Chapter 3

My Doxes slammed into the enemy like a tide of unstoppable steel, spewing hatred-filled balls of plasma. Every one of the rapid-fire shots meant a melted cluster of enemies, every step meant a daemon ground beneath my giant robot feet. A horde of screaming barbarians, most armed with scraps of fabric attempting to be trousers and a sharp piece of metal or a crudely made autogun, didn't even compare to the types of enemies Commanders were meant to fight. There were a lot of them, though, and they weren't the real threat. They were just the meat shields for the real troops.

Daemons. Warp-borne entities composed of emotion, usually negative; very negative. Khornates were the servants of the god of war and murder. Every act of bloody violence committed in anger strengthened him. Which was something of a problem for me.

I did not consider myself a violent person. I actually tried my best to avoid conflict. I liked making friends much more than making enemies. I'd gotten to the point where even the shittier kinds of people in high school smiled and greeted me with a hearty "Yo Archie! What up?"

But, all the same, I hated Chaos. The sheer scale of its malevolence, the eternal torment of the poor souls foolish enough to follow them, the pointless, unchanging, unending hell they perpetuated in this fucked-up galaxy; I hated it all so much.

And it felt good to destroy the things you hated. Very good. That was a problem when it came to Khorne, something the Imperium, with all of its litanies espousing the virtues of hatred, had failed to grasp for so long. Humanity was its own worst enemy when it came to Chaos. It was why Khorne had the most power out of all of the dark gods. Humans were so very good at hating, and killing, and all too willing to do so.

I refused to give Chaos an inch. Give them an inch, and they'd take everything, and leave nothing but pain and suffering. Thusly, there was only one thing I could think of that I could do.

'This mustn't register on an emotional level,' the combat doctrine.

I wasn't human in form. Unlike a human, directed by chemical impulses and brain structure, I was a machine. Everything I was, was now so much streaming lines of code. Code could be edited. Hatred was optional.

It was a drastic step, modifying myself like this. But when the choice came down to not doing it, and enjoying the carnage to come, potentially giving even more strength to the strongest Chaos god, or doing it, then it wasn't really a choice at all.

I hoped I was making the right decision. God, I hoped so.

Here goes nothing.

Accessing root personality matrix.

Saving current personality matrix, codename: Prime.

Establishing new personality template, codename: Warface.

Establishing if/then personality template clause: If engaged in combat with the possibility of Chaotic influence, then exchange personality template Prime for personality template Warface.

Deleting emotional matrix 'anger'.

Deleting emotional sub-matrix 'hatred'.

Deleting emotional sub-matrix 'lust for battle'.

Suppressing emotional matrix 'fear'.

Updating primary objective: Preserve the physical and emotional well-being of sapient, non-Chaos lifeforms.

Updating primary objective: Destroy all Chaos forces in such a manner that does not violate the aforementioned primary objective.

Save personality template: Warface.

Applying.

End access.

And that was that. I let out a metaphorical breath. I felt calmer. More rational. The horror of my situation wasn't gone, but it felt a great deal more manageable. Useful as this was, I couldn't become reliant on it. Didn't want to risk irreparably damaging my psyche.

I wouldn't destroy Chaos because I hated them. I would destroy them because they stood in the way of peace. Khorne would draw no strength from battles with me. My machines were soulless (or at least, I thought they were) and thus could not be sacrificed. No blood, only metal and circuitry. No joy in battle, only clinical detachment and cool logic. Perfect professionalism.

I didn't hate Chaos, now. I pitied them. From my perspective, it wasn't their fault for being so fucked up. It was ours. The humanity from my world had created it. Games Workshop had designed this universe to be a parody, the epitome of grimness and darkness taken to the most absolute of extremes. If pressed, I could not come up with a setting more messed up than that of Warhammer 40k.

And now it was my job to clean it up. And clean it up I would. I pitied them, yes. But that didn't mean I wouldn't crush them wherever I found them. I had my goal. I would drag this galaxy into a Noblebright future kicking and screaming if I had to.

I watched dispassionately as howling squads of cultists and Bloodletters were vaporized by plasma, each shot calculated for maximum effectiveness with no unnecessary overlap. This ungodly level of multi-tasking made my efficiency of warfare obscenely high.

There were tanks and other daemonic engines of war on the field as well, contesting with the Leman Russes and Chimeras of the Imperial Guard while corrupted Valkyries on strafing runs wove between streams of flak emitted from IG Basilisks. Their plasteel and ceramite frames were holding up surprisingly well against plasma. Well, better than their fleshy infantry had so far. Yoinking imminent, once my fabbots arrive. See what I did there? Fabricator bots? Fabbots? Eh? Ah, whatever.

Daemonic engines of war adorned with skulls and the eight-pointed stars of Chaos trundled forwards into battle, powered by madness and blood and firing munitions of the same. Mortar-like tanks fired arching gobs of the sanguine liquid that boiled with a heat greater than magma at my army. It seeped into their frames and sought to wear away at the joints like acid, but the sturdy construction of the Progenitors held firm, and such weapons found no use against my Doxes. The engines equipped with melee weapons died before they could close the distance. It was the tanks that did any lasting damage. Shots here and there impacted against the armor, denting and tearing in some places, lucky hits blowing off limbs. Immaterial. I felt no pain. My units were expendable.

With Chaos caught on two sides by the armor of the Imperial Guard and my Doxes, the battle, which had promised to be a long and grueling exchange, quickly turned into a rout. Enemy infantry simply couldn't survive in such a hostile environment, with bullets and plasma flying through the air thick enough to be mistaken for walls of death. They were liquefied first. The enemy armor didn't last much longer than that. With the ground clear, my Doxes could calculate the flight paths of the enemy air-power, and they set to filling the sky with plasma as well. It was even easier than sniping Banshees with a Scorpion in Halo.

It was as the last of the fighting was dying down when a tank on the IG side fired a shell at my forces and blew the head off of one of my Doxes. It remained standing. Wasn't like anything important was in there except for the optics, anyway. To a unit, my remaining forty Doxes froze, and very carefully did not point their weaponry at the twitchy Imperials.

I allowed a trace of annoyance to color my tone as I addressed the Leman Russ responsible, as well as broadcasting the transmission across the entire local IG battle-net.

-Nice shot, soldier, but would you kindly direct your fire elsewhere? I am not your enemy.-

A hatch on a larger than average Leman Russ popped open and a grizzled man dressed in a uniform that at first glance appeared to be an old-timey set of dress blues interrupted whatever the pilot of the guilty tank was going to say, his gruff, commanding voice riddled with suspicious wariness as he spoke into a hand-held Vox-caster. I didn't blame him for it.

-This is Tank Commander Abraham Cook of the 17th Mordian Iron Guard. You say that you are a friend of humanity, but your forces are clearly inhuman in design. What cause have I to trust you?-

Huh. I was more than mildly impressed. He'd asked a question before shooting. That deserved a prize of some kind! Later.

-I have not shot at you. Nor do I plan to. You have no cause to believe me, Commander, and that's fine. Believe what your eyes are telling you now. I could have just as easily stayed out of this fight and let you grind yourself down on Chaos, but I didn't. I value the life of sentient beings as precious, not something to be thrown away. I'm here to help save this world. Please, Commander. Let me.-

Please please please please please be a reasonable authority figure!

-...Fine. But give me a reason to regret my decision, and I swear that there will be a reckoning…whoever you are.-

-Thank you, Commander Cook. I promise on my life and honor, I mean no harm to the Imperium, and I will gladly surrender myself for questioning once all this is taken care of. But for now, every moment we dally is another moment the Enemy is slaughtering defenseless civilians. There is work that needs doing.-

And oh yeah, that's right. I needed a name. It just didn't feel right to use my real name. Drich and the other Commander SIs used their webhandles, but Lazurman kinda, sorta, lacked gravitas. Tiki and Torroar used their Commander designs as names, but that wouldn't work for me here either.

I dialed up the time dilation. I'd probably be thinking about this for a while.

…I was horrible at naming things!

But aside from that, I was ecstatic on the inside. Peaceful first contact! I had my foot in the door! Now, all I had to do was drive Chaos off the planet, and then I could sit a human-sized avatar down with them and we could see about helping each other even more! Yes!

Oh, hey, the base defenses and the reinforcements were done. My new armies utterly dwarfed that first force I'd sent out, with a mix of Doxes, tanks, bombers, and fighters. Now to start upgrading to T2 structures and setting up some orbitals so I can take a look-see at what we got going on up there…