Tanya Russ
The Rangdan were a menace; that was the only way to describe their continued actions against the Imperium.
After the grand meeting of military officers convened by the Emperor, a general operational plan had been set forth to find the homeworld of the Rangdan and then destroy it. It would take time, and we would need to keep fighting them back, which kept putting us in places that brought us in contact with human worlds they had infected with their 'bioform virus' as it had come to be known.
It was an unfortunate thing, but it was really looking like we would be wiping out the human population in the sector, simply because there was no way to undo what had been done, and to let their corrupted genes leave this region would be disastrous.
Of course, that meant that there would need to be some sort of repopulation effort in this system. I could leave it to the Administratum, but with how close we were to Fenris, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to grow my own personal holdings. So I had volunteered some of these systems we were clearing out for Fenrisian control at the next meeting. It happened the day after the discussion of the general strategy.
Surprisingly, my quote-unquote sister, Lion El'Jonson, volunteered as well, obviously seeing my attempts to try and help secure this space as some sort of threat to her position.
It was worrisome how Lion was threatened by everything I did. Honestly, it was ridiculous. They had already built up their own career. Why were they worrying about what I got up to?
But such was life. If they wanted to see threats to their career everywhere, they would continue to see threats to their career everywhere. I was just going to focus on the here and now and dealing with the problems of the Imperium and making sure my retirement was well and truly going to happen.
The Emperor approved my initiative and apparently was going to be sending a message to the leader of the Iron Fist Legion whose homeworld was in the same region and might be willing to contribute some colonists to the effort as well.
And beyond that, we got to work on the operations to push the Rangdan out.
Dorn and Perturabo immediately began pushing forward their lines to try and secure fortifications within Rangdan space. Planets that were well and truly fortified would require a bit more effort to take.
The Khan took control of the Pale Warden Legion, and the two of them got to work scouting out deep space, trying to find the homeworld of the enemy, shadowing enemy ships, and seeing if they could find another opening into this labyrinth that possibly could be the halfway to their own world.
That left Mortarion, Lion El'Jonson, myself, and Nobunaga as the main frontline formations trying to clean up and clear out enemy fortifications in front of us and secure territory as quickly as possible.
That, of course, was the problem. Every time we thought we had an area secured, we'd either find another nest of bioforms behind us, either created while we weren't looking, or being deployed by ships that apparently were very good at getting past the Imperial Navy.
But as we pushed forward we were no longer just running into bioforms. It seemed that the Rangdan had calculated that a portion of the region in front of their territory was to be degraded with their bioform virus. These people were chosen to be sacrificed, creating a no man's land of monsters before you got to the real threats.
Trained soldiers, that's what I was dealing with today. That, and the Primarch of the Second Legion, Nobunaga. The planet Uhines was a familiar world in some senses, snow covered and full of native monsters other than the bioform, though hardly as terrible as Fenris when it came to ice worlds.
Not only because it was not officially a Death World, there were places that were quite fertile even in the coldest regions, but because there were what I could best describe as genetically enhanced cherry blossom trees.
They seem to just be blooming all year long and dropping their leaves across almost the entire planet. Obviously, this planet had been terraformed at some point, why and how I don't know, lost to time as the population that had been here were now fighting us as nothing more than monsters.
But that was not the only threat we had to deal with, there were orks on this planet. Lots and lots of ork mercenaries from across most of the Galaxy.
How did I know they were from across most of the Galaxy? Well they told me. Or at least Dark Shadow had told me.
Was this the same Dark Shadow I'd run across in the campaign against the Wheel of Fire? Hard to say, but they were claiming to be and that they were claiming they had faced me in the Wheel of Fire. I barely had any memory of running into them, but they were claiming that they had been hired by the Rangdan to prevent me from successfully taking this planet.
Whether we had met before or not, they knew how to fight. They had dragged out this conflict from what should have been a three week affair out to three -months so far. We'd been forced to dig in and fight them head to head in operations that reminded me quite a bit of some of the reports I'd read about the fighting on the planet Xyat, the planet my last Legion Master had died on.
Now, maybe it was just similarities in fighting styles, but it was somewhat concerning and if this ork really was the ork from the Wheel of Fire and had in fact seen to the death of my Legion Master, this operation was going to get a little personal for my men simply for the fact that they would swear vengeance on the ork, it was that simple.
Blood debts would be called for the moment that my army knew exactly who they were facing, and while I wasn't exactly against that, it was also something that could be used against me so I was keeping that Intel to myself. I didn't care how much this blue ork liked to celebrate, I was going to continue to say no I don't believe you.
My men needed to clear their heads, and getting them angry over my mistake would not be conducive to their good conduct on this operation, especially when we needed to work in cohort with the Sons of the Second Legion.
I had my issues with the leader of the Second Legion, his bravado and belief that he was the reincarnation of Oda Nobunaga being chief amongst them, but I would not say that his legion was unprofessional. They were doing a good job of clearing out the city with the skill of a unit that seemed to be devised specifically for this job.
I'd say they were doing a better job than mine, just comparing the damage reports from my side of the city to his. One fourth of the city was destroyed where we were fighting, while on his side of the city it was mostly still standing.
Now I could believe that he was doing a terrible job and my men were simply having to use more explosives because that was what was needed, or I could believe he was doing a good job and it was just down to tactics. So, I was going to believe it was just down to tactical differences. If he was somehow doing a terrible job, well, this was why I kept my own version of the Imperial Army close at hand to clear out areas after we had cleared them and keep up a little bit of a secondary defense line between my forces and his as we made our way through the city.
Now that I was down from the fortifications where I had been overseeing the city and on the front lines, I should probably pay him a visit to get more information on the situation on his side of the city instead of relying on reports and the occasional conversation over telecommunications.
I didn't tend to go to the front lines as often as I used to. I trusted my men to be able to do the job, so there was no reason for me to lead them that often. Instead, there was plenty of time to let local leaders take up the chance to get some glory for themselves, become the men they needed to control the legion, and individual fighting companies.
Theoretically, in time, these men would become their own little lords of the legion, their own little legionary commanders underneath me. So, they needed to be given enough room to both succeed and make mistakes so they could learn.
But today, I had come down from my position for one simple thing and one simple thing only. There was a strange report that a portion of the battlefield was no longer fighting.
Why would a portion of the battlefield no longer be fighting when Orks and Space Marines tended to beat the hell out of each other whenever they got the chance? I didn't know, but I was very concerned.
This is why I brought my Varangianr Huscarls of the first company and had them marching behind me. I wasn't bringing my Valkyrie for this. My personal guard was frankly more trained over the decades of experience than most of the Valkyrie. They had a better chance of survival simply because they were Space Marines and had better armor and weapons. Well, I had gathered quite a bit of Terminator armor by this point. The armor had been spread out to the great companies in small quantities, but the majority was concentrated in the Varangian Guard. Not because I needed the extra protection, but because I needed an armored fist to throw at something once in a while. The Varangian Guard served quite well as that armored fist.
So we had an unknown situation with the Orks, and I was marching at the head of my column into what could be a problem area. Hopefully, it would be something that could be cleared up easily enough. Perhaps they stopped fighting because there had been some sort of truce made up. Maybe the Orks wanted to surrender? Doubtful, but hey, less fighting is good fighting as far as I was concerned. Or maybe they had run into some third unknown situation. Maybe the bioforms weren't as easily controlled on this planet and were attacking both the Orks and my men, and they had stopped firing at each other to try and deal with that situation. Or maybe they had unleashed some new viral weapon that had killed them all. I don't know, but I needed to know to continue this campaign. Plus, after this operation was done, I could easily march the rest of the way to my secondary lines and find out how things were going over there.
Sighing, I looked over my shoulder at the column behind me. I couldn't even see most of their faces as they were all wearing Cataphractii Terminator armor. One thing I would make extremely clear, though, was that I was a little bit more relaxed with some Great Companies. The first great company needed to keep their helmets on, especially for situations where we might be going into unknown, contaminated zones. They were following my orders exactly, even I was following my orders, and I put on the wolf helm and closed off the internal vents. That gave me a bit of an ability to sniff out the enemy.
We didn't know what we were dealing with, so it was better to be safe than sorry. I didn't want to end up like the few dreadnoughts that were also among the First Company. Men of good standing had been horribly injured but wanted to continue to fight. If that had been me, I would have taken them out and gone to take a teaching position back at the Fortress of the Fang on Fenris. But my men were particularly stubborn about dying in combat. Well, not so much dying in combat but getting as much fighting as possible in their life. It's hard to say sometimes.
So I had to allow this process of internment for these men, even though once you became a dreadnought, there was no way out of it, apparently. Which concerned me on a different level. The dreadnought armor style was a useful thing, a squad support mech that could easily provide a lot of versatility that a tank could not. Tanks had trouble with mountainous and forested regions, even urban environments. But this squad support mech, well, it was basically just a giant person, not Titan-level, but able to support quite well.
Carrying big guns and lots of ammunition into a combat situation, it seemed foolish to me, to not create something that could be operated by some perfectly healthy Space Marines, but apparently, no one had really thought about it.
It was annoying how some simple concepts just didn't seem to pop into the heads of the Mechanicum or other production units for the Imperium.
I needed to find someone within the Imperium who was actually thinking of long-term weapon production because there would not always be a plethora of wounded to be strapped into such machines, and not every wound would be so grievous that they would permanently need to be tuned inside such machines.
There were two or more, and currently, I had a squad of a dozen and another couple were along the sides of the column. There were about a thousand Marines with me in total because if you're going to go into a problem, you're going to go big. I probably could have settled this with a hundred, but crushing the problem was more my style than feeding it piecemeal.
We also had the artillery of several Russ tanks pointed at this problem area to be called in if needed, simply because I didn't want to risk losing this operation.
The two Terminators in front of the column stopped as we arrived at the front lines, which should have been a hellfire of guns and explosions, but was completely silent in front of us.
To the left, I could hear off in the distance sounds of gunfire and such, and to the right, I could hear it as well. It meant that around here, things were still being fought over, but this part of the line was completely quiet, as if something had simply silenced everything.
Confused, I stepped forward, my cape billowing behind me as I did. Several Varangians grabbed their guns and moved to either side of me as we approached what should be the front line of the fighting.
But instead, all I saw were some rudimentary trench works and an empty line that represented where my men should be.
Turning to a nearby officer of the Varangian, I asked, "What formation is supposed to be here, and why are they not here?"
He looked around, nodding for a moment before saying, "I believe this is the 15th Great Companies' line. There should be members of that company scattered around here, at least 300 to 400 men."
I nodded as I looked around. "So where are they?"
Something wasn't right. I could feel it, but I wasn't sure what it was. I dropped down into the trenches and looked around to get a better look. I quickly saw that everything had just stopped only moments before. Someone's meal ready to eat was lying open on a small overturned crate, and the steam was still coming off of it, which meant that, for all intents and purposes, they were about to eat before whatever happened, happened.
Continuing to look around, I saw guns dropped here or there, a few pieces of armor, and I was a bit concerned that maybe finally the warp had created something that would affect Space Marines and turn them into bioforms, but I saw no evidence of that.
Taking a knee, I put my hand in the dirt and pulled it up, making sure it was just dirt and not fleshy substances that used to be human. There was no blood either, at least not in the quantity that I could say was due to a person melting and recombining into a monster.
My men jumped into the trenches after me, quickly filling it up and securing it. I could hear the commander of the first calling up the 15th commander and asking for reinforcements to our position. After all, it was a giant hole in the line, and we needed to close it as fast as possible. Whatever had happened here was not exactly conducive to us winning this conflict.
Poking my head up out of the trench, I looked across. There was still no fire coming from it, which seemed unlikely. It should have been orks or maybe another mercenary force across from us firing everything they had at us, but they weren't. This told me that whatever had happened here happened over there, so it was better to find out what was going on. Grabbing the trench, I pulled myself up onto the no-man's land, brushing myself off, and taking it slow as I crossed the area.
Well, slow for the first few steps. I expected someone to shoot at me, and I would jump back into the trench, but nothing happened. So I pushed onward, the Varangian doing the same, pulling themselves out of the trench and following me across the no-man's land of several destroyed buildings and what used to be a park, by the looks of it.
Arriving at the other side, I looked down and saw the trench for the orks in a similar shape, completely abandoned, almost like there was a rush to escape some unknown fate. Yet there was no activity, like there would have been a rush to escape. Some unknown fate was over there, and there were things that would obviously have been knocked over if things had been forced into a retreat. A table that was precariously holding up ammunition but only had three legs, a desk that obviously had once been a piano that was lying against the wall that the men would have had to retreat over, and most likely would have been kicked over during said escape.
I jumped down into this trench, seeing that the orks had done a good job of digging it out, or their animals did. I did see several corpses of squigs here and there. It was not impossible to assume that they forced them to do the digging.
Looking left and right, I chose a random direction and started moving further into the trenches, looking for any survivors. Members of my first great company jumped in after me, clearing the trench with a little more professionalism than I was doing myself, simply because I had already come to the assumption that this place was abandoned and they needed to find evidence of why so it didn't happen throughout the entire line.
Turning a corner, I was about to call my brother in the Second to see if they had anything similar going on when I saw something unusual, to say the least. An ork was on the ground, a blade in his hand, as a bioform was about to rip it to shreds. They weren't doing that, neither was the ork trying to slash at the thing because they seemed to be stopped, completely unmoving statues.
I had to do a couple of double takes to try and piece together what I was looking at.
"Hmm, no, this won't do at all," came a voice from an alcove in the trench. Carefully, I detached my bolter from my side and started moving forward, wondering what the hell was going on, before what the hell was going on was made quite clear to me.
A tall metal skeleton walked out of the alcove to look at the two frozen bodies, shaking his head as a strange green glow seemed to emanate from his eyes and other areas of what I could just guess was glass or some other form of power transfer. They were carrying a large staff that was only vaguely familiar, reminding me of the weapon that the Second Primarch had got his hands on, and they had a rather ridiculous-looking metal cape as they walked along.
Shaking their head, they seemed to be observing the frozen pair before saying, "This is too dramatic. We need to work out something better for their final position. Plus, an ork using a knife in close combat? That's unlikely. It would probably use a bolt gun."
"My Primarch, we have found nothing in the trenches," came a voice from behind me, causing the skeleton to turn and face our direction.
Thankfully, I already had my gun pointed at it as I said, "Thank you, First Officer Henry Fyf. I believe I have found something, though." I never took my eyes off the robot skeleton as it stood there, seeming to be surprised to see me. I think it's hard to tell, the face was rather unmoving.
It tilted its head before saying, "You're one of the Primarchs, aren't you? Most likely the Legion Master of the Space Wolves, correct?"
"Wolves of Fenris," I responded before saying, "Only the orks call my legion that and get away with it. So, you better start explaining what's going on here, Mr. Terminator knockoff."
"Terminator knockoff? I will have you know, I pre-existed your little action film by several million years and…. Wait, how do you know about Terminator? Every last copy of it in human hands was destroyed in the 15M. The only remaining copy I know about is in my own vaults."
The Iron Man put its hand under its chin as it was looking at me with an appraising stance, as if he was trying to determine something about me. I never took my finger off the trigger as I kept my eyes on him before saying, "As a Primarch, I have access to things that most people don't know about. The Palace has quite a large collection of movies."
It was a lie, but I said it with such confidence, I hope he takes me and believes it 'cause I'd rather not have to explain reincarnation to whatever the hell this is.
The robot nodded before saying, "Of course, the Emperor . It is an ever-growing collection in attempts to control the galaxy. Do wish him luck on that. You can pull it off, war maybe if you abated, but let's be serious. No empire has successfully united the galaxy, and I doubt his is going to do the job."
I tilted my head before shaking it and saying, "Now, that's your opinion. I don't care if he unites it or not, as long as we get to a point where I can retire, I'll be fine with that."
"Retirement? Oh, what a glorious, foolish dream," a robot said with a shake of its head. "There's no such thing as retirement for the heroes of a story, only death, pain, and suffering, or, well, faking your death. That's possible."
The robot seemed to think for a moment before saying, "Where are my manners? I ought to introduce myself." Giving a rather large bow, he said, "I am Trazyn the Infinite, Liberator of Antiquities, Protector of History, and Collector of Events."
"And let me guess, hired muscle for the Rangdan" I said.
"Usually, you give the person your name after they introduce themselves, young lady," the robot said before adding, "Until you show me some manners, I will not be answering any of your questions."
I narrowed my eyes behind my helmet before saying, "Tanya Russ, leader of the VI Legion, the Wolves of Fenris."
"Oh, yes, it's the Orks who call you the Big Booba one. I've heard of you from some of my samples over the last few years."
"Samples? What do you mean?" I asked as Trazyn snapped the fingers of his right hand, and the Ork and bioform disappeared.
"As I said, I am a collector. I am not, in fact, an agent of the Rangdan. I'm just seeing the writing on the wall for the Rangdan. They're going to be annihilated sooner or later. I'm giving them twenty years in total, so I have fourteen years or less to collect a few samples of their culture before it's all destroyed under your boots."
"Ah-huh," I said, still pointing my gun at him. "And are these samples including about three hundred to four hundred Wolves of Fenris? They should be in the trench across from here."
The robot laughed before saying, "What? No, no, I haven't captured any Wolves of Fenris. I've simply preserved some culture of the Wolves of Fenris, which obviously will not survive this campaign for the reunification of humanity."
"What does that mean?" a soldier from somewhere behind me asked, causing Trazyn to look past me at them as he said, "You're genetic monstrosities of humanity. If the Emperor is as I know him to be, he will sooner or later seek to undermine the Legions and cause them to, well, clean each other up. You don't need a million-man army of genetic monsters when you have billions of humans that you can throw at a problem, especially when you're trying to make sure that humans are the inheritors of the Empire."
"Please try not to imply that the Emperor is planning to murder his own men," I said, still pointing my gun at him before asking, "And please return the so-called cultural elements that you have taken."
The robot seemed to think about it for a moment before saying, "I hope you're not foolish enough to not consider the possibility that he will betray you. He did get rid of the Thunder Warriors in a similar way, turning the Custodian Guard on them and having one last fight to the end. A few survivors that I have managed to bring under my control never stop talking about the betrayal of it all, how he had ordered them massacred and butchered."
I fired a shot into the man's shoulder. It pinged off his armor, causing him to stop.
"I don't know who or what is telling you such tales, and I don't really care. Father is not interested in training his soldiers, and I really doubt he will simply have our Legions be exterminated. There's no reason to do that."
"Isn't there a reason though after all? Aren't you and your people, a barbaric type of brutal warriors brought up to be even more brutal monsters, no different than these bioforms that the Rangdan have deployed in their own way?"
"There's a major difference between a hive-minded mass of flesh sent to kill humans and humans who have simply been genetically altered for combat."
"Yes, yes, yes, you do have more of a higher functioning on an individual basis, that is true" The robot shook his head before saying, "and you do have the ability to pull off some rather remarkable attempts at pissing off the wrong people. The second Primarch, I think it is, really poked a bear a few years back and was lucky to get out of that alive." It shook its head before saying, "Though maybe that's another way he'll get rid of them eventually. My bet is on a false flag civil war, and he'll try to get you to fight each other, and whichever one survives will be the rulers of humanity, if he lets you survive at all."
"Are you sure you're not working for the Rangdan? 'Cause it sure sounds like you're trying to start a fight with us."
"No, I'm just trying to distract you while I set up a proper teleportation for myself. After all, I'm not much of a fighter; I'm more of a, ah, Collector."
My finger was already pressed as his fingers clicked, and several bolt rounds went through the area he had occupied a moment before.
The temptation to swear was quite large as I realized he had played me. So, instead, I simply holstered my gun and bit my lip inside my helmet, looking at the area where this Trazyn character had been a moment before before shaking my head. "Put a call into the Emperor. I need to know what he knows about Trazyn and why he's kidnapped 300 of my men."
The captain of the first nodded his head as he came up next to me before saying, "It will be done, my Primarch. What should we do with this?" He indicated the trench we had captured.
Shaking my head, I said, "Isn't that obvious? He's carved a hole in their line. Calling every unit we have and start pushing them through this hole, and we're going to roll up both sides of this line, break the current stalemate, push the enemy back as far as we can. We may have lost 300 men, but we're going to make the most of their loss."
"Yes, my Primarch," the captain said as I turned to start heading back to our own line so I could meet with the Primarch of the second and find out what he knew about this Trazyn character .
Tanya Russ
Well, besides the Egyptian Terminator robots, everything was going to plan. I managed to find my way through the various explosions that were remnants of this city and ruins that were becoming more and more common to the Second Legion's part of the line.
It became quite apparent as soon as I stepped into their side of the line that the city was in much better intact state. How he managed to have his fighting be done in such a way that the city was not rendered into rubble like mine was, I didn't know, but I did feel jealousy, I guess, towards it.
If I could take a city without destroying it, I'd definitely be doing it. Simply because it would make resettling a population a year after the war easier if there were already homes built and ready to be moved into. Granted, it would probably take a couple of decades to clear this place out completely, so by the time that happened, it would probably just be easier to bulldoze the wrecks and non-wrecks and build anew.
But that was beside the point. I kept moving further and further into the city, asking the Second Legion troopers who spotted me the direction to my brother. Thankfully, they seemed to have a good idea and kept pointing me towards the back lines, which told me that he wasn't a fool and was already engaging in frontline combat for no reason.
Pushing forward, I kept moving until I found what I was looking for. My brother had apparently set up a tent inside an abandoned stadium. The tent was not very garish, but it was obviously easy to spot from any direction once you spotted it, being made of white linens on the sides.
Stepping forward, I approached the door where several of my brother's honor guards were waiting with large spears in their hands, appearing to be made from power tech technology.
They crossed their spears, blocking my route, which was a bit surprising, and I heard a few grumbles from the Terminators behind me, honestly not liking the fact that I had been stopped. Hell, most of my First Great Company had been flooded into the gap in their lines. I had brought along 20 of my Terminator-wearing guard simply in case something abnormal happened. AKA, I wasn't trusting that robo-skeleton to be fully gone, and I don't know what its plans were, but if it had kidnapped Space Marines, what were the chances it could not kidnap a Primarch?
Looking at the pair, I said, "Is my brother unavailable at this moment or what? Why am I being held out here?"
The pair looked at each other before one of them obviously talked into his helmet's internal radio. They didn't say anything to me.
After a few moments, a guard came forward and pushed the spears up, saying, "Sorry about that, Wolf King. Nobunaga was not expecting you, and he has an unexpected guest at the moment already. He had said no one should enter during the original meeting."
I nodded before saying, "That makes sense. Well, is it okay for us to talk now? I've had a very confusing and interesting trip over here, and I probably need more details about what he knows about something I came across."
"Hmm, yes, you can come in," the soldier said, leading the way as I stumbled into the tent and turned a corner, the canvas walls in my view. I saw my brother on his throne, with one of his cat girls massaging his shoulders. Apparently, he had decided not to wear his armor at this critical point in the campaign. An ork stood before him, seeming to be not under a threat of combat and completely cordial.
I blinked a couple of times before the ork turned and saw me. He smiled and said, "Big-booba one, I was wondering when you would show up. I was actually hoping to contact you, but well, things have gotten unexpected."
I recognized that voice, and my hand immediately went up as I said, "Shadow."
"Dark Shadow, yes. It's good to see you in the flesh, Space Wolf," the ork said with a smile, confusing the hell out of me.
"It's Wolf of Fenris, and would you please explain to me, brother, why is this Xeno here?" I asked, gesturing at Dark Shadow.
My brother, who had been observing, nodded his head before saying, "Mr. Dark Shadow here has contacted me about switching sides in this conflict."
I blinked before saying, "What? Why?" turning to Dark Shadow.
They weren't smiling before saying, "You see here, Miss Big Booba, we have a good rivalry going on here, and I'm quite enjoying our fights. It's just that the people who hired me or, what's the term I'm looking for, disgusting monsters, yes that do, they aren't worth working for. Originally I had a contact with another ork friend of mine who was working for the Rangda on a planetary body away from here. They were fighting men in yellow and black."
"That must be Iron Warriors," I thought, since they tended to put yellow and black on their armor sides to mark the warning signs that they've seen across the many battlefields.
I nodded my head as the ork continued, "While connection was lost a few days ago, but now I could assume that he died in combat. After all, he was fighting a formidable foe, and his fighting capabilities were more than worth it. But he's like me and knows when to pull back at the right time, so I doubt that's what happened. If I had heard from him, I would be less worried. If I hadn't, and the Rangdan local commander has been acting a bit, what's the term I'm looking for here, jumpy ever since that happened."
"He's also been eyeing our lines as they got more contracted, even though we're well within the loss rate. He seems to be pushing for the use of more biological monsters. And two days ago, he convinced a regiment of orks that there was a virus going around in a part of the line and had them inject themselves with a quote-unquote antiviral agent."
I blinked as I realized what he was implying and laughed at the stupidity of our enemies.
"Now, I may be simple but I'm no simpleton. Obviously, they want to turn us into bioforms and send us against your lines and probably escape with a few surviving Rangdan still on the planet. Now, I'm not a fan of that. Orks like a good fight, but we like to fight our enemies as orks, not as whatever the hell the bioforms are. So, I am negotiating the surrender of my line in exchange for switching sides."
"I thought you were my enemy. Don't think you can call me your enemy when we're on the same team," I said.
The ork laughed before saying, "Yes, yes. You would still be my enemy even if I switched sides. I'm afraid this would just be a temporary truce. A temporary alliance against greater threats , and then I would scatter off into the wild unknowns and rebuild my strength for another little campaign against you. One without what's the word here... it's morally dubious allies, I think."
"That would probably mean you'd find absolutely no one willing to work with you," Nobunaga said as he shook his head before adding, "The Dark Eldar aren't exactly morally decent ."
"Hmm, true, true. I'd probably continue to work mostly with orks in the future, rather than work with these monster makers. Apparently, they're too tempted to use their magics to turn their allies into monsters to actually win a war."
"What does that mean?" I said, already knowing that they weren't doing the best job, but I was interested in his perspective since he had been fighting for them and had had some contact with the Rangdan. Perhaps there was a bit of intel that could be withdrawn from this Dark Shadow before he switched sides.
"Exactly what I said. They've already determined that they're going to lose this war, at least if they fight it conventionally. So they've decided the best way to win is just to make everyone suffer. They've said it quite clearly - make you bleed for every ounce of ground that you take, which as an ork, I'm not the biggest fan of, but a good fight is a good fight. It's just the part where it's kind of obvious they're going to turn us into non-orks, that I'm not a fan of."
I sighed, nodding my head, wondering what kind of world I existed in that I could agree with an Ork on something. Well, I guess the kind of world where I would rather be human than some sort of bioform. And if they have a new technology that can turn orks into bioforms, well, I don't want to find out what other technologies they're working on.
Turning to my brother, I asked, "Well, I see no reason why we shouldn't allow the orks to switch sides in this combat. These monsters are threats to both of us, after all."
My brother nodded before he said, "Yes, though I've been told that the Administratum will not accept any contracts from Xenos to fight for them on this campaign. According to them, we are to show humanity's superiority with this campaign, so that they can broadcast it across the galaxy that we defeated the Rangdan all by ourselves and without help from anyone else."
I blinked before sighing, face palming myself at the stupidity of the Administratum.
Shaking my head, I turned to the ork and said, "How would you like to be under contract to Fenris, not the Administratum or the Imperium?"
"What?" he asked, raising what passed for an eyebrow.
"I have a hold full of ork teeth aboard my battleship. I'd be willing to pay you that in exchange for the surrender of your garrisons."
"Hmm, that's a nice contract. I imagine a hold of your battleship's quite big. That would set me up for some time. Are you okay with doing that, though, my enemy? After all, that would simply make me stronger and potentially a graver fight for you the next time we meet."
I raised an eyebrow at that before shaking my head and saying, "Well, no, it probably would not do, as long as you're only going to be working for us. I don't care. Secondly, fighting you is probably good to get my men's skills up, since you seem to be able to replicate the effects of the Wheel of Fire on any battlefield you're on. So I see no reason not to let you go. Continue on your way, on the assumption that you will continue to fight the Rangdan until they are completely defeated."
"Hmm, well that's a deal," he said, holding out his hand. I took it and gave it a shake.
"It'll be an honor to work with you, big-booba one. Even better honor to fight you after this is over," he tipped a hat he was wearing at me before he walked out of the place, vanishing into invisibility before even leaving the tent.
Sighing, I turned to my brother and said, "So how are we going to sell this to Dad?"
"Oh, I'm thinking we just don't talk about it," my brother said with a shake of his shoulders. "In fact, we could easily just earmark this particular incident as something that needs to be kept under wraps. Afterall the Adeptus Administratum doesn't need to know what we're doing. It's not their place to interfere with military affairs. So why not just make it so that, as far as they know, it never happened?"
I raised my hand to provide a counterpoint, but then scratched my chin and thought. Nothing he said was wrong . The Adeptus Administratum was a pain in the ass to deal with, so if we simply marked this whole situation as confidential, they probably wouldn't even care. It's not like they had an investigation arm to check up on what we were doing, so we might as well. In my head, I said, "Deal."
Before I went on to ask the burning question, "So that's a strange metal pole arm you found with the green glowing stuff. What race did you get that from? Because I think I just ran into a member of it on this planet."
My brother sat forward in confusion before saying, "I got that from a campaign against a massive moon-sized structure, maybe bigger, filled with strange technology like that. I only intended to explore its surface, but once we started fighting the automated defenses, we kind of had to push a little bit deeper before pulling back." He nodded to the right, and one of his Fox maids brought across the staff from its wooden chest. Taking it from her, he held it in his hand before saying, "I have no idea what species this is from. All I know is that it is a very interesting and powerful technology. And the planet was defended by robots, so I assumed it must be some leftover from the Men of Iron."
I nodded in my head before saying, "Maybe it isn't. I ran into one of these robots on the planet. They claim they were much older than the Men of Iron and had abilities and powers that imply they might not be lying on that matter: teleportation and some sort of time-stopping effect."
"Hmm, time-stopping. I sure hope they didn't do anything to you while you were unaware."
I blinked and cursed internally before finally saying, "I was never rendered unaware." I tried not to think about the implication that my brother had just made because it was a terrible thought that I wished had vanished from my mind.
"Oh, good, good. Well then, as for these Men of Iron of unknown origin, as far as I'm aware, the creatures on the planets I investigated withdrew to their stronghold, once I pulled back and seemed to take no care as long as I stayed far away."
"Well, still, I believe these unknown Men of Iron kidnapped 300 Space Marines with their time control, so this is a threat to us if we run into them."
"Hmm, well, I think the only option we have here is to contact Father about this. He has more in-depth knowledge about all the Xenos races out there. I'm sure he could probably give us some clues as to who these Men of Iron of unknown origin are. Perhaps this is something that could be talked out with them, and your men can be returned."
"That, I hope," I said with a nod before shaking my head. "But I don't believe we'll be that lucky. Also, I believe now we're about to have a bit of a breakthrough on their line in my area. This unknown Men of Iron created a gap in both of our lines, and I just happened to exploit it first. My men are already moving into it. I said before saying, "and assuming that the orks that are about to leave the line are in front of me, that'll be two large holes in their line that we can easily puncture through. The campaign for this planet may have just been cut short by several months."
"Maybe years," I said with a smile before I noticed another Space Marine of a different legion entering the 11th.
It was the familiar emblem of the 11th who gave a nod to me before reporting, "A hole has opened up in the arc lines. We have fighting being confirmed within the Rangdan location between orks and non-mercenaries. Commanders in the field are requesting permission to push forward."
"That was fast," Nobunaga said with a nod before standing up and issuing orders to move forward and help the orks against the non-orks. They are our allies for this complex combat."
The Marine nodded and left, and I looked to the commander of the First Company and said, "Issue similar orders to our own men. The orks are switching sides. We might as well make sure that they are encouraged to do so."
The commander saluted and stepped out of the tent to send out the order, leaving her alone with the Primarch of the Second Legion and his retinue.
Looking at him, she asked, "What's with the 11th? Why are they here?"
"Ah, yes. I tend to have a bit of the 11th hanging around with my formation. The leader is a good man, his legion found my homeworld first. He's very driven to find his own gene father but also acknowledges that one gene father is as good as another, and so he tends to work with me when he has the chance."
That made sense to Tanya. She had heard that some legions that had yet to find their Primarch tended to stick to the legions that were a bit more friendly to them. Primarily, it was known that the Pale Wonders were almost the second legion of the Luna Wolves, often working well with them and following Horus's orders to the letter.
So it wasn't that weird, although she had not been informed that they were around. Shaking her head, she said, "I should really have a conversation with the 11th Legion Master when I have a chance. I've never met him."
"Yes, when you have a chance, you should. I think you two would get along. You both seem to enjoy order quite a bit." Whatever thought he was going to continue with, he shook his head then and said, "I must wait for another time. I'm going to get my armor on. The fray war is about to crack wide open. I assume you'll be joining the battlefield, my sister."
Tanya smiled and nodded, giving a valiant reply, "Of course, brother. I wouldn't miss this fight for anything."
Bjorn
What commander had set his footsteps on that cursed him to this fate? After the Battle of Emapus, his unit had been quite mauled. Most of the third Great Company had been wiped out, which didn't mean much since there were other units that could take their place. His unit could be pulled out of the line entirely, and that's what happened. The more destroyed units had been sent back to Fenris to start recruitment of the Aspirants to repair the losses, and units like his within the company structure had been put on redeployment. They were sent to oversee old conquests and check up on everything. In essence, he had been moved from the front line, one of the old organizations that was always with the Primarch, to the back lines, and one of the backline units had been moved up into their place. It was infuriating, to say the least.
No longer was he fighting monsters. No longer was he winning glory for his gene-father or proving the superiority of Fenris. No, now he was back in the Wheel of Fire on New Vietnam, occasionally patrolling outside of the Wolf Fortress. A structure built sometime after the War for the Wheel of Fire to overlook the human resettlement of the territory, as well as make sure that the ork population stayed relatively minuscule to nonexistent.
Oh sure, he did get a few fights in here and there. The orks were not completely gone, but they were always primitives. The Third Company was simply just overseeing the local population's own hunters that dealt with the orks for the most part.
Sighing, I leaned over the wall to look out across the valley that once played host to the final, colossal, and majestic battle between the orks of the Wheel of Fire Warboss and my own Primarch. It had been nearly 30 years since I had fought, and in that time the jungles had grown back quite a bit. This place, which had served as our breaching point into the sector, had developed quite a bit. There had been a population of humans left behind, of course, slaves that had been made free. And in that time, they had taken up residence on this planet. Most of them were primitive and were making use of the planet's ecosystem for the best, but there was a small city at the base of the mountain that the Wolf Fortress sat on.
This population had no connection to Fenris as far as I was aware, but apparently, someone had seen enough images of time to commission a statue of her. Surprisingly, it was more tasteful than the one that was built on her own planet. At least she was wearing full power armor. Apparently, the Ork saying of "the Big Booba one" had quite worked its way into the population's mindset as well. The proportions on the upper body were a little bit ridiculous.
Thankfully, the statue was not as large as the one on Fenris, about half the size, and could easily be forgotten here since this was a backwater even amongst backwaters.
Apparently, they did have one day that they celebrated the liberation of the Wheel of Fire, something called "Fenris Day" near the end of the year. Fun factoring in with the constant guards of the Wolves of Fenris up here in the mountain, it would never be forgotten that we were the ones who freed the Wheel of Fire.
Beyond that, well, there wasn't much else to talk about. It had only been 30 years since the freeing of the Wheel of Fire, so construction could not have progressed all that much. From what I understood, there were a few other colonies on planets that I had fun on, including the one where the Wolf Temple now stood as a monument to the Legion Master, Enoch Rathvin, and those Iron Warriors that fought by our side to conquer the planet. Other populations lived on the former capital world of the Orks, though that one was mostly abandoned. From what I'd heard, there had been a secondary infestation of Orks not too long after we'd left, and one or two Ork spores had been missed during the burning of the planet. So the population of humans had been evacuated, and the local solar government--well, local was a funny term for it--was actually from outside the Wheel of Fire, so they weren't exactly local. But they had decided that the best way to make sure that Orks never came back was to drop a world killer on the planet. How they'd gotten permission to do that, I still don't know, but it had been effective in destroying the planet. Surely if Tanya ever found out, she'd be on a little bit of a quest to find that planetary governor and remind them that she can shake them about harder than their brain can survive.
A lot of lives had been used to take that planet, and now their hard work had been turned to primordial mud and set aflame. Which would require some recompense, I'm sure, when she found out. Otherwise, the planets here were progressing rather nicely from what I understood, growing into a stable economy, but one separate from the current planetary governorship that was outside the Wheel of Fire, which apparently was causing some issues. The local military was not a fan of, well, the actual local military, aka the Malishas, that kept these planets safe and under the rule of Fenris.
My thoughts were interrupted as I heard someone coming up some steps. I turned and saw Kori Bretakollrsson step out of the shadows of a dark hallway, carrying two cups of--was it mead or coffee? Hard to tell, but as he got closer, I noticed that it wasn't steaming, so it was probably mead. Sticking my hand out, I took the glass and said thank you, and he nodded before leaning over the banister to look down at the city like me.
"Planet seems to be doing well," he said matter-of-factly, and I nodded my head before he continued. "The sector Governor sent over a complaint today. Apparently, he was told that the Wolf's defenders were only supposed to be here for 10 years, and yet we're here for the 30th year, and he wants us out."
"Ha, who told him that, and why does he want us out?"
Kori sipped before saying, "From what little details I've been able to scrounge up from the former commander, it looks like they don't like having to send anyone into the sector taxman or anything. Also, there seems to be a sort of situation where anyone who doesn't want to pay taxes or live under imperial rule moves to the sector since it's so frontier there's no way to have control. Reportedly, the governor's granddaughter ran off with some former blockade runner, and she's somewhere in this sector living a happy life."
I nodded before saying, "Well, so it's just a bunch of personal bullshit."
"I don't think he wants people living out here so he can keep the taxes coming in. He probably wants to take the moment we're gone as an opportunity to evacuate the sector and leave it barren and undefended," I said.
"That's just asking for the orks to come back," I added, pointing out the obvious.
"Oh, definitely. Orks are going to come back sooner or later. At least with people here, there'll be some warning and the ability to shut it down before it gets as bad as it was before we cleared this place out," Kori nodded in agreement.
"Can we send something to the Administratum to tell them to fire the guy or something?" I asked.
Kori Bretakollrsson shrugged his shoulders before saying, "We can give it a shot. I was actually seeing if we could get this Wheel of Fire as its own proper sector and not just some amalgam onto the actual sector."
"Unlikely," I said, shaking my head. "The only way that would happen is if the population was higher than it is right now. And if it was higher than it is right now, we wouldn't be dealing with the problem to begin with."
Kori Bretakollrsson nodded his head before saying, "The other option is a bit underhanded, but I think Tanya would like it."
"Underhanded? How would you accuse her of such a thing?" I mocked, feigning disdain before laughing and saying, "As long as it's legal, it's not underhanded, after all."
Kori nodded in agreement before saying, "From what I understand, if we get this sector declared property of Fenris by moving a large population of Fenris civilians to it, well, at the bare minimum, it would no longer really serve the Imperium for it to be monitored by people who are from the local clusters. After all, they're trying to monitor people from Fenris, who are, well, the Primarch's chosen in this case."
I nodded my head, realizing that this would serve to fix the issue quite a bit. "Of course, how do we get a population of Fenrisians to move here? After all, Fenris is going through a population boom, but it ain't booming that much."
"Well, what is considered Fenrisian?" Kori Bretakollrsson raised an eyebrow, causing me to look at him confused.
"Is it just the people from the world of Fenris, or is it the people from the sector of Fenris, or the system of Fenris?" I asked.
"I don't know," I admitted. "I've never really looked too deeply into it. Does Fenris have a sector?"
Kori Bretakollrsson shrugged his shoulders before saying, "I don't know myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if we did. Considering how much of Tanya's forces were deployed to clean up territory around Fenris, at the bare minimum, there are quite a few planets that have populations who are thankful towards Fenris for rescuing them nearby."
"I nod before saying, 'So what? We just convince those populations to send over colonists? That's not exactly going to guarantee that people declare it a Fenris colony.'"
"Of course not, but if populations are moved to Fenris, then taken from Fenris to here, it'd be really hard to prove that they didn't all come from Fenris, wouldn't it? Especially if there were a few Fenrisians among them?" Kori Bretakollrsson suggested.
I nodded; that was a little bit mischievous.
"I have to contact the commander of the Wolf Fang to work this out and a few other Great Company commanders," I said with a nod.
"Of course, of course," Kori said with a nod as well, sipping his drink before saying, "At the bare minimum, if we bring in some more population, it'll make it easier to get this place declared a proper sector and stop the Governor from poking around here like he has been trying to, causing trouble, especially considering what he did to the old ork capital."
"Ha, yeah. If anything, by the time he finds out about this, Tanya will have helped us make sure this is a success, just to make sure he doesn't get control of the sector ever."
"Idiots shouldn't be left in control, that's for sure," Kori said with a hum.
Stepping back from the discussion, he said, "By the way, a letter from your sister came in. She's still fighting on the front line against the Rangdan."
I nodded in agreement as I'd received the letter as well, but then I blinked and looked at him. "Wait, how did you get a letter from my sister?"
Kori was whistling as he walked away, leaving me stunned and unsure if I should be pissed or angry, or if he was just playing me.
"Fine," I shook my head, hating the sub deployment. At least it'd be something entertaining to deal with. That Governor was probably going to do something stupid, and it would be fun to screw with him when he did.