30 Kilometers from Khemri,Nehekhara, 11, Angertag Ulrichszeit

Lieutenant-Colonel Templeton opened his cupola and stood on his seat so his head was outside of "Arras", the Challenger 2 he used as a command tank. His right hand patted on the tank`s roof armor, this might be one of the last "real" missions that the behemoth would see. The Desert Rats had been stationed in Arabia since 2523 and the tanks saw much more use during that time than Templeton had imagined before. There had been missions against the Undead, the need to quell fighting between feuding tribes and the occupation of two pirate bases. That there were not enough low-boy trailer units that would allow the tanks to skip most road marches added to the mechanical misery. The old girl was on the verge of being clapped out.

If this were Earth she would have been shipped to Vickers, would have received a reconditioned engine and running gear plus some new black boxes and he would have been issued another tank. Unfortunately, Vickers, United Defense or however they were called were in a different universe these days. Keeping the tanks running and supplied had developed into a nasty headache during the last years, especially as its main gun used different ammo from all other tanks in the Reiksbund. There had been ideas to replace the gun with a 120 mm smooth-bore or even a 105 rifled one and change the Perkins engine for a MTU 883. The plan had looked very nice till one saw the first cost estimates, and as always, the plan was the first casualty of the battle.

The 7th Armor Brigade would continue; the German government had agreed to that and they had proven themselves twice over. But they would receive German kit and the Challenger tanks would be replaced with Jaguar tanks and at least one platoon of Tigers. The 7th Armor Brigade, the Desert Rats, in Tiger tanks, the Lieutenant Colonel thought that Rommel would have a laugh somewhere. For a change the Challengers were playing second fiddle in this op, the dozen AS-90 SPG would deliver Her Majesty`s displeasure to an enemy this world had never seen.

Templeton rubbed his eyes which burned with a lack of sleep. The Desert Rats always maintained a troop ready to ship out at a moment's notice, which did not mean that this was an easy exercise. Their orders had arrived only a very few days ago and he felt like he had only cat-naps ever since. The target, a strange floating pyramid, was trundling at a very moderate speed towards a destination that was subject to intense speculation. The Lieutenant Colonel would have been far happier if that course would have brought the Pyramid closer to shore. There was a Dawi pocket battleship with 8 inch guns that just waited for its chance to pound that Pyramid into rubble. No such luck and so a couple of forward observers were reporting via hopefully undetected satellite links. Tempelton, his platoon of Challengers and a company of infantry with their Warriors were guarding the artillery.

"Arras, this is Shelldrake. Firing now"
"Shelldrake, Arras copies."

Each of the dozen guns fired once and Tempelton thought he saw some minute corrections of the barrels. There were more shots, another break, another salvo and then the artillery got serious about it. Every ten seconds another salvo flattened the sands, assaulted the Lieutenant-Colonel`s ears and sent out another 600 kilograms of steel and explosives. Tempelton wasn`t privy to the videos provided by drones or observer`s reports. He did see a green glow on the horizon though that seemed to flicker in time with the artillery strikes. Maybe it was his imagination, but that flicker seemed to become less bright with each salvo. If those shells were indeed on target they should wreak havoc, of that Templeton was reasonably sure.

He missed the first flickers of light, they were behind him and so the reports and screams via the wireless hit him at the same time as the small burst of light that emerged before him. There was a green-tinted flash, a sound like a thunderclap and then there were things where nothing had been before. There were two flocks of flying things and several of skeletal figures that seemed to carry some type of guns. The flying critters took off towards the SPGs while the walking ones made themselves into a line. Tempelton dropped into his tank, closed the hatch and started giving orders.

"Foxhound one and two, this is Arras. Engage flying targets, make sure you do not hit Shelldrake units with heavy weapons. All Arras elements and Foxhound three, open fire on the infantry before us."
He started hearing a lot of "Acknowledged" while his tanks turret started to rotate.

"Hesh up, engaging" came from his own gunner who had decided to offload the ammunition meant for undead constructs through the muzzle. An unlucky skeleton simply disappeared in a huge explosion while the loader pushed one of the new HE-rounds into the barrel and followed it by a charge.
"HE up"
"On the way."

The huge tank rocked on its suspension and a dust cloud rose from the ever-present sand. When sight was restored Tempelton found a circle of death where the shell had exploded. Metallic-looking bones and pieces of machinery littered the beaten ground. While the loader pushed another round into the waiting weapon his gunner engaged the enemy with his coax. That did not work as well as might be expected. The tracers indicated that the shots went true, but they also showed that more than a few shots ricochet in all directions. Other shots hit and simply had no discernible effect and sometimes the enemy dropped. Tempelton opened the hatch, pushed upwards and got himself behind his own machine gun. If the 7.62 GMPG would not do the job the 0.5" Browning Commander`s HMG provided by the Germans surely would. His head was still getting past the opening when the screaming in the wireless started and the first explosion sent fragments past his head. When he was up he saw several smoke columns where Archer SPGs should have been. How on earth could these bloody overgrown beetles harm armored vehicles?

The smoke hid the combat on that side of the field apart from some green lights and the sounds of many weapons firing. Another explosion lit up things and at the same time something green hit his own tank. A surprising amount of armor was spalled off the Challenger`s front. Even more worryingly his headphones replaced the chaos of unexpected combat with the slight hiss of fried electronics. The turret below him darkened and stopped turning. He was torn between assisting his crew in restarting the tank and fighting, choose to shoot the enemy and found that his machine gun indeed worked. He managed to get a couple of bursts right through a group of skeletons. Limbs were ripped off, torsos pierced and heads removed. He aimed for another section while the tank under him came to life again and the main gun spat out another round. When the sand settled sufficiently for sight again he found more undead on the ground in pieces, but he also found several skeletons that rose from the ground where only destroyed ones had been. The tank besides his cooked off, a column of fire rose from the hatch to be replaced by copious amounts of smoke. Something hit his tank again with more blows, he shot more skeletons and finally remembered that he fought more than just his tank.

"All Elements, this is Arras. Fall back to rally point, repeat, fall back to rally point. Driver, back 200 meters."

The tank below him lurched back while throwing heaps of sand in the enemy`s direction. More explosions penetrated the smoke, more green beams were visible shorts, more tracers went the other way. Things were a bit better now. The Undead seemed to have problems hitting at longer range and more machine guns could be turned on the swarms of fliers. The latter seemed to have multiplied somehow, but now withered under the combined firepower of the Desert Rats. Tempelton was about to breathe easier when more of the white flashes announced the arrival of more monsters. This time there was a new type among them, something that seemed to be made up from the upper part of a undead, a thick hoverboard and a big cannon. He aimed for that instantly and pressed the "override" button on his sight. The turret turned to the target while he spoke into the intercom.

"Gunner, target this flying thing, now."

There was a brief pause that allowed the gunner to get a range, the computer to give a firing solution and him to see the barrel turn in his direction.

"HE up"
"On the way."

The enemy disappeared in the following explosion, but more beams and more flying swarms emerged from the dust. Tempelton got several of them as did his gunner`s coax, but an explosion reminded the Lieutenant-Colonel that this was not the place for a last stand. From here on out the retreat was a nightmare of attacks from any direction, but the one that he expected them, crews burned in their own tanks and things that refused to die. The Desert Rats reached the rally point and then retreated down the old road that had brought them to the battlefield.

Tempelton was more than exhausted when the newest wave of flying critters attacked his tank. He managed to bring his machine gun around in time and unloaded a dozen bullets straight into one at short range. Things shortened, sparked and died, parts dropped and the thing twisted, turned and dropped. Its companion was close behind and when the soldier thumbed the butterfly trigger the heavy machine gun fired twice before the bolt clicked empty. Tempelton saw eldricht weapons that pointed at him, sharp claws and blades to rend him.

And to his very amazement he saw it vanish like a mist in the morning sun. The next hours were the hardest in his life, he had to tabulate the losses his forces had incurred in the prolonged battle. Out of a dozen he had five tanks left, out of 14 Warrior IFVs six remained, nearly half of the soldiers were dead and wounded.
Of the 12 Archer SPGs not a single one had made it to the rally point. This world held only very few of them any more.

Security Cabinet, Berlin

A joint session this time, things had gotten to the point where the major allies had to be included. Two seats were taken by Reiksmarshall Helleborg and Freiherr von Kluck were a marked contrast to the Germans that occupied the majority of the chairs. One chair had been upgraded with the addition of a cushion and had a bit more space around it as Rotach Roogson might be the shortest being in the room, but also the broadest around his shoulders.
The briefing about Angertag`s engagement was drawing to a close and the blank faces that watched the Colonel were mute testimony that their owners were at a loss about what to do. Some did not know which action could be taken, others had ideas, but no plan on how bring their peers around to accept them.

"The Hammer Hawk drone was able to obtain pictures and video for post-strike analysis. This picture shows the damage by the first series of impacts, this one was taken at the time when the artillery came under attack. As you can see there is strong damage to two faces of the target and we believe that all weapons here were inoperable.
This picture was taken 30 minutes later, most of the damage to the armor is already repaired and here we see that the gun barrels have been restored to the original.
We have also extrapolated the course that the Pyramid seems to take. If it were to follow it for 16 more days at present speed it would arrive at Nagash`s fortress."

"What would it want there? Does Nagash want to check if he really switched off the oven?"
"We do not know that Minister Söder, but we can speculate. The Pyramid has deviated from course twice so far and has spend periods up to four hours at these spots. Both were known to contain Warpstone. We were able to infiltrate a team to this location via helicopter, there is no Warpstone left."
"So?"
"Nagash`s fortress is built on top of one of the richest Warpstone mines in the known world Sir. We do not know what the Pyramid uses the Warpstone for, but if it needs more then it will find a surfeit there."
"That sounds reasonable. We should stop it before it arrives there then."
"Yes Sir."
"So what is the staff`s recommendation to destroy this? Our first attempts were not as successful as one might wish for."

"Sir, the staff believes that both the cruise missile attack as well as the artillery bombardment indicate that the pyramid has a hard time intercepting fast projectiles that arrive from a steep angle above. Indeed this picture shows that the guns will not be able to elevate past 60 degree and an attack from that angle will not be intercepted. The self-repair capabilities shown by the target as well as its resilience ask for a much stronger strike. The Staff has identified two further possibilities. One is extremely experimental and we would prefer not to use it, especially as we have a limited time window."
"So what is the staff`s recommendation."
"We use a "Greif" from Libenau."
"Ufffff"
"I cannot believe that you suggest such an atrocity. When you did this last time you got so much more than authorized and..."

"Excuse me, Minister Söder?"
Reiksmarshall Hellborg had not shouted, that would not have been dignified. At the same time he still managed to speak loudly enough to shut Simone Peter down for the moment.
"What does "we use a Greif from Libenau" mean and why does this upset Frau Peters so? I have heard of the "Greif" rockets that carry your satellites to orbit, but they do that from Peenemünde, do they not?"
"The German armed forces have stationed 12 "Greif" rockets in silos in in Lower Saxony. These rockets do not carry a satellite to orbit, they carry a nuclear weapon to any part of this world in under an hour."
"A nuclear weapon like the one you used to kill the Horned Rat?"
"Basically yes. Actually two of them have enhanced warheads."
"Enhanced?"
"Enhanced with Warpstone so they register in the Empyrean."
"Why would you build such a thing?"
"The crews that maintain them call these the "God Killers". I do not believe they do so in jest. These are the final trump."

"Oh my, and you believe that we need this?"
"This..thing has so far withstood our best attempts to bring it down. I do not believe we will have much more success if we stay conventional, but we will incur worse losses. If we strike now we do so in one of the most desolated regions this world has to offer. Nothing of value will be lost."
"Are you serious Markus? It is you who tries to obtain every bit of technology so you can build bigger and better weapons. And now you want to throw something away that both AIs we can consult state is far ahead of them in technology. Are you so eager to throw nuclear weapons around that you want to kill the goose which lays the golden eggs?"
"All attempts at communication have failed Sabine. The last one incurred an attack so bad that Hypatia had to restore parts of herself from secured storage."

"If this thing removes Warpstone, why not lure it into the Chaos Desert and have it remove it there? Try to use things before you destroy them, is that so hard to understand?"
"Have you seen the video we got from the 7th armor Brigade Sabine? Have you seen the beings that slaughtered our soldiers? It is most likely that the Pyramid used the Warpstone to build these, the weapons they used could be explained that way. Do you want more of these in the world, many more?"
"You are not sure and on the basis of this speculation you want to use nuclear weapons? What..."
"Sabine, I have been in this room when we had to decide the use of such weapons for the first time."
"And it will be the last time. My party will not stand for it."
"Sabine, we had an intense discussion then. The most important insight we gained from it back then was simply that we are not on earth any more."
"So?"

"When anybody uses these weapons in anger on Earth it will likely cause a war worse than any that we have ever seen. It is possible that humanity will not survive that war as a high-tech capable civilization. The use of such weapons is deterrent, the threat they may be used. If and when you use them you have lost already regardless of the outcome. Guess what, we are not on Earth any more. And if we find something that threatens us all then by god we use a nuke if that is the only way to do the job. It is not the end of the world, it is what it takes to prevent it."
"So you say it is ok to use the atom bomb because the other side cannot shoot back? Why didn`t you nuke the Dark Elves back then or the DawiZharr? They could not shoot back, couldn`t they?"

"No they could not, but they also could not threaten us the same way that this thing can. If this is indeed a Necron Monolith, and what we have seen from that battle makes it much more certain, than it is a threat to us all. It is quite literally a threat to all life on this world and if we give this thing more time to produce more of these horrors then God help all of us."

The picture still projected to the wall was one of a Skeleton warrior. Looking for all the world like a nightmare that fused technology with death it scared everybody in the room more than they would admit.
In the end it was not the arguments that decided the issue. It was the picture of a metal skeleton that held an unearthly weapon and looked into the audience through green orbs that hovered in the skull`s eye sockets.

Liebenau, Lower Saxony

The small room was 60 meters below the surface, protected by packed earth and many meters of reinforced concrete. It held two men who looked both bored and tense. When the red telephone rang an electric current seemed to go through both. They had trained for this, every day since they had been posted here. Their training carried them through the motions while their bodies went cold and their minds insisted that this was not really real.

One of them took up the receiver and heard a code that he matched against the card before him. It identified the caller as authorized and so he nodded to his partner. That partner stepped towards a small safe, opened it and took two small cards from it. Breaking the seals they exposed this days codes and compared them in steps with the voice at the other end of the phone line. The codes matched and so both stepped in front of the console.

One of them used a keyboard to input the coordinates they had received, the other confirmed that they were correct. No training in the world could keep both from swallowing nervously before the next step.
They removed a key each from under their shirts and placed then into a slot.

"On three, turn right. One, two, three" click
"On three, turn left. One, two three" click
They were swaddled in so much earth and concrete that they could neither hear not feel much. What they heard and felt was enough.

"What did we do..."
"Follow orders, that`s what."
"Hope that is good enough."

400 meters from the pair three huge slabs of concrete lifted minutely and then rolled aside. Three steel caps opened with the hiss of hydraulics, opening dark shafts below. Inside the middle shaft a bunch of computers finished the final checks and started a hot-gas generator that provided much more energy to the rocket. More hot gasses were led towards turbines and spun incredibly strong fuel pumps into ever-increasing rotations and power.

Nitrogen Tetroxide met dimethyl hydrazine and when they met inside the rocket chambers they unleashed an inferno. Five engines roared with unrestrained power within seconds and huge pillars of flame vented from the two side shafts provided for that. Slowly at first and with ever-increasing speed the Greif rose from its silo. The first stage burned for more than three minutes before shutting down. It was discarded and a second stage ignited two engines of the same type to bring the warhead towards the planned trajectory.

This was the first launch of an ICBM in anger on two worlds and already it was trying to achieve something never tried before, hitting a moving target. As the Pyramid was moving at a very predictable course and speed it had been deemed possible by the planners. They would know the truth of it 20 minutes after launch.