The New Jedi Order: A Vision of Confluence

XII: Effigy

Each minshal had been carefully cleared: Zalthis found he had been correct in the domiciles bearing subtle entrances that were hard to distinguish from afar. The minshal resembled the domed shell of a creature and they found that the means of egress was a mobile scute, half again the height of an Astartes, that could be hinged away on tough and flexible tendons. Each was empty, bereft of all but some nest-like piles of detritus in some, scallop-shelled storage containers in others.

All that remained was to descend underground and discover what awaited them.

Broad stairs swept downward, running to either side of a duracrete ramp painted in bold hazard striping. Zalthis' boots clacked and crackled detritus underfoot, sharp and sudden noise against the distant backdrop of rolling artillery thunder. Auspex revealed no signs of life aside from the motion-tracks of the Fondorians and Solidian, but he kept his bolter up and trained, sweeping carefully as they descended into the gloom of the rail terminal. Lume-panels were blown out, leaving sparkling fields of glass and plastek that glinted and glimmered as the strike team panned gun-mounted torches about.

In the rail tunnel, one hovertrain had been waiting at the terminal when the sky fell in. Without power, it never left. It was left torn apart, metal left runny and puddled in still-warm pools. Plasma and acid, it seemed, had cleared a path for the vong to enter into the pitch-dark tunnels.

Zalthis led, panning a bright, hot white cone of illumination left and right. S'hmu kept close at his right hand, rotary cannon readied, then the Fondorians followed in a chain that terminated with Solidian. His brother had not groused at taking the rearguard. Auspex showed ghosts and phantasmal contacts, fouled up by the atmospheric storms above and fitful electrical conduits that sparked at random, shocking blue-white showers of sparks that skittered and bounced off his armor. Fondorians swore now and then when unlucky cinders met skin.

'More sign,' Solidian reported, the other Astartes' torch playing over a ruined maintenance alcove. Clean, sharp cuts belied the manner of destruction: amphistaff with wanton abandon. Several other stations such as these had been thoroughly worked over, though if it was a tactic to ensure transportation remained disabled or merely acted as catharsis, Zalthis knew not. He could only hope that as the invaders wasted energy in destroying unpowered electronics, they left their limbs leaden and reserves depleted.

'Then they're down here for sure,' S'hmu rumbled.

'The question remains: why do they not follow the Titan?'

'A distraction, mayhaps,' Solidian offered. 'The Titan draws attention while they pass beneath notice.'

The Herglic swore colorfully. 'With comlink and your 'vox' down, we're the only ones that know.'

Zalthis turned, illuminating S'hmu with his torch. The other Fondorians shifted their weight, eyes shifty and downcast. Fingers tapped on lasrifle grips and boots scuffed against duracrete.

'We should've gone with the others,' spoke one of the natives.

'We'll die-'

Solidian, meaningfully, hefted his bolter.

'Consider your lives spent already.' Zalthis waved a broad hand down, further into the dark of the tunnel. 'That way, you save lives. Have you families? Friends? Imagine who you fight for. Conscript S'hmu is right. We may be the only ones who know that this Tshek Ulm leads a force to undermine the lines. Your family, your friends: their lives hang in the balance. Yours are already spent. Ask: what do you wish to buy? A moment's respite or their safety?'

None looked particularly inspired. Zalthis shook his head.

'The other consideration is that Brother Solidian and I will not retreat. You will go alone.'

Faces paled, even those non-human.

S'hmu spoke for the rest. 'We'll, ah, stick with you Blue Boys. Duty, and all, right?'

Solidian laughed into Zalthis' ear, over squad vox.

'Well spoken, Brother. Sergeant Ascratus' oratory rubbed off on you.'

The deceased Ultramarine's taciturn and practical mien was the butt of many jokes among the neophytes. Had Zalthis been without helm, his glare would have pinned Solidian through.

Seven hundred meters farther along the rail-line, Zalthis called the first halt. He raised one fist, killing his torch and listened with some vexation as the Fondorians shuffled along several more steps before, one by one, shutting off their own lights until blackness overtook them all. Zalthis held out his gently winking auspex, enough so that those behind could see. The resolution was washed and grainy, marked with interference, but occasional smears of red along the very edges hinted at contacts.

'Motion,' Zalthis hissed, paired over vox and comlink. 'Distant, but we are gaining. Solidian, you and I have our helms. The rest of you - your lasrifles feature thermal though the scopes. You've been shown how it functions. Activate it now.'

'They will be half blind,' Solidian whispered through helmet-to-helmet vox.

'We will be their senses.'

'Got 'em on,' S'hmu murmured, his basso tones rumbling even as he tried to whisper. 'Hard to see anything.'

'We will move slowly and I will call out impediments.'

In contrast to transit lines that ran on actual tracks, the subterranean network on Fondor anticipated use by repulsor technology. Thus, the way was clear save for thin and shallow indentations that appeared to be some manner of dormant lighting, perhaps guidance for the trains that floated above the smooth duracrete surface. Footprints were more evident in thin dust as Zalthis cycled through scanning filters and there were many, many of them. A great deal of beings passed this way only shortly ago, only further confirming his anticipation of Tshek Ulm's movements.

A thin wireframe, floating in the upper left of his vision, tracked their position relative to known topography above. They were heading back toward Oridin, at an angle to the path of the bio-titan's last known course. The theoretical held.

Zalthis led them at a decent clip, ignoring occasional grunts and muffled exclamations as Fondorians stumbled in the pitch-dark, trusting S'hmu to keep them together. Too slow, too careful, and the Yuuzhan Vong raiding party would outpace them. He would risk losing the element of surprise, so long as they caught up.

Slumps of crumbled duracrete loomed suddenly out of the darkness occasionally, marking where something above had tumbled down and the shock of it had caused secondary collapses, delaminating the ceiling and buckling walls. Zalthis directed wide berths around these slopes of debris and exposed rebar, knowing how easily the Fondorians could trip or injure themselves. None of the collapses yet blocked the whole tunnel, but he began to see why S'hmu had considered them a lost cause.

He paused a second time with whispered command as they rounded a particularly broad spill. It looked as if some high-rise tower had fallen straight down, punching through its foundations and into the tunnel proper, bringing down entire spans of the ceiling and support buttresses with it. Only a narrow path led along the far side of the tunnel and it did not look natural - it looked cleared.

'Sign,' he called and Solidian confirmed. 'We are still on their - ah.'

Movement lit his auspex, suddenly, and the silhouette of a low-slung body clambered into view. Zalthis could see it clearly as it waved antenna, carefully poking long, triple jointed legs out to find stable places to step. Its body was slender and long, just over a meter, its head flush with thorax. Another poked up above the collapse, following its fellow. Then a third. Wings with a span as wide as Astartes were tall flicked gently, as thin as fine paper.

'Grutchin,' Solidian warned.

'There's something different about them.' Zalthis blink-magnified, focusing on one of the insectile biot's heads. There were the large, compound eyes and mandibles that dripped caustic acids…and there was a strange, webbed nodule, like coral, that sprouted from the center of its skull like a horn. The ones encountered during the boarding action looked almost the same, save a bit smaller and without the coral growth. Uneasily, it recalled the sproutings on the skulls of the Obroan slaves.

'We were told they were uncontrollable.'

'That was the claim,' Solidian confirmed. S'hmu edged closer, eyes glued to the scope of his rotary cannon.

'Big things,' the Herglic dismissed. 'Probably won't like blasterfire much.'

'They are bred to eat starfighters, Conscript. They are hardier than they appear.'

The three grutchin poked about, nibbling at exposed rebar here and there, crunching at duracrete. They appeared not to have noticed the squad's presence yet.

'We cannot bypass them.' Zalthis lifted his bolter. 'Conscripts, focus fire. Kill them swiftly, then re-ignite torches. Gunfire will travel far in these tunnels and our best option then is speed. On my mark.'

He slid crosshairs over the thorax of the lead biot. His helm showed him that Solidian selected another. 'The leftmost one,' he ordered to the Fondorians. 'Three. Two. One-'

Three bugs burst, spraying chitin and legs and then spotlights banished the dark.

'Now, with haste-'

There were not just three grutchin.

Malik Carr received the news with a solemn nod, turning back to regard the bonfire of blazebugs that filled the strategic grotto. Enough of the incandescent insects hummed and hovered that the air was sweltering but adepts and tacticians bore the sweat streaming down their features with stoicism that made Malik Carr proud. The heat bothered him little and he found he did not perspire and wondered about the searing touch of the bomb on Obroa-skai. He had passed the crucible of fire and now he doubted it could easily find purchase in him.

"Another lost to little gain," Commander Harmae voiced his opinion with little enough humility that a lesser Warleader would have taken at least his tongue, if not his head in recompense. Malik Carr merely growled deep in his throat and Harmae sunk to one knee, bowing his head deep. "Apologies, Warleader. I speak out of turn."

"You do, Commander. Rise, and chasten your tongue." The blazebug formation displayed several great orbs: the world of the infidels named 'Eboracum' and its three moons. Little aggregations of the insects clustered around the grandest sphere, representing the grand cruisers of the 'Impeerium'. One knot in particular drew Malik Carr's focus, his trained ear picking out the subtle tones of the blaze-bugs wingbeats and the pulse of light in their bodies. The language of the blazebugs required many years of training under a most demanding lash, as incorrect interpretation of tone, color, luminescence and frequency could lead to catastrophe. The bugs wove a tapestry of meaning, able to declare the tonnage of a warship, its velocity, its bearing, weaponry, damage status and more. For his own vessels, they even spoke of crew morale and levels of supply. Commander Harmae attended to better hone his understanding of the bugs.

The newly elevated Commander wore his cloak of office like a shield, turning more braggadocious than Malik Carr would like and beginning to chafe under serving him directly. The others elevated by Nas Choka now commanded their own squadrons and Harmae, Carr feared, fostered some jealousy that he was not given similar.

The warrior had great promise as a tactician and leader - a Warleader one day - but not if he was unable to see Malik Carr's intention to hone him into a successor.

"Your words are not without merit, though lacking in deference." He waved at the blazebugs and a cluster detached from the ceiling where they rested and fed, descending on thrumming wings to hover above Malik Carr's outstretched palm. They forged together this time not a choir-icon, but the rough shape of an infidel warship, scaled beyond all others and large enough to even match the smallest koros-strohna.

It was long and boxy, as unsubtle and brutish as all ships shaped of technology would be. The bugs could not form all details, but Malik Carr imagined the gold and blue hues of it and the dense iconography that festooned its armor plating. Harmae wrinkled his nose at the blazebugs as he read their meaning.

"A monument to sin," the Commander snarled. "And a trophy to be claimed."

Carr kept his features schooled, even as his blood boiled at the thought. He imagined the enormous warship filled with aistarteez, overflowing with the blasphemous creatures. First magma missiles would breach the strange barriers the 'Exiles' shrouded their warships in. Annihilating fire would overwhelm them, baring armor to be hungrily devoured by plasma unending, belched by the pure throats of yaret-kor. The Aistarteez would peer about in confusion and then fear, and then finally despairing realization as purifying flame would burst and roll down corridors and mustering chambers. Yun-Yammka would feast on their unworthy souls and the cold silence of the void would stopper their screams.

From its ruin he would claim the warship's grand sigil. He would deface the stark white and curving rune with the rich blood of the Exiles and he would mount it on the prow of Blood Spat in Wrath for all to see. And they would flee before him and fall upon their faces and tear at their breast, for they would know he was Malik Carr, who slew aistarteez and threw down their nascent ambitions.

Iron tingled on his tongue and he swallowed thickly, snapping fingers and waving away the blazebugs.

"A trophy we must have patience for. Your Eminence, attend me."

Harrar, with hands clasped together within the voluminous sleeves of his robes, strode to Malik Carr's side and bowed just enough to indicate respect to a peer, not a subordinate to a superior.

"Speak to me, my brother, and tell me the gods smile on this course."

The priest ran his thin tongue around fringed lips, wetting them and composing his thoughts.

"The portents are good. In cracked bone, the Slayer shows sign of His favor. My mistress is inscrutable, for there is little to draw her gaze, but this is no hurdle. Yun-Shuno will be most pleased by the glory heaped upon her creations. The Gods smile on you, Warleader, and anticipate your designs."

Malik Carr hummed deep in his throat, more a rumbling growl. Tak tak tak clicked his claw on the coral underfoot. His probing strikes had confirmed Supreme Commander Nas Choka's word from Fondor: these Exiles boasted most potent warships. A miid-roic and three yorik-akaga lost to no tangible gain. His fleet bore the losses with ease, but such a toll that would be reaped by a frontal naval clash would be unbearable. Nas Choka faced but four of the Exile warships at Fondor and found himself stymied - Blood Spat in Wrath was the only grand cruiser Malik Carr commanded, compared to Nas Choka's three.

If the Gods approved of his design, then he would be cautious no longer. Delay was anathema to his mood and each day spent acting like the cautious, death-fearing infidels chafed against his resolve.

"Commander Harmae, you shall lead the implantation. As we have plotted, so shall be done. Fail me not, Commander, and greater heights await you as my second."

Harmae clapped fists together.

"Belek tiu, Warleader. Your will be done."

Malik Carr peered up at the luminous orbs of Eboracum and her three moons. The blazebugs hummed and shimmered and the largest moon hung bold and prominent over the living world.

"Bruk tukken nom cambin-tu," he muttered.

Trembling fingers accepted a short, rolled lhostick. Caraget clicked a lighter once, twice, thrice before wavering flame erupted. Sheltered by cupped hands, Elsali leaned forward and lit the end of the 'stick dangling from her lips. All around the square, just a little open area between habitation blocks, several hundred others were repeating similar rituals. Three other tanks rumbled down to silence. Platoons, what was left of them, claimed sections to collapse on, to prop rifles up against drab duracrete walls and pat hips for canteens. Fondorian conscripts and Eboracum First alike, distinguished only by their gear but united by empty expressions and deep-hollowed eyes.

She hacked a cough, smoke gusting out of her mouth and Caraget slapped her on the back. It tasted like compactor waste and the smoke burned her lungs, but it gave her something else to focus on. Something other than shaking hands, stale sweat sticking her tanktop to her skin and a pounding headache like hammers on the inside of her head.

"It's funny, right?" Caraget said, poking at Elsali's rebreather, dangling loose around her neck. "They don't want us breathing in the-" the other tanker waved, a few drifting clots of ash sticking to her arm "-crap in the air. And here we are." Cara was on her second pack of lhosticks, the last a stomped flat pile of waxpaper on the deck grating inside the tank.

"Ironic," Elsali said around a trembling laugh. "This stuff is awful."

"The worst," Cara agreed. "Hey, Sula, want some?"

The driver rudely gestured toward them both from where he lay underneath the Russ, sheltered from the light ashfall and basking in the warmth radiating from the engine block. Cara responded in kind, with one finger on both hands. The tank itself sat quiet, engine off and cooling down. Ammunition was bingo, as Sarge put it, and they were waiting on resupply. Of their initial platoon of three, only they made it out from the Worldeater. Behind her eyelids, she could see the plume of fire through her rangefinder, like a welding torch spitting out of the empty turret-ring of a Russ as they left it behind.

First time she climbed into one, she felt invincible. The rounds they threw around were made to kill other armor like this, and she saw how hard they hit. If it took that much to knock out a Russ, well, wasn't much in the galaxy outside a starfighter that could dent it. Sweet deal, compared to strapping on the carapace armor of infantry and lugging around a lasrifle.

Rakamats made her wary, since they laughed at those big shells she punched downrange, but they'd learned how to work around that. Get Cara and Tonil to tickle them with the lascannons, coordinate with the other tanks in the platoon, and then the biots'd eat an armor-piercing right down the throat.

Then the Worldeater showed up and smashed up everything. Russ went down like paper targets to balls of plasma as big as a landspeeder. Bugs - bugs - thumped in and knocked the sixty tonne tank around like a Rancor with a toy. Nothing touched that titan.

Tonil hopped down, joining the both of them where they leaned against the tank's tread, coughing and waving at the haze of lhosmoke slowly forming a cloud.

"Aw, not you too, 'Sali."

"You're not my boss," she replied, mulish, taking another stomach turning drag on her lho.

"Sarge's saying we're gonna hold here for awhile. The Lieutenant up at Kadyin has a plan, but he's gotta get everything in a row first." Tonil dropped down to sit, crosslegged.

"The Lieutenant? If the Ultramarines've got a plan, guess we're gonna be alright."

Elsali raised an eyebrow.

"That sarcasm, Cara?"

"What? No, of course not. Just wondering if that plan needed K'le and Ravik's tanks to get eaten. I'm no transhuman, maybe I don't understand."

Elsali plucked her lho from her lips, turning it around in her fingers. The mention of the other crews had her sweating again, even in the chilly air. She hadn't known them quite as well as Cara - she wasn't as outgoing as the middle-aged gunner - but they were good people too and part of the platoon since Founding. Three months didn't seem like a long time, but tankers had to have each other's backs. There'd been more than a few nights of drinking in the Civitas, burning the Imperium scrip they were paid and wondering aloud about their new lives.

Now ten men and women were vong-fodder, burnt up and probably eaten by the giant bio-titans. They'd come this close - this close - to the same fate, if Sula had been a little slower, if they'd been out of position, if that one smash bug hadn't missed and splattered on the road but had spun them out instead, if -

A warm arm looped over her narrow shoulders, tugging her back to the present. Cara, taller than her, looked down with sympathy.

"Sorry, 'Sali. I'm just - egh." The gunner choked out a noise of frustration, tossing the stub of her own lho aside and trying to shake another out, one-handed. The three lapsed into silence, retreating into their own thoughts. Elsali burned through one lhostick, claimed another, found her hands shook less.

Motion caught her eye from among the knots of infantry that also populated the square. One woman, an officer by her cap and flash, strode along with two at her back, lasrifles unlimbered. Ahead of them they drove seven more, down to their undershirts and bare feet, wrists secured behind their back. The three chivvied them along, out into an open area. Each bundle of exhausted soldiers this group passed fell quiet, still and staring.

Just about in the middle of the square, the officer gestured and her two escorts started kicking out legs, dropping each one of the cuffed humans to their knees.

"Hey," Elsali said, pointing. "What's going on over there?"

Something in her tone caught Sula's attention and the driver poked his head from under the tank, peered over.

"Deserters," he said, succinct, and tucked back under. A wave of sudden heat and cold swept her from head to toe.

"What're they gonna do-" she asked, knowing the answer. Rebreather masks were yanked off the kneeling figures and the two soldiers with the officer brought up their rifles. No - no, no way, that was not happening, no one was gonna die here, no one who made it out of that all that shit -

"The hell is this?" someone cried - no, it was her, she asked that and she was halfway over, jamming her cap back down on her head. The officer glanced her way - as young as Elsali was with a shiny scar across half her face, claiming an eyebrow and blurring the definition of her lips.

"Not your business, Private," she stressed and Elsali saw the tabs of a second lieutenant. There was the striking of booted feet on duracrete behind them, but Elsali just saw the flaming ruins of K'le and Ravik's tanks. Who wouldn't run away from those kriffing bio-titans, who wouldn't be afraid-

"What'd they do, then?"

"Again," the lieutenant said in heavily accented Basic. "Not your business, Private. Back to your crew, now."

A heavy hand fell on her shoulder and Elsali jumped, craning her neck to see Sarge towering over her. His eyes were hard, hard and uncompromising as space and with pressure on her shoulder gently pulled her back. The LT's two goons had their lasrifles up, not quite aiming, not quite not.

"Easy there, 'Sali. I got this. Go on back."

"Sarge-"

"I said go back. Go get me my vox."

It took an effort to pull herself away, to turn her back on the LT and the rifles and march back. Each stomp of her boots jolted her hip and up her spine and she grit her teeth to keep from screaming. Cara and Tonil were watching her, wide-eyed.

"Fry me alive, 'Sali, you almost got shot-"

"Sarge needs the vox," she spat, ignoring Tonil, grabbing onto the side of the tank, boots catching on the bogie wheels to give her a leg up. "I'm gonna-"

Crack. Crackcrackcrackcrackcrack. Crack.

Her fingers went numb and she slid, undershirt tugging as it caught on rivets. Caraget caught her arm.

"Don't turn around," the older woman warned. "Just climb up. Get Sarge his vox."

She didn't know how she managed to clamber up the side, into the turret, or who took the portable vox when she handed it out. Elsali slid down, surrounded by metal and armor, legs bunched up in the cramped interior. It reeked like lhosmoke and promethium and fycelene, like sweat and maybe a little bit of urine. Tears cleaned streaks of soot and ash from her cheeks as they fell. Someone was talking outside, shouting out pointed words to a silent audience but inside the tank, it was just noise. Muffled noise and it didn't mean anything at all.

Ullos was cautious. Optarch was emphatic. SPHA/t, AT-ATs, even E-Wings had proven ineffective against the Worldeaters, their lasers and rockets and even one proton torpedo proved unable to batter down the voids protecting the enormous biots. Sortieing a squadron of Juggernauts and mustering a full march of all nineteen reserve AT-ATs could stress the Yuuzhan Vong center. The Iax Tertius and First Eboracum would support with Russ and Basilisks. SPHA/t and /m could provide long-ranged support and a density of artillery suppression to make a difference.

It would also summon every Worldeater from across the front. Thus far both sides had avoided bringing the full force of their heavy assets to bear in any particular theatre for fear of allowing their foe the chance to strike at flanks. That theoretical evaporated when the Worldeaters rose, the northern and southern ones crunching into Fondorian lines with slow but inexorable pressure. Yet to withdraw forces from the wings, to fold all into the middle: it was betting all the chips on a single hand of sabacc, not knowing what the shifter would bring.

Optarch agreed with the metaphor, not knowing the particular card game but familiar enough with games of chance and strategy.

'It is essential we force the Vong's hand,' Optarch repeated, pacing in front of a holotank in which a slowly revolving image of the dreaded biot took up most of the real estate. Estimates of weapon growths and suspected dovin basal pits were highlighted, but all were conjecture thus far, drawn from visual reporting. 'We do not have the ground forces to continue to hold this line. Sooner or later, we must retreat again. Each line buys us time, but costs us distance. Another two retreats and your city will be within range of hostile artillery. They can begin bombardment of its shielding.'

'If we don't have the manpower to hold the front, then concentrating the Vong strength into a single point is sure to result in an unwinnable battle.' Ullos leaned forward, planting palms on the holotable, worrying his lip with his teeth. 'The plan to flood the flanks with wardroids after the worldeaters are committed could work…but it also brings all four of them right here, to Kadyin.'

'Where Mors Vigilia may strike.' Optarch finished; glad he was of Lord Guilliman's line and not one of a less patient genetor. Ullos' concerns were valid, but he worried overmuch. 'I have done this on many worlds, General Ullos. I have fought and broken sieges since before you were born.'

'In your galaxy, Lieutenant. This one is different.' The Ultramarine turned to the broad transparisteel windows of the amphitheatre command center. Forty stories above street level, with clear and unimpeded sight to the distant defensive line. Tiny flashes indicated the nonstop plasma barrages and frequent blinks of blue light picked out still active Republic artillery. Though the paint was different, the brushstrokes were the same. It was war, simple and straightforward, and war was his home. No matter the galaxy, no matter the troops in his hands, Optarch understood the canvas.

'Yes, General, in my galaxy. The wars I have fought in would make this one appear a border dispute. Trust in my experience. The worldeaters will be dealt with. One way, or another. Of that you may be assured. The flanks will fall and the Yuuzhan Vong will be primed for a final thrust.'

Ullos cycled the holodisplay, revealing the entire local sector, a thousand kilometers on a side. Two icons marked out the local worldeaters, separated by perhaps two dozen kilometers. To the north, one roamed some two hundred kilometers away, moving farther every moment. To the south, the fourth ranged one hundred and sixty kilometers from Kadyin. At the pace they moved, each covered forty kilometers in an hour, but the analysis was that this was more careful pace, as the worldeaters were making a point to amble about, destroying infrastructure and indulging in their apparent hunger. It might well be that at need, the biots could hit far higher speeds in protracted motion. Projections ranged as high as a hundred kilometers an hour, perhaps more - the gravity nullifying abilities of dovin basals made the square-cube law a mere suggestion.

'I know that Magos Mu is working on the shields. If Mors Vigilia is aboard one of your starships, I fear the Yuuzhan Vong will retaliate with their own armada.'

'They are not, General. Lord Admiral Regil has acceded to Admiral Brand's requirements that his squadron remain at anchor along with the Fifth Fleet.'

'Hard to work around factors I don't know, Lieutenant.'

'Nevertheless, General, you must. Part of the bargain is the utmost of secrecy, even now. The Magos and Mors Vigilia required it. We yet have no certainty about operational security, as you are well aware. The Vong xenoform have proved most adept at infiltration and subversion.' Optarch patted at his gladius. 'If it settles your mind, I will not be sitting idle. A son of Ultramar leads from the front. My life will be on the line, just as anyone else's.'

Beyond the transparisteel, Fondor appeared grim. Its omnipresent polluted atmosphere mingled with the stale ash that still drifted from the grey skies like a sorrowful snowfall. These people saw this world as ruined. Such catastrophic devastation, they whispered, looking at the orbital pictures of the vast scar across the northern hemisphere. Artificial winter would cool the world several degrees over the next few years as ash blotted out the sun. It would rain and rain across most of the world: only centimeters in some areas, piling up in drifts meters deep in others.

They saw this world as already lost.

Nonsense. Its industry ran on the detestable 'droids' so favored in this galaxy. They did not need clean air to breathe or sunlight. They could work at full capacity in the blackest of night, or in the utter lack of oxygen. The living beings that remained would learn to stay indoors, to erect atmospheric shields over their remaining enclaves. This world was hurt, but it was so very far from lost.

Not like Calth.

Not like Calth.

He pushed the thoughts aside, unwilling to touch that still-suppurating wound. Many even refused to speak of it. There was an unreality to it, one compounded by the bizarre nature of their arrival in this galaxy. In many ways, the day-to-day difficulties of adjusting to a whole new universe, one filled with humans both contemptible and admirable, made it easier. Calth could be pushed to the back of the mind, the reeling reality of the Imperium itself built on a foundation of sand shelved.

For the greatest fear, the one none spoke of, was that in their absence, all might be lost. That as they spent months here, in this galaxy, their own home burned. That Macragge itself might have fallen, for their absence. Optarch felt the weight like a yoke about his own neck, occasionally adjusted to, but never relinquished. He feared how heavily it might sit upon his Primarch.

'Alright.' Ullos said, coming to stand next to him. Optarch looked down at the man, who reached only mid-chest. 'Alright, Lieutenant. Let's pass the orders. You're right - we can't stop the worldeaters anyway, not in time. Oridin is too vulnerable and we might as well bet it all. Let's see if we can bait in the monsters.'

He counted sixty-seven grutchin. Thirty-six were killed as they surged after the first three, punctured by bolts and blew apart. The insects were fragile, too slender to weather even a single mass-reactive without catastrophic damage. Zalthis and Solidian reaped their toll until both bolters ran dry. They had drilled for years to affect perfect reloading, under the most severe of duress. Sergeant Ascratus forced them to do so blindfolded, while sprinting, with low-power lasfire snipping at their heels. To eject a magazine, select a new, snap it into position and cycle the chamber took just over a second.

That was enough time for the rest of the grutchin to spill over.

Zalthis took a potshot, clipping the wings of one leaping through the air. S'hmu bellowed and held down the trigger to his rotary cannon. Blue hyphens of blasterfire leapt out, bracketing and then shredding a biot in mid-flight. Sharp cracks of lasrifle discharge poked at others with threads of ruby-red light, momentarily connecting target to barrel. Another few grutchin tumbled, missing limbs, wings. They moved in a mass, coordinated, boiling toward the squad.

'Back,' Zalthis shouted. 'Back! Firing retreat!'

He shot again and this time the bolt only punctured a grutchin's lacy wing, the membrane too thin to trigger the detonator. It exploded in the duracrete ceiling behind and while the biot wobbled, wings catching less air, it finished its jump by landing on a Duro. The alien's shocked cry turned into a warble of bubbling agony as the biot sank acid-slavering mandibles into his throat. One red beam jolted the grutchin, a second sent it reeling back, waving its legs in anger and a third punched through a compound eye.

More came. Fondorians scattered, shouting wordless, aimless terror, firing with triggers held down. Las sprayed, unaimed, as much a danger as the swarming biots.

Auspex chimed and Zalthis span on his heel, striking a grutchin with the butt of his bolter. Its head and thorax exploded in ichor, chitin and acid, steaming on the casing of his rifle. Before his very eyes the thick construction of the bolter withered, pockmarked, dripping into slurry that crept down toward the magazine.

He hurled it away just as the bolts went off in sequence like a krak grenade, shredding half a dozen grutchin with diamantite shrapnel. Another fluttered in and he gutted it with his blade, yanked from his hip holster. Solidian's bolter barked, knocking two in rapid succession from the air.

The biots were all around them, meter-long bodies and whickering wings blocking vision, confusing auspex - he saw a human go down, get dragged, screaming, into the waiting jaws of two insects. Another howled, backed against the wall, keeping grutchin at bay with rapid beams of las.

Four left alive - or was it three? Zalthis' words before felt hollow; this was no worthy death. He owed them better.

From lifeless hands he scooped up a lasrifle, pinching off the trigger guard between ceramite-clad fingers. One, two grutchin, right through the eyes, dropped by red las. Solidian hurled a krak grenade, sending another cluster flailing and twitching. S'hmu, stalwart, was an eye of calm as he spun, spraying blasterfire. Smoking grutchin spoke to the benefit of volume over accuracy.

'Zal!' Solidian shouted. The other ultramarine, caught off guard after hurling his grenade, lost his bolter to a darting grutchin that plucked it from his fist. Two impacted him on the plastron, staggering the Astartes back. From twenty meters away, Zalthis heard the sizzle of ceramite melting.

'Sol!' A lasrifle was no danger to Mark IV plate and Zalthis hosed his brother down, blowing away one grutchin but just as quickly another and another took its place. As if by some signal, every remaining biot launched away from where they were, arrowing for the embattled Ultramarine. His brother vanished under a sudden pile of swarming wings and clicking jaws.

The lasrifle in Zal's fist clicked dry.

Blue blasterfire burst over the pile of grutchin, ripping fist-sized holes into abdomens and popping multifaceted eyes. S'hmu barged in, hooting a long bellow through his dorsal nostrils. A grutchin leapt on the rotary cannon and the Herglic hurled the entire thing aside, crunching the biot between weighty weapon and duracrete tunnel wall. Then he was ripping the grutchin from Solidian with his bare hands, slinging them around and stomping them into mush.

Zalthis leapt into action, lending his own superhuman strength, obliterating one biot with a backswing and then grabbing hold of the abdomen of one S'hmu held in both fists and tugging, ripping the creature in half messily. Solidian's flailing arms came visible as they pulverized the single-minded vong weapon-creatures, unearthing the fallen Ultramarine from under a carpet of overgrown locusts. Rents were torn in oceanic blue plate, deep enough that crimson leaked from a few. His helmet was half-melted, revealing a crazed expression.

Zalthis caught Sol's hand and yanked his brother back to his feet, slapping aside a bug and stomping it flat. Then there were none left, none at all, the whisper of wings gone and chitter of insectile legs silenced.

He gave Solidian space, breathing hard. His brother looked like he had been set upon by a carnodon, but waved a hand in placation.

'I'm-' he gasped in air, 'fine, brother. I-'

S'hmu groaned, sinking to his knees instead. Solidian caught the Herglic, easing him away from a puddle of steaming grutchin spit. A stone sank in Zalthis gut as he saw the being's injuries. Of his left hand, little remained but red-slicked nubs of bone. Slashes cut deep in thick black and white blubber. He carried aid - Zalthis was no medicae, but he had training in its application. He had stimulants and staples, enough to seal injuries long enough to…his thoughts faltered. Long enough for transhuman biology to take effect. He knew how to treat another Astartes. It was Lyros that had the training on mortals - on human biology at least.

Solidian was asking the same question, over and over.

'Why did you do it?' he demanded, roughly, face inches from S'hmu's. 'Why? Why did you do it?'

S'hmu tucked his mauled hand in close, wincing, jamming it under his other arm. Blood drooled from his wide lips, staining thick and peglike teeth.

'S'm' home,' he slurred. 'Nev- never liked Fondor but s'm' home. S-since I was' calf. Didn' want you t' die for m' home.' Zalthis knelt down, pulling Solidian back. His brother yanked off the remains of his helm and hurled it aside. Blood trickled down his dark face from slashes where his scalp had been ripped back, exposing bone. Bloody, but nothing life-threatening. Already scabbing over.

S'hmu trembled, gasping. Bloody mist gusted from his dorsal nostrils.

'Kriffin'...acid. Think I…got s'm in m'-' he coughed again, doubling over and Zalthis supported his shoulders. '-kriffin' lungs.'

'Breathe slowly,' Zalthis ordered before snapping fingers at one of the surviving Fondorians. 'You! Bring a medkit. Something!'

'I - I don't have anything, sir.'

'Then what use are you!' Zalthis pulled a stimulant ampoule from his belt, ripped away the needle-guard. Solidian caught his wrist.

'Sol, he'll die-'

S'hmu shuddered, breath growing shallow.

'You will kill him with that, Zal.'

The stim rolled in his ceramite palm, mocking. He clenched his fist tight, ceramite creaking louder than the tinny sound of shattering glass. Once, twice, he pounded his fist into duracrete beside the dying Herglic.

'Sorry, blue boys,' S'hmu slurred. 'Take m', take m' gun. It's a good gun.'

Solidian, face stained with clotted blood, looked between the stricken alien and the smashed bits of grutchin scattered about. Fingers ran over melted divots and bites in his thick plate.

'I will, S'hmu.'

Deep brown eyes rolled and stared blankly up, past Zalthis, past Solidian.

''Fraid…' he said in a small voice.

S'hmu's undamaged hand was as large as Zalthis was, even in his plate. He clasped the Herglic's arm, palm to wrist, leaning close. He knew not what to say, in times like this. For his Sergeant, there was only pride. Sorrow that he would not learn more, that the Ultramarines lost a great champion, but to be Astartes was to die - all knew that. Mortals yearned to live. It burned in them: in Knight Taral's remaining eye, when she held her body together by will and bloody determination. Here, now, in the surprisingly human ones that peered up at Zalthis' harsh red lenses. They craved meaning. They needed peace. The words came then, with clarity.

With his free hand, he doffed his helmet. S'hmu's mouth worked, soundless.

'May your Force be with you,' Zalthis said.

S'hmu stilled and breathed no more.

They rolled out at dawn. Thirty-two Juggernauts, bounding over the broken terrain in a long column, racing ahead of plodding walkers. SB series war droids in their thousands marched alongside the walkers, smartly sweeping their heavy lasers left and right. The mood was grim – this much armor against one worldeater might be able to eke out a win, but everyone knew there were three others that would all respond in time. Most saw the foray as a suicide mission. Many were even volunteers, Fondor natives who jumped at the chance to strike back at the bastards that had hurt their home. The Tapani martial culture was still alive and well and some aboard the juggernauts hummed old songs or clenched tight in their hands pictures of loved ones.

They went to war expecting to die and Optarch was proud. There was much weakness in this galaxy, he had seen, but still there was ever steel in the spine of humanity, as divergent as they might be. In his own turn, then, he would do all he could to ensure that their swift expectation of death did not come to pass. That a decent percentage of those going to war were alien he chose to overlook.

The Yuuzhan Vong, alerted instantly by tremorsensors and a wakeful yammosk, reacted swiftly. Rakamats stirred from slumber, yawning and shaking sail-like spines. Warriors barked out orders to regiments of chazrach. The vast worldeaters lowed, long and loud, primitive sapience hungry for battle. Coralskipper squadrons hurriedly refueled, devouring rock and processed minerals. Tsik-vai and gunship analogues prepared to take to the skies.

If the infidels wanted a fight, they were more than welcome to come.

Marshal Baur'ak was pleased. If they forced a climactic confrontation, it would be that much easier to break their backs and push on to his objective. This dismal world had killed his taste for a longer war and now he was eager to be done and gone. There was little glory here, he felt, in the grinding attrition of line breaking and the follow-up urban skirmishes until the next defensive lines. Better to finish and leave this world of abominable dead-things to the Shapers to rebirth and chase greater glories.

As the yammosk fed him more and more intel, indicating with greater certainty the strength of the infidel strike, Baur'ak grew more and more convinced this was a last-gasp effort to break out. They were on the brink of defeat, so close to their precious capital and the critical shield generators. Desperation drove them. He issued the command. Fold in the worldeaters. No longer needed as heavy assets across the front, he could alloy them here and shatter the infidels in a single stroke.

Operation Last Hand raged out before Kadyin Memorial. Juggernauts rippled off salvos of rockets in unison, battering down rakamat voids to allow walkers to finish them with one-two strikes of chin-mounted blasters. Snubfighters dueled with coralskippers above, aerial superiority hotly contested. SB droids absorbed endless hails of bugs, carapaces dented and smeared with ichor as they poured blaster fire into the Yuuzhan Vong entrenchments.

Even the first worldeater was embattled. Juggernauts dashed around it, keeping constantly on the move, deceptively speedy for such size. Walkers dueled it directly, exchanging fire, seeking to hammer through dovin basal choirs. Leman Russ, kept at range, threw shell after fat shell, armor piercing and high explosive. Basilisk launchers thumped out cluster munitions. SPHA/m artillery slung baradium-enhanced rounds high.

For all its land-bound nature, though, the worldeater was built like a cruiser. Yorik coral plates as thick as any spacecraft protected its flanks and back while dovin basals as large as that of a corvette hungrily sucked up rocket and blasterbolt and shell alike. Occasional lucky shots snuck through, pitting and scarring its thick hide here and there, but it only drove the beast to new heights of savagery. Urang-hul breeding pods exploded along its back, hammering at walkers and juggernauts and war droids alike, slamming flat the latter and punching holes clean through the durasteel of the others. Horn-like nozzles spewed plasma without end.

The Republican armor held its own. The speed of the juggernauts and their low-slung bodies allowed canny drivers to exploit factories and warehouses, letting the worldeater's return fire shatter and hole those abandoned buildings instead. Walkers fared worse, too tall and too slow to easily evade, but with the benefit of tougher plating.

Minutes passed first, then a quarter hour, more. The Republicans, bolstered by Exiles, held strong. Spirits rose. A sense of anticipation roiled across the front, infecting all with anxious energy.

It seemed the worldeater might founder. Snubfighters, briefly freed from aerial duels made strafing runs, employing the same stutter-fire techniques that had proven effective against coralskippers. Lasers creased armor, clipping the tip off the largest of the biot's vast plates soaring from its spine. Massed rocket fire finally battered down a void, rippling crimson explosions along the entirety of the beast's left side. It stumbled, momentarily knocked off-kilter, bellowing in anger. Two proton torpedoes, loosed as soon as the dovin basals were soon to be exhausted, slammed down in a paired detonation that overloaded the senses of all those within a kilometer.

The worldeater stumped out of the explosion, scorched, steam and smoke pouring from it, but still standing strong.

It raised its head to the sky, paws balled into fists, and howled.

Howls answered it.

The other worldeaters had arrived. Singly they strode toward the battlefield from all directions, coming to the aid of their embattled kin.

Ullos, watching from his command center, knuckles white where he clenched hard the rim of the holoprojector, waited for Optarch's promised deliverance.

As called for in the battle plan, the juggernauts broke off, speeding back toward Republican lines. The walkers, slower, more ponderous, backed away, keeping up an unending stream of blasterfire. In contrast, the SB droids pushed harder, throwing themselves at the Yuuzhan Vong even as rakamats rallied and lesser biots sensed blood. The droids were expendable – Fondor's vast manufactories churned out thousands every day. First Eboracum tanks repositioned.

The worldeaters must be drawn in totally.

Ullos could not guess what Optarch's plan was. There were no capital ships above that could offer fire, even if the shields could be lowered. The Yuuzhan Vong would be unable to miss such a deployment and would never commit their forces with such a danger above. Admiral Brand's fleet remained clustered more than a thousand kilometers away, remaining anchored and out of range just like the Yuuzhan Vong fleet, each hiding behind the horizon line.

Optarch looked up at the clouded sky. Beyond, at the edge of the atmosphere, was the invisible barrier of the Republic's shields. These, he admitted, were impressive. Voids could cover vast stretches of a world, but to date no void shield had yet been constructed that could encapsulate an entire world at once. Always voids had to be layered and overlapped. Though their efficacy was lesser, Optarch admitted an interest in these barriers. What difference might they have made at Calth, he wondered.

Technicians in Oridin had been working overtime, sometimes going without sleep for days at a time, reinforcing and running endless tests on the generators. Magos Orichi-Mu, drawn by temptation of technology and professional rivalry, tucked into the challenge with relish. The fruit of their efforts was finally to be plucked. Much rode on this moment: like Ullos had said, Optarch was preparing to gamble an entire world. Distantly he wondered if he would be so flippant with a world of the Imperium. If his willingness to try the unorthodox and dangerous came from his lack of connection to Fondor.

It did not matter.

Optarch tapped his wrist, activating the noospheric link to Orichi-Mu.

'Now or never, Magos,' he said. As was the cantankerous savant's want, the Martian did not deign to reply.

Instead, just above Kadyin, a five hundred square kilometer segment of Fondor's shields cut off.

Ullos nodded in satisfaction, expecting this development. Reflexively, he looked up at the ceiling of the strategic center.

On board Yammka, Nas Choka's lips thinned.

At first nothing was different. The juggernauts continued their fighting withdrawal. More walkers were swatted down, legs cut from under them, control cockpits blown off. SB droids died in swathes as the arriving worldeater sprayed plasma across the field. Underground storage and fuel depots erupted in explosions, blowtorch sprays of flaming fuel spraying hundreds of meters into the sky. Artillery fire slashed down from the New Republic lines, but it seemed ineffectual in the weight of the Vong advance.

The clouds above, still slowly lightening as the shrouded sun rose, blushed red. From them burst free a massive, flame-shrouded shape, howling toward the surface at terminal velocity. Reentry heat blushed the carapace a deep crimson, an enormous plume of smoke tracking its descent. Coralskippers reoriented – the yammosk did not know what this was, simply that it was a foe. Plasma hammered out, encountering active void shields. Magma missiles spiraled in, crumpling against thick adamantium armor.

Retrojets fired, each blowing out a plume of exhaust as wide as a rakamat, kicking up curls of grit and dust. The lander struck the surface with enough force to knock flat chazrach and topple entire blocks.

Four worldeaters circled the cloud of kicked up ejecta warily, each keeping well at range. The battlefield calmed, both sides uncertain of what was to come. Grinding metal and screaming motors rent the air, thudding booms the only clue to what went on within the settling cloud of smoke and dust.

Lights ignited within, red and crackling blue. Harsh searchlights strobed and swept, weirdly distorted by the swirling curtains. One worldeater stopped, sucking in a deep breath, body quaking with the intensity of its irrepressible energy and urge for violence, fists balling.

Its roar was deafening, an animalistic declaration of violence.

From within the cloud of dust came its answer.

Windows exploded for kilometers around. The swirling dust and smoke was visibly blasted away, suddenly clearing to reveal a single, towering bipedal figure. An effigy in iron. The barrage of noise continued: a long, mournful, visceral scream that tapered off into a lingering rumble at the edge of hearing.

Its true name was long and convoluted, a string of binaric and ritual hexadecimal that ran on in fractal tangles of equations praising the Motive Force. To the world, its name was Mortarch Abandon. The primus Titan of the Legio Lacassex, veteran of Ancient Mars, survivor of the scouring rad-storms of Calth and the engine murder of Komesh. The Lord of the Maniple Katabatic. The Death Watcher became the Lord of Death again.

Optarch had overseen the insertion of the coffin-ship into the orbital churn of debris, poised precisely over the battlefield he had chosen for the day. Aboard the single-engine coffinship the princeps and crew of Mortarch slumbered in drugged stupor, all systems drawing the barest minimum of power.

In her cradle Noriomi dreamt of fire and war and clear skies baking with sunlight. She dreamt with the soul of Mortarch, conjoining together in their aspect of Mors Vigilia. The Watcher. The careful carnodon, the poised hunter. Watching, waiting. Guiding until their battlefield was ripe. Her moderati slept restless, phantoms of their mistress and the god-soul of the Titan unwilling to settle. Days passed.

If Orichi had not been fruitful in his labors, the worldeaters would have overrun Kadyin Memorial line. The Republicans would have broken. Iax Tertius and First Eboracum would have faced catastrophic losses. Oridin City would topple, days later, and then the shields, the entire world's shields, with it, opening to endless landings from the Yuuzhan Vong armada.

The Omnissiah ever provided.

Finally set free after the doldrums of waiting and months beforehand of tedium, Noriomi stretched muscles tense with inaction, the action repeated by the slabbed shoulders of the thirty-meter engine of war. Its warhorn howled again, challenge bald-faced and arrogant. The great titan rocked its shoulders, rippling the vast cloth of its half-cape, arid and ashen and toxin-laced air snapping and catching at the weighted edges. Holographs skittered along the woven adamantium thread and gold weave, an oceanic ripple of the gloried history of the ancient machine. Digits uncurled from a hand larger than a main battle tank, brushing the fabric with a beguiling gentleness.

Noriomi scoffed, the tenor of her disdain clear through the Mind Impulse Link, the sacred tether that unified them all. She saw through Mortarch's eyes, felt the acidic winds against her adamantium skin. The thrum and pulse of the chained star in the Titan's belly was the heat of her own heart.

offered a moderati, though in the blend of the joining it was unclear whom. Tol Tolu, by the flavor of excitement in the tone.

Mortarch Abandon took a long stride, the impact of the splayed claw on the hardpan jolting Noriomi's hip. Her foot/its talons sunk only a meter into the dense ferrocrete.

Another scry-pulse slammed from Mortarch, scouring the battlefield and building a tactical map of several hundred square kilometers.

Two of the four worldeater began to lope to the side, aiming to outflank the Warlord. Shoulder-mounted las-blasters tracked, smoothly oiled and sanctified gearing mechanisms rotating the train-sized weapons with ease. The other two stood their ground, one hunching lower to the ground, waggling massive spinal plates in some manner of bestial threat display.

Kilometers away in Oridin, Orichi-Mu continued his quiet hymnal to the Machine God on a secondary vox-band.