Naturally, we prepared for war. Nobody should escape with what they did to our Lord unpunished. They obviously had expected something, though maybe not retribution: a whole army had just been snuck off the planet and they were advanced enough to detect incoming space ships. They just weren't prepared for us. We—that is the Eighth, the Sixth and the First Companies, deployed directly into their capital: Desh'ea. Our main objective was taking out the government.

At this point I mentioned it must have been a difficult objective, having listened to several soldiers complain about having to fight in a city. The Captain saw fit to enlighten me on the differences between Space Marines and unaugmented soldiers at this point.

If you'd ask an officer of the Imperial Army, they'd tell you that fighting in a city is difficult. So many spots for ambushes that the defenders know, but you don't; so many places where you can place a sniper… We are a different story.

As I said, we deployed directly into their capital—that's what Drop Pods are for. That gave them little time to react: first it started raining metal from the sky and then we were pouring bolter rounds into them. It wasn't even their army we were facing at first; they were looking for their arses, while we were faced by their police forces.

My Eighth Company landed in a slum. We had to advance towards one of the more fancy quarters. We got to a… I think it was a bakery. I recall a smell of bread.

At this point the Captain started making a plan of the city with the help of my favourite tea mug and his armor parts. He later agreed to sketch the progress of his company, which you will find attached at the end of the chapter.

There was a barricade there. Pathetic thing really, it wouldn't have held back a mob, let alone us. They tried shooting us, but that didn't stop us at all. It's really amazing how long it takes for people to realize they won't dent power armour. They were still shooting when we were on them. We are already furious by then—had been ever since Angron told us about those implants. And here we had those people trying to stop us.

So we slaughtered them.

At this point we made a break, since the Captain went to retrieve a dataslate with the recordings made by his helmet, mentioning something about pictures saying more than a thousand words. He was right. I was not prepared to witness what I did, but I shall endevour to share my impressions.

The picture was shaking and it took me a moment to realize that it was because the Captain must have been running. There was a surprising amount of screaming, too and it was the War Hounds doing it. I think this was the first thing that truly shocked me: I have always envisioned Space Marines as being somewhat dignified when they fight and my imagination had somehow never included them yelling wordlessly at the top of their lungs.

The barricade was made to stop normal people and such, not charging Astartes. It had been reinforced with some planks, but that didn't even slow the War Hounds down. In seconds they were upon the defenders.

Slaughter was an apt word here: I had never realized how much damage a chainaxe can do. The phrase that a person who'd never seen it may be tempted to use would be that it cuts through a body like a knife through butter. It's not an apt metaphor: a chainaxe tears more than it cuts. It's not a smooth process and neither is it clean. It's not just that there's a lot of blood, there were also chunks of meat and bone flying. One man managed to jump away in the last moment and instead of being cut in half, he only had his stomach ripped open. Blood and feces poured out as he fell to his knees and then on his face into this disgusting soup.

That was the point where I had to urgently visit the toilet. I managed to preserve some of my dignity and did not sully the floor, though I think that did not make much of an impression on the Captain. When I returned he was watching me with exasperation.

What did you expect? It's war. We're there to kill. You think a man dying from a stroke is anymore aesthetic than that? Bah. Death's death and we're there to kill until they understand there is no other way but ours – or until there's nobody left. Their choice.

I had only one way to regain my dignity. I had to watch the whole recording. I hope you all will appreciate my sacrifice. It didn't get any better, but after a while I managed to recognise some overarching pattern.

What surprised me was that the fighting wasn't really constant. It was more of a series of short skirmishes, with the War Hounds all but trampling over their opponents. The Captain had been very helpful and informed me about such things like the force necessary to hit somebody hard enough to punch their head off and similar charming details.

At some point, I asked him about the way they moved through the city. It had seemed odd.

There are many different ways to plan a city, and Desh'ea had a circular design. No, it was more of a spiral—the main street was a spiral and it went through the whole city. Following it would have slowed us down, but then so would have had looking for shortcuts or demolishing too many buildings. One of us, I think it was Degwin—he's a Veteran Sergeant now—suggested we keep blowing up things. He really had, still has, an unhealthy obsession with blowing things up.

It's not really funny.

Stop laughing.

I think I was sounding at least a bit hysterical at this point. It was not the easiest tale to listen to, I can tell you that.

We got to the governmental quarter by midday. That was where their soldiers were. Cowards, the lot of them. Yes, the soldiers, too—their damn police force had had more guts than they did. I know, I saw them. The rulers hid in their villas, the soldiers shot at us a few times and then they ran. For most of them it was the last time they'd run away from anything.

The Emperor, in his wisdom, had ordered us to take some of the dignitaries alive. It wasn't particularly hard, I have to say. Some people get amazingly cooperative when they see a Space Marine pointing a weapon at them.

Heh. I remember one time when one Blood Angel did it. He pointed his bolter and snarled, his pretty face all contorted—it looked rather funny to me, but the officer he was aiming at obviously did not share my amusement.

Sometimes just glaring works, or even just looking with mild disapproval. Never managed to pull the last one, but I remember an Ultramarine who could do it.

But, going back to the topic, after a day, Desh'ea was ours.

This was when they had figured out we were just plain better then their soldiers. But instead of doing the logical thing and giving up, they figured they'd continue fighting. It was the stupidest decision they could make. We had their leaders.

Instead, they decided to use the gladiators that hadn't joined the revolt as cannon fodder. Surprised? We were too. Obviously, Angron was right: those High Riders were not fit to live. Why hadn't all the gladiators joined him? Now I know it was all related to where they were from. The arena Angron fought in was in the capital, but there were others on the planet. In fact, why didn't the whole damn planet acknowledge he was right? That's just how Primarchs work. You can't conceive that they could be wrong and that anybody could disagree with them, but that's not the case. If you believe strongly enough in something you can stand up to them. I know I did. But we'll get to this later.

So, they sent the gladiators at us. That was stupid too. Remember the implants? We can run into enemy fire. We can fight equally with the strongest orks. They just ran into our axes.

At this point I had the privilege of watching another recording. It was as shocking as the previous ones. A mass of bodies, armed with close combat weapons, charged. They screamed, got in each other's way, trampled over each other. Then the War Hounds met them and started cutting through them like a harvester through wheat.

I hope I do not need to mention the gore? It's… disturbing in how many ways a human body can be maimed in combat. Lost limbs and heads are but the tip of the iceberg. Let us just say that yet again, I proved to be not ready for the horrors of combat and had to commune with the toilet.

That summed all shortly just how bloody the whole fight had been.

In the end, we won. It didn't take long. As I already had mentioned, we were just plain better.

That was not the end of our troubles, though. First, there were the gladiators. The implants could be removed from Angron, but nobody else had the slimmest chance of suriving the surgery. Nobody was happy about that: we ended up stuck with an army of maniacs, who tended to fly into rage at the drop of a pin. You can imagine just to how many conflicts that lead. As you know, we're not the most peaceful of legions. Now, add the Imperial Army—they picked fights with them on a regular basis and it's not like soldiers are impossible to provoke-and you have a kind of flammable situation that's just waiting to explode. We were quite aware of this. Unfortunately, we couldn't exactly drop them off on some nice planet and just leave the populace to deal with them, now could we? Keeping them was ultimately the best choice, but it was far from ideal.

It was also the decision of our Primarch and the Emperor himself accepted it, so even if any of us had wanted to protest, there really was no point. I'm not saying they were bad, but at that point we weren't all that happy about them being around. We still remembered the remnants on their planet that we had fought.

This turned out to be a significant factor in Angron's early campaigns. He was used to commanding… undisciplined people. We are blood-thirsty, but we can control ourselves.

Most of the time.

Will you stop snickering?

I am not yelling!

As you might imagine, we had to take a break at this point, seeing that Captain Kharn saw fit to demonstrate how well the War Hounds control themselves. And to those who would accuse me of sarcasm, I would like to point out that I am still alive and well.

As I was saying, we weren't too happy about having those gladiators with us. Not all of them were glad about Angron's decision either. It might seem odd to you, but they thought he had robbed them of a chance to get even or at least die trying. We were his vessel for his anger, but not theirs. They didn't really have a chance to fight. On the other hand, he was still one of them and not one of us. We were his vessel; they were his brothers and sisters.

If a fight broke out, he'd always side with them. He ate with them, he remained in the same part of the ship as they did. He knew them all by name, while with us… He was wary of us, not entirely convinced we're proper warriors. Back then, I think he thought of us as something between weapons, usurpers and strangers.

To us, it looked like those gladiators didn't appreciate that he had agreed to join the Imperium to save them from dying and being forgotten.

The first to voice their disapproval with just being taken away and not given a chance to fight was a slip of a girl, actually. I was quite surprised when she first marched up to our Primarch and started yelling. She had amazing lung capacity, though I'm afraid she didn't get much of an opportunity to demonstrate it.

We didn't kill her. Angron stopped us, but it was quite a scene nonetheless. Though, I'll give her credit for courage. Yelling at a Primarch is not something even Space Marines manage to do on a regular basis. I think I heard Abbaddon managed to actually have a row with Horus, but I have no idea how true that is.

You know, she actually wore her hair in pig-tails. It was one of the most surreal things I've ever seen: this girl, small with a huge scar across her face and her hair in pig-tails. She was even blonde, with freckles.

Our Primarch tried to explain. It was a bit like watching somebody trying to explain things to cudbear. It just didn't work at all; she'd been too angry to listen. In the end two other ex-gladiators dragged her off and I spent the next hour repeating variations of "I'm sure they'll understand once they calm down."

As you can imagine there was one problem with that—the ones that were angry did not calm down. Ever.

Still, we were…

The Captain pauses, considering his words.

I think I can say we were happy. We had our Primarch and he would lead us. Once he was up again after the surgery, I had the privilege to train with him. It was amazing. I had no chance against him. Really, there was no comparison.

At this point, the Captain suddenly punched the wall next to me. I barely had the time to flinch.

That's how fast we are. That's how strong we are. He's more than that. Where I make a crack, he can punch a hole. Where you can flinch from me, you wouldn't see him coming. Watching him fight was—is indescribable. It's best seen.

That was about the time when we were concluding military operations on the were the rulers of the planet and Angron had to start making his first difficult choices as a primarch. He'd have to practice on the nobility from his whole world.

He hated them. He called them High Riders and wanted them all dead. He had no mercy for them; the prisoners we had taken in Desh'ea were all executed. Bastards deserved all they got and more. I'd kill each and every one of them all over again, if I had a chance.

The planet was in disarray—fine, let's make that complete, utter chaos—once we were done fighting and since it was going to join the Imperium we had the joyful perspective of staying in orbit for months, while the situation calmed down, as we had to keep the more blood-thirsty charges of our Lord away from the planet.

They wanted a lot of things. Some of them wanted to glass the whole place. Others wanted to be involved in ruling it. I don't think our Lord expected them to actually want to rule and that they wouldn't listen when he told them no.

It did not escape my attention that the Captain did not mention anything about destroying the entire planet and, naturally, I asked.

Our Lord didn't say anything except, "It's not to be done." I've never learned what he thought of just wiping out all life on the whole planet. I think the Emperor had dissuaded him out of it, though I cannot say how. We had to start bringing order there again.

This phase of compliance is usually the most tedious part of bringing the world to compliance. You're done with fighting; mostly at least. Sometimes, there are some nests of resistance left. This is the point when the Governor is chosen, if it's necessary and then we wait until it appears that everything is in order.

The Captain sneers in distaste.

This really isn't a task for Astartes. We're there to fight and yet… Sometimes I feel like the only sane person around. You would not believe what some otherwise reasonable people can suggest. There was this one time… But that's a different story.

I think I felt like this back then. Our Primarch had no idea about running an Expedition Fleet and-

He pauses and shakes his head.

I don't blame or condemn any of my brothers. I blame my shitty luck while drawing lots. The Emperor had other duties calling him—he stayed as long as possible with our Lord, but once we entered the later stage of bringing that world to compliance, he had to leave, while we had to stay. Somebody had to… point him in the right direction and show him certain mechanisms of running an Expedition Fleet. I ended up with the job, until our Lord would join one of his more experienced brothers.

And for months, we just sat there, wrapping up all loose ends and waiting for another fleet to rendezvous with us.

I chose to end the chapter here, as next the Captain has described his efforts in educating Lord Angron. It is a most interesting narrative and I think it deserve a separate chapter.