"Today, I demand that you unleash all your power. Use pheromones, use mind control, use every means at your disposal to turn every warrior and every civilian we have left into a soldier willing to die defending the capital at any cost!"
"I will make humanity understand that to conquer the T'au, they must step over every last one of our corpses!"
More than a hundred Ethereals answered in unison:
"For the greater good!"
They began releasing pheromones.
An invisible psychic pulse spread outward from the council chamber, enveloping the entire city. Every T'au mind received the signal. Their thoughts began to change, to be reinforced, to be infused with a fanatical will to fight.
Fear vanished.
Exhaustion vanished.
Even their instinctive fear of death vanished.
In their place came an extreme, twisted loyalty, and the resolve to embrace death for the "greater good."
Every resident, regardless of age or sex, took up arms.
They dug trenches in the streets and set traps inside buildings, turning every house into a fortress where they could fight to the very last moment.
The Imperium's frontline headquarters.
It was a hastily erected command center on a stretch of scorched earth recently cleared by orbital bombardment. Layers of defensive fortifications and staging areas packed with vehicles of every kind surrounded the enormous armored command vehicle. Tens of thousands of Astra Militarum soldiers rested and resupplied there.
Saul was studying the holographic tactical map inside the command vehicle.
On the map, each city was marked as a massive red zone. Dense clusters of blue arrows around the cities represented the Imperium's encircling forces. But those arrows stopped at the edges of the red zones, as though blocked by an invisible wall.
"We have three options," Saul began, his voice calm and clear. "First, launch an