Several more Lamenters volunteered after the First Company Commander got back on his feet.
Nolan took them in order. He used the Ten Rings for each bout, but not at anything approaching their actual capability: what he brought to each exchange was his body, his enhanced speed, and the kind of spatial awareness that came from two hundred-and-something days of simulated combat in the most demanding environments the Warhammer galaxy had produced. The power armor was absent from both sides. The weapons were absent from both sides.
The results were the same regardless.
The Lamenters and the Stormtroopers watching from the edge of the training ground had the quietly thoughtful expressions of people updating a number they had known intellectually but not quite felt yet. They had believed the gap was large. They were now revising upward.
Nolan left the training ground with a satisfied expression and the particular easy looseness in his shoulders of someone who had just spent an hour doing something they genuinely enjoyed.
Behind him, the Stormtroopers were being led through bolt weapon marksmanship drills by a pair of Lamenters, learning at the same time how to group shots against different xenos threat profiles at various ranges. The two activities had been paired deliberately. The Stormtroopers needed the shooting refinement. The alien recognition material was something Nolan expected them to be able to recite in their sleep within the year. He had a model in mind for what a Stormtrooper should eventually be: the Solar Auxilia of the Heresy era, fully armed mortal forces capable of sustaining a three-to-one or better engagement ratio against Astartes in prepared conditions. That was a long-term goal. The Lamenters were the instructors who would get them there.
The base hall was lit from the projection array set into the center of the round table, which was currently displaying a detailed map of the European continent in soft blue-white light.
Nolan sat at one end of the table, one fist loosely closed and supporting his chin, considering the board. David sat at the other end, metal fingers resting on the table surface, optical sensors steady.
They had been at this for a while.
Nolan raised his hand and moved a cluster of projection figures representing a Lamenters company down from their current position toward several small European nations in the south.
The miniature Astartes spread rapidly across the map surface, reaching their target positions with the speed the game's simulation allocated them. A tiny armored figure in the lead raised something above his head that the rendering detail was too small to specify and produced what the projection engine interpreted as a roar of completion.
"Lamenters teams executing simultaneous decapitation strikes. Twelve hours, coverage across approximately forty percent of European secondary targets. Your network suppression prevents any warnings from leaving the affected zones before the operations complete."
"I am sorry, my lord." David raised one finger and touched the table surface on his side of the board. "One of my sorcerer assets had advance warning of your intended timing. He mobilized heavy armor to converge on the insertion points."
A formation of robed projection figures poured toward the Lamenters positions from three directions, and behind them, a slow-moving ring of armored vehicle projections closed the perimeter.
Nolan watched this with a slightly compressed expression.
"Then I pull out the psyker unit, use the portal network to exfiltrate the priority targets, and we call the decapitation a partial success rather than a failure."
"Your operational intent has been exposed. The public communication apparatus has now reframed the entire operation as an attack by a hostile non-state actor. You have become the declared enemy of a significant coalition."
"I wasn't expecting persuasion to be part of the toolkit," Nolan said flatly. "I expected chainswords to do the persuading."
He looked at the board.
"Since the decapitation route is closed, I fall back to the sequential advance. Systematic territorial consolidation, one state at a time, beginning from the weakest adjacencies." He paused. "David, why does your human coalition have a Titan?"
A War Dog-class Titan had appeared in David's formation while Nolan was explaining the advance. It was approximately half the height of a human finger in projection scale, but it was present and it was moving.
Nolan stared at it.
"It is a metaphorical asset," David said, with the particular tone of a Man of Iron who understood that he was being technically accurate and probably not entirely helpful. "You were declared a global threat before the sequential advance began. Your friend Tony Stark chose to defend humanity. If Tony were to fully pursue the path of an Adeptus Mechanicus Tech-Priest, I think his engineering capability would eventually produce something analogous to a War Dog. It would take time, but it is within his capacity."
"That is a generous interpretation of 'human coalition assets.'"
"I was being conservative."
Nolan leaned back in the metal chair.
"Fine. Then I stop restraining myself and call in an Imperial Navy fleet. Orbital bombardment. We skip the ground phase entirely and simply remove the political infrastructure from above."
"My lord." David's tone had the quality of a teacher gently redirecting. "We are running an informal strategic scenario with no set parameters and no actual intelligence basis. We are, to use the correct term, playing. The Titan is also playing. If you bring in an orbital fleet, I reserve the right to introduce assets of equivalent dramatic scale."
"You already have a Titan. What's left on your asset list that would be equivalent to an orbital fleet?"
"I have not fully decided," David said, and it was possible that he was being entirely sincere.
Nolan sat with this for a moment.
"Are there actually traces of alien activity in Europe?" The thought had surfaced while David was talking about sorcerer units. "Something supernatural specifically."
"Not alien in the xenos sense." David's optical sensors dimmed slightly in what Nolan had learned to read as the equivalent of a careful pause. "The werewolf phenomenon appears to be genuinely present in several regions, and it predates any known xenos contact in those areas. Current assessment is that it functions as an ancient curse or an infectious blood condition, the distinction matters less than the result. It is not harmful at its current scale. The local population manages it through their existing social structures. It does not require our intervention."
"For now," Nolan said.
"For now," David agreed. "We will have time to address it properly. It is not going anywhere."
Nolan stood up from the table.
"End the game. Go back to supervising the foundry outputs. Second Son Island and Hydra Island both. And check the power armor dimensions with Reditus before you do anything else. I need to know how much the fit has changed."
David rose from his side of the table and passed one hand across the projection surface. The game pieces, the armies, the coalition forces, the Titan, vanished. The world map remained, its borders and geography glowing in the empty hall.
Nolan walked toward the passage without looking back at it.
The map stayed lit. In the empty room, every border it showed represented something they did not yet own, and every empty space between them represented the distance between where things were and where they were going.
David looked at it for a moment before following.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~