ISD 16701 - Battle of Berenike

Following a crushing defeat at Marinus, Imperial orders summoned the Imperial Red Company, along with legions under the command of First Strategos TITUS HAUPTMANN, to Berenike. Humanity is victorius in defense of the planet, and HADRIAN MARLOWE demonstrates his abilities in combat against SYRIANI DORAYAICA for all the galaxy to see. VALKA ONDERRA is injured in a wizards' duel against the Extrasolarian sorcercer, URBAINE.

“They’re ordering us to join the fleet at Berenike,” said Bastien Durand. In a rare twist, the fellow had removed his glasses. He looked young without them. “They’re planning an expedition to retake Marinus.”

“They’ll be a while gathering their forces,” I said.

“It’ll take the better part of a century to mass the fleet at Berenike,” Corvo agreed.

“Seventy-eight years,” Durand said. “Oberlin says they mean to launch in ISD 16710.”

“I read the dispatch,” I said. Berenike was on the road to Marinus, a colonial supply depot and Legion fortress world that had played Marinus’s role in Imperial conquest and expansion before Marinus had. All ships making for the freeholds and the inner rim followed that ancient road through Gododdin and the Centaurine provinces, through Berenike, to the Veil and Marinus. It was following that road that had called the Cielcin down upon us centuries ago, for beyond Marinus lay Cressgard—burned now to glass to erase the Cielcin and the holocaust they’d visited upon that once-green world. “Berenike,” I repeated. I had been through Berenike before—as I had Gododdin—but I had never set foot there. “How quickly can we get there?”

Demon in White, Chapter 67: The Summons