Brother-Captain Kittan of the Salamanders Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes grinned at the sight of the Emperor's servants milling around in the camp mingling without irony or self-awareness , preparing for the latest battles with a particularly stubborn Tyranid splinter fleet that had come to ground on this particular backwater planet.
Tech-priests in their robes and augmented forms, buzzing and clicking with the holy sanctification of the Machine-God, discussing the sacred mysteries of their work with techmarines from his company, and the mechanical noises of their respective mechadendrites and implants were the same; Imperial Guardsmen-and-women listening intently to the last minute sermons of a rather keen Sister of Battle named Sister Yoko Littner that he had grown fond of since he and his battle-brothers had fought alongside her sisterhood in various battles over the last few years, and a few enginseers were in that crowd, apparently curious to see for sure if she was as tolerant of the Cult Mechanicus as she promised. (She was.) A Commissar (named Dayakka) who preferred to lead by example than by force (having been taught by the legendary Ciaphas Cain himself, she said) shared a bundle of rations with sanctified psykers and a couple of ratlings.
A fairly cosmopolitan diversity of units, he thought, and blinked in mild surprise at a unit of crisp-looking beastman wearing Imperial uniforms, mainly of the Imperial Guard but a few others here and there. He was impressed, he hadn't thought that there were many still loyal to the Emperor. He frowned as he noticed one in particular, a nearly-human beastman dressed in the uniform of a Princeps, attached to the retinue of the local Inquisitor that had met up with this composite of military forces quite by accident (or so the Inquisitor, named Kiyal, insisted, but Kittan knew her as his blood-sister too well to believe her); a blend of cat and shark features on a human form, arms grotesquely broad and fingers a mixture of flippers and claws, sharp teeth bared into a perpetual glower under a mop of long hair so light as to be nearly white.
"Viral," Kittan said neutrally, his spiky shock of ash-white hair startling against skin so dark as to look like cooled magma.
This cat-shark beastman, though tall himself, had to crane his neck up to meet Kittan's eyes. "Brother-Captain Kittan," Viral said.
They stared at each other; not quite challenging, but with a sense of not-quite-rightness disturbing them both.
Kittan shrugged, the brilliantly green plates of his corvid-style power armor (modified to resemble the dragon-like salamanders that his Chapter took their name from) moving silently as he did. Viral relaxed, his feline instinct to attack rivals soothed, and blinked at Kittan, the red light from the Space Marine's glowing eyes hurting a little.
Viral smirked at the associated forces. "I have to say," Viral rasped. "It's nice to see our multitude of forces mingling without irony."
"Yep," Kittan said (still speaking with a strong hint of the decidedly urbanized accent from the part of Nocturne where he had grown up, even after a few centuries of dedicated service as one of the Adeptus Astartes). Viral cocked an eyebrow and waited, but Kittan said no more. Salamanders were not known in general for being especially talkative, as suited their less impulsive habits enforced by both possible geneseed mutations and the influences of their own Promethean Cult.
A group wandered by them; mostly Ogryn, the abhumans grown to tremendous size and strength by ages living in extremely hostile worlds at the cost of their intelligence being focused to extreme levels (thus giving them a sad case of stupidity). The smallest of them was still a head taller than Kittan, who would be considered a giant of a man by any other standard, their bodies not quite as bulky as his own for the most part (being derives from natural adaptation rather than purposeful enhancement), and he felt rather at ease in the company of people as large as he was. A fairly even mix of men and women (and the ladies were cute as buttons, he thought, with the combination of their fearsome bulk and charming demeanors), the child-like mutants seemed to have been drawn from many worlds; most likely, they had simply been random Ogryn just barely intelligent enough to be capable of serving in Imperial Guard squads instead of the Ogryn-specific ones they were typically sent out in, and had naturally gravitated towards each other in the camp, going around and playing before battle came. At any rate, they had taken it into their head to adopt a tech-priest as their friend; the tech-priest, a mutual friend of Kittan and Viral's named Leite, accepted this with good humor.
The Ogryn wandered by Kittan, nervously giggling and slapping each other and whispering furiously as they stole looks at him. Kittan grinned and walked to them, the Ogryn gaping in delight at the sight of a Space Marine coming to see them. "Hey-ya, guys and girls," Kittan, grinning cheerfully at them. "Hyped up for smashing the Emperor's enemies?"
"Yeah!" One of a pair of dark-skinned Ogryn twins boomed, thrusting their arms up enthusiastically. A few of the other Ogryn followed their example, though the rest either stared shyly at Kittan or got distracted by a passing bird. Kittan grinned at the Ogryn twins; they seemed slightly familiar to him, and he recognized them as natives of his planet, and had worked with the regiment they were attached too once or twice. Jougan and Balinbow, he thought their names were.
Tech-Priestess Leite, a tall blonde woman dressed in the red robes of her calling, seemed to grin. Like most tech-priests, she was heavily augmented to replace her flesh with sacred machinery, and her mouth had been covered or outright replaced by a combination of a rebreather and vox unit. The grill mesh of it was designed to look something like a friendly grin, though, and her eyes (not augmentic, he was surprised to see) crinkled as if she were smiling. "Enthusiasm," she said. "Heh. Love it."
This seemed to meet with approval from the Ogryn in general. One in particular, a tall and rather cute Ogryn lady with her hand on Leite's shoulder as if guiding her around, grinned with a mouthful of sharp teeth down at Kittan and Viral. A pretty and solidly built example of her kind, her curvy form a bit bottom-heavy and standing taller than most of her fellows, she had the earthy dark skin and white hair (shaven on one side of her head, in her case) common to Nocturne as well.
Pleased to have earned to attention of a Salamander, the Ogryn wandered away again, most of them too shy to risk upsetting him. Kittan wouldn't have minded; he was fond of children, and in their innocence he felt that Ogryn generally were sweetly child-like. They let Leite go, though, and she nodded professionally at Kittan. "The big girl back there tells me she's from Nocturne," she said.
Kittan considered it. "Could be, yeah."
"Truly?" Viral said. He looked surprised. "I thought that the home worlds of the Adeptus Astartes did not need to tithe Imperial Guardsmen."
"They don't have to. They can join if they want to," Kittan said, laconic as ever in the tradition of his Chapter.
"And here I was, surprised that Nocturne had Ogryn," Leite said. "Not exactly, uh, usual, you know?"
Kittan grunted. "We didn't used to. 'Bout thirty years ago, during the Time of Trials-"
"The what?" Viral said.
"Annual time when Nocturne's moon Prometheus flies closer to the planet, affecting it's gravity and inducing horrendous amounts of volcanic activity and earthquakes, followed by year-long winters," Leite explained.
"Ah."
"Yeah," Kittan agreed. "Well, it was worse than usual. Lot of people couldn't make it to the sanctuaries, and way too many settlements were destroyed. We needed to repopulate, and as it turned out the Guard had a regiment's worth of unattached Ogryn who had their planets destroyed or lost while they were off-world. We gave them the all-clear to settle."
"I heard that some particularly dense Salamander got it into his head that getting Ogryn to breed with artificers and local tech-priests would result in a population of smart Ogryn," Leite said dryly.
Kittan seemed suddenly very interested in the ground. "Yeah, well, he didn't know how heredity worked then, okay?!"
Viral grinned; it was a rare sight to see one of the Adeptus Astartes embarrassed.
"Anyway… the Ogryn integrated, settling some of the more dangerous parts of the planet they liked. A few generations later, we have plus-sized Nocturnites wandering the planet and looking adorable." He paused and added, "And also a new generation of tech-priests who are attracted solely to much taller women, but whatever."
"So, another one of your plans ended up going bad, eh?" Leite said.
"You swore you'd stop making fun of me over that!"
"I didn't swear it on anything I hold particularly sacred," Leite said dryly.
"Hmph," Kittan muttered.