Warzone: Lemmas

In equal parts satisfied and perturbed by his work, the surgeon stepped back, adjusting the heavy jackskin gloves. Jaw slack, eyes rolling, the Space Marine sat in the throne, back arched, skin blanched and shaved, naked limbs truncated. 

'Is it primed?'

The three looked at the mutilated figure. His heavy blinks and quiet, idiot moans suggested he retained some stunted a sense of urgency; an emphatic desire to communicate – or perhaps rescind.

'Maestra, I have removed his ability to prevaricate. He will tell you everything you wish, as truthfully as he is able.'

The cell was behind armaglass, beyond the light.

***

[//Battle Barge 'Blood Meridian', Desolators; en route Lemmas Quaternary; date incerto.+]
[//@thrones_arcane+]

***

Infrastructure Design in the Myrean League

'The main principles of Myrean architecture are utilitarian efficiency, macro-system synergies and defensive capabilities. Every aspect of civil, industrial and military engineering is designed to function and synergize as part of a great overlapping lattice of productivity and defense. This is true for every administrative building, factory yard, deep space refinery or military garrison, all working together in brutally coordinated synchronicity to achieve the impossibly high standards expected and enforced by their Storm Tyrant masters.'

So recorded the doctrina wafer submitted by Tacticus Jerren Fell, an embedded Orthodox spy, in his report for the Flesh Eaters Grand Voivode, prior to planetfall on the supposedly impregnable Lemmas IV. 

'Buildings are squat and robust, built like starship hulls in ferrocrete and adamantium with strong angular shapes and minimal structural weakpoints such as overexposed entrances, viewports or balconies. Their inner layout is designed to optimize the flow of material and staff, as well as to double as defensible multi-layered strongpoints in the event of a siege. Most have concealed defenses and weapon depots in strategic choke points throughout their outer layers, and to maintain some productivity during a siege they hide part of their productive infrastructure in central underground facilities equipped with power supplies and life support systems.'

[// Lemmas Tertiary, M+3 post. Starfall.+]
[//@datacrypt_624+]

'The strategic infrastructure – incorporating energy grids, starports, logistical hubs, medical facilities, weapon manufactora, nutrition depots and communication nodes – are housed in fortified military facilities within the inner rings of Civitas defences, fully subterranean when possible and pre-rigged for demolition in order to deny invaders key resources and captives.'

'Both major cities and minor outposts follow the same principles on different scales, with layout planning designed to ensure maximum efficiency in productivity and logistics, as well as to give the defenders all possible advantages during a siege. Myrean cities are predesigned in modular geometric layouts, with each sector being an almost self-sufficient part of its greater whole (with a minimum number of factory yards, hive blocks, logistical hubs and power plants to avoid supply shortages during a siege), and all connected by a robust logistical network to ensure the optimal flow of resources and personnel for maximum industrial yield. [...] And in the event of a siege, every sector hides armories, bunkers and defensive batteries, every building is designed to double as a fortress, every avenue and plaza is laid out to facilitate the organization of the defenders and funnel the invaders into kill zones. Myrean defensive layouts are arrayed in concentric rings around a central administration fortress, with each successive ring housing more strategic infrastructure and consequently a higher concentration of defences and garrisoned troops.'

Lemmas had become the base of one of the False Primarch's closest aides, Praesius Auros Cassus, of the Argent Heralds 'who had dug himself into the planet's surface like a tick', in the words of Ostar Rhone, Ordo Pacificus. 

Fell's report was thorough and complete, and ended on a politically expedient conclusion that an attack was 'highly likely to be repelled', a change from the initial draft that suggested:

'any commander foolish enough to deploy attacking forces would find them suffering near-extinction-level casualties'.

Jerren Fell was later honoured with holy trephination for his thoroughness and honesty.

***

[//With Captain Caedes helping to coordinate the system-wide conflict, Brother-Chaplain Uriah Grimm, hero of Interlude Quay, was deputised to lead the Flesh Eaters' Third Company in the assault on Lemmas IV+]

Message in a bottle

Jerren Fell's report had the singular honour of being cirulated amongst Orthodox High Command, then intentionally delivered to Calydon on the orders of the Flesh Eaters' new Chapter Master. A battle barge, captured by the Carcharadons from the Star Wardens during the flight from Coldforge, was filled with many hundreds of thousands of printed copies of Fell's doom-laden findings on the unfeasibility of an attack on any Shieldworld. The barge was then stripped of any useful materiel, and sent on a collision course with Lemmas, the galactic south's gate to the Myrean League. 

[//Facing both the Argent Heralds and the Riven Lords' elites, the Carcharodons were placed into the unusual position of rear-line support to their Flesh Eaters allies, a mark of how eager the new High Voivode was to demonstrate his prowess. +]
[//@vivacretacia_40k+]

Blinking into existence from the warp a dangerously short distance from the planet, Blood Meridian's translation was felt physically by every defender; triggering nausea, panic and vomiting. 

Momentarily wrong-footed by the Star Wardens' transponder codes, the fleet Commanders began firing too late to arrest or alter the craft's course; their fire merely causing the craft to break up in high orbit,

Scant minutes later, the prow of the Meridian breached the planet's exosphere, and somewhat short of a second hence, the craft impacted, razing a substantial portion of the continent, triggering geothermic and tidal secondary actions across the planet, and semi-permanently occluding its atmosphere.

The Long Watch of the Storm Tyrants had ended, in a statement as powerful as it was blunt. Planetwide, the dazed defenders woke to find a yawning breach in their perfect defences, and more than two fifths of their warriors and population simply gone. 

Over the following days, tattered scraps of Jerren Fell's report, carried into the seething atmosphere by the firestorms, began to fall into the hands of the remaining dismayed defenders. The message was as obvious as its delivery had been unexpected. 

Between the lines of Fell's report of the invincibility and preparedness of the Shieldworlds, was a blunt statement. The Orthodoxy was not to be denied; nothing was beyond the High Lords and the demands of the Lex Imperalis.

***

[//RIP – TEAR – FLESH+]
[//@monstrasumus+]

***

Lemmasfall

Corewards of the Mourn Expanse and its third most fortified system, Lemmas was more than merely a critical system – it was deeply symbolic to the Partisan cause. Located to the galactic south, it was a stanchion of the Myrean League in a confluence of voidlanes, and thus served as a gate to the broader region.

[//Argent Heralds, Third Company; amongst them an 'Equerry' –a non-standard rank that had appeared amongst the Chapter, whose roles were ceremonial and related to veneration of Volnoscere, the False Primarch. Such individuals were subjected to particularly spiteful treatment where captured or brought to bay.+]
[//@mwymarc+]

Containing a Shieldworld, a third of the Myrean Fleet, the Ramilies-class Starfort Hybris and nine major fortified garrisons on moons, orbitals and deep-space stations, the system was to all intents and purposes, impregnable to conventional attack.

It was perhaps in response to this reputation that the Orthodox forces deployed some of its most reliable and ferocious forces in the shape of the Flesh Eaters, under their newly-appointed Chapter Master; alongside a substantial Carcharodons fleet.

• Lemmas IV: Shield world and system capital, home to one of the three largest military training facilities of the League worlds.
• Lemmas VII: Industrial world and system anchorage. 
• Lemmas V: Industrial world with one of the highest outputs of the Myrean League, specialized in military equipment.

Garrisoned by the Storm Tyrants 3nd Battalion and its Tetrarch, alongside their fleet, the Partisans bolstered its defences with Companies of Argent Heralds and the Riven Lords' veterans, representing some of the Primarch's most trusted and reliable forces. These were spearheaded by the Heralds' Chapter Master, Praesius Auros Cassus.

[//Kaemos, Ancient of the 3rd Battalion; pictured during the struggle for Lemmas IV, against the Flesh Eaters. +]
[//@techtype_paints+]

Reportage of the fighting itself was highly redacted, but the broad strokes were clear. The Flesh Eaters went for the system's throat, deploying seven thousand Astartes against the shaken defenders on Lemmas IV. Even so badly mauled as they had been, the defenders made the Flesh Eaters pay for every step of ground, the citizenry mobilised in their entirety.

[//Assault Squad Vykosz+]
[//@duckcalledsue+]

Lemmas IV was declared to have fallen to the Pentarchy after two weeks – the high price the Flesh Eaters had paid allowing Chapter Master Cassus, a measure of pride if not comfort.

Besides the four companies of this already winnowed Chapter believed lost in defence of Lemmas III, we can use comparisons between pre-and post-war census estimates to give us figures  [...]

[APPENdloopscript+]

, along with around thirty per cent of the planetary population. 

[///conseq{DIV=FAIL}+]

[//@the_og_Krug+]

//Battle Brother Eionius Tercion of the Argent Heralds/Marines Mendicant affiliate ;[SUSPECTED]//Wounded during ( Unsanctioned ) Operation Thunderbird and taken prisoner by the <REDACTED> Chapter.[ Prisoner transfer protocol beta 7 per Office of Interrogations] Agent <REDACTED > :Inquisitorial Team <CLASSIFIED> Further Clearence: ACCESS DENIED//

With the system capital lost, the remaining Partisan forces began to rally to Lemmas VII, where the Riven Lords and surviving Storm Tyrants 3rd Battalion held out. The fleet battle here [...SPOOL}??]

[//indicatio+]

[//SPOOLFAILURE+]

[+SCRAPSHUNTERRORABORT+]

***

Ostar Rhone stood back, sweat beaded on his dreadlocked brow as he considered the trunk before him. The lips still moved, murmuring only the slurred, infantile half-nonsense left to the Space Marine by the treatment.

What a waste.

Something about the scale of the Space Marine was unnerving even when denuded, deprived of its limbs, and bereft of its frontal cortex.

The Inquisitor was no stranger to sacrifice, as his bionic arm attested; but to be deprived of one's mind... where then, the soul? He shivered. The thought rose, treacherously, to the front of his own mind once more.

What a dreadful, bloody, pointless waste.

All of a sudden, he was furtive. The others had long since been dismissed, and the idea of recording devices here was laughable.

The cell was behind armaglass, beyond the light. He felt, nevertheless, exposed.

There was no-one to witness a minor act of mercy. His voice was soft.

'If there is anything of you in there, Brother-sergeant.' He trailed off, as though trying to find the words. 'My... my duty means any knowledge of your kind ends here in this room, but...'

He paused. Looking left and right, as though the interrogation chamber were not amongst the most secure facilities in the Sector, he bent down to the Space Marine's tormented ear and whispered four short words.

***

There was no sign the Herald understood.

***