If it didn't hurt so much to smile, Arsha would be sure that she would be doing just that right now. As it was, the mass of bruising that marred her pale, but not altogether unattractive features made such a maneuver... unfeasible.
This discomfort was not at all helped by the barrage of beratement that the Governor was launching at the head of his PDF force, screaming so loud that the poor man would not have even been able to get a word in if of course, he could still have spoken.
Grand High Marshal-Protector Iskander Von Der Tann, Duke of Swarthia and Cardinal-Marshal of the Emperor's people on Cena Primaris, the commander of the Cenian PDF, was sprawled out on the onyx floor of the governor's throne room, a large purpling bruise playing out on his head behind his greying hair. The irate governor's massive golden scepter was dented, evidence of the beating that the ceremonial instrument had been subjected to, the soft metal indenting against the Marshal's skull.
Arsha, alongside many other high-ranking members of Cenian government and society, were also in attendance, standing in a semi-circle before the governor's throne, the black stoned floors and pillared walls harshly reflecting the hearth fire that burned uncomfortably hot from the left wall, the heat and dark stone making the throne room into an oven.
"Do you realize now, general, that the Imperium will be breathing down our necks now that we have attacked and failed to destroy their slave soldiers?! We are peripheral! We are not supposed to be worth crushing!" The governor ranted, his puggy face burning red with fury spurned on by fear.
The meeting had started well enough. A great holotable, carved from real wood, had been dragged into the throne room and a great banquet was set, a fitting refreshment to accompany the inevitable victory that the glorious PDF would inevitably win against the fiendish occupiers.
Arsha remembered the scene, with nobles and bureaucrats cheering as the small blue dots denoting their infantry advanced, while shouting curses and harking up phlegm when the advanced stalled, deriding the common infantryman as cowards and worse. The worst of it, in Arsha's opinion came in the last hour of the battle, when the PDF had truly begun to advance into enemy territory, and gun down a few of the enemy. The bloodthirsty glares of these voyeurs chilled Arsha, the transformation of normally affable noblemen and giggling highborn ladies into jeering spectators spoke more to human nature than Arsha felt comfortable exploring.
But even the bloodthirst was not the most disturbing thing she had seen today, but she had been wrong. The governor, having rejected her request to leave the festivities, was forced to not just observe the spectators, but to also see the 'sport' itself.
She saw the green-tinged projections of personal combat emitted by neatly polished servo skulls and freshly oiled cherubs. She watched on as the last moments of brave men and women were played out before her, like a highlight real at a scrumball match, the footage obtained by pict casters specially mounted on the chests of certain PDF soldiers, as well as by the rare circling seer skull that had been purloined from the propaganda ministry to serve as live feed-captures for the Governor's soirée.
In one scene she saw the PDF troopers advance, lasrifles flashing in the gloom as the strobing lights searched for a target. In another, a small cluster of Imperials had been found trying to escape and were scythed down while their backs were turned. She remembered how the assembled nobles had cheered at the spectacle, ever eager to sate their blood thirst vicariously through the work of their lessers.
Another scene showed a group of Imperials already cornered, hiding behind a crude bastion made of old benches and various bits of rubble, these two had evidently made more of a fight of it, as even from the limited field of view that the picter provided, she could make out several prone shapes on the floor as the PDF trooper advanced towards the enemy. A pitched grenade ended their resistance, the Krump of the explosive quickly drowned out by noble applause.
The final scene of the presentation was the most dramatic, as another force of Imperials was engaged by the PDF, this time in a standing firefight. What made this action so dramatic was a charge issued by the PDF troopers at bayonet point, their commander intending to run the Imperials through with cold steel. The close engagement was brutal, with many near lasbeams hurtling past the trooper on whom the picter was mounted but paid off spectacularly for the audience when the trooper managed to engage one of the enemy soldiers, his bayoneted gun held up at the ready.
It was only at this close-range engagement that Arsha was able to make out the features of the enemy for the first time, or rather their lack thereof, as the entirety of the soldier's face was covered with a brown leather mask connected to a chest-mounted box via a breathing tube. As the pict went on, Arsha could tell that all these men were similarly attired, their faces hidden to a man by their bulky rebreathers.
For all that thought they were clearly skilled opponents. Of the two imperials still standing, one was missing an arm, the whole left side of his body smoking and scorched, grasping, of all things, a shovel in his remaining hand.
The other was scarcely less worse for wear, his grey uniform blackened in several places by las impacts, and he held his bayoneted gun unsteadily. To the left of the last remaining imperials, a PDF trooper lunged with his bayonet, while his comrades circled around to the right, combat knives drawn. A lunge with a bayoneted rifle took the leftmost Imperial in his wounded side, stabbing deep into the abused flesh that lay under the greatcoat. Despite this the soldier retaliated, delivering a brutal overhanded chop down into his attacker's shoulder, both men going down in a tangle.
Meanwhile, the rightmost Imperial fought on just as tenaciously as his comrade, two PDF troopers having fallen in front of him, his bloody bayonet making plain how he accomplished the feat. This soldier's resistance was ended by what Arsha's meager military knowledge told her was a sergeant, whose chainsword made quick work of the masked imperial, the wiring blade making a mockery of the soldier's greatcoat and bayonet.
This last display, more than any of the others, brought on another round of raucous cheers, the nobles disregarding any form of poise and gravitas that they may have possessed, leering towards the virtual bloodshed, grinning like carrion birds sighting a lame animal.
It was at that point that Arsha wished she had been blinded by her gifts like so many of her fellows were. The inconvenience of blindness and the wariness most humans held when seen with wytch-sight a happy exchange if it meant she would not have to view the monstrous degradation that surrounded her.
It was at that moment, much to Arsha's silent relief, that something went wrong. The power to the throne room was momentarily cut, flooding the room with a stygian darkness only dispelled in places by the burning hearths and brassieres which littered the room. In the half second it took for the power to be restored, the mood in the room had completely died.
In that moment, the room was silent, as the reveling nobles recovered from the blackout. If even the personal party of the governor had experienced an outage, what had happened to their own homes and estates? Was this some ploy from the governor?
Arsha could see the frenzied calculation taking place behind the eyes of the most astute nobles, while those too drunk to do so gawped stupidly, stunned into silence by the shock of the event.
The silence was only broken by the booming voice of the governor as he shouted, "What is going on here, why has my party been interrupted!"
As the governor bawled, Arsha could see servants already frenzying into action, desperately trying to find an answer to the governor's query. After a long moment of huddled conversations and rushed vox calls finally culminated in an answer.
"Honored Governor, I believe I have the answer to your query." came a choppy, mechanical voice. The voice that belonged to Magos Logus Sceptimor Xelesk, the highest-ranking member of the Machine Cult on Cena Primaris.
The Magos surprised Arsha by how human he looked for one so high in the embrace of the Machine god. He kept the basic blueprint of the human shape, though much of it was covered in a thick purple robe, trimmed with a shining layer of gold and platinum.
He had two arms, in keeping with the basic human form, though only one of them, the leftmost, ended with a hand, while the right was made up of a large, almost industrial appearing claw, while his legs were entirely nonexistent, replaced by a mass of scuttling crab legs which splayed out from underneath the Magos' voluminous robe.
"My cogis logatives indicate a 67.32% chance that the current power fluctuation is the result of enemy action, it is considered most likely that..."
"I will hear nothing of this Magos! The Imperials have no power here, The Emperor Himself, The Machine God made flesh has granted me my right to rule, no man, heretic, or alien wretch will take it from me!" The governor all but screamed.
"And I shall prove it, behold!" as the governor made this pronouncement, he pulled some hidden switch or toggle on his throne, and the holofeed provided by the seer skulls resumed, with the previous scenes of slaughter replaced by a calming panoramic of the entire hive, taken from the top of its highest spire, the governor's own.
The image shown, still picked out in green, was of the vast hive complex, junior spires, slums, and the vast Emperor's Glory spaceport, the lifeline that connected Cena Primaris to the wider galaxy, allowing fertilizers and complex industrial machines in, and spilling out vast quantities of grain and algae cultures to feed the many mouths of hungry hive cities as far away as the Imperium Nihilus.
"I told you, my city is fine. Those heathen bastards could no more hurt my city than they could hurt my own personage." the governor proclaimed proudly.
And as if he had commanded it, his hive began to shake again. And on the pict screen, Arsha could see why. It was a spire, a smaller one on the Eastern end of the hive, Autblix, if Arsha's memory served, and it erupted in fire. Explosions rocked the base of the megalith, the spreading shock waves lancing out from them to flatten whole neighborhoods, the following plumes of fire that spilled out from the explosions consuming what the concussive force had not flattened.
This was a mere backdrop however to the main event of the unfolding catastrophe, the fall of a hive spire.
The spire fell hard, first sagging beneath its own weight, leaning on its side like the forts the ancient Terran Pissians were known to build as it struggled to stay upright. This was a losing battle, as inch by inch, the gravity of Cena Primaris slowly dragged the behemoth down, like a swimmer struggling against a heavy current. Then, inevitably, the laws of gravity fully asserted themselves, and the behemoth fully toppled, smashing great stretches of the hive to flinders, and creating an aftershock that could even be felt in the governor's own spire.
The shocked silence that followed was only broken after minutes by the governor, screaming threats and ascribing blame for the disaster onto his retainers and other advisors.
It had, Arsha reflected, been the longest few hours of her life, and brought her back to the present.
It was fortunate, she supposed, that in the following rounds of blame assignment and petty revenge that immediately followed the governor's exclamation, her only injury coming from when an overeager guard, marching away some squawking nobles had shoved her out of his way, the resulting fall bruising her face.
Soon enough the feast was adjourned, as the disgraced High Marshal was dragged from the room by stone-faced servants. Soon Arsha managed to make her excuses and subtly leave the chamber, her slight form and more modest attire helping to mask her from the exodus of the garishly attired nobility that crowded around the room.
With the calamitous feast now concluded, Arsha was looking forward to returning to her chambers to meditate, when a strong and chillingly cold hand grasped her shoulder
"We need to talk" came the mechanical voice that could only be associated with the Magos
There was a certain artistry to the proceedings, Kal'roh mussed from the middle of his busy quarters, filled near to capacity with lithe water caste diplomats and their squat Earth caste comrades, who persistently fussed over their angular machinery.
The fall of hive tower Autblix, that he was observing from a projected image emitted from a silently floating messenger drone, appeared for all the world like a vast orange flower, the fiery explosions that spilled from the base of the spire formed the petals, whilst the towering grey tower formed a massive stamen.
It was typical of the Gue' barbarians that the only beautiful things that they made were manifest in destruction or were elsewise covered in so much superstitious nonsense that only the most raving fanatic could call them anything but egregious.
Yet Kal'roh's interest in the collapse was only partially artistic in nature, as like any good art piece, it conveyed a clear message underneath all of the artistry. The commander of these new Imperial forces, whoever he is, is clearly callous.
The falling spire, according to the calculations of his Earth and Water caste logisticians would have killed around thirty million Gue,' while the damage to infrastructure would undoubtably kill millions more in the coming weeks.
And yet despite this, the genius of the unknown commander was made evident in how their own exclave, despite being perilously close to the falling tower, appeared to suffer little to no damage from the fall. His supply of water and power, centrally supplied from the hive had not only integrated itself into the Hive's closed systems, but also avoided the mass destruction of surrounding neighborhoods.
A bold commander, but not reckless or hasty in executing a plan. In short, it would be this enemy, not the overfed fop that claimed to govern this planet, that would be the true foe to the Tau'Va's advance on this world.
If he was one of the Shas'O, the Fire caste, he may have felt honored to contest such a tenacious foe. As it was, he was merely annoyed to contest a world that should be an easy contest.
"Por'Vre Swiftongue, it appears as if we must shift our plans. The silk conquest is lost to us, open communications with the Kor'vattra, and inform honored Aun'Sek and Shas'El Throat Slicer that a military conflict seems inevitable. May the grace of the Etherals preserve us all."
"May the grace of the Etheral preserve us" echoed his two-dozen strong work team.
The atmosphere aboard the Mont'ka'a, the Swiftly Falling Blow, was tense but orderly, the modified Hero class cruiser which serves as the command vessel of the roughly hundred ship invasion fleet that had assembled in what the Gue' call the Cena system.
Around the bridge's circular holotable, a representative of each caste stood to discuss the coming conflict with the Gue, save Por'O' Kal'Roh, who was already conducting operations on planet.
"It appears, honorable Aun'Sek, that you will have your war as predicted" said Shas'El Throat Slicer, his gruff tone complementing the massive build of the grizzled fire caste commander.
"Indeed, Shas' El, it would appear so." In contrast to the massive and grizzled Shas' EL, Aun' Sek was young for an Etheral, her skin still bearing the vague blue hue of adolescence, as opposed to the greyish hue of the grizzled fire caste commander.
"And let us thank the Greater Good for this opportunity. A chance to decisively crush these barbarians will serve our purpose well."
"Honored Aun, while I agree with your sentiment, we must be careful of these Gue. They are formidable soldiers".
"The Gue'Ron'Sha are on planet? I was told that no Space Marines were stationed on this world." the Ethereal responded, her voice even but spiked with a hint of concern.
"No honored Aun, I do not speak of the dread Space Marines, but of something I find more troubling, the Gue'La'Sha have been stationed in the capitol in strength, and these soldiers are not unknown to me."
"Forgive me for interjecting, Shas'La, but how are these Gue'La'Sha a threat?" came the booming voice of Fio'Kanha, the stocky and gregarious Earthcaste overseer, head of the expedition's engineering corps. "Their weapons are primitive, their technologies feable, without the gene-abomination of the Space Marines, or the Mind science of their sisterhoods, what threat are the Gue'la'Sha without overwhelming numbers? They are stupid like the Be'gel and without their robust biology."
"I would have to concur with Fio'Kanha" stated Kor'Fellow, the willowy Aircast admiral of the expeditionary fleet.
"The baseline humans, while formidable in void combat, have shown far less formidability in ground combat. Furthermore, these humans possess no aircraft on the surface, and their defense fleet has already been ordered to stand down by the Governor, the victory of our silken conquest."
"All this is true, but none of you have fought these humans before. Their weapons are primitive, but is it not said that a spear is still a spear no matter how fine the robe one wears?" uttered the fire caste commander, quoting an old Tau proverb.
"You speak as if you have personal experience in this matter Shas'El Throat Slitter, is this so?"
"This is so, honored Aun" Throat Slitter said. Straightening, the venerable Tau pulled up intelligence footage of the enemy. For many on the bridge, this was the first time they had seen any of the invaders.
He was a brutish thing, bulky and with hard angels, the antithesis of sleek tau design doctrine. In the soldier's left hand was held a bulky pistol, of the kind most often favored by the officer caste of the humans. In his right, he held a bulky, box-like sword, the small generator unit at its base denoting it as one of the crude cutting swords favored by humanity.
"I have suffered many wounds in my carrier, honored Aun. I have faced Be'gal migration wars, Y'he devourer fleets, the rampages of the Star Devils and Rak'Ghol murder pilgrimages. I have even faced down the Gue'Ron'Sha that you speak so highly off. But it was these soldiers that brought me closest to death. A thrust in the dark and a chink in my armor nearly took my life, and it was only the swift actions of my comrades that stabilized me and brought the human down. Since that day I have been wary of underestimating humans."
"I appreciate all your inputs, honored castemen, I will take my leave now, to meditate on what you have said. I leave you this time to refine our plans for this world, may the Greater Good preserve you."
Turning as she said this, she began her journey back to her quarters, and while her face was serene, if one looked closely, the ghost of a smile could be seen playing out on her lips. A smile that presages conquest.
Colonel Kurtzen was inundated with noise. The metallic clank of roving techpriests and their servitor attendants, the low tooth chattering hum of melta beams carving through plasteel, and the grinding treads of Centaurs and Brunnhildes delivering supplies and specialist equipment to diligent squads of engineers. And all the while this symphony of construction was undercut with the scraping beat of shovels scraping.
In a more conventional defense, trenches would be the Death Korp's primary means of defense, the cut earth being more stalwart a shield than even the vaunted Rosarii that the Emperor grants to the greatest of His servants. This time-honored tactic was, however, rendered useless in a hive. No matter the quality of shovel, or the sinew of the man driving it.
Still, the shovel has its use, as shown by the platoons' worth of men shoveling gravel and broken rubble into sacks, to use as sandbag defenses in lieu of trenches proper.
Overall, Kurtzen was pleased with the progress his regiment was making in fortifying the newly conquered ground that they had occupied when the PDF cowards had fled. His inspection was mostly a formality, but Kurtzen made sure to scrutinize each pill box carefully, and had personally sighted several emplaced Lascannons and Autocannons.
"Looks like the fortification effort is going well" Serana said, her chipper attitude undaunted by the vast quantity of dust that was rapidly covering her uniform. Her one concession to the choking dust was her rebreather, which accompanied by her dust-greyed clothing almost made her look like a fellow Korpsman.
"It appears so" Kurtzen replied as he moved down the line, stopping only to instruct a demolitions squad to move a broken-down ground car back to their HQ, the techpriests could make good use of quality metal.
"What I want to know is why we should bother to fortify this dump, can't we just drop the roof on them again? It worked well the first time" Serana commented almost petulantly.
"There was a tactical briefing on that, another tactic like the one you have described would further destabilize the hive, bringing the roof down on our own head more likely than not" Kurtzen stated while he pulled out a data slate. He tossed it over to Serana, who caught it deftly despite the gasmask covering her face.
"There was a briefing about it at the start of this wake cycle. You did not attend"
"Evidently not" Serana responded, her sarcasm, as ever, lost on the Kurtzen.
" And what's your view on these defenses, think they'll hold?" Serana asked.
"Against the PDF rabble? Absolutely" Kurtzen replied.
"And against anything else?"
"I do not know"
Hi everyone, I'm so sorry for the delay in this chapter! I got a job last month and thought I do like getting paid it has cut into my available writing time, so while I won't make any promises, I can tentatively offer another chapter by the end of the month. I'd also like to thank all my readers and followers, Y'all are why I do this! Also please feel free to leave any criticisms you have, the whole purpose of this project was to improve my writing so please don't hold back! Until then, I'll see you when I next manage to upload a chapter, Peace!