Blighted March close to Skavenblight, 2. Bäckertag, Brew Time
Ulrich Stoiber was adjusting the view of his camera on the monitor in front of him. He would have preferred to have his head outside and use binox but currently the tank was under NBC-lockdown. All hatches were closed, all seals inflated and the ventilation via filter was providing some overpressure in case of a small leak. It was not as bad as it would have been before, the camera and monitor he was provided served far better than the vision slots of olden days.
Earlier some Plague Monks had infiltrated the lines of the 7th Panzer division and dropped some Poison Wind globes among the rows of the tanks and Panzer Grenadiers. They did not kill anybody as mask training had been highly emphasized during the last weeks but now everybody was uncomfortable under masks.
At present the units involved with the operation were on hold as the Skaven in front of them were subject to an artillery barrage mixed with occasional bombing runs and nobody wanted to get into that mess. Neither did the Skaven but they had fewer choices left. From what Stoiber had heard the Skaven had been in full retreat when a flight of Tornado bombers had plugged their tunnel entrances explosively. Now they were in the middle of the Mother of all Traffic jams and got plastered mercilessly. Mist and smoke hit the sordid details and infrared which pierced these veils gave moving blobs of greenish light that ran this way and that before the dropped and cooled.
Switching back to visible light to discern more about an interesting blob he saw something like a free running Hamster wheel on steroids that seemed to mount some sort of beam weapons. It zig-zagged along the battlefield doing faster turns than a rabbit on cocaine.
A couple of tracers chased after it and one finally connected with the mad construct, obliterating it totally. Tracing back the tracers the tank commander found a "Jaguar" tank. Based on the running gear and hull of a Puma IFV it had a 105 and a 30 mm cannon. Stoiber was not so hot on the latter and would have preferred a coax machine gun and more main gun ammo, but as the kill just showed, that autocannon had its places. As calling it Puma 105 had been confusing the name "Jaguar" was chosen when the old missile tanks that carried that name before were stood down and converted for lack of enemies worthy of their expensive armament.
His Wolfpack was not needed at present, their role was the combat of at least partially supernatural enemies in which they had shown great aptitude during the Battle in Sylvania. He was quite content to have others getting their hands dirty. The next day put the Germans within sight of Skavenblight having traversed 250 kilometers worth of March and Skaven within very few days. Their final target was in front of them, yet the mostly abandoned mass of decrepit ruins did not ease Ulrich`s mind. The city on his monitor reminded him of an iceberg with 90% under water and out of sight.
He learned how wrong he was much later.
Blighted Marches, 4. Koenigstag, Brew Time
The nature of the enemy was strange but very powerful and made them undeniably dangerous. That made special measures necessary that normally would never be considered. The Necromancer closed his mundane senses to the world and trusted the defense of his material body to his apprentice and the armed guards.
His mind adjusted to the world hidden from most and marveled in the flow of energies that was unseen all around him. Disdaining the Winds of Magic filtered by the Towers in Ulthuan or the raw energy of Chaos he concentrated his attention on the ripples and eddies left by the life and death of beings. The picture formed by his mind`s eye was not surprising to him, he had done this before. The Blighted Marches had not gotten their name for the Skaven or the eternal mist and decay that suffused them. It were the dead under the surface of the muddy waters that rested so lightly that had caused the moniker.
Waking these dead up was less the creation of a new undead that were to follow his will, it was more a wake-up call for creatures that had not forgotten old hatred and were willing to rise at the slightest provocation. This was a good thing, there was much work to do and it could also be used to teach his apprentice-not that said worthy thought of himself like that-yet.
Pushing them message that it was time to rise to the many dead below was easy-to give them precise instructions and to wake them up in batches of hundreds was hard work. The warpstone that was so prevalent in this area helped him to conclude the task he had set himself for the day.
Pulling himself back into his otherworldly flesh he saw his guards cautiously watching him while trying to hide the fact. In front of them more than a thousand undead shuffled to move ordinary lines as their regiments had been untold years earlier. They waited for his commands.
Taking a deep gulp from the goblet offered to him he addressed his client. "So, Major Gerber-as requested this batch will seek out all warpstone within 500 meters of this beacon wherever you put it-that is also where they will put the warpstone. Herr Koch here will easily be able to modify their orders, I will be around for a couple of more days if you need more of these.
"Thank you Herr von Carstein-I think."
Neustadt, Naggaroth, roughly same time
Naggaroth is a chilly place in the Brewtime already but currently Elrik Straker wished for less clothes or something cool. He was sweating all over and his skin felt as if he had a severe sunburn. He did not really realize any of that as the view in front of him was just overwhelming.
A pair of pear shaped containers, much bigger than him were heated to incredible temperatures. A banshee-like wail emitted from a box that supposedly pushed air so strongly that it went through the molten ore in the one container like the bubbles a child might make though a straw into his drink.
The other was just tipped forward and poured many tons of molten glowing steel forward. All of this gave the overwhelming sensation of titanic work and achievement together with a whiff of hell. The hall he was in was far too loud for any conversation and he was led to the much quieter office of the overseer where a beaming Thorsten Breitkop offered explanation.
"What you have just witnessed is called a Bessemer converter. It is used to convert pig iron to high-quality steel-and the converter you just saw in action gives 30 tons of that in one go. The pair of them makes more steel in a week than the rest of Naggaroth in a year."
"Wonderful, simply wonderful"
He sat down with Claus Tolles in another office an hour later and a glass of good schnapps-a taste he had acquired during the last year- and savored the taste for a minute. He was a powerful Druchii in his role as Malekith`s majordomo but the Fortress of Despair was his chosen domain. Here he was out of his depth and not among his people-none of that soothed his mind.
"You seemed less than enthused when Thorsten presented his new toy, what is up?"
"Ah, a marvelous achievement and it will allow many new enterprises and weapons I am sure."
"So?"
"And so it will bring much upheaval among the Lords."
"Is it that bad?"
"Good steel has nearly the price of silver and a lot of Lords have paid fortunes to acquire stores of it to make the tools of war. Now these stores will be worth far less. But do not worry about it as it is only a drop in the ocean of unrest that your works have unleashed."
"That bad?"
"Worse. Your Auxilia is the most powerful infantry unit of its size in all of Naggaroth and nobody has yet seen what happens when your Black Company and they work together. As you are loyal to Malekith only that makes a lot of Lords uneasy.
That all Druchii have to spend more efforts to keep our slaves from running as they all dream of working for you is but a nuisance.
Your new inventions have brought great wealth to some. Urglieth Jerres –that is Lord Jerres these days-has amassed a great fortune in a very short time and he is not the only one. But for every newly rich Druchii there is one who has lost a fortune and two who envy the lucky one. And we are Druchii, so you can imagine how we deal with this kind of tension-bloodily.
The joined stock companies are another thing. Don`t get me wrong, overseeing them has made me fabulously rich but now a lot of the Lords get ideas. Did you know that Lord Jerres send saboteurs to burn Lord Irrles river boats so his railroad had more customers?
A lot of these conflicts end up in front of Malekith who has to decide. Up to a point that is a good thing as it gives him more power-but we are fast approaching the point where his patience is exhausted and then Khaine help everybody who is in the vicinity.
"Fuck"
"Indeed"
Dragon Gate, Ulthuan, 6. Festtag, Brew Time
Cales, Sword Master of Hoeth, watched the sun reflect of the directly of the tastefully shining ceremonial armor of Thyrion. The light shone through slender windows that made up one of the long walls of Dragon Keep`s great hall. Having displaced Korhal from the place of honor for the occasion the Prince`s entourage had taken great care to time the ceremony just right for this to happen. That served to distinguish Thyrion from the lesser nobles better than an otre` amount of jewelry or an artificially elevated place. Nothing else in the room could distract from the Prince, it was sparsely equipped with deceivingly simple-looking furniture that could keep the attention for hours of one let them.
Thyrion himself projected an air of casual charm and seemed slightly amused at the proceedings. Cales was only too used to the Princes ways and concentrated his attention on the visitors who were quite unusual in these halls. For the first time in elven memory humans were entertained in these halls as guests of honor. And these humans were quite unusual, even if Cales could not immediately say why. A quick check revealed that the four were quite mundane, even if all of them carried several wards. That these were bigger than any human he had so far met, but that was not the disquieting part as they were still about the same height than the assembled elves, even if broader around shoulders and limbs.
The swordmaster decided it was the little things that got him. The faces and any other exposed skin was free of the blemishes, smallpox scars or warts that humans so often carried. Their clothing and any other attire had a workmanship that elevated it far above anything that Cales had seen from other human factions. His fine eleven senses could not detect any of the smells that usually emanated from humans like a cloud of flies from dung. If he could detect anything it was a faint smell of some perfume-in a human soldier a totally unheard of thing. So what was getting his attention so much without expressing itself to his conscious mind?
"Prince Thyrion, nobles of Ulthuan, I am Oberleutnant Ernst Hermann of the KSK. My armsmen and me have been sent as military observers to the Dragon Gate by the German government to learn about the conflict between your armed might and the treacherous Druchii."
Ah-that was it, the teeth. Cales had yet to meet the human older than 6 or so that had all of his teeth in good order-and here they were as white and even as those of an Ulthuan noble. An Asurian smile from a human face was most disconcerting.
A while later he found himself having small talk with Korhal, commander of the Dragon Gate. Of course the Germans were the subject, especially their officer who just finished a conversation with Thyrion. "Have you seen the sword this Hartmann wears? Does he think that we are some savages from the Old World that he thinks he needs to impress? And does he really think that he can use that useless piece of dead steel?"
"I am not sure why he wears it-might be as he is the only officer around and we have never seen officers of this "KSK" before-maybe they all do? Be that as it may I am not totally sure that he cannot use it-the way he moves with it indicates that he at least used to wear it. And if you look at the handle than this sword has seen some use."
"Actually he indicated that he practices with it regularly and that he-in his own words-at least does not cut off his own foot with it" Both Elves were too well controlled to jump at the voice of Thyrion that cut through their conversation. "I think that this is his way to show humility to which he is of course well entitled to. But we can change that, can`t we? Cales would you be so nice to give fencing lessons to this Ernst Hartmann?"
Cales, who practiced sword fighting for more than 200 years and was renown for his skill even in a group of Asur specialized in it started to bristle at have to teach a mere human before he started to smile.
"I will do my very best my Prince. I cannot promise for the results though."
"I am sure you will do your best Cales, as always."
Camp Hohenstaufen, 7. Sigmarstag, Brew Time
The monitor in front of Sleeneck displayed a house. He spoke "Tarquelt" into the stalk he had learned to call Microphone and repeated it several times. Next he scratched the Skaven pictogram for house onto the pad in front of him.
When he clicked the button to signify he was done the monitor showed several houses "Targuelts". It was half an hour later that "his" German told him that he was done for today. This time no latch opened but the human offered a small brown square he had taken from a bag. By the Horned Rat-chocolate. He had just tasted it once before and it was all his aspirations rolled into one. And this piece was bigger than the last one. For about a second Sleeneck felt guilty-he had not given away any secrets, why did the Germans reward him so? Just as he thought them the Skaven words for nonthreatening things?
"You like chocolate don`t you?"
"Yes, yes"
"Well, I offer you a deal then. You can have this now-no strings attached-or you wait for 10 minutes. If you can wait that long I give you two."
Sleeneck`s first reflex was to rip the chocolate out of the Germans hands and nearly got up from his chair. "You are not joking joking human – I get one more piece if I just wait 5 minutes"
"Yes, you do, promise"
"Then I will..I will wait."
"Fine, I will be back in five."
The Germans had so far not tortured Sleeneck-but now they started to do so. The German placed the bar of delicacy directly on the table in front of the Skaven and walked out of the room.
The brown piece looked at him. "Take me, you know you want it it" it seemed to say. His tongue could already taste it, his nose twitched and his snout started to salivate from the sight and delicate smell. It looked so good and it could be his immediately. Just then he would not get the second piece and that was even better, wasn`t it? But who would believe that promise. Maybe the German would not bring a second piece, why would he. Or take away this piece for him being so gullible?
The Skaven`s right hand pulled his left one back that had nearly snatched the delicacy from the table. Sleeneck spend the next 4.2 minutes punching the next wall in frustration and running in circles while having conversations in his mind.
The German brought the second piece exactly on time before slapping Sleeneck on his back and bringing him to the next training session, called "Boss for a day"
Skavenblight, 8 Brunntag, morning
Lord Paskit personally visited some of the defenses that had been prepared along one of the ways leading into Skavenblight from the Blighted March. The Skaven had always relied more on the March and their hidden location than on fixed fortifications for their defenses. There were city walls from the time when Skaveblight was still called Tyros. Even Skaven neglect and malignant nature had not been able to tear these majestic edifices down, yet against the firepower the Germans had demonstrated several times they seemed a pitiful defense.
That had not kept Paskit from manning them with Skaven drawn from the lesser clans yet he did not expect to see any of them again or playing any role but speed bump. Instead the Skaven had converted every house and ruin along the likely avenues of approach into miniature fortresses with barricades doors and windows, reinforced walls and tunnels between each of them. Jezzails, ratling guns and warpcannon all had secure firing positions and Plague Monks stood ready to throw their best globes full of pestilent death.
The Germans would have to dig out every one of them and there were thousands of them. In the close confines they would not be able to play to their strengths and would suffer high losses. Yes, this was a good plan, much better than letting the Germans into the undercity. He had sold this strategy as "slowing the Germans down and bleeding them" but he would kill them up here and show everybody that he was the Lord of the Warrior Clans.
Having a last look at the street he saw the empty cobblestones, the trash to the sides, the ramshackle walls of the aboveground buildings, all cloaked in a dense unmoving mist-just like he liked it. Hurrying with his entourage towards the entrance to the next tunnel underground he heard a strange noise he could not place, a sort of mechanical purring.
About 200 meters above him Nathan Alpers made his way down the same ally and saw it only on the monitor displaying the scans done by a MM-wave radar under the fuselage of his Storch. He would have preferred to eyeball the city himself, but it was safer with the fog and next to no wind was an important requirement for what was to follow.
When he reached the cities center he turned his plane in a tight circle and flew down the same lane as before. Pressing a button on his stick a small canister dropped from his plane, deployed a chute and landed in the alley, joined by another one at the roads end.
"Storch 06 for Grey Lady 01-beacons in place and radiating"
"Grey Lady for Stork 06 acknowledged, commencing bombing run"
Nathan made sure he was away quite a bit when the huge bomber lined up the two beacons he had just placed. He had cleared the mist by climbing a first-row seat to watch the old warhorse open its cavernous bomb bays and an endless stream of black cannisters drop from it. They all dropped smaller bombs in return which ejected parachutes just when they disappeared in the mist.
Unseen by the German pilot the cannisters were ruptured by small explosions and formed halos of ethylene oxide around them for the briefest of moments. When these halos had time to mix up with oxygen from the atmosphere sufficiently another series of small explosions fired them up. What happened next was technically a conflagration rather than an explosion but in practice this did not make much of a difference. A row of fireballs emerged from the mist, eating their way into Skavenblight. Pressure waves that were vastly powerful merged into even more devastating shockwaves and washed over the hiding places of the defenders.
Buildings collapsed, walls fell inwards, and Skaven were burned in the fireballs. All of these were side effects. The real killer, the killer that would leave even the Skaven speechless were the overpressure and the following partial vacuum that tore the lungs of its victims.
Five minutes before a vast army of Skaven had stood ready to kill any interloper into their domain-now scattered survivors staggered through their burial ground. They could see the terrible effects better with any minute a wind came up and pushed the mist away that had so far graciously coated the carnage after several dozen meters. It also allowed them to hear the explosions and the rumble of German war machines from the walls better.
German Field Camp, near Skavenblight, 8. Brunntag
Since Ulrich Stoiber´s "Wolfpack" was not needed in the prelim fights, his unit had a holiday, so to speak. Back in the main camp the panzer were once again checked and resupplied. Due to it not taking all too long, the Crews had nearly the whole day for recreation.
Ulrich was very fond of his Leopard 2A8, even without the clerical sanctioning done by the Wolf priests. Nor could the stopgap design process leading to the A8 diminish this fondness. It was a tank design for this new world they were now inhabitants of and it did that job very well.
But progress did not stop and for the Skaven campaign KMW, Rheinmetall, Porsche, MAN and Daimler-Benz had done their utmost to deliver at least prototypes to the Bundeswehr. The new Jaguar MBT had the broadest distribution so far and Stoiber and his crew had already met one in the field, killing that strange Skaven combat wheel.
Ulrich did not know what to think of that design. He was too much of an old school tanker to consider a tank derived from an infantry vehicle to be "real" Main Battle Tank, but he saw the advantages. Krauss-Maffei-Wegmann´s new product was easy, fast and comparatively cheap to produce. It´s platform build enabled one hell of possible variant designs and the configurable armour packs could be fitted to the situation at hand. It even had some protection his Leopard 2A8 did not have . Like his namesake, the Jaguar could be a deadly, nimble and fast hunter, as another nod at the new reality, all Jaguars had a fold-out seat for a possible on-board sorcerer.
Still, until he could test drive one first, Ulrich would never part with his actual "Eisenschwein".
The polar opposite in design intentions to the Jaguar Ulrich saw sitting in the officer´s club, drinking a refreshing fruit mix. Rolling to the supply stations was a not-any-longer Leopard 3. The ministry had wanted to keep ties to the Wehrmacht at bay and named the new Panzer Leopard 3. But even the civilians after some newspaper reports had begun to refer to Germany´s newest and heaviest MBT as a Tiger. There simply were so many similarities in design philosophy that it was obvious to name it so, the relation was clear.
Company founder Ferdinand Porsche would have been proud of his design department. The new Tiger was what Porsche had hoped for in the old Tigers, but was impossible due to the technological level of that time. Technological advances and a bit of magic had made it possible now.
The new Porsche Panzer was a rolling fortress, impressively armed and armoured, active and passive defence systems installed, having a place for a sorcerer as well, very agile and fast for a Tank of it´s size. But this all-around prowess came at a price, a really big price tag. Compared to the new Jaguar, the new Tiger was hideously expensive, so it was no surprise that up to now only a company of vehicles had been bought by the Bundeswehr. And the crews getting to operate them were the envy of the Panzer Corps.
Ulrich was sure that if the Panzer was really as good as he had heard so far, the Armed Forces would buy quite a number more, no matter the price. But equally sure was that the majority of tankers would drive the Jaguar, the Tigers like their older relatives would be reserved for veteran and elite formations.
Amusingly Porsche at the moment was making even more money with Panzer parts than with the Panzer itself. Having obviously a design department filled with nerds, the Stuttgart company had designed 14 track types, each for specific terrain situations, for their "baby". With the exception of 2 types, all other were universal, so the Moorketten (Swamp tracks) were in massive demand by all units with tracked vehicles.
And a small family-owned company was making good money as well, thanks to their passion for history. They were producing and delivering an upgraded Zimmerit mix anew for some vehicles. Back on Earth, magnetic mines were an outdated old hat, but on Warhammer some idiot might come up with it again.
The newly designed combat vehicles already had some varied defenses installed, but older types got patches of Zimmerit coating, up to a full coating like in the old days. Indeed, Ulrich´s A8 had it´s underbelly covered with the stuff, reducing the danger of magnetic "outch", should someone invent it.
Someday, their own German "Stary hats and robes" would be tasked to develop another, cheaper solution to the actual systems and Zimmerit, but that was something not for the short, but medium future.
Skavenblight, 8. Brunntag later that day
Meister Keppel had one of the best look-outs that could be had in this battle but that did not mean he enjoyed the view. Skavenblight was a depressing place of crumbling buildings with empty windows that stared like eyeholes from a skull, sagging roads and ever-present decay. The fact that a bright sun shone mercilessly on the battlefield did not improve the sight any but exposed brutal detail.
The celestial mage was sitting inside a cupola made of armored glass on top of a low-slung tracked vehicle. Formerly a "Raketenjagdpanzer" (missile armed-tank destroyer) it had been remodeled into a "Beobachtungspanzer" (scout tank) when its TOW missiles no longer had worthy targets. Most of them were now equipped with sophisticated sensors and drones, yet a few had been modified to be used by mages. Armed only with a remote control machine gun they protected him far better than an amulet and a few armsmen. If he had to go to war at all, then going in an armored shell while sitting down was the way to do it.
And he had some new toys to work with-drones. Of course seeing the target of his spells directly was preferable, but the high-definition video provided by the drones together with good data on their position allowed him to do quite a lot remotely. Most of the time he was supporting the allied troops by either banning enemy spells or by detecting traps ahead of the time, something his order was good at.
"Himmel 02 von Hammer 06, we are approaching a series of barricades across the street. Do you have anything for us?"
Keppel was able to see the barricades directly from afar and had a bird`s eye view via the drones. Putting his head back against his seat he let his mind doing the watching instead of his senses.
"There is something nasty at the left flank, I`d say a warpstone-fuelled trap. And there might be gutter runners in the building to the right"
"Hammer 06-thanks loads."
A small greenish explosion and the squealing from the CS-soaked building proved the celestial mage right.
He was about to congratulate himself when he barely caught a Skaven spell in time. That one would have been nasty-"Eye of the Warp" but he managed to break it in time. The Skaven mage was well hidden and immediately tried something else-this was going to be back-breaking.
Skavenblight, different part, same time
"Find them and kill them" Udo Meins stared at the tunnel entrance before his squad while he waited for the go. It was ominous, dark, emitted a fetid smell and was sure to contain crazed Skaven and deadly traps. He could sense the tension in his soldiers, it was more than the usual pre-combat tension as entering a dark hole triggered many deep-seating fears.
He wanted to go in, urgently. Last weeks the bleeding rats had killed his brother Gerd when he was on a supply run with a hovercraft. Why did he have to play hero goddamn it? He had been through the first pain, through denial and a certain acceptance. It had come with a mantra whenever he thought about the Skaven and his brother.
"Find them. Find them and kill them."
He was so keyed up that he punched the shoulder of the "Panzerfaust" gunner besides him before the Lt. had finished the go signal. Said gunner triggered his weapon which was curiously muted and ejected a lot of black plastic chips from its backside. The front end was a different matter. The warhead flew straight into the tunnel. Smoke, flames and a deep rumbling spoke of a thermobaric warhead that killed all defenders that were too close.
Blowing his whistle and running forward without checking if anybody followed the German Sergeant ran towards the tunnel.
"Find them, find them and kill them"
Skavenblight, different part, same time
Joakim Vos pushed his way into another building. It had been left standing by the bombing and had to be checked for survivors and tunnels. The passageways were too broken for the "Schwert" drones to make it through, so humans had to do the job. He was well armored against most threats and enjoyed the well-filtered air that he did not have to suck through a filter himself. Yet none of that mattered with his current problem.
"Reik Actual from Beetle 06-no survivors in this building. There is one possible tunnel entrance, we will leave some mines a few meters downrange and close the entrance with a charge. We need a burial detail?"
"Reik Actual for Beetle 06-what for?"
"House is full of dead Skaven slaves Sir, all human."
"Sigmar wept."
"Reik actual-these humans were all armed, I suspect they would have attacked us if they were still alive."
"Beetle 06-you are right-the Skaven have killed their minds long ago, the bodies just had to follow."
2000 meters AGL, Skavenblight, same time
"Target is at coordinates …., will be illuminated from two minutes."
"Rhino 14 acknowledges"
Simone Rausch saw a maker appear in her HUD that gave her a steering clue when Peter Fahs, her WSO put in the coordinates into his systems. Pulling her Phantom into a lazy curve she lined it up with her target. There would be no extra approach around this time, she had learned that lesson at high cost.
"Rhino 14 has passed IP, ETA to target 1 minute"
"Rhino 14, target is illuminated."
20 Seconds later a warbling sound told the German pilot that her bomb`s laser seeker "saw" the spot of ground that radiated coherent light at the right pulse rate. The change in sound and the HUD told her when the plane was in the basket-the place where the bomb needed to be dropped.
The departing 500-pound weapon did not make the plane jump much, the effect groundside was more spectacular. A house that was occupied by Skaven who had not been able to get away vanished in a cloud of smoke, just to reappear as a settling pile of rubble.
"Rhino 14, target eliminated, going back to holding position. 20 Minutes to Bingo fuel."
Skavenblight, different part, same time
Kargan Ironbeard found that something new every day is something you can get used to as well. Especially if the new things you learn are often about stuff making your life easier. The new thing he learned today was something like that and he highly approved. Together with his Thunderers he checked house after house alongside the road the allies wanted to use to access the inner City and besides some badly placed traps and survivors will all the combat power of a newborn kitten he found corpses.
Burned corpses, corpses with missing limbs, corpses pierced by fly debris but mostly still corpses with no visible injury besides some blood from mouth and nose. Lots of them, great bleeding lots of dead Thagoraki. Ironbeard liked that state of affairs very very much, his approval only muted by two things. The power that had produced this veritable mountain of dead rats did not rest with the Dawi. The second was that this was just a skirmish-the real battle waited underground and there the Germans could not apply this particular trick in such spectacular size.
The real battle was still to come, but even of that Kargan approved-the Book of Grudges still had many pages that needed to be taken care of.
Outside Skavenbight, 10. Baekertag, Brew Time, evening
"Thanks Gottlieb" Henrik Gerber plonked on the chair that Gottlieb Pfeil, one of his Lieutenants had kept it clear for him. The command tent filled up quite rapidly and before long General Wolf climbed the podium erected for him which brought everybody else to attention.
"At ease everybody, sit down. Let me give you the news and our fresh orders. The good news is that as of noon today we have taken Skavenblights upper city. There are only small pockets of resistance left and they won`t last long.
The enemy has suffered heavy losses during this operation, we are still trying to count how many ratmen we killed. Gentlemen-congratulations. Now for the bad news."
An aide unveiled the first map of the day and despite the disciplined military audience an audible murmur rose. The map looked strange for a very simple fact-it showed the vertical as opposed to the horizontal. On top it had a small line broken by the symbols of houses, walls and streets. Below that there was a huge blob that extended in every direction with all the symmetry and sense of a malignant tumor.
Henrik had used the analog of an iceberg for Skavenblight before with the major part below the waterline. This map, provided it was accurate showed him his error. Icebergs have just 90% of their bulk unseen. The Undercity of Skavenblight was far far bigger in comparison to the city above.
"You all have obviously seen the bad news already without me having to point it out to you. Our job is not half done, it is not even one-tenth done. But we will do it, have no doubt. This map was made with something the Germans call echolocation and reveals all the major caverns and tunnels under us. It cannot show minor tunnels or subdivisions, but even so we can see that this Undercity had huge tunnels, extensive open underground spaces and lots of areas that are more tightly packed than the worst slums of Altdorf.
We cannot know exactly how many creatures live below but we have to estimate the population in many millions.
Yet despite all that bad news this map also shows us how to win the coming underground campaign. If you at the places of this map marked with a stylized pump you will find 13 of them. They are more or less evenly distributed around the blasted city and without them the Skaven would either drown or suffocate. So, if we capture these pump stations and control them we can force the Skaven to give up-or drown them like the rats they are.
Our job is pump station 8, this one. We will go for it starting from coming Angertag, but do not expect this to be quick or easy. As we need to secure our supply lines and remove the warpstone from all areas we want to occupy this can only be done methodically, slowly and surely. Anybody who thought he would be home for Christmas please get rid of this illusion."
