A/N: Alright, you can all put your power swords and flamers away. New chapter inbound!
Disclaimer: Warhammer 40k and Code Geass? Not mine.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Metal Monsters, Part IV
Argyre Planitia Forge, Surface of Mars
Day Fifteen of the Battle of Mars
Battle Sister Aureliana Verginia's eyes shot open and she bolted upright as the sound of bells filled the tiny room. Suppressing a yawn, she shook her head vigorously to clear the fuzziness from her mind. A series of yawns and the rustling of fabric told Aureliana that the others had awoken. Stretching and massaging muscles sore from a night of sleeping on cold rockcrete, the dozen Battle Sisters made their way to the hab block's main area. If any of them were still sleepy, they were jolted wide awake as the piercing wail of air raid sirens filled the forge complex.
Per Canoness Superior Laurentia Caelina's orders, the tinny recording of the Convent Prioris' bells was broadcast on all local Adepta Sororitas channels twice daily. Originally intended as a call to prayer, Aureliana's platoon had adopted it as a signal to change shifts. Though contact with other units scattered throughout the forge complex was sporadic at best, Aureliana doubted her unit was alone in the practice. In recent days, however, the air raid sirens had begun taking over the bells' role.
With only a decaying lamp-pack to provide illumination, Aureliana set out their rations for the day—a nutrient bar and a carefully-measured canteen of water apiece—atop a piece of salvaged flakboard. Several Sisters began laying out the group's weapons and armor at the center of the chamber. Most of the forge's remaining stock had already been taken to Terra by the time the Adepta Sororitas arrived, but enough bolters remained to equip every Battle Sister. The same could not be said of their distinctive Sabbat-pattern power armor: there were only enough suits left to equip one in ten Battle Sisters defending the forge complex, and frontline units received priority. Rear-echelon platoons, among them Aureliana's, made do with flak armor.
The Sisters not otherwise occupied set to cleaning the shrine, if such a makeshift setup could even lay claim to so grand a title. Cobbled together from the sisters' personal effects, the symbol of their faith occupied one of the corners. An icon of the Immortal God-Emperor formed the centerpiece, and a tiny silver Aquila hung below it. A small leather-bound prayer book lay on a makeshift altar fashioned from a chunk of flakboard. One of the Sisters retrieved the platoon's only sacred candle, now reduced to a stub, and carefully placed it before the icon.
The droning of innumerable aircraft overhead and the whistling of falling bombs drowned out the approaching footsteps until their owners entered the room. The other half of Aureliana platoon wordlessly slipped in the chamber, shedding their flak armor and carefully inspecting their weapons. Ammunition remained in critically-short supply, and the incoming Sisters counted and recounted every bolt before passing the clips to the second watch.
Their duties for the evening complete, the twenty-odd Sororitas occupying the hab block knelt in front of the shrine and bowed their heads. The most senior of the platoon reverently lit the candle and stepped back, allowing the scented perfumes to circulate before starting the Emperor's Prayer.
"The Emperor is my savior. He is my protector. With the Emperor at my side, I shall fear nothing, for He is my shield, and His wrath is my sword…"
An explosion tore through the hab block, sending the gathered Sisters flying.
Argyre Planitia Mining Complex
Surface of Mars
The mining facilities at Argyre Planitia dated back to the Great Crusade, constructed by the Mechanicum in hopes of exploiting the rich veins of platinum and iridium left behind by ancient meteorite impacts. Long after the minerals were exhausted, the complex continued to play its part in supplying the ravenous Imperial war machine. Workers dug through ancient waste heaps in search of valuable salvage and combed countless kilometers of tunnels for archeotech. When even those resources ran out, the gutted buildings were disassembled and broken down to feed the nearby forge.
When the Chaos vanguard fleets appeared in orbit, neither the Argyre Planitia garrisons nor the Ultramarines bothered defending the dilapidated complex. Perhaps eyeing the surrounding bulldozed-flat ground as a staging ground for his siege engines, Peturabo paid the mines significantly more attention. As the bulk of the Iron Warriors pushed ahead to engage the Imperial defenses, a small force stayed behind to secure the facility.
Once a garage for shipping crawlers, the massive gantry cranes and conveyer belts that loaded and unloaded the transports had long since been broken down for scrap or reverse-engineered for their technological secrets. Only ancient promethium and lubricant stains on the rockcrete floor remained to remind passerby of the chamber's purpose. A squad of traitor Guardsmen patrolled the walkways overhead, eyes scanning the horizon for the Imperial counterattack that was likely to never occur.
As the sun slowly disappeared over the horizon, the only source of illumination became the cultists' flashlights and Sergeant's chronometer. Every noise, from the traitors' footsteps to the creaks and groans of an aging structure, was echoed and magnified tenfold in the empty corridors. Exactly on the hour, the Sergeant's timepiece quietly beeped and a hiss of static blared from his vox bead.
"Command to Squad Three, what's your status?" the vox operator on the other end demanded impatiently.
"Squad Three to Command," Sergeant Sokoloff grumbled, "Nothing to report."
A blast of white noise replaced the normal acknowledgement, and Sokoloff would have sworn to the Ruinous Powers themselves that he heard a wet snapping sound and gurgling beneath the static. The Sergeant tapped his vox bead again, repeating his sitrep in a louder voice. He swore as more static assaulted his ears, causing him to rip the device out of his ear and throw it to the ground.
"Command isn't responding," Sokoloff turned to face his second-in-command, "See if you can raise Squad Fo-"
Screams and lasfire echoed through the hallways, banishing any thoughts of restoring vox contact. Shouldering their weapons, the ten traitor Guardsmen sprinted towards the source of the noise.
If he had not known better, Pisti Sokoloff would have thought the carnage before him were wrought by Khornate Berserkers. Rapidly-congealing blood stained the walls and pooled on the floor. A severed head, terror etched permanently in its features, rolled along the floor and came to a stop against the Sergeant's boot. Another body, a sizable hole gouged in its chest, lay face-down two meters away. A sword of indeterminate origin impaled the squad's Sergeant against the wall. Seven more bodies lay scattered around the corridor, forming gruesome islands of flesh amidst the ocean of crimson.
One of the enemy's armored shock troopers lying in a pool of blood formed the macabre display's centerpiece. Dozens of scorch marks and gouges from close-range lasbolt impacts dotted its exterior, though Pisti suspected the half-dozen Power Sword wounds were what finally felled the beast. Like millions of his fellow traitor Guardsmen, the Sergeant had feverishly prayed to the Ruinous Powers for protection as ships of a previously-unknown race picked off the troop transports one-by-one. He had heard tales of their nightmarishly-powerful ground forces, of metal titans equal to entire platoons of Guardsmen.
A feeling on unease settled over Sokoloff as he waved two of his men forward. The Guardsmen shouldered their lasguns and cautiously approached the body, taking care to step around their comrades' corpses. His heart skipped a beat as one of the men kicked the armored form. The fear remained even as the enemy remained completely immobile.
"Cle-," the first Guardsmen was cut off by a dagger spinning through the air and burying itself up to the hilt in his forehead.
Many of Sokoloff's squad, among them the second vanguard, snapped and began firing wildly into the darkness. A bulky shadow dropped down from the ceiling, flowing between the gaps in lasfire as it fell. It landed on its feet with a loud thud, leaving millimeters-deep impressions in the rockcrete floor. The advance team's other member had scant heartbeats to scream before a savage blow buried him in a nearby wall. The incoming lasgun fire slackened momentarily, then resumed with even greater intensity. The dagger that killed the first man suddenly reappeared in the figure's left hand moments before the entire limb morphed into a fast-moving blur. Two more Guardsmen dropped dead as some unseen force redirected their lasbolts back towards them.
Their limbs suddenly feeling impossibly heavy, the remaining members of Sokoloff's squad could only watch in mute terror as the shadow stood up to its full two-meter height. As the armored corpse faded away, the shadows that wreathed the new arrival dissolved, revealing an identical metal titan sans the Power Sword wounds. Pisti had fought alongside enough Tzeentchian cults to know sorcery when he witnessed it. The Knightmare's eyes flashed, and the traitor Guardsmen could only shut their eyes and throw their arms up in a futile effort to block the oncoming red tide.
Panic gripped every fiber of Pisti Sokoloff's being as he opened his eyes to pitch blackness. He could hear heavy intermittent footsteps and lasgun discharges. He heard a blade being forcibly pulled from its rockcrete-and-flesh sheath. He heard the screams of his men as the enemy's horrific weapons carved them to pieces. When his lasgun's muzzle flashes failed to pierce the darkness that engulfed them all, Pisti realized that the enemy had not disabled the lights: he had taken away their eyesight.
The chopping and screaming abruptly stopped, replaced by silence. Sokoloff could hear fresh blood dripping from newly-made corpses, pooling and mixing with the old congealed gore. He heard a near-inaudible crack, felt a blade savagely parting his bowels, and the illusory darkness was soon replaced by the real thing.
Black Knights Theater Group A Field Headquarters
Vicinity of Argyre Planitia, Surface of Mars
With the sheer amount of reinforcements Abaddon was pouring into Argyre Planitia, allied forces could ill-afford to charge in blind. The massive Warp storms surrounding the entire basin blocked sensor sweeps, and the enemy held total air superiority over the area. The few recon craft able to breach the storms were promptly shot down by patrolling Chaos fighters. With every other option exhausted, the Black Knights sent in the Raiders. Nearly seventy-two hours ago, the twelve men and women of the 2nd Raiders and a Psychic Special Warfare Operative disappeared into the mine tunnels snaking under the entire region. With layers of bedrock blocking communications, they were forced to place dozens of relay stations as they slowly navigated the forgotten passages.
"Ma'am, we've received a sitrep from Lieutenant Landsford," a communications technician turned to face Field Marshal Barros, "They've successfully infiltrated the main mining complex and neutralized the patrols."
"Tell them to link up with Imperial forces in the forge complex as quickly as possible," Lelouch interrupted, "They need to know reinforcements are inbound before they decide to make a suicidal charge."
"Yes, sir," the technician acknowledged and turned around to reopen the communications line.
"What forces do we have at our disposal?" Lelouch turned to ask another technician.
"Two regiments from the Death Korps of Kreig just arrived this morning. Additionally, five Praetorian Guard regiments are five hours out. We're also receiving word of a regiment of Catachan Jungle Fighters in the area that still hasn't reported in."
"Good," Lelouch nodded, "Carry on."
"Yes, sir."
Argyre Planitia Forge
Surface of Mars
Aureliana stared at the scene before her in disbelief. A Chaos bunker-buster bomb had demolished the room where she and her fellow Sisters slept to rubble, along with room several floors below it. She could see platoons of Skitarii scrambling over piles of rubble in the streets below, struggling to get their howitzers and mortars under cover before the next wave of artillery shells pounded the complex. Having spent her formative years as a Sister of the Order Hospitaller before the Prioress pressed all able-bodied Sororitas into military service, she was no stranger the screams of the dead and dying. The lack of said screams unnerved her as much as the chaos below. Aureliana slowly reached up to touch the sides of her head, and her fingers bought back blood.
Turning around, she could see several of her Sisters stirring and shakily sitting up. Flying debris had sliced up their skin and uniforms, but they seemed otherwise unharmed. Aureliana paid them little mind and made a beeline for one of the motionless women. Seeing that a jagged piece of rockcrete had ripped the unfortunate Sister's throat out, the former Hospitaller could only close her eyes and say a brief prayer on the fallen Sororitas' behalf before moving on. Another, her hands clutched over her abdomen in an effort to keep her bowels from spilling out, opened her eyes for a brief second before going to join the Emperor.
The floor beneath Aureliana's feet shook as the Chaos artillery batteries renewed their bombardment.
Chaos Landing Zone
Argyre Planitia, Surface of Mars
"Look at that," one of the Raiders whistled while pointing towards the forge complex, "Peturabo must've been pounding them the whole two weeks."
Great columns of smoke, visible even to the naked eye, rose from the distant fortress. Hundreds of bombers droned overhead, circling over the burning forge but showing no sign of going in for another attack run. Smoke trails of a million rockets choked the skies. Even without hearing enhancement, the thundering of Chaos artillery batteries reached their ears. The massive shadow of Craftworld Altansar loomed over them all, bathing the impact basin in shadow. Thousands of tiny dots, no doubt dropships and bombers, swarmed around the corrupted hulk like so many gnats.
"Contact! Fifty meters at three o'clock and closing!"
The Raiders immediately hit the ground, hiding behind rocks where they could and going prone where they couldn't. They took slow deaths to slow their heartbeats and steady their aim as they leveled their machine guns towards the rapidly-approaching speck. The Operative's eyes flashed briefly as he unsheathed his blades.
"I've put an illusion over all of us," the man explained in a raspy voice, "He won't see us unless he crashes into one of us."
As the runner drew closer, the eight-pointed star of Chaos Undivided carved into the shoulders of his flak armor became visible. He had no weapon, and a look of utter terror was etched on his mutilated face. Trigger fingers tightened as he drew closer, but an unseen shooter reduced his head to a fine red mist before he got within ten meters of the group.
The Raiders waited nearly two hours before setting out in the shot's general direction.
"They got slaughtered," a Raider deadpanned while observing the scene before her.
A Devourer-class dropship burned furiously in the middle of the clearing, periodically rocked by explosions as the fire cooked off the last of its fuel and ammunition stores. Charred skeletons spilled out of the landing ramp, and dozens of corpses surrounded the destroyed hulk. A sharp-eyed Raider spotted the twisted remains of a fuel tanker within the dropship's vehicle bay, thus explaining the violent flames. The wrecks of several Griffon- and Medusa-type siege tanks were clustered around the craft, their fate made obvious by the gaping holes they sported in the place of ammunition stores.
"Whoever did this was no amateur. They were probably hit while saddling up to move out. A lascannon shot apiece to take out the turrets, or even just to fuse their rotation mechanisms," the Operative pointed out areas of interest on the wreckage, "Once the ship's defenseless, blow off a landing strut with a Hunter-Killer Missile. Dropship tips over, and the ambush becomes a massacre."
"Infighting?" one of the Raiders suggested.
"No," Lieutenant Landsford shook his head.
The twelve other Black Knights turned to face him as he flipped one of the corpses over. The Lieutenant pointed to the wound in the middle of the traitor Guardsman's back, ripping open the dead man's tunic to expose the surrounding flesh. Rather than recoil in disgust at the sight of necrotic flesh, the Raiders leaned in for a closer look. One particularly brave soul touched two fingers to the injury, immediately noting its tapered shape.
"Only one kind of blade in the galaxy leaves a wound like this," the Lieutenant concluded, "A Catachan Night Reaper."
Easily one of the most recognizable designs in the Imperium, Catachan knives also became one of the rarest following the world's Exterminatus in the final days of M47. Though many Jungle Fighters survived to pass on the forging techniques, the loss of the unique form of iron mined on their homeworld ensured any new knives were pale imitations at best. Over the millennia, many of the remaining originals were destroyed by their owners when facing death or capture.
Despite the "seen everything, done everything" outlook adopted by most Raiders, it took the squad some time to notice the several sets of nearly-obliterated Sentinel tracks.
Argyre Planitia Forge, Surface of Mars
Day Twenty-Five of the Battle of Mars
Quite frankly, Aureliana preferred the bombers. The droning of a hundred thousand jet engines was met with the wailing of air-raid sirens. The Skitarii flooded the fortified streets, illuminating the darkening skies with flares and searchlights. The booming of numerous flak batteries drowned out the whistling of falling bombs. The attacking aircraft fell from the skies by the dozen, and the Sisters would hunt down and finish off the surviving aircrews. Against the bombers, they could at least do something.
When the bombing stopped and the shelling began, the Skitarii and Sororitas could only bunker down and weather the storm. With their auspex arrays and air forces almost totally destroyed, the defenders had nearly no way of accurately locating the enemy artillery. Several Basilisk crews valiantly attempted to do so with math and dead reckoning, but the enemy answered every outgoing shell with a hundred incoming ones. In the end, they destroyed only a small handful of Chaos artillery pieces and filled several hundred body bags.
Aureliana's medical training told her that the explosion had ruptured her ear drums, and she was fairly sure by the second day that she would need to see a chiurgeon to regain her hearing. She was one of the lucky ones: the blast had killed six Sisters outright, and five more succumbed to their injuries over the next few hours. Lacking any form of medical supplies, Aureliana was forced to administer the Emperor's Peace with her bare hands. The surviving Sisters lay the corpses in a side room and covered them up the best they could.
With nothing to do but wait out the shelling, Aureliana's platoon undertook any possible task to stave off thoughts of the deceased. They maintained and polished their weapons enough to pass even the toughest of inspections. They cleaned and prayed at their makeshift shrine for hours at a time. They played every game they remembered from the schola, then made up new ones when those ran out.
The battered Skitarii squad that staggered into their hab block on the bombardment's fifth day came as a welcome relief. Dispatched from the forge itself, the eight Mechanicum soldiers bought boxes of ration bars to supplement the Sisters' dwindling supplies and additional weapons to defend their position. More importantly, they bought fresh faces to talk to and a Tarot deck to keep them sane. The Tribune, quickly noticing Aureliana's condition, even provided her with a pen and paper.
When Aureliana Verginia awoke on the tenth day of shelling, she noticed that the floor's constant vibration had ceased. She cautiously peered outside and saw only a clear pink sky where she expected innumerable rocket exhaust trails. Her heart skipped a beat when a cold hand touched her shoulder, and she whirled around, ready to attack. Her fist stopped millimeters from the Tribune's face. Aureliana sheepishly lowered her arm and fished out her pad.
What's happening?
The Tribune took the offered pen and hurriedly scrawled down his reply. Aureliana's blood instantly ran cold.
The enemy's launched an all-out assault on our southern flank.
"Stand firm, Sisters!" rasped the Canoness Superior, "Hold your fire until you see the whites of their eyes!"
Though members of the Adepta Sororitas traditionally bleached their hair bone-white, Laurentia Caelina had not needed to for years. In another time, she would have long since traded her power armor for a habit and her bolter for a stack of holy texts. She might have embarked on a final pilgrimage before taking over a convent and spending the remainder of her years teaching a new batch of young girls how to kill in the Emperor's name. In better times, the Imperium would have never asked Laurentia or a great many of the Sororitas beside her to fight.
"Incoming!"
Far over the horizon, a line of Iron Warriors siege tanks lobbed shell after shell at the Imperial lines. The first volley reduced dozens of Sisters into airborne collections of gore and orphaned limbs and blinded the survivors with flying dust and debris. An Immolator exploded after it was struck in the fuel tank, showering those clustered around it in flaming promethium. The lucky ones were incinerated almost instantly, while the unlucky ones fell to the ground shrieking in agony as they tried to claw their skin off. The rabble militia that accompanied the Sisters retaliated with mortars of their own, but the improvised explosives had little hope of even scratching the enemy guns.
The first wave of Chaos ground troops appeared over the horizon as the defenders struggled to regroup. Even without her helmet's aid, Laurentia could already discern individual details on the approaching cultists. She could see men and women who had carved blasphemous symbols into their flesh, whose sanities were eroded by potent combat drugs, whose bodies were bloated with pestilence. Heretical litanies turned to screams of pain as the oncoming horde charged straight into a minefield. Thousands of crude but horrifyingly-effective devices constructed by the forge workers—one-use flamers, industrial sprayers loaded with caustic chemical waste, storage drums loaded with gunpowder and jagged metal bits—ripped through the enemy's forward ranks.
"Immolators! Cleanse this filth!"
Great streams of flame arced over the defenders' heads, covering the blood-soaked sands in flames. Cultists became torches, falling to the ground and screaming in pain as holy promethium clung to their skin and clothing. Whether motivated by mind-destroying drugs or promises of their patrons' favor, enemy soldiers mindlessly threw themselves upon the pyres, suffocating the flames with their bodies. The gruesome aftermath—the charred skeletons and corpses burned beyond recognition—was quickly trampled underfoot by the oncoming horde. The Immolators fired their tanks dry, and continued mortar fire forced them to seek cover deeper within the complex.
"Exorcists! Now!"
Smoke engulfed the Imperial lines as the combination rocket artillery and shrines left their hiding places and opened fire. Armor-piercing rockets screamed through the atmosphere, sailing past the approaching horde and landing amongst the siege tanks behind it. A great many warheads malfunctioned, but the volume of incoming mortar fire nevertheless lessened considerably. As the crews readied another salvo, this time targeting the enemy infantry, heavy bolters and stubbers stationed within overlooking buildings opened fire.
"Sisters, purge them in the name of the Emperor!" Laurentia bellowed, a sudden vitality coursing through her veins.
With a snarl, Battle Sister Herminia Cassia slammed the butt of her bolter into the closest traitor's face. The man, clad in the tatters of an Imperial Guard uniform, staggered backwards while clutching his shattered nose. Herminia put a round in his chest before returning to her place on the line. Spent casings clattered to her feet as she unloaded towards the oncoming horde in short controlled bursts. Resisting the urge to just hold down the trigger took more and more willpower as the cultist mob drew closer.
Having carefully counted her shots, Herminia knew she had fired her last bolt before she heard the telltale click of an empty chamber. A burly cultist clambered over the barricade and body-checked the Battle Sister before she could reload. Her lungs forcibly expelled the air they held and her vision swam when she hit the ground, and Herminia only barely avoided a lasgun butt crashing down. She intercepted the second swing with her bolter, throwing all her weight behind it. Her armor servos barely made up for the many kilograms of muscle her assailant had over her.
Adrenaline surged through Herminia's veins as she saw another attacker decapitate her neighbor with a chainsword. She pushed her opponent back half a step, giving her just enough room to gut him with her sarissa. Another Sister wasn't as lucky, her opponent having wrapped his hands around her neck, and went limp before Herminia could aid her. She dropped her gun butt onto the cultist's spine, snapping it in two, and crushed his skull beneath her boot.
"Gas! Gas!"
The sight before Herminia would haunt her until her dying day. Those fortunate enough to receive warning scrambled for protective gear, but few could don it quickly enough. A colorless mist descended upon the battlefield and engulfed the combatants, killing Sisters and cultists alike. Victims sank to their knees, clutching their throats and gurgling as they drowned on dry land. Eyes blistered shut and mouths ringed with chemical burns, they died slow and agonizing deaths. Bolters barked as Sisters granted their comrades the Emperor's Peace.
Nearly blinded by the caustic chemicals, Herminia dropped her helmet. Holding her breath, the Battle Sister fell to her knees and began desperately searching. As her lungs screamed for air, her motions grew steadily more frantic. The Sororitas loosed a scream of pain and frustration when her hands hit something hard and heavy, which promptly skittered out of reach. Her strength spent, she collapsed into the rubble and began making her peace with the Emperor.
It seemed that the Emperor was not quite done with Herminia Cassia. A yelp of surprise passed between her blistered lips as an unseen force seized her and propped her against the wall. She felt something engulf her head and heard the hiss of hermetic seals. Though each breath bought a new wave of agony, Herminia slowly gulped down the stale recycled air. As her head slowly cleared, she could hear people conversing in ancient Low Gothic.
"Shit! Second wave incoming!" a tinny voice yelled from somewhere nearby, "Looks like they've got gas masks and chemical warfare gear!"
"Is there anything you can do about the gas?" another equally-frantic voice shot back.
"Not against this much of it!" the first voice screamed back.
"Hey, stay with me," a third voice gently addressed Herminia, "You're going to be all right."
The half-dead Sister of Battle wondered if the voice belonged to a daemon. She couldn't put up much resistance in her current state should it wish to convert or consume her. Herminia weakly groped the air in front of her, tensing when her hand found metal. Something about the way the surface curved told her that she found her savior's helmet, and he stayed statue-still as she traced the contours of his faceplate. He felt too small for an Astartes, yet too large for a Skitarii.
"My name is Lieutenant Matthew Landsford, 2nd Raiders. We're here to help," the voice reassured her after a moment's pause, "I need to know who the highest-ranking officer in this area is and where I can find them."
Black Knights Theater Group A Field Headquarters
Day Forty-Five of the Siege of Mars
"By the time we arrived, the Iron Warriors had already deployed chemical weapons against the Imperial lines. The forge's defenders took heavy casualties, and the subsequent ground assault sliced right through the outer defenses. The enemy's latest push nearly drove us out of the basin altogether," Lieutenant Landsford concluded his report.
"And what is your opinion on the situation, Lieutenant?" Lelouch inquired in an utterly impassive voice.
"We're already fighting with our backs against the Titan workshop, and we barely stopped the last attack. If Peturabo launches another chemical attack, we're finished," the holographic Knightmare shook his head sadly, "Even if he doesn't, we're looking at another three to four days at most."
"Something's bothering you, Lieutenant," Lelouch observed, "If it's at all related to the situation at hand, I need to know."
The Lieutenant hesitated for a moment, then continued.
"The Brides of the Emperor," Lelouch twitched, "defending the Argyre Planitia forge are a second-rate army at the very best. Most of them are either past their fighting prime or fresh from whatever their equivalent of boot camp is. The rest look like they've never held a gun in their lives."
Lelouch pressed his lips together in annoyance. He had a very good idea of where the first-rate units were stationed. As if on cue, CC and a squad of Psychic Special Warfare Operatives burst through the door.
"Tell whoever's in charge that the Ecclesiarchal Palace will reinforce them within the next twenty-four hours," Lelouch ordered as he closed the channel.
A/N: Dust off your popcorn, 'cause shit's about to get good! Maybe...
In the meantime, a new soundtrack addition:
Insert Song (Siege of Argyre Planitia): Stalingrad - Sabaton
Also...is it just me, or does nobody ever finish the Emperor's Prayer?