Battle 01 · Outer Watch
Dispatch from Vandros: The Silence at Relay Seven
The Crimson Paladins have reclaimed Relay Seven, the Drukhari escape with stolen crew
The mission
On the distant perimeter of the Vandros system, Outer Watch Relay Seven fell silent. The station's final transmissions were fragmentary: reports of unidentified vessels, weapons fire and desperate requests for assistance. Since then, nothing.
The final distress calls went unanswered while Vandros’s commanders occupied themselves with the succession. In an apparent stroke of good fortune, the Crimson Paladins were close enough to step into the breach. They arrived in time to find a Drukhari raiding party, from the Blades of Spite, loading surviving prisoners aboard their departing craft. In the station’s shattered main hangar, Protector-Marshal Aurelan Thane launched his desperate rescue assault. The raiders had prepared a farewell of their own: demolition charges intended to leave the relay beyond recovery.
The battle
Thane’s golden-armoured Sanguinary Guard, the Aurum Vigilum, struck first, sweeping the Mandrakes from a ruined section of the station in the south. Other Paladins advanced towards the demolition charges. For a moment, a rescue appeared within reach.
Then Zaerath Vexstride entered the fighting.
Leading the Wyches of the Severed Chorus, she overwhelmed the jump-pack Assault Intercessors securing the explosives in the north-eastern ruins. The dying Paladins dragged five Wyches down with them, but could not halt her. When the Embers of Solvaris, armed with pyreblasters, closed in, Zaerath’s troupe cut through them too, surrounding and dispatching their last sergeant among the ruins.
Across the hangar, Thane and his Guard descended upon the Raider Thorn of the Veil. Encarmine blades tore through its hull, and the resulting explosion hurled Vekhorax Soulspite and his Incubi onto the decking. The Archon struck back, grievously wounding Thane, before the golden warriors overwhelmed him and his remaining bodyguard.
The wounded Protector-Marshal pressed on towards Zaerath. His Guard destroyed the last of her Wyches, but the Succubus fought with undiminished fury. Alone amid her fallen troupe, she finally brought Thane down. Only then did the Aurum Vigilum close around her and end her bloody performance.
Elsewhere, the surviving Intercessors continued the less glorious work of disarming explosives. Upon that work, the station’s survival depended.
The aftermath
The Paladins hold Relay Seven. Vekhorax’s attempt to disable it permanently has failed, but the rescue has fallen bitterly short: another Drukhari craft escaped with captives while wounded raiders slipped away. Thane survives, badly wounded; two of his squads have been destroyed.
The Paladins have appointed the most senior remaining station officer as commander, while staying to repair, recover and consider how best to guard the unprotected civilian populations in the Outer Watch. The surviving personnel will depend upon their protectors’ experience and guidance as much as their weapons. Command will remain in mortal hands, at least in the station’s records.
For Vekhorax, plunder and entertaining prisoners must offset a wrecked Raider, shattered retainers and the demands of recovery. Zaerath has a different accounting. She has humbled the red-armoured warriors she despises and laid their commander low.
Their alliance survives the raid. Whether the Archon can still direct the fury he has unleashed is another question.