Tanya Russ
It felt good to be back on campaign again, that was a strange thought but still that was how I felt.
This would be my third campaign, by my count. The first, of course, had been the one that had taken me from Fenris to the Wheel of Fire, the next was a decade and a half of campaigns across the Galaxy working with Primarchs I'd gotten to know over the years: Vulkan, Perturabo, Jaghatai and Horus. Over that time my legion had served on every possible planet type I think there was, I mean there was the possibility of one I'd never known existing so that was always a thing to keep an eye out for, I'd seen everything: water, jungles, sand, ice, even a lava planet which had been a hell of a fight.
But I had not run into any other Primarchs in that time, oddly enough. Oh I heard stories but Father had continued to have those files edited in such a way that the exact names were never added to these sheets. It was quite annoying, even Perturabo had commented on it and wondered if he was trying to prevent people from getting their proper lot of Glory. Frankly, I had put that down to no.
The Emperor was having too much fun letting his kids discover each other which was causing a bit of a slowdown, I believed, in the campaign. I wondered if he perhaps didn't realize what he was doing or if he was doing that subconsciously while he ran off and did his own thing. Which he did quite often.
For every campaign I heard of where one of my siblings was participating, I heard about three more where The Emperor was involved in some shape or form. He was doing his utmost to try and save as many human civilizations that were out there as possible, and that attitude was a bit contagious.
For Vulkan, it didn't matter how infectious it was. His need to bring back human dominance to the Galaxy was set, he was already sold on the idea. Horus was always up for the fight though he did seem to try and offer terms to civilizations more than most.
Jaghatai, of course, was Jaghatai. People either surrendered or they got trampled under the wheels of his motorcycles. He didn't seem to care about this infectious need that was pushed by the Emperor. Not to say that he wasn't doing things, it's just he was doing them on his timeline.
Perturabo though, I had noticed, had the most problem with that infectious need to bring in as many civilizations as possible. He even apparently was the type to be susceptible to overwork and every time I ran into him I tried to push him to try and relax a bit, maybe work on one of his structures. So far I hadn't seen any indication that he was building up those planets he had conquered but I didn't have much time to visit those worlds.
I figured, sooner or later, he would invite me to one of them since I was always pushing him to try and work on his civilian infrastructure ideas.
Man, that had been the majority of my second campaign. After that I'd gone back to Fenris for a year and a half of R&R to let my men have a moment to rest, recoup some troops, and ready for a new expedition outwards.
In that time I'd also learned that the two homeguard forces I'd left to try and bring in worlds closer to Fenris had been busy. It created a bit of a large cluster of 40-odd worlds in the area around Fenris that were nominally under our protection. It was not a lot but apparently my region of space wasn't exactly heavy on populated worlds, oh well, nothing that I could do about it, but it was a start at least. Though we'd found quite a number of worlds abandoned, either due to the population fleeing from one disaster or another or having died out inside those same disasters. Although it's always a possibility that a few may have been undergoing terraforming before the Old Night took over and the end of human civilization began.
We generally had been marking those planets down as possible colonization sites, either for our allies or maybe even the people of Fenris someday. I didn't know if that would be something we'd pull off but it was definitely on my list of things I would be interested in doing. Fenris was having a bit of a population boom, rather a large one at that. Though we were somewhat okay at the moment, thanks to shipments of food coming in, it would probably be better for us to curtail our population boom in order to prevent overpopulation. Thich was not, in my opinion, a great situation so emigration targets would be useful. Overpopulation, of course, could also be solved by building up, we would just need to sacrifice more of the wilderness that made up the planet's appeal.
Which would be good for an economy in some aspects but it would be bad to maintain a people who was hearty and able to survive in the wilderness as was needed for the legion, plus I'd seen several Hive cities at this point and I did not want one of those to come into existence on Fenris. So the other option was looking into possibly colonizing worlds that had once been livable in our region.
Of course I'd probably have to clear that with the Administratum, they seemed to be more an annoying bureaucracy than anything but you needed a bureaucracy sometimes. Imagine what would happen if I tried to colonize a planet someone else was already colonizing. That could not end well, I figured.
But those were just the domestic concerns that I had to deal with. They were usually simple, I would look at the situation and tell the people working under me to handle it in the best way that I figured they could do it and it would work out. Being at the top was quite fun in fact, now that I was near the top. Emperor was of course the main CEO of this company but being a sub-CEO was pretty good. I basically made my own hours as long as I continued to contribute heavily in one way or another and I could decide what to do with the conquered planets, or at least for the most part.
That 'most part' got a bit more complex when I ran into aliens.
Orks, of course, were the simplest issue in the universe to deal with: you destroyed them or pushed them into reserve-like planets. I had been to one or two worlds that I could basically bomb into submission to get them to declare they would fight for The Emperor by this point. These planets, of course, had very primitive Orks, ones not even using guns but instead wielding spears and axes to fight amongst each other. They were not exactly enemies of the Imperium but they could be useful as chaff against the enemies of the Imperium. I simply arranged for Imperial Navy ships to be put in orbit around a couple of these planet, to keep their guns on them in case they decide to betray us. I'd even had their warlords sign agreements that they would not pursue space technology and would rely on us for transportation. The Administratum weren't exactly happy about this but mainly because I'd asked them to create some sort of barge that was easily able to be cleaned out of the mushroom and fungus infection.
Now Orks like this were not something you could wield against other alien races, sending them to planets that did not have an Ork infection just guaranteed the planet getting said infection, but sending them against planets already infected with Orks did tend to result in interesting things happening, especially considering the Orks I would introduce were often trained by Space Wolves as I had been interested in seeing if it was possible.
These Orks would be dropped on the planet where they would either succeed in killing the enemy before being returned to their original world or be corrupted by the local Orks and simply become another enemy we had to fight. It had not happened too many times yet but it had happened though both cases had not been big problems as the weapons that we gave them had self-destruct switches thanks to the Mechanicus That helped to keep our Ork volunteers in check, besides, they had plenty of Orks to do battle but lacked the equipment to get all of them to peak lethality.
It was an ongoing experiment so far. I had been working it out but it was always possible that it would backfire and so I was always being careful. The emperor already even popped up once to ask what the hell was going on and, after the information exchange, he'd agreed that he thought that there might be some merit to my idea.
And he was giving me a little bit of rope to run with on this.
That being said, the situation was not the only one we had to deal with. There were many alien races I had run into at this point, many different species, and they usually fell into three camps.
Genocidal assholes who won during the Old Night and had conquered their human neighbors and enslaved them, often either murdering them or putting them on the lowest strata of society. Trying to negotiate a stop to that situation usually led to me being forced to repay the genocidal assholes with a genocide of my own, there was a few dozen planets that had been reduced to Stone Age technology because we had been forced to come in and blow shit up. I had to hand them over to the Administratum to deal with even if, because of my previous conversations with Malcador, I knew that that was probably a death sentence. So, yeah, even though I would love to live in a Star Trek Utopia type situation where us and the aliens could get along and build a better economy… It looked like it would remain a dream for now, at least for most species.
There were also relics of what was called The Dark Age of Technology by the Mechanicus, a Misnomer if I ever had been one. These holdout civilizations usually were humans mixed with other species, often equals, and a not as terrible situation as we had run into on several areas.
Now they weren't genocidal so our attempts to try and deal with them was that of a normal human civilization to be brought in. It should not have been too hard.
But of course, just as everything else in the 31st millenium, it was, indeed, pretty hard. Apparently stories of our policies towards some civilizations had spread and they told tales about how we were some sort of Maniacs out there trying to wipe out all alien civilization and put humanity on top. Which was half true but humanity on it's way back to the top would probably be for the best, considering what the other civilizations had done when we weren't around. But that was a story for another time. So these mixed civilizations would immediately declare that they would not join the Imperium and then proceeded to kill our messengers and/or shoot at us or something that would basically activate our own protocols which said that if a civilization attacked us we had the right to invade and conquer them.
It was annoying that what should have been simple negotiations about the integration of these people into the Imperium, as another class of citizenship, ended up becoming these bloodbaths and violent annexations.
One of the reasons I decided to take my last break from campaigning had been simply running into another one of these awful moments where it seemed possible that we would have been able to create some sort of alliance with a Human-Xeno republic, only for that to go up in a nuclear fireball when they tried to send a shuttle with explosives to my ship under parley.
The other situation that happened with Xenos was at least somewhat better. When a Xeno species was not very advanced, barely in the space age or lesser, and had no connections to humanity and no real connections to the Galaxy we were able to create a couple enclaves. Basically it was a simple deal that they would trade with the Imperium and swear fealty to it.
Cases such as these were very rare, because finding Xenos that weren't in active connection with humanity was not something that happened very often as far as I could tell.
Although I had to think the Dark Eldar pirates or the corsairs whatever they prefered to be called, at this point I really just saw those two as two faces of the same coin as far as I was concerned, were a big threat in the region I was fighting in throughout the last campaign. I had tracked down every Corsair piratehold and Dark Eldar Outpost in the region and crushed them, with some effort. This had brought in a bunch of human civilizations and a few Xeno civilizations that only spanned one system and were under the Imperium's control and stabilized a large network of trade centers that opened up more connections to the core.
The Eldar had officially got on my annoyance list, it felt like they were the only other big Xeno species you could run into besides the Orks. h sure there was the shark people and a few other smart races that you ran into once in a while more than every other but the Eldar were the second most common, probably due to the fact they once had an empire that encompassed a good portion of the Galaxy. At least this particular region of the Galaxy that was close to Fenris itself.
Of course the corsairs spouted bullshit about being different but for the most part they seemed to be on their way to being corrupted to Dark Eldar, so I tended to view them as pirates that needed to be burned out. There had been one party that had proven to me that they were not affiliated but they still were slavers and had been causing trade problems. So my options had been to pay the Eldar to not raid trade lanes and hope they agreed to that or destroy their ships and leave them stranded on their planets. That tended to be my mean response when they could prove that they were not in fact related to the Dark Eldar.
The Dark Eldar on the other hand were ones that I just went straight to burning. I didn't run into them very often but when I did they were easily recognizable as they had a tendency to wear leathers and other gothic regalia. Alongside their use of spiky armor that helped to recognize their favorite activities and what they normally got up to… Well I would normally not to judge a book by its cover but in this one case the cover was quite clear on it's contents.
Now, for the most part, all I did was burn out their cities and destroy their ships so i could leave them stranded on whatever planet they were living on beforehand. However sometimes there was nothing you could do but kill everyone on the planet. The crimes they had commited would probably have most war crimes organizations retching in a bathroom somewhere. That statue that I'd come across all those years ago was on the tamer side of the evils they could get up to.
In the end it came as a surprise that there were worse things than being turned into a living statue and that put a dark feeling on my gut.
Thankfully the Eldar were not a monolith. the corsairs for example were an outlier, as for the Dark Eldar… Well, they were a rarer sight, what was more common were the two other groups we had run across: Craftworlds and Exodites. Craftworld Eldars lived in large mobile moon-sized vessels who engaged in trade with basically everyone. hey seemed to be more than willing to trade with all sides on the conflicts that engaged with them.
Those were in all likelihood from the same place as that one Eldar I'd met all those years before came from, although the specific Craftworld from which they came from was still a mystery to me. The few I had run into had been aloof and unwilling to join the Imperium. Since they were Xenos and had no direct contact with humanity, as well as being mobile, I gave them enough room to do whatever they wanted. After all they were traders, they were providing a place for trade to flow which would help the economy of whatever empire was using them. If the Imperium just became the only option they would still be traders and they would have to sign a deal with us at some point. No reason to start a war with them, I thought.
Well, I wasn't going to start a war with them. Some of them were apparently all too willing to start wars with me.
During one of my many campaigns aiming to reduce the amount of corsairs and Dark Eldar in the universe I'd run into a group of Eldar that apparently thought that helping my targets survive was a good idea. Those Eldar had fought and kept us in a standstill more then once, keeping us in check long enough for them to evacuate the disgusting monsters that were the Dark Eldar offworld as well as many of their ships. What particular brand of the CraftWorld Eldar it was I didn't know yet but the men we're not exactly happy about running into these Interlopers and they got themselves on my list of Eldar that needed to be dealt with sooner or later.
The last major Eldar faction I had run into weren't really a faction per se, more of a group with similar ideas. Those generally went by the term Exodites Eldar, meaning those who had left civilization and returned to the wilds to live like their ancestors or more precisely like primitives .
I had had a conversation with several Exodite leaders, they often had different terms for how they controlled their people but from my general understanding of these talks they had left because they had seen that Civilization had led their people to. Whatever craphad happened resulted in the creation of some entity in the Warp that they refused to elaborate on. I was unwilling to push on since I'd rather not deal with any entity in the Warp.
They were, as far as I could see, no threat to humanity. They preferred planets that humanity would have no interest in and there were hundreds of thousands of worlds in the Galaxy, many of them in less harmful shape to humanity than the ones they chose. Many of their planets reminded me of Fenris, which I suspected might have more to it than just a reminder.
So I worked out a few deals where basically we would leave these planets alone, at least as far as I was concerned. Those worlds within my sphere of influence would be left alone though trade ships might come by but, as far as I was concerned, the Imperium had no interest in those planets. There were plenty of other fishes in the space sea and something told me that reenacting Vietnam across several jungle planets with populations of near immortal beings that could put a spear through Ceramite armor would not be fun.
There would probably be problems in the future but I was sure there'd be able diplomats to work them out. As time went on there would probably be some resources found on those worlds that would draw our notice, something that would be useful for the Galaxy as a whole, and we would not be able to get enough through what was basically subsistence farming and gathering, which was the majority of methods used by these Exodites in order to make as much of a challenge of their existence as possible. When that happened most likely we would have to negotiate again,
But a recapping of campaigns had to end sooner or later. After I brought the Emperor's peace to quite a bit of local space and areas nearby I had gone off to have a bit of a rest and recruit new forces. That had lasted a year and a half and now we were on our way again: we built up our forces, switched out some Grand companies for others. We had also picked up the first batch of what I was calling the New Valkyries, women who had undergone the process developed by my wolf priests to enhance them with my genes so they may live for longer and become more resilient to the environments that we'll experience.
Just because a logistics core was supposed to take over the rear lines didn't mean they should not get some sort of improvements for fighting. Considering they were not Space Marines they did not fall under the category the Emperor was unhappy about, I'd written one or two letters about the situation and he seemed annoyed with it but was going to let my exploration of the Primarch genes continue.
We'd also picked up some new armor for them as well as some more equipment. The forge world that had been created out of the Moon of Svellgard was producing quite a lot of equipment nowadays, not to mention the orbital industrial complexes I brought in. I'd brought in what was called a Star Fortress for protection of my world, a literal miniature Moon. The enemy would have to fight its way through before even trying to land on Fenris. If the enemy didn't somehow defeat the fortress, which looked to be a hard thing to do, its weapons would be able to open fire on their ships and prevent them from getting any easy landings.
I was already looking into getting another one because if you're going to have one defense line you might as well have two, not to mention that some reports of fighting in the Galactic North of Fenris were getting a little bit louder.
They hadn't called for direct help yet but I figured it would be not too long from now before my forces would have to be rerouted to whatever was going on. Until then I had gone forward with my newest mission, gathering my Legion and my Valkyries and some Imperial Army regiments from various local Imperium planets. I began preparing an expedition to the Galactic North so i could see if my help was needed around the region.
That, however, was interrupted by a message from the Emperor asking me to head North nonetheless, just a little bit further West. Apparently there was another Ork Waaagh on the way.
Seriously, the Orks seemed to be the most common adversary amongst the stars, you just could not go 10 years without running into an Ork horde. Anyways there was a Primarch I had yet to meet on route to the same system that I was heading to, I knew that because Emperor refused to give me the official name of the allied commander. His words were along the lines of 'head North and meet up with allied forces to deal with the situation, an Ork that goes by Over-Tyrant of Grel is gathering its forces to push further south. Stop him and eliminate the threat that he represents'. This task didn't seemed that complicated and I believed that it would be easy enough but you never knew with these Orks so caution was advised.
Either way Orks were a mysterious bunch, always coming up with new issues and new nicknames. I considered calling up the two planets of feral Orks for infantry support but even though I had a plan to use it once in a while those were operations where I would be low on support. In this case I had plenty of support with another legion on the way and might as well not aggravate other legions by showing my willingness to use underhanded tactics.
I was somewhat interested to run into another Primarch, knowing only four of my potential 19 siblings was in my mind preventing me from building out my network of contacts within the Imperium. If I wanted to achieve a successful place for Fenris when this was all over I needed to have as many friends as possible, as many associates and people I could count on as possible. What better way to start that than with people who would consider you family.
Blood is thicker than water as they say. While I was sure it would not be an easy process to get to that point, having that bond, that connection, with these 19 other siblings would be the best way to secure a peace across the Galaxy and a peace on Fenris so I could retire and raise wolves out in the wilderness again. This time just with some modern conveniences.
Part of me could not wait for that day of retirement, but some part of me also kind of dreaded it. Yes, not being shot at or having a sword thrown at you or an axe coming for your neck and all the other ways you can die on campaign would be good and something I'd be happy to do.
But I must admit… Being on campaign gave me the ability to see things I'd have never seen in my previous lifes. Planets with different kinds of atmosphere, strange stellar anomalies, ancient relics from humanity's golden age… And that really was a golden age, no matter how much the Mechanicus kept pushing this idea that the height of humanity's technology was the Dark Age because they feared all AI. It had been a golden age, it had been closer to Star Trek than it was now… It kind of made me miss not having been there for it but that's what we were building towards eventually, I assumed. Maybe just a little less AI but turning humanity into a reasonable controller of a portion of the Galaxy, building ourselves up into a powerful people again, this would inevitably lead us to rebuilding the Golden age.
But that was the point. Yes, my retirement was all set up for a quiet life but did I really want a quiet life after all I had seen so far? Did I want to go out there and explore the Imperium we were building when this was all over… Yes. I would have a choice when I got there and I could do both, I really did have near immortality so I would have plenty of time to make up my mind and just do both. Maybe one century I'd be a hermit and another century I'd be an explorer, only time would tell and what time would tell was still yet to be seen.
I was drawn from my thoughts as a beep came from above me, telling me that someone on the bridge wanted to speak with me. Getting up from the bed I had been laying in, Turid Ulfketildottir and Maria Hæfnirdottir rolling off me as I did, I walked over to a nearby communication unit. Pressing it, I asked, "Hello, Captain Nemmius Tetanus. What may be the reason you're calling me at this hour?.
"Primarch Russ, we have arrived in the system as ordered but apparently your sibling Primarch has already arrived with their fleet and is commencing attack on the planet of Grel."
I raised an eyebrow at that before saying, "Another one who likes to go in for an assault dead ahead? Alright." I yawned before speaking, "Contact them and ask if they need us to deploy right away or if we have time to prepare our troops for landing."
"I have already contacted them, my Primarch. The Primarch of the 14th legion has said they do not need help, they will have this situation dealt with on their own and we can sit back and observe."
"Well, well." I said with a raised eyebrow before shaking my head and saying, "Then tell them that I quite appreciate the offer to stay back but my men are restless and we will join them on the field of battle as soon as we're ready."
"Yes, my Primarch" the captain replied. Pressing a button and closing the connection, I shook my head.
Not a great start to my first meeting with the Primarch of the 14th. He appeared to be more of the standoffish 'get the job done on my own' type. Really there wasn't much I could do on that matter then. Oh, sure, I could play their game and let them have the fight on their own and that might ingratiate myself to them a bit but the fact of the matter was this was an assault on the concept of teamwork and they needed to learn to work with their siblings. This person was so obsessed with getting a job done themselves? They would just have to learn to deal with the fact that others had their own opinions on that matter.
Shaking my head I turned towards the room where two of the girls were slowly yawning and getting up ,I clapped my hands loudly and said "all right girls, help me get my armor on, we've got some Orks to do some head splitting with."
"Yes my Primarch" the trio said as they pulled themselves from the bed moving over to the machinery that made their job a little bit easier in getting my gear on. For myself I walked over into a small shower box to wash away the night sweats, and get on my undersuit that would allow me to better use my armor.
Just because I would be dropping directly into combat was no reason to not have everything perfectly arranged. Oh so since this would probably be my first meeting with that new Primarch it would mean I should probably take some time to get everything shined and polished even let the girls arrange my hair into something fashionable. It's always important to make a good first impression, and I will have a first good impression with this new Primarch, even if I did annoy them by joining the fight against their opinions.
Mortarion
The Orks scattered before our forces, retreating as my Guard pushed ever forward and slew them with Volkite and sword. I had most of my legion deployed at this point and we were making good progress in clearing this world of its infestation.
This world was once probably an agri-world judging by how flat it was and how much the land appeared to have been made such as a way to allow plants to grow, lines of trees cutting in between each farmland to prevent too much wind from causing damage to the crops or soil.
It was hard to say exactly how long ago this planet had been taken over by this infestation but it was not too long, I thought. The human population was still alive here, though a little rare, and they would be the inheritors of this dirt ball when we were done with it.
This is why I had deployed as quickly as possible when I realized that the enemy's fleet was gone. Yes that was most likely a sign that a good portion of the military power of this Waaagh was on the move somewhere else, we would need to track it down, but if we could cut off their supply point, their homeworld, from them? Well that gave us more control over where the battlefield would be as they couldn't pull away and regroup anymore. They would have to commit to whatever assault they were planning on because without somewhere where they could search for scrap for their homemade weapons they would be easily destroyed by my forces.
Plus the fact this thing was called a Tyrant kind of pissed me off. I hated tyrants. My adopted father had been a tyrant so I tended to dislike them, as well as any psykers. Not only had the pirate been one, one of my first campaigns had shown me just how desperate the psychotics could be and what mayhem and monstrosities they could unleash.
Give me my scythe and a good gun and I would kill every Tyrant I found. That was my calling as far as I was concerned, bringing these monsters who would trample on the weak and visit horrors on them just for being weak. The duty of the strong was to protect the weak as far as I was concerned, not torment them, and the things that psykers did was tormenting.
Unfortunately I didn't get to have a bit of enjoyment at the knowledge that destroying this Ork would bring down the number of psychos in the universe, everything I had been able to dig up on this 'Over-Tyrant' indicated that he was just a regular Ork. One with perhaps a bit more stress about his abilities than some others but no different than any Ork I had killed in the past. He might have escaped or he might not have, there was always the possibility that he sent his fleet away to do something else while he was still be on this planet.
If so I could not wait to track him down. Nothing breaks the Orks' ability to fight better than to see their leadership die, their morale would plunge the moment my scythe removed its disgusting green head from its body.
"Lord Mortarion?" came a voice to my left, causing me to stop my thoughts and my almost instinctual murdering of Orks that charged at our lines to look at one of my sons. By the looks of the unit markings he was part of the communications units.
"Yes, my son?" I asked, looking at him, and breathed out a bit of gas from my mask. A mixture of oxygen and poisonous air that were common on my own world, it helped me keep strong and reminded me of where I'd come from, what I was fighting for.
"The Primarch of the Wolves of Fenris reports that they will be arriving soon."
'What', I thought. "I said that we did not need their help, didn't I?" I asked, raising an eyebrow, knowing that that was probably the only thing he really could see. Unlike some I did not wear a full helmet, only a lower helmet which was my official gas mask while the top of my head was covered by a white Hood embroidered with gold.
"Yes, Lord Mortarion." The Marine said nodding before adding, "They appear to have refused your recommendation on that."
"Oh, of course they have," I said, shaking my head an annoyance while leaning on my war scythe as I did. "Figures, another one of the emperor's kids would be just as disrespectful of my own ability to fight for myself as he had been."
Shaking my head I could just envision the day I'd met that golden bastard that had been posing as some traveler come to free the planet from its necromancy overlords, a job that I had mostly done. There was only one left, the top ruler and the most powerful, hiding at the top of a mountain covered in poisonous zombies. The only reason he had not been killed was that place and, well… He had found me and raised me. And, yes, I was a bit hesitant about actually killing the man who had been my adopted father. If he had remained at the top of that mountain, I think we might have been able to come to some sort of agreement and turned that mountain into a prison that he could not come down from as the people of the valleys inherited the planet.
But I had been pushed to make an assault on that stronghold by the emperor's coming and claiming that if the people of my own world did not need his help or the Imperium then I would be able to defeat that warlord all on my own.
It was a terrible deal but I had been incensed by his behavior and let my emotions get the better of me. So I had a mounted an assault alone up that mountain, killing zombies and surviving the poisoned air as best I could as I made my way further and further up.
And upon reaching the top of the mountain I issued a challenge and failed.
My adopted father apparently had no hesitation about killing me though and was about to do it until the emperor stepped in. He blocked the blade that would have killed me and pulled me off the ground. Then he helped me kill my adopted father, never going for the killing blow himself but always driving the Necromancer towards me, towards my waiting blade and it was humiliating.
The great Necromancer did die on my blade but for all intent and purposes the kill belonged to the emperor. It was his skill, his resilience, that finally won the fight. I was just an instrument of his will in the end and it was grating on me. There, in front of my slain adopted father, he revealed information that he thought was of importance such as him being my quote unquote 'biological dad' and how he was there to bring me into his Imperium as a warlord.
There was not much else I could do on that matter at this point, I'd sworn. I knew already that if I did not succeed in killing the great necromancer alone I would swear my scythe to the emperor, so I did. Another thing that grate on me, I had exchanged one necromantic overlord for one golden overlord. Both claimed to be my father but were they telling the truth? That always was a curious thought to me. I could have sworn I'd heard another voice on that mountain, another voice claiming to be my father calling to me.
Shaking my head I focused on the here and now. I did not like my so-called family, too many of them seemed to have the opinion that they should interfere in my business and in my fights. Just the fact that this wolf was going to descend after I told them I didn't need help told me all I needed to know about them; they were another personality like the emperor.
So far the only one I found that I actually liked was Horus and that was simply because he knew how to set up a good battlefield and use my men as they needed to be used.
"Did they say where they'll be landing?" I asked the legionnaire who nodded, answering, "They plan to drop behind the enemy's current line of advance."
I tilted my head, that was rather aggressive. More aggressive than Horus' troops too. So maybe I was looking at this wrong, perhaps it wasn't that they were coming to help me but more that they enjoyed the fight.
Guess I would have to find out when I met them. Shaking my head I started moving down the line, looking up at the sky, waiting for the forces to descend. My white and green robes with gold etchings flowing in the wind as I did.
I knew wearing white was somewhat making a target of me on this battlefield but the plate armor was forged on my home world and it helped spot me out for my own men as well as the enemy. Yes most of my men wore greens of various shades along with the gold etching. Only a few heavy armor infantry units that I was experimenting with on behalf of the emperor, these Terminators, did wear white armor like myself.
So far they were rather successful units, in my opinion, and I was going to be giving the go ahead to adding them to the arsenal of things that Space Marines should have under their control. They turned an infantryman into a tank and I approved of that, as an infantryman should be able to do any role necessary on the battlefield without relying on machines that could break down or were big targets for the enemy's heavy equipment.
I did not have to watch the sky long as, soon, I saw lights moving downwards. Obviously drop pods by the looks of them. Very aggressive, not even bringing in air support? I would see though, against Orks it was perhaps unneeded here. It was very likely that these Orks did have some sort of anti-aircraft fire but drop odds were really resistant to those kinds of weapons, at least from what I had seen.
Estimating how long it would be before they landed I turned to the men and requested, "Give me a comm unit and tell everyone to be ready for an advance."
"Yes, my Lord!" the Marine acquiesced, giving a salute before trotting off in the direction of a nearby comm station. The advance had been on and off all day so we had been in the middle of a break when all this had begun and they'd already started building up a small set of structures for operational control, something that I thought was important. If something were to break through our lines and scatter us we would need to be able to fall back and reform into some sort of unit, not a hard thing since most of my men were trained not to be strictly companies but to be able to work with each other no matter what. You could take a man from company A, a man from company B and three men from company C and they'd still be able to work together to full proficiency. That was one of the ideals I had ingrained in this legion.
About the same time I saw the landing pods crashing through the sky into the Ork lines. Every Commander was waiting my order for a general advance. So I did not keep them waiting long, "Forward!" I ordered matter of factly, stepping out of the low trenches we had dug and starting to move forward at a slow and steady pace, my scythe kept at my side, appearing as the grim reaper as I moved across the battlefield with my legion to either side.
The Orks that had been facing us in their own makeshift trenches apparently were distracted for a good long while, turned to look at the spectacle opening up behind them. It was chaos from what I could see. The Ork trenches had been dug behind a tree line separating a farming territory from an orchard of some kind, overgrown with centuries of misuse.
It would appear that we were outside of some major town hidden by those overgrown orchards as they were starting to be a lot of fires through those trees, enough to determine that something massive was burning and the sound of fighting was ever growing. But the Orks did not keep their attention on the disaster going on behind them for too long as one of them spotted us marching towards them at the last possible moment and started screaming something in Orkish about a good fight. He charged out of the trench at us but didn't last very long as guns opened up on him, turning into a burning mess as Volkytes hit him directly.
Orks of course though don't know fear like humans so watching their friend turned into dust into the wind did not send the Orks into a panic. Instead they came roaring and charging out of their trenches directly at us giving us one opportunity to fire point Blank before we had to engage in hand to hand combat.
For some that might be a problem, for me it was a easy thing to deal with. My war scythe would slice through ranks of the Xeno scum and as I cleared the road for my legion they would simply follow me in, pushing further and further into the formation. Their own scythes and guns opened up as they followed me until we cut through the line meant to stop us from pushing forward into the trenches that they had dug where the greenskins that supplied the weapons of these Orks toiled. They began running in terror, mounting makeshift machine guns and firing at us.
There was no real time to pay special interest to these creatures so I allowed my men to deal with them. Instead, I pushed forward through the trees- and pushing was the correct word, my armor was rather wide at the shoulders and in a few places I had to use an extruder strength to knock over the tree to make a road.
The Marines to every side of me were doing the same, pushing over dead and young trees to try and get through this overgrown orchard until we broke through the other side. finally saw what was on fire for ourselves.
There was another open field, this one though appeared to have stopped being an open field sometime ago. Instead there was an Ork warcamp with structures that could date back to yesterday or 100 years ago made from salvaged wood and scrap metal. It was burning.
This massive war camp, at least the size of a small town, was burning at the hands of Marines in gray and blue armor. They often wore what appeared to be skins on the sides of their armor, making them look more like savages. Some of the Marines didn't even have their helmets on, revealing that they had full facial hair and unkempt hair as well.
They would not survive well on my homeworld of Barbarus, facial hair was a way to get yourself killed if you were not accustomed to have poison in your lungs as it would leave gaps between a mask and the outside air. it was the same for helmets, hair that long meant that there were probably gaps when they put their helmets back on.
Not meant for dealing with hazardous conditions, that's for sure. They were meant for what they were doing, burning things and fighting monsters like a bunch of barbarians.
Shaking my head I pushed forward, only stopping when I saw several Marines had not gone full barbarian yet. Three blue Marines were guarding what appeared to be slaves while a fourth appeared to be checking them over and unlocking the collars around their necks and giving them food.
Respectable. They may be barbarians but they looked after the weak, perhaps I would not be so annoyed with this new Primarch after all. Shaking my head I pushed forward up to a marine guarding the entrance to some bureaucratic-looking building and declared, "I am Mortarion, Primarch of the Death Guard. Where is your master so I might talk with them and discover what they know of the current ongoing battle?"
The Marine gave a salute, good old Aquila, before saying, "Our Lord Russ is through the gateway, currently interrogating the Over-Tyrant of Grel."
I raised an eyebrow, why were they interrogating an Ork themselves? Well there was actually more than just that that was interesting, I hadn't known that the Over-tyrant was close. If I had I would have pushed further, I wondered how this Primarch had known. And, to come back to it, why was the Primarch interrogating the Over-tyrant? After all, if we just killed them we'd be done with this thing and all we had to do was wipe out the remaining Ork forces.
Shaking my head in curiosity of what this Primarch was thinking I put my hand on the door and pushed it open, stepping into the chaos that was a burning city of Ork kind. I tried not to look too closely at the filthy place, mushrooms were growing everywhere and it was a disgrace in its own way, covered in filth and decay. Place probably stank hard but thankfully I did not have to deal with that thanks to my lower facemask.
Pushing my way through the chaos I soon found myself in the center of the town -or camp, whatever you prefer- looking up on what I guessed used to be the throne building of this tyrant overlord. It was currently burning as well, which was intriguing considering it looked like it was made from stone. They must have used some sort of chemical agent to spread across the roof to make sure I would burn, though how long it would burn was up in the air. Unless it burned its way into something that actually was worth burning it would probably go out after a while, just leaving a black and ruined mess.
On the steps of the House of this OverTyrant stood a crowd of Marines surrounding what I could best guess was their Primarch. From a distance I saw their back, somewhat short compared to some of the Primarch I'd met. They had medium to long blonde hair with a black fur line cape blowing in the wind as they stood over what by my guess were the remains of the OverTyrant, although at closer inspection as I pushed my way through I realized it wasn't remains. The Ork was still alive, barely.
His arms and legs appear to have been cut off. as I got closer and saw two legs standing on the ground, apparently frozen there, I realized it was more they had been snapped off.
"Alright big greeny, let's make this simple," came the voice of the Primarch as they stood over the creature, one foot pressing down on its side and a blade near its neck.
"There was supposed to be a fleet of enemy vessels in orbit and yet they're gone. That tells me that you've sent them somewhere, tell me where they are so we can destroy them."
The Ork laughed out loud before saying "Let me guess, you'll let me live."
"No, no, no. It's not that I'll let you live, it's that I won't hand you over to the Mechanicus to perform morally questionable cybernetics on you. For the betterment of mankind, of course."
"Haha, go screw yourself big booba one! Not going to tell where my boys have gone. They're going to pop up and cause so much trouble for your little Imperium that you won't believe."
"So you've confirmed they were planning to attack the Imperium… Well at least it puts what I'm doing to you down as something good after all. This galaxy doesn't need more slavers in action and it definitely doesn't need more monsters. Any last words on this situation before I call the Mechanicus to come pick you up?
"Yeah! Your brother in yellow will die screaming under the horde of Orks coming for him, Terran."
"Huh, was that intentionally telling me what's going on or were you just not thinking that through?"
"What do you mean?" the Ork said, sounding confused while still in pain.
"I mean you've told me where the fleet has gone, they've gone to our brothers in yellow. There's only, as far as I'm aware, one legion that wears yellow so all I have to do is contact them and see where they are in the nearby clusters."
"Oh… Oh fuck!"
The light blue Primarch gave out a merciful chuckle before slashing down there blade into the Ork's chest, ice quickly sprouting from the wound and engulfing the body.
Once the Ork was fully encased and dead they withdrew the blade and flicked it across the ground and the steps, sending its Gunk off it before sheathing it and turning to face me. I had a feeling when I'd seen the ice used but now I had confirmation as I saw the eyes glowing with The telltale use of magic. Another sorcerer King, I guessed. As I looked upon the face of the Primarch I knew I would just have to get used to working with monsters as so-called siblings.
Raising my hand I said "Mortarion of the Death Guard."
The light blue Primarch smiled as they tilted there head and said, "Tanya Russ of the Wolves of Fenris." They said with a nod in my direction before saying, "Nice cape."
Compliments were not something I was expecting but I said, "Ditto."
Stepping down the stones the shorter Primarch, as Tanya was shorter than me, said "Sorry about the whole coming down here without your leave but my men were restless and I prefer to get into the fight as soon as possible, especially considering there was supposed to be a fleet around this planet and we have no idea where they went."
"Wasn't that concerned with the situation myself. They're Orks, whatever fleet they've put together and sent out our siblings can deal with. The legions are strong, if we weren't we wouldn't be able to push this crusade all on our own as we have been."
"True but to pretend that the enemy cannot do things we do not expect is foolhardy in my opinion. If an enemy thinks claiming they're weak when they're actually strong will give them a better chance of winning they'll do it and Orks are more than capable of doing it. Their so called gods, Gork and Mork, are gods of brutality and cunning and though they do prefer to use their brutality in a straight fight they will use cunning and trickery when it serves them well enough." Tanya said, shaking their head as they stepped down from the last step onto my level
"Hmm, perhaps." I had yet to see this coming that Tanya feared but I may not have as much experience with Orks as they did.
Cracking their neck Tanya said, "Well, looks like we have a planet to clear out and a message to send. We will need to contact the Imperial Fist, I believe that's the name of the Marines wearing yellow, and warn them of what's coming. We'll find out the closest location of their outposts or legions. If this OverTyrant has sent that fleet away they probably sent at least half of their Waaagh with the fleet to do as much damage as possible."
"Hmm… Not nothing, Imperial Fists," I said with a nod. "Don't you think they could handle the situation on their own? After all rushing off into combat seems to deprive people of the ability to prove themselves capable in a situation."
"I'm sure they're more than capable, doesn't mean I let a hunt go unfinished. I was sent here to deal with the Ork Waaagh, I've dealt with their boss but they appear to have let most of their forces out to fight, which means I have to track them down. It's what the wolves of Fenris do, we hunt the enemies of the Emperor down." Tanya replied, as if that was the most universal rule in the universe.
"Now, once we've dealt with this planet, would you be willing to accompany me on such a mission? After all we were both given to this task, and this task has run from both of us."
"Hmm…" I gave it some thought before answering. "I guess I might as well, you've pointed out a good reason for me to join you on this gallivant across the Galaxy. I'm sure though our sibling has this situation under control."
"If he does, he does. If he doesn't, well then I guess we get to meet him. And if the worst comes to pass we get to know each other. In order to have a good working relationship we should get to know each other. After all how can we count on each other to fight by our sides if we don't know each other's tactics and ways of thinking? it's important, I believe, to build a working relationship.
I took in a deep breath of my homeworld's air before letting it out a little too hard as a puff of its escape the mask, billowing out a bit and perhaps showing my annoyance as it was carried in the wind into Tanya's face.
"Fine," I said with a shrug. "I will accompany you on this quest and we shall have a moment to talk. After all there's not much left here anyways." I said, looking around. Two legions could easily clean up this planet so leaving elements from both our forces would be more than enough.
As the smoke cleared from Tanya's face though I realized I may have unfortunately insulted them as there seemed to be a bit of annoyance now across their face. It quickly flashed away, returning to that strange smile they had but baring their fangs a bit though. I would have to be careful not to do that again as it seemed to have upset her.
"You know, most gas masks are meant to keep bad air out. I think this is the first time I've seen one that's used as a large vape." Tanya said, waving there hand to blow away the remnants of the smoke.
"Vape?" I asked, confused.
"Are you not breathing in some sort of heated mist? I did not smell any tobacco on it so I assume it's some kind of vaporizer meant to keep your throat moistened because you need to scream orders."
I blinked, a bit confused by that. I'd never considered that as a possible use of my device but it did make some sense. In some ways just breathing in the air of my homeworld to remind me of what I was here for and what I was going to be doing was not exactly necessarily the only use I could have for it. I would have to look into this vaping technology.
Shaking my head I simply replied, "It's a byproduct of my homeworld. The planet was full of poisonous air near the top layers of the atmosphere. Living in such conditions changes you a bit, makes you miss those strange gassy skies of the world you live in."
"I understand completely," Tanya said with a shake of there head before taking their thumb and showing the fang I had seen before, "I was not born with this. They grew in after living on my homeworld for a couple days, most likely this is some sort of biomechanical stuff the Emperor keyed into our DNA to make sure we would survive in whatever battlefield we came across." Tanya said with a shrug.
I tilted my head at that and looked at Tanya, finding something odd in their words. "Hmm if we were designed to be that adaptable… "I began, "Then wouldn't we have adapted to the conditions of Terra? After all, according to him there was a lab accident that sent us scattered into the winds of the Warp. As far as I can see I've never adapted to another planet since leaving my homeworld. Have you adapted to any other planets?"
Tanya stopped as they started to think about that for a moment before saying with an odd tone, "No… No I've never thought about that or had any other adaptations appear off Fenris. But that's probably because these adaptations that appeared via instinct were needed for the environment we were living in, once we acquire longevity as the emperor has I've been informed we will have more adaptation ability, up to even shapeshift. So, most likely, we will be able to adapt to the planets we are standing on."
I answered, shaking my head, "More magic bullshit. I would rather we had no such abilities."
"Not a fan of magic?" Tanya asked as they turned to me fully and sounding generally curious. I could still see that little bit of power behind their eyes and that upset me to some extent. I just didn't liked working with a mage, maybe I could explain why to this one.
"Let me tell you about my adopted father, the great Necromancer and War Lord of my homeworld, Necare of Barbarus and the horrors his kind unleashed on the people of my homeworld."