Sterbelicht - One Sacrifice At A Time Against The Galaxy (40K)

It is thanks to the foresight of the Federation's Diplomats that, when the First Armada flies through their space, the ships can replenish their supplies and top off their fuel bunkers from local sources instead of being forced to entirely rely on creating their own infrastructure to harvest the required materials for fuel synthesis and on the Arboretums aboard the Logistics Fleets.

And it is thanks to their hard work that the outriders of the Federation soon find those of the Duelists, or rather their raiders, and engage in the first battles of the coming war. The information gained in these short engagements is instrumental, as they reveal that the optimism from the High Council and the pessimism of High Admiral Naskra are both wrong and right in equal measures.

Yes, the Duelists still utilize the same tactics and pursue the same objectives observed during the 621 Liberation Wars, but they are ever so subtly changed to their altered ships. Though information from the Late Chapter Master Chyron had suggested that new ship designs before the Rift, in general, were sporadic and almost never done by Cultists themselves, preferring to steal them instead, the findings of the scouts reveal, alongside dissections of the wrecks created in ambushes and short-lived skirmishes, that the Duelists had altered their ships and designs to the point that three distinct variants were already observed within only five battles.

Thanks to these findings and the aid of the Watchtower scouts, who had themselves fought against the Duelists whenever they let their raiders loose, a picture of the cult's doctrine emerges.

The front of their ships is heavily armored, with the rear almost unprotected, while their weapons are focused in a forward arc, rarely in broadside arrangements. This suggests that charges are the preferred method of attack, alongside ramming attacks. Thankfully, the Federation has always emphasized mobility and speed in its ships, so such attacks are unlikely to occur unless the situation devolves into a close-range FUBAR. Yet, concerningly, boarding armaments are present on every single vessel, with evidence that many of the foul ritual sites within the bellies of the Duelist ships are capable of acting akin to teleportariums.

High Admiral Naskra orders ship security to intensify anti-boarding drills across the entire fleet.

---

The Battle of Freyja would be the beginning of the war proper, for it was not scattered planets occasionally raided for slaves and sacrifices that were liberated and placed under Watchtower garrisons who happily took over the role of logistics and rearguard for the Federation with their limited ships, nor a handful of ships that noticed the encroaching Armada and fled or were obliterated in short order, but a battle with over 200 Duelist ships arranging themselves against over 700 of the Glimmering Federation.

The Duelist's intention is clear, as their ships array themselves into a perfect defensive deep-strike lattice, stacked eight ranks deep, five wide, and five tall. Heavies at the front and edges, lighter ships in the middle and rear.

Always up for a game of Chik-An, High Admiral Naskra deploys his fleets in a similar formation, though not as deep and with a broad base, carriers at the edge and Lupus sent ahead to lay out a minefield to shepherd the enemy formation into the maw of the Federation. And it is a maw, with five Cancer-Class Class Assault Cruisers and eight Bloody Midnight-Class Light Cruisers settling in at the front, their internal security and boarding teams preparing for the fight ahead as crews are evacuated from non-critical areas in a precautionary action. The batteries and turrets of the rest of the fleet glint with anticipation even then, over a hundred thousand missiles primed and ready for their maiden voyages, warheads eagerly brimming with deadly potential just as gunnery crews across the fleet settle in to load their assigned weapons, their clans having lived so long as the operators of these weapons or those on other ships that the very notion of delivering anything but exemplary work in this first actual battle becomes a physically revolting thought for tens of thousands.

But all battles start eventually, and the Choirs within the armada notice that this one begins with a drumbeat echoing from all the Duelist's ships. Like a quiet thunder, shattering the peace, it starts just as all the foe's vessels ignite their drives, brilliant plumes of plasma and fire burning their signature into the void, and the ships accelerate.

Faster and faster do they fly, deadly in their intent, and faster and faster does the drum beat its steady beat, just as the Federation mirrors them, until, at last, the threshold is crossed by the enemy, and the Lances of the Glimmering Federation open up with brilliant luminescence and crackling baleful green, spears of light racing ahead of the fleet to touch the shields and vessels of the cultists...to no effect. Some mass fluke, perhaps? Is the drum the sign of a ritual to deny an alpha strike against the cultists? Or internal components?

It does not matter; the ships still fly, and the Lances have cooled. They fire.

And they fire.

And they fire.

To no effect. The enemy still advances, and the fleets cross another threshold. Macro-Cannons speak their furious roar, missiles fly so thick that sensors across the Armada simply render them as thick panes of things smeared across the void moving against the enemy, with Thules in fighters and Siblings flying escort for their siblings flying bombers, munitions loaded into bays to crack the fleet before it can be finished by those they intended to become their prey.

Explosions ripple across the Duelist fleet, shields shimmer and burn, the impacts so monumental that it takes a solid minute before the sensors of the Federation can register anything other than violent energy...and the enemy fleet emerges unscathed.

In a pict-show, this moment would baffle the Glimmerlings so much that contact would be made and battle done in a titanic crash and clash of voidships shattering each other apart.

But this is not a pict-show, and thus, the Duelists are still minutes away.

Emergency plans are enacted, ships shuffled around, and where before it was assumed that the enemy could be pounced upon and enveloped, now the fleet gears for a knife fight with boarders everywhere readying themselves to fly into the void and burn through crews to kill the ships from within rather than without.

Contact is made.

Ships shatter.

---

One of the enemy's boarding pods, one of many, impacts upon one of the Marching Triumph-Class Fleshpiercers, disgorging their troops just as the Triumphs boarders begin to swarm into the enemy ships, millions of soldiers exchanged within a mere three minutes across the two fleets, hundreds of vessels called to arms and to repel boarders just as the Glimmerlings do the same.

Pitiful abominations of melded machine and flesh begin to gorge themselves on the chaff of the Third Strike Fleet, weaklings undeserving of the glory of bathing in the blood of enemy crew battling against the Augmented Troops the Glimmerlings had brought, yet there are those who fight against the Lamenting Ones, those Brothers sworn to the Child that the Glimmerlings had ensnared with soft words and constant enticing.

Master of the Second Circle Jukrn is one of those, stepping with power-armor-clad boots unto the halls of the Midnight, his subordinate troopers already cutting into walls and ductwork, sapping gear and sabotage equipment on their backs, and he cares not for them at all.

Standing before him, holding a two-handed sword and all the signs of the corrupting miasma of the Child upon his soul, stands Jukrn's Brother from the Lamenters.

Steadying his grips on the twin chain axes he holds, Jukrn stands at attention, back straight and legs closed, right hand crashing with axe in hand against the chest plate over his hearts.

A duelist's salute.

A moment passed...

His Brother stands, legs apart and loose, yet ready for action, and holds his zweihänder level to the ground, the flat of the blade above his eyes and shown to him.

'A duelist's salute,' his axes whisper gleefully, and he laughs a booming laugh, shifting his legs as the Pact is sealed and one of them shall die today.

"Let your skill honor your Gene-Father!" Jukrn screams, racing against his Brother, the joy of combat thrumming through his soul.

---

It took over three months for the Armada to flush out the last of the Khornate sappers and saboteurs from all the ships infested by them; the cultists were unusually disciplined and focused, with Choirs agreeing that the many ritual sites found within the vessels they attempted to destroy had been for communication instead of anything else. They were sent to gather as much information on the ships and plans of the Federation as possible, sacrificing themselves to accomplish their directives.

A worrying sign for what is to come, as if the losses of the first battle weren't horrendous enough. Not in ships, but in lives, as the crews of the fleet had been butchered by an enemy that seemed nearly impervious to gunfire for hours until they suddenly weren't, though, in reality, it had only been half an hour. Were it not for the Virgo-Primus Fleet Carriers re-distributing their own crews as a makeshift solution to the ships gutted, reducing their own effectiveness in non-carrier operation by half, then dozens of ships would have had to be scuttled until replacement crews could be brought from the Federation proper to crew them once more. In the following months, new crew would be brought from the logistics tail and fleets and trained to (barely) acceptable standards, so that reduction was short-lived, but it was enough to make High Admiral Naskra call a halt to the planned deep offensive until it was known what foul ritual the Gore-Sworn Duelists had enacted that had given them such a massive edge.

The findings of the Choirs and Cerberus Interrogators attached to the Armada were as calming as they were alarming. For though the Cultists captured and interrogated had all agreed that the Coward's Cadence, the Ritual used, although "Blessing" was the word used by the captives, was capable of outright nullifying any ranged attacks for eight hours of combat, and four more of these Rituals were waiting to be enacted by the Fleets of the Gore-Sworn Duelists, they could not be easily replaced. Each Coward's Cadence was the work of decades of preparation and sacrificing, enacting pacts and binding daemons in specific sigils for greater rites until the final pact could be made and the "Blessing" bestowed upon a fleet.

So, on the one hand, the Federation now had to contend with up to four more times of the same kind of battle as before, but on the other, once they had been used...the ships and fleets of the Duelists were not capable of standing up to Federation weaponry. The initial salvo of Lances would have melted an estimated 6% of the approaching fleet, a fact confirmed after the surviving ships had been analyzed, with each salvo likewise taking such a toll, and the barrage of missiles, bombs, and macro-cannon shells afterward would have savaged them into tattered piles of flying scrap.

The only issue was creating the right stratagems to bring such an eventuality to fruition.

Speed would likely be of the essence, as the Ritual would need to be triggered first, and then...the Armada would bravely run away for eight hours.

---

First Champion Ryuna stood at rest atop her fortress' balcony, staring down at the twenty million soldiers raised from the new generation marching in perfect lockstep through the promenade covered in holy sigils and totems created from the unfaithful heretics and traitors, duty shirkers and cowards.

They were a sight for sore eyes, as the attack by the Glimmering Federation had, amongst other things, stalled the planned offensives against the Feculant Maggots, throwing entire Operations into the trash and requiring fleet and armies to be shuffled around. That they had lost almost two Sub-Sectors was also not something that stifled the boiling RAGE within her thundering heart. That they had their own little traitor band of Space Marines did not help either.

Still. Another thirty would follow in six months, and new ships were already being constructed to account for the loss of those fighting against the Child's sycophants. She felt sick in her mind at the thought of that thing. She could understand pledging oneself to Nurgle, the Corpse Emperor, even to Tzeentch, but to lust after the Star Child? No wonder the Slaaneshies wanted to corrupt them so badly.

Hiding her sneer of anger and contempt until all the new soldiers had left through the portal in the center of Geheni, she turned around and ordered her staff to enact Project Sundial on Thremscria.

---

"GET THEM OFF THE PLANET! NOW!"

Six words screamed in panic, six words that were hastily explained by the Choir that had sung Foretold Luminous Paths Seen, a stray insight gained into mundane plotting by the Gore-Sworn Duelists on the planet of Thremscria causing a panic within the five that rapidly spread to from the captain of the ship they were stowed aboard to the soldiers on the ground.

The planet of Thremscria had been dominated by a singular fortress dug into a lone mountain that had eventually been fully converted into the oppressive structure that towered over the huts and hovels of the inhabitants living here, slaves and sacrifices taken in eternal raids from the villages and nomadic clans living in the only continent of the world spreading misery, hatred, and Chaos Corruption to the point that many of the worlds inhabitants fought against their would-be-liberators.

Yet, within its fortress, there was something that could not simply be allowed to be destroyed via excessive orbital bombardment until the fortress' void shields cracked and its structure was turned into a glowing crater.

That something was the souls of over fifty million innocent people, souls uncorrupted, stored in stasis chambers, all taken from Watchtower worlds over the decades and slated to be used in one ritual or another.

In response to that revelation, the Lamenters had deployed at the side of the Amratur Grand Army, Order of the Blazing Suns, and Titan Legio Gladius, with the other forces of the Armada busy liberating other worlds equally vital for the creation of a chokehold system.

With over a thousand Space Marines crashing through the void shields of the fortress aboard their Stellar-Constellations as Sun-Shrieks and Moon-Divers supported them in tandem with the Thules and their Siblings, the void shields soon proved to be no obstacle to the approaching Titans and their swarming cohorts, guns thundering and missiles shrieking, while its internal defenders were shredded to rescue the innocents.

A victory here would have been a massive boost to the morale of the Armada, still shaken by the Battle of Freyja, and it would have been one well-earned.

The eight Cyclonic Bombs stashed at the continent's edges dared to differ.

The fifty million had been turned into a trap for the ground forces of the Federation; the Titans and Knights noticed and reported back, thanks to the Gore-Sworn Duelists' soldiers perfect discipline and cohesion, and the planet was deemed a minor loss by the First Champion of the Duelists in exchange for the blow to morale and fighting capability it would have bought.

Were it not for the Celestial Choir.

The warning came just in time...for most of the forces.

86% of all soldiers could be evacuated, alongside the Blade of the Golden Sky and Glimmering Star, but the Blade of the Rising Sun and Burning Dusk, alongside almost 400 Lamenters who chose to give their places on the evacuation ships to the innocent souls they had come to rescue in the first place, could not be saved. Their transports managed to rise from the world just as the Cyclonic Bombs detonated, and despite the fervent prayers of millions, were obliterated by the planet undergoing Exterminatus, debris and shockwaves knocking the transports from their ascent and into the hellscape below.

It was a dark day when the names of 396 Brothers of the Lamenters were etched into the main hall of the Tears of the Void, each giving their lives so that fifty million, seven-hundred forty-one thousand, three-hundred eighty-five souls could live.

And even as every. Single. Of those saved souls who pledged themselves to the Chapter to repay their debt with their life's labors, it proved to be the last drop of many that pushed the mindset of the Lamenters beyond what they were. Beyond what they were...



And What They Could Be:
(6-Hour Moratorium)
[] Shards of Stained Glass
These are not mere crafts of art created by the Lamenters in times of rest and relaxation, done to center one's mind and enter silent contemplation by utilizing the work of hands and mind to create beauty in an ugly galaxy to enter meditation. These tears of stained glass are cries. They are shouts. Prayers. Hopes. Thanks. These panes tell stories beyond stories, emotions untold and sacrifices immortalized as history and witness, comforting echoes and emboldening cries. They are the grief of the living and the joy of the departed, the glory of those who died gladly and those who lived with sacrifice. They are stories. Stories that endure.
[] The Burning Lament
Is this what will always become of them? Soldiers that sacrifice everything they have, everything that they can give, everything that is demanded of them, only to see, time and time again, that it simply isn't enough when the entire galaxy seems so hell-bent on burning it all down? Fine. Fine. If that is what the galaxy demands of them, the Lamenters Legion will be more than willing to break its spine and kindle alight a beacon for a brighter future. Let the horrors come. Let them try. Let them break. Let them fear the Child's Angels instead.
[] Duty Beyond Breaking
This is war. Eternal. Unending. Unbreaking. Death is our Duty, and our Duty is endless sacrifice. Priests may speak of duty. Soldiers may dream of that rising sun on the horizon. Civilians may pray for the coming of the dawn. But we know it won't be achieved by prayer, duty, or inspiring speeches. It will be won by fighting beyond reason, hoping beyond sanity, and lighting one candle after another until the entire galaxy is awash in the flames of hope eternal and unquenching. We did not take the Aspirant's Trials to live. We took them to fight the galaxy itself, dare it to break us, stand defiant even after death, and fight For Those We Cherish. Then, and only then, shall we Die In Glory.