10 million kilometers from the Warhammer World

The space tug had left the cargo container quite a while ago, had performed a retro burn and refueled at Sage 17. The container had followed the course it had been set on, which was, up to now, a very long ellipse that was about 20 degrees "up" from the ecliptic. Both the signals it had received from the world that was so far away and the computers inside agreed now was the time for a final maneuver. Small reaction control jets changed the craft's orientation. When the time was right a flame lit the back end of the capsule for two minutes before it extinguished. There was a series of small explosions when the chemical stage detached itself from the capsule and took its own trajectory. The capsule was no longer going back to the Warhammer World in any way, shape or form. It would take its place among the far-flung objects in the Oort Cloud analog that surrounded the sun and stay there for a very long time.

Before the Weltensprung most people were buried in the many cemeteries their religions had erected. In the last decades a lot of those not connected to a church or mosque had chosen to be buried at sea or natural cemeteries in forests.

The Weltensprung had not changed that a lot. That was until the Ohlsdorf incident. The Ohlsdorf cemetery had been the largest park cemetery on Earth and by all that was known on the Warhammer World as well. Covering some 380 hectare 202,000 people were interred in it. In 2529 a necromant took it upon himself to raise as many of them as he could. Why he did attempt to do so would never come to light. As soon as he started the ritual he set off close to a dozen magic detectors and a SWAT team wasted him about ten minutes later.

He had not been able to call up too many dead, in fact even the few he had revived fully dropped once he was riddled by bullets. Still, the picture of skeletal hands that pushed from the earth, the skulls that barely poked up in so many places had burned themselves into the minds of many.

It had convinced enough of them to change their ideas about their last resting places. It had provided financing for this undertaking and so more than 30,000 people had been quite thoroughly cremated. Their remains had been compacted as much as feasible and interred in the cargo container. The container had been sealed by the Cult of Morr and declared its own garden. As long as the seals were unbroken and the "garden" not disturbed Morr would hold sway over them. Given where the dead were going and that the seals were etched into a diamond slate it was very unlikely that they would ever be disturbed.

The fell gods were not amused.

Site Alpha, Kislev

The mess hall was full of people, lots and lots of people. There were the Germans, there were the mages. There were the many Kislevites, the workers, their spouses and the kids. Dear god, so many kids.
All looked to the small lectern that was erected at the far wall of the hall and at the middle sized man who climbed it.

Jacub General froze for a very long moment. The biggest crowd he had ever spoken to were the workshops on pollutants he sometimes supported with a presentation. This crowd was many times bigger and the vast majority of them depended so much on what he would do. Fuck, he could not do this, no freaking way.
Taking a deep breath he looked at the assembly.

"Folks, you all should have heard by now that Herr Meier and his staff were killed during a hunt last Geheimnisstag. This is a hard blow to this project as it leaves us with exactly one engineer, me. I see no way how we can continue without their guidance."

There was a brief, total silence before the murmurs set in. Jacub straightened his back, there was no way to avoid this mess.

"Unless all of us do their very best, unless all of us outgrow themselves and shoulder the burden. If we do that I am sure we can make it. And that is my question to you: Do you want to make it happen, do you want to finish what you have started?"
There was more silence. Until the cheering started.

There was no way Jacub General could let down so many people. Now he would just have to make his own miracle.

S-647 Minerve, periscope depth, close to Lustrian coast

In the old days, the days that were a hazy memory of a life gone by, Fauve's back would have badly protested. Now it creaked alarmingly and the back side of the Lieutenant's overall showed sizable lumps and ridges that should not belong to an unbroken spine. They showed up as Minerve's skipper bent to the periscope's eyepiece since dusk. Still, his back did not hurt, very few things did these days. Fauve was still tense, but that was as Minerve was making an ungodly racket.

The submarine's batteries had been nearly depleted, he had no choice but to take Minerve to periscope depth and to raise the snorkel. It allowed the two Pielstick diesel engines to suck air through the whole boat, they pushed their exhaust into the water. In the old days the racket had been balanced by the welcome infusion of fresh air that had made the sub livable again. These days even that had been taken from Fauve and his crew as they no longer needed to breathe and their sense of smell was mercifully diminished.

The necromant that had forced them into his service would not care about any of that, he only cared that they did as they were told. And that they had done, they had emptied the waters of the Vampire Coast from German shipping. Luthor Harkon's ships could once again roam the seas and bring the bounty of the two ships Minerve had sunk to his lair. Presently the submarine could just patrol the Vampire Coast, waiting for the next would-be hunter to step into their trap. Even when the submarine spent most of the time motionless the batteries had a nasty tendency to self-discharge. If Harkon wanted his submarine ready for battle he needed to run the engines now and then.

And while the engines were making their racket sonar was next to useless, which meant that he had to pull an hours-long periscope watch lest Minerve be attacked without warning. In an hour the batteries would be full again and he could take her under water. The sub would engage her balancing system again and resume imitating a hole in the water, waiting for customers. Fauve would sit again on his favorite chair for days, motionless like most of his crew.

The sea swallowed most of the soot produced by the Pielstick diesels, the periscope left next to no wake as Minerve made only so much speed as needed to have rudder and plane control. Still, the engines produced several hundred kilowatts worth of thermal energy which they released into the water. The sounds the engines transmitted into the sea carried far into the ocean, detectable by those with the appropriate sensors. The warm spot in the ocean was spotted by a telescope attached to the Kopernikus station, the noise struck a side array on a German submarine.

Pi=3.15, Naggaroth

Barak ar Varbadaudassoda's army was like a piece of soap. The more he used it, the faster it was gone. And like using soap it had its effects, but needed to be used again and again. Using his army meant that he lost warriors that had just arrived from the depths of the desert as well as comrades of campaigns waged hundreds of years ago. No matter whether Hung warrior, demon or Chaos Knight, he led them against an unending series of ridge lines that laid perpendicular to the exit of the Chaos Desert into Naggaroth.

He led them into the fire of hundreds of rifles, against something that killed like one of these rifles, but so much more often and the infernal cannon that one rarely saw, but for the results. Sometimes the Druchii rigged the infernal wire that gripped his people better than any Kraken ever born. More often than not they caused avalanches that claimed even more of his warriors when they were finally in range to storm the elven defenses. Last week he had tried out something he took for a good idea and had one of his mages cause the avalanche before he assaulted the last ridge. Nobody died under the snow as they died on it. The ground was so soft that wading through it was impossible for anybody under armor and all the others were so slow that the Druchii probably laughed their asses off while they killed another lot of his warriors.

Still, the Chaos Desert birthed new warriors nearly as quickly as the cowardly elves could kill them. Whatever N`Dharma was, however Slaanesh enticed even more creatures from the depths of the desert that even Barak had never seen, he did it. The last batches were really, really strange in Barak's eyes. Given the warlord's long life and where he had spent it that meant a lot. The Keeper of Secrets had confided in Barak that the denizens of the deepest parts of the Desert would not be too stable without him.

All that the expenditure of blood, pain and lives had bought Barak a few kilometers of blood-drenched ice and snow that nobody in his right mind wanted to be in, let alone pay for so extravagantly. And together with every meter forward another problem reared its head higher. Inside the Chaos Desert there were several sources of nourishment. Things that might have been mushrooms, animals that multiplied with neither rhyme nor reason provided food to those who still needed it.

Whenever a Chaos Crusade stepped outside of the Desert they relied on foraging, on plundering their victims. That was simply not possible here and so he had to organize transport that brought food and other victuals from the the Chaos Desert. It did not go down well with the noble warriors, but the nomads like the Hung could be enticed to perform. That the Hung were among the best fed in Barak's army did not improve morale any, but got at least some others to lower themselves to haul supplies.

Just with every snow-covered kilometer and every icy ridge line the transport needed more beings who consumed more victuals themselves. He needed to break the pointy ears soon, otherwise he'd be in deep trouble.

Pi= 3.1499

At first glance Malus Darkblades's tent was the same it had been through this campaign. Only if one looked more closely one could see patches, scruffy spots and badly repaired damage. The Druchii in the tent had always been slender, now they were on the verge of being gaunt. Now their faces bore lines rarely seen before, shoulders slumped and backs were rounded with fatigue.

"Three days?"
"Three more days and that's it Sir. We can last considerably longer on food and other victuals, but munitions and replacement weapons are very thin on the ground. I can also not say what is in the pipeline with any confidence. If the enemy continue to press their attacks like during the last days then we are out of ammunition in three days."
"Unacceptable."
"Indeed, still that does not fill our arsenal Sire."
"Yes, it is. Tuvil, something is wrong at this Neustadt place, I have never trusted them. Send somebody you can rely on back with the wounded tonight, he should have a look. And pray to Khaine that Magestalker comes through for us, otherwise we can fall back on bayonets."
"Wouldn't that be fun Sire."

Site Alpha, Kislev

Jacub General had found something he hated more than boiling squigleather boots. If he could he would travel back in time and throttle everybody connected with its invention at birth. He was tempted to throw it to the ground and stomp on it a dozen times a day. He had gone through the throwing part a couple of times, but had refrained from the stomping so far.
The object of his hate and loathing was his walkie-talkie of course. The small wireless was a high-end model, with decent range, digital, hard-to-decode transmission and good sound quality. It also allowed far too many people to contact him at the same time.

"Boyar, we have finished the 13th lot, shall we move on into 15 or is there something else we should take on first."
"Boss, if supply does not get its ass in gear soonest my excavators are running out of diesel. It is not that we cannot use the break, but..."
"Herr General, please be reminded that I need your signatures for the reports."
"Whoever bought the new chains should be shot boss, they break after a few trees."
"It is nice that you asked me to complete the wiring in the port hangar deck. It is just that nobody rigged the cable runs yet."

None of the problems were insurmountable, not in the least. There were just that many of them and everybody wanted his attention right now. Jakub had never been fat, but he had lost two kilograms during the last week as he existed on a diet of sandwiches and coffee.

And some problems did not have the tact to use the wireless. They simply walked into his door.

"I do not know why you imbeciles mix water with wood pulp, but do not expect me to freeze it, it does not work that way."

The woman who had entered his office was about 1.6 meters high, but held herself so erect that one would have guessed more. She had passed his door without knocking and certainly not asking permission. Seeing her nobody would have expected her to do so. The stark white hair and the face that was too pale even for a Kislevite was a hint why she had no need to do so.

"You must be Valera Morosov, right? We did not have the time for proper introductions."
"As you superiors all got themselves killed nobody could do so properly."
"Yes, a horrible oversight on their part I am afraid. Even so I would prefer if you were to talk about my dead colleagues with a bit more respect. Now that this is past us: why can you not freeze ice with wood pulp?"
"It just does not work that way. How can I explain that to one as dead to magic as you."
"Frau Morosov, I am pretty sure that the experimental ice station that the Reiksbund erected close to Tilea is made of a similar material. I will look this up immediately and I am pretty sure that the records show who was the Ice Mage in charge of this project. You can probably contact her for pointers."

The slamming door was probably some sort of answer to that.