15. Organising the Party

The forces of Chaos had been busy since the battle for Bloodhaven. Though the Ori had not returned, presumably believing their mission fulfilled, work on the base around the Stargate had continued apace, turning it into a capacious staging ground and nigh-impregnable fortress. Kilometre-long, gargoyle-encrusted ships hung in the air in contemptuous defiance of gravity, while huge lance-thrower turrets tracked the slightest movement above. A network of trenches and low fortifications extended out from the main encampment, hulking artillery pieces gazing over them with eyes both electronic and organic.

Primarch Toji Suzuhara couldn't help wondering if the gods knew something he didn't. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

At present, he was busy surveying the construction work on the northern defence lines with one half of his brain and calculating the forces under his command with the other. For a Primarch, his flesh reshaped by the gods themselves, this was not nearly as hard as it sounded.

Let's see now... two battle companies from each of the Chapters except Kensuke's boys, two infantry regiments, five armoured companies, three thousand gun-servitors, six thousand plague zombies, and the-gods-alone-know-how-many daemons. Have I missed anyone? Ah yes...

The scarred, rocky earth shook as five gaunt, armoured giants strode into view, their myriad weapons tracking to and fro. The encampment had been given ten Evangelions in total – two of the standard Mark Vs, and eight of the new Mark VIs. The latter lacked some of the sophistication and raw firepower of the earlier designs, thanks largely to trained human pilots being replaced with daemonic possessors in an attempt to combat personnel shortages, but they made up for it by both being easier to mass-produce and having several interesting new tricks thanks to their greater connection to the Warp. Besides, they were still Evangelions, and thus pretty much invincible in Toji's professional opinion.

Then there were the Space Marines. Taken at a young age, subjected into training unmatched in brutality until the launch of the Divine Assassin Program, implanted with augmentations both biological and cybernetic until they were second only in might to the Primarchs themselves, and brainwashed into exemplars of discipline, loyalty, and precisely-applied brutality, they were about as close to the perfect soldiers as it was possible to get. The facts that they wore armour of a durability usually reserved for main battle tanks and that their basic infantry weapon was essentially a compact, fully-automatic rocket launcher were merely the icing on the cake.

The remainder of his forces were less overtly imposing, but still fairly impressive. Much of their equipment had been adapted from the gods' received memories of the 41st millennium, and applied with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Those human infantry not specifically assigned to a heavy weapons team or some other specialist role were equipped with gleaming black carapace armour and hellguns, whilst the clone-bred servitors compensated for their lack of intellect with thick armour, extensive bionics, and a terrifying array of oversized weaponry. When coupled with the tanks, daemons, and zombies, the garrison represented truly ridiculous overkill even by the gods' relaxed standards.

So who'd they manage to piss off this time? he thought.

Though even someone of his stature tended to get left out of the loop on occasion – Tzintchi in particular loved nothing better than yanking his subordinates' chains – the current climate of silence was both unusual and worrying. That kind of information lockdown usually meant that something he really wouldn't like was about to happen.

He wondered what had happened to that girl they'd captured, Vita. The gods hadn't given him an answer there, either. A small, treacherous part of him hoped that it had not been the same thing that happened to the other young female mage they had got their hands on.

Rescuing Alicia and her mother from the Warp had been a singular act of mercy. The gods themselves personally raising her? An unquestioned honour. He just wished the end result had been a little less... well... psychotic.

He knew she looked up to him; saw him as some sort of big-brother figure. Hikari teased him about it mercilessly, alluding in a faux-dramatic voice to his 'secret admirer'. It was just... how exactly were you supposed to explain to a cheerful, sweet-natured twelve-year-old that casual homicide wasn't a healthy, constructive hobby to have, especially when it was part of both your and her job descriptions? More to the point, would the gods even want him to?

As if on cue, Alicia swooped in and landed next to him, executing a flawless salute. "Toji, they've finished work on the western barricades. Just thought you should know."

She was beaming happily, her cheeks slightly flushed. At times like this, it was almost possible to think of her as an ordinary child. Instinctively, Toji gave her a gentle pat on the head with his armoured gauntlet, almost driving her to her knees in the process.

"Good to hear it, Ali. How's your little project with the Stargate going, by the way?"

"Pretty well – just found out that you can transmit psychic signals through them. Papa Tzintchi was very interested in that." She scraped something red and sticky off her gloves. "You know, I really wish we didn't have to sacrifice so many clones to do it. I mean, it's fun for a while, but it always leaves such a mess afterwards."

Yep. Almost possible.

She glared at him reproachfully. "Anyway, didn't I tell you to quit with the head-patting? I'm not a little kid any more, you know."

"Right. I was forgetting. Incidentally, they're running a fleet exercise up in orbit this afternoon, and I've been asked to oversee it. Want to come look? I'm sure a lovely lady like yourself would enliven an otherwise dull procedure."

A frustrated pout. "I can't – they're going to be running some more of those stupid tests on me. Seeing what I can do. You'd have thought they'd figured out most of that already."

He gave a sympathetic sigh. "Ah well, can't be helped. These things happen. Tell you what – I'll take a few snapshots with the helmet-cam while I'm up there. I'm sure Captain Tung would be happy to donate that model of the Stiletto she's got on her desk to a good cause, too."

She hugged his leg – it was about as high as she could reach, really. "Thanks, Toji! Well, I suppose I'd best get going, then. See ya!"

He started to wave as she skipped away, only to see her stop next to a passing servitor, rip its heart out in a spray of gore, and gulp it down on the spot.

Toji had always wondered if the clones had souls. Now he knew. That revelation, though, was secondary to something else, something he now desperately tried to blot out as only a Primarch could.

As Alicia had devoured the dripping organ, he had heard her mother's disembodied voice scream out in horror and grief.


The Hellhounds were lined up in perfect ranks, their matte-black bodysuits seeming to absorb the light around them. Not one of them spoke, and even visible breathing had been eliminated by their bionic respiratory systems. The only indication that they were alive at all was the way their heads had swivelled to look at Tzintchi as he entered the chamber, their expressions hidden behind their scorpion-like helmets.

He'd been having a bad day. They'd had to exert more and more power to support the war effort, slowing time to a crawl where required to ensure the prompt completion of important projects, and investing warp-energy in the mass-production of clones as servants, soldiers, and occasionally sacrifices. Though both had been undoubtedly useful – the Divine Assassin project had managed to compress four years of training into a single month, and the clones had gone a long way to helping with their critical manpower shortage – they had considerable limitations and active disadvantages.

For a start, there were the clone instability issues. The more sophisticated the intellect they created for any given clone, the more violent, irrational, and generally sociopathic they became. The shining example was the posthuman Kyon Junior, who was an active liability (if still too much trouble to warrant replacing). Reigle had posited that this was for much the same reason as the increased negative effects whenever they made greater use of their powers, but whatever the case, it had effectively stymied their plans to repopulate the Earth using warp-born clones. Even introducing them to state-sponsored breeding projects had been a failure – clone-created sperm resulted in unacceptable rates of mutation and birth defects, whilst their attempts to artificially inseminate cloned females... didn't really bear thinking about.

The time-distortion had been even worse, creating the sort of tangles in the space-time continuum that would have given Albert Einstein a migraine. People, objects, and even places had occasionally vanished, falling into the gaps, and when coupled with the weird side-effects that resulted from any major use of the gods' powers, it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep the Earth habitable, let alone the happily anarchic utopia they had once intended it as.

The most subtle and troubling effects, though, had been on the gods' own personalities. Asukhon, never the calmest of individuals, had become increasingly snappish and irritable, whilst Reigle grew more and more withdrawn, eternally preoccupied with her bizarre 'experiments' and answering his requests with the sort of robotic obedience that reminded Tzintchi unpleasantly of her time as his father's puppet.

And then there was Mislaato. She'd always been the most fragile of them – such was to be expected when one was mind-raped over several months by a greater daemon of the Old Gods, killed messily, and finally resurrected by the power of the Warp. Consequently, she had been affected the most, to the point where a significant part of the cloning project was now devoted to slaking her ever-increasing appetites.

Nevertheless, Tzintchi was largely unconcerned. They were the Old Gods' chosen weapons, not the Old Gods themselves. They need not share their weaknesses – and even if they did, the current situation was only temporary. Once they had defeated those who dared to oppose them, they could go back to their saner, more measured approach to pan-dimensional conquest.

In the meantime, though, they had the Hellhounds.

"I think you'll be pleased with the results, my lord," Fleshcrafter Allard said confidently. "The cybernetics make them considerably stronger and faster than an ordinary human, not to mention a whole lot quieter. The armour on their bodysuits can shrug off a direct hit from a bolt round without crippling damage, and we even managed to replicate the splinter pistol design you gave us. I must say, those Commoragh Eldar you spoke of had some really nifty equipment."

He handed the god a sheaf of documents, which he duly flicked through. Tzintchi was wearing his human guise for this visit – personal inspections always added that much-appreciated impression that your bosses cared what you were doing, but Allard and his staff were accredited geniuses, so searing out their minds by revealing his true form probably wouldn't be the best of plans.

"The really important bit, though," the scientist continued, "is how we set up their minds. They aren't as sophisticated as a fully-developed human – we're not stupid – but they're smart, they're resourceful, and they're vicious. Hunter-killer, infiltrator... they can do it all. Might not want to let them near civilians, though – once their blood's up, they can get a bit... indiscriminate. Finally, we took a look at the readings you sent us on those two mages you picked up, and we taught them a few tricks in that department."

"Really? Interesting."

Tzintchi raised his hand, and sent a gout of indigo fire washing across the assembled ranks. As one, the Hellhounds moved to respond, and two hundred reddish-purple shields appeared from their outstretched fingers, staving off the assault.

"Very interesting. How about melee weaponry? Anything there?"

"Naturally, my lord. We assumed that that would be the range at which most combat would occur, and concentrated much of our attention upon it. Each Hound has a pair of Angel Cutter phase blades, the kind the Callidus-pattern Divine Assassins employ, built into them. One in each retractable forearm-sheath. I spent ages getting the 'snikt' sound when they pop out just right."

Allard was a comic fan, the god remembered. There was something about building an army of killer cyborgs that couldn't help but bring out your inner teenager. Even their name had been a topic of minor debate – Asukhon had wanted to save it for the flamethrower-tanks it had originally applied to until he had gently reminded her that tanks still required human personnel, and sending valuable troops into battle riding a giant, self-propelled napalm bomb would likely not be beneficial to their current manpower problem.

"So how many do we have now?" he asked.

"Over two thousand, with plenty more to come. That's the great thing about cloned soldiers – they're so easy to mass-produce. Matter of fact, some of their equipment, especially the Angel Cutters, is taking longer to make than the bodies we're fitting it on. We should be able to get the full consignment done on schedule without any more time-distortion than we've already got."

"Excellent." Tzintchi turned to the rest of the assembled staff. "Ladies and gentlemen, you have pleased your gods greatly. I'll go chat to Mislaato and see if she can rustle up some kind of suitable reward for you. And no, that wasn't intended to come out as sinister as it did – I'm just naturally like that."

That got a few nervous laughs. He turned around, his jacket flaring out dramatically, and vanished in a cloud of multicoloured lights.

"And now," his disembodied voice said with a little extra reverb for added effect, "I bid you adieu."

Showing off in front of one's followers was always such fun.


When he rematerialised, it was back in the Eye. Mislaato wasn't there, unfortunately, but Reigle and Asukhon were. They'd clearly been having an argument – much of the ever-shifting furniture lay broken and shattered on the temporary floor, and the former's decaying flesh bore several rapidly-reknitting wounds. Tzintchi decided it would be impolitic to bring this up, though, especially since there'd apparently been no lasting damage.

"So, my dears, it appears the Hellhounds are almost ready, and you know what this means."

"Planning session?" Reigle asked flatly.

"Yep. Planning session. Now, to the best of my knowledge, we have no less than five universes opposing us. The first, that of the Federation, Borg, and associates, is no real threat. The Stiletto broke their backs quite comprehensively – in fact, the Bureau's overtures are likely to do little more than exacerbate an already-chaotic situation. Equally, Haruhi's little prison has been effectively neutered by K.J.'s depredations. The Integrated Data Entity still represents a potential spanner in the works, but it's mostly a known threat, and an exploitable one at that. It's always nice to know where the opposition's getting most of their intel from."

A wave of his hand, and three large dimensional maps appeared in the centre of the room.

"The other three, though, are a bit more... problematic. The TSAB are relatively low-tech compared to the others, but their magic means they can punch way above their weight, and the fact that they're organising the whole thing instantly elevates their dangerousness. As for the Spirals, I'd hoped to avoid them for decades to come. At present they're a relatively peaceful bunch with gadgetry they barely understand, but their potential is utterly terrifying, and if the reports are correct then they've managed to live up to it in the past. Worse, both sides are ideologically opposed to us to such an extent that employing peaceful overtures as a delaying tactic likely wouldn't work. We're going to have to hit them, and hit them hard."

"I am developing a countermeasure against the Spirals," Reigle stated, "though it may take some time to perfect. Meanwhile, however, I have a suggestion regarding the final universe, that of the New Republic."

"Go on," Tzintchi said encouragingly. Good old Rei – nice to see that her brain-cells haven't rotted as well.

"You mentioned that diplomatic channels would be ineffective in dealing with the Time-Space Administrative Bureau and Spiral Nation, but the New Republic is run by an overstretched, inefficient, and highly factionalised government with a history of internal strife."

"A typical democracy, basically," Asukhon commented. The gods tended to harbour a fairly dim view of rule by committee. Given that a particularly well-organised one had almost turned the planet's entire population into semi-sentient orange juice eighteen years before, this was perhaps understandable.

The goddess of despair acknowledged this with a faint smile, their earlier dispute apparently forgotten. "Furthermore, the one faction who would most likely be opposed to us on an ideological basis, the Jedi, have faced frequent criticism and occasionally been overruled entirely. Given that our activities in that universe have given its residents little reason to harbour a personal grudge, approaching them and casting ourselves in a sympathetic light has a high probability of preventing them from acting against us until it is far too late."

"Fair point, Rei. I think we can go with that. Anything you'd like to add, Asuka?"

She gave one of her trademark many-toothed grins. "Indeed there is. In fact, I'd like to replace that suggestion with one of my own. It's a nice idea, Rei, but it's far too conservative as always. With my plan we can destroy the Republic rather than temporarily distracting it, plunge their entire galaxy into a state of exploitable chaos, and, best of all, avoid having to suck up to a bunch of self-centred, self-righteous politicians."

Tzintchi raised three of his eyebrows. "And how, my dear, do you intend that we do that?"

The grin widened to a quite impossible extent, and she indicated a cluster of symbols some way outside the Republic's galaxy. "Simple. We use these guys."


Supreme Commander Varak Shaar was in something of an awkward situation. This displeased him. Awkward situations were something he liked to inflict on other people. There was no avoiding this one, though – he was clearly the only one on the ship even remotely approaching the appropriate rank to deal with it.

On the one hand, he was naturally disinclined to trust axe-wielding aliens who materialised on the bridge of his prized vessel without so much as a by-your-leave, particularly when they were quite obviously unintimidated by the magnificence of the mighty Miid Ro'ik battlecruiser. In fact, this particular one had asked him for interior decoration tips.

On the other, she (it was hard to tell with aliens, but she had introduced herself as such) offered a truly unrivalled opportunity to him and the entire Chosen Race. Specifically, the chance to assault their target galaxy six years ahead of schedule with outside assistance, no strings attached.

"And what," he asked, "do you get out of this, infidel?"

Given that she apparently used technology no more sophisticated than primitive bronze armour and the aforementioned axe, whether or not she was an infidel was pure guesswork. He felt confident in his assumption, though – nobody who looked like that could possibly be holy.

"The elimination of a potential threat," she replied. "One of their civilisations, the New Republic, has been contacted by an alliance opposed to us. We would prefer that said alliance does not gain their strength. This galaxy is irrelevant so long as its inhabitants do not present a threat to us, and I intend no insult to the Chosen Race when I say that you do not."

Cocky little tsup, isn't she? He decided not to make an issue of the fact that she could speak their language so perfectly.

"And why is that?"

"Because I very much doubt that our enemies would get along as well with you as with them."

Shaar grunted. "Very well. I shall inform the Warmaster of your proposition. Remain where you are, infidel, until my return. If you do not, I shall devour your heart and wear your wings as a cape."

She made a strange snorting noise that he eventually recognised as indicating amusement. "Supreme Commander, I believe I am starting to like you."

Three days, fifteen honour-duels, and just under a hundred deaths later, the endless fleet of the Yuuzhan Vong changed course. By their standards it had been a fairly smooth transition, though the new Warmaster's freshly-appointed second-in-command was a bit disappointed at missing out on the nice new cape he'd been looking forward to.


Author's Notes: For the record, Varak Shaar was really fun to write. You can always rely on Chaos to screw things up for everyone else, eh?

Expect to see quite a bit more Dark Eldar tech this time round than in the original. This is not because it's inherently more 'evil', but because the lovely folks from Commoragh are opportunistic scavengers who compensate for their technological deficiencies (they can't even create their own wraithbone) with the generous application of Warp-based weirdness. I figured, therefore, that their stuff would be much easier to replicate when you're starting with a twenty-first-century tech base as newChaos is. Divine knowledge can only help so much. OK, so I suppose the Warp's influence does make it that much more evil as well, but that's beside the point.

Oh yes, and Toji and Alicia are indeed going to be playing a significant part later on. Remember I said Bloodhaven would be useful? Yep. For the record, I only noticed the disturbingly symbolic imagery of the heart-devouring scene just after I'd written it. I stared at it for a moment... and then decided to keep it. Yes, I am one sick puppy.

See you next week!