What follows is an excerpt from a conversation between several troopers and a certain Commissar at the Imperial's HQ. For whatever reason, the observer recorded it in Gothic and not Edelweiss, hence the language difference.
Trooper Spirout gulped nervously, eyes flicking to the equally worried-looking Trooper Fantaseau standing next to him. The pair was sweating copiously in the bright Pyros sunset, the glare bouncing into their eyes in the most uncomfortable way possible. A cheerful guitar tune floated through the air, emanating from the colourfully painted hardwood instrument Colonel Leman was strumming away at. The only other noise breaking the awkward silence was the distant shouting of the changing of the wall guard back in the camp. The three were on top of one of the ring walls, Leman sitting with her legs and the long hem of her coat, which she insisted on wearing despite the heat, hanging over the long drop-off of the wall, the unfortunate Spirout and Fantaseau standing a ways behind her. Unable to take the silence any longer, Fantaseau spoke.
"C-commissar, Ma- er, sir, it was an accident! We were just moving some supply crates, and then the sun got in my eyes, and I tripped, and I lost my grip, and the crate fell, and..."
Spirout broke in, eager to back up the story.
"The fault was mine, Commissar. I tripped. We were just trying to help! We didn't mean to crush the shrine-thing!"
It was what had happened after all. Admittedly, they'd both had a few gulps of synthwine beforehand, but everyone did that! An Edelweiss who didn't drink a glass of wine or two to slake his thirst was... well, hardly an Edelweiss at all. And so what if they'd crushed a shrine! It wasn't even a big one! Just a little portable field unit like you always saw the cogboys use. The cheery guitar tune continued, clashing jarringly with the unpleasant aura that Leman gave off. There were rumours in the barrack rooms; some people said she was a witch, others a sanctioned psyker. The really bold veterans were sure she was an Untouchable. Spirout shivered despite the sweat dripping down his temples. Without stopping her strumming, she spoke.
"Do you know what the Omnissiah is?"
"Sir?"
"Do you. Know what. The Omnissiah is?"
"Um, sir, it's the cogboy's god. The Machine God, I guess, ma'am. Sir."
Leman sighed. Spirout tried desperately to resist the urge to run.
"Wrong, Trooper Spirout. Close, but nonetheless wrong. Trooper Fantaseau?"
"Um, well, don't they say that the Emperor is part of the Machine God or something? I mean, they must be wrong, because the God-Emperor, in all his most, um, holy glory on Earth, is the one and true god of all mankind, right? Sir?"
The commissar gave an incremental tip of the head, which might have been a nod. Spriout relaxed. Good old Fantaseau. Always quick on his feet, that one. If anyone deserved a round down at the canteen, it was him.
"Commissar, we apologise for whatever crimes we have unintentionally committed. Anything we can do to repent for our sins, we're willing to do, sir."
The strumming stopped. There was a rustle of fabric, a soft mechanical buzzing, and a quiet noise like a knife cutting a tomato in half. Spirout and Fantaseau both looked down at the clean, precise cuts that a row of diamond-tipped chainsword teeth had left in their midsections. They were dead before they hit the ground. Spriout's last conscious thought was wondering where the sword had come from.
Holding the Eviscerator heavy chainsword in one hand and cradling her guitar in the other, Commissar Emil Leman turned and addressed the two corpses.
"The Omnissiah is part of the Emperor, but a fraction of His true glory. Dishonouring but a portion of His greatness is besmirching Him in His entirety. That is a lesson that all those who are truly faithful should know. Clearly, you lack faith. And the penalty for disbelief is death. There is only the God-Emperor of mankind, resting in His golden throne on Earth. Nothing else matters. Only His will."
Θ
We're standing a ways down the hill; Irohov, Azul, Mordakka, the TAchimera and I. Root is momentarily occupied, tracing a circle several kilometres wide in the dusty red soil, its middle centered on the Kingdakka's reactor room. I'm sitting cross-legged just inside the line, tracing a smaller circle around myself. Instead of the usual complicated pentagrams, all I do is mark the circle with twelve regular lines; the hours of a clock.
When it comes to temporal spells, drawing runes and whatnot is normally unnecessary, since you need to summon a physical construct to channel the temporal energy through. Only the most ridiculously energy-intensive temporal spells require runes, and this particular time-slice was a doozy.
"Irohov, everyone, could you get inside the circle? And make sure you don't scuff it or break the line."
"'An wot 'appens if we duz break da liddle lines, den?"
"Timeslicing destabilization. Different sections of your body begin to run at different speeds relative to each other. Large portions of you die of blood loss and rot, while other bits tear themselves to pieces because individual muscles and tendons are moving at vastly different rates."
"Oh."
"Yep. Now, Azul, I'm going to need your help."
I pat the ground next to me.
"Sit here, and place Nnoitra here, and... here."
She sits, but there's a bemused look on her predatory face.
"Heretic, I know this isn't a blood rite of Khorne. Neither the Blood God nor the Emperor approve of sorcery. Why exactly do you need me, and Nnoitra?"
Root shimmers back into existence. He's doing the mental equivalent of panting.
"Something wrong?"
"I just haven't partially materialized in a while. It's hard moving around, separate from my host body. You could have done it yourself."
I shake my head firmly.
"No. I've got to conserve energy. We've got to conserve energy. Root, I'm going to do-"
"A Pterrian Link? Is belief transferring really necessary?"
Irohov, like the others, is looking suitable inquisitive.
"I know you're going to give me a long and extremely detailed answer anyways, but what exactly is a Terry-ann Link?"
Sebell can go into Engineer mode, but he also tends to slip into Metaphysician mode. Now, I could quote some old grimoire Thate dothe talken 'pon the grym Horrors of the Warpe moste detailededly, or I could explain Pterrian Links succinctly and briefly. Which I will. Forgive any lapses in proper professional style in the next segment, because I'm not much of a philosopher. Anyways. You probably know how the Warp is powered by belief, right? The more you believe in something, the more you feel it, the more that concept gains strength. Take Slaneesh: debasement and hedonism made flesh. The idea behind the Pterrian Link (Named after the great Vimes Pterrian, the famous Ankian sorcerer-junkie) is to disguise the warp presence of one thing as that of another; it means that the belief and emotion fuelling one thing is temporarily fuelling something completely different. The spell has a wide variety of uses, with what it does only really limited by the imagination of the caster ('Cause it's really easy to cast and doesn't take a whole lot of energy). In this case, Sebell would use the spell to boost the amount of energy he takes in while casting the time-slice, then shut down the Link as soon as he was done, allowing Nnoitra and co. to recharge. Anyways, I've gone on. I'll skip ahead to the actual exciting spell casting stuff. Right. Okay.
The miniature runes on the Proteus armour begin to glow a faint gold as I mutter the words to start the Link. I point the palm of my hand at Azul, and she shudders slightly as eight thin streamers of golden light connect my hand with several points across her skull.
"Heretic, you never said it would hurt so much. Continue to pain me and I may have to start removing your fingers."
"Settle down, and stop resisting. Tel Nnoitra to calm- ah. There we go. Thank you Nnoitra."
Azul replies in Nnoitra's mechanical screech.
"Make this worth my time, and energy, Sorcerer."
Feeling the energy flow, I begin to speak the spells for a wide-area time-slice. The ground shudders, the reddish dust swirling in lazy spirals, then coalescing, with an oddly tuneful grinding noise, into huge ranks of glass pillars at regular intervals around the line in the sand. The pillars begin to spin, shards of glass breaking off and orbiting around them with a low whining noise. I feel my nose start to bleed as different parts of me start to slightly temporally flux. Then my vision goes red, there is a massive thump, and everything is back to normal. The pillars are hazy and indistinct, and the line in the sand has become a huge glassy dome surrounding the Kingdakka's landing site. The air outside has taken on a strange sapphire hue, streaked through with brilliant blood-red. I stand up, feeling the joints in my legs pop uncomfortably.
"Well that went well."
"Magos Hethrohodin, we need to talk."
Bérthier clicked his heels together. The Magos didn't strike him as the type to appreciate formalities, but he didn`t feel right without a little saluting of a (technically) superior officer. The diminutive figure in red gave a start, turning away from the partially dismantled repair drone she`d been tinkering with on her cluttered workbench.
"Oh. Um. Marysh- Bérthier. What. Do you want to talk about?"
At her nod, Berthie took a seat in one of the cushy, high-backed metal swivel chairs scattered across the spacious, airy office.
"I believe you can guess, Magos."
Hethrhodin waved a hand lazily, and several of the wall screens sprang to life, displaying blurry picts of several horribly mutilated corpses.
"The deaths. Er, murders. Indeed. You, you think it has something to do with the Greenskins? Well, their attacks?"
"Quite possibly. I've just gotten word that all our scanner beams have lost their signals."
"What?" She was fully turned in her chair now, leaning forward, a worried scowl on her face. "They lost? They lost the signal? How? It can't be mechanical, or. Or. Well, we'd know."
"It's not a mechanical problem. All of the scanners still work. Your repair teams have confirmed that. It's just that, as far as the scanners are concerned, there is an area of complete nothingness around the enemy encampment, as of about five minutes ago. No electromagnetic radiation, no vibrations, nothing. All we get on pict recorders is a non-reflective, black dome with a diameter of about six kilometres. We may be dealing with more than Orks. The astropaths say they're getting disturbing feelings from the dome. Nothing definite, but they think it might be Chaotic."
The Magos gasped, collapsing back in her chair.
"C-Chaos? On my planet?"
"It's more likely than you think. I've also got a first draft of the medicae's autopsy reports on the cadavers of your archaeology team. All the wounds were inflicted by something with an extremely intense powerfield. They found this inscribed on, what was his name..."
"Enginseer-Excavator William Dyer."
"They found this carved in to the skin of his back."
He handed over a thin data-slate. Hethrhodin retched. It was as if someone had taken a metal spike, and whittled away at the man's skin to form a series of ghastly, blood-soaked letters.
IT WAITS
Farther along the stretch of mangled skin, the same hand had carved an eight-pointed star.
The data-slate fell from Hethrhodin's hands.
"Omnissiah protect us. They know what we're hiding."
"Wh-?"
She was on her feet in a flash, striding to her desk. As she tapped the keys of her desktop cogitator plate, heavy metal blast screens slammed shut across the wide bay windows. Bérthier heard the office door lock with a loud clunk, and a hazy forcefield snapped across it.
"What's going on? What do they know you're hiding?"
When she spoke, her voice was devoid of any of the mumblings, stuttering and self-correction.
"Berthier, what I'm about to tell does not leave this room. At the moment, it is known only to me, a few select members of my archaeology team, who are now dead, and the Fabricator-General of Mars himself. There is a reason this base is so heavily guarded despite being well away from anywhere dangerous. The Titans are not here to be repaired. They are here to defend something. Five hundred years ago, my Explorator team landed on Pyros, hoping to make a routine sweep. We knew that colonists from Terra, way back in the Dark Age of Technology, had settled here at some point or another. We expected, at best, some minor scraps of farming equipment. What we found was... a Titan. A Titan like no other. It had decayed over time, and had apparently suffered from a meteor impact, but from what we could tell it was both human, and at the same time, unlike anything else we had ever seen. It was technologically advanced on a level that would put the Eldar to shame. We managed to recover a considerable portion of the memory of the computer that had maintained it. Under orders from Mars, we set about rebuilding it. This base, this fortress is the end result of that project. As for the machine... we know the Ancients called it the First Gospel. How good is your Old High Gothic?"
"First... principus? And... Mon Dieu. Principio Aevangelus. "
"That's not all. We discovered that the wreck of the First Gospel lay in a cradle... a defensive launch cradle, that is, above a far larger structure. This."
She tapped a key on her desk, and the screens changed, showing a brilliantly white sphere hanging in a field of mottled black and grey.
"This is a sensor read of Pyros' crust, one kilometre down. That thin line there is our bore shaft. The sphere is 500 meters wide, and impenetrable to anything we could throw at it. We've tried macro charges, cutting lasers... nothing gets in. We haven't ever been able to scrape samples of the exterior material off. It's completely impenetrable. Dyer was working on a theory; he thought that an extremely high-energy but tightly focussed las blast might break the shell, but you'd need a lasgun the size of a house, with a more advanced optical system than anything Mankind can produce to pull it off, and we weren't going to scavenge one from our orbital defense system. Dyer thought he could get in. Now he's dead. Whatever we've found, they want."
Θ
An unfortunate side-effect of the time-slice is headaches. I've taken to walking around the barrier, distancing myself from the clamour as the Orks try to get the Kingdakka back in to manageable shape. According to my armour's internal chronometer, it's the fifth day after the slice. A little less than an hour of time has passed outside the dome. I could increase the difference, but I'm already tired as it is. The slice is more draining than I had expected. I'm not weak by any means, but the tremendous amounts of energy, flowing through my body, especially those supplied by Nnoitra, are wearing me out. I feel like I haven't slept in several days, even though what I've mostly been doing is sleeping. And eating. Once you get used to it, ground squig mixed with partially charred moss isn't half bad. I stroll along the edge of the barrier, contemplating the low humming of the incorporeal pillars that keep the dome stable, and trying to ignore the continuous sound of hammering and construction noise as the Orks take advantage of their new limitless supply of metal.
"Sebell..."
"I thought we agreed to a no-talking policy. You know we both need the rest."
Then I notice the movement. There's a blot of something on the dome; a dark stain on the outside, as if all sunlight is being cut off in a small area. As I approach, there's another flicker of movement, and the darkness pushes through the surface of the dome, coalescing into a writhing knot of shadow on the inside. I catch a brief glimpse of five glowing red dots before the shadow explodes outwards, engulfing me in inky darkness. Then the whispering starts.
"She never loved you..."
"They're all dead... you killed them, Sebell, you killed them all and you could have said no..."
"Your life is a lie... you are a meaningless cog in a vast, uncaring machine. The universe is grim, and dark, and when your puny life ends the vast consciousnesses that control you like a puppet will feast upon your soul..."
"Shri. Enough already. You know it's me."
Just as suddenly as it had swirled around me, the shadow contracts, taking the shape of a frail figure, clad in tattered black robes, her pale, sickly face partially covered by a black mask with five red camera inserts set in it; before me stands Shri Pfelnig, Eye of Tzeentch.
"Sorry about that, Vivat. But hey, it's good to see you again."
Shri Pfelnig, also known as the Shrieker, also known as the Head of Black Ops at Tzeentch HQ. She has a reputation as the best terror-warfare practitioner since Alpharius Omegon, and she deserves it. A ridiculously powerful telepath, she has a record of causing more psychological casualties than actual physical deaths in every one of her campaigns. Despite having what amounts to an army at her command, she tends to work alone. Biologically, she's twelve years old... mentally, no-one's entirely sure.
Shri locks me in a crushing bear hug, and the Proteus armour lets out a warning beep as I feel a joint in my spine pop.
"Good to see you again, squirt!"
"I'll tear your soul into a million pieces, Root, you stupid bastard! How's my favourite team of backstabbers going?"
"Not bad, not bad at all. What brings you to our operational area? Well, I mean, aside from... y' know."
She sighs, running a finger through her dirty long hair, which I now realize is clotted with dried blood.
"Just tidying up some loose ends. The dig team is out of the picture, but I couldn't get to the political officers. They've got a Pariah in the Commissariat."
"What? We weren't briefed on that!"
"I know. Neither was I. Command's not entirely sure, but they don't think she'll be able to interfere much."
"And aside from that? What about the other two? When do I get briefed about them?"
"Soon, soon. And the ship is going to arrive on time."
"Good, then. Just as planned?"
"You've got that right."
As I walk back towards the Kingdakka, I see Shri slip back through the time-slice. She claims she has a little more work to do, but I know she'll be back. All part of the plan. Nearing the ship, I hear a commotion from coming from the shadow of one of the landing legs. There's a roar, a hiss, and the stomp... stomp... stomp. A huge four-legged machine, trailing sparks and clouds of smoke lumbers out of the shadows. It looks to be one of the wide-barrelled Booma artillery cannons, mounted on a much larger walking base, with several primitive but effective-looking gun turrets strapped on for good measure. The ungainly machine clanks to a halt, and the top hatch opens, a white-bearded figure poking his head out.
"Irohov? What is this thing?"
"I give to you the new Heavy Booma!" he exclaims triumphantly, wiping soot and rust out of his face. "We needed a way to get the heavy artillery more mobile, and we were low on armour support. So I got the Lootas to whip something up for me. We've got a dozen others under construction as we speak!"
"What about the stationary cannons?"
"There's a team of meks digging out the tunnel network now. Ork technology may not look like much, but apoli, does it ever work!"
"Glad to hear it. When d'you expect to be finished?"
"Hold on..."
He disappears back inside the machine. There's a brief silence, a clank, and with a hiss of hydraulics the Heavy Booma sinks to the ground. Irohov pops the hatch again, and then scrambles down a ladder to terra firma. He stops for a few seconds at the base of the ladder, panting.
"Sorry... we've-pant- had a few problems with exhaust backflow. It goes straight to your head. Anyways-whew- The Kingdakka's essentially done except for some modifications Squigwood is making to the antimissile system, but other than that it's perfectly flight worthy. The stationary turrets will be ready in a day or two; all we really need to do is position them. That just leaves the Boomas; they're probably going to take another three days. Call it just three days."
"So half an hour-ish real time? Anything I can do to speed up the process?"
"No, you should probably just rest. The Orks... even the best Katyushan forges can't work at those kinds of speeds. I have some mechanical experience, but this is beyond anything I've seen. They're moulding metal so fast it's just a blur, and hammering stuff into shape while it's still red-hot. It shouldn't work, but it does."
"Excellent. Now, If you'll excuse us, I think Sebell needs to pass out for another twelve or so hours."
Θ
"So, it's decided, then?"
"If you think it's a good idea, Bérthier."
The Magos and Maréchal burst into the multi-storey central command center of the Pyros base. Hethrhodin hurried to a knot of technicians, jabbering hurriedly in Binary. Bérthier grabbed a nearby vox unit, thumbed the switch to 'General Announcements', and began to speak.
"Attention all Mechanicus and Edelweiss forces. As of this moment we are at full mobilization capacity. All troops, tank crews and Titan pilots are to prepare for immediate mobilization. Edelweiss crews are to bear full carapace and heavy weapons. You know what to do. Get to work, people."
The command center exploded into hustle and bustle as various groups scurried for their battle stations. An aide hurried to Bérthier`s side.
"Qu'est ce que c'est notre plan, Maréchal?"
"Formation standard. Et dit aux étables de préparer mon coeurl. On galope."
Half an hour later...
The entirety of the Edelweiss force was ready to march, rank upon rank of carapace-armoured soldiers standing in the shadows of the Thunderer siege tanks and even larger Titans. At the rear of the column was a massed rank of twenty-one enormous beasts, twenty of them bearing armoured plateformes on their thickly muscled backs. The carapaciers, the dreaded Edelweiss heavy cavalry. Dwarfed by the huge green-skinned reptilian beasts was a smaller one, bearing a flag in the saddle. Bérthier leaned across the automatic grenade launcher mount, scratching his coeurl on the soft skin just below the bony neck ridge.
"Alors, Marengo, ma p'tite bibitte, vous aimez ca, non, espéce de gros bétas, la."
Thrumming in excitement and pleasure, the Coeurl tilted its boxy, thickly armoured skull back, pointing the topmost of its four pairs of sonar eyelets at Bérthier. Marengo's feeder tentacles were whipping back and forth, the groundcar-sized beast no doubt feeling the rush of a high-oxygen environment. Bérthier noticed its rear pair of climbing legs twitching; the big lummox obviously was raring to go. Reshuffling his two long-hafted bec de corbin pole-hammers in their sidesaddle sheaths, the Maréchal dialled the command frequence on his portable vox. Knowing that his message went out not only to the Edelweiss, but also to the Titans, the command center and the few Skitarri left on guard duty, he spoke in Gothic.
"Forward!"
Θ
I'm thinking it's time for another brief factual interlude; think of it as a breather before the dying and the exploding and the Titans start to happen. Here's an excerpt from Dawyd Atenbrow's blockbuster ecological treatise A Galaxy of Life; A Compendium of Extraordinarily Dangerous Land Animals, Chapter seven: Gentle Giants: The Tramplers and Gougers.
The Edelweiss Coeurl or Proulgrinus Pandoruum are a species of large, herbivorous land animals inhabiting the forested upper highlands of Edelweiss' equatorial regions...
Immensely physically strong, they possess both and endo and exoskeletons, probably as a result of the tremendous air pressure differentials on their homeworld. Triple hearts and two full sets of lungs allow them to metabolize oxygen with extreme efficiency, even in environemnts with low atmospheric density...
The body is heavily muscled, with the head surrounded by a thick bone plate, with gaps only for the mouth, feeder tentacles and eyelets, probably to protect the braincase in a fall. There are two pairs of legs, each with four opposable toes; the front pair, being the larger of the two, is used primarily for running, while the rear pair, which can orate almost 360 degrees at the hip is used for greater speed as well as climbing.
Coeurl are surprisingly intelligent; individual subspecies bred specifically for their brainpower are said to have reasoning capacity on the level of a two-year-old human child. Though somewhat hostile to human presence, they form strong bonds of loyalty when in human company for long enough, and will not hesitate to protect long-time riders with their lives...
There are two primary subspecies: the tank-sized, immensely strong but dull-witted Boulonnais, and the smaller, but far smarter and faster Camargue. Both breeds are used as cavalry in the Edelweiss armed forces.
Θ
I grin in anticipating, flexing my shoulders and feeling the nanomachine armour adjust to fit better. The three days have gone by in a flash, and everything is prepared; The Kingdakka is ready to lift, and I saw Shri slip aboard sometime last night, the Heavy Boomas are loaded and clanking, the stationary defence guns are buried in their pillboxes, Azul has sharpened Nnoitra, Irohov has oiled his flamer pistols, the TAchimera is even bouncier than usual: Everything is going as planned. I snap my wrists, watching as the nanomachines in the Proteus armour reshape themselves into a familiar form: two blunt-fingered powered gloves, covered in shifting blue runes.
"Gauntlets are ready. Let's go back into real time."
"Everyone ready?"
The sound of the crumbling glass pillars is drowned out by a cacophonous howl of triumph.
"WAAAAAAAAGH!"
Θ
"Time to arrival?"
"One hour plus or minus two minutes thirty seconds."
"Acceptable. Weapons status?"
"All las turrets at 100 percent, missile tubes loaded for precision orbital bombardment. Reactors turning over at full; the engine crew syat they can boost them up to 150 percent in an emergency. Obital strike team is on station. Fighters are loaded in and ready for drop. We're at full combat efficiency."
"Excellent. Set ship status to yellow alert. Tell Nevski and Kutuzov to get suited up. I want them dropping on time with everyone else."
"Of course, Captain."