Nimue Arcada and the VII
in
The Campaigns of the Suppression of the Intcom II
Along the Dyach River
”FIRE!”
A shudder and hum, followed by cracks of lightning, and then a whoosh.
“Effect?” A stocky, broad man standing partially out of the a cappella of his tank said. He looked out with binoculars to try and confirm his own question, however at these ranges not even with its zoom functions could he see what his gunner could.
“It just… just fucking bounced off!” An outraged, though tired, voice shouted back.
A string of resigned groans followed from the rest of the crew.
“I predict only a likelihood of 14% at penetrating the upper glacis of our current target” an automated voice said in monotone deadpan “perhaps shooting at somewhere else on the target may be more effective” the voice continued, suddenly with a drip of sarcasm.
“Shut the fuck up QUTAM!” The driver of the tank shouted at the Artificial Intelligence built into the tank. “And what the fuck are those monstrosities! Why do they have two barrels? And why are they so fucking hard to kill!?” He ranted to himself, as the A.I continued to operate the autoloader for the tank’s electromagnetic railgun.
“INTCOM Command has designated this adversarial armoured unit an ‘Invader’ class super-heavy tank. It unknown however what the Earthling military refers to their armoured units as-”
“I said shut up!”.
“Affirmative, driver Eugene”.
“Keep the tank in reverse, keep to the trees if you can, Eugene. If that thing hits us we are all going to go up in flames”. The binocular-wielding man finally said. He had only not so long ago watched that very same tank obliterate seven other tanks of the very same kind he was currently commanding. “QUTAM, load APFSDS” he added.
“Aye aye, Commander”.
“Affirmative, Commander”.
The Intcom tank would usually fall back into its camouflage of light-distorting invisibility, however it only flickered ineffectively over the hexagonal-lattice armour of the XMT-15 MBT, an Earthling gunship of some sort having riddled the armour in so many holes the camouflage no longer functioned. Between the flickers of invisibility, the words
“Last Out of Metrosphere Alpha” could be seen painted along the side of the tank.
While their tank rolled back, shots fired back and forth along the vast distances of the battle as fellow reversing XMT tanks fired at the advancing wedge of Earthling war machines. While their own tanks were sleek, clean and a mixture of sharp angles and curves… the Earthlings own tanks were bizarre bulky objects with rhombus-like frames and covered in far too many cannons to be reasonable or logical. Not to mention being painted in bright gaudy colours - including pink. Fucking pink.
And yet those stupid pink things were fucking slaughtering them. The commander placed his empty hand over his face in a long, terrible, soul crushing sigh of existential pain.
Looking again around him, he saw the shivering waves and mirage-like effects of an active cloak beside his own tank. He saw the corpses of both dead tanks and infantrymen, and the crashed remains of far too many aerial drones - some of those things were supposed to be state-of-the-art shipments from The Benefactors.
Another shot sped across the horizon, rocket-propelled charges in the shell only speeding it forward, straight into the shimmering distorted field of a nearby tank that had fired only moments before, a fellow tank crew. Instantly gone in an explosive flash.
“Enemy is utilizing a yet unknown form of rocket-propelled HEAT shell, based on the observed characteristics. The Upper-glacis armour of the XMT-15 of crew two hundred and seventy three was inadequate” QUTAM reacted to the inferno that was once a crew of friends.
The commander loved his tank. The XMT-15
“Benfrank Jeffeshington”, named after an ancient rebel leader of Earth, who led a coliseum slave-uprising of only 300 warriors against a million. But here, right now, his tank was woefully unmatched. It was looking like ol’Jeffeshinton is going to need a lot more than 300 warriors to win this battle…
Looking up even, the battle was no better. Air supremacy had been lost long ago, and the few drones and air-superiority fighters left were mostly there to distract the enemy’s air assets than to attack anything. It was barely enough to maintain this ‘orderly retreat’ from becoming a full on rout.
The commander watched as an INTCOM fighter trailed down to the earth, plumes of smoke and fire following it as three of the Earthling’s passed by its fall. He took hold of the pintle-mounted heavy stubber and fired in futility up at the enemy aircraft. The point defence turret beside him, operated by QUTAM turned with a whir, but did not fire. The A.I understood there was no point.
Their backwards, reversing retreat through underbrush, mounds of soil and the dead continued only until the commander saw a shell fly into an allied tank from behind.
“Enemy shell from behind! We’ve been flanked!” He and the A.I QUTAM in essence shouted simultaneously. Following their shout, comms flared up with the simultaneous shouts of alarm and panic of many hundreds, even thousands of fellow tank crews.
“Turn the tank around! The flankers are closer to us! Get us facing them, hurry!” The commander shouted, actually seeing one of the armoured beasts behind them, rushing forwards in what was clearly the front of a wider encirclement. It was like its two-barreled cousin, only instead with a single main barrel… and what was, ten - no eleven guns total. Fucking insane.
Eugene, an excellent driver, quickly spun the tank around from its reversing to facing the flanking super-heavy invader, with very little time available for the enemy to even see their tank’s side armour. The enemy tank was firing its eleven guns at multiple of their tanks at once, even penetrating two XMTs simultaneously. Predictably, their own exchanging fire resulted in little damage to the beast.
“Fire!” The commander shouted, and he watched as their electromagnetic kinetic APFSDS-shell flew into the enemy’s turret armour, only to ricochet wildly into a sharp angle upwards into the sky. Drawing too close now, that the enemy tank’s coaxial autocannon was now firing out towards their tanks charging towards it. The commander was forced down, closing the capella above him. The enemy tank’s bolters and lascannons were firing wildly around it, trying to find invisible tanks charging at it as well. It’s main cannon fired, annihilating a tank directly besides their own, its invisibility field also having failed long ago.
“Take its side! Rush it! Load HEATFS!” The commander shouted, seeing another shell they fired again bouncing off the beast of a tank.
The rushing INTCOM tanks, caring not for formation as the Earthling tanks encircled them, charged towards this one singular tank coming at them at visible eyesight distance. Autocannon rounds pinged over their own tanks armour, a lascannon bolt searing its hexagonal lattices.
“Just one” The commander murmured to himself. So many of their fellow comrades had died. The ruins of tanks littered everywhere they passed. It seemed to be a single tank versus perhaps dozens, and yet they were still losing.
“C’mon”.“The target’s main cannon is rotating! Expected target is ourselves, advise maneuvering countermeasures!” QUTAM announced, mostly ignored by the crew.
“Just one” The Commander repeated. They didn’t hold out in Metrosphere Alpha for so long to die like this. Their tank was speeding ahead towards the side of the enemy’s own tank, speeding just ahead of its turret’s rotating barrel.
“I repeat, enemy turret rotating!” The A.I shouted, before overlapping its warning with another warning “Enemy aircraft strafing!”
Through the cameras within his tank, the commander could see what appeared to be the flying jetbike-things of the Earthlings with those psychotic supersoldier women riding them, wielding lances. The point-defence turret was now firing at them, QUTAM desperate to do something.
“Just one kill, c’mon!”
“At this speed, the enemy tank will fire upon us before we can reach the enemy’s side! Begin maneuvering countermeasures!”
“Come on. C’mon, just one. Just one!” They were not at the side, but rather the corner of the enemy tank. The enemy tank’s barrel was almost aligned with their own aiming towards each other.
“Fire!”The gunner, headless of the A.I’s protests, fired, despite not having the side profile of the enemy tank. The commander closed his eyes.
…
…
He opened them. He was still alive, and his crew were cheering. Somehow, their shell penetrated, a fluke or miracle - maybe even a shot-trap in the armour. He did not care, he could only watch as a blaze of fire erupted outwards from the enemy tank’s turret, a pillar of fire burning as a signalling grave.
“No life-signs within enemy target, dramatic loss of power within!
Engine Kill!” announced QUTAM, again stating the obvious.
Truthly, they were dead either way. On both sides now, advancing enemy tanks were emerging, the charging allied tanks really with nowhere to go. Those jetbikes were swooping down, the lances somehow penetrating their fellow tanks upper armour as if they were made of foil, and surges of crackling energy then detonating them from above. The Commander did not care, for he now could die happy knowing he had taken at least one with him. He opened up the cappella again, standing up half-out of the tank, smelling the air, listening to the screams of metal and explosions.
And… a roar.A terrible, metallic roar. He turned, back towards the blazing enemy tank they had just gutted, an immense pillar of flames still shooting out of its top hatch. His eyes opened wide, his pupils pinpricks.
“Impossible...” it was not The Commander who said this, but QUTAM. He could only agree. It… it just wasn’t.
The machine, the roaring, metallic screeching machine, enraged… was still turning its barrel towards them. Its armour glowed. Glowed with hatred and anger, the righteous fury of so many millions of years.
“They’ve got an A.I too!” shouted Eugene, the only logical conclusion.
“Negative! No sign of activity within the former target!” The A.I responded, bursts of binary heard between its own outbursts.
“It has to be!”.
“Negative! No sign of activity!
No power!”“Then, someon-”.
“Negative! No life signs!”The commander, eyes fixated on the roaring machine, its barrel turned towards their own tank. He could see eyes, glaring at him, looking into his soul. He was not a religious man, He did not believe in magic. At least not before that moment.
The roaring beast fired its cannon at them. It’s aim was not accurate - but it did not need to be. The force of the blast caused The Commander to be flung from his Cappella, hitting the ground. It was lucky too, for moments later his tank erupted into flames and debris.
The Commander looked up into the sky. He could not move, it was possible his legs or back or everything was broken. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes again a giant clad in armour was staring down at him. He knew it was one of those women, if only because of the ridiculous breastplate. She held a bolter in one hand, its barrel aiming down at his face.
“The Emperor’s Grace. Any last words?”
“Fuck you”. He said. He expected immediate execution then, but instead there was awkward inactivity, as the giant woman still stood there, gun aimed at him. There were crackles and chirps from the woman’s helmet, her face hidden behind the same sneering Astartes helm.
The woman then lowered her gun, and then raised her hand upwards, making gestures with her fingers to the other jetbikes flying around in his field of vision. All around the battlefield, the cannons ceased firing.
He would have placed his hands to his face again to sigh, but he wasn’t sure they were still there.
“The Emperor’s Grace. Any last words?” Captain of the 2nd Host’s Seventh Company, Morgause Sangive, announced solemnly to the broken human below her. The human, who’s square-like and stubbled broad face was drawn in great pain, stared at her, having just been flung from his strange and likely xenos-infested tank.
She and her sisters had rode in on venerable steeds, Duskeagle Pattern jetbikes - VII customisations of the Adeptus Custodes own Dawneagles. Their Host Lady Commander, Lyx Devine, had once again decided to attempt one last encirclement at the Dyach before they reached the urban region known as ‘Metrosphere Beta’, and so they rode out to, from above, pierce, destroy or disable the ‘peasant rabbles toys’, as Lyx referred to the enemy’s armour.
Personally, Morgause had no ill will towards this man. Surely, their cooperation with xenos was abhorrent, and their lack of aristocratic grace improper - but she had just seen this man destroy a Baneblade, despite a vastly inferior steed being his own. If not for the Baneblade’s enraged machine-spirit, so outraged by its defeat against such an inferior foe, this man’s crew may have seen tomorrow’s dawn.
It was commendable. While she would be his executioner, she would pray for him and hope that whichever god watches over his people finds him worthy of a warrior’s paradise.
“I wish to have intercourse with you” said the man, in extremely broken, almost incomprehensible Low Gothic.
Morgause blinked. She was not expecting that. Certainly, her legion was known for its ability to draw out the baser instincts of others and general infatuation, but - ah. Thinking on it, it made far more sense that this was some form of miscommunication. Certainly, he must be suggesting that he wishes to join the Imperium of Man.
This brief hesitation, following the man’s sudden and inexplicable statement held her execution long enough for her vox to chime in.
“Company Seven, this is Host Command, speaking on behalf of Lady Commander Lyx Devine of the 2nd Host. You are to immediately cease all offensive operations and assume all targets are now designated as ‘enforceable’ rather than ‘extirpate’. A ceasefire has been declared on the condition of the enemy force’s surrender. Victory is ours, Hail Nimue!” The Vox finished, followed by further vox chatter of affirmations.
“Affirmative, Host Command” Morgause herself added.
She lowered her bolter, glad that she no longer had to execute the man. Awkwardly, the misunderstanding still on her mind, she stepped back from him. She raised her hand above her head and signalled to the VII Riders above to assemble. As she did so, their armour ceased fire, and it seems the Intcomese own armour had been given the same message from their command, as they too ceased fire.
Morgause had the man checked over by an apothecary from her company, the area around them and the burning Baneblade now a mustering area for the seventh company. Lines of jetbikes sat stationary, their knightly-maiden riders dismounted and idle, interceptor lances down - some, to her annoyance, were actually checking their steeds or armour for dirt or blemishes. At least they were not applying cosmetics in the middle of a battlefield, she thought. The fact that the number of incidents of this nature was greater than zero… Only in her Legion, she supposed.
With the waiting, finally the armour caught up with them. Baneblades, Fellblades, both of the VII and the IA regiments attached to them. Lighter tanks followed, numerous Wode-Pattern tanks, Vanquishers, IA Chimeras. Basilisks. VII Land-raiders and rhinos. Valkyries flew low above, over the desolate, smoke-plume covered landscape by the River Dyach. Enemy soldiers, now POWs, were being marched in lines with their hands on their heads, IA guards watching over them. There were Xenos too, mixed into the line. There had been at least one incident already, of a xeno being summarily executed even after the ceasefire, but otherwise the Xenos were acknowledged as part of the ceasefire as well.
If the Xenos survived their internment, of course, would be another question. The VII did not acknowledge the Edict of Tolerance. They would never join the Imperium of Man, as many of their human comrades likely will, eventually. She hoped even.
“For The Emperor!” a distant shout. Filled with rage and fanaticism, shouted by probably hundreds of Earthlings as they charged again for a freakin’ bayonet charge.
Fortunately, the distant part was the important part. They were not coming here. And sure enough, the drum of exchanged artillery from both sides soon drowned out the Earthling’s warcry.
Metrosphere Delta was still holding, but only just. The burning skyscrapers, the collapsed highways, the rubble of buildings spilling over into the streets. The holes in the roads, opening up the subways to see the las firefights below.
Ignoring the damn mushroom cloud in the distance. No one liked thinking about that part.
Genjkins, a mere pvt conscript, was not very happy he was here. He drew snake eyes at the front of the bunker, and they threw him into a truck rather than underground, and now they had him charging into nuclear clouds rather than hiding him away from them.
He was slouched against sandbags piled behind an apartment building’s bullet-punctured and las-burned wall. An anti-tank railgun, requiring three people to move it, was placed stationary on a rug in the room, pointing out of a large hole in the wall towards the streets below, in the event an enemy APC shows its side passing through. Old plas containers of foodstuffs littered the ground. Not even military rations, it was food they had scavenged from the local megamart. A bucket collected dripping water from holes in the roof above, a filter placed inside the bucket so they could drink safely.
Slowly, they heard steps coming up the stairwell. Genjkins and the other conscripts and volunteers turned to aim at the stairwell, only the hear the new sergeant bark up at them that it was only him. He didn’t like the new sergeant, he preferred Rau - but Rau got his skull crushed in by one of those giant women’s boots. His fucking brain matter flew for meters.
“Get your asses up you pieces of shit! Get up! We need you down stairs, the benefactor-shit needs people to hurl shit for him”
“Ughhh” was the general response of the conscripts.
“Get going!
Go, go, go!”
They all got up and started shuffling down the stairwell, except a couple who had to help translate to a few Freedom Battalion volunteer fighters who had no idea what the sergeant was saying… as well as the xeno who had no ears, mouth or eyes and only communicated through, well, he had no fucking idea.
They shuffled, still, they shuffled.
Passing different levels of the apartment building gave Genjkins insight into how things were going. The room below theirs was filled with corpses, only a jittering neurotic left maning a heavy stubber. The room below that was the food storage, which was empty.
Reaching the ground level, there were now about twenty men and women gathered in the building’s lobby, some xenos and even a child, carrying around what seemed to be a grenade launcher. Lucky kid, all he had was a auto-stubber. He doubted this thing could even penetrate the armour of ‘emperor’ shouters, let alone the armoured chicks.
Organised, as much as conscripts and volunteers… and child soldiers could be, the sergeant then had them all out of the building, ducking and weething through wreckage and cover, as they headed towards a nearby parking lot. They all ducked and crawled for half an hour when a burst of heavy stubber fire passed over them.
“For the emperor!” the heavy-stubber shouted.
“No emperor!” someone shouted back.
Eventually, they arrived at the carpark, a journey which would have probably taken less than five minutes had they not been in an active warzone. There, standing ominous, was a man in a strange white, one-piece tunic.
This was who their sergeant called ‘Benefactor-shit”. A nameless human man, covered in augments. He did not speak their language, only communicating through one of their xenos Freedom Battalion volunteers, whose origins were also unknown. He would also speak, in whispers of some undecipherable tongue, to a glowing assistant, an A.I, probably linked to his head. Benefactor-shit was where all their best equipment came from. If the Earthlings were invading them from some fucked up past, then this man was probably stepping out of a time-machine from the far future. He showed up with trucks and drones, delivering crates filled with… utterly bizarre weapons.
Crazy shit. Bows and crossbows that fired lascannon beams out of them. Some kind of weird throwing star-grenade. Once, they argued about what the hell to do with some kind of spear or javelin, until former-sergeant Raul just threw the thing at an enemy APC. The Javelin came to life in mid air, went through the APC with oil and blood trailing behind it, before going on to penetrate a second tank, whip up to hit one of the armoured chick’s jetbikes in mid-air, and finally exploded on a fourth vehicle’s turret. Genjkins felt stupid after that, as just before he complained about why they didn’t just give them more missiles.
But most of all, were the Centaur-frames. Huge, as large or even bigger than the armoured chicks the Earthlings used, wielding the same las-bows. He had actually watched once as Mr Benefactor-Shit actually disembarked out of one of the Centaurs, like it was powered armour that the Intcom marines used, though actually able to compete with the armoured chicks, as they were now evidently seeing.
On the ground, was a dead Earthling, one of the giant women. Beside her were at least a dozen corpses, and a shattered Centaur frame, half its frame blown off. Benefactor-shit, or The-Man-In-The-White as others preferred, was gesturing to them, and the sergeant quickly had them lifting and moving piles of old equipment into a single pile. Destroyed drones, spent batteries of strange design. They needed all twenty of them to struggle to move the half-missing Centaur into the pile. Damaged… and even still operating Las-Bows were thrown into the pile.
When they were done, the Man in White, Benefactor-shit. He raised his arm towards the pile, aiming some kind of signet-ring at the pile, and a bright golden light engulfed it, the pile evaporating into thin air. Genjkins then understood.
They were fucked. Benefactor-shit was destroying the evidence that he was here, or at least as much of it as he could. They went to work making another pile, and another. A truck arrived carrying more to be piled up and evaporated. Benefactor-shit also while this happened stood over the corpse of the Earthling super-chick, drones surrounding her corpse and scanning lasers and analysis schematics were appearing around her.
They ordered Genjkins to remove the helmet of the woman. They honestly expected some kind of brutish, bald woman… Genjkins instead saw what, honestly, he could only describe as a holo-supermodel, perfect features, large pouty lips, eyelashes, even makeup.
“You guys are seeing this too right? I’m not just hallucinating?” He asked, looking at her face. Hey, it’d been a long time.
“Yeah… yeah… we can see it too Genjkins” one responded.
“Well, I guess that explains the giant knockers then…”.
“What is this? Are we fighting giant supermodels from space?” Another shouted, with a ring of laughter. Genjkins could really only agree. This was like the plot of a bad pornographic holovid. A female conscript was groaning in annoyance, while a xeno was asking what the significance of the oversized mammary-shaped armour was.
While they laughed and groaned at the absurdity, Benefactor-shit was completely stoic, discussing with a xeno about whatever they discovered. Genjkins actually thought he recognised a word in Low Gothic, “seed”, but otherwise had no idea what they were saying.
All their activities, including Benefactor-shit, stopped then. They could all hear music, drifting through the city. It was the old public announcement hymn, before the Metrosphere’s government building got nuked. Where it was coming from, they had no idea.
“This is an announcement from the INTCOM High Command, representing the decisions of both Aetvatia and the Intercommunity. A ceasefire is now in effect across all theatres, INTCOM forces are to lay down their arms unless Imperial forces of the Imperium of Man do not cease fire. I repeat, a ceasefire is now in effect. Lay down your arms’.
The collected men and women were completely silent. On one hand, they were going to live. On the other - this was a surrender. The Battle for Metrosphere Delta was finally over. Benefactor-Shit, The Man in White, however, having completed his tasks… smiled.
“No emperor”.
The Man in White said in perfectly understandable words. And suddenly, his signet ring lit up and his entire body burst in bright golden light, within the light they could see the blackened skeleton of the man before it too was vaporized into ash, and then into nothingness.
