Alaric saw the assorted men slowly stop what they were doing and watch as their new commander came into view. Some were watching from windows, some were in the street carrying heavy equipment, for whatever reason, some were watching with scowls from an old cafe. Regardless, he gave a goodbye to the tanker, who nodded and gave a half salute in return as Alaric pulled himself out of the hatch.

As he slid over the metal and his boots met the ground, a tall, ebony skinned man in a major's uniform came walking out of the cafe, pushing between the group who Alaric could tell were snipers by the long rifles they held over their shoulders. The major, who Alaric assumed was Naveed, held out his hand for a shake as he strolled up, trying to assume an easy smile.

The man, despite his attempt at a smile, looked positively wrecked. Worry lines were etched into his face despite him almost being of an age with Alaric and his uniform was completely disheveled. The scarf that all of the guardsmen of Deeprok owned hung loosely around his neck, covered in sweat. When he shook Alaric's hand and Alaric introduced himself he immediately perked up, knowing he was no longer going to have to be the CO of the regiment.

All in all, it made Alaric rather uncomfortable. His XO couldn't lead a regiment to a single city in a few hours without breaking down, but Alaric also thought none of them were going to live for 24 more hours so at the least it wouldn't be a problem for long.

"Sir, I am Major Naveed, it is an honor to have a war hero among us, sir," the major said in a thick accent that the tanker had oddly not shared. Alaric took a look around again, closer this time, and was confused to see the mix of skin colors and body types. Most planets were either obviously multicultural or had such a limited gene pool they all looked alike, here there seemed to be two groups. He briefly considered asking but realized he didn't at all care as long as the two didn't kill each other.

Still, Alaric tried to make his best humble expression, which was helped by the fact he detested the term 'war hero' (Alaric was adamant that war and hero were two very contradictory statements) and said in his 'hero' voice,

"Why good major, it is an honor to be in such esteemed company myself! The regiment's of Deeprok are known for their combat prowess! Now let us go and plan this battle, we have a war to win!" he said this with as much gusto as he could possibly muster to mask the blatant lies while also speaking loud enough for his voice to reach the surrounding troops, hoping no one would notice the slight twitch in his eye when he finished the sentence.

"Very well Colonel Attelus, we have set up in this cafe right behind me, I'll give you the full report inside," the man said with a nod. Alaric released his hand, walking towards the cafe as the man followed close behind, starting up on the basics,

"Sir, we have around 200,000 people in this city we need to evacuate. We are at reinforced strength at about 1,600 men, and the 11th is at full with 1,500," Naveed told him as they passed through the doorway, the gathered snipers and other guardsmen dispersing and going back to do whatever it was they were going to do.

The inside was as much of a command post as Alaric had ever seen, and he was glad that they at least knew how to make a CP. Vox systems were set up around the room, a large map sat on a table in the center, under a hanging light, and barricades had been set up to block the windows. Racks of lasguns sat against one wall along with the few heavy weapons a light infantry regiment could gather. Around the table stood a short man, one of the pale ones, with a vox pack, and a dark skinned woman in a PDF uniform.

He found the woman rather striking, and his eyes lingered on her as he scanned the room. She didn't bother looking up at the new arrivals like the many in the room who had stopped to regard the colonel, instead her attention focused on the map where she was marking positions and such down with a red pen. Her ponytail was dark like her skin and her uniform seemed to fit snugly in all the right places, he cleared his head with a light shake as they entered.

"-and that means that the Heretic forces will be moving in through 13th Ave most likely, though-" Alaric cut off Naveed as he stepped up to the table,

"Yes yes, now it's time to get things done." He walked up to the table and looked down at the map. In response to the significant lack of room afforded to her, the woman sighed and stood back, moving from her hunched over posture as Alaric began scanning the map himself.

"Uh, right sir. This is Major Anya Attar, she's our liaison with the local PDF forces, and this is our vox operator, Dac-"

"A pleasure, ma'am," Alaric said as he held out his hand. The woman looked at his hand like it might catch fire at any moment and slowly shook it in return with all the subtle distaste that Alaric vaguely remembered his mother managed to muster for his father and his father for all the regiment's that the old man didn't lead.

Alaric briefly considered that shaking a beautiful woman's hand reminding him of an unhappy childhood might be a sign of some internal problems, but quickly decided that was drivel and went back to pretending he was someone he was not, shelving the thought in the same place he puts his memories of learning his father was dead and hiding in a closet in the Schola Progenium.

"It's an honor, sir," Anya replied. Truthfully, Alaric hated almost everything, but a night with a woman was one of the few things that made him hate everything a bit less, and was one of the few things that might get his blood running in a way that wasn't out of a shrapnel wound. On that note, he decided to see if he could work a bit more closely with the PDF.

"Naveed, how many fighting able bodies do we have in total?" Alaric asked as he tore his eyes away from Anya and back to the map of the city. A marker was shown for the street they were on and several other markers recorded evacuation sites in various parts of the city. His eye found a plaza, marked as 'Pius Landing' and realized it was the one which he had landed in. He gave a bit of a chuckle at this and then began moving his eyes elsewhere.

"Like I told you sir, we have 1,600 men in total. 11th is at full with 1,500 and their CP is located here," Naveed pointed at a marker on the opposite side of the city, in an Arbites armory if Alaric was reading correctly, "but their men have already been distributed across the surrounding area, setting up ambushes and barricading hard points," as he said this, the major pointed out circles around various terrain features around the city and at crossroads and bridges inside the urban center.

"Why aren't we distributed yet?" Alaric asked, raising his eyes to give a questioning glare to Naveed. He was no longer in the lime light, and thus could give all the glares and scowls that the smashing headache that was inside his head and that summarized the entire situation was allowing him.

Naveed began stuttering out an odd excuse of an apology and an excuse,

"I- sir- I'm sorry... the- we didn't have time and... I-"

"Doesn't matter, you never answered my question, how many combatants do we have. Including PDF and enforcers," Alaric snapped, cutting into the excuses he couldn't care less about.

"I... sir, the PDF has one regiment in this city and two in Slaepsong. One of them is currently inbound and will reach us in about six hours, in total around 3,000 men in this city. We could of course raise more but it would take several more weeks. The Arbites have 50 here in Highkam due to an investigation in the government that was underway, and we have around 2,000 enforcers on standby as well. So... 6,350 men, and fifteen hundred on the way," Naveed said, reading off a notepad he was carrying.

Alaric was glad that the man could do math, when he led the Burgione 2nd on Horones, a penal regiment, his XO couldn't even manage that. Or read. Or go through a battle without converting to chaos and trying to drink Alaric's blood.

Better times, he thought to himself.

Still, looking at the numbers themselves, Alaric didn't trust the PDF to hold any longer than the table he was leaning on would after an artillery shell falls on it, and the Arbites and enforcers were so minor in number that he knew they would have almost no use in the battle. Still, the 11th was just as well trained as his 12th, which was fairly high by Imperial Guard standards and they had a fairly good amount of men in the city, so not all was bad.

At the very least, they'd be able to hold off the invaders for a few days, at least if they made some sacrifices and used the terrain to their advantage, and on that note, he tapped the area outside of the city.

"Where are they most likely going to come in from?" Alaric asked, looking at the terrain around the city. He thought he had a decent understanding, but he was a good enough commander to know he should probably trust the local bumk- guards who had lived on the planet their entire lives.

"Sir, the city is surrounded by a large canyon to the east which then leads into a trench to the west side. The trench can be crossed through these three bridges..." Naveed went on to point out three bridges in the more narrow parts of the trench to the north west. If Alaric was reading the map right, the trenches were 3,000 meters at their deepest, far too deep for some untrained heretic to climb up. Naveed continued on,

"The south can be traversed but it's mostly desert and the sand worms live out there, also-"

"Sand worms?" Alaric asked, Naveed nodded, pointing at the desert on the map,

"Yes sir, sand worms. Huge beasts that eat anything that tries to move through the desert. We only move through there when we absolutely must, and even then it's in a large convoy and we have to prepare to lose some people each time we do it, not a good place," Naveed answered.

"Well that's perfect. Those bridges, what's past them? Any other barriers?" Alaric asked, Naveed nodded excitedly.

"Why yes, of course. The roads gradually go low until they enter the rifts, and our AA covers the roads up until that point. They'll have to go through canyon roads, easy ambush points... and there is this..." Naveed paused as he pushed the map to the side, pulling another rolled up map and spreading it across the table. This one was of the continent as a whole. "Sir, you can see here that there is a major rift going straight through here, from the north all the way to the south, we call that The Scar."

"Of course you do, what about it," Alaric said, interrupting. The three surrounding the table all looked up and Naveed stuttered as he continued.

"Uh... well... The Scar can only be crossed in two places that lead to the city. We don't have the supplies or time or know how to make a bridge that spans across The Scar, but there are two natural formations that go across. Huge bridges of rock that are large enough to hold the roads with room to spare. They're quite beautiful..."

"Great!" Alaric said, clapping his hands. "We can detonate them as they're crossed and block off the city. They're going to have to land in the rifts, it'll take them some time, all the while we can be hitting them..." Alaric found the plan simple but effective, tactics 101, but when he looked up, Naveed and the vox operator shared a look of horror. Naveed sounded aghast as he spoke,

"Sir... those arches... they're natural monuments, priceless cultural artifacts. The nomads call them the Arches of Empire because-"

"Anything I should know that is actually important?" Alaric asked, drumming his fingers on the table and finding his headache growing exponentially at the stupid.

"Er... sir, if I may," Vox Operator Dac- began, "but we simply don't have a way to build those bridges again. If you collapse them, it will cripple this city when this invasion is finis-" Alaric felt his eye twitch at the operator, at the stupidity around them. Did they not see how much of a failure this entire campaign would be?

Even more, did they really think he was some sort of hero who actually could save them? Most of all, did they think that even if he was a hero, he'd still somehow manage to hold off hundreds of thousands of heretics? He was sick of the damned idealism, he needed soldiers, not fogging dreamers. He didn't even feel it when his hand slammed into the table so hard that it knocked the rolled off maps off, scattering them on the sandy floor.

"There won't be another fogging day of all of our damned lives at this rate, if we're lucky we have a week and that's if we blow those fucking 'cultural artifacts' and do everything we can to slow them down. And do you know what happens even if we hold them off from this sand filled hole? Huh?" the group, along with every single person in the cafe, was staring at him in surprise and horror. "Well I'll tell you, they're going to kill every other damned person on this planet as we get starved out. So you better start praying lads, it's game over."

There was a heavy silence as Alaric realized quite what he had just said. Dac- was pale in fear, his mouth wide open, Naveed was covering his mouth with his hand and had taken several steps back. The silence stretched on and on until Anya cleared her throat rather loudly.

"Well, he has a point, we're going to have to blow those formations to stop the heretics from reaching us. The remains can become monuments to the battle of Deeprok," Anya turned her eyes to Alaric, who was briefly calmed by how piercing and pretty they looked, "after we survive this, of course."

"Yes, of course," Alaric said, biting his tongue and deciding he was emotionally done for the rest of the day.

"Well... I think it's time we make a battle plan then..." Naveed ventured, but he was once again interrupted as Tauron, who had been sitting slightly outside the group throughout their discussion, cleared his throat.

"Or maybe we can ask which man in this regiment is the heretic."