Chapter 45, A Wolf's talk with Father

M30.875

Tanya Russ

You would think arranging a meeting with the Emperor would be the easiest thing to do when you're both fighting on the same front, but I had to admit it's kind of hard when the enemy is always pulling something new out of their bag of tricks.

The war for the northern sectors continued on unabated, with each side bringing out every tactic and strategy they could find and utilizing them. The mercenary armies that had made up the elite cadre of warriors from the Rangdan forces were still around and still being used, and the rapid attack areas, particularly near areas where we were weak, indicated they had some intelligence agency able to pry information from our people. However, when it came to ground combat, we were slowly but steadily dominating.

Space Marines just have a better chance of pulling off a long extended combat; they had the skills and ability necessary, and with plenty of infantry coming in to support our forces, well, it was a victory sooner or later. Unfortunately, by this point, in my estimation, half of the systems we were here to save had been depopulated to the point that they would never fully recover, not with their original population, especially with the simple fact that we couldn't solve the issue the Rangdan had created with them.

There was no way to undo what had been done, and as far as we could tell, it really looked like sooner or later, someone was going to have to go through with those planets and remove the population completely via extermination.

Who would do that? Frankly, it was probably going to be my role at sunrise, simply because my men could bear it.

Sure, the Iron Warriors may be able to bear it as well, but they were slowly being withdrawn, as the Mechanicum had suspected. Sooner or later, forces were being withdrawn from this front, and most likely near the end of this, it would be simply left to the forces in the region that called it home, AKA the Lion, who was still standoffish from what I had accomplished over the years.

However, just because we were winning on land didn't mean we were winning everywhere, and their new tricks were becoming a bit more annoying.

They seemed to have an endless number of ships that they could call upon. These ships would continuously flow from the Labyrinth of the Night, and so naval battles were becoming a bigger problem as the war went on. More and more of our ships were simply dying to theirs. Even my own ship, Hrafnkel, had taken severe damage in a surprise attack.

On par was never a good situation, and we were falling out of par when it came to naval combat, simply because they seemed to be mass-producing ships as cheaply and effectively as possible while still having enough effective weapons to cause us problems.

The Mechanicum, in response, was upping its own creation of ships, though their standards were not being lowered, and they made it quite clear that we had to be better captains than them and stop losing the ships they produced.

The results of the slowly growing problem of the Rangdan possibly finally taking the field was a problem.

Up until recently, we hadn't actually seen them in combat. We'd fought their bioforms, of course, and we'd faced their mercenary armies. Both were two very different extremes, one having good skill, the other having just overwhelming numbers. So what were the Rangdan? What were their natural abilities to fight?

As it turned out, their natural ability was warp powers, lots and lots of warp powers.

Different facets, different abilities, it was very rare for these warp-induced beings to show up, but when they did, they caused problems. We'd finally gotten an actual look at the Rangdan for the first time rather recently.

On the planet Zoitov, I've been fighting a Rangdan bioform that was rather on the giant side. It looked like a T-Rex, which was a common issue I'd been noticing with lots of Rangdan. The standard four-legged monster would often be there, but their bigger forms, especially ones meant for combat, had multiple different looks and often seemed to be based on the most random things from a T-Rex to a thing that looked exactly like the Alien Queen from Aliens.

When it first started happening, I simply brushed this off as weird coincidences. Now, I wondered if there wasn't something more to it. The fact that the Rangdan were now confirmed to be psychically based creatures had me wondering if they weren't using mental images from entertainment that were still found in our old stories to try and form their monsters.

Once the Warp gets involved, you couldn't make any assumptions, especially when they would freely try and summon creatures from the Warp.

There have been three or four attempts in the several encounters to do that, trying to summon something from inside the Warp out. What they were trying to summon, thankfully, we didn't know because my men had managed to learn of the situation through the use of the Rune Priests detecting the surge of Warp energy and they moved to fix the situation as quickly as possible.

The Iron Warriors had reported similar situations where they attempted to summon some sort of Warp entity on the planet and they just dropped artillery on them. The 4th had tried to do what my men did, gain closer ground and butcher everything in the area personally, but there seemed to be some sort of field that created mutations generated by the Warp energy of this ritual. My men did not report any of these mutations, so perhaps they were simply made of sturdier stuff, or perhaps the world spirit of Fenris protected them from the worst of it. Either way, most Space Marine legions still in the region preferred to drop artillery or bombs on the problem, instead of engaging them at close range like my men did, which usually ended the ritual as it required a lot of concentration to pull off. But their ritual casters seemed to have a 50/50 chance of escaping when they just dropped artillery on them.

As for the possible Rangdan, the few that had been seen were very stone-like in their existence, in the sense that their flesh was a nearly crystal-ish blue material that did shrug off some of the lighter grazing hits from a bolt gun. The best way to actually kill them had been found to get either multiple direct hits in one place or close distance engage them with melee weapons as they seemed to be rather inefficient in that particular field of combat, not to mention chain swords may take a bit of time, but they will cut through the armor-like skin of the creatures.

As for the general body shape of the creatures, they were humanoid in shape. I guess I had been expecting something more monstrous just from their treatment of humanity, but that seemed to be unlikely. Although there were other concerns I had from the few combats I had with these creatures.

Mainly though they supposedly were Xeno, but they appeared quite human underneath their hard shell. The bone structure was altered but still looked human. Granted it could be the same sort of situation that came with the Eldar, the species being close enough in existence to an ultimate design.

Of course, I did wonder if that was actually true. After all, if the Eldar had been around as long as they claimed, it was safe to say they weren't messing around with the human genome at some point to make sure that the monkeys ended up looking like them.

Then there were, well, frankly rumor-like ideas that kept popping up now and again that there were Eldar half-breeds. I had yet to actually run into one, so it probably was just a rumor, but if it was true, well, there should be no way for that to be a real species. Separated by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, species do not interbreed.

You could not get a dinosaur like the T-Rex and have it have relations with a modern-day crocodile and produce offspring. Biology was that simple.

Now granted, the odds are worse especially when the Warp was involved, I knew this, but even that seems very unlikely. As far as I was concerned, there was probably more to the story of the Eldar and human relations, and a lot of history that was either lost or unknown. If, of course, the half-breed thing was true, that was something I would have to look into when there was peace. Although if I was at peace, I'd probably go back to Fenris and enjoy my long-earned cultivation of that planet. There was no reason to go running around trying to prove a theory that Eldar were just an offshoot of humanity, or the other way around.

Especially with how xenophobic the Administratum had gotten over the last few years, they were just causing more problems between me and them. And I had enough problems between me and them to last a lifetime.

But that's beside the point. The war continued, and from my understanding, the situation was basically leading to a stalemate. But now, with the use of Rangdan with psychic abilities, their attempts to try and draw something out of the war, and their continued ability to just bring ships out of thin air, it was leading to the inevitable. This war would not end within a decade with an Imperial victory. It had a better chance of ending in a draw, which was not what we wanted. We needed to defeat the Rangdan so thoroughly that they would never be able to rise again, salt the earth, and prevent any attempts to assault our frontiers again. As well as prevent the use of their bioforms. That technology would be a problem going forward. The idea that they could convert parts of humanity to simply be hive mind meat shields was still a terrifying prospect, and something we would probably have to keep under wraps. When this war was over, not mentioning the whole psychic powers, that was getting a bit out of hand.

It was a dangerous situation, but it needed to be handled. How could we push through? That's why I had finally gone around to pushing for a meeting with the Emperor.

I knew he and the Lion spoke very often, but I tended to just do the objective as ordered, leaving the thinking to the higher command. But now we needed something more solid, and I wanted to see if there was any way I could help. Drop in more resources from Fenris perhaps, or call up allies from some of these civilizations that have been brought into compliance with the Imperium.

Hell, I was still proposing the use of Ork mercenaries, and at the very least, Dark Shadow showed that it was possible to work with them. Perhaps the Sharkmen mercenaries could be brought in. They did have a rather good ability to eat their way through problems, and the bioforms were a problem they could eat through.

Of course, the original meeting with the Emperor was time-consuming, and it took me a couple of months. Apparently, he'd been busy trying to do something and had Constantin Valdor hold everyone outside his office for the last few months as he supposedly tried to solve the Labyrinth of the Night equation.

The Pale Wonders and White Scars had been keeping an eye on the passageway in and out of the Labyrinth of the Night. This was where most of the enemy ships were flowing out of. We had never seen a ship go into it, so we had no idea what was on the other side or what it was being used for.

Personally, I just assumed that it had been an ancient storehouse. Perhaps they had been building ships for generations and always putting some of them into the Labyrinth of the Night as some sort of piggy bank. It was a massive, nearly sector-wide shipyard capable of being militarized through the use of many passages inside of it.

We knew there were more ships coming, so it was always possible that they were bringing in more people from other places and filling those ships before sending them out. At this point, we had nearly scouted all the way around it, and it was a bit mysterious. If it was a passageway, it seemed rather odd that there didn't appear to be anything on the other side of it.

Letting out a sigh, I shook my head as I looked out of a large decorative window onto the space beyond.

"How much gold has the Emperor used in the construction of the ship?" This was his main transport between campaigns, and Terra. It must have been astronomical. Granted, I knew that gold was not as big of an issue as one would surmise from my modern-day knowledge of the material. They'd probably found asteroids full of it while exploring the asteroid belt in the Solar system, and they had been once part of a galactic empire. So they had access to whole planets at points in time, probably still did. Still it was disconcerting to see this much gold.

It made it almost feel too rich for its own good. Hopefully, well, assuming that the gold was only skin deep and the armor underneath it was proper material, or maybe some of this material wasn't gold and it was just gold-like and strong. Either way, it was a bit too gaudy for my taste.

The purple and red curtains didn't help that opinion, nor did the gold armor of the Custodians walking here or there, keeping an eye on various personnel, including me.

Maybe I was just being a bit too grounded. I had never been a rich man in either life. Granted, you could consider me one of the richest people on Fenris, but Fenris was a backwater, a slowly progressing backwater, but a backwater nonetheless. Gold was not a sign of wealth. The first signs of wealth were weapons and armor, and even then, wealth meant nothing compared to the stories you could tell of your valorous acts. Storytelling was a main component of Fenrisian wealth, to some extent.

It was about this moment that I realized I'd probably gone full native on Fenris without realizing it. After all, I'd lived there for 30 years and had no hope of leaving the planet. Of course, I would have integrated myself into its culture to a degree that might be hard to shake. It was a good thing I'd probably never run into the noble class that helped run the Imperium. They would probably consider me a barbarian just because I didn't wear enough gold. I would need to learn about the new culture of Terra, and that was for sure. Even if I would prefer to live on Fenris when this was all over, there would probably be times where I would need to come off and rest to talk to the nobility about problems in my region. However, the government was finally set up.

"Daughter, Tanya, welcome aboard the Bucephalus," came the familiar voice of the Emperor. Turning, I saw him in all his splendid glory and he looked a few feet taller than the last time I'd seen him when he walked into the room. His hands were outstretched in an obvious sign beckoning for me to come and give him a hug.

Internally, I sighed. Externally, I stepped forward and gave him the hug he requested. After all, he wanted us to play family, and I wasn't against the whole notion. Nowadays, families tended to stick together in the worst of it, and having a family bond when at war with unknown enemies was a good thing to have.

Patting me on the back, we broke the hug and he said, "It's good to see you. We haven't had a chance to speak directly in years, it feels like."

He wasn't wrong. We'd had a few off-handed conversations with each other in larger groups, but never alone. There were too many eyes in the area to watch us. In fact, the Emperor signaled to one of his Custodians and they started marching people out of the room until it was just him and a few Custodians he considered so loyal he would let them in on any conversations that were to happen here.

"I assume you're here to talk to me about the robot skeleton you met a few years ago that you filed a report about."

I blinked, saying, "No, but I wouldn't mind starting there. It's an interesting way to begin our conversation, I think."

"Ha! Yes, Trazyn is an interesting thing to begin a conversation with," the Emperor said with a nod, stepping past me to look out at the blackness of space.

"I believe I've mentioned the old Eldar Ancients, correct?"

I nodded and he said, "They were created with the Orks, in fact. At least, that's how the legends go. Two sides of the same weapon used against a foe that they once faced. Their masters were long since destroyed by their own hubris and their use of the psychic abilities of the Warp."

Oh, okay. Now this conversation was getting interesting, but I would ask my question when I had a moment to ask it. Instead, I would focus on the Trazyn part of this equation.

"Is this Trazyn part of the enemy that they were made to fight?"

"Yes and no. To say that they are the enemy is to imply that they were fully at the head of the problem. No, they were, in a way, created by the enemy they needed to fight as well, creatures of this realm, immortal in existence, who wish to proclaim themselves as gods without tapping into the Warp. They fought the Ancient Ones, or the Old Ones, depending on how you phrase their wording, in order to gain dominance of the galaxy, using the robots as a tool in this war."

He shook his head before saying, "The correct name of these robots is Necrons. I've had one or two dealings with Trazyn over the millennium, trading him rare finds from Terra in exchange for assets across the galaxy. He is a complicated ally, to say the least."

"Ally? He kidnapped some of our soldiers."

The Emperor nodded before saying, "If it makes you feel better, they're fine. Frozen in time at the exact moment that they were taken, they won't die or be killed. They'll just be held there until he decides he no longer wants them, and then they'll be released in a position that will usually benefit us."

I blinked before saying, "Are you saying that Trazyn intends to be our ally?"

"He's an ally with anyone he deems useful for his own schemes. The Imperium wishes to restore order and humanity to the top order, which would keep history safe, so for now, we are allies. As long as we remain strong and capable of defending humanity, we will be allies. But if we were to ever shirk from those duties, fail, or become so weak that it becomes apparent that we were going to enter another dark age…" He shook his head before saying, "Well, I would watch your back. Trazyn is a collector, and he would take quite an interest in collecting one of my Primarchs, if not all 20, if he could."

I shivered at that idea before saying, "Definitely going to be keeping an eye out for this Necron, then. But how exactly do you two know each other? I would have figured that if he was a collector, wouldn't you have been at the top of his list of collectible items?"

"Ha," the Emperor laughed at that before saying, "Probably I am, but I helped him solve a problem on Mars many years before, so we've kept in good relations since then, for the most part."

"I know I did before," he said. "So, if you're not here to talk about good old friendships, then why are you here?"

"No, it's the problems at the front with the Rangdan, and that they seem to have endless resources that just are becoming more and more of a problem. I was wondering if you would allow me to engage my plan to bring the Orks from some of the primitive worlds I have brought under compliance and unleash them on the enemy, maybe hire some mercenaries from the Shark People for good measure, and fill out our numbers to try and compete."

The Emperor shook his head before saying, "Although I like the idea of having the Xenos fight the Xenos, that would not solve the problem. Then again, the problem is not very apparent, so you probably aren't thinking on how to solve it."

"It's not apparent as in…" raising an eyebrow before he nodded and turned to me.

"We are not just fighting the Rangdan of the present. We are also fighting the Rangdan of the past and future."

I blinked before saying, "Time travel?"

"Yes, I think I've solved what their Labyrinth of the Night truly is. It's not a gateway between their capital home world and the rest of the front, it is a passageway with multiple entrances in multiple time periods."

"And every action we take has resulted in something being altered. We start to look to gain ground on their worlds, all of a sudden, the people have had vaccinations that turn them into monsters, going back hundreds of years. According to Mechanicum records, that's quite normal, but," he tapped his head, "I've never heard of this. I've heard of the Rangdan before, they've never shown any care for the population to do something like that. I know in my history," tapping his head again, "which means someone is tampering with time."

I blinked before saying, "Are you saying we're immune to time travel effects?"

The Emperor shrugged before saying, "No, I'm saying I'm immune. You might be in a few hundred years. It's not impossible, but at the very least, once you've grown strong enough in the Warp, you will not be easily fooled by a time traveler's alterations to the past and the future. I foresee that the Rangdan have been using the past and the future against us, altering elements in their past to try and give themselves a better chance now and probably bringing in ships from the future, and equipment and manpower in hopes of evening the odds to fight the Imperium."

I shook my head before saying, "How far in the future and how far in the past can they go?"

He shook his head before saying, "Future, it's unknown. Past, I would say at least a couple of hundred years. I wouldn't be surprised if they have given messages to their past selves to improve production in hopes of trying to meet us at that category or start storing ships in the Labyrinth of the Night, which may be why they've had almost an endless number of vessels. It's also possible that if under the right conditions, you can duplicate ships with time travel, though playing with the Warp like that is a dangerous thing and could cause catastrophic results. If they are allowed to keep doing this and if they keep going as they have been, we will be overwhelmed. Our fleet power will be unable to compete with theirs. Their manpower will continue to increase, and sooner or later, the Imperium will be invaded again. They will push further and further. This is a real threat, one the Imperium has not faced before, not truly."

He shook his head before saying, "We're not doing a good job, but we need to do better."

"Why not? I didn't see the problem ahead of us," before saying, "so what do we do to do better?"

"We need to break the future as well as break the past."

I blinked before saying, "I understand how we could break the future. We need to do something now so horrendous that the Rangdan will never have a chance to rebuild in the future, thus denying them the forces they're using from the future. But how do we break the past?"

The Emperor shook his head before saying, "There is a way. My place. I would rather not talk about a mission that must remain absolutely quiet. There are entities that would seek to aid the Rangdan if they knew my plans simply because they disliked me."

I chuckled before saying, "Do you have your own version of Being X out there, trying to ruin the future of a prosperous humanity?"

He nodded, before saying, "I wish it was just one. No, there are four of them. Four creatures of foul intent, who would use humanity as a host for their parasitic ways."

I shivered as I realized I believed I knew one of those creatures. Keeping the name to myself, I thought, "If these creatures were some sort of great Warp existence, there was always the possibility that hearing their name could summon them. I would rather not be assaulted by such a monster again just for calling it what it was - a parasite."

The Emperor nodded his head, looking out into space before finally saying, "I have a plan that should break this Labyrinth of the Night. It will be hard on me, and when I come back, I may need time to recover. Once that is accomplished, the war will be left to you and your brothers and sisters, as well as Constantin Valdor."

"Well, while I am recovering, please try and keep relations good between the family. I worry that as Malcador said, sibling rivalries will grow out of hand."

I smiled before nodding and saying, "I will do my best to make sure that the family stays together, Father."

He smiled back before saying, "You know, it still amazes me that you managed to accept me as a father figure in this life, considering your past experiences."

I shrugged before saying, "The world is a strange place. You either adapt or die. I could accept you as a father, see that your plan is carried out, or I could not and still be forced to carry out your plan. I doubt you were going to let an investment like me wander off into the ether without putting up a fight. I'm out of problems that I couldn't ignore."

"Ha, I had considered that. Yes, I would rather all my children fall in line through simple methods such as you did, but there have been some who needed a little bit of encouragement, reinforcement of their own morals, and assurances that they are right for the job."

"Such as Mortarion?" I asked, getting a nod from him before saying, "That was an unfortunate series of events. I have a feeling that the genetic code I used to create the Primarchs has been tampered with in some way that I don't understand."

I blinked before he turned to me and said, "As I said, I should have only had sons. Your soul being how it is changed your form, Mortarion being changed into a female form that's unnatural but explainable. After all, somehow his father was able to use his own genetic code against him, causing the Warp part of him to be converted into something he thought was weaker - something he could easily defeat. And then he ridiculed him for being that weak and easily defeatable, trying to get in his mind. I worry that might have been somewhat effective, from some reports I've heard."

He shook his head but then said, "That's all understandable. Your sister, the Lion, is a little less so. I have no idea why they became female. With all due respect, unless they were always a female, it might explain it. Perhaps they are the enemy you've spoken of on a few occasions. What was her name? Mary Sue?"

I chuckled at that before giving a shrug and saying, "Although we do have a bit of a natural enmity, I don't know if she's actually Mary Sue. I've been keeping a little bit of distance and trying to make sure we have good relations, and if she is, she doesn't seem to have memories of our past problems."

"Hah, you mean her attempts to kill you?"

"Yes, those specifically. If she did, I think she would have already attempted to try and murder me. In fact, the fact that she hasn't implies either she doesn't have memories of it or she isn't Mary Sue. I don't know what's better, thinking that she doesn't have memories of it but is Mary Sue, and is safe, or thinking that she is not Mary Sue and she's still in the Warp, possibly a weapon that could be used against me in the future."

The Emperor nodded his head, understanding the dilemma, as he reached out and patted me on my shoulder. "I understand, my daughter, and I'm sure that we will have an answer soon enough. At least, where I must go may provide the answers for that question, and if I have it, I will let you know. Otherwise, just assume she is not Mary Sue, or if she is, try to pursue a closer relationship with her. As I said, families stick together. If she sees you as much as a sister as the former Tanya she fought to her death with, perhaps she will forgive you in some sense, or at least find you bearable enough not to come after you and kill you."

I sighed before giving a nod and saying, "I will try, Father."

"Good, my dear," he said, slapping me on the shoulder before saying, "Now, I've had some good alcohol prepared direct from Terra, some of the greatest wine that still can be created on the planet and has been stored for many hundreds of years in the perfect conditions to make sure it's aged, and I wish to share that drink with you before I go out on my quest. Do you wish to open it?"

Smiling, I said, "I could never turn down a good drink, Father."

M30.878

Lion El'Jonson

The war for the northern frontiers continued, and finally, we had pushed through the reason for our troubles.

The enemy fleets had been firmly put on their back feet over the last few months. Their ship production seemed to have gone down, and they had lost the amount of crew willing to serve them. Either way, the enemy had finally ceased their endless hordes of enemy ships, and we were finally starting to push deeper into their territory.

This war was turning out to be one of the more brutal campaigns in human history. So many Space Marines had died, and so many Imperial forces, not to mention, it was officially proclaimed that the humans who had been tainted by the Rangdan could not be allowed to rejoin the Imperium.

I was not a fan of this take. They were a problem, I know, but these people were still people, and we were here to defend them. Tanya had raised the concern about this and attempted to reach the Emperor. She suggested that perhaps the sector should be segmented from the rest of the sectors until a better situation could be applied. But the Emperor was busy with whatever he was working on to finally break the Labyrinth of the Night, a mission that he had not explained to me.

Though I had theories that he had explained it to my sister Tanya. A few correspondences with her had made it clear that she believed that the Emperor was quite able to handle the situation, which told me that she had been given some assurances already.

But it didn't matter in the end. The Emperor was not here, and Constantin Valdor, who had moved his forces to maintain some control over the fighting, had received an order from the War Council in the Emperor's name. It was quite clear that the War Council had been infiltrated by elements of the Mechanicum and the Administratum, as they sought to have this sector pacified completely, issuing an order that all systems that had not been activated by the virus that the Rangdan had introduced should be activated so that at least it would be clear who was infected by the retrovirus that would convert them into monsters.

They had given this order to Tanya, of all people, a person known to, in my opinion, to go out of their way to save civilian lives. I had to suspect that perhaps the Administratum was testing her. She had gone out of her way to try and create peace treaties with Xenos and other groups within the now Imperium of Man. Perhaps they wanted to make sure she was loyal. A rather awful thing to do to a child of the Emperor, it showed that they had no trust for her, in my opinion. Granted, I was of the same concern, but I trusted her enough to do their duty.

However, now I knew that she would do her duty no matter who the order came from.

With that order, she deployed her Marines to every single planet and, through their presence, activated the bio-forms of the population. The entire sector was now devoid of the human life that originated in this area. The only human life were Space Marines and infantry brought in from other planets after we had conquered them and the Imperial Navy, of course.

Since the Council's word was the word of the Emperor, and people were already making assumptions that the Emperor was going to do something like this, she unintentionally assigned herself a new title, one that I'm not sure she enjoyed: The Emperor's Executioner.

She had turned her legion into the monsters of the propaganda, or showed herself to be the monster in the propaganda that it portrayed.

Either way, the Wolves of Fenris, for now, bathed in blood. Their hands were dirty from the tasks that many legions had to do. Eventually, there was always some area of grayness in these campaigns, be it a human civilization that just wanted to be independent, but apparently wouldn't settle for at least signing trade deals, to Xenos who were friendly but whose ancestors had enslaved humans generations before and would not undo it.

I wondered if I should reach out to her and see how she was really doing, actually get to know her. After all, was she all right with this new title, this order that she had been given, or was she bothered by it but keeping it to herself?

I shook my head, though, as I looked towards the bridge window, wondering when we would arrive at our destination. The part of me that wanted to question this needed to shut up. A person must stand up and count their own issues for themselves. She must bear her own faults or her own thoughts. If she really had a problem with it, she could deal with it on her own, just as I dealt with my own issues on my own. Keeping your issues secret and dealing with them was the best way to handle a problem, the safest.

After all, very few of my own Marines were aware of my own issues, how I was not the standard template knight that they were thinking I was. That I was a lot closer to Tanya than some would expect. Yes, I wasn't as flashy as she tended to be, and having a few extra feet in the height department did wonders to hide my particular issues.

Oh, I have to admit there are other things between me and Tanya that have remained unspoken. There was a camaraderie that I wished to feel with her.

Yes, she was a wild woman, a queen of her people, a monster hunter, and a show-off. And that was the camaraderie I wished I could feel with her. She was, in essence, free. She was honest with what she was. She didn't fear what would happen if the truth of what she was got out because she didn't hide it. Part of me wished I could be as honest as she was, to revel in drinking, to enjoy the prospects of my office, to take simple joys, and to remove creatures from the world that harmed people simply because it was fun.

But as a knight, I couldn't be any of those things. I could enjoy a drink here or there, but I could not revel. I could kill monsters, but it must be for the betterment of humanity. And I would never take and use my powers given to me for my own interests, like she would, simply because it was not something I should do.

"A knight needed to be a noble guardian, not as Tanya was, a wild barbarian king. But I wondered, were she and I so different? After all, we had both been raised very similarly out in the wilds for a few years before finding our way to civilization. If we had traded places, would we be feeling the same way? Would I be the one who would be a wild barbarian king and her an honorable knight?

Ahh, I tried not to think about such things for too long. It gave me a headache simply because the past was the past. It was impossible to see the other outcomes.

After all, as a knight, I have had plenty of time to look into the science behind several concepts of the universe, and I was aware of the idea of string theory. Multiple realities and all that, quite interesting concepts on their own… I wonder if the barbarian in Tanya knew about that, or did she even care?

Shaking my head, I saw out of the corner of my eye Luther arrived on the bridge, quickly coming to my side and saying, "Brother Lion, a report has just come in from the forward scouts. The situation that we are flying into is not as expected."

I raised an eyebrow at that, before saying, "How is it not as we expected?" As I understood it, we were making one good push to the edges of the Labyrinth of the Night, where we would use mines to try and seal it completely, and then pull back in hopes of preventing any other fleets from entering the Labyrinth or leaving it while we repair our infrastructure and equipment for the next round of fights with the Rangdan.

The White Scars, though mostly having been redeployed over the last few years, had left some troops to act as our forward scouts, and they were currently ahead of us, making sure we weren't jumping into a trap.

Which was a good sign. That Luther had not said we were jumping into a trap, that the situation was not as we believed, if there was a trap, well there was nothing we could do about it, and it would be a hell of a fight while we spin up the engines to turn back. But if it was just not as we believed, well, it could be anything.

"According to the scouts, the Labyrinth of the Night is gone."

"… I'm sorry, did you just say the Labyrinth of the Night is gone?" My eyebrow firmly raised as I processed this information. After all, that was a hard pill to process. The Labyrinth of the Night was a large series of Warpstorms that were hard to understand. Yes, they could have dissipated, but it was very unlikely, as Warpstorms didn't just dissipate when they were being used in the way the Rangdan appeared to be using them as.

I was half expecting to learn that they had been feeding the Warpstorms in some way to keep it alive and useful for their assets and preventing us from making movements in and around their homeworlds.

Luther nodded before saying, "In its place, there's now a planet, a large planet, one that we believe may be their capital."

I blinked before nodding and saying, "Contact everyone. We need to start preparing a siege of this Capital now. If it really is their capital, we must destroy the Rangdan while their defenses appear to have been stripped from them."

"Of course, Brother Lion," he said, giving a nod and yelling some commands to a nearby communication officer who ran off to find the fastest way to pass the message.

Turning to look back at the front of the bridge, I briefly wondered about what the Warp looked like in this region before throwing that out of my brain. I started to put together what we would need to pull this operation off. If this really was the capital of the Rangdan's empire, this would be where the last battle would be fought. The last major battle, at least.

I was slightly concerned that something had destroyed the Warpstorm, but perhaps this is what the Emperor had been saying all this time. That he was working on a method to dispatch the Warpstorm. How he was able to do that I did not know, but psychic powers were not one of my interests.

The Emperor would reach out and tell me what I needed to know when it was time. My job now was to finish this and bring the Rangdan to their knees. They needed to be exterminated, our leadership finally ending this second war and destroying any chance that they would ever rise against us.

First, I needed to get what few leaders were still in the region. Dorn was still someone in the region, his men at least were, and they would be needed to hold the line. Perturabo had left to secure more of the region around his homeworld. Apparently, there had been a bit of a kerfuffle on his own planet with some of the leadership not enjoying the heavy taxes that were slowly rising, thanks to the Administratum's efforts to try and pay for the ongoing crusade.

Of course, Khan had to leave because his ability to provide important information and bring worlds into compliance was needed elsewhere. That left Mortarion, Tanya, and Nobunaga as the mainstays of the army needed to fight this war. Tanya, of course, had the largest contingent, so I would obviously call on her. But who should be the other one to help me in the final fight on this planet? In my head, I decided Nobunaga would fit the bill. Yes, Mortarian's men were good at fighting in trench warfare and they could be useful, but we still needed men on the frontier. Someone needed to back the imperial forces still in the region, so leaving the Death Guard to fill that category would do the best for that.

I would also bring in the 11th Legion, what was left of it, here for a full force for this operation. The Pale Wonders had also been pulled off for other operations with Horus, so there were not many of them around. But if I had any of them, I'd bring them in as well.

If this was really the capital world of the Rangdan, I expected the fighting to be the hardest we'd seen in this entire campaign. So obviously, we would need some of the largest manpower of the entire campaign: 300,000 men at least.

Some may have gone with the notion that we could just virus bomb the planet from orbit, however, that would be a waste of a good planet. Not to mention, there was no guarantee with virus bombs. Assuming that these people knew that sooner or later their defenses would break down, they would have bunkers underneath the planet. And once you've dropped a virus bomb, well, you can only really drop one. We needed to make sure that those bunkers were destroyed, their populations retrovirus turned on, and if any humans survived, they should be brought back into the fold. But the fact of the matter was that they would probably be turned into bioforms. The more we landed on the planet, the monsters that they were, would probably taint everything they had with as many horrible biological monsters as possible.

Maybe we'd be lucky, then, I thought, for the smile, perhaps once we destroyed the planets, the Rangdan and all the other worlds would realize it was over and use themselves as bio-weapons. The creatures were stupid enough that it would make the fights at least easier, even if there'd be multiple numbers to find.

However, if they did that, it would make it easier to justify virus bombing as well. We hadn't used the virus bombs yet. We hadn't used orbital bombardment to its full capacity. If they started to do things that just made the planet unappetizing to even try and conquer, we might as well just start using the weapons.

Shaking my head to remove those darker impulses, I turned to look as a Marine came up, giving a salute. They said, "My Primarch, the ship will be entering the Rangdan's home system in a few moments. What are our orders for the situation?"

Nodding, I thought for a moment before deciding, "We can't push into the system now, even if we've just managed to defeat the majority of their fleet and their defenses are down. We do not have the power to do so. We will continue with the mission, but we will simply throw mines at their planets instead of trying to drop them around the Labyrinth of the Night. Make their space unsafe for their own ships while we pull back and wait for reinforcements to arrive."

The Marine nodded before wandering off to talk to the captain of the ship and deliver my orders as well as the orders to the rest of the fleet. It was not a big fleet. It was only meant to be a quick operation. If only I had brought along something more substantial. Oh well, I'll be back soon enough.

Those thoughts were interrupted as the ship transferred from the Warp into real space. Immediately, the crew began actively working on various jobs, getting everything functioning and ready for operations. The screen separating the internals of the ship from Warp was brought down, so we could get a look at what was out there.

Granted, there wasn't much to view this far out, but it was a nicer look to see the stars than to see nothing. And I could watch several probes being launched as well as communication machines that would bring us information about the enemies of homeworld, so we can get a better plan of operation ready.

It was not long as a data slate next to my left hand activated, showing the planets that we would fight over. At the moment, unnamed, though perhaps the Mechanicum had one, or I should name it. Either way, the Rangdan would face us on that planet.

From what I could see, it was a rather odd world. A large continent dominated one side of the planet, taking up about 30% of the surface area, with various islands and archipelagos breaking off of it. The rest of the planet was water. Even that continent was broken up, as there were several large rivers or passageways from the main oceans surrounding the continent to a large inland sea that probably provided trade routes for most of the civilization on the planet. After all, it's much safer to cross an inland sea than to cross an ocean that big. I could already assume there were monsters in there bigger than those on many planets.

Shaking my head, I watched as the fleet began to do maneuvers, gathering as much intel as they could. As it did, I looked at the planet, trying to determine the best place for our landing.

Assuming that the Rangdan had years to build their own defenses and probably had a good water navy, due to the oceans, I would have to assume that landing anywhere near land would guarantee us to be bombarded by shore guns.

There weren't many places to pull that landing off, but there was one. There was a peninsula jutting out of a large mountain range in the northern half of the continent, down into the major sea.

The mountains, from the topography scanner, were well and truly large, large enough that it would probably be hard to shoot over them, which meant we would only have to worry about half the guns.

We were to create a landing there and move out of the mountains slowly and carefully. We could slowly conquer the planet, killing the Rangdan and ending this conflict, but it would take time.

However, with their planet known to us now, we had all the time in the world. So far, they had not found Terra, which meant this war was now on uneven footing, and we had a better chance of pulling this off.

I would definitely need to bring Tanya in on this. Her men were renowned mountain fighters, they would be able to take the landing zone and clear the road for the second of my own legions to spread out. They would need to be among the first wave, or at least amongst the first wave. This was my campaign, after all, and I would not be beaten by my sister in the landings. I needed to show my military prowess and make sure that father understood that I was a worthy leader amongst men. The best way to do that, of course, was to be amongst the first, but also to show that I could work with even those with whom I had a slight trouble working. My concerns about my sister's wolves and her barbarian men being the issue that I probably needed to work with. I needed to make sure that everyone saw that I was willing and able to work with her. That way, when the inevitable time came for father to step back and focus on other operations across the Imperium, as he was obviously doing with his efforts to build a civilian government, I would be one of the first on his list of possible warmasters to run the military side of the government.

This campaign I had hoped would be the centerpiece for my bid for that eventual eventuality, though I will admit the operations to pull it off had not gone over well. Instead of basking myself in all the glory necessary for such a campaign, things have been a grinding assault from a grinding assault to a grinding assault. Whatever glory was accumulated was quickly lost by simply how many had died to accomplish it.

Not to mention, because it took so long for these spurts of glory to happen, they were often drowned out by the more numerous victories coming from my brothers in charge of the Ultramarines, Guilliman, and the Luna Wolves, Horus. Both of them were seen with quite a lot of success out in the Ultima Segmentum, and those victories would drown out mine quite a lot simply because their losses were lesser and more accomplished. Conquering 10 primitives doesn't really seem that impressive compared to fighting a problem that threatened the heart of the Imperium. But at the end of those conflicts, the 10 primitives were now providing some form of resource to the Imperium. Wow. But what we were taking from the Rangdan, it was barren, the population gone, and no way to rebuild them to the way they were before.

I heard that Tanya was proposing moving some of her people into the region to try and help rebuild, and I was considering trying to do the same, but the population of my homeworld wasn't exactly great. Why was it that Tanya's population was big enough that she could do that?

At that moment it actually hit me that something was up with that. For the first time, I was aware that Tanya was the king of Fenris, but I didn't understand what that actually meant. If our planets were somewhat similar and we'd done the same to remove the problems that prevented growth, why was her planet having a large enough population to support colonization efforts?

I blinked several times before deciding that perhaps I should visit Fenris when I had the time and find out what economic factors were causing it to grow at such a rapid rate. There was no way she had come up with a better way to guide humanity than me, but perhaps she had stumbled onto something that her former King had been working on.

My thoughts were interrupted as Luther came back to my side, saying, "My lord, Tanya has sent a message back. She is already willing to amass half her legion and move it to us at our request."

"Hmm, of course she has," I replied. "She was most likely to be the first to jump on a prey when a weakness was found. Perhaps I would have time to talk to her then about what method she was using to allow her planet to grow so large."

Constantin Valdor

Standing at attention just inside the office door, I watched as the Emperor, who had been in seclusion for a year, finally stepped out. He was looking older and a bit shorter, showing that whatever had kept him busy had taken a toll on him. He also walked more carefully, using the wall as a resting place for his hand as he carefully maneuvered himself out of the room he had just spent a whole year inside of.

I had never seen him in such a state before, and even then, I had been sworn to secrecy about it on a small Night World on the fringes of Imperial Center. There, he had gone into the Warp for some unknown purpose that he had not shared with me or any of his sons.

When he returned, he had looked older and a bit more grim in personality. He had ordered the memories of the event removed from every Primarch and everyone who had been in the room to see him return, except me. Why he had done that, I was still not sure, but perhaps he didn't want to share moments of weakness with his sons, or perhaps it was something that he didn't want his sons to know about. That gateway to the Warp was a dangerous thing. Either way, it showed that he trusted me quite a bit, and I would not betray that trust.

"My Emperor," I said with a nod before asking, "Was your mission a success?"

He looked at me with a pained smile before nodding, saying, "With any luck, the Labyrinth of the Night will become undone within the next 30 minutes. Its existence, brought into question by its origins ceasing to exist. It won't undo what has been done, but it will make it so that from this moment forward, it can no longer be as it is and it will dissipate, allowing the forces of the Imperium to finally surmount and push forward into the last refuges of the Rangdan."

I nodded as I moved to pull a chair out for him and said, "Thank you, Constantin," as he moved over and took a seat, letting us out. Taking my stance near the wall, I waited to see what he wanted next.

He looked at the bookshelves around him before he said, "Have I ever told you what I see when I go into the Warp?"

I shook my head as I said, "You never explained what you did when you were in the Warp."

"I see possible futures or possible timelines that have already come to be, my failures and triumphs. If I am to believe the visions that are shown to me, then I know that the Imperium will succeed in its efforts, but it will not be the Imperium I meant to set out to build..."

"If you believe," I asked.

He nodded before saying, "I'm at the mercy of four creatures of the Warp who have plenty of reason to want me to fail. My plans are in the hope that they will fail in their own efforts, but they delight in showing me these alternate realities, these alternate failures. So, I don't know if they are the true realities or the true failures. I've seen visions where Guilliman declares himself independent, takes over half the Imperium, and fights me, killing Horus and Tanya and every other child until nothing of the Imperium is left."

"I have seen visions where I succeed in creating the Imperium as I dreamed it to be - a human empire controlling the stars. But like a mirror darkly, something has gone horribly wrong. A religion has set in and rotted across the Imperium. They believe that I am a God brought here so that humanity may serve my will."

"I have seen a story where Dorn falls to the taint of Chaos, the Purple One taking delight in causing pain and suffering to his own men and to his enemies."

"If I believe these visions, then all my children could become traitors. But if I don't close my eyes to the possibility that they can betray me, perhaps not willingly but through blackmail or some other means, I can only do the best with the information I am given. The information given to me could lead me to the future that they so enjoy and delight in showing me."

"The cost of that future weighs on me and I feel older every time I think about it. I worry that what I do now will simply bring it about sooner or later instead of preventing it. That fate is already sealed and destined to happen."

I tilted my head towards him as he said that last minute. He noticed that and smiled before saying, "I would rather believe that destiny and fate are not a thing. Though if there's anything in fate that is a thing, I think humanity would have already fallen in those visions. The fact that those visions exist, even if it is showing me a hellscape of possibilities, shows me that there's something there, something in humanity that is good that still strives to survive. I hope that the Chaos gods would like to crush that out of me now so that it would never come to pass and that their version of humanity may dominate the galaxy."

"Their version of humanity? My question caused him to shake his head and say, 'Their version of humanity is a nightmare. Their version of your reality would be more like it, one which is dominated by pain and suffering, disease and decay, war and barbarity. A unified human empire will calm the Warp. It'll take time, but it will happen. However, if they succeed, they will want more on all fronts. They will want humanity to be fighting itself until it goes extinct and for the aliens to take up the conflicts once humanity is gone. They don't care where the emotions flow, only that the emotions do - the pain, the suffering, the hate, the pleasure. It gives them power. They use it to jostle amongst each other for more power in an endless cycle of a terrible game with no clear winner ever to be declared.'"

"What happens if the Warp is calmed, my Emperor?"

He looked at me before saying, "I don't think we can destroy the four. The most we can ever do is to lower their power enough that their abilities are not so widespread. I have played with the idea that maybe if, just if, this reality becomes so calm that they can't get enough of their power, they may cease to exist, but I doubt that. More likely, if my plans to remove their source of food are successful through the calming of the galaxy into an orderly society, a few may go to slumber and wait for another chance to play their great game. A few may move into other galaxies though. We are, after all, just one galaxy amongst hundreds. Who's to say that they don't have their own playgrounds out there? Galaxies that are more devoted to their taint than ours. Perhaps they would gather their forces and send them towards us, perhaps they wouldn't, and perhaps they would stay in that galaxy, preying on the people there instead of ours."

He shook his head before saying, "Only time will tell what the general outcome will be. Once the crusade is done and humanity is restored, we'll have time to figure out, test and find the best way to deal with these chaotic beings. For now … for now, I just hope that they stay far away from my children so that they may not become a plaything for them."

I nodded as the Emperor seemed to look off into the distance before getting up to sigh and saying, "I'm going to retire to my bedroom and get a good night's sleep. I haven't had one in... how long have I been in there?"

"472 days, my emperor."

"Ha... never mind. I should probably go get some food first, then get some good night's sleep. That's a new record."

Shaking his head, he stepped by me, patting me on the shoulder before exiting into the hallway. I followed behind him as my duty required.

Writers note: and there we go wre moving towered the end game of this ark, deceased of fighting over plent would gotten tiersom so this should be fine… i think, i also think i done the best job with setting this idea up as i can since we know nothing about ragadon and i was left to my own devices. But ah let see reaction.

Please comment, review, and generally enjoy yourselves…

Edited by: L, Guardsman Pius, Golden

Community edited by:

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Reviews
Anthony: here you go
DondoIsHereAgain: thank you
Gwynx: i say she very rich
: thank you
end5:thank you
hunterelliskeith: thank
maskedkeeper:na
ToasterForkerAnonymous: i'm sure they will be fine
Agonizing Turtle: ha what Lord woflen?
evilstatistic19: always will
Gold1992: Nikea going to be fun

Austin: oh they know each other, as for Monster of the week if i ever figueire out how to do tanya in symphogear i let you know
Not another me: i do in fact plan, though it very loses plan, though were a good 100+ years out
Qinlongfei: when big e when under the mountains and when e hung out with Volkan and tanya