After the Fall
XXXXX
Colonel Mira sighed as she looked at herself in the reflection of her personal mirror. It seemed not too long ago that she had started to spot gray hairs. Now, she was having a hard time spotting the hairs that weren't gray. They were there, a few flecks of brown in an ocean of pale, withered hair, but you practically needed to comb through to find them. She lay the mirror down.
At a hundred and fifty years of age, she had to consider something that she thought that she would never think of. Death by growing old, not fighting on the battlefield. She wasn't quite sure what to think of that. So many times she had faced down the enemies of man, and had thought "this time, this time I won't walk away from it." And yet she had. Against the manipulations of the foul Eldar, she had survived. Against the overwhelming ferocity of Chaos, she had survived. Against the brutality and endless numbers of Orks, she had survived.
Orks. Of all the foul creatures that had nearly claimed her life, they had come the closest. She looked around her. She was sitting in the commander's seat of a Salamander scout tank, the driver right in front of her. A cognitior in front of her showed that it was part of a formation of around three hundred vehicles, all moving towards a single direction. The majority of the formation was made up of Chimeras, carrying their valuable cargo of Cadian guardsman. Two-hundred Chimeras with twelve guardsmen in each, bringing her strike force to 2,400. A good portion of the Cadian 203rd. The survivors of that fateful battle.
Graia, the Forge World that they had been deployed to protect from the WAAAAAGH! of Warboss Grimskull, all those decades ago. She and her men had never left the planet, for countless reasons. At first, it had been due to the Inquisition quarantining the planet after the Ork invasion had been followed up by a Chaos incursion. Five years later, when the taint of the Archenemy could not longer be found on the planet, they were still required to remain. Partially because of how many losses they had taken, with them only finding a few hundred replacements by recruiting locals, but also partially to deal with the continued Ork presence.
Just like how she and the 203rd had never left Graia, neither had the Orks. They were a shadow of what they once were, but it was nearly impossible to totally eradicate them. In the invasion of Graia, they had scattered their spores everywhere, and it had been months before proper population control teams could be assembled. Something that had given the Orks plenty of time to start multiplying and spread out even further. She and the other Cadians had been forced to settle in for the long haul, attacking the Orks wherever they popped up.
Thankfully, the incidents of them appearing had been slowly decreasing as time went by. It had now gotten to the point where the time between incidents had reached half a year. Hopefully, they would be gone for good soon, and this planet would finally be rid of the xeno presence.
It seemed that that someone else out there agreed, and was interested in speeding up the process. Quite a few additional regiments had been deployed to Graia, and all of them had been viciously engaging the Orks. In fact, she and the 203rd were on their way to reinforce them at this moment. "All units, increase acceleration," Mira ordered over the Vox. Friendly forces have engaged the enemy. The Greenskins have taken enough human lives as it is. Make them pay for every last one of them."
There was a chorus of confirmations from her officers. She took a quick sweep over the details of her formation, reminding herself of the assets she had one last time. In addition to the Chimeras and her Salamander, she had thirty Leman Russ battle tanks, thirty Hydra tanks, twenty Basilisks, and twenty Hellhounds. Only the Chimeras were technically part of the 203rd, the rest all belonged to other regiments that specialized in armored warfare. Regiments that had been idly shuffled off to this planet to deal with the ongoing Ork infestation. Nevertheless, the 203rd and Mira had learned to work in unison with them.
"Any visual on the targets?" she asked the commanding officers of the other regiments. She had been given authority of the counterattack on the Orks, but the COs of the various regiments maintained their positions, relaying her orders and acting as they saw fit when it didn't contradict her. She thought this way was fitting, it kept experts within their field, but she still needed updates from them.
"Not yet," a gruff male voice said, "but I can see smoke, looks like artillery strikes. Might be friendly, some of our advance units did manage to get there. What defenses did you say that they had again?"
"A few thousand infantry, dug in. Hastily dug in, but dug in all the same," Mira replied.
"Well, looks like the Orks are facing them head on," the commander said. "I hope they aren't all green boys and girls, it'll be all for naught if they rout before we can ever get there. Damn it, we're still not in range."
"Almost there," Mira said, more to herself than anything, before continuing to speak into the Vox. "Weapons free as soon as you get the chance and friendly fire is a non-issue."
"Roger that, don't shoot anything that isn't big, green and ugly," the other commander replied. Mira allowed herself a small smile, but nothing more. She had to keep her eyes on the display in front of her. They were nearing the edge of a heavy concentration of habblocks on the edge of Graia's eastern continent. Beyond them was nothing but dead lands, devastated in the Ork invasion, and where the survivors had hidden out. Fighting amongst each other, repopulating, and eventually reorganizing.
A trench line five kilometers long had been dug between the habblocks and the bad lands over the course of two days, as soon as the massive Ork attack was spotted. A few regiments that had been posted nearby had set up the initial defenses, while Mira had organized reinforcements and vehicle support. They had gotten word, even as they sped to engage the xeno forces, that the defenses were being assaulted by the Orks. How well the battle was going was currently unclear. Vox communications were becoming increasingly spotty as the battle continued.
"Hold on…hold on…" the commander of the vehicle regiments aid. "FIRE!" The thirty main cannons of the Leman Russ tanks all roar, their shells soaring through the air. Standing up, Mira poked her head into the multi-spectral surveyor hanging just under the overhead hatch, and surveyed the battle She just barely saw the explosions in the distance, but they were still too far for her to make them out clearly. Although she was close enough to see that the Leman Russ tanks had been dead on. She let out a soft moan of frustration. This Salamander was a very old and dilapidated model, its surveyor wasn't up to snuff.
"All units," she said, switching frequencies to a universal band. "Execute pre-designated maneuvers. Reinforce the defensive lines where they're weakest, provide support, and drive the green menace back. For the Emperor." A loud, proud chorus of "For the Emperor!" echoed across the Vox lines, as pockets of vehicles began to split of from the main group. Six to eight Chimeras would pack together and speed off, a couple of the other vehicles either in front, or not far behind. Before too long, Mira's Salamander was alone, except for seven Chimeras, a Leman Russ, and a Hellhound, all of which were heading directly to the center of the defensive line.
As the cannon of the Leman Russ thundered again, Mira finally got a good view of the battlefield. Countless Orks were swarming forward, some clutching axes, others firearms, all of them with their mouths open. The roar of "WAAAAAAAAAAGH!" was clearly audible, even over the sound of gunfire and explosions. Dozens of vehicles were also present among amounts the advancing horde. The majority of them trucks, a decent among of looted Imperial vehicles, and among them, a few heavily armored battlewagons.
The trench that was under assault had a heavy stream of fire erupting from it. Constant streaks of bright red las fire, occasional interrupted by the smoke trail of a rocket or the yellow blur of tracer rounds. The constant barrage was eating away at the Orks, with hundreds of them dying before they could even reach the trench lines, but the survivors simply charged over the corpses without a second thought. In fact, the ground was littered with so many bodies, that Mira was sure that the Orks had tried previous assaults, ones that had ended with the attacks slaughtered to the last man.
Despite the overwhelming amount of dead Orks, they were rapidly closing with the trench line, even as dozens of them died. The defensive fire was not deterring them in the slightest. The Orks, as much as Mira hated them, were no cowards.
There was still quite a couple of kilometers between her forces, a distance that took a time for her mechanized infantry to speed across, even at maximum velocity. The battle cannon of the Leman Russ in front of them continued to thunder, dotting the enemy forces with explosions. "Don't overextend once you reach the trenches!" Mira ordered, raising her voice over the increasingly audible detonations. The Orks will come to us, don't fight them out in the open where they have an advantage!"
They couldn't be more than a kilometer away now, Mira could clearly watch the person to person fighting. The section of the line they were heading towards had a platoon strength force holding it. A pair of heavy stubbers were being manned, firing nonstop at the xenos, while the rest relied on their lasguns. Occasionally, a handful of Orks would near the line, and a great belch of flame would rise up to meet them. They had flamers as well. "Good," Mira muttered to herself, "We'll need that for the aftermath."
As she continued to watch, there was a flash of bright red and the head of one of the gunners exploded. An Ork had managed to get a lucky shot in. She slumped backward, her hands still firmly gripping the gun, which fired harmlessly and pointlessly into the air. The second gunner turned his head and shouted something Mira could not hear. Judging by his pips and the hellgun power pack on his back, he was the sergeant. One of the troopers approached the stubber, hesitated, and instead of taking over, continued to fire with his lasgun.
A vein pulsed in the sergeant's face, and he started screaming at the trooper, gesticulating wildly and occasionally making a very rude hand sign at the trooper. It didn't matter through, the momentary lapse in heavy fire had been what the Orks had needed. A pack of around fifty managed to force their way through the fire and towards the trenches. The flame troopers, clearly terrified even from this distance, sent roaring tongues of flames at the approaching enemy, but it wasn't enough.
At least twenty Orks made it to the trench, the first one in swinging an axe at the man who had refused to pick up the heavy stubber. The first blow was surely fatal, but that didn't stop the Ork from gleefully standing over the bloody corpse, his weapon descending again and again. The outward fire instantly stopped as the Imperial forces turned their attention on the ones who had breached their defensed, firing desperately at the green giants. The Orks, delighted at their success, as well as finally killing humans, returned fire. Their normally inaccurate weapons now utterly devastating in the close quarters of the trench.
Mira grit her teeth. "There are Greenskins in the trenches!" she reported to the vehicles still in her unit. "Move to point blank range and eliminate them. Refrain from using all weapons that could hit our allies, no flamers or battle cannons, use heavy bolters. Even then, take care to ensure that you do not hit friendlies!"
Her gunner, a young boy who couldn't be more than eighteen, noticeably rubbed the back of his neck in worry. The driver spotted this out of the corner of her eye, and whispered a few words of encouragement. Mira felt a speck of annoyance. The boy wasn't Cadian, he was one of the locals that had joined up after the Ork invasion. A Cadian would be ready for combat and not need someone to coddle him.
The second after she had had thought this, she chastised herself. He had signed up to do his duty for the Guard, and he was still here. Not everyone had had the same training of Cadia. As a whole, very few humans had collectively been trained to be able to field strip and resemble a lasgun from the age of six. Humanity couldn't afford to be picky right now.
She turned her attention back to the trench. The fighting was thick and fierce now, corpses from both sides were slumping over the side of the trench. Whether out of bravery or simple panic, some of the guardsmen were engaging the Orks in melee combat. At first, she thought that this would be suicidal, only for the bright blue flash of a power sword to cut through the torso of one of the Orks. She spotted a couple more bursts of flame, but she could tell that the Orks were pushing through. Not for long though.
Her unit finally finished the approach, coming to a creeping halt just before the trench line, and all of their hull mounted heavy bolters opened fire. The Orks were completely caught off guard by this sudden influx of fire, so vicious that it quickly reduced even the massive and armored aliens to blood mulch within seconds. The guardsmen were just as taken aback as the Orks, although, thankfully, they had enough sense about them to scramble away from the pack of Orks.
"All units, disregard previous orders, you are weapons free on flamers," Mira reported, the second the last guardsman was at a safe distance. Almost at once, the main cannon of the Hellhound burst to life, flames engulfing the Greenskins within a matter of seconds. Mira's Salamander joined in with its smaller but no less deadly flamer, and within no time at all, the last of the Orks were dead and burning on the trenches.
"Chimeras, deploy all troops, reinforce the trenches, then form a wall of steel. Everyone else, fire from behind!" The doors of the Chimeras slid open, and a platoon of Cadians poured into the trenches, a handful carrying heavy weapons that they instantly set up, while the rest slid into cover, lasguns at the ready. Two medics jumped down and instantly began to attend to the wounded of the initial defenders, barking orders at aids for what medicine they needed.
Said initial defends, while clearly shaking, hastily returned to their post. The sergeant grabbed his heavy stubber without a word and returned to firing on the amassed enemy in the distance. A Cadian had taken position at the second stubber, and before too long he and the sergeant were barking reports at each other, coordinating their fire in order to concentrate it on the thickest parts of the horde.
The second the Chimeras were empty, they forced themselves through the trenches. Some of them were able to simply go over them where the trench was thinner, while others dove down and then up over the other side. Swerving sideways, they formed a makeshift wall against the enemy forces, their weapons firing nonstop as they did. The Leman Russ and Hellhound each slid up to a different gap in the makeshift barricade of Chimeras, and fired from within. Mira's Salamander hung back a bit, acting as a last line of defense in case any Orks managed to get through, and playing to the strength of the vehicles underpowered and short range main cannon.
Already, she could see that the tide of the battle was turning. The massive influx of forward firepower that she had brought was having a devastating effect on the Orks. They were not deterred in the slightest, some of them even seemed to be excited by the prospect of a more hardened target, but their confidence was proving to be their undoing. Barely any of them were able to reach the trenches now, and those that did only did in small pockets. Victory wasn't a matter of if, rather when.
Yet, Mira couldn't help but swivel in her seat to look around the battlefield, including down to the far sides of their defense lines. Here and there, soldiers were falling to enemy rounds, a Chimera would explode from a concentration of Ork rockets, and a well placed grenade would send a pack of limbless soldiers flying. She ground her teeth in rage. Even after all this time, after Captain Titus had cut off the head of this warband, they were still plaguing this planet and its people. How many more had to die before they were finally free of this green plague?
"Colonel!" the driver of the Salamander shouted. "We've got a dozen Ork trucks heading right towards us! They aren't carrying any passengers and-oh frak, they're suicide units!" Mira slammed the surveyor back to the forward position. Sure enough, a dozen bright red flat beds were heading straight for the line of Chimeras.
They had been loaded up with red barrels that had the Ork skull on them, as well as what looked like captured Imperial munitions. They carried no passengers with the exception of a handful of Gretchen who had been given the thankless jobs of handling the explosives in the backs. They had detonators in their hands, apparently to make sure that the explosion wasn't premature. Meanwhile, each truck had a Ork driving it, all of them screaming "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" in a single, guttural note.
"Don't let them through!" Mira ordered, but it was a needless command. Every Imperial weapon within a half kilometer diameter was already aimed at the trucks. The lasgun and stubber rounds bounced harmlessly off of the armored fronts of the flat beds, but one round managed to tear through the throat of the rightmost driver. It veered off to the side before it started to flip, leaving a ball of fire behind the rest of the Ork formation. The heavy bolters had more luck, chewing through the armor and sending three more up in flames, while a single blast from the Leman Russ claimed another pair. The rest, however, all managed to find their marks.
Unbridled glee on their faces, the Orks let out one last "WAAAAAAGH!" before their trucks finally slammed into the Imperial transports. Four of the Chimeras were consumed by fire, and even the Leman Russ was badly damaged. Its right treads were completely blown off, and sparks were flying from the front, where the armor was dangling off.
Overall, the Ork horde had been thinned out by this point, although they were still viciously pushing. Urged on by the success of their suicidal brothers, the local Orks clumped together and attempted to make a breakthrough. At this point, the four dead Chimeras became a liability. Their burnt out husks had been a source of death for the Orks and mobile cover for the Imperium. Now, with the crew and machine spirits dead, they were acting as limited cover for the Orks. Indeed, some matter of sense seem to have come over the Orks, and they were charging for the wrecks of the APCs before looping around and heading on for the trenches.
Hundreds of the xeno barbarians were now working their way through the burning vehicles, their weapons flaring as they fired without aiming. The few remaining vehicles desperately returned fire, attempting to stem the flow, the Hellhound going so far as to push through and drive directly into the thickest part of the mob. At least a dozen Orks were crushed, and five times that were consumed by flames, but before too long a hail of grenades had fallen on the Hellhound. One tore open a hole in the Hellhound's petroleum tanks, and the next second it was consumed in a blinding explosion that, in a silver lining, also swallowed up around fifty nearby Orks.
Mira silently made the sign of the Aquila as she watched this noble sacrifice. She was not certain if the crew of the Hellhound had meant for their deaths to accomplish such a feat, but she would not insult their memory by implying otherwise. It had taken the edge off of the enemy assault, although the Orks were still pushing hard.
Pushing open the hatch to the Salamander, Mira stuck her head out and looked back upon the infantry in the trenches. She was not certain if the Vox would be able to reach the non-Cadians and she didn't have time to find out. "Grenades!" she shouted. "Any you have left! One volley! On my mark!" She twisted in the hatch, undoing the bandolier of grenades that she herself was wearing. Fingering the pin, she kept her eyes on the nearing horde.
Bullets pinged off of the front of the Salamander, and a couple came far to close for comfort. Every survival instinct in Mira's mind screamed that she needed to get back into the safety of the Salamander, but she couldn't. She had drawn the attention of all Imperial infantry in the area, regardless of whether she had direct command over them or not. If they saw her duck and cower, they would panic, their resolve put to the test. She would and could endure.
The Orks drew nearer, close enough that Mira could make out the expressions in their eyes. The love of battle and slaughter, the joy of being in their element. An expression that she had grown to know. To know and hate. "MARK!" Four pins tumbled down the side of the Salamander as she threw her bandolier, two frag and two krak grenades, into the thickest parts of the horde. Behind her, a volley of grenades joined hers. Some, like Mira, had tossed their entire entire bandolier. Others had only had a single grenade left from the prolonged fighting, which they had thrown as hard as they could. One person had even thrown their lasgun. At first, Mira had thought that the guardsman in question had lost its nerve, until the lasgun in question exploded with a ferocity that easily surpassed that of the grenades.
The row of explosions had taken out most of the remaining Orks, but a few still survived. Those had been at the front of the mob when the grenades had been thrown, far enough ahead to survive with only minor injuries, which was nothing to an Ork. With one last defiant roar, they poured into the trenches for a second time.
The trenches had much more men in it than the last time they had moved to person to person to combat, but it was still a hard fight. Guardsmen were once again reduced to shooting at point blank range, firing desperately at full auto. Axes were swung and fire was returned. Mira bit her lip as once again guardsmen began to fall. One Ork darted forward, his axe raised over his head, and swung down at a man she recognized as the sergeant who had been manning the heavy stubber.
She expected the man's head to be caved in, but there was a flash of blue, and the man defiantly raised a sword above his head. The axe shattered as it crashed into the power field of the blade, the crude Orkish weapon being no match for the destructive field. The Ork paused, puzzled at the destruction of his weapon, trying to piece together how it had happened. While his foe was distracted, the sergeant took his sword in both hands and gave a mighty swing. The Ork's head toppled off to the side, the puzzled look still painted on its face, even in death.
A second Ork charged forward, repeating the actions of the first. With a swift blow, the sergeant severed the alien's hand at the wrist, before following up with a cleaving blow to the torso. A third Ork, learning from the mistakes of his fallen allies, chose to simply aim its rifle at the sergeant. Realizing that the xeno had wised up, the sergeant dropped his power sword and went for his hellgun, which was hanging loosely from its strap.
Mira, was quickly. She had begun to draw her hell pistol as she had watched, and now it was firmly in her hand. Her very first shot went directly through the Ork's skull, and it toppled over, never knowing what had killed it. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the sergeant sparing a glance to see who his savior had been, but she had more important matters to attend to.
She began firing into the mass of Orks, trying to get them in the head when possible, but not passing up body shots when they presented themselves. Orks were tough enough to take multiple shots to the gut and keep fighting for some time before bleeding out. Even Mira's hellgun, which was a cut above standard lasguns, needed to get several hits in to kill them there. A headshot on something as tough as an Ork was still fatal, but Mira couldn't afford to be picky. In the middle of a brutal melee such as this, any direct hit was a shot worth taking.
So she continued to fire, catching at least five Orks in the head and who knew how many others. She fired until her power cell ran dry, whereupon she promptly slapped in a fresh cell and continued to fire. The Orks, so busy on their opponents in the trenches, didn't even notice until the las rounds had already hit him, and even then it took them too long to identify the source. Mira continued to fire again and again, working her way through power cell after power cell. Time sped past, until she once again reached into the Salamander for her last cell, only to pause after she had loaded it.
All of the Orks were dead, with the except of a few dismembered ones who were snarling on the ground. Until a guardsman put a las round in their head at least. Looking around, Mira saw that there were similar results all around. The Orks had spent the last of their manpower on this suicidal charge, and while they had killed more guardsman than she was comfortable with, they had lost.
Sighing, Mira lifted herself out of the Salamander and slid down the side. She landed on a dead Ork, bright red blood squirting out of the wounds. "Who's in charge here?" she asked. The sergeant she had spotted throughout the fight put up his hand. Now that the battle was over, she finally had a good look at him.
He was not a handsome man. A good chunk of his nose was missing and one of his eyes was a rather rugged looking bionic. Aside from that, he had the white hair and the lined face of a man who has lived a very long time and undergone chemical rejuvenation, but had not been high on the priority list. That, combined with the countless scars that dotted his face, gave him the look of a man that had been in the service for a very long time, most likely too long. His armor was unremarkable, the standard template so many regiments used. The only remarkable part was the shoulder, on which a white "23rd EDR" was painted. She assumed EDR was an acronym for his home planet.
"Do you have any wounded?" she asked.
The sergeant spat bitterly to the side. "Not any that your medics aren't already looking after. Not a whole lot of them, thanks to those Emperor forsaken Orks."
Nervously, one of the sergeant's flame troopers approached him from behind. "Um, sir? Do you want us to start burning the bodies?" she asked hesitantly.
The sergeant sighed. "Not just yet. Get our dead out of the trench first, away from the Greenskins. Keep an eye on them though, any sign of spores and we'll have to burn them too." He grit his teeth. "I'd rather not, but if we have to, we have to." The flame trooper nodded and ran off to relay his orders. Already, Mira could see most of the guardsmen, her men and the sergeants, moving to do just that. Kneeling down, he picked up his sword, deactivated the power field, and slid it back into his sheath. "I owe you one colonel," he said. "We might have been able to hold this line without you, but barely any of us would've survived."
"Think nothing of it," Mira replied, "we're all here to do the Emperor's work." The sergeant nodded in agreement. "I better Vox this back to high command, let them know that the situation is dealt with."
"I better get the xenos ready for roasting," the sergeant replies. "In about ten minutes. I need to sit down." He did so, idly making himself comfortable on top of an Ork's head. Placing his hellgun on the ground, he reached into a satchel with both arms. With one hand, he produced a worn and dog eared notebook, and with the other a stylus. Silently, he flipped it open and began to write.
She made to climb back into the Salamander, but before she could, a Cadian with a back mounted Vox unit climbed out of the trench and ran up to her. "Colonel, command is calling for you. They say that they have orders that are for your ears only." Confused, Mira reached out and took the handset that the trooper was offering her.
"Colonel Mira speaking," she reported.
"Colonel, this is Lord General Ishone," a hoarse voice replied. "My forces just arrived in this system. I would have contacted you sooner, but I was informed by the local commanders that you were engaged in combat and could not be distracted. However, word made its way to me from one of the locals that the battle was over and you were now free." Mira felt uneasy. She hadn't even reported in that the Orks had been annihilated yet, how could someone who had only been in system for hours know that?
"I'll cut straight to the point Colonel," the Lord General said. "Your regiment is made up of battle tested and capable men and women, and they've been leading regiments that have also proven their worth in battle. A grave threat has emerged and the Imperium needs every able bodied soldier that it can find. You will be transferred to my command, along with all other Guard regiments on this planet, and we will be departing this planet within a week. Frankly, you've been squandering your talents on something that could have and should have been handled by a local PDF."
Something didn't feel right about this. Consolidating forces to deal with a new threat was hardly unheard of, quite the opposite. In many parts of Imperial space, it was the standard approach to approaching threats. Yet in all the decades that the 203rd had been stationed on Graia, they had never been called off planet until now. Not for Hive Fleet Kraken or Leviathan, not for Necrons, not for anything. What was different?
"Lord General-" Mira began, but she was cut off.
"I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but it's best that you hear it from me," Ishone said. "I don't have time to soften the blow, I need to make sure that you get the facts and don't spread inane rumors." There was a tiny quake in the general's voice, but she hastily forced it down. "Cadia has fallen."
Disbelief overtook Mira. The general had to be lying, spreading falsehoods in order to weaken the morale of the Imperium. It was fully possible that she had fallen to the taint of Chaos. Greater men and women than her had given in to the ruinous powers after all. Telling lies about the more secure planet in all of the Imperium, because there was no possible way that Cadia could have fallen.
Then, she forced herself to be rational. Why would someone who was spreading propaganda for Chaos tell a lie that could be easily countered? Cadians were regularly deployed to the most dangerous fronts of the galaxy, requiring them to be deployed far from where they were stationed. If Cadia hadn't fallen, those soldiers would be able to easily squash the rumors. A more convincing lie would be that a Tyranid fleet that dwarfed all the previous ones was on its way, or that the chapter master of the Ultramarines had been slain in combat. Rumors that would've been harder to disprove.
What was more, Graia still had an Inquisitor stationed on it. A very minor Inquisitor, one who had only recently been sent here as his first assignment to ensure that the presence of Chaos was truly gone, but he still commanded with the authority of the God Emperor's Holy Inquisition. Truly lying about such an action would be considered heresy. There was only one logical conclusion. Cadia had fallen.
She felt an urge to let her legs give out, to slump to the ground in disbelief. She fought it back. If her soldiers saw her despairing, they would all despair. She had to set an example. "How?" she asked. It was the only word that she could form.
"Abbadon, the 13th Black Crusade," Ishone said. "He crashed one of Blackstone Fortresses into the surface. It's a barren rock now. Of the 850 million citizens, I estimate that no more than 4 million escaped. The Eldar assisted them. It's not quite clear where they are now, but some representatives of the Eldar are approaching us to negotiate a ceasefire between our races."
"The Eldar? Can we trust them?" Mira asked. "You know what they're like, Lord General. They only care for themselves. A planet of our kind can die just so that they can save a handful of their own. We can't expect them to be true to their word."
"Under normal circumstances, I would agree with you," Ishone said. "However, I am slowly receiving their reports of a radical shift in philosophy within the Eldar people. A sort of movement that I can only describe as religious. They're calling themselves the Ynnari. A movement comprised of Eldar from all of their factions. They've worked together despite various difference before, but never to this degree. But they're scared. They've taken massive losses in recent times. A craftworld that they looked at much in the same way that we looked at Cadia. Dark times are approaching for us both, and it seems that they cannot face it alone."
"And we can't?" Mira asked. She had intended the question to come out firm and defiant, but it was anything but.
"If we do, there may not be anything left afterwards," Ishone said. "Surely you must have heard the rumors circulating across the Imperium. So many rebellions, so many wrap storms, the coming of a third Hive Fleet. They're saying that the End Times have come."
"I refuse to believe that," Mira said, and she was glad that there was some defiance in her voice. "The Emperor's light still shines bright through the Warp, his Angels of Death still stand stalwart, and the men and woman of the Imperial Guard have yet to falter in our duty. The End Times will not come so long as a single one of us is left standing!"
"I appreciate the vigor colonel," Ishoned said. "Make sure that you keep that attitude when informing your men of the situation. Pardon me, I need to make contact with the local high command. I have quite a bit of requisitioning to do. I'll get back to you as soon as I can." With that, the line when dead.
"Everything ok?" The sergeant had looked up from where he was writing, concerned etched on his marred face. Mira looked at him. Would he understand? Could he possibly understand growing up on a planet, being told that it was the shield of humanity, the line that would never break, the beacon that all looked to, only to hear that it had been crushed by the enemies of man? Could anyone other than a Cadian?
Her hands tightened into fists. They would, sadly, have to learn in their own way. As much as she didn't want to believe it, there was a chance those wild rumors were right. The End Times could be creeping towards them at this very moment. The Imperium was weaker than ever before, and their foes seemed to be growing stronger and stronger. Victory seemed impossible.
But she would make them suffer if it was. Those who had been foolish enough to make an enemy of the Imperium would have to fight for every millimeter of land that they wanted to take. Every stepped would be paid in blood, and humanity's warriors would show the very best that they had to offer, both in valor and ferocity. Even if the enemy won, she and all of the rest would do everything that they could to make the victory hollow and meaningless, due to the sacrifices that they had had to pay. If the Imperium could not be the masters of the galaxy, no one would be. They would drown the Dark Gods in the ocean of blood they wanted so badly.
Locking eyes with the sergeant, she slowly began to explain the situation.
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Author's Note: The request was just for Mira to hear about the fall of Cadia, but I'm on a major Gaunt's Ghosts binge (Just finished Sabbat Martyr), so I threw in a battle at the start. I'm trying my hand at being able to depict battles that have more than a couple hundred people in it, and those books gave me a lot to work on. I'm starting small with a simple one, just Orks being Orks in a situation where they have no chance of winning…but they really couldn't care less. They got a fight and they're happy. (What's more, obvious cameo is obvious)
Also, it was a pain in the rear figuring out what color Ork blood is, as Games Workshop seems to have gone back and forth on whether it's green, black or red, so I just went with red for simplicity's sake.
I would like to thank my Patrons SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, Ryan Van Schaack, and RaptorusMaximus for their amazing support.