Entry XIII – Contact Within the Veil

 

Entry XIII – Contact Within the Veil

Battle Report: Mon-keigh Armoured Advance

The Mon-keigh came beneath a shroud.

A thick, metallic miasma rolled across the vault world’s fractured ridges, swallowing distance and muting light. Auspex returns fractured into ghosts and false positives. Even Aeldari sight, sharpened by war-helm and spirit-stone, could not wholly pierce it.

The air tasted wrong — chemical propellant and ionised particulate.

Striking Scorpions had already advanced into it.

Karandor Asurdor led them ahead of the main host, their forms vanishing into the haze long before the Mon-keigh column reached optimal engagement distance. No signal betrayed their position. Only silence.

Then the bombardment began.

A low whistle became a shriek.

Heavy artillery mortars thundered from within the unseen column. The first impacts tore into the ridge-line in concussive blossoms of dirt and shattered stone. Secondary detonations rippled across Guardian positions, forcing rapid displacement.

“Indirect saturation,” Talmen observed, helm tracking trajectories through the haze. “They fire blind — but in volume.”

Argmes Caendeer did not flinch.

“Reapers. Counter-battery.”

Dark Reaper launchers elevated in disciplined unison. Through target solutions extrapolated from arc and recoil signature, missiles cut upward and vanished into the miasma.

Seconds later, distant detonations answered.

Argmes himself took position among them, reaper launcher braced against the ridge. His fire was not hurried. Each shot selected, adjusted, corrected. Where Mon-keigh artillery boomed with brute excess, Aeldari return fire struck with surgical denial.

One mortar battery fell silent.

Then another.

The bombardment did not cease — but it faltered.

Movement stirred within the fog.

Large silhouettes advanced — mechanical, bipedal, iron-limbed.

Sentinels.

They emerged in staggered formation, searchlights carving pale tunnels through the miasma. Multi-lasers spat incandescent lines toward the ridge.

Argmes watched their gait.

“Inelegant war walkers,” he said coolly. “Articulated in imitation, but lacking grace. A primitive copy of a superior design.”

One Sentinel stumbled as a Reaper missile tore into its hip joint. It collapsed sideways, detonating in a bloom of fuel and shrapnel.

But more pressed forward.

From behind the ridge came the rising whine of grav-engines.

Shining Spears.

Lenlara Kelvae led the charge, lances angled forward as the jetbikes swept down the slope in a crescent of controlled fury. They cut through the miasma in a single decisive arc, impact lances striking the nearest Sentinels with explosive precision.

One machine folded instantly, cockpit vaporised.

Another staggered, then detonated as its reactor was pierced clean through.

A third Sentinel managed to pivot — its autocannon barking at near point-blank range.

The shot struck true.

One Spear vanished in a flare of ruptured gravitic energy as jetbike and rider were consumed in the machine’s death throes.

Lenlara did not slow.

The remaining Spears completed the pass, leaving broken walkers burning in the haze.

“Sentinel screen neutralised,” Talmen confirmed.

Argmes’ voice remained level. “Advance.”

The host moved into the miasma.

Visibility narrowed to fractured glimpses — outlines of wreckage, heat blooms, the flicker of pulse-fire through chemical fog.

Then came the grinding churn of heavier armour.

A Chimera transport burst through the veil at short range, heavy bolter stitching fire across advancing Guardians. Its turret swivelled, tracking targets with brutish persistence.

At its flank, half-shrouded in vapour and debris, stood Karandor Asurdor.

The Striking Scorpion Exarch moved with deliberate economy. Mandiblasters flared in controlled bursts as he leapt atop the vehicle’s hull, chainsword biting into armour seams with methodical brutality.

The Chimera bucked violently, attempting to dislodge him.

“Support the Exarch,” Argmes ordered.

Dark Reapers adjusted position instantly. Missiles struck the Chimera’s forward plating in tight succession. Guardian volleys followed, shuriken rounds shredding exposed sensor arrays and weakening structural points already carved open by Karandor’s blade.

The transport’s engine compartment ruptured.

Karandor dropped clear as the Chimera exploded, its hull splitting in a concussive roar that rolled through the fog like thunder.

When the smoke cleared, the Mon-keigh line was fractured.

Artillery silenced. Sentinels destroyed. Armour burning.

Remaining infantry withdrew in measured retreat, dragging wounded and abandoning wreckage.

Argmes did not pursue beyond calculated necessity.

“Hold the ridge,” he ordered. “Let them carry the memory of this ground.”

Silence gradually reclaimed the field — broken only by the crackle of cooling metal and the distant churn of retreating engines.

---

Post-Engagement Exchange

The miasma thinned slightly as atmospheric currents shifted.

Talmen approached first, helm mag-locked to his belt. Argmes stood surveying the battlefield’s geometry, while Karandor Asurdor emerged from the haze with two Scorpions at his back — armour scored, posture unchanged.

Talmen inclined his head to the Exarch.

“Your forward placement delayed their armour effectively.”

Karandor’s reply was characteristically brief.

“Indeed.”

His gaze flicked toward the distant silhouettes of Mon-keigh cavalry units withdrawing beyond the main column — riders mounted on large quadruped beasts, barely visible through haze.

Talmen followed the look.

“They employ animals for mobility,” he said thoughtfully. “Crude. But effective. They cross broken ground quickly.”

Karandor gave a single nod.

“For beasts.”

Argmes turned, expression unreadable.

“To entrust manoeuvre to a beast,” he said evenly, “when gravitic propulsion exists, is an extraordinary inefficiency. A jetbike is quieter, faster, and requires no feeding.”

Talmen allowed the faintest curve of amusement.

“Yet the beasts do not require reactors.”

Karandor added, in his low, clipped tone:

“They endure.”

Argmes considered that for a moment longer than expected.

“Primitive solutions,” he concluded, “sometimes persist longer than superior ones.”

The wind shifted again, carrying away the last strands of miasma.

Below the ridge, Mon-keigh wreckage smouldered.

Above it, the Aeldari host stood intact — diminished by one Spear, several Guardians, and unseen Scorpions within the fog — but unbroken.

The vault world remained silent beneath them.

Watching.