Editing Trip Into Hell (Warhammer High) (section)

===The Secret Weapon===
Ahriman trooped slowly back to the PDF command centre, Helmet still tucked under his arm, feeling the rain splash upon his face and patter off his armour. The rain was an apt reflection of his thoughts, his feelings. He hadn’t felt this way in several thousand years, not since the incident on Aghoru when he had thought the Primarch had been killed by the Daemon beneath the mountain. That man had touched him with his honest and fearlessness in the face of adversity, and now he was dead, his spirit lost to the warp. He was one of thousands who had died, and their sacrifice more and more seemed to be in vain. Things were not looking good.

The PDF command centre was as busy as ever, casualty reports coming in and fresh orders being sent out. Ahriman noticed several steaming bomb craters nearby and the tail section of an Ork Fighta-Bommer sticking out of the side of a nearby building. The Orks had tried hitting here too.
He strode in, pools of water mixed with blood left behind from every bootstep. Everyone could see how angry he was, see the glossy crimson coating his armour and feel the force of his aura upon them, and they all kept well away.

All heads turned as he strode into the command room, and several of the aides auras flickered fearfully as they saw the gore splattered Astartes warrior, looking more like a World Eater than a Thousand Son.

“Lord Ahriman, I…”

“Spare me. Casualty report?”

An aide ran over and swiftly handed him a note, which he snatched from the poor man’s hand. Three hundred and seventeen killed, a further hundred injured. This was the worst raid in weeks. The Orks were getting bolder; they knew their victory would come soon. 

The Governor tried to talk with him. “My Lord, things are becoming desperate. Morale is sinking fast, we’ve had to cut the artillery expenditure again by half, and there is still no word of any relief effort. If things don’t change, I fear the inner city will fall within a month, and the whole planet soon after.”

“Seadelant is one of the top twenty trade route hubs in the entire Imperium. They will not leave us to die here, they can’t. Not unless the Emperor wants to have half of Segmentum Solar rebel for want of food and raw materials.” Ahriman was gruff, blunt. He didn’t want to have to think about the alternative, that the Imperium would arrive too late and it would have to be an invasion, not liberation.

“There is more, my lord. Lyleith, our chief astropath has felt something in the warp.” She moved aside and the Astropath stepped forward. Ahriman briefly wondered why the entire ruling body of Seadelant was female, but her words knocked that thought out of his head.

“You can feel it, can’t you? Your power is greater than mine. The warp is stirring, something big is about to happen.” She spoke true, too damned true. Recently he had felt the normally still surface of the Great Ocean start to ripple, like a storm was brewing, something stirring in the depths. None of this made Ahriman feel any better. Trakeria saw his gloomy expression, and capitalized on it.

“My Lord, we do have one ace up our sleeve, which if properly employed, will change the course of this war.” Ahriman turned to face her, projecting fire into his aura to cow her. She quailed at his invisible show of force, but pressed on.

“The Caorst Charxers came with two more pieces of heavy artillery, which have not been deployed due to their importance and rarity. I myself only found out about them this morning. But given the situation, I feel we have no other choice but to deploy them.”

“What have the Caorstians been holding back from us?” Ahriman demanded.

“Deathstrikes.” Ahriman saw a flare of savage joy in her aura, and it was well justified. The Deathstrike was a mobile ICBM launcher capable of carrying the most powerful warheads in existence from one side of a planet to the other, or even between planets in some circumstances. Life Eater bio-toxins, Nuclear, Warp Missiles for killing Titans, even reality tearing Vortex Warheads could all be deployed by the Deathstrike. And now Ahriman had two of these monsters at his disposal. Part of him recoiled at the potential devastation, but another part revelled in the destruction he could visit upon the Orks. Used right, and with his guidance, they could rip the life from the Ork onslaught in one fell blast, destroy the invaders and expunge them from the surface of Seadelant.

“Why wasn’t I informed earlier?” he pressed, his anger seeping from his rigid control. If he had been able to use them before the outer walls had fallen…

“They were destined for the Cadian Gate, and were deemed to important for general deployment. I promise you the Caorst Master of Ordinance will be thoroughly disciplined for this when the battle is over.” Trakeria was almost gloating, the chance to lord it over regular Army troopers dancing in her mind. Before Ahriman would have come down on her for it, but now he was too tired and unsure to worry. To hell with her, he had a war to win.

“What Warheads do we have at our disposal?”

“Boosted Plasma Fusion Warheads. All the power of an Atomic Warhead with none of the radiation or fallout. Each is dialled to one hundred kilotons. Between them we could break the back of the Ork Siege, kill tens of millions of the Greenskin scum, and throw them back.”
Ahriman brought up the schematics for the planned warhead strikes, and stared at them with concern. “The entire outer city would be levelled in the blast, and we know there are survivors in there.”

“If we don’t do this, there will be no survivors regardless. You are Astartes; surely you see that the needs of the many have to outweigh the needs of the few?”

They did, but Ahriman couldn’t shake off the feeling that those survivors, whoever they were, were important in some way to the future of this war. Something was linking them and their efforts in the occupied outer city to the overall fate of Seadelant, but he couldn’t find the connection. He couldn’t find any connection, his future sight was almost totally gone. It even felt like his own fate was no longer under his control.

“My Lord? What are your orders? Do we deploy the Deathstrikes or not?” he didn’t want to have to answer that question, hell he didn’t want to have to weigh the fate of an entire planet and all its inhabitants. All he wanted to do was to get away, re-connect with himself and expunge his failure back on Terra. Now it seemed he was bringing his failure with him. He had to succeed; he had to show them he was no has-been and beat these Greenskin Invaders.

Ahriman spat out two words.

“Do It.”