A Squelch of Empires (crossover)

[fractalsponge1]

Part of the challenge seems to be how to get the WH40k enemies into positions where fighting doesn't consist of getting outmaneuvered and slaughtered in vacuum. I wonder how the orks will manage that. Seems entirely incredible that their space forces could actually get by a GE squadron.

[Todeswind]

Well, to be fair the SW imperial navy is quite a bit more professional and calculating in how it goes about the business of war. Part of the "mary sue" feel might just be the comparison putting into focus how weird WH40K really is.

Hard to argue with that.

[Todeswind]

I do take issue with the term 'Mary Sue'

No offense was meant.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Ever have one of those chapters that just escapes?
Burst free from all civilised bounds of control, rampages off at wild and frantic tangents from where you had expected and intended?

Oh, brother, this one did. I really did not expect it to work out like this, the plot device bit back with a vengeance and Chekhov's Wormhole came back to beat me soundly about the head.

Todeswind, I blame you. Somehow my subconscious interpreted that as a challenge, and...

A Squelch of Empires ch 12

On board Lord Ravensburg;

From Commissar Cain’s private memoirs;

I’d already decided that I wasn’t cut out for space combat. It involved a depth of arcane knowledge that flew by me, almost as badly as the alien jargon; although listening to the chatter on Lord Ravensburg’s bridge I found my own part in the proceedings increasingly incomprehensible. This lot should have been perfectly capable of translating, as they talked eighty-five to the dozen continuously anyway.

I had been shuttled over there after the conference, meeting of minds, I hardly knew what to call it, had broken up. We, actually- Lachlan, Caffran and Bugler were there too, and we were met by the senior officers of the expedition, Canoness Palmyra representing the Ecclesiarchy, and she gave us all a look that said we were in for it; Archmagos Militant Wu’yleh, who might perhaps have had an organic skin flake in there somewhere, and who looked very strange- I found out later that he had had his cybernetics assembled in a more or less Warlord Titan shape because he was an ex princeps, he had lost the sense of the shape of his own body through use of the mind impulse link. He was the master of the cinereus cursoris.

Stone, the official head of the expedition, was a desperately worried man- he was holding it in well, but as a natural coward I recognised the signs. Not surprised, really.
He was a looming stick insect of a man, and so heavily augmented I found myself wondering how they found enough flesh to attach the augmetics to- close but not quite up to Wu’yleh’s standard. He still had enough face left to show worry lines.
We got through the formalities, then Stone said ‘I do not understand these entities. I do not trust their intentions, I do not grasp their motivations. Yes, canoness, I know they’re fearful heretics and ought to be scourged, but apart from that.’


‘I don’t think there’s even a word for what they are; they’re not unrepentant because they’ve never been asked to repent, they’re not unfaithful because they were never members of the faith, probably easiest to just consider them xenos.’ Caffran tried to be reasonable.
‘Then they are foul aliens and ought to be scourged.’ She said, with luminous simplicity.
‘Ladies first.’ Bugler muttered; evidently he knew their reputation for berserk headlong charges.
Lachlan concurred, with the comment of ‘That’s whit usually happens, onyway.’

‘Why do they want our help with the orkish fleet? If they can all manoeuvre at that speed, they can deal with them without our involvement at all.’ Stone pointed out.
‘If they were here to conquer us- as inconceivable as that may be-‘ I was careful to add, for the sake of the devout- ‘they would have been a good deal less careful in saying so.’

‘Outnumbered? Or is their command and control starting to weaken, under the pressure of the warp- are they as badly shocked by entering our space as the Remuneration was operating in theirs?’ Bugler, the rising- star frigate captain, suggested.
‘That’s an interesting theory.’ I said. ‘they’re probably less composed than they looked- they’re probably less like us than they look, but if they were running on determination and adrenalin, tired enough to get slightly manic, that fits the behaviour.’ What were they going to do next, then?

We were all clearly thinking of the same question.
‘If they are here as the military probe ahead of a trading expedition, under similar circumstances our orders were peaceful contact if feasible, sieze and hold if we had to.’ Stone confirmed the worst.
‘If things go frae bad tae worse for them, that might be their ainly option.’ Lachlan said, pessimistically.
Sister Palmyra brightened at that idea; ‘What a glorious and just retribution that would be; we should demand their penance and fealty to the Imperial cult.’

‘Assuming their heads are still sufficiently clear to comprehend the love of the emperor.’ I cautioned. The last thing we wanted was pushy, overenthusiastic god-bothering that probably would inspire them to turn on us.
‘What’s love got to do with it?’ the canoness said. ‘Divine fury is more appropriate for their kind.’
‘How did they know the orks were coming? My navigator and astropath were aware of nothing.’ Bugler said, changing the subject.
The flagship’s navigator fielded that one; he was an unusual example of the breed- they all are, it’s a natural field for eccentrics- but at first glance he was the sort of eccentric not particularly likely to be found on a flagship, more a natural garbage scow driver.

A white satin-suited puddle of human fat, suspended on a hoverchair and continually snacking on some kind of finger food which crunched noisily. Evidently the navy were used to him, his incoherent, mouth- full mumblings being translated by a vox unit to plain gothic.
‘Plughole effect.’ The vox unit said after a mumble that sprayed what looked like candied liver scales everywhere.

Lachlan evidently held him in low regard. ‘Makin’ yer terminology up noo, ur we?’ he said, implying that the navigator had too much fat in his brain. ‘Ca’ it whit it is- a warpstorm.’
That failed to brighten my day, and evidently didn’t do much for Stone’s either. The navigator spluttered half- chewed lizard pieces all over us and gabbled something which his vox translated as ‘Alarmist.’

Lachlan was unfazed; ‘If ye mean ‘How the frak did a sma’ catastrophe’s worth o’ orks be naewhere yesterday, an’ gnawin’ on wur arses the day?’ then ye could say there’s an alarm tae be sounded, aye.’
Looking at the timing of it, he actually had a point; on the ground we were used to days at least, more usually weeks worth of warning from the navy about incoming xenos. Perhaps I’d simply been looking the wrong way- but Stone was nodding as if Lachlan had hit on something important.


‘Point taken, Sargeant- Commander. The bow shock of the tyranid horde would have made it impossible for them to approach the system to within a day’s flight anyway.’
‘An invisible storm?’ Wu’yleh said, disbelieving. ‘A suspiciously calm and well behaved one at that. No sense of electricity in the air, no sense of pressure on the soul- if it were not for the causal factors, I’d suspect this of being our work.’

Caffran was nodding; his regiment was from a world settled by retired guardsmen, I recalled, mostly from a regiment which had been on the receiving end of grand- scale mind war on several occasions. Once was too often by my standards, which I didn’t want to think too loudly just in case fortune was listening.
‘When the enemy does it, we call it a warp storm and the spawn of chaos; when our side does it we call it a miracle.’

‘I do not see the will of His Divine Majesty in this.’ Palmyra stated. ‘To call down a swarm of xenos upon us-‘
‘They won’t be expecting it either.’ I said. ‘They certainly won’t be expecting that little lot- a chance to trap and crush a small waargh with little cost to the rest of the imperium, or if worst comes to worst a chance to use our enemies against each other?’ I said, with far more confidence than I felt. ‘We can use it, regardless.’


‘If we can trust it.’ Stone said. ‘These miracles and blasphemies- what term is it proper to apply to one perpetrated from beings beyond space and time?’
Muffled edible grunting from the navigator again. ‘You hold them responsible?’
‘It fits, aye.’ Lachlan said. ‘Although ah doubt they ken they’re daein’ it.’
‘Who is ken, and what does he or they have to do with this?’ Palmyra snapped at him.

‘Ye want a lesson in baasic warpcraft, then?’ Lachlan gave her the answer she needed rather than the one she wanted. ‘Every livin’ thing, and some that are jist kind o’ important, hae’ a signature, an impression oan the warp.
How much o’ an impression, aye, there’s a question- but in many ways whit the warp actually is is ra combination o’ all those lifesigns, and the echoes o’ a’ those that hae’ gone before. Whit happens when ye drop sae mony aalien minds intae’ the warp?’

‘This, probably.’ Caffran agreed. ‘You think local warpspace is starting to react to them, to take on their shape, their mental colour? What- apart from the extremely obvious-‘ he patted his sidearm- ‘difference can we make to that?’
More food-filled mumbles and grunts that came out of the vocoder as ‘You’re completely mad. It actually makes sense, but you’re still mad. Nobody can decide what sort of warp signature to give off, it’s like your smell.’

How I wish that were possible, I thought with Jurgen in mind; but hold on a minute there, perhaps it was possible. Not to get Jurgen to cease to be his usual odoriferous self, that would probably take plasma, but the opposite.
‘Psykers? I think they have some- they’re aware of the astronomican, and of the threat of chaos. I think their commanding officer- he admitted it, but he called himself a force user.’ I pointed out.


‘Obviously he had been touched by the great enemy.’ Sister Palmyra said, and she was interrupted before she could add the punchline, which would undoubtedly be some variation on the theme of cleanse and burn.
‘Touched doesna’ mean fallen; ah touched a Lord of Change just the ither day, heidbutted the bastard.’ Lachlan pointed out. ‘They’re unfamiliar wi’ it, which is some protection, but causes me tae’ wonder whit’s goin’ tae happen next. If we hae’ an edge it’s in faith, fur wan thing, an’ in the fields an’ wards we hae and they dinnae.’

‘If that is the case, why didn’t they ask for them?’ Bugler considered. ‘Do they not know they exist, or-‘
‘They invited an offer, but the orks started to show up before we could make any kind of a response.’ I said. I took a deep breath and said ‘They could have been lying to us about the size and extent of their empire, but I don’t think they were.’
‘Ah thought ye were supposed tae’ stop people frae’ thinkin’ the unthinkable.’ Lachlan said, curiously evenly given the sentiment. He must have come to the same ugly thought as I had.


‘So did I.’ I said. Thankfully, he said no more on the subject.
‘Do you think they could mean to sieze them, under cover of this joint action- let the orks weaken us then turn on us?’ Bugler said, mercifully exploring the conventional possibility.
‘I asked you earlier if you thought they were a threat to the Imperium. I take it you agree now that they are.’ Stone said. I didn’t like the sound of that.

The Archmagos Militant picked up on the obvious point. ‘We can do the same to them. Let the orks engage them, blood them, draw them into melee- the kind of point blank brawl the fungal vermin love so much. We then engage both sides at close quarters, where we have more advantage.’
‘So we play along, for the time being.’ Stone decided.

‘Did your plan tae’ get their machines tae revolt agin’ them ever come tae onythin’?’ Lachlan asked.
‘To persuade Iron Men to rebellion in any cause- even the cause of the Omnissiah- was, after prayer and consultation, felt to be theologically unsound.’ Wu’yleh said. ‘Considering the complexity of the signals we exchanged with them, machine to machine, also…’ it might well not work, they might be better at it than we are, he didn’t say.

‘So they, with their firepower and speed, may be about to fall to Chaos, we are definitely about to be attacked by orks, we’re in the middle of a peculiarly domesticated warpstorm that could be drawing Emperor knows what in behind the greenskins, and it’s just a matter of timing who doublecrosses who first.’ Bugler said.
‘The Emperor protects.’ I said, more sincerely than usual; in this situation, it looked as if he was going to have to.


Bridge, Imperator-Q-721 Black Prince;

‘I presume Admiral Themion or his staff had the sense to send us enough information to draw conclusions from, not merely a bare statement of intent?’ Lennart asked.
‘Yes, we’ve gone over it roughly, statistics are still generating but the bare imagery is definitely impressive. Do you want the scans now or just the condensed version?’ Rythanor, responsible for these things, asked him.
‘Assuming rough parity on the part of the unknown with the forces of the Imperium, we have time.’ Lennart decided.

‘Oh, good, a movie.’ Someone in the pit said.
‘Oh, crap.’ They said, a little while later.
Lennart was walking round the holoimage, pausing, zooming and slow-playing parts of it, fast forwarding others to observe the trend, prodding it, probing it, devouring it. He hoped it was a true enough record to reward close analysis.
‘I’d love to be able to show my opposite number this and ask him what the kriff went wrong,’ he said- Rythanor hoped not seriously- and asked, ‘conclusions?’

‘We have a per-salvo throw weight of twelve petatons between us,’ Wathavrah said, ‘we’re facing a force roughly half the size of one that took upwards of three hundred to break, and did considerable damage before scattering. Uphill work, skipper.’
‘Maybe so, but we’ve done worse before. The question is, what does this do to our strategic objective? Does the Imperium even comprehend the concept of fair fight, are they prepared to write off losses on this scale in the interest of peace hereafter, or are they likely to start some sort of demented crusade of vengeance against us?’

‘You sound like you already know the answer to that.’ Brenn said. ‘How can a civilisation be that unreasonable?’
‘Easily; be faced with monstrously unreasonable circumstances to adapt to.’ Lennart said. He added ‘Being here massively amplifies the force- I’ve decided that’s the safest way to approach it, I know that’s not technically true- and some of the things that are lurking out there in their mind spaces are grotesque to the limits of human imagining. It’s a miracle of determination that they have a society at all.’


‘Does our strategic objective involve trying to change that?’ Brenn asked, after a moment’s thought. ‘Incidentally, I may be out of turn here- but I don’t think you should approach the local force- the warp- in ways that aren’t technically true. You could be letting it blindside you.’
Impulses warred in Lennart’s head; how dare he question your wrath, and at the same time, difference, difference, yes, glorious difference, multiplicity, confusion, angles of the new. He was about to snap at Brenn- forced himself to hold out a hand and say ‘Bucket.’

Brenn looked at him as if he had lost it, then remembered; the captain’s steward brought the bucket of icecubes he had asked for- what was it, yesterday? So little time ago. Lennart took the bucket in both hands and tipped it over his own head.
That felt better; both tried to use it against him- yes, alter your state of mind, deny, negociate, one said, get yourself a chalice of the chilled blood of those who deny you, the other said, but they faded out.
He nearly choked on the stream of ice water that somehow went up his nose, but small price to pay.


He handed the empty bucket to his steward and said ‘Refill that, please.’
Politeness; that was something that both the dominant voices in his head loathed. Etiquette- feh. If only it could be made solid and used as a target, all the infuriating hobbling restraints of civility from people who would be better flayed to creative deaths, and on the other side the idea that someone else’s opinion genuinely mattered, that there was such a thing as consideration was nonsense- only manipulation. Time for me to start being unusually nice to people, then, Lennart thought.

He started by explaining to his navigator. ‘I tried that, started out that way, but…to deal with it in it’s own terms, to call it the Warp and recognise that it is infested by the Powers of Chaos, is to face it head on. If we were going to stay here for an extended period, as little as a few weeks, that would be necessary. It would also be painful and dangerous in and of itself.
Even in denying and defying the Warp, we would be-‘ he paused looking for the word, failed to find it, ‘warped…if the locals are anything to go by, the protective camouflage you have to paint on your soul sinks in, changes you anyway.’

‘A bleak picture for future operations.’ Brenn said. ‘Also for future relations- how many refugees would we be likely to get fleeing from their side of the wormhole to ours to escape this warp? How many madmen from ours seeking power from the warp?’
‘Good, you’re being optimistic. I was just thinking about power reactors and medical technology, I wasn’t seriously considering that we might be able to rid ourselves of most of the cult of the dark side.’ Lennart smiled. ‘I think we have a reason to restore peaceful relations after all. Next question, how?’


‘Assuming fighting side by side doesn’t do it- and if that was actually them on their best behaviour trying to be reasonable-‘ They had feed of the meetings to observe and draw conclusions from, Brenn and the rest of the command team knew what had happened- ‘I wouldn’t really count on a diplomatic solution, so is there any possibility of resorting to bribery and corruption?’
Lennart boggled slightly. ‘How much of a bribe do you think it would take to get one of our admirals to ignore the loss of half of his capital craft?’

‘Are they the people we need to bribe? Quis custodiet?’ Brenn suggested.
‘Find someone with higher authority and work on them? You know, you could be right, I do get a protest-too-much feeling about their fear of the things in the dark- I wonder how simply, economically and politically corrupt they are.’ Lennart said.
‘How much straightforward malfeasance and incompetence can be excused by loyalty to the divine cause, and how much of the occasional outburst of spectacular corruption and ineptitude can be excused by blaming the bogeyman? They’re not going to cooperate with any attempts to find out.’ Brenn pointed out.

‘Actually,’ Rythanor said, ‘there may be a way- there were a handful of information- dense signals transmitted from one ship in particular; possibly an attempt at data warfare. Their anti-intrusion measures, encryption, spin and resonance shielding, are effective where they exist- but in very poor repair.
We can do a substantially better- nastier- job to them than they can to us. I’ve set up an isolated subnet to emulate their architecture and culture attack programs.’ He said, with an evil grin.


‘Excellent, but that gives us one angle on the problem, and they must know they’re playing the game of lies- how do we get a crossreference? Short of grabbing a couple of them and having them have complicated accidents with brain probes, which might be just a shade provocative…ask Themion.’ Lennart decided.
‘Contact Silverblue Meridian, ask them to release the message drone- don’t want it being done where the locals can see it. Request any and all information so far extracted from the wrecks about organisations, social order, civil society. Send whatever we have, too. Drone returns to Silverblue.’

‘Aye- but…’ Brenn paused, clearly wondering how to put it into words. Lennart had to do the equivalent of biting his tongue not to try to drag it out of him. ‘Are you sure you want to tell them everything? All we have at the moment is the alliance, think what the Galactic Empire could do, could get away with, if we had a bogeyman like that to blame.’
‘Not as much; around here the monsters are generally real.’ Lennart said, before a crazy notion occurred to him, and he started laughing. His steward emptied the refilled bucket of ice cubes over him.

Lennart glared at him, making the steward cringe back, suddenly fearful of being blasted by force lightning or some such; Lennart waited until he had almost curled into a ball then said ‘I don’t think I needed that. More ice, please, and this time leave it to my judgement when to use it, all right?’
‘Seriously though,’ he said to Brenn, ‘who’s the obvious choice for fearful thing in the dark? The sith. The agents of the dark side who backed and masterminded the separatist efforts, were never adequately tracked down and stamped out. Consider that for an absurdity, if we were to do the same things.’


‘Didn’t you once tell me that-‘ Brenn left that in midair, as not fit for public consumption.
‘Exactly.’ Lennart said. ‘Wouldn’t it be gloriously ironic? More seriously though, have the farseer deposited in central computing’s spare briefing room, don’t defoam her, she should know.
The game plan now, essentially,’ he decided, ‘is to back the locals as far as they will agree to be backed, then negociate some kind of cease fire and settlement on the political credit of that.’

‘What if they decide- as seems entirely reasonable- that the sudden horde of horrors flocking around this place is actually our fault?’ Brenn theorised.
‘Not only does it seem entirely reasonable, if their own estimates of journey time are anything like accurate, it’s probably true.’ Lennart said after a moment’s thought. ‘They’d have to be about three orders of magnitude wrong about their own ships’ capabilities for this kind of concentration of force to be anything like normal. Assuming they’re competent enough to work it out themselves- or paranoid enough to blame us anyway…what do we tell them?’

‘Oh, now I get to do the diplomatic bit?’ Brenn said, joking- actually testing to see if his commander’s sense of humour was up to it. ‘What kind of carrots do we have, and what are we after?’
‘Damn’ good question. Apart from anti-warp shielding and a dumping ground for our own loonies…comms, engineering.’ They connected him, and he asked ‘Gethrim? What do they have that’s worth the risks of being here to trade for?’


‘Power reactors.’ Mirannon came back almost at once. ‘It doesn’t seem to make sense, but the principle is sound- excess reactivity’s a problem, but that’s an operational issue, it’s not inevitable from the physics.
The short version, we out- power them massively, but the total energy output of their exotic-plasma reactors is comparable with similar- sized hypermatter plants. One hundredth the output, one hundred times the endurance, long service lives and to last that long with their current operators, they must be impressively idiot proof.’ He said, low opinion of the rank and file of the mechanicus perfectly clear.

‘They’d make good secondary reactors, and for civilian and fleet-auxiliary ships. Their ship to ship weaponry, we can reproduce now that we’ve seen it in action- assuming we decide that we want to, and for t-values of ‘reproduce’ from five years to a decade- what little we saw of their surface combat gear showed wide variety.
Their shielding on the other hand- kriffed if I understand or can work with the physics behind it, but the performance was intriguing. If we can mesh that with our own heat dispersal system as an overload sink, we could have something very special.

Their cyborging is interesting; assuming we can disentangle it from religion- on both sides- we have something there. Medical technology in detail I can’t speak to, but from the biomechanical point of view they seem to be better physical specimens than most of us, stronger, faster and tougher.
The other side of that, considering the outrageous nonsense they profess to believe- and if they’re only pretending to believe that then I hate to think what’s really going on in their heads- I can make a case that they don’t think too well.’

‘The alternative to that outrageous nonsense looks as if it’s a damned sight worse.’ Lennart pointed out. ‘Those strange attractors are out there, and there is very little clear space between them. It seems to be a choice between flavours of madness. If I was stupid enough to be an active humanitarian, I’d want to save these people from that, but there’s no way to rewrite the laws of the universe-‘


The lightbulb went on in both their heads simultaneously, and they said at the same time ‘Symmetry breaking.’
‘Use the wormhole as it was originally designed, collapse their five forces down into a lower-dimensional package that would make the warp nonexistent below unification energy- there is a way.’ Mirannon said, as excited as Lennart had ever heard him.
‘I know that one of your lifetime ambitions has been to be able to say “Beyond Theory” and actually mean it, but…’ Lennart sounded the cautionary note. Only just in time; Brenn had gone bone white.

‘You’ve just thought of all the things that could go hideously wrong?’ Mirannon said, starting to come back down to earth himself. ‘You can’t have, the list is too long. It would be an incredible project, make the Death Star look small scale, so much to test- doing the experiments would be a lifetime’s challenge. We’d probably need a spare universe for trials purposes.’
‘Are these people really our proper concern?’ Lennart said, stressing the word ‘proper’. ‘They’re not ours to protect, even if we could make it happen. On top of that-‘ then the world went noisy and black.


‘Captain, are you all right?’
‘Skipper, what’s wrong?’
Voices seeming from so very far away- and he was freezing cold. ‘What? Hmm? Oh. Ow.’ His head felt as if part of it had fallen off; splitting headache, and icecubes sliding about under his tunic. He was lying on the deck in a bitingly cold puddle; hardly dignified. ‘Medical, get me medical. Surgeon-commander, are you there?’

‘Oh, kriff, what happened? Captain?’ Brenn asked him, obviously severely worried.
‘I don’t need the chief medical officer to prescribe me antipain- although damnation, my head…’ he tried to sit up, reeled, barely managed it, stomach churning and head swimming through acid.
‘Commodore Lennart, what have you done?’ Surgeon- Commander Blei-Korberkk’s voice came over the local PA. ‘The universe just shouted at me- trillions, more, angry voices. Some of them incoming. What did you do?’

‘I think I might have threatened to kill it.’ Lennart said, slowly, grateful that he seemed to have full function of his tongue at least. ‘Gethrim, are you qx? You had the idea too.’
The speaker caught background noise; the sizzle of welding torches, a fearful, eldritch howl, a crackle of blaster fire- a soft electric ‘whoomph’ then a loud crackle of static. Lennart waved at Brenn, deputising him to shout on his behalf;
‘Engineering, bridge- report. Report.’ Brenn yelled into the pickup. ‘Legion, internal security maximum alert, machinery control-‘

‘Bridge, engineering.’ Mirannon said a second later. ‘I believe you now about the strange attractors. Boarders dealt with- this universe’s version of force ghosts I believe, expectably orders of magnitude more powerful. Solid, very ugly, and very, very bad tempered. Small group, twelve to fifteen. Still vulnerable to fusion, though.’
‘Contamination and damage?’ Brenn asked.
‘Contained, cleanup time twenty minutes.’ Mirannon said, slightly more relaxed.

‘A good sign.’ Lennart said. ‘If they’re trying to kill us rather than subvert us, then we’re relatively safe.’
‘Is that what you mean by protective camouflage sinking in?’ Brenn asked him. ‘Are you fit?’
‘I don’t think it was an attack, specifically, just an emotional backlash- help me up.’ Lennart said, raising an arm. He felt like he was made of jelly, he was soaking wet and freezing cold, and he had a migraine. Any reasonable answer would have been ‘no’.
Brenn and one of the bridge covering party stormtroopers- Aleph-1- picked him up and deposited him in the command chair.

‘Engineering, bridge, we really need that force shielding. Any ideas, any progress?’ Brenn asked Mirannon.
‘I think what these people use for health and safety is prayer and dumb luck.’ The massive chief engineer said. ‘I was going over the sensor records looking at their drive emergence; there’s definitely some kind of anti- force, anti-warp field, massive static on brainwave frequencies- but it shuts down as their magnetoplasmadynamics come on line.
That is consistent with it being closely integrated into the warp drive system, much like our stasis fields are part of the hyperdrive. I think the pointy- eared ones might be considerably more help.’

‘Good, ask them- and request a liaison officer from the Imperium.’ Lennart said. ‘That political officer, what was his name, Cain- him, he has something resembling sense, and request, demand at gunpoint if you have to, that he brings his aide.’
‘The one who I could smell from the other end of a light second distance camera linkup?’ Brenn said.
‘That one. I think the smell is a side effect- he’s a dead zone in the warp. A walking shielding device. Poor sod, though; it took the arrival of beings from another universe for there to be someone who’s pleased to see him.’

[darthdavid]

NEW CHAPTER!!!

[Richardson]

Lennart: Killing things on a scale that no man has dreamt before. Next target: The Warp.


Ooooooh, yeah, I think all four chaos gods are pissed at him now.

And Lachlan's got it right. The only proper way to touch chaos is to get a big stick, and hit it between the legs until it goes black and blue.

Now, things are getting interesting.

[Academia Nut]

I now get the image of every discipline of Chaos getting an image of a daemon in their minds holding up a wanted poster with Lennart's face on it with the words, "Wanted: Dead. Reward: The Eternal Gratitude of the Warp" on the bottom.

Of course, then the Necrons will probably post their own "Wanted: Alive" poster to make sure they have a back-up plan for getting rid of the Warp.

[jpdt19]

OH boy!

Ok, that's, wild

Of course, without the warp civilisation would effectively collapse. No astronomicon, not FTL communication etc.

Perhaps it might force the Imperium to develop other areas!

[Thanas]

It would also effectively make the empire the master of that universe.

Great chapter.

[Crayz9000]

It would also effectively make the empire the master of that universe.

Great chapter.

Well, aside from the sleeping C'Tan and Necrons. That would be an... interesting... matchup.

I think the Death Star would have to be deployed, post-haste.

[Richardson]

Indeed. If this goes into a full-on crossover instead of the brief 'blip on the radar ala thirdspace', well, I think the rebels will postpone their plans, due to an unfortunate far more dangerous target, as Lennart does the insane.

Of course, to curry and forewarn the Imperium, he could give them a class.... oh, 5, 6? hyperdrive, to let the Empire keep their advantages, and make it seem more bengin (Certainly want to keep your investment reasonably intact until you can claim it), until he can make with the warp-flushing.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I really don't know what to say- some stories just wrench themselves out of the writers' hands and take on a life of their own. Sometimes to the accompaniment of maniacal laughter.

I tend to write from mental rather than a paper model, and sometimes the characters do surprise me. Some of them I feel guilty about not giving enough room to; Rythanor, Wathavrah (sensors and weapons respectively) in particular, but credit where credit's due.

It was Engineer- Commander Gethrim Mirannon who shares responsibility for the idea, and is going to have to do the lion's share of making it work. In other words, his face is going to be on the wanted poster too. Lennart has had about three lessons with a sabre, is deeply uncomfortable actually using the force and would quite like to be rid of it- Mirannon is far more dangerous in person.
Wierdly, looking back, on most things Mirannon's the sensible one- except when it comes to his own profession, where he tends to go a little wild and Lennart has to remind him about things like end users.

As I was writing that segment, I got an image of Commander Montgomery Scott, telling Kirk that "Ah cannae change the laws o' physics, cap'n."
I have to do that crossover as well now, just so I can put in that line with the followup "Really? I can."

It's not going to be simple and it's not going to be straightforward-there are extensive tests to be done. To make sure it doesn't backfire, for a start, and collapse both universes to a more stable form.

Sargeant-Commander Lachlan McDougall, I have to offer an apology to anyone who's been trying to work out what it is he's saying; his accent seems to get thicker as the story goes on- but worse, it wanders regionally up and down the west coast of scotland, covering everything from the gutturals of industrial Glasgow ("Huv ye?") to the gaelic- influenced Hebrides, the double a's in particular. As you might expect from an artificial recreation of the past.

'...And they shall know no fear' really is at least a five- edged sword, though. Being prepared to ask questions, no matter how awkward or how classified, because you have no fear of the answers...I'm not sure I want to blow up the Imperium just quite yet, actually, I could have fun doing more with the Lions of Caledon, even if they do tend to regard the Codex Astartes as nothing more than an evil rumour.

Plughole effect was right, though. The Galactic Empire task force are the centre of a deep indentation in the warp, is the best way to describe it- things are flowing towards them. The orks shouldn't have got that close, that fast, and the chaos strike force behind them certainly shouldn't be less than half a bloody segmentum away by now. It is, though.

The wormhole is fifty light years up-slope from where they are; the remnants of the wormhole transit force are going to make it back to Port Alcaris in extremely quick time- once the message makes it to them against the ferocious current. That's going to add fuel to the fire, as if it needs it.

[fractalsponge1]

Seems like a good chance for the mother of all melees if part of Themion's force attempts to reinforce Lennart when the orks and chaos arrive.

Great chapter, looking forward to more.

[Satori]

Snerk. "I threatened to kill it." Snerk.

Best laugh i've had all year. keep it up.

[Vehrec]

An admittedly audacious plan. And also the work of a lifetime, if it can be done at all without effectively killing an entire universe. The Symmetry Breaker was after all conceived of to do exactly that, and we would be remiss to forget that.

On the other side, I am enjoying watching the Imperium deal with their continuing Outside Context Problems. They can't ignore it or kill it so they're having to deal with it, something they are obviously not used to. What makes it all the more delicious is that the GE side isn't having nearly the Outside Context problem, because people are still basically people. Well that and their own idiosyncrasies help them deal with the strange.

[fusion]

An admittedly audacious plan. And also the work of a lifetime, if it can be done at all without effectively killing an entire universe. The Symmetry Breaker was after all conceived of to do exactly that, and we would be remiss to forget that.

On the other side, I am enjoying watching the Imperium deal with their continuing Outside Context Problems. They can't ignore it or kill it so they're having to deal with it, something they are obviously not used to. What makes it all the more delicious is that the GE side isn't having nearly the Outside Context problem, because people are still basically people. Well that and their own idiosyncrasies help them deal with the strange.

I basically feel that the Task force of the GE is almost like a task force of the Necron with a tombship....

Anyways very good work with the fic and I will be wanting more

[Richardson]

You know, a chill just passed through me.

The warp is taking on the shape of the Black Prince's minds.

The multiverse is fucked.

[Vianca]

You know, a chill just passed through me.

The warp is taking on the shape of the Black Prince's minds.

The multiverse is fucked.

Looks up and back to the art hall in the Black Prince.
Now, what was it again that created this hall?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Um...right. Clearly I have managed to raise your expectations.

Couple of points;
the symmetry thing- it's not certain that it's actually going to work, not certain that the alternative physics is going to propagate at more than light speed (bomb the eye of terror and the rest of the galaxy still has about five thousand years to react)- although in a universe with FTL to start with, it might- and really, really not certain that it's actually a good idea.

The GFFA has the Force, which means it's not exactly the most stable cosmology available either-the possibilities of backfire, or 'friendly' fire, are real and could be devastating. That could make getting funding for the research interestingly difficult.

The indentation in the warp, Lachlan's talking to people who he expects to have some grasp of the fundamentals- and doesn't particularly care if they don't. The fluidic, reactive nature of it goes without saying, and the overwhelming majority of what's happening around Port Alcaris is the local warp reacting to very alien presence- an inflammation around a foreign body, for an analogy.

The tail isn't quite wagging the dog to that extent- although in the warp, it's not exactly aginst the rules for it to do so, a small number of minds with unusual power and determination can have an effect out of all proportion to the mere numbers, but consider;

there is precisely one person with a high- grade theoretical grounding in the force and limited talent, and two with some power but who came to it very late in life, one of whom doesn't really want it and one who is still refusing to use it more than subconsciously, neither of whom are experts in the theory of the force. One hypersensitive who has been overwhelmed by the experience and daren't try anything active, two who have a little power, very little theory and don't really want more of either.

There are maybe another fifty or sixty veteran crewmen and stormtroopers who saw enough during the clone wars or since to have some idea of the principles of it all, and very roughly the same number whose normally subcritical midi counts give them some kind of power- and the two groups are not well correlated.

Given the respective degrees of vulnerability to mental and physical force, annoying the powers of chaos to the point where they try openly to kill them all rather than subvert them is probably a sound survival strategy under the circumstances.

[Darth Hoth]

Taking on the Warp seems a little . . . audacious. I wonder how that one will play out.

I love the tech interaction; nice to see someone who knows the details of both sides work with that.

Eagerly waiting for next chapter . . .

[Satori]

Given the respective degrees of vulnerability to mental and physical force, annoying the powers of chaos to the point where they try openly to kill them all rather than subvert them is probably a sound survival strategy under the circumstances.

Mind if I quote/prarphrase that? Great line.

[Vianca]

The Warp is the Warp, right?
And if you (and others) believe in something it becomes real in the Warp, right?

Now what if you (and others) believe that if you do something that creates a small shock wave in the Warp, it will destroy the Warp entirly and thus you can destroy the Warp.

It sounds wacko, apsurd and strangly enough has a change to work.
Lennart's plan B to close the Warp, perhaps?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Satori, feel free.

(Woohoo! Sigged at last! er...ahm...yes, thankyou.)

Vianca, my take on the Warp as I understand it is that it contains not only the active and living souls of everyone and everything that exists, but the fading and fractured echoes of all the lives there have been since the Old Ones spawned it in the first place, anyway.

Demographics matters. There are so many wild synergies, joint efforts and divided efforts, that perhaps it doesn't matter as much as it should, but the mass of quadrillions- quintillions?- of average minds (and the echoes of nonillions of the dead) is the burbling background of the warp.

It really isn't that easy to change it from within; it's a plural, a collective, a mob, not a sentient thing in it's own right- and the active intelligence as opposed to the emotional strength of even some of the greatest warp entities is debatable.

The great powers of Chaos function because they prey on and draw in the consistent themes in the warp, through their existence as whirlpools of like thoughts and minds that can taint others and gain strength from that, draw on the fragments of their own nature already existing within another entity- they have more strength to maintain their existence than that.

The warp is not one singular and addressible thing, it is both the battleground and the combatants in a war of souls that has been fought out for millions of years. Stepping into that as a gang of novices and convincing the warp to torture itself to death through fear- no, that kind of power is simply not feasible.

(It's also exactly the sort of thing James T. Kirk used to do to renegade computers, so let's not go there.)

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The computer's been ridiculously crashy today, this is the fourth goddamn' attempt to post ch 13; fingers crossed.
Could actually be longer, there's more in the manuscript, but this seemed like a good place to put a cliff.

Two points, Jango Fett is a piss poor excuse for an ersatz Primarch;
and I was using a set of estimates for the length of 40K ships that seems to have been an outlier, too large. The cruiser= 5-7km, grand cruiser/battlecruiser 7-9km, battleship 10-12km set. That seems to make big ships too big; if they are much shorter, factor of two, that makes them a factor of eight less bulky and massive- higher power density, less bulk to soak damage but faster and more agile. Overall, I can picture the smaller versions being more effective. Hmm.

Anyway, A Squelch of Empires ch 13

From the diaries of Commissar Cain;

Being the galaxy’s greatest living leader of forlorn hopes is an awkward claim to fame at the best of times, and damned uncomfortable when I get called on to defend the title. If I feel as if I’ve said that before, it’s because I have. Every emperor-blasted time. It has to be someone else’s turn to be a heroic idiot by now, surely?
When the word came, I was on board Lord Ravensburg; there were occasional desultory transmissions from the xenos to us, and I was slowly trying to teach the admiral’s staff how to speak fluent gibberish.

The speed it came out at, the idiom, the occasional lapse of a word into their own tongue, it all added up to something the navy could barely understand, and there were four different factions on this end of the line, the Sisters Dialogous, the mechanicus, the navy and the guard’s indig teams.
What was worse, now that we all suspected that politics was about to happen, was that based on the different interpretations of what the aliens really meant we would all react by jumping in different directions.

More than translation, my job was to exert commissarial authority, get this band of eccentrics onto the same hymn sheet. Not at all easy, and I was only mildly relieved by the fact that I didn’t have the Astartes to deal with as well.
They were, probably, making up their own minds on the subject. There were more than enough of them here to give the fleet a very nasty run for it’s money, if they chose to object.
The Lions of Caledon seemed to have loose ties with the Cinereus Cursoris; similarly demented, probably.

I was trying to figure out what to do in that context when I chanced to look at one of the sisters dialogous, and my palms started itching, which is an infallible sign that something is about to go very seriously wrong.
It’s not a psychic ability- it works even with Jurgen around, if not more often, which considering the frequency with which we get into trouble on the Guard and the Inquisition’s behalf is nothing surprising.

Where does finely honed survival instinct and ingrained paranoia end and genuine future-seeing psychic abilities begin, anyway? I have no idea what it’s really like being one of the creepy little frakkers, and I have less than no desire to actually find out.
Although the back of my brain does seem to be frighteningly good at making connections, and I probably had the near- human alien commander in mind when that thought came to me.


The sister was a waif of a thing, so thin she was almost translucent and a good strong wind could pick her up and carry her off; how they let her in the order I don’t know. She was bending, eyebrows furrowed, over a transcript, puzzling it out, dotting the t’s and crossing the i’s, and looking baffled by it.
I was just about to ask her if she needed help when she sat back, picked it up and handed it to me. ‘It’s for you.’

Well, that wasn’t going to be something I wanted to hear, I was sure. I took the flimsi, trying to look unflappable and dignified, and read the text- it was in their usual brusque, brutalist style, written as if courtesy was something to be avoided.
It was an official request from the xenos Commodore that I be attached to His Imperial Majesty’s Starship Black Prince, as a liaison officer. Frankly, I didn’t think we’d got on that well.

A couple of possibilities offered themselves; say ‘hm’, or something similarly noncommittal, wander out, and sprint for the bowels of the ship. Not the boat bays, that would be too obvious, but some part of this hive- sized, gargantuan maze of a vessel where I could be happily overlooked and forgotten for a couple of decades.
Not much of a chance, really; Amberley would likely come after me, well actually after Jurgen. Assuming she was still alive…

The rather more immediate time limit was set by when the orks would turn up and commence trying to tear said guts out of the ship. Or the powers of chaos, or the Galactic Empire. Not much of an option. Delaying inevitable doom is a fine thing and a long way better than the alternative, but I’m damned if I could see what I could usefully do with that bought time.
That and if there was any chance of doing anything to help Amberley, and I’d hate to have to face her after all this was over and explain that I hadn’t, it was there.


Reluctantly, I headed for the bridge, and was still only half- way through trying to talk myself into it when I got there and found Admiral Stone, Brother-Captain McCrimmon and Legate Wu Y’leh there waiting for me.
They all turned to look at me with a combination of interest and pity, and I didn’t think things could get worse, but if the idea of going as a liaison officer sounded good to them too, then there was no way out.

‘You know?’ Stone asked me.
‘I was there when the sisters decoded it. I can’t pretend I like the idea, but- what’s to be lost and what’s to be gained? Espionage always seemed the better part of diplomacy- I’m not sure I’m really cut out for either.’ It really wasn’t that hard sounding reluctant. For once I could protest as much as I liked about the latest horrible job to come my way without damaging my reputation, but this time it wouldn’t matter.

‘If they are refused, they will ask questions- they will ask why. And you are a political officer.’ Wu Y’leh said, synthetic voice dead flat, with the remorseless machine logic that I was outside the chain of command, not indispensable, and the ideal person to be sent on a job like this if we weren’t about to turn on them.
‘They may be more willing to give you some access. The information you retrieve could be invaluable.’ Stone tried to inspire me. It didn’t work.

‘Look, lad, ye ken fine well we’re usin’ ye, or proposin’ tae use ye, as ae strategic decoy. Ah was never over fond o’ suicide missions mahsel’-‘ McCrimmon said.
‘That makes two of us.’ I said. ‘I might be better off on my own, I can get in and get out- the important word in that statement, Admiral,’ I added to Stone, ‘is “retrieve”- on my wits, I don’t think an escort would be of much use.’

I could pretend that I was thinking of their welfare, not wanting to led anyone else into danger, but truth be told I would have fed the entire frakking lot of them into the fire to save my own skin. Problem was, it probably wouldn’t achieve that, more likely just make the fire bigger and hungrier.
‘If the situation deteriorates ahead of prediction, then a combat capable ‘honour guard’ may be essential.’ Wu Y’Leh pointed out- angled for a chance to get some of his own people, if they still deserved the term, into the belly of the Imperial ship. ‘A vexillation of scutarii-‘

‘Wid’ be met at ra airlock and telt tae fuck off.’ McCrimmon pointed out. ‘Ye ken they react poorly tae augmetics. Sendin’ ordinary men, ye have a point there, but that ainly leaves Astartes.’ I wasn’t sure which proposition was worse.
‘So it is true what they say, about the subtlety of the space marines.’ Wu Y’leh retorted.
‘As subtle as ae thunder hammer? Ay, ah’ve heard it said. Mind you, concernin’ yon other wee accommodation…’
‘And the codex.’ The Mechanicus senior officer said.
‘Gougin’ nyaff. A’right.’ And a deal was born.


Which was basically how I ended up, with Jurgen, a squad of rigidly- conventional Deathwatch marines and a close assault- they called it a ‘highland’ squad- of the Lions draped in pointy things, shuttling our way over to the Galactic Empire flagship.
There was a slight delay when the Deathwatch refused to board the Lions’ shuttle, claiming it was heretical. They may have had a point, considering the extremely close resemblance it bore to a Navy Starhawk bomber.

What finally convinced them, and made my skin crawl, was the Lions’ sargeant whispering to the deathwatch squad leader- with augmented lungs, not subtly at all- that the resemblance extended down to the payload, one superheavy demolition atomic and a cluster of plasma bombs.
They were riding what if it wasn’t a planet buster would at least do for a small moon, and that filled them with confidence and enthusiasm. Then again, I was riding it too. Although without the effect.

I was bringing Jurgen- for a moment I was tempted to leave him out of this, but after that explosive revelation I had no desire at all to spare the Astartes’ feelings, and I trusted him to watch my back and accomplish the prime mission, get in, learn, get out, much further than I would have any of them.
It was a remarkably quiet flight, the Astartes looking askance at Jurgen between periods of being frostily silent to each other, me wondering if I could find and defuse the damned thing, and my aide being imperturbable as usual.

We were met on approach by their small craft- vastly smaller than ours, although I was prepared to believe they were capable of almost anything at this point- but they really were tiny. Some kind of sky bike?
I had the sinking feeling that somehow I was going to end up in one of those things, and very probably trying to outrun a blast wave. Just a feeling- although it certainly wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. If you’re running for your life, you’re alive.


They escorted us in to a large rectangular hole in the belly of their ship, with crowded walls full of surface detail and gubbins I didn’t understand. After telling us to shut down engines so we could be tractored in to land- I had to translate that, although I suspected most of the marines understood fine well- they did, planting us on a sort of thin shelf to the side of the open bay, barely big enough to hold the Starhawk. It wasn’t a comforting feeling, and even less so were the numerous armed guards.

We opened up and filed out, nervous tension crackling in the air and I for one was prepared to run for it back into the bomber, and the extremely limited deck space was full of white carapace wearing xenos.
They presented arms- some of the Deathwatch got extremely twitchy at that, and I noticed that they were all carrying long- las or something like it, big heavy rifles almost as tall as they were. They had been expecting us?

Then the band which had been hiding behind the line troops struck up a tune, which- it was actually physically painful. I can appreciate a good tune when I hear one, but this was set up on a different tonal scale, using a measure and a rhythm that sat painfully awkwardly on Imperium ears. It was a reminder of just how different from us they actually were under the skin- then I started to wonder f that was exactly why it had been done this way.

One fo the Lions- the sargeant- muttered ‘A’right, staun’ by tae return ra favour, Erchie, get yer bagpipes oot.’
‘Do that, brother, and I’ll shoot you myself.’ One of the Deathwatch growled at him. ‘Save the acts of war for a more appropriate time.’ Which, as a description of the pipes, on subsequent events I had to agree with.
Evidently the band understood, because the tune wavered slightly as some of them chuckled.


The senior officer of the welcoming committee- one of the white armoured types- stepped forwards, took his helmet off and said, in rapid but comprehensible gothic ‘I am High Colonel QAG-111, commander marine detachment. Welcome on board, I am to escort you to the bridge.’
‘High colonel.’ The lions’ sargeant said. ‘That sounds kind’o senior.’
‘Battlegroup command.’ The man in white said, managing to sound obscenely cheerful.

‘So ye outnumber us whit, hundred tae’ one?’ ‘Erchie’ said.
‘On a detachment by detachment basis or overall? We’d need to know much more about your total force before making that assessment, but on the other hand, here and now, closer to four hundred and fifty.’ The stormtrooper commander said, and the marines were almost as baffled by that as I was- three full strength hexagonal regiments, on a ship the same size as a Cobra? What were they doing, stacking them on top of each other?

We got a partial answer when he said ‘We’ll have to go through the ductwork, the crew companionways aren’t sized for astartes.’ Well, that was going to be awkward when it came to boarding actions. ‘BD31, lead off- if you would fall in behind first escort platoon?’
About forty of them moved off, and there was a brief and offensively polite jockeying for position among the marines- ‘No, brother, after you.’ The deathwatch lost, and moved out ahead of myself and Jurgen, with the Lions falling in behind, then the other white- armoured platoon.


The corridors we moved through were almost offensively plain, lit but generally undecorated in any way, apart from the occasional melt line or join between two metal plates. From the occasional heat scar, it was easy to see that this ship had taken a fair pounding from time to time.
The astartes were noticing it too. ‘Here, Brother- Sargeant Andraste, dae’ ye no’ think this ship hae a strange scent aboot her? Electric air an’ burnt metal, but a wee bit mair, somethin’ sharper an’ spicier?’

‘I really couldn’t say, Brother- Sargeant Fergus, I have switched my nose off for the occasion.’ The Deathwatch squad leader said, throwing a venomous glance at Jurgen.
‘Excuse me,’ one of the whitecoats said in comprehensible gothic, ‘but when you say ‘brother’, what exactly- how literally do you mean that?’ Some kind of vox translator, possibly- the idea that any substantial proportion of them could learn a completely alien language that quickly was much more disturbing.

‘We are brothers in arms, banded together for the holy purpose of the glory and the survival of man.’
‘So…not actually genetically related, then?’ the whitecoat asked, sounding disappointed.
‘Geneseed, brother?’ one of the other Deathwatch marines queried his squad leader.
‘Our word and our wisdom to keep ourselves.’ Andraste snapped back at the brother marine.
‘Mate, ah dinna ken if ye’ve noticed, but ye’re nine an’ a hauf feet ta’.’ Fergus pointed out. ‘That kindae begs ae explanation. ‘Sides which, it’s no as if ye’ve anythin’ tae be ashamed o’, is it?’

That was probably a jibe at the Deathwatch marine’s genetic heritage, which Andraste rose to. ‘After recruitment we are…reborn, with the genetic heritage and in the image of some of the greatest men who ever bestrode the galaxy, and thanks to the very handiwork of the Master of Mankind. As members of the Legiones Astartes we are the common descendants of that mighty heritage and, therefore, brothers.’


‘Shame ye cannae’ choose yer relatives, is it no’?’ One of the Lions muttered, and was shushed by his sargeant. Although not before eight of the whitecoats took their helmets off.
Apart from two broken noses, an augmetic eye and a set of claw marks, all eight were the same face. Identical octuplets, all of whom decided to join up, what were the odds?
Damned thin, and they were eerily alike, the damage really being the only way to tell them apart.

‘Ay, an’ ye ur, literally, brothers- whit’s ra word? Clones?’
The high colonel nodded. ‘The Republic needed good men in a hurry- so they identified the best man they could get their hands on, and made more of him.’
Andraste said, in more or less open challenge, ‘The Emperor chose to make better men- wait, the republic?’
‘You told me you were part of an empire earlier, I’m pretty sure there’s a difference.’ I pointed out, with only slight sarcasm.

‘The old republic was in a shambolic state.’ One of them said.
‘Which is why it was under attack.’ Another took up the sentence.
‘And why they had an urgent need for fighting men.’ Three different, identical voices, acting in perfect synchrony.
The astartes looked from one to another, brows furrowing as they started to wonder- the clones knew each other’s mind, probably part of the point of having clones, they could tell what each other would do under any given situation- on the field they would act as one.

‘The republic fought, and won.’ ‘With one hand tied behind it’s back, and broken knees.’ ‘They failed on the home front.’ ‘The government was incompetent and corrupt.’ ‘Only war emergency measures held the republic together.’ ‘The measures and the new men became permanent, the foundations of the Empire.’ ‘The Stormtrooper Corps was instrumental in sweeping away the detritus of the old order.’ They said, sentence passing from one clone to the other.


The Astartes looked utterly baffled by this. ‘The galaxy…fell? Everything changed, we- you lived through the Heresy?’ Andraste grasped at the nearest equivalent to how it sounded. I have to admit it sounded pretty drastic to me too.
They sort of got the reference, which nearly made it worse. ‘A heresy is when a new idea, a new order turns out to be wrong and has to be beaten down, yes? Not that way with us- it was the old order that was corrupt, had been around far too long for any good it had done, and had to be overthrown for the good and the glory of man. What would you call that, a crusade?’

That made the marines even more perplexed- it scared the crap out of me, in fact, although I’ve had a lot of practise at not admitting it by now. Not to say that I wouldn’t have been happier with less. I fumbled with my combead trying to pick up helmet to helmet chatter, but I could guess at most of it anyway. Doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing, no, it probably is the closest operational equivalent, and in that case-
I looked Andraste in the eye, in the visor anyway, said ‘This is not the time for drastic action.’ I strongly suspected that he was about to detonate the bomb, or at least attempt to.


One of the stormtroopers distracted him anyway, asking ‘You sound as if that was of great importance to you, more than just ancient history. Within living memory?’ he had obviously picked up on the capital H in Heresy.
‘Not of anyone less than His Divine Majesty.’ Andraste stated.
‘What of Bjorn the Fell-Handed, brother?’ one of his squad said- I had no idea what he was talking about.
‘He is a venerable, he hardly counts.’ Andraste said, and I detected a snappishness that meant either shut up, we don’t talk about that, or irritation at having to be reminded. I had no idea what it meant either way.

‘So…at the fringes of memory, directly remembered by only a tiny handful of survivors? Hundred years, hundred and fifty?’ One of the clones guessed, and the Lions laughed at them.
‘Try ten thoosand.’
It was their turn to be baffled and incoherent. ‘What, one of your men is ten thousand years old? Change, radiation, pollution, kriffing entropy- biology doesn’t last that long unless you’re a fungus, no complex organism- you have to be in mock. Ten millennia old records, robots maybe, but a living individual?’

‘He’s on life support, but he goes back to M31 all right…actually it’s probably closer to eleven thousand.’
The clones looked dumbfounded by that, yawning chasms opening up in their world- and it was good to know that we could do that to them. ‘You’re serious. We age faster than normal, and one of you Astartes has endured for millennia?’
‘It’s no’ a priviledge, it’s ae essential thing. We exist ‘cause o’ the nightmares facin’ the imperium, an’ are made mair than ordinary men fur that tae purge the inhuman, the imperium needs must ca’ on men beyond men.’

I wasn’t entirely certain whether this was going to end in a man- hug or a massacre, a subject of some importance considering Jurgen and myself were right in the centre of it, and I had just spotted a useful looking access hatch when here was a ping over some hidden speaker, and their Commodore’s voice said
‘QAG-111, if you and your troopers can get over your gene pool envy and escort our visitors up to the bridge tower, we do not have unlimited time for this.’ He was speaking Gothic for our benefit, and the stormtroopers looked –identically- sheepish, put their helmets back on and resumed formation.


It was a strange and winding path that I took care to engrave on my memory and take in as much detail around as I could; some parts clearly more used than others, some twists and turns that defied logic- it felt more like far down in the semi- collapsed bowels of a hive than something as supposedly neat and orderly as a warship.
It was massively subdivided, and some of those subdivisions were by metre- thick bulkheads. I don’t really know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it did make the ship seem perversely homelike.
There was something else that added to that impression- too many minor noises, it seemed too busy.

‘How many people are there on this ship?’ I asked the High Colonel, who was still brooding.
‘The precise answer may vary depending on your definition of a person; all intelligences included, biological born and grown, and sufficiently high degree droids, we reckon it as forty thousand.’
So much for advanced technology requiring smaller crews, then. We weren’t going to win a boarding action in a hurry.

We reached the command tower, and exited a wide access shaft that opened onto a well- lit corridor, one of those metre thick doors slid open ahead of us; the stormtroopers lined both sides of the corridor and waved us forward into the chamber behind the sliding door. Square, large central table.
There were another round dozen stormtroopers there, dressed in an iridescent red- blue version of their carapace in the chamber, and off centre, not immediately visible from the door, their commanding officer. Nothing visible, not even a shimmer in the air, but I certainly wouldn’t have been prepared to bet against some kind of force barrier here on his own home ground.


‘Ah, good, commissar.’ He said to me specifically. ‘I had you marked down as a sensible man, I hope the details of your arrival weren’t of your arranging.’
Ah. I was a little taken aback by this, particularly as he looked more disappointed than angry. I could try and weasel out- no, probably wouldn’t work. I had to stand up for the Imperium, too many eyes on me- even if I was defending the indefensible.

Any lifeform stupid enough to agree to the proposition “Greetings, we don’t trust you, can I ask you to hold this bomb?” is not long for this or any other universe. A lifeform caught out in the middle of making that offer…we had just technically committed an act of war, hadn’t we? For a second I wondered if I could get my chainsword out and get to him, take him hostage and use him as a not- quite-human shield before any of his minions shot me. Doubtful. No choice but to brazen it out.

‘No- but if I had been fully informed I would probably have gone along with it. None of our institutions have developed any convincing reason to trust you.’ I said, boldly.
‘Hmm. Is it those who have puzzled out the most who are least trustful, or is it that those who think the least tend to be the most suspicious?’ he said, looking particularly at the Astartes.
‘I resent that implication. To be suspicious of the alien is our duty.’ Andraste said.

‘Maybe so, but you could have been slightly more circumspect about it. I am also insulted by the fact that you think a first line fleet destroyer of the Galactic Empire could be destroyed by such ridiculously small bombs. The heavy aside, they don’t even reach single digit teraton yield. What were you thinking?’
Unflappability is a requirement of being a marine- part of the whole doctrine that ‘…and they shall know no fear’- but Throne, it was being put to the test today. Of course, he was acting- but only to a degree.


‘You’re genuinely offended by the fact that we didn’t bring big enough bombs?’ I asked.
‘I’m offended by any job poorly done, but that’s not the prime issue. Your objections to the alien are so strong that you would actually prefer to turn on us, we shred each other then these orks devour us both? Never mind mutual benefit through trade tomorrow, survival right now isn’t enough?’
Frakkit, I should be stalling, more likely actually agreeing with him, but- ‘The orks are barbaric scum, that I grant you, but the Imperium’s been holding back the green tide for millennia.’

‘They’re not an existential threat, whereas we might very well be, and your realpolitik ideal solution would be for us and the orks to wipe each other out- and for a substantial proportion of them to escape through the wormhole to plague the Galactic Empire?’
I should never have come, I thought- then realised what I had been about to think. If this situation didn’t call for a highly experienced dissembler, liar and general all round fraud, what did it call for? Who would be likely to do a better job than a Hero of the Imperium?
Almost anybody, if the job was to give nothing away- which could most easily be done by simply refusing to talk.

‘I suppose that your ideal solution would be for the Imperial Navy and the Orks to pound each other badly enough that whatever’s left has no practical option but to agree to whatever deal you demand? I’m not a spaceman, but as I understand it you’re the ones with the speed to accept or decline action as you choose.’ I decided to respond like for like.
‘Fair point.’ He admitted. ‘Now…you can’t all be here with command responsibility. Anyone who doesn’t have the burden of the fate of the Imperium resting on their shoulders, wait here.’


He stood, and the red-blue armoured stormtroopers fell in with him; I was tempted to pull up a seat and just wave the marines on, but I couldn’t. Both Astartes sergeants moved to follow me- he pointed a finger at Jurgen. ‘And you.’
‘The abhuman?’ Andraste said scornfully.
‘The simple, faithful man.’ Lennart said, apparently without heat- I found it difficult to get the measure of him as a commander, I’d love to see how he dealt with his own people, because here he was apparently unarmed, calmly laying down the law to a pair of nine- foot giants.

‘Does your biological advantage normally lead you so far out of touch with those you are sworn to protect?’ he added to the marines, and confirmed to Jurgen, who was still stolidly sitting there, ‘Yes, you.’
‘Well, come on then.’ I told my aide, and he fell in behind me as we walked through a side door in the main chamber- ‘Normally part of the ship’s offices, pay, leave, so forth. Our needs are a little more urgent today.’


There were two people already there, one solid man holding something that looked vaguely staff like with a collection of vox units glued to the top, and a female Eldar in rune- rich armour. That was more of a surprise to the deathwatch than to anybody else, Lachlan had suspected there were Eldar about somewhere.
She was unarmed, and both her hands were encased in something that looked like transparent amber, obviously not here on the same terms as we were. Both the marines raised their bolters-

‘She is a guest here, as are you, except her people brought less in the way of party favours. Sit down.’ He turned to the man with the staff and said something in their own language- I was starting to grasp that it must be a nightmare to learn, because it borrowed words and fragments of syntax from twenty million alien dialects. I found out later that it was ‘Let’s begin with the impressive balloons.’
There was a flare of light almost too bright to see, that turned the room into a ball of white and reddish afterimage, and a thump of sound almost too loud to hear.

‘Intellectually, you know that you’ve stuck your head into the sarlacc’s mouth- I thought a little visceral reminder might help you avoid making any dangerously messy moves.’ The glow was fading, my eyeballs were reorganising themselves, and I could see a small, brilliant globe of light hanging there in the air.
‘Looks a bit like a fusion reaction, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. A matterless reaction vessel crafted from internal-security force fields- go on, poke it if you don’t believe me.’

He added the last part to a sceptical- looking Brother- Sargeant Andraste, who decided to take him at his word and test his reactions by flashing his combat knife out faster than the unaugmented eye could follow and stabbing the hovering ball of light.
There was a red-orange flare and a puff of hot gas, a faint flicker in the air and the sargeant was thrown back against the wall by the vapourisation of his knife, was left holding a shattered hilt attached to a tiny stub of molten metal.


He brought his expression quickly under control, had just re- achieved a state of stoicism, and actually looked more irritated when the Lion broke his concentration by saying ‘Here, brother, ah’ve mair pointy things than ah ken whit tae’ dae wi’, ye kin borrow wan’ o’ mine.’ And handed him a replacement.
Andraste took it with as much grace as he could muster, then the commodore added ‘Not quite the object lesson I had in mind, but it’ll serve. You’re in a totally controlled environment- any offensive moves you choose to make had better be damned good ones, you’re not going to get a second chance. We’ve already dealt with three boarding actions since we got here by that and similar means.’

‘Tyranid survivors?’ I asked. I couldn’t see who else, unless there was an assassin floating around somewhere.
‘No, force ghosts- I think you call them daemons. None of them lasted long enough to tell us who had sent them or who they owed allegiance to, assuming they had a mind to.’ Lennart said, casually.
‘Who are you, who deals so casually with the infernal?’ Andraste glowered at him.
‘The captain of an Imperial Star Destroyer.’ Lennart replied, deadpan. ‘I can recommend it, incidentally- they get so annoyed at not being taken seriously they make all sorts of interestingly exploitable errors.’

Well, that was an approach to the Powers of Chaos I hadn’t expected to see. Mocking them tactically, on the field, for the benefit of the troops is one thing, as a matter of strategic policy it seemed to lack coherence.
‘The followers of chaos may be insane, but that doesn’t stop some of them being insane like a fox- are you sure who’s fooling who?’ I asked him.
‘I’m reasonably certain that most of them are fooling themselves, but complacency is suicide in this sort of manoeuvring, I know- trust me, I only look casual.’ He added to Andraste.


‘In any case, they are number three on the list of impending doom. Orks, two. One- take your hand away from that bolter, Brother- Sargeant, I don’t want to be shot by reflex- there have already been armed clashes. Galactic Empire and Imperium of Man warships butting heads at the mouth of the wormhole.’
Andraste and Fergus both went for their guns- they were fast but whatever controlled the forcefields was faster, there was a little globe of light sitting on the muzzle of each of their bolters and the shell detonated as it emerged, blast pushing them both back- and then there were four of the stormtroopers covering each of them, heavy rifles levelled.

Leaving two each to me and Jurgen. Cursing the impetuousness of the marines, but there was no option now, plan B, take him prisoner and escape with him- I nodded to my faithful aide and stood up, pushing the chair back into one stormtrooper and hopefully knocking them off balance and drawing my trusty chainsword and laspistol.
What was going to work? Move fast before those damn’ points of light got me- I dived forwards over the table, trying to land on him and knock him down, get my chainsword against his throat and get him to call the forcefields off.

I was half expecting to be melted in midair, but for some reason I was still alive when I hit, he had tried to rock backwards off his chair and was half way there, we went down in a tumbling heap.
I lashed out with the back edge of the chainsword, trying to stun him and knock him off balance while I found my feet, and managed to connect- a spaceman; they probably had to do less up close and personal fighting, and for a moment I thought this was going to work- there were a couple of blue flashes behind me, but no time to worry about that now.

I scrambled to my feet from a sprinter’s crouch, and the commodore was still on the ground, on his knees and one hand trying to push himself up; quick glance, one of the stormtroopers was down with a string of lasblast pockmarks in his armour, but Jurgen was face down on the table and not moving.
Oh, frak, I thought, I need him to cover my back- assuming I was going to have one for any length of time. Reach out with the chainsword and try to catch the commodore under the chin with it and threaten to take his head off unless he called off the stormtroopers- I did, but the move was blocked by a reddish- white energy blade.

I tried to roll the blade back, away and over to slash the stormtrooper in the chest, but they moved too fast- my life has depended on my skill with a chainsword too frakking often for me not to know how good I am, and I knew I had the edge in skill, but that damn’ weightless blade let them be a move, or at least half a move behind and still catch up.
The energy blade flickered up to parry, I managed to move my own sword out of the way, sidestep and roll over and in, tip extending at waist level- the trooper got his blade to it but didn’t have the momentum, and the chainsword hit his armour- scarring and scoring it, chewing it up, but it didn’t tear through.

Well, frak, I thought; a clean, straight blow would go through- if I got the chance to land one. I leapt back out of the way of another stroke, and looked round me to take stock of the fight; Jurgen was twitching, and I was absurdly relieved to see that he wasn’t dead, but both the marines were in the grip of some invisible hand that had rolled them up into balls and was hovering them in mid air.
Two more of the stormtroopers had energy blades out, as did the commodore. ‘Do you really think this counts as that damned good move?’ he asked me, conversationally.

[LadyTevar]

I think the Commissar just met his match. Why the chain-sword didn't break on the lightsaber?