Author's note: I have had this fic idea in my head for well over a month now and it is very satisfying to finally have begun writing it down. This first chapter was originally going to be much longer, but I just couldn't hold myself! I had to publish! Therefore, the first chapter has been split in two, so if you think it's a bit short so far, don't worry, more is coming very soon! Enjoy!

"Commissar Lalonde?"

"Come in."

Your name is Rose Lalonde and you're a Commissar in the Imperial Guard. At the moment, you're sitting at your desk in your office. It is a small and dark room, lit up only by the dim lights on the wall, and on the rare occasion that the ship is parked at the right angle, a distant star shining in through the window into space behind your back.

Other than that, your office mostly consists of a sturdy wooden desk with two chairs nearby. A comfortable one for you and a less comfortable one for any guests you might have. In case of an important visit from a higher officer, you let them have the comfortable chair instead. If the Emperor got off the Throne and came to visit, you'd bring in a couch for him. The Emperor deserves as much.

The guest chair has some red spots here and there, which are definitely not dried blood and have no correlation whatsoever to the mysterious stain on the red carpet and the many bullet holes in the floor and walls. How did they ever get there?

The door creaks open and a Guardsman enters. It is difficult to make out his features in the darkness, but he's definitely a man. His hair is tucked in underneath his helmet, although black strands poke out here and there, and if you are not mistaken, he's wearing glasses.

"Yes?" you ask since he hasn't spoken a single word yet. While asking, you turn the monitor on your desk off before turning to look at him. You try your best to not appear too intimidating. Most Guardsmen have both fear and respect for Commissars.

"Oh, yes! Message from command, ma'am!" He salutes you as he walks over with a piece of paper. You take it and look back at him. The Guardsman doesn't seem very nervous, so either he has handled Commissars before or he's very brave. "Your name?" you ask trying to sound as polite as you can, even though you still manage to put some authority into it. Can't get too personal with a fellow soldier.

"John Egbert, ma'am!" A relatively average-sounding name for an average-looking Guardsman. To be honest, you rarely remember Guardsmen. They're usually a beige ocean with helmets and lasguns marching by you unless you're the one leading the charge towards the enemy. As for you personally, it varies. Sometimes you are on the front line commanding a charge, and other times you are at HQ, coordinating air support, armor and artillery.

At the end of the day, what matters is if you won the battle or not, not where you were. You do your job and the Imperium has another victory noted down in records. Life then goes on until the next battle.

"Thank you, Egbert. You serve the Emperor well. Dismissed! …oh, and close the door on your way out, please?" The sentence starts off cold, although as you make your last request, you warm up a bit. Not too much. Heat is for the denizens of the Warp, and the denizens of the Warp are evil. On top of that it is absolutely forbidden to be friendly with Guardsmen. Friendliness isn't regulated by any restrictions but rather personal code and morals.

You take a look at the piece of paper in your hand. The Imperial Aquila in form of a two-headed black eagle is printed at the top of the paper and it has been stamped with a red stamp reading "CONFIDENTIAL – FOR AUTHORIZED EYES ONLY" in the lower right corner.

Chances are, a pair of unauthorized eyes would probably have read it already before getting to that corner. Hm, the light in your room is a little too dim and you don't have a good reading light. Last one broke when you hurled it at a Guardsman who had lost his lasgun. The lasgun was later recovered in the pipe system when a toilet clogged up. To this day, the enigma of how the lasgun wound up in the toilet pipes is unsolved. Theories including heresy, clumsiness, a practical joke gone wrong and many other explanations have been floating around and yet no solution has been found. Asides from the two missing Primarchs, the lasgun in the toilet is the biggest mystery in the Imperium.

Your reading light broke and you then proceeded to yell at the Guardsman for dodging it and not letting his armor or helmet (and in the best case, his face) take the blow. After that, he ran away and you were left with a broken reading light and a missing lasgun.

Of course, the idiots on the ground had to go and get a Baneblade tank broken somehow. (The full story was never divulged, through rumors whisper that the incident began with the words "Hold my drink, I want to try something" and involved a very large rock and Baneblades being poorly constructed for falling) The tech-priests considered the tank to be of greater importance than the broken reading light which probably sits on a shelf in the workshop still.

You would of course go down there yourself if it was not for the fact that you don't like spending more time than absolutely necessary with the tech-priests. They are slightly intimidating with the tentacle-like mechadendrites attached to their spines and the low electronic humming they make when communicating with each other. However, tech-priests are not as unsettling as the Servitors, the mindless drones of flesh and steel used for the lowest and easiest of tasks.

With no artificial reading light, perhaps a natural light will do fine instead? An idea hatches in your mind as you switch the intercom device on your desk on and adjust it to the bridge frequency.

"Bridge? Commissar Lalonde speaking, over."

Almost immediately, a raspy voice is heard over the communication system.

"Reading you loud and clear, Lalonde, over."

"Alter heading minus forty-five degrees, please. Utmost importance to both Imperium and myself. Reading light broken."

Not a single word is heard in response except some grumbling. By this point, the rest of the ship's crew has learned that arguing with you isn't worth it for the most part. A silver tongue and a bolt pistol are excellent tools to have at your disposal.

Ever so slowly, a familiar humming sound is heard as engines fire up and the gargantuan armed cathedral boasting a span of five kilometers across and nearly a hundred thousand passengers springs to life. Twenty-eight million tons of steel turn around, and with them, tens of thousands of soldiers, crewmen and vehicles, all just to give you that much-deserved reading light. If this isn't absolute power, you don't know what is. After a few minutes, things calm down and the nearby sun is shining in through your window, giving you a perfect opportunity to read the paper you received earlier whilst you sip the bitter tanna from the mug on your desk.

It seems to be standard fare. An armed conflict between humans and xenos has erupted on a planet. Hang on, does it really say "Trolls"? You have heard of Orks before, but never Trolls. According to the paper, they are a xeno race who has often peacefully co-existed with humans on the planet Alternia. So why would there be a conflict now? Of course. Reports state that Chaos forces have been seen as well and that they most likely have been lighting the sparks of conflict. Exterminatus is out of the question because of risked heavy Imperial losses and damaged relations to the Troll Empire.

You switch your intercom system on again. "Bridge, how many troops do we have at our disposal on this ship?"

"About a hundred thousand soldiers, a few hundred Leman Russ tanks and Valkyries and a few Baneblades, Commissar Lalonde."

This seems to be a suitable force. In addition to that, Alternia must have a few thousand Planetary Defense Force soldiers and reinforcements are just a message away. These people are the Imperium's finest, the Emperor's hammer, and shall have no problem quelling the flames of conflict on Alternia. Humanity shall prevail and the foul traitors and xeno scum will regret the day they ever crossed the Emperor.

"Plot a course for Alternia. The Trolls shall have their first serving of the Emperor's fury and Chaos is long overdue for the leftovers."

EDIT: I got a review saying Rose couldn't possibly know about the missing Primarchs, and no, she doesn't know about them. It is the narrator making that joke, not her.