Dimension 467-H, Cosmic Alliance controlled space, United Nations of Earth jurisdiction, Sol system, in front of the dimensional wormhole, The Foremost Vigilance, bridge
Lord-Admiral Machem listened in silence to the voices of his bridge crew as they continued chirping out reports of increasing worry.
The chaos fleet was painfully slow in getting moved by the large scrapping freighters, and the quiet of the standoff between his battlegroup and the station's defences was juxtaposed by the loudness of his second calling for quiet.
Turning towards him the crew kept their stoic faces and postures but the feeling of worry was still communicated nonetheless. The Foremost Vigilance's sister ship was heavier than the light cruiser he stood upon and he glanced at her mightier guns tracking the freighters that passed through the void. Two cruisers and his handful of escorts in the 3rd most fortified place he'd seen.
But in the fleet that surrounded the station he could see one familiar vessel. An adventure from long ago and a temporary alliance between himself and the Eldar left Machem knowing that ship. "Hail the Eldar ship and let them know its Admiral Machem, I'm calling in a favour"
Dimension 004-A, The Old O-ELDAR webway, Commorragh/Space Vegas, The Vancouver, Bridge
PAU sourly concluded his conversation with the Aeldari diplomat. The report from the surviving Banshees had not been pleasant and much like the other operations happening in the Dark City had nearly failed and had a heavy price. He'd been informed of a second transport ship that would transport the leader of the Black Heart to safely take him away and prevent recapture. The CA hadn't given much to the UNE fleet invasion force so the reliance on warmachines was flattening the objectives they were trying to take, but hopefully with the successful capturing of Vect they could dabble into the Drukhari's game.
Prepping a message he flaunted his writing chops a little bit and used the leftover power in the already deployed sonic emitters across the city. This wasn't part of the plan but PAU was confident that he wouldn't endanger other operations in effect.
The AI then felt something watching them which shouldn't have been possible. Being broken up into a digital consciousness came with a lack of physical instinct but as the AI multi-tasked in coordinating the ship there was a presence in the... code? Checking for infiltration and variation or even code degradation he found nothing. Maybe he was being paranoid or even being compromised?
Watching the AI slightly panic the Vancouver didn't understand much. Her children were quick to obey PAU's commands but even their voices went unheard by the AI. She only kind of knew what they were doing here and her aggressive children seemed to be happy so it didn't really bother her much besides just being bored. The only thing she could do was watch her brothers' and sisters' corpses get trounced upon by the other humans and though they knew not what they do it chafed her greatly.
She watched as the CA took the cheese grater to the face as they conquered the surface. She watched as they fought saved people and died killing people, the Vancouver had no real memories but the scene was familiar. She watched as the little men in their machines gave their lives and she wondered how many she couldn't remember a new purpose was discovered with that thought and the cameras of the Vancouver flung themselves into service. She may not have know them or why they did things how they did but she will know if just this fragment of their story. This blaze of glory that so many were burning out from, if none would remember them nor even their enemies, she would.
On the Ground? Ceiling?... surface, Hidden Blade district
Dushik wasn't tired yet. 49 hours would've been too much for the weaker trueborns but Dushik had been molded into a warrior from the vats and he would rather die than even consider the notion of fatigue. His back remained straight while he stood watch upon the parapet of the fortress. The soft noises of distant gunfire prickled through the quiet of his guarding.
But another noise soon entered the mix it was a soft crackling of the speakers the Mon-keigh used. Dushik worried they would use the speakers to paralyze them again and attempt to take the fortress so raising his rifle he let off a barrage of shuriken at the device. But instead of the pain that even now left a minor headache a feminine voice called out in perfect Aeldari, it even had the accent for this district of the Dark City. It was loud and his barrage hadn't prevented its message from going over the wall.
"Attention Drukhari hostiles, this is a general announcement from central command of the Cosmic Alliance forces: The recently anointed Dark Muse of the Black Heart, known as Asdrubael Vect has been captured and transported to secure confinement. Before he is able to give a call for a general ceasefire and surrender we would like prematurely give it for him. Surrender now or else you could possibly be killed before you are ordered to surrender, to all Kabals outside the Black Heart's direct influence you are also encouraged to surrender before your own leadership is captured or killed"
As the near silence once again engulfed the solitary soldier's watch he felt the darkness a little more, the weight of his light armour and gun felt heavier, and the sounds of war felt a little duller and farther away with the silence pouring through the gaps like a broken dam. Only now could Dushik admit that he was tired and his pride was only the second most hurt of that day.
Back on the Bridge
The admiral Sarah Briggs had returned to the bridge with an angry expression. PAU noticed immediately and split some attention to converse with her. When she was pissed he became more cordial with his expressions, "Admiral, We've received word from the Biel-Tan representative that Asdrubael Vect has been captured with heavy losses on our side. We've begun to spread this information to demoralize the enemy, in addition C.A. forces have captured 60% of the surface with considerable resistance from the Kabals our attempts to push further into the under parts of the city are making slow progress"
"On who's authority did we disseminate that information? That wasn't part of the plan and it could lead to a rescue attempt"
"On mine. I waited until he had been transported out of the system before using the leftover power in the speaker missiles as broadcasters" The admiral brought up the casualty reports as she listened, over 93 million total casualties.
Her gaze skipped PAU's hologram and remained focused on the scrolling battlemap and three screens of reports "What about our wrecks?"
"Of the ninety-three downed ships seven were completely lost with all hands, twenty-nine have been repaired and have evacuated to friendly territory outside the city, forty-two are still undergoing repairs and the last fifteen are under siege by enemy forces"
"Estimation until those under siege are freed up?"
"five hours with current resources" She shifted her weight from one foot to the other which PAU recognized as meaning bad news was immanent.
"There was a heavy attack on the Concanid system and with the help of a psychic override the enemy was able to get a portion of their fleet through the wormhole" PAU jumped through predictions as he figured out what was next "The president wants at least 30% of our presence here returned to the wormhole" The AI immedietly began to protest.
"Ma'am we've just gained a stable situation on our terms, if we were to kneecap ourselves now we'd need to fill in that gap of firepower with further warmachine and I.R.O. deployments and that's if we want our push through the undercity within the next week" The admiral still gazed at the board taking in the crumbling enemy front on the surface, the Drukhari without a larger chain of command nor a presence like Vect to force them in line had descended into infighting with some determined to make a stand in their lower districts.
"I know. Make it work" PAU then spent a large portion of their processing power on shuffling around ships to make battlegroups feel like more than they were. The admiral watched as her authorization code allowed their metal monsters on the field. They could win even without their tight naval blockade but PAU added the projected death toll updated with the new plans, her peripheral showed enough, it was smaller on the screen now as to make room for the new digits.
10 minutes earlier, The Renegade (Corsair ship), Cargo hold
"I SWEAR THAT I WILL HUNT EACH OF YOU UNTIL THE END OF DAYS! AND I'LL MAKE YOU WATCH WHAT I DO TO YOUR FAMIL-" With a loud thump the container was finally sealed. It was depressingly made by the unimaginative Mon-Keigh so the temporary prison cell was just a square cube of steel and it seemed ironic to anyone who was poetic or bored enough to listen to the poetic guys.
There were guidelines that the Mon-Keigh had given to the Aeldari Council on how they were to treat Vect, so to circumvent them they enlisted help of Corsairs who were beholden to no restrictions, and thus the leader of the dark city was stripped, bound, sedated (partially successful), and had two attempts to gag him (both unsuccessful). The corsair captain originally was a Drukhari himself and took great pride in showing how he differed than them, but for Vect? A blind eye was turned on the conditions of the cell.
Either way they were paid a kings ransom to prevent the return of the king and the Biel-Tan diplomat watched them join the transport convoys to the outside of the webway. Their journey was seen by the UNE fleet and given an escort of fighters to the edge of the portal, a symbolic gesture not gone unappreciated by the Corsairs. The Biel-Tan ship on the other hand had a prisoner to interrogate.
As a guardian for the despot's "safe" arrival a very uninterested councilor who had threatened his way back into work listened to the captain talk about the origins of Commorragh. It wasn't that the captain wasn't a good host it's just that the councilor literally had seen the future for the first time, but he decided to break the captain out of their rant about pottery variations and ask him about it. "Could I ask for your insight on a personal matter captain?"
The captain who thought he finally found someone who appreciated his lectures was hurt but acquiesced to the subject change, and silently his crew thanked the diplomat as they were spared another lecture on ceramics. "You may have any advice we can give"
H'aras hesitated before continuing, should he really ask this? So far the reptile had been keeping the psychic outbursts to himself as he was no young man any longer and this was not unheard of for the older of his order, but the nature of these attacks were unprecedented and no other but the Aeldari would know more than him on psychic matters. "I have acquired a new problem since we entered this galaxy, my control of the psychic has deteriorated to such a point I fear that my old age is now more than a degrading number" the captain was bit concerned at the apparent confession of an untamed psyker standing right next to him.
"You are right that is a problem, especially here an uncontrolled mind is one open to abuse. Your kind is not accustomed to this power and though this means your limits are unknown so too are your weaknesses. Perhaps you should seek advice not from us, but instead a teacher of this sort. Until you find one I would ask you try to dampen your usage, it draws attention from the other things in the warp" H'aras was familiar with the denizens of that place and was unimpressed. One had rambled at him and he got to feel cool at it, but the captain's words definitely rung true. He could not afford to have a weakness so present and exploitable, not when he had this feeling that something was happening.
It was stabbing at him, nearly screaming that he must do something about... just that. He couldn't pin down what great thing he was missing out on. Things were happening here and will continue as the CA pushed themselves further into this mess but there was another story that was going on, one that he was getting prophecies and feelings about but no actual substance. The views of the burning city passed by as the old reptile mulled over the little pieces he was seeing through a kaleidoscope, and the picture didn't sound too great.
On the ground, 19 hours later
The grind had begun an hour after they arrived. The thumping of machines against the ground shattered what windows were left and the disposed pods of the I.R.O.s managed to make a tripping hazard a general advisory to all soldiers from their density. The might of what
The soldiers of the UNE felt insignificant as the towering monoliths of firepower blasted apart the fortifications that had held them back from pushing further. The humans felt insufficient when watching the throatblades dart in and out of the fray with the psycho bitches that had been moving faster than they could track. The organics felt just a bit scared as the Independent Robotic Operators gunned down anything alive and then shot them again to prevent them from being taken back to their friendly lines, They had been given orders twice to try and capture injured enemies but their logic calculators kept on guiding them to these war crimes.
But the Drukhari felt nothing, the ones who were dead had an obvious reason for this but as the walls closed in on those who were left they had little to feel for. The suffering that they had lived off of now was overflowing not from their slaves but from themselves. The titans of their enemy seemed determined to create a path to tread right through them and there was little they could do or throw at them now. The artillery never stopped either, every pound bore a hole further into the ancient stone of the city. The forts and bastions that had stood longer than the entire history of the UNE were getting shot with weapons originally made for ship to ship combat, it was needlessly destructive in the Drukhari's eyes but their complaints went surprisingly unheeded by the Mon-Keigh.
As the surface was finally covered in the silver and blue of the UNE the next battle had already begun. The many districts that existed underground where the warmachines couldn't walk were left to ye ole' foot soldiers and it fucking sucked. Tight corridors with little natural visibility and plenty of unfamiliar blind spots. The maps given to the troops were basically unreadable due to the density and the complexity of architecture. The little support of the wider CA did show their value as they pushed the hardest into the underground, but the UNE had to grind themselves against the bulk of the defences the smarter kabals had set up.
The underbelly of the city became unbearably hot as a cooling plant was blown up by a stray shot of an artillery warmachine. This in combination with the tight enclosed spaces and the machinery of Commorragh using the underground to stay out of view meant that it got even hotter as time went on. The UNE had temperature management that was meant for the voids of space, but the temperature even exceeded that at some times with reports of the walls melting and heat stroke on both sides. Some Drukhari units surrendered because of the threat the heat presented, it seems sweating to death wasn't honorable in their eyes.
Or it was the stories of what the machines were doing. The I.R.O.s became the perfect predators of this metal jungle and with their unrelenting force their wake left very little to find for the teams that had secure the sites. Or rather very little to find that was alive, it seemed that whatever was down here had caused the logic of some units to fully go crazy as these particulars would fire on the UNE as well. An override was issued to the troops after it was found out what killed an entire platoon, but after another few hours the rogue I.R.O.s had found a way around them. An unprecedented amount of programming was done in the fleet above to try and rein them in but it appeared it wasn't entirely physical, as after a few were destroyed the occasional minor demon would appear. It wasn't until much later these would identified from testimonies, but the rogue AIs were counted only on two hands so it it was deemed a later problem.
So the cycle of war repeated itself. Breach. Bullets. Bodies. Again and again the tapestry of violence impressed the one chaos god who was watching and occasionally fucking with their metal toys. The UNE proved itself a great demonstrator of war but only when pushed into the close quarters of brutal combat, they would normally prefer the overwhelming firepower of a gun the size of a garden but a shotgun reigned king here, the tried and true design left the thumpy noises of the pellets hitting bodies sounding like xylophone taps played by a giant. Melee wasn't rare and it showed. The Drukhari held that as their advantage and soon learned these Mon-Keigh were still the clumsy and uncoordinated fools they were used to. Those bands of troops that held tight were then targeted by the throatblades who had more in common with a noisemarine than their own kind. Artists would try to capture the image of the throatblades dueling Drukhari wyches in the dark and dreadfully hot tunnels for years, but the soldiers who had to hold point and surround the rooms definitely got the best view and some hearing damage.
It was there in the dark sewers and basements that the story of great Drukhari Kabals would end. No greater shame could be given unto the prideful so as the hours ticked by nobles and leaders left the battlefield with their own blades to their throats, while the less shameful ones surrendered. The invasion of Commorragh had been a complete masterstroke of tactics and resource deployment for any of the other powers in this galaxy but for the CA the price was too high. The death toll of just their own had not been felt in a few hundred years, and the total including their enemies made them monstrous.
All this could've been justified as it had been done before but there was a third group of the slaves and citizens in the city, and that number would've always looked bad but it was truly astonishing. The UNE had figured out the cost in numbers, they knew what the warmachines would do, what the I.R.O.s often resorted to, what every stray shot and accident did to the city. The UNE had their victory in a conflict that would've taken others centuries, in a place that was hostile to everything, to a people who had spent more time in battle than their entire history, and stopped one of the greatest crimes against life ever seen, and they hated themselves for it. They could've done better.
Dimension 467-H, Sol system, The Oldest Spring (Aeldari ship), a hastily assembled conference room
Admiral Machem had been listening and only occasionally asking a few questions here and there. Across the table was the 3rd fattest man he'd ever seen and they were clearly not used to actually being called upon to do things, and between the two was an Eldar who spoke both languages. By his request both parties had agreed to surrender any kind of technology and leave it at the door, and as such a translator had been serving the two in conversation for a while now.
Most of the UNE's envoys were currently being used in the ongoing operation or in a senate meeting that got interrupted and put under complete lockdown, so the one who was called to engage with the Imperial Admiral was none other than Patrick Oldman a man who started out great but faded into obscurity and was sidelined into greasing wheels at the Sol system station. So far the Admiral had gained that these humans were not from their dimension, had only recently come into the Nihilus space and had gotten the Aeldari to work with them. Patrick on the other hand had only gotten that the Imperials had gone looking for the inquisitorial ship they had captured.
What should've been a tense situation filled with hidden meanings and drastic consequences became so cordial it would've been a play made by Harlequins. After about an hour the Admiral had negotiated the release of the inquisitorial ship and its crew minus the inquisitor as the UNE didn't want the only person with the clearance to declare them heretics be given free reign. The UNE in turn was to expect a few more diplomats to be sent their way, and try to accommodate some more official talkers. Both left the table thinking they had screwed over the other but the Eldar wondered if they even knew what they were doing.
Retrieving UNE file... ...
File Found! File name: The Empty Galaxy, and The Pop Problem
Since man first looked to the stars he always wondered if something was looking back. A search for others as well as a confirmation of organisms once existing on mars spurred much of the early UNE's history and its treatment towards neighbours and later alliance members. Though the neighbours confirmed their own ancestors thought the same a large question sprung from a more complete cartography of the galaxy. In the admittedly smaller galaxy the sentience was few and far between, maybe a few dozen spread over the entire swath with many not being of natural origin left many wondering, where is everybody?
Though not a new question it remains unanswered with only the empty space and pre colonized worlds being a comfort. All this space is not without its problems as with the history of the galaxy as it is the population has remained only at a steady population growth instead of matching the exponential territory growth, the natural rate of human and all others growth is painfully slow to the ambitions of CA. The previous empires of the galaxy became too content with their conquering of the wastelands and the CA plans to differ itself through amount of hands and minds, but even the quickest to solve the population deficiency are dwarfed by all the free uncolonized worlds, the profitable mining station sites, and the research stations needing minds to work.
This problem has been kept somewhat solved with mass low level AI labour but the complicated moral questions of creating a semi-slave species with some randomly gaining the ability to reason has dampened what was thought to be the solution. The other problem is what would happen to all the created AIs upon the deficit of organic labour catching up to mechanical ones. So the large scale solutions the AIs propose have only partially been implemented with the notable examples being in the military. A ship bound AI control 2/3rds of the UNE fleet alone and individual I.R.O.s are in disposable planetloads normally kept in storage until needed to prevent sentience advancement, both of these positions already are widely discussed across the CA and further mass deployment seems unlikely and most unpopular.
"Oh to be the young and industrious again! To see the land our grandfathers fought over, the same our fathers forgot, and then see only where their own children will play. It is too comforting to see not the wild and dangerous as things to be feared like us old folks do now, but rather the wild: Tamed and the dangerous: destroyed. We wish you on your way young men and women, and all the luck to you!" -Taken from Our Newish World by the great Irish playwright Tristian Hart
