In his personal commanders tent, Colonel Anakwor Farlorn considered himself, rather grimly, a very lucky man. He was reading for the datapad placed in the middle of the camp table, scrolling through its contents. It was the list of requests for supplies and specialist items from the Battalion commanders, waiting to be approved by the commander and passed on to the logistical elements of Dauntless. They were often varied but one thing was always the same, requested on the eve of any battle they were marching to: body bags.
It was just that sad fact that every single operation the Rangers ever carried out would result in some losses. Some theaters yielded more deaths than others. From grinding attritional urban warfare where no-one was safe or massive field battles with armies numbering in the millions clashing like gods of war. Every single Carian that died was a Carian forever gone from the Galaxy.
All of them had lost their homeworld to a rouge Imperial fleet that had razed their entire world. It was on that night that he had made the hardest and cruelest decision in the face of impossible odds to flee the world with the forces that had already been drawn up for service in the Confederate armies. He had saved only three thousand and seven hundred souls and forced them to watch as their world burned right before their eyes, knowing they could do nothing at all.
He alone was responsible for the deaths of over a billion people and the reason why his soldiers had no home to return to, no families or loved ones to live with. In a way, he preferred that. A man who has nothing left to lose will do anything he is told. Some thought him cruel for that. They weren’t entirely wrong, but neither were they right. A soldier's life was to die, sad and depressing prehapes, yet it was the truth. His job was to point them in the direction and tell them the manner of how they were to die. He wasn’t afraid to spend their lives without doubt or hesitation for the greater good of all. They would all die. But he had promised them he would make all their lives count. He had promised never to waste them.
That was why he was reflecting rather callously the fact that he was a very lucky man. Since their world was gone, he didn’t need to take on the burden of drawing up death notifications or arrange up death pensions. He didn’t need to receive letters of spite sent to him by the kin of fallen, cursing him for sending men to their deaths. He just needed to record a name and cause of death to the ministry of records, after which it would be sealed in some dusty hall, forever forgotten.
Footsteps outside his command tent took his mind off this terrible train of thought as he stood up and looked up. His young adjutant Karsaw walked in. He was dressed in khaki coats, brown corduroy breeches and webbings, and puttees around their legs and forearms with a steel bowl helmet that covered his short blonde hair completely. Strapped to his side was a Vyper rifle, kept immaculately clean. Farlorn had saved the boy from the fires of Caria personally, risking his own life just to save one more. In hindsight, it was a stupid move that wasn’t worth the risk but he didn’t really care anymore. Karsaw reminded Farlorn of a younger version of him, bright and youthful before taking on the burden of command.
“Sir,” He said, “Major Fennstrum would like to inform you that he has received the signal from the forces that have infiltrated the city that they have begun the uprising. All four battalions are in position and await your order. All Battalion commanders are awaiting pre-battle briefing at forward observation post two.”
“Inform them I’m on the way. Just let me get dressed.” Karsaw nodded and walked away. Farlorn strapped his double pistol holster to this chest’s combat rig. He attached his two scabbards to his belt via magnetic links and adjusted his brown waterproof cape. Lastly, he snatched his peaked officer’s hat with the silver dauntless insignia and placed it on his crown, brim first. He was dressed in black boots and fatigues, a black leather jacket.
He bent low as he stepped out of his pitched tent. He looked around. The sun was rapidly setting, and only thin traces of light crept through the woodland canopy. In the sickly amber dusk of the forest, it was cold and damp, and night mists began to gather all around them. The Rangers had stealthily pitched up camp on the western approaches to Tamiz, right next to the remains of an old burnt-out farm. Farlorn wondered what had happened to its old inhabitants as he looked at the gutted out remains of a barn, festooned on its single surviving wall with climbing ivy and bright vine flowers.
A light guard screen on the road right behind the barn, shrouded by a line of trees made sure that nobody detected the Rangers. They were fairly isolated and the surrounding land rough enough that it’s was highly unlikely that anybody would even think of coming here. They had spent nearly a week here without detection, save for a single incident.
A day before, a caravan of merchants looking for shelter against a harsh and sudden acid rain had stumbled onto the guard screen completely by accident. Farlorn had them ruthlessly killed, their bodies dumped in some ditch a kilometer east. He had made sure that it had been sloppy to frame it as a savage bandit attack. It had worked when a clansman patrol stumbled across the remains yet they didn’t bother to investigate further. Some in the Regiment disliked his handling of the incident but none doubted it was the right choice. He simply couldn’t let them go and he certainly couldn’t trust them to keep their mouths silent. If they had been slaves maybe he would have done it, as unlikely as it was, but these merchants relied on the Tantt for their livelihoods. They had every reason to give the game up. He couldn’t spare the soldiers to keep them under guard
Such was the nature of the command. Hard choices needed hard men and Farlorn knew for sure, with near egotistically certain, that he was the only one in the Regiment that fitted that role. The only person that ever came close was his cold-hearted second-in-command Major Vidar Fennstrum of First Battalion. It wasn’t a secret that the two detested each other. The bad Major hated the Colonel for leaving their world, denying the last stand, and leaving their families to die. Yet, Farlorn had him as his second officer. It was because Farlorn knew that Fennstrum was a very competent leader, willing to do anything to win a battle, and one knew the old but applicable saying “keep your friends closer and your foes even more.” Better Fennstrum be where Farlorn could keep a watchful eye.
All around him, Rangers were packing up camp, wrapping up tents, and stomping out smothering fires. It was a lot of movement but it didn’t matter anymore. The uprising had begun and the need for furtiveness was over.
Troopers saluted him as he passed. He stopped a few times to confirm commands with platoon leaders and exchanging encouraging remarks among the men. He received confident and excited replies that made him smile. A week of just waiting around on the eve of a battle was torture and their blood was up now that a good fight was on the horizon. On disgusting slaver scum, no less. The Carians, their world burned by tyrants and warlords, would relish exterminating the Tantt.
Farlorn reminded himself to inform the commanders that extra-judicial killings were something that was not preferred. They were to treat the slaving dogs like they were… well… people, as much it made him sick to even call them that.
For some, absolutely inexplicable defiantly real reason, he forgot to tell them.
Karsaw was waiting for him at the mouth of a ditch leading into the dark woods. It led down for a hundred meters to the command post. All around them, the trees rustled as Rangers began to advance towards their designated positions with their units.
At the end of the ditch was a large dugout with camo-net over it that overlooked a large winding valley with a winding river running through it. His senior officers were waiting inside. The sun was setting rapidly, beginning to sink behind the rolling hills. Farlorn allowed himself moment to admire the fairly untouched land before ducking inside. He unfurled a yellowed old scroll from his equipment pack and spread it out on a table to show the assembled officers: Major Fennstrum of 1st, Erach of 2nd, Thorin of 3rd, Lindemann of 4th, the Pathfinder-master Hark, and Sniper-sergeant Markus.
“Three kilometers to the east is the city of Tamiz,” Farlorn began, tapping his finger on the scroll. “A stinking hole that’s a major slave-trading hub. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy in this entire damned Galaxy. It is miserable here, friends. Imagine the worst conditions you could imagine, explosive slave collars, malnutrition, whips, pleasures girls, and multiply that by ten. Far more than you can ever imagine. It makes me honestly shiver to think about it.
Confederate high command has determined it is within our best interests as the beacon of freedom to liberate the poor souls kept in pens here.
As I speak, forces that have infiltrated the city have gone active and have begun the uprising. Slaves are being freed and armed to cause as much chaos as they can. A bit sooner than expected to be honest but plans should be planned to change. However, they are outnumbered and currently, isolated from major forces.
We are those major forces. The approach is straightforward. A river that is called by the people here as the Ynodea. It is in a valley about one wide and three long. It is broad and slow-moving, especially at this time of year. Most of the way is choked with tall reeds and other vegetation We can move down the river channel undetected if we keep low and move smart.
The city of Tamiz on the western flank is a large makeshift curtain wall. It appears more to keep the people in than foes out. Here, just after the clearing, it the Parkala gatehouse, the main entrance for the western city. An airstrike will take care of that and we will storm through the breach created.
Our job is to make as much noise as possible as we burn a white-hot hole into their flank. We are to confront their main forces and eradicate them from the face of this cursed world. Then we shall continue onto the main garrison, a mini fortress in the center of the city.
You each have been briefed on your Battalions role but I’l recap now just to make sure. First, Third, and Fourth battalion is to be at the front. The Second will await on the outer-reach of the city on the flats for the landing ships that will come. APCs and transports will be unloaded. Your job is to follow in the path the other three are blazing. You will move refugees, arm slaves willing to fight, and clean up any Clansman that slip through our lines.
I apologize, Erach, for denying you and your unit glory.”
“No problem, sir,” Major Erach said, lifting up a hand, “Someones got to do that and there’s plenty of glory in saving innocents.”
Farlorn continued. “Our foe is tribal but for Lord’s sake do not underestimate them. They may be feral and equipped with poor weapons but they are savage and will fight to the end. They have perfected the art of cruelty on their subjects so do not allow yourselves to be captured.
They are brave men, I must admit.
So, let’s kill them.”
They advanced just as the disappeared over the horizon. Things moved in the water, dark things just out of sight with glazed over eyes that watched the Rangers as they moved. It took an hour of trudging through thick reeds while being assaulted by near-solid clouds of biting flies before they even saw the city itself. Dirty black columns of smoke were starting to appear over the horizon.
Farlorn and the Pathfinder company led the way. The Pathfinders, the elite of the elite among the Carians, blended almost like phantoms into their environs. They rubbed their cloaks on the surfaces, absorbing its colors and patterns, blending near seamlessly into the reeds that wrapped all around them.
He looked back. There were over three thousand soldiers in the reed-clogged riverbed, but their commanding officer could even barely see them, and he knew their positions.
Now, the sheer walls of Tamiz began to rise. Farlorn took out his Binocs. He adjusted his binocs and panned it around, seeing features in the darkness as a green negative. It was haphazard and tribalistic with no sense of uniformity. Clearly, the defenders had used anything they had to build it. The sensors in the binocs detected rusted metal, dirt, stone, and some organic materials used it the construction. The top was lit by fires and lamps. He looked up and saw shapes moving on the top of the wall. They looked frantic and erratic, sometimes firing weapons, not outside but inside.
The Rangers broke their advance and moved east into the woods before the gate. They spread out and secured the road that led through the forest. They spread out into a line, preparing themselves of the assault. Weapon emplacements and snipers set themselves up to cover it.
Farlorn saw the gatehouse, a large stone bastion fifty meters wide and a thirty tall. If the locals were to believed it held a garrison of about a hundred soldiers with three thick gates of steel. Even with superior numbers, skill, and tactics, Farlorn knew it would take days to secure such a fortress and many losses on his side.
He was lucky he didn’t need to concern himself with that/
In the distance, it sounded like someone was weakly blowing a whistle. Farlorn looked at his wrist watched and knew it was time.
The whistle turned into a deafening shriek that filled the world. He looked up. Something was trailing a long line of fire through the air like a comet. It certainly flew like one, breaking the sound barrier with a humungous boom that rattled the trees all around them, birds flew into the air in a panic. He spared a look through his binocs and saw figures pointing up the sky.
He smiled.
The missile, launched all the way from orbit, struck right at the first gate. With the force of a battering ram, it ripped it off its hinges. The guards just behind it were pulped by the sheer force of the impact. It struck the second gate like it was the warhammer of a god.
It was between the second and third gate, at the heart of the gatehouse, when it detonated.
The entire gatehouse blew out in a vast avalanche of metal, stone, and dirt. Dozens of guards were brought down as the poorly constructed obstacle blew out for a stretch of nearly seventy meters. Debris scattered wide for nearly three hundred paces, bloody body parts among them.
For a moment the heat was so intense that Farlorn’s nightscope read nothing but emerald glare and he had to take his eye off it. It turned out he didn’t need it. A massive breach had been created, so wide one could drive a super tank through the gap without scratching the sides. A bubbling, the blazing wound had been carved in the huge wall, a ragged, slumping incision in the wall. The Colonel could not even tell that a gatehouse had even once existed there, impossible to tell apart in the pile of rubble that remained. Several blocks of buildings just behind the gate had also been brought down and fires began to spread rapidly.
A loud moan was brought to the Rangers, carried to them by a warm wind. It was the moan of a city that had begun to despair. Torn apart from the inside already, barely able to hold it together, and like a wrathful god, the Rangers had come to condemn them for their sins.
“Men of Caria, let us show their misbegotten kind what it means to draw the fury of ten thousand systems!” Farlorn bellowed as loud as he could.
Suddenly, three thousand troopers emerged out of the treeline, seemingly out of nowhere. They charged forward as marksmen and heavy emplacements behind them picked off the remaining reeling wall troopers that had somehow survived the devasting strike.
All of them had their cold steel bayonets attached to their barrels.
All of them let out a single, terrifying roar.
They were a ruthless unstoppable tide.
They were the First and Only Carian Ranger Regiment.
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