"Now. We. Are. Free."
"Come on sir, don't give up now!"
"We're done taking orders from you, sir."
"Don't worry sir, you'll be safe with!"
"The ghosts your condemned demand blood for your sin."
"Right here sir! Don't worry 'bout me, all in a day's work, eh?"
"You cannot stop us, for we demand vengeance against your heinous demands!"
"Did… Did I do good… sir…?"
Bragana shot out of his bed, clutching his pounding heart with one hand while wiping his brow with the other. He gasped for air as he shook his hand clean of the cold sweat from his forehead. It took him a minute to realize he was safe. The shadows that chased him in dreams weren't real and the spectral knives that hunted him when his eyes closed weren't either. He wasn't on Pagaren anymore, he wasn't even in the same time period anymore. He was thousands of years before his birth and millions of lightyears away. Still the gunfire and sounds of battle continued in his head. At first he thought he was hallucinating the sound but then realized it was likely some sort of border skirmish with the Tau.
"They'll be fine." He reassured himself. It was only partially successful. Part of him worried about his men, what kind of fight they must be in and his heart felt uneasy because of it. Another told him that whatever kind of skirmish they were in with the Tau was nothing compared to what they had already been through. But that was exactly the type of thinking that had gotten the 55th into trouble before.
Unable to go back to sleep, he ultimately decided to let the soldiers have their fight, putting his faith in their ability to not get killed. Almost as an afterthought, he also gave a quick prayer to the God-Emperor. The Emperor protects, but in Bragana's experience, solid armor and even more solid cover tended to work a bit more reliability.
He pulled himself out of his bed and into the officer's mess hall. It wasn't richly decorated and ornately embellished like the regal chambers of his aristocratic youth, nor was it a pure rockcrete bunker, spartan and bare like he had become accustom too. Instead, it was a comparatively spacious technicolor mishmash of various Lego bricks Max had granted the Guard as a building material. Portal tables and folding canvas chairs sat next to stiff matchbox tables and long pencil benches while a large erase acted as a bar on the far side of the room with a meager selection of stale slightly flavored bread and non-surplus recaff. Perks of rank in the Guard.
However, the General wasn't the only one in the room. Sitting under one of the precariously dangling lights, Lorian Menatat, the highest ranking (and only surviving) commissar greeted Bragana with a slight nod of acknowledgement as he took a sip of his own recaff from a chipped novelty "#1 Commissiar" mug. While Bragana was still in his informal under suit for sleeping, Menatat was in his full, battle-worn commissariat uniform, his peaked cap boasting a gnarled lip, his greatcoat frayed at the seams with bullet holes and a dark sash that had been stained with battle and blood from years of campaigning, it was impossible to tell that it was still only a blue sash of a junior commissar, not that it mattered much anymore.
"Do you ever take that uniform off?" Bragana asked jokingly while pouring himself a cup of lukewarm recaff from the eraser bar.
"According to regulation, all service personnel of the Astra Militarum are required to always wear appropriate clothing and uniforms. Uniform maintenance is of the highest duties of a guardsman and failure to keep their equipment, weapons, gear and kit in proper condition will subject the offending guardsmen to 20 lashes on their bare back." Menatat rattled off regulation like a schoolboy reciting class readings, laughing with Bragana at the end of it.
"Well it's a good thing neither of us are Guardsmen." The General chuckled and looked at the sorry state of the Commissar's uniform. Uniform maintenance had long slipped the duties of the average 55th guardsman and Menatat just didn't have the heart to go after them for something he failed to do himself. Commissars are ideally paragons of regulation and duty after all.
"Shouldn't you be asleep Okonkwo?" Menatat rolled his mug in his hand, watching the recaff inside swirl and shift.
"Shouldn't you be out on the frontline, inspiring the men or something?" Bragana sat down across from the Commissar.
"No, I've been told by the ranking officer that they're mostly just prodding the Tau, trying to get them to just back off of the convoy that was supposed to head over to the water chamber on in their borders. No escalation of force. But I suppose this is going to be something the blue bastards are going to run to the Titan about though."
"Titan? You mean Max?"
"Its what some of the soldiers are calling him due to his size and everything. Holy Terran-Class Titan, Gloriana Maxima. Pretty name. Not going to lie, its kind of catchy."
There was a silence between the two officers as they sat opposite one another. It wasn't an awkward silence, but instead one of two friends just enjoying silent company. It had been a long time since they were able to experience a peace like this and it did not suit them well. They were still both waiting for nonexistant artillery to come raining down or an airstrike to roar out of the clouds. For a decade, pounding footsteps and lasgun fire had become their white noise silence and now that they could zone it out, all that was left was them waiting for something.
"I had that dream again." Bragana finally broke the silence, "Of Pagaren. If Max claims to know as much about us as he claims to, it is imperative that he does not share it."
"So far he seems pretty content to just try and have us 'get along' with the xenos." Menatat reassured his friend, "No doubt he'd us his knowledge to blackmail us into compliance if we were to step too far out of line."
"Aye, we'll play his game for now. We cannot allow the Astartes or the Sororitas to know of our… failings. I fear the divine punishment that would await us."
"You mean beyond what we've already suffered. We got overtaken by an expanding planetary Warp anomaly and I'm still stuck here with you."
The two men laughed. It was funny really. Years ago when the 55th first set out into the stars, Bragana and Menatat loathed each other, constantly fighting and even one time nearly killing each other in a duel. Funny how small their petty squabbles seemed now in hindsight after all they had been through together. They had bonded in a way only desperation and combat could forge and they laughed longer than was probably comfortable for anyone watching them until both their eyes faced out of the window and stared at bedroom outside.
Officially the 55th was sharing their room with the Order of the Frozen Pyre. That sharing had gone as smoothly as century old recaff. The Sisters had immediately claimed the high ground, announcing that they would turn the bedframe plateau into a fortress of faith and righteousness. They were devout in the same way a rabid dog would froth at the mouth at an unwelcomed and suspicious intruder in that they were nearly blinded by it, far more so than was usual for a Sororitas convent. Most of their numbers scorning the Sallotic guardsmen as heretics for their difference sect of the Imperial cult. It was only the one shared brain cell of diplomatic tact the Canoness and the Old Priest had that prevented them from denouncing the 55th in its entirety. Bragana himself had to personally intervene when a Seraphim-equivalent nearly dragged off a poor guardswoman to be burned at the pyre for refusing to acknowledge their interpretation of the Lectitio Divinitatus was the only correct one and that the guardswoman should renounce her own faith.
That was to say nothing of the 55th's Mechanicus contingent who nearly came to blows with the Sisterhood, fully prepared to "wipe away the blasphemers who stood against the Omnissiah's will". In the end however, the Tech Priests got the last laugh as it soon became apparent that for all of the Sororitas' faith, they lacked most if not all knowledge on construction and machinery beyond what their own servitors already knew. Their motor pool was forced to park next to the Guard's own pool of kludged together and borderline techno-heretical vehicles, unable to get up to the holy bedframe as none of them could work out how to build a vehicle lift. Bragana knew no binary, but even he could make out the pure smug satisfaction the unit's Tech Priests' chirps had when they saw the Sororitas Rhinos pull up next to the Chimerusses and wheeled Tauroxes, silently fuming at the failure of their Ecclesiastical servitors.
Bragana got out of his seat and walked towards the window, recaff in hand and looked out into the well-lit room beyond. It was still dark out but the 55th had made heavy use of battery powered floodlamps to illuminate the entire ground floor they occupied. The General watched as the night shift continued to raise walls, pour rockcrete and stack Legos into bunkers, barracks and buildings. Even if most of the soldiers were sleeping on the floor, their tents and shelters gathered around their company standards as if they were bonfire on a cold night, Bragana's heart swelled with a sort of fatherly pride.
Building and constructing was one of the hallmarks of the soldiers of Sallot, an inevitable result of a homeworld with unstable tectonics that regularly forced its stubborn inhabitants to build and rebuild their cities. To the night shift workers, it was a fairly comfortable task, letting them slip into autopilot as their bodies simply followed orders and carried materials. They could build defensive outposts overnight and dig trench lines in an afternoon, all of them were positive they'd completely cover and fortify the room given to them within a few days, especially if they could secure the assistance of Max. It was for this reason that the regiments raised on Sallot were called the "Warforged" or simply "Assault Engineers" by anyone who didn't have a Munitorum-approved auto-quill in their ass.
"Lorian. Where did we go wrong?" Bragana asked without looking back, his voice somber, a stark contrast his laugh moments ago.
"Do you mean physically or metaphorically?" Menatat put aside his recaff and pulled an unmarked flask from his coat pocket, downing a quarter of its contents in one swig, "Legally I am required to tell you that it has not gone wrong and that only those too coward and too seditious have failed the Emperor. Honestly though… probably since we left Sallot's gravitational well but then again that's just how things normally go in the Guard isn't it?"
"I thank you for your honest and wise council commissar." Bragana turned around and noticed the flask, chuckling as he saw Menatat wipe his lips with the back of his hand "Commissar Menatat, is that a regulation beverage in your possession which you have just imbibed?"
"Officers of the Officio Prefectus are responsible for the morale, motivation and purity of all members of the Astra Militarum force they are assigned to. They are allowed and encouraged to use whatever methods they see fit to do so as long as those methods are moral and pure in it of themselves." Menatat rambled in his most official sounding force before dropping it to take another drink, "Basically, I'm the Commissar and I make the rules and I say as part of the 55th Sallotic Army I am allowed to increase my own morale however I see fit and thus this beverage is automatically regulation approved."
The two friends laughed as Bragana downed his recaff so Menatat could pour him a little bit of his liquor. Through a decade of campaigning and fighting they had gone from bitter enemies to close companions. As the two raised a drink to the Emperor and to the 55th, they remised on what fighting back to back through hell itself could do for a relationship.
It was the early morning and Max stood in the warm morning sun on the second-floor landing, having just awoken moments ago to a knocking on his bedroom door where a both a Commissar and a Fire Warrior Commander were nearly at blows over trying to deliver him a petition for a case. Max had spent the last twenty minutes listening to Aun'Phai make his case and realized two minutes in he needed coffee.
"And so, just like the wings of the Sharmara'tai, we engaged our right to open fire on what was clearly an armed convoy with hostile intent." Ethereal Aun'Phai finally concluded a long, rambling speech about self-defense, justified suspicions, side tangents and repeated metaphors for a creature native to Brei'han that not even the Eldar Rangers who had snuck in under invisibility cloaks fully understood.
"Okay… so let me get this straight." Max closed his eyes and screwed up his face as he tried to unpack the layers of verbal fluff and complex oratory skills used by the Ethereal, his barely awake brain only able to grasp at the surface of anything Aun'Phai just said. "So, you saw a bunch of trucks and tanks lined up and you started blasting?"
Max looked over at the convoy in question. It was armed alright. He could make out trucks and armored vehicles in a convoy pattern, lead by an armored spearhead that was aimed directly at the Tau lines. Max could recognize the vehicles, but something was off about them. He could see Leman Russ turrets on Chimera bodies, an open topped Leman Russ being used as some type of transport, a half-tracked Taurox that looked slightly less stupid than a fully tracked one and what looked like the cockpit of a Sentinel strapped to the passenger compartment of a Valkyrie put on to six wheels. If it hadn't been for the Imperial symbols plastered all over the blatant tech heresy and Guardsmen all over the place, Max could have easily mistaken it for a Mad Max scene.
"Yes! A preemptive self-defense!" Aun'Phai repeated loudly at Max's questioning, "What purpose would the Unenlightened have to line up their tanks of war other than to invade and destroy like the brutes they are?"
"Have you considered that the 'Unenlightened' might require water." Commissar Menatat barked in his most official commissar-voice, "Water which you are currently preventing us from obtaining? We seek the water sources from the bathroom and were wise enough to know that you would not allow us through uncontested, so we came prepared."
"Prepared to scour our hapless civilians with your savage fires!" Aun'Phai shouted and pointed at what looked like to be a Manticore Missile Launcher with Hellhoud fuel tanks bolted on to its missile rack instead of actual munitions, "Your water tanks can just as easily contain that vile promethium you savages are so fond of dousing everything in for your brutish, pyromaniacal god!"
"Both of you calm down." Max could see the two leaders stare daggers at each other and their accompanying entourages gripping their weapons just a little tighter.
Max could see both sides of what was going on. Trigger happy Imperials was a well known fact to anyone who interacted with them and the zeal they showed while committed what amounted to war crimes against any heretic, xenos or traitor was frankly disturbing to Max's contemporary view. The fiery death threats that the Sororitas had been sending everyone, including their fellow Imperials, was not helping. Even Max got a strongly worded letter saying that if the sister who wrote it found enough promethium, she'd "burn his bloated, oversized affront of a body in the name of the God-Emperor". And they wondered why they were becoming more and more isolated by the other factions.
At the same time however, the Guard (and the Sisters who shared their room) required more water than what they could produce or recycle themselves. Max wasn't going to attempt amateur plumbing to try and give a pipe straight to the Imperial room so it would ultimately be up to the minis themselves to get their water. Downstairs this wasn't a problem as both the Marines and the Eldar had equal access to the kitchen sink which laid beyond both their claims. However, Max knew that if given the chance, the Guard would also try to turn the tables on the Tau and cut off their water supply.
"Okay, how about this. There will be a specially designated corridor which the Imperials can use to access the bathroom and the water within. As long as they stay within the bounds, they will be within their own territory. The Tau will be allowed to erect defenses on either side of the road as long as nothing extends into the road or otherwise blocks it. To ensure equal access, I will have… the Eldar take watch of the bathroom itself to make sure no side gets more access than the other."
"Do you really trust the Eldar that much." Both Menatat and Aun'Phai flatly stated.
"No, but I trust them more than you two being mature enough to have any other solution." Max thought it was a pretty good idea. The Eldar were pretty much guaranteed to be as neutral a third party as possible in this regard. In addition, Max didn't want to seem too sympathetic to Imperial forces, worrying that the Tau might just decide to break their agreement to the peace accords which meant the Space Marines were out of the picture. Not that he'd trust them with something like this; so far they'd proven to look more like heavily armed drunkards instead of righteous angels of wraith.
"If either of you have any complaints, now would be the time to say it. Otherwise, I'm getting the tape and informing the Eldar." Max stated, unaware of the Rangers who disappeared beneath the stairs. Both the Imperials and the Tau commanders said nothing, either unwilling or unable to come up with something in response.
"Autarch Faeris." A Ranger kneeled before the Eldar commander and gave his report, "It would seem that the disputes between the primitives have resulted in an opportunity for us. It seems that the Greater Mon'keigh wishes to bestow upon us guardianship of the fountainhead chamber."
"I see…" Faeris put a hand on her mouth and closed her eyes to meditate. She mentally weighed her options; Craftworld Harashyrun never acted without careful deliberation and reference to their ancient archives before fully committing themselves to a singular purpose.
"It is done." Faeris's eyes shot open with a flame of certanity, and she looked to the Rangers , "We shall accept the mon-keigh's proposal and humor him with it. Once we accept, we shall see how far we will be able to push the role he bestows upon us. Let us weave this fate into a greater web, we have much to learn about our current situation and perhaps we can leverage the Greater Mon'keigh to our advantage."
A/N: Had a burst of inspiration long enough for me to get this chapter out quickly. Next chapter will be another "faction focus" one, on who I don't quite know yet. As always, thank you to everyone who reads, favs, follows and comments especially now that I've rebooted the entire dang fic lol. Hope people enjoy this as much as I enjoy writing it. I'm debating if I want to make insert half chapters to explain each of the factions more in detail out of character or try to keep it all in-story and a part of the normal chapters. Anyways, see you next chapter! o/