered. “By the Throne…”
Elard straightened slowly.
“This is Warmaster Elard of the Imperial reclamation fleet,” he said into the receiver. “Repeat identification and give the commissariat number of the Commissar Gallius.”
Several seconds passed beneath violent bursts of static, then the voice returned with a sigh.
“Commisssar Gallius-ck…ssspeaking.” A little murmur, unintelligible, “Commissariat…ck…589.5442.14-9”
Although the words were slurred and the cadence left a repulsive image of whatever lips were pronouncing those words, there was no doubt the identifications have been correct and corroborated by the other officers in the Stratagenium; that was Commissar Gallius himself. Even the endless background noise of operators and hololithic projectors seemed quieter now, everyone looked at each other and could feel the same questions forming in their minds but none was brave enough to make them out loud.
Elard’s expression hardened.
“Six years without communication,” he said flatly. “Six years ignoring direct strategic summons from Imperial High Command, and now you answer only when your uncontrolled animals begin flooding my warzones.”
“Careful…Warmassster…your officersss may begin to think-ck…you are angry.”
Several commanders exchanged uncomfortable looks. Elard’s jaw tightened visibly.
“You deployed five thousand convicts onto Iopra Maximum without authorization! Are you even going to explain yourself?!?”
“That…wasss not me-ck, Warmassster.” The genuine confusion in Gallius’ voice didn’t calm Elard humor in the slightest
“Stop this! Stop this insubordination in this very moment Commissar, or I will have you executed by dawn! Why are five thousand, or however the frakking size of their reinforcement, of your troops descending on Iopra right now?!?”
There was a moment when not even static could be heard in the vox, as if the connection had been severed all together by the other end of the line. Elard was hunched forward, his eyes staring unblinking at the projection of the vox in his screen, the veins on his face looked like they were about to pop at any moment. Slowly, the warmaster began to breathe deeply, realizing the scene he was making in front of all his officers; he needed to remain unyielding and strong, this was not helping that image at all. Only when his breathing steadied, the vox crackled back to life.
“Now that you’ve-ck….calmed yourssself Elard.” Gallius spoke as soothing as his raspy voice could allow, “You could perhapsss underssstand-ck…that I have just arrived from a Warp jump done from the orbit of Xanthera VII and had nothing to do with the influx of new Cardrean forces…perhapsss they ck-came here because their homeworld didn’t receive any news from me and thought the regiment had been wiped out, perhaps they did thisss whenever I requesssted reinforcements so long ago and only now did their message arrived…”
“So you’re saying.,” Elard made a long inhalation, “that you, truly, had nothing to do with this?”
“No, my lord-ck…I am sssimply ssstating the truth-ck”
Elard stared at the hololithic display without truly seeing it anymore, his mind instead attempting to dissect every word Gallius had spoken. Warp interference, delayed astropathic messages, reinforcements arriving years after being requested; none of it was impossible. In the Imperium, entire crusades had vanished into the Warp and returned generations later believing mere weeks had passed. Still, something about the commissar’s voice unsettled him.
“Then explain Xanthera VII,” he said at last. “Your entire command vanished upon arrival in-system. No communications. No astropathic trace. Nothing.”
Static rolled softly through the vox, the answer took longer this time.
“Xanthera-ck…was lost.”
Several officers shifted uneasily.
“What does that mean?” Elard demanded.
“It meansss exactly what I said.”
“We translated into orbit and found the world already dead. No lights. No vox traffic. No responssse from the surface.”
The astropaths stationed near the chamber’s rear shook their heads and shrugged, to them that explanation seemed as plausible as any other, yet that was simply something too…unexpected for everyone there to believe at face value, it was such a bomb of information out of nowhere.
“For six years?” Elard asked skeptically.
“Perhapsss.”
The Warmaster exhaled slowly through his nose. He was too tired for mysteries, too tired for half-truths and cryptic implications; entire sectors burned while this man spoke in riddles through a dying vox channel, it was unbelievable.
“You will provide a complete account upon arrival,” Elard said firmly. “Every log. Every casualty report. Every movement your regiment made following Xanthera VII.”
“Of courssse, Warmaster.” The response sounded almost amused.
As soon as the vox channel was disconnected, Elard’s grip on the table seemed to relax, the man swayed from side to side as if talking with the commissar had required every ounce of his strength to keep up. He turned, then, to Cestus.
“The moment his vessel and every personnel aboard it enter secured Imperial space, I want them detained and questioned of every little thing for as insignificant as it may seem.” His eyes were fueled with bitter anger, “That is an order, Coronel.”
“As you command, my Lord.”
Elard pushed himself upright from the hololithic table, though the effort looked difficult now. His exhaustion had become impossible to fully conceal; the sharp edge behind his eyes had dulled into something older and far more fragile, a tired old man wrapped in medals and command sigils, forcing himself to continue because there remained nobody else capable of carrying the burden.
The Strategium lights seemed painfully bright suddenly. Inducing a nausea the warmaster was able to conceal due to his request for a iho-stick to put on his lips.
One of the younger officers cautiously approached the table, carrying a data-slate against his chest.
“My lord Warmaster,” he began carefully, “there is also the matter of the Cardrean landings themselves-”
“Like I said before, you damn fool…leave this whole mess to Mihael to order them however he sees fit, although warn him about the particular way the Cardreans tend to react when exemplary executions happen:”
“Yes, my lord.”
He hurried away almost immediately. Far beyond the Strategium walls, the flagship groaned as its engines adjusted course through the void. Somewhere on the planet they orbited, millions of soldiers prepared for another day of slaughter beneath ash-filled skies while commanders shuffled regiments like pieces upon a chessboard. War continued on, with its master stressed and absent-minded, worried the new developments would only bring more chaos into the war, not relief.
–––––––––––––––––––
Through the geysers smoke and the heating hiss of the ground, there was chaos and revolts wherever Mihael gazed at; not among his ranks, that was for sure, he knew his men perfectly to know those instructed under his watch never knew disorder, it had to be those convicts and killers that the Warmaster had somehow trusted the commander to lead. From the overlook of ferrocrete the man stood on, a column of ships left the human cargo they brought with them on the steams beyond his vision, yet the commander didn’t need any eyes to know what was going on in the patches of land the Cardreans descended on: he could hear the gunshots from officers, the shouting to bring control over to masses of people, fighting between his ranks that had been something rare before this very hour for his regiment. The man cursed his luck and every single human being that had let this happen, it was unacceptable for a man of his stature and renown to be reduced to a babysitter of a bunch of misfits that nobody else wanted to lead, so it fell upon his expert hands to control the uncorrectible.
“I should have got them all killed as soon as they disembarked…” He growled, hearing more distant shouting.
“They’re animals,” muttered one of the Kasrkin standing nearby.
Mihael did not rebuke him, the man had merely spoken what most of the regiment already thought; there were no two pairs of eyes that weren’t staring at the “show” before their eyes with disdain, repulsion for the unfit to bear the Aquila of the Imperium. When the winds of the planet blew the steams to other directions, making the men to have a better view of the scene before them, the Cardreans seemed to be there only to misbehave, like if there was no war going all around them; men with more implants than actual flesh harassed the mechanicus auxiliary tech-priests with wrenches and tools made for disassembling, women with sharp knives flirted and pushed male Cadians around, scholars (“why in the Emperor’s name were there scholars here?” Mihael kept wondering) noted the Karskin features in big ledgers almost as tall as themselves; it was just a clash of cultures aggressively taking over discipline and order that had been firmly established on a military encampment.
“Captain Alden, headcount of the newcomers?” Mihael grumbled, his hand hovered a holster
“About…three hundred convicts and other assets from the L’alen system, sir.” The man scrolled on a datapad, “It appears the number of transports was exaggerated”
“Thank the Emperor for that,” The commander huffed, “See to that they have the breathing system fitting for a gas giant like Iopra and then just…send them on a suicide mission, I don’t know”
“Sir, with all due respect…it appears most of them were already fit for this planet surface sir; the most augmetic prone ones already have inhalators-”
“Well color me impressed, that means you will give them less equipment.”
—---------------------------
Yaror thought she was unruly by Morvane standards; indeed, in her lifetime she had many times rebuked literary analysis of old history books with colleagues, and too had been known for the usage of some…illegal substances to keep herself awake at late hours of the night just to finish essays or papers on different matters of planetary business or theories about the evolution of gangs in the adjacent world of Cardrea; but never, ever in her worst nightmares did she envisioned sharing the same space with any of the inhabitants of Cardrea nor, even, of the dangerous pirates from the Karthion’s asteroid belt. Yet here she found herself now, in the middle of a war she barely knew what it was about, with a Axe grabbing her by the waist and manhandling her to form a line with the rest of recruits from the regiment.
“Just…stay sonen still, pen-dog!”
The gruff voice of another Cardrean behind her came just as the woman felt shoved forward; around her tens of bodies were being pressed together and herded onto neatly made rows of soldiers all facing officers dressed with attires Yaror only recognized by description alone, never before seeing so many Imperials from the Astra Militarum together. Mud sucked at her boots with every step.
She hated this planet already.
The air itself felt diseased; thick, hot, impossible to breathe properly without a proper gas mask. Somewhere beyond the steam fields, machinery groaned endlessly beneath the ground while distant gunfire cracked every few minutes like someone snapping branches in a dead forest; the fact nobody around the scribe was barely reacting to those gunshots was the second most worrisome thing Yaror could think of, the most important thing being nobody was seemingly distributing the precious masks that allowed a regular human being to properly breathe in this environment…her head was already starting to spin threatening with vomiting everything she had eaten that day,
A sharp whistle snapped her attention forward.
“Attention! You all will be handed a gun each! Do not complain about the condition of it nor the firepower of it! When I blow this whistle, I want the first five lines to march forward and engage the Xenos!” An instructor yelled as loud as his throat allowed him to, “I don’t want any excuses and I don’t want anyone breaking formation, understood!?!?”
“Shut the sonen up offbright and give the suicide order already!!!” Yaror heard someone shouting behind her
“Can we skip to the part where I get to kill something? I’m bored as a grox over here!” Another voice was heard, this time coming from her line
“Silence! Silence all of you!!!” The instructor yelled
“Or what!?!? Do we get to die faster, Concord-blind asshole?”
“Hey, don’t say that! There are pen-dogs here! They aren’t gonna die, they’ll run away and will get shot in the back!”
“Shut up!!! Shut up or I’ll start executing whoever disobeys my orders!!!” The officer’s face was blushing red
“Oooooh you made the squeaky officer mad, Rath!”
“Emperor’s balls I hope so!”
Genuine cruel laughter spread all around the rows and rows of Cardreans, entire lines of recruits bent forward cackling while the instructor trembled with fury under the scorching sun over their heads; several of the more heavily augmented recruits slapped each other on the shoulders like men sharing drinks in a tavern rather than awaiting deployment into combat. Had they all gone insane? “No…” Yaror answered herself, “This is just Cardrean typical shit”.
“I SAID-!” The officer raised his whistle again with a shaky hand.
There wasn’t even time to make fun of the Imperial when a loud boom propelled everyone close to the man backwards, there was a loud flash, a bone chilling sound and then…the officer was no more than blood splattered everywhere, the ground where moments before he had stood on now just a smoking crater where some bomb or rocket or a laser or whatever Xeno technology had just hit the Imperial positions. There was silence for a heartbeat longer, faces of recruits that moments before had been so cheerful now replaced with looks of shock and bewilderment; nobody said anything but the confused stares at one another said everything that words failed to express, Yaror felt like she was about to break into a crying fit of fear, induced by the most primal urge her body had ever felt of running away from there and not look back until she was far away enough from war for it to affect her.
“Well…” A Tech Lunatic ventured to speak, “Now what?”
“We…” One of the Sisters replied, taking a step forward and looking down at the smoking crater, then to the frontlines and finally to the war beyond, “We go ahead and kill those aliens?”
Another uncomfortable silence was felt for a few more minutes; someone sneezed in the last line on the back, another person whistled a tune out of sync.
“Yeah, sounds good…” An Axe broke the silence, inhaled hard and then shouted “KILL THE XENOS! PURGE THE HERETIC!”
“Remember Infernodum!” A voice joined the scream
“REMEMBER INFERNODUM!” The rest of the frontlines retorted; then every man and woman was off to their own devices to charge or entrench themselves as they saw fit.
Yaror remained frozen. The wave of bodies surged around her almost immediately, boots splashing through mud as recruits scattered toward weapon crates, trench mouths, abandoned barricades…anywhere that resembled cover or an opportunity to kill something first. The suddenness of it made no sense to her, one moment they had been heckling an officer like drunken laborers outside a refinery hall and now they moved with terrifying enthusiasm.
“MOVE YOUR ASS, SCRIBE!” someone roared near her ear.
Due to the peer pressure all around her, Yaror stumbled and staggered her footsteps towards the first crate on the trenches that looked like it could contain some kind of weapon; she slid the wooden cover off from it, revealing three rows containing two plasma pistols each, whenever she stretched her hand to take one another pair of hands came from behind and picked it up shouting a quick “Thank ya!” before disappearing into the trenches. She took another in a rush, afraid to have it snatched away from her hands, and quickly threw herself to the first trenchline she could find, lasers and plasma whizzing above her head just as she got into cover. “I-I don’t know how to use this!!!” She screeched, talking to herself as she tucked her knees to her chest. Gunfire erupted from the forward perimeter; real gunfire, not warning shots or disciplinary coordinated fire, sheer raw war happening all around her with death taking a life everywhere she looked and from every direction the sounds of war came from.
A cluster of recruits near the eastern trench suddenly exploded apart in sprays of mud and blood as bright projectiles tore through them from somewhere unseen.; bodies dropped instantly, the survivors shouted in confusion, firing blindly into the steam. Yaror ducked instinctively as another volley hissed overhead.
Emperor save me. Emperor save me. Emperor save me…
Lasfire answered immediately from the Imperial lines, red beams lancing through steam in frantic volleys; shadows moved between the geysers beyond the perimeter, fast, tall shapes of ochre and brown became sometimes hot spots of lasfire and other times seemed to vanish in the blink of an eye before reappearing meters ahead like if it was nothing, fading into a translucid figure before being completely gone from sight. Stealth suits, Yaror had read about them in some of the books back in Morvane and couldn’t shy away from the awe it produced within her, but also the dread of knowing they were there to kill her and all those around her.
“THERE THEY ARE!” A Cardrean woman beside her grinned wildly while reloading.
How could these people sound excited?. Another explosion rocked the staging grounds behind them, sending dirt and debris raining over the recruits; through the chaos Yaror noticed the disciplined soldiers from earlier finally moving past the disorganized masses, the Cadians she and the rest of the recruits were supposed to be supporting and not causing them any more troubles than they already had with the war going on. They advanced in measured lines through the mud, rifles firing in synchronized bursts toward the steam fields. Orders traveled crisply between them despite the noise, every movement controlled and efficient. Watching them felt like witnessing an entirely different kind of humans at war and, to some extent, that was a correct assumption.
“So you finally decided to join the show!” A Sister mockingly gestured a salute to the Imperial forces around
“Shut up convict and keep shooting!” A Cadian replied
“Just like your guard did when your planet-?”
“DON’T YOU FRAKKING DARE FINISH THAT PHRASE!” A chorus of voices rushed to answer
“It’s so sonen easy…” Yaror heard the Sister mumble
The argument dissolved beneath another barrage of incoming fire. Brilliant streaks of blue-white energy carved through the steam choked battlefield and detonated against the forward trench lines with enough force to throw entire sections of mud and ferrocrete into the air with violence. Yaror instinctively flattened herself deeper against the soaked ground, hands pressed over her head while debris rained across the staging field, she had barely fired her weapon at all, which now was all muddied in the ground next to her; the knockback hurt her shoulders whenever she held it and, as she discovered soon enough, Yaror didn’t had quite the aim required to make a shot worth a damn; nobody cared though, there was not a singular soul around her watching what she was up to or how well she was shooting so why bother to shoot at all? What was the point of sending someone all the way from Morvane to here’ The order from the superiors on her covenant back home hadn’t been born out of a punishment for her or banishment, it had been like a privilege, they had made it sound like Yaror and all the other Morvane scholars were being sent to make some holy work in the fields where the Imperium “needed them the most”, but was it really an honor to be in the middle of a pandemonium like this one? However point of view Yaror tried to study those questions from could never and, most likely, would never give her the proper answer.
The battlefield, too, had become impossible to make sense of anything at all. Steam from the geothermal vents mixed with smoke from burning equipment and the chemical stench of discharged lasguns until the entire front blurred into a suffocating haze of red flashes and moving silhouettes. Every few seconds the fog illuminated with sudden bursts of light revealing fragments of horror before swallowing them again; people with one arm less or a leg missing crawling on the ground shouting for a medicae that would never come to assist convicts like them, a Cadian dragging wounded soldiers toward cover without slowing his rifle fire, packs of Cardrean tarns shooting at empty steam geysers only for invisible return fire to cut them down moments later. Whenever the strange xenos shapes appeared, they did so only partially, outlines shimmering in and out of existence like ghosts trapped halfway between worlds. Sometimes she caught glimpses of angular armor reflecting the floodlights, their movements carried an unnatural smoothness, too precise and fluid to resemble human motion; each appearance was followed almost immediately by another series of lethal energy blasts punching through men and machinery alike. The guardsman, Yaror realized with horror, were being hunted by those stealth suits like predators, this wasn’t a common gunfight.
It was then Yaror truly understood how thin the line holding this entire force together actually was. The recruits hated the discipline imposed upon them, the Cadians despised the recruits for existing among them and officers barked threats louder than orders while nobody outside of the men under their command actually listened to them right up until someone was torn to pieces by enemy gunpowder. Nothing about this army felt united except the fact there were aliens trying to kill all of them equally. Somewhere ahead, a section of trench collapsed inward beneath concentrated fire, dragging soldiers and recruits alike screaming into boiling mud and shattered support beams. The disciplined firing patterns of the Cadians shifted immediately, several squads redirecting toward the breach while others advanced forward to cover the repositioning. By contrast, many recruits simply broke formation altogether, running wherever instinct pushed them, years of improvised fights in rooftops of Hive cities or buildings were the only kind of war those people knew and reacted to; there was no coordination between the two regiments, they were literally and figuratively worlds apart in that fight, this was not just noted by Yaror but she could feel how the Xenos realized this too; that was the sole reason for the Imperial wrongdoing that would lead everyone to death. And she couldn’t stop any of it, only cower in fear on her place, watching in slow motion how the Imperium was losing ground meter by meter.
Then a body crashed into her from the side. Yaror gasped as both she and the stranger tumbled hard against the trench wall, the man scrambling beside her wore what remained of a Cadian’s uniform burned nearly black across one shoulder, blood streamed from his scalp while panic consumed his face entirely.
“They’re inside the vents,” he babbled breathlessly. “Throne, they’re inside the damn vents already-”
His words ended abruptly, a narrow beam of pale energy punched clean through his skull; Yaror followed the steam to the hole where it had come from and saw something reflecting the light just below the ground beneath her. She screamed.
—--------------
Mihael realized the day was lost when the sound of war started to come closer to his command position in the artillery batteries trenchline. Bit by bit, section by section, discipline eroded beneath the pressure of a force that understood exactly where to strike. Through magnocular lenses he observed another trench segment buckle under concentrated xenos fire while guardsmen scattered in every direction the moment the bombardment intensified, some attempting to regroup with nearby squads only to disrupt firing formations, a handful charged blindly into the steam with screaming bravado and vanished seconds later beneath precise enemy volleys. And amidst it all, flashes of the Xenos suits of combat sometimes surged from the ground, taking advantage of the clouds of smoke expelled by the geysers to make their sudden strikes, their heat coolers impeding the suits from becoming their entombed dooms; he had never such a thing, never imagined the Xenos coil be that cunning.
Mihael lowered the magnoculars slowly, disbelief and horror contorting his face.
“Sir, orders?” His captains looked at Mihael in search for a plan
The commander’s jaw tightened; an entire month wasted, men wasted, equipment wasted, defensive infrastructure overrun because some distant command structure had decided this mongrel reinforcement experiment was strategically acceptable. Mihael mind was clouded by rage, he wanted to scream, to shout curses directed at the warmaster Elard, he wanted to kick and shoot every last one of the undisciplined bastards that had thrown months and months of careful planning and hard fought victories into the Warp by their sheer incompetence and stupid sense of pride in spitting onto everything the Imperium had gifted them with. Mihael inhaled slowly through the stale recycled air of his rebreather before finally speaking.
“Signal all remaining formations we are leaving.”
“Fallback order, sir?” Alden straightened immediately.
“Yes.” Mihael’s expression hardened further. “Full retreat.”
It was a reality hard to swallow, the commander felt it when he glanced at his officers; how much this pains them to do so, for a proud and decorated regiment like the Cadians 322nd. This was worse than dying out; but Imperial duty came first and honor second, and so the orders were relayed and whatever vehicle still operational was driven back to form a last line of defense and buy the retreating forces some time to get out of the fray. Several disciplined squads immediately began organized withdrawals from the shattered trenches, covering each other with practiced volleys as they retreated through the mud. The Cardreans, however, required some more convincing to leave their posts all together.
They did not collapse once the retreat began, they did not scatter into full panic as many other auxiliary formations would have under equivalent pressure; instead, they fought with a kind of ugly stubbornness that bordered on irrationality. Groups that minutes earlier had looked ready to stab one another over rations now held defensive pockets with desperate cohesion, dragging wounded companions through boiling mud while firing wildly toward advancing xenos silhouettes in the steam. Mihael observed one cluster of recruits hold a collapsed trench junction nearly four minutes longer than ordered, long enough for two crippled Cadian troop carriers to escape encirclement further west, another group detonated their last charges inside a geothermal vent rather than abandon the position quietly, burying themselves and several pursuing stealth suits beneath an eruption of boiling slurry and shattered rock.
Crazy, primitive, undisciplined bastards, all of them; but their results couldn’t be denied by anyone who saw them fighting. The convoy rumbled onward through the steaming plains while darkness slowly crept across Iopra’s horizon; behind them the battlefield continued glowing red beneath bombardments and burning wreckage, a wounded scar stretching across the geothermal fields.The Cardreans were following the convoy on foot, most of them had stopped firing whenever the enemy had stopped pursuing them; battered, bloody and injured, some of the Cadians purposely looked away from the recruits or made small talk between them to pretend they couldn’t see the unfair silent treatment they were giving the Cardreans. An all-time classic way for the Imperials to repay the L’alen inhabitants' efforts: by making them walk on their injured bloody feet while the rest of them could rest and tend their wounds from the safety of their vehicles. The battle was over and with it the last moments of considering Cardrean scum like equals.
Mihael observed it without comment from atop the command Chimera; when the water reserves were distributed, they first went to the regiment proper before auxiliary allocations were considered, the casualty checks were separated naturally into different “regiments” without the need to speak about it first; nobody protested against it, not certainly those that were trying to keep up with engines on foot. Ahead, the refinery fortress rose through the steam fields at last, enormous industrial towers vomiting black smoke into the poisoned atmosphere while lumen walls illuminated fresh defensive emplacements around the perimeter; guards waited behind heavy barricades as retreating forces streamed inward beneath the klaxons of emergency mobilization.As the convoy finally crossed into the refinery perimeter, the commander cast one last glance toward the endless line of bloodied Cardreans still trudging through the mud behind the armored columns. Most of them collapsed the second they were in “allied” ground, fighting back tears of inscrutable pain as they tried to heal each other and soothe their pain and sorrow through a shared community. Neither the guards, nor the Cadians or any other Astra Militarum member there present, who could have very well witnessed and listened to it all helped any of the Cardreans with their misery and agony. Mihael stared at the poor bastards for a minute before shaking his head, returning to the medicae wing inside the refinery fortress without even looking back at the bodies laid down in the middle of the encampment suffering all along in their anguish. All the commanders that evening took painkillers and other medicine to feel their heads light and to stop thinking and worrying about the recruits; none wanted to point out the most blatant irony of it all, that being the medicae wing being only a few meters away from the place where the Cardreans had collapsed and formed a communal circle to fend for themselves.