“Welcome aboard, Lieutenant Durant. Please pop Seven and take your Human advances.”

“Yes, Sensei!” the neatly uniformed communications officer saluted, and I watched lights cycle in her mind, and her presence began to harden as her Scout/7 clicked over, Human/3 followed it, and she took the Null Forsaken advance she had held off since she was fifteen years old. The Karma she’d pre-spent on her Matrices was now applied, and they began to form; Soul and Ki percolated and hardened into a Diamond Vajra.

I reached out my hand, she reflected the motion, and I twisted and pulled and she gasped despite herself as a tiny little sun in her gut was unveiled for her.

Her white smile was very bright in her dark skin as she stared at the green and gold mindclaw encapsulating her hand, and shouted out despite herself. The bridge crew all grinned and shot her winks and thumbs-up.

She was, of course, our primary informant as to the status of the Empire’s armada, and had performed superbly. Primos and remaining at Six for years just to carry out her mission, she had made herself one of the most superbly talented Signals officers in the fleet, and been rapidly promoted up the ranks, her looks and calm eventually catching Tokata’s eye as he lost his own senior Signals officer to promotion. She had been reassigned to the Torador rapidly, to the dismay of her prior captain, and even the bridge Mentat remarked on her even mindset and ability to focus on her task.

All the better to feed endless information to Anatolia and the Strategos Circle.

I watched Solar Furnace Gehenna slowly swallow the bulk of the Torador, feeling only a passing distaste for fools serving uncaring lords who abused their loyalty to no constructive end. There was a time for loyalty to the end, and a time to realize that your Lords were ignoring their Duty, and it was time to kick them.

I turned my eyes to the planet and the space dock, where thousands of MF Gunboats and Crescent starfighters were precisely wiping out the last of the countless shield generators and gunbanks that had not been blown all to Hell, although most of them were lacking power and/or the people to man them after a whole bunch of hot plasma swept through the place and gave everyone a nice dose of lethal rads.

Was the place salvageable? With work, sure. But the vast majority of the people inside were going to be dead before the end of the day, even if they didn’t fight.

The planet below might be able to put up a fight, although the great majority of the command and control systems were totally off-line, and the most important weapon and defense systems were totally wrecked.

Some munitions thoughtfully placed near aerospace forces ready to be moved out had totally crimped planetary air power, too.

However, all that didn’t shut down the uncounted numbers of Blok and Spire-mounted air defense cannons, and even if they couldn’t coordinate their fire, there were simply a lot of them to take out.

I’m sure they were fervent in their defense, loyal to the Crown Duke Stuttgard, and ready to fight for their world.

The orbital satellites detached from the inner ring of the Orbital Ring, and proceeded to shoot down at all those air defenses very precisely. The beam didn’t have the punch to take out a blok or anything, but the exposed guns and their feeds? Yeah, a few zillion calories to sensitive systems, and explosions were making lines across the megacities in one-second flashes.

Would it get them all? Nope, far too many. But it could very rapidly clear out any area and open up a flight zone. It also did a real number on the morale of the militias manning the things, which was also important.

There were targets to address, others to make sure were eliminated, and all of them were pretty much panicking as the orbital fire rained down. Very notably, the civilian bloks weren’t being targeted much, but the high Spires of the wealthy and noble were getting pounded pretty damn bad, as were all the Mechanist Forge Platforms. With communication systems down, all was chaos... except on our end, as the sabotage teams moved from place to place, and made a bad command situation so, so many times worse.

And there was one other minor matter that needed addressing...

-----------

“Your Graces, you seem to have something of a situation to deal with down there.” My voice was flat and unforgiving, definitely not going to take any shit from them, and they bit back on their ire and condemnation after seeing the light flashing in my eyes.

“I commend the precision of your strikes, Contessa,” the Coronal Duke Sviltam managed to reply grimly. “Exactly how long have you been planning this attack?”

“You are asking the wrong question, Your Grace. The correct question is: How long have you been prepared to deal with this situation if it became necessary? And I most certainly have no obligation to tell you that.”

“Why, then, have you contacted us? Surely it is not to negotiate terms of surrender,” scoffed the Umbran Duke Al’Alifa, his dark eyes keen in his swarthy face.

“I will be quite frank and state that right now at least one thousand other Dukes Twilight are watching this conversation and the ramifications thereof. They have been fully briefed on the fact that your Estates have become little more than enforcement arms of the Stuttgard for centuries. You have fallen a great distance from the defenders of humanity that are noted in the Oaths you swore to your Orders.

“Don’t,” I interrupted as they were about to say something, and the words were strangled in their throats. “My files on you and your Orders are very complete. They have been reviewed by twelve hundred of your peers, each, and all are in agreement that your neutrality and mission have been completely compromised by political manipulation and nepotism. If you think that I don’t know you are a Burschmeier scion and that the Al’Afir merchant clan has been subordinate to the Stuttgards for millennia, you are total idiots. You appoint your personnel by nepotism and family loyalty.

“You are not Coronals and Umbrans. You are the children of the wealthy playing at wearing black and gold to give legitimacy for your actions. I’ve momentarily held at bay the five hundred and six requests for death duels with you both, and even more for some of your members. Were it the choice of most of the Dukes Twilight watching this, you would be executed in public, your records made known to the people, and any hint of your names and history stricken from the rolls of the Orders Twilight.”

Both men paled despite themselves. There was knowing some of your compatriots scorned you and your position, and there was knowing five hundred of them were willing to death-duel you to expunge a stain on the honor of their Orders.

“You are being given one chance, and one chance only, to keep your lives and your Cloaks.

“I will be sending a light cargo hauler down to the Castle in six hours. Every single registered member of your Orders present upon Diadem will board that ship. For every one that is not present, I will shoot one who is, starting with the most senior.” Their eyes almost popped. “I suggest you make sure they are all present.” I flicked my hand, their Bands beeped, and the very complete list of names scrolled up before them. “I have been assured by my Diviners that all of them are still alive.

“You will be taking ship to Ameradaspace. You probably won’t recognize it, since it is in Pharoah Sector. That system’s fleet is among those floating overhead in flaming ruin above Diadem, pulled away by the Emperor.

“There is a Xenosym invasion inbound, and it will hit the system in under two weeks.

“You will live or die with the people of Amerada, Your Graces. I hope you have some resources you can call upon to fight with.”

Their complexions were an interesting shade of green and grey. I went on without batting an eye.

“You may elect, of course, to resist. If any of your people would prefer to challenge me to a duel, I will accept, and I will gut you like the cowardly pigs you are.” Their lips slightly parted. Duel a Nineteen? They were corrupt, not insane! “You may hole up in that Castle and Dungeon, and wait for me to go away, seeing as how I was nice enough not to reduce the second-oldest bastion of the Orders in existence to stray atoms.” They both winced despite themselves. “What I will then do is bake you to death. I will ask a small Gardener, merely two thousand miles square, to focus some sunlight down upon your little Castle, while I wash the general area in a Greyfield to make sure you cannot adapt to it. The air will start burning before the foundations of your building start melting, and you will all be reduced to ashes we will dump in the dustbins of Underspire.

“I act with the remit of over ten thousand Chapters of the Twilight Orders.” There was another beep, and both men paled, looking over and reading the death sentences and approval signed off on by countless numbers of their fellows. The Twilight Seals spinning above their Bands mocked them and what they had made of their Oaths.

“Your Graces, you have six hours to make ready to leave. If you and yours care to duel instead, get your challenges ready and your affairs in order. If you want to hole up, just shoot the cargo ship when it comes down. If you want to try something drastic, like turning to the Warp Gods to rescue you... well, now, you can expect a proportional response.”

My voice had dropped very, very low. I knew who all their families were, and proportional response meant I would be holding them responsible for the evil that they did to others, and those related to them, too.

They were nobles, and this shit was all about family and privilege. They had taken these positions and stuffed their kind and underlings beneath them simply to make sure they held onto more power for their families.

I didn’t have to send anything for them to know that I knew who their families were, and I’d take them down without the slightest hesitation if they tried something truly heretical and blasphemous... which they most certainly had the resources to do. All those Warp artifacts and lore were also resources, if unclean, that their families might and could use to further their aims. That many of them had not been destroyed when they should have been was not a secret to me.

“Where are your Coronals?!” Duke Sviltam managed to puff weakly. “I would have words with them!”

“There are neither Umbrans nor Coronals present in any of my forces here. Their remit is to protect humanity against forces without, and corruption stemming from them within. A civil war founded on moral grounds and the abuse of duty and loyalty is not their concern. The Orders are older than the Empire, and their duty is, and always has been, to humanity first. The Empire is merely a convenient tool to help them do their job.

“They will no more help me fight the Empire than they would aid me in a trade war with another noble house. They have serious work to do, not internecine fun and games... although they do find such foolishness amusing at times, and grimly required at others.

“Goodbye, Your Graces. I will check in six hours for challenges, and set up the proper grounds if required.”

The holographic representations winked out on the two despairing men there. They’d strutted around with pride and esteem in their borrowed cloaks, important men with great Imperial authority, equal to the Lords of their Families. Now, they were cannon fodder to be thrown against the xenosym... or they would be gutted corpses, or ash on the wind.

However, the local Orders were indeed very well-connected to the surrounding noble families. They did indeed have resources to call upon. If they worked desperately fast, and managed to convince their kin, they might manage to pull together enough firepower to actually make a difference in Ameradaspace, and thwart the xenosym.

If not, at least they could die with their names on the rolls, and their Cloaks intact.