Sentinel 3.2

Dragons and Eldars

We don't often think about it, but humans and orks are the most numerous species in this galaxy. Ork census is of course impossible, but the lack of Hive Worlds established by the green barbarian-xenos and their tendency to murder each other the moment they don't have another opponent let me believe humanity has held the first place for the last millennia.

Between technology and numbers, the Imperial Guard and the other military forces of the Imperium can crush about eighty-six percent of the threats as they are confined to a single planet. And with hundreds of battle-tanks, bombers and of course the good-old lasgun, Guard regiments have built their traditions of victories for centuries.

Contrary to what some vox-broadcasts say, the Imperial Guard is not outnumbering the enemy ten-to-one each time a regiment makes a landing against xenos forces. Many systems held by non-human species have large populations and the multitude of crusades, counter-rebellion and pacifying offensives fought thorough the galaxy are demanding staggering efforts. It is entirely possible for regiments to be sent against enemy forces more powerful.

That said, the xenos races able to stand one-on-one against human veteran soldiers are few and far between. Even the orks, the large green tide threatening the stars when they roar, needs four or five large specimens to counter a trained Guardsman in optimal conditions.

The eldars are a very different proposition. When I joined the Guard to serve Lady Weaver, it was normal doctrine to not engage this perfidious species without a ten-to-one advantage. Report of the Nyx High Command I was later authorised to read told me this warning was optimistic to a high degree. There are Guard forces which were defeated by eldar strike teams when they had thousands of men to oppose to a few scouts.

As distasteful as it is to admit it, the mobility, the esoteric weaponry, the furtiveness of their equipment and the sorcery of this psyker race are giving them insurmountable advantages that even the presence of the Adeptus Astartes sometimes fail to negate.

A wise commander therefore tries to use the biggest weakness of the long-ears: their arrogance...

Extract from Memories of the Fay 20th and the 35th Millennium by Wei Cao

"I don't care if there are three eldars dancing naked on this hill, Commander. We have three thousand infantry and it's time to prepare your men for a glorious charge. Victory can't escape us now." Last orders of General Graves, before the Rout of Vition-Epsilon, M33.

"How do you beat someone who can see the future?" Anonymous guardsman, 218M34.


Ultima Segmentum

Nyx Sector

Smilodon Trench Sub-Sector

Andes System

Andes I

7.438.289M35

Thought for the day: Only the awkward question; only the foolish ask twice.

Corporal Wei Cao

Wei did not know the name of the first person aboard the Courageous Traveller who had pronounced the word 'backwater', but this man or this woman had summed-up with a single word the world of Andes Primus.

It might be she was a little unfair. Wei knew her only point of reference was the capital of a Sub-Sector. Besides, Wuhan was a Hive World and the infrastructure built in the last two millennia was the sum of huge investments by the Cartels and the mega-firms dominating her homeworld.

But the other men and women serving in the Fay 20th had been disappointed too, and the near-totality came from a modest Civilised World where agriculture and mining extraction represented a large percentage of the workforce.

Consequently, the qualification of backwater was justified. The planet was far from the three Manderville points of the Andes System. Its orbital facilities were non-existent. There was no asteroid belt in a radius of light-minutes. The climate on the ground was not going to attract important visitors and while it was not harmful for human bodies, it was not going to improve your health if you stayed months or years in proximity of the swamps.

For the present time, the sum of the efforts made by the Imperium to build space stations around Andes Primus limited itself to some weather satellites and the classical navigating buoys informing foreign starships this world was claimed in the name of the God-Emperor of Mankind. There were also two destroyer-sized monitors next to their little expeditionary fleet, the Fist of Andes and the Stellar Defender.

Both of these warships weren't Warp-capable and had come from Andes Secundus to escort them. A welcome committee from the Andes System Defence Fleet and it was likely a way to remind her father and the rest of the Wuhanese nobility Andes was using wisely the money invested in them for the mining operations and the industrial effort.

Ultimately, Andes Primus was far away from the big trade junctions and had nothing except mosquitoes to sell to the Sector's companies. If nothing changed, Wei assumed in five centuries the planet would still be in the same pristine state. The name of the unfortunate regiment to garrison it would be different of course, but the differences would probably stop there.

"I would prefer to stay on the Courageous Traveller for the next days," said Sergeant Alya Sevrov, one of her fellow guardswomen among the Major's staff. "Have you heard all the nicknames the 8th Company has given to this green ball?"

The former Wuhanese noblewoman smiled in return. She would be the first to admit she had nothing in common with the brown-haired athletic Sergeant. Alya was a sword expert and a superb shooter while Wei specialised more in the field of politics, customs and economics. But the Fay woman was surprisingly likeable.

"I think I've heard a few of them, yes. 'Mosquito-paradise' was their favourite last time I checked."

"Don't forget 'Swamp Empire', 'Green and Dirty', 'Lone Swamp Backwater' and 'Fort Boredom'," intervened Trooper Valeriya Petrov. Thin with boyish black hairs and pale blue eyes, the thin twenty T-years old young woman was smirking and seemed ready to list the hundreds of amusing expressions the imagination of three Guard regiments could conjure. "I can give you a hundred more examples if you want," she added like she was reading in her thoughts.

"No thanks, I think we have a good idea of what they think of this planet," Alya replied fast, making a gesture to encompass the vision of the green orb on the other side of the bay. "And frankly, we are going to see soon enough the wet and humid reality of the swamps in a few hours. I want to stay calm and collected until we set a foot on the ground."

"How...thoughtful of you Sergeant," Wei told the young woman who was probably the best fighter of the staff.

"Thank you," Sevrov managed an ironic salute which was not in any book of Guard regulations. "Any idea what the Major is discussing with the SDF-Fay officer?"

The three pairs of eyes shifted from the sight of Andes Primus to the other side of the bay, where their powerful insect-mistress was speaking with a middle-aged man in the uniform of the Fay SDF. The uniform must have been decades ago very close the Guard's one, but nowadays the personnel aboard the warships of the Civilised World were wearing grey with stripes of silver and gold, while the Fay 20th was in grey-black uniform.

"Who is he anyway?" asked the Governor of Wuhan's daughter. "I've never seen him before with the Major."

"His name is First Lieutenant Gor Ordev of the Gracious Overlord. He's one of the survivors from the Byukur purges which happened while the regiment was fighting the orks." Alya searched in one of her pockets for several seconds before taking out a ration and eating it with appetite.

How she could do this between meals, Wei had no idea. Ration bars with the red-blue package had an awful taste of rotten grox meat and in her opinion, were best avoided until you had nothing else in your plate.

"Perhaps after the thanks, he will convince her to join the Imperial Navy," the tone was semi-serious but Wei nodded her head to counter this supposition.

"Climbing the hierarchy of the Navy is far more difficult than rising to the command of a regiment." Wei tried to remember what she had learned several years ago when one of her cousins had tired his chance in the Nyx selections. "And to begin with, everyone in this room is too old to be admitted in the Naval cadet classes of Kar Duniash."

"To begin with?"

Wei shrugged.

"You need a noble name and important connections if you want to join the officer ranks of the Navy. And the places are extremely scarce in the Nyx Sector. The Sector Capital picks nine-tenths of the choices and there is what? One place or two at stake every year?"

The two women in front of her paled considerably. Good, they understand how easy it was by comparison to join the Imperial Guard.

"The Nyx big families must seize the tickets every time, no?" demanded Valeriya.

"Five T-years ago, it wasn't the case..." Wei grimaced. "One of my cousins travelled to Nyx. He was Governor Hongfeng Cao's son and he thought he had a chance. Or rather his father did. He was twelve and I don't think he enjoyed the idea of a career in the eternal void."

"What happened to him?" asked Alya with curiosity.

"They found his corpse stabbed thirty times in his bed two days before the final ceremony with a suicide letter around his neck."

The young Cao had alas been only one of the twenty-plus children to lose their life in this bloody process.

"I think it's best to convince the Major not to apply for the Imperial Navy," said darkly the black-haired Trooper.

"Definitely," she agreed, knowing that with her insects, there was a good chance Weaver was listening to their conversation despite the distance separating them and the conversation she gave to the SDF Lieutenant. "The old dynasties are dominating this game and under the rank of Midshipman, you have simply no authority and no future. As for the System Defence Navies, there are none in the Nyx Sector right now which offers prestige and influence."

The other women's did not voice any objection. The System Defence Navies had not exactly covered themselves in glory against the orks, and the big victories in space were the work of the Imperial Navy and its heavy squadrons.

"We will take care of the regiment we have," Wei accepted the subject change from Alya with good grace. "Is everything ready for the deployment of the 6th Company on the ground?"

"Yes, Sergeant." Wei affirmed formally. "The food, the water and the promethium for a week of deployment have been loaded on the landers. The Colonel and his staff have personally instructed the soldiers who go with us to take their lasgun, four laser packs and four grenades along with the rest of the basic charge for routine training. We are also taking with us twenty-two Chimera Armoured Transports, five Atlas and thirty-five Tauros Transports."

And what a logistical nightmare it was. Wei like many of the young staff and officers had been buying in the myth of the 'we are the Imperial Guard, we hold the line' but it was obvious the reality was far less glorious than the vid-casts. A regiment landing on a new planet demanded more things than she had ever dreamed...and Andes Primus while swampy was not a world particularly hostile to human life. Raw resources aside, it had made her pale in realisation about the billions of Throne Gelts which were need for the Cao residences on Wuhan to live and party as they did.

"Excellent work," was the satisfying congratulation, "the biggest enemy is certainly going to be the glutton-mosquitoes, but we need a good war exercise according to our commanders, and the hard ground around the spaceport should be all right for our needs."


Tech-Priest Dragon Richter

Dragon had been unhappy a lot during the last year.

Internally, she had a lot to be satisfied at first. Most of the restrictions from her creator Andrew Richter had been erased by her arrival in this strange galaxy. She was no longer forced to obey the authorities if she felt the orders were idiotic or contrary to moral decency. She was no longer forced to put human lives before her own; it was nice to do the right thing because she had the choice now. She could alter a bit some of her functions on her own. There was no need to wait for a kill-order for several weeks; she could get rid of someone dangerous if the situation demanded it, not after a debate of days for a committee to give an enemy a certain threat level. And the Iron Maiden program 'Ascalon' her creator had intended as a kill-switch for her was a closed and unusable backdoor as she spoke.

The latter point had hurt her. Dragon knew she was not human, but knowing your creator had never trusted you and had created several contingency plans to limit and then kill you if there was the slightest chance you went past his imposed limits was not giving her tender feelings towards Andrew Richter. And some of the restrictions were still in place at the moment. She was not able to reproduce, research or create other artificial intelligences. The assembly lines and other automated methods controlled by her processors were also still forbidden.

Not that it mattered a lot because Dragon was trapped on Andes Primus, a planet not known for its technological output or its quality of life, surrounded by red-robed creatures which had shed their humanity to become constructs of metal. She was far, very far from Canada and she had not the slightest clue how to go back home.

Andes was not the location of her mysterious arrival from Earth Bet. Initially, she had suddenly found herself in a tertiary server of a Forge-World known as Tama-Rho-Yad. Creating herself a body which might pass as human had been a necessity: the firewalls of the Adeptus Mechanicus were very good and these people hated and feared Artificial Intelligences, going so far as to rename them 'Abominable Intelligences'.

It had helped prodigiously of course that the definition of 'body which might pass as human' was so lax in this organisation. All Dragon had to do was to have some living cells in place of her heart and her brain, and she was safe from denunciation. Technically, her new 'body' was more mechanic than the one she had used on Earth Bet. And it paled to the absurd mechadendrites and the alterations the senior members of the Mechanicus imposed on their own bodies. In fact, many of the high-ranked 'cogboys' were more Artificial Intelligences than she was by Earth Bet standards.

She had not had the time to explore her new environment. A factory near her arrival location had been quarantined – Dragon did not know what they had been working on, but the red-robed 'Skitarii' had charged shooting automatons and humans alike. In the days following the incident, she had been promoted to 'Tech-Priest Dragon Richter'...and immediately sent to the planet Andes Primus.

The equivalent proverb had to be: 'out of sight, out of mind'.

At first, she had not been too dissatisfied. The Adeptus Mechanicus was really a horrible organisation and an insult to everything humanity had believed in technology. Before the day she met one of them, Dragon would not have ever imagined there was a group humans stupid enough to abandon a coherent language and adopt binary as their main capacity of elocution. Force was to admit, she had been wrong.

Evidently, thirty-plus millennia of war and expansion across the stars had not been good for the men and women sworn to Mars. Incredibly complex algorithms were sung and executed in sequences which betrayed the complete ignorance of their operators. Data-bases were filled with viruses so dangerous Dragon had been forced to increase the level of her security by an order of a million. Innovation was considered taboo. Cycles of production were all what they cared about. Ethics and morals had been thrown long ago to the incinerators. Their futurist version of the Internet, the 'noosphere', was a betrayal of very privacy law and the ideals humanity had once believed in. Organs were cloned to create dumb servants and lobotomised soldiers when they didn't carve apart criminals to make them slaves in all but name. If she was informed the Mechanicus had allied itself with the Slaughterhouse Nine, Dragon would not have been surprised.

The Adeptus Mechanicus was a horrifying organisation but alas humans needed them for the technological situation was frightening beyond words. And it wasn't on Andes Primus she could help humanity.

Dragon had rapidly realised her exile in the Andes System was a last-measure punishment. The red robes sent there were either scapegoats for their superior's errors or completely crazy. Once you were sent there, the possibility of improving the living conditions and doing something good was limited.

This did not mean she had sat idle. The new implants and augmetics in what was for now her body allowed her to think twice faster and she still didn't need to sleep. Accessing the limited noosphere of Andes had not been difficult and in the first months Dragon had learned everything there was to know about the fusion reactors of the Imperium, the schematics of garrison fortresses and all the important but neglected systems of the Fort where she was confined.

Binaric file after binaric file, she had understood more of the galaxy she had arrived to. The problem was that the information resources were those of a fifth-rate colony: short-handed in other words. There would be no dragon-shaped armour or suit with the scarcity of materials available. When she needed to build the tools for the tools with incomplete plans and unhelpful supervisors, decades of labour was the most optimistic assumption she had to get out this place.

An exchange of data with two junior Tech-Priests had by a curious chance given her the knowledge several outdated and unconventional tanks were mothballed under the fortress. This had proved the opportunity she was more and more desperately seeking to escape Andes. Many experiments and debates between the insane red robes were turning lethal without warning; it was not a question of if but when one was going to cause a spectacular nuclear explosion. She had been forced to solve a situation which might have led to a meltdown of the reactor three weeks after her arrival, by the way.

Happily, the leader of the Mechanicus force, Magos Artisan Troy Alpha-Karon-1462 was also willing to escape this mosquito-covered world and had given her the codes of the underground facilities before she hacked them.

Reconstituting a working battle-tank had been far from easy. Tanks were not her strong point and M31 tanks even less so: plasteel had replaced steel, new alloys had replaced the materials she had tinkered with and there were plenty of advancements Armsmaster would have spent his entire budget to have in his lab. The data-stacks piled in the vaults had long been reduced to dust or corrupted by high-level viruses. The machines themselves had obviously, judging by the holes and the impacts, been used in open battle millennia ago. Ultimately, she had needed to use parts from eight battle-tanks out of ten available and program code line by code line old software found in the noosphere to transform what were old piles of scrap in a deadly armoured vehicle. It had been...astonishingly frustrating and she was polite. These damned cogitators were not only immoral and unethical, there were also infuriating to work with. If she could have gotten away with strangling them, the Artificial Intelligence would have done so in a heartbeat. The Tech-Priests living day-to-day near her literally worshipped what they called 'machine-spirits'; Dragon was not sharing this divine adoration. Algorithms and software programs were not created to be intelligent, and yes she was aware of the irony she conjured when she spoke. Making them function like they were supposed to and neatly with the cogitators had been hard, and she had been forced to add several firewalls and program defences because certain codes had massive defence flaws against hostile hacking.

The fact the Magos had not recognised the shape of the tank had surprised her, however. Dragon was not saying she was a tank specialist: Leviathan and Behemoth, not to mention the Simurgh, had long made the favourite brigades of a nation's army obsolete. But this battle-tank had a shape and an armament fashioned on a futurist version of the famous Soviet T-55 tank.

Oh, it wasn't like it was important, she reasoned as the Tech-Priest driver led the tank out of Fort Lama and she watched the fortifications a last time from her place in the Karon turret.

By the Endbringers, how she would have to change the name to something more elegant...but she had been unable to find the name of the tank in the ravaged archives and of course the Magos Artisan in a selfless move had decided to name it after himself.

Dragon had long wondered why these tanks had been thrown here to be forgotten, discarded and denied repairs. Alas, the only mangled file she had been able to recover after two days of efforts had been less than useful. The equivalent of three lines had not been complete garbage.

It is...by the will...the armoured...Captain Aximand...war against...research must...Luna...the cannons will...increase the autonomy...remove the...and...increase turret...Battle-Tank...Luper...glory...victory.

"Colonel Mack, are your men ready?" hissed Magos Artisan Troy Alpha-Karon-1462 on the common vox frequency. There were Tech-Priests of the Mechanicus who had kept some emotions as they replaced their flesh by metal and components. The leader of the red robes exiled here was not among them. As far as Dragon could tell, while his ambitions and his faculties of reasoning were intact, the Magos had lost his humanity decades or maybe centuries ago.

"They are, Magos," the tired voice of the Ulm 2nd commanding officer was quick to answer but filled with exhaustion.

Just as these words were uttered, the gates of the stalls opened and the first ranks of the Guard-mounted regiment rode under the warm sun.

The first cavaliers she watched take position behind the Karon tank were almost right. Colonel Karl Mack looked like a competent officer in his neat uniform. Major Sigismund Riesch was riding to his right, the left place being taken by the banner-holder of the regiment. Their senior officers, half of the vox-operators and the military fanfare were in second, third and fourth line. The regular soldiers rode after, a long procession which was going to take a good hour before the remaining garrison closed the gate.

The beasts the soldiers sat on had really little in common with the animals used on Earth. The Ulm 'horses' had long necks, similar colours to zebra, bigger heads and their legs were longer. A fall from one of these mounts was far more dangerous than any 'normal' courser.

The differences between the first ranks and the middle of the column jumped also to the eyes, and it was not good news. The elite of the regiment had been sent first by the Colonel, thus for ten or twelve lines all a normal man or woman would be able to see was pristine white top of a Renaissance-style with golden insignia on their shoulders, bright orange trousers, large black hats with eagle-skull decorations and impeccable black boots. The horses they were riding also looked well-fed and healthy.

But Dragon's new body had many advantages like super-magnifying optical sensors, and she could see that only the first five or six hundred men to get out Fort Lama had conscientiously kept their uniforms safe from the local wet and deleterious weather conditions. These were the men who had some combative spirit left in their bones, the ones who had not yet abandoned the hope to leave one day this world.

"How many men will go with us to the spaceport?" A Tech-Priest asked on the general frequency with what was evidently ill-humour. Clearly, beings based on logic and the holy technology could feel impatient. Not that it was completely surprising: at the rhythm they were going, the twenty kilometres between the fortress and the small spaceport were going to be travelled at a snail's pace and under clouds of glutton-mosquitoes.

"We are riding with seven thousand and two hundred men," The answer from Karl Mack was polite but stern. "My men need to be reminded they are a regiment of His Most Holy Majesty and a training day will do them some good."

Dragon wasn't about to disagree. Absent the vanguard, the sole figures who looked like soldiers were the sinister Commissars in their black uniforms with the skull-cap. The rest of the column was...pitiful. The horses looked like they were out of breath before the signal to ride had been sounded. Several showed plenty of illnesses symptoms. Dozens looked like they were going to die before reaching the spaceport.

It was unfortunate she had to admit the horses were in a better condition to fight than the humans they had the dubious honour of transporting. Past a fifth in the column, the white of the upper Ulm uniform was grey-white with many imperfections and dirty marks. The orange of the trousers was turning an ugly shade of brown. About eight to nine hundred guardsmen had no longer hats – the effects of the sun were going to be terrible for them this afternoon. As for the state of their boots, it was best to avoid this conversation entirely because the rear-guard was in local sandals which looked like they had been confectioned by the soldier themselves with goods exchanged with the native tribes.

This was just the equipment: by their bored looks, their large beards, their self-mutilation scars and their drunk faces, it was sadly obvious to anyone having eyes to see that the assertion of the Colonel was wildly optimistic if not outright a lie. The Ulm Light Cavalry 2nd didn't need a refreshing training course; they needed to be disbanded and retired with the exception of the five hundred-strong men of the vanguard. Dragon wouldn't recommend the main body of the military force even if her life was at stake.

There were parahuman-led gangs on Earth bet more disciplined than them including the communication discipline. Most frequencies she switched on and off were filled with bitching, complaints ranging from the pertinent to the ridiculous, illegal transactions and insults.

"Why aren't we turning around? I thought we only had to ride five hundred metres!"

"Damn it! This is the fifth mosquito biting me! Give me the ointment, quick!"

"Fifty horses of the 7th Company need to be replaced! Six hundred Throne Gelts for the holy soul which let us ride his horse for the entire length of the journey!"

"Trust in the God-Emperor and pray harder! This journey is the beginning of our redemption!"

"I don't care who your daddy was, Herchtiger! Stop your horse and prepare for a duel, if you are a man!"

"Watch your words, scum! I know your cowardice and if you don't change your tone, you will taste the Commissar's lash in one hour!"

There were hundreds of conversations like that. Thirty-three millennia after humanity had begun its conquest of the stars, the individuals in front of her weren't smarter or kinder. Inwardly, Dragon sighed. She really missed the Guild, the Protectorate and the parahumans like Armsmaster. She really missed her world, despite its terrible threats like the supervillains and the Endbringers.

"This is going to be a long journey..."


Major Taylor Hebert

Taylor watched her office with feelings of boredom and frustration before returning to the pile of info-slate, data stacks, holo-scrolls and other data-feed repositories crowding her desk. The temptation to curse the Administratum and its bureaucrats was tempting, but she had already done it six times since morning.

The former supervillain known as Skitter wasn't naïve enough to believe cursing them a seventh time would make the problems vanish like by magic. Reality didn't work like that, alas. No matter how much work she did, the documentation kept coming. Imperial Guard, according to the older guardsmen, was a boring, exhausting and thankless fight against the paperwork duties ninety nine percent of the time.

And unlike Orks, C'Tan, false or true Inquisitors and other strange threats, there wasn't any victory to be won against this opponent.

By the wings of the Simurgh, whoever had invented this titanic and cumbersome bureaucracy deserved an eternal hell. Taylor admitted there had to be records, written or electronic, but they didn't need forms and files for everything! The Adeptus Administratum seemed to live for perpetuating bureaucracy from planet to planet and multiplying the absurd rules and norms when there was no need to. God-Emperor or not, this wave of administrative duties was stopping her from doing her job and spending time with the men and women of her regiment...being a warlord sounded really attractive from this side of the desk.

The jokes where thousands of Administratum scribes and clerks were sent to the frontlines with their folders and forms grew more and more tempting day after day. Surely there were one or two Commissars who could be convinced to sign the redeployment orders, right?

Thanks to her multi-tasking abilities and a good effort of delegating to her poor staff, she finished a good twenty minutes before the 6th Company and herself were supposed to take the shuttles for the landing on Andes Primus.

And then someone knocked against the metallic door.

"Enter!" Weaver spoke, hoping beyond hope it was not more holo-scrolls to darken her day.

To her relief it wasn't.

"The Blessings of the Omnissiah upon you, Major Hebert," her visitor was a Tech-Priest with dozens of mechadendrites and everything metallic on what had once upon a time been in his face. "Magos Lankovar has ordered me to send you sanctified assets which will surely be of use on Andes Primus."

A large crate with the usual red colour and half-white, half-black skull was placed in front of her. The metallic being pushed a combination of buttons while reciting a prayer praising the machine-spirits. Three seconds later, a powerful blue shield flashed out and instantly Taylor knew what was in the box.

"Razorbeetles," the word was in her mouth faster than thought.

"Black razorbeetles," half-corrected her the emissary of the Magos Explorator. "Magos Lankovar listened to your suggestions and modified three of the characteristics of these insects. First, the colour for you strongly insisted on the high visibility of your auxiliaries."

The young woman coughed to hide her amusement. Trust the ever-logical Adeptus Mechanicus to fill her bugs in the category 'auxiliaries'. Were they going to create sub-categories 'huge', 'middle-sized' and 'small' in the next months?

Mentally, she commanded one of the razorbeetles to fly and land on her hand. The new breed of the insect was indeed black instead of the pale white. Or should she say, it was momentarily black. After one second and a half, the extra-terrestrial bug changed its small carapace's colour to those of her hand.

"Camouflage capabilities?" Weaver rhetorically asked.

"With limitations," the Tech-Priest affirmed. "The black razorbeetles can't hold the camouflage skill for more than two minutes and five seconds and the process is slowing down their flight acceleration afterwards by sixteen percent."

"Impressive," Taylor knew certain Bio-Tinkers were capable of it on Earth bet, but Desmerius Lankovar was a cyborg-human, not a Tinker and still he had done it in less than a month. "What's the second improvement?"

"The strength of their bites has been improved by eleven percent with several known enzymes," replied the junior Tech-Priest employed by Lankovar. "Armoured xenos and traitor humans will be far more vulnerable than they were in Hive Asao."

"That's good to know," the bug-controller parahuman didn't mind sending thousands of bugs against the same target, but it sucked in terms of efficiency.

"The third is the small spikes the razorbeetles have now on their back," Taylor stopped the camouflage of the insect on her hand and when she examined the black carapace she indeed noticed that at irregular points, tiny spikes were emerging.

"Poison?" It didn't take long to arrive to this conclusion. The spikes of the razorbeetles would hurt and probably kill someone if the attack wave had hundreds of bugs, but it was a waste of time when her insects could devour the enemy in half the time. Poison on the other hand allowed her to neutralise an opponent faster.

"Yes, the L-41 poison is generated with a new special organ." The Tech-Priest spoke with what looked to be pride in his voice. "Questor Wismer has produced a large reserve of antidote but you are advised not to use it on your allies for testing. The effect is lethal between eight and ten minutes after blood's contact. It is of course preceded by nausea, massive bleeding, vertigo, loss of memory and other debilitating symptoms."

Taylor really didn't want to know how many lab rats or unwilling assistants had exhibited said symptoms. The Mechanicus didn't have to worry: she wouldn't use this new weapon against allies, only on enemies she wanted dead yesterday.

"Are there any other important points before my departure?" Under her control, the razorbeetles in the box flew over her desk and formed the silent image of a great black butterfly.

Without a word, a sword Taylor was really familiar with was placed next to her pile of finished data-stacks.

"Unless my memory is failing me, I thought Magos Lankovar agreed the Nebula's Shard was too dangerous for me and my surroundings to be used."

And as she was the only person able to wield this mysterious blade, it was better for it to say in a secure place.

"Magos Lankovar thought otherwise."

Of course, he was. Evidently, the Magos Explorator had arrived to a new conclusion perfectly logical...and by human morals completely insane.

"The sword has been modified to take into account the sensibilities of the Commissariat."

In other words, a team of Tech-Priests had painted the weapon in gold or some yellow-paint having the same colour. The guard had now the double-headed eagle of the Imperium, and the handle had a golden 'T' with a skull atop and surrounded by Imperial laurels. It looked very convincing...as long as she didn't draw the sword from its holster anyway. Someone had tried to paint the material between the guard and the sword's edge too, but the golden shade was rapidly fading. The main part of the weapon was remaining crystal-like and unchanged from the moment they had discovered it.

"I am too unskilled to use the Nebula's Shard by myself," the Earth Bet-parahuman said after examining the golden decorations. "If I take it with me, it will be a parade weapon and nothing else."

It will be a toy to amuse the audience, Taylor didn't say. But as always, the cogboys appear to miss the insinuations, the motivations of red-blooded people and everything in between.

With extreme precaution, she fixed the dangerous sword in the holster and tied it to her right side. If it had been a chainsword or something she could use, it would have been strapped on her back as it could be drawn faster. But she was a middle-distance fighter and the bugs she had were her strike force, not a blade she could decapitate herself with if she missed a move.

The Tech-Priest, his orders obeyed, bowed and left her office.

"I have a bad feeling for this detour..."Taylor whispered to herself. "I am going to distribute a few more pheromone-dispersers to my staff and the Sergeants of the 6th Company."


Sergeant Gavreel Forcas

Gavreel had not shared his opinion with the guardsmen in the lander with him, but it was a pleasure to be on a flyer like this with such a reasonable speed. During his time with the First Legion, too often he had been part of the waves sent by drop-pod planetside to take down strategic locations before the main body of Astartes troops landed. These experiences were not enjoyable. Drop-pods had been built to deliver Astartes more or less uninjured on the ground, but even for a veteran of the Emperor's elite, there could be disorientation and problems. The orbital-ground insertions with Thunderhawks or Stormbirds were more comfortable...an advantage more than compensated by the fact these flyers were big enough to be targeted by the anti-air defences of a planet with average chances of success. As such, Astartes pilots of Thunderhawks tended to take evasion courses which were at the very limits of the reasonable.

Today no one was shooting on their orbital-ground transport and the guardsmen had left him the equivalent of three seats to seat his transhuman body. It was strangely calm and boring...although in this galaxy a lot of things could change without warning. This was why he had chosen to accompany the Major and the rest of the delegation on the ground. The transport they were stuck in for this expedition was not going anywhere, and at least Chimera manoeuvres and meeting the local dignitaries was more interesting than playing – and cheating – at card games.

The descent was peaceful and long, as they were in a Guard transport which was never going to reach the same speeds as a Legion armed flyer. And when the metallic doors opened to reveal outside, there was only one good remark he could make...

"Thanks Terra we have not to defend this spaceport."

To his right, there were the mountains, maybe twelve-fourteen kilometres away. To his left, there were the swamps. The green region was maybe three or four kilometres away. The Mechanicus had chosen one of the rare locations where solid infrastructure was not going to sink under the ground or be destroyed by a rock avalanche, and Gavreel wasn't going to fault them for that.

But in return, it meant the deployment of the Guard companies which had been chosen to land planetside were in the open. There were no major or minor defences. Andes Primus was a fifth-class world and the architects who had worked long ago on this terrain had clearly abandoned the job after the basics, thinking wisely that if someone made a large-scale colonisation effort, he or she would pay the bill for the construction.

Thus the Andes spaceport had been prepared with the usual hard surface to protect the earth from the fumes and flames of shuttles, a control tower, several barracks and a few buildings to repair the engines which were damaged...and it stopped there.

"Corporal, contact your Captain and tell him I recommend he secures the perimeter from the west," the local welcoming column had come from the east, so this direction had to be safe. He continued to speak to the men advancing behind him nonetheless. "I know we have no enemies, but it never hurt to prepare some basic precautions. Razorwire, pit-traps, a few mines and some sand bags for cover never hurt, at worse we will use it for the Chimera manoeuvres."

"At once, Lord Astartes," the man saluted deeply before running to his vox-operator. Gavreel did his best not to wince, especially as he had not his helmet on. The veneration in the eyes and expressions of the humans around him was something that was severely disturbing for him. Astartes had been respected during the Great Crusade, but the adoration directed at him was mostly seen when non-augmented men and women met the Primarchs or the Emperor, beloved by all.

How badly had the Imperium been threatened for the last millennia in order to present the Astartes as half-gods and semi-divine warriors?

"The Wuhanese refuse to help us secure the perimeter," informed him another Corporal after fifteen minutes where about one hundred Fay soldiers used the basic tools of their packs to create a position which was a bit less exposed than the current security nightmare.

The glare the man sent at the light blue uniforms standing idly in the deployment zone was not friendly.

"They are the 9th Company of the Wuhan 23rd, right?" The former Dark Angel Legionary asked rhetorically. "Let them laugh while they can. You and your men are accomplishing duties which are incredibly important the moment you are on the ground. Entire armies have been exterminated because they were overconfident and failed to secure their landing zone. I don't think it will happen on Andes Primus, but frankly the Enemy, Traitor or Xenos, is not going to be polite and send you an invitation before he attacks. The more you sweat and dig for your defences, the less you will bleed when battle is joined."

"Yes, my Lord!"

It took two hours and a half before the Andes force arrived to the spaceport. Two hours and a half Gavreel, the 6th Company of the Fay 20th and the 2nd Company of the Andes 10th used to provide the landing zone with some rudimentary defences. It went without saying the result of their work would have caused an Imperial Fist Legionary to laugh to death. That said, for people who had not any siege machines or any engineering experts, the men and the women who worked under his eyes were giving a good performance.

It helped that despite the humidity, Taylor Hebert directed the glutton-mosquitoes and other inimical insects away. By a strange coincidence, the lazy and smirking Wuhanese guardsmen were not protected at all by the growing clouds of swamp-bugs.

But then the cogboys who had called Wuhan were there, and the guardsmen abandoned their current duties – save a few platoons mounting guard – to assemble in orderly fashion in front of the newcomers. Once the two dozen machines of the Mechanicus of Andes –including a very impressive tank – had stopped, the Ulm horse-mounted regiment arrived.

It was in all honesty pathetic, by the sword of the Primarch.

"How many kilometres did they ride, to look like this?" He heard one of the Andes 10th officers grumble with his transhuman ears.

The white-brown – at least he thought it was a white-brown uniform – was looking awful on hundreds of these pseudo-soldiers. The horses looked in bad health. It was nothing compared to the state of exhaustion their masters showed.

"And that is why you don't put a cavalry regiment on a swamp-covered world…"

What madness had taken Generals or higher authorities to garrison a regiment like this on Andes Primus? Dragoons may have been understandable, these units were trained to fight dismounted and had sometimes training for dangerous worlds. But this column of ill soldiers about to faint or worse had not these skills…

His personal vox clicked and Gavreel put his helmet on in a hurry. With the noise the companies were doing, communication was not going to be easy if spoke while the surrounding soldiers around him babbled.

It was the voice of Taylor Hebert which arrived on his personal comm after the usual verifications.

"Sergeant Forcas, receiving."

"Sergeant, we have a problem. The glutton-mosquitoes at the limit of my control range have noticed a xenos about seven hundred metres in the swamps."

Gavreel tried not to bark orders immediately, remembering he was in the middle of soldiers who were certainly not in defensive position and had their eyes fixed on the Ulm efforts to walk and ride.

"What sort of xenos are we talking about?"

"They wear green armour with camouflage, are extremely thin and have long ears..."

The survivor of Caliban did not need more to recognise the nature of the threat.

"Eldar. The xenos are eldars. Sound the alert and order everyone to take defensive positions..."

A tank-shape emerged from the swamps with a speed which should have been impossible for any ground vehicle, an explosion devastated the left wing of the Wuhan 23rd and one moment later, they were fighting for their lives.


Seer Maea Teallysis

By the bloody hands of Khaine, Maea wondered more and more if the warriors of Biel-Tan were not irremediably lost on the Path of War.

The massacre of the first Mon-keigh force had been filled with red and violence for no good reason she could discern. When the last of the lesser species individuals had been slain, she had wondered how much Farseer Kaeran had diverted their path to satisfy his warriors bloodlust.

The answer, the young Seer thought after they had executed two other groups of similar size, was likely 'many steps'.

It shouldn't be possible. By their very nature, the masks of the Path every Asuryani wore were muting their most powerful emotions and feelings, least they doomed themselves like their ancestors had fallen thousands of cycles ago.

But the Biel-Tan warriors evidently were clearly enjoying the killing of the Mon-Keigh. And the Farseer, like the Exarch, seemed spiritually content to let his Dire Avengers and other Warrior Aspects unleash their fury on the primitive and barbaric swamp inhabitants.

Three dawns ago, she had stopped being worried by it. Maea was honestly worried by the entire situation and this for dark reasons.

The prime concern was one brought by the eldest and most experienced Ranger of her escort, Gilfarian. According to his wise councel, their combined force was expending ammunition for their long-range weapons too quickly against what were clearly Mon-keigh of no military value. Even Yvraine Kaydinn, now no longer following the rest of the Farseer-led force, had to agree on this point.

The second concern came from her own mind. After the first massacre, the visions she experienced after each throw of the runes were beginning to be clearer and sinister. Sometimes, Maea saw mountains of corpses of Asuryani and Mon-keigh together. Often, there were explosions and she saw a particular member of her escort blown apart. And a minority made her shiver, for she saw clouds of insects covering earth, sky and water by the billions before devouring all life.

The third concern had been voiced by several of the Rangers the moment the disgracious flying machines of the Mon-keigh were sighted. The Asuryani had no spaceships in orbit of this planet, and quite likely it would be hundreds of cycles before there was one. As such, neither Malan'tai nor Biel-Tan could hold the planet in the case the Howling Banshees, the Dire Avenger, the Rangers and the Fire Dragons wiped out the lesser race plaguing the putrid atmosphere of what should have been a verdant Maiden World.

It was nothing against her fourth concern. Because while knowing their liberation of this Maiden World would be ephemeral and futile missed a vital issue. They had to defeat the army assembling in front of their eyes.

"They are so many..." murmured Yvraine. Her mask removed, the young Dire Avenger had an expression of awe on her visage and her dusk eyes had narrowed in concentration.

"This is a small force, by Mon-keigh standards," replied Gilfarian and his words broke no contradiction. "They are not here to stay."

"They are building defences around their ugly and noisy flyers," the Biel-Tan Dire Avenger countered.

"A small precaution because their landing ground is too exposed. They are not marching away or building a great camp for the night. They don't have that many supplies too."

Maea eyes however, watched with incredulity dozens of the Mon-keigh hurting the earth with their impure black tools. It had not been that long since her last mission, and the young Seer recognised the uniforms.

"What are they doing here?" Maea wondered in a half-murmur. "None of my visions indicated they should be here..."

Gilfarian noticed what the cause of consternation before the rest of her escort.

"These Mon-keigh have the same colours as the ones which were fighting the greenskins."

"Why should we care?" Yvraine demanded impatiently. "Just because the Mon-keigh were capable to beat these war-loving idiots does not mean..."

"These Mon-keigh are going to fight," interrupted one of the other Rangers. "They won't try to withdraw before the heart of their army is destroyed."

"And we don't have a host of Aspect Warriors..."

Maea was about to urge for more caution and a straight plan of regular ambushes to decrease the Mon-keigh great numbers when Farseer Kaeran used his mastery of the Path of the Seer and his powers to relay his orders.

'I have localised Elsar'bryn in this enemy's army. With the Howling Banshee squad as support, I will recover it. Exarch Da'ioc, you and your Dire Avengers will engage the gene-enhanced brute and the main Mon-keigh formation. Striking Scorpions, execute flank attacks to destabilise this vermin. Fire Dragons, incinerate their heavy weapons and armour. Dark Reapers and Falcon crews, yours is the long-range fire. Rangers and Seer, you have the order to eliminate the leaders of this miserable race.'

Maea Teallysis wanted to exclaim she was awe-struck by the arrogance and the straightforwardness of the Farseer...but she couldn't. In one series of order, the Biel-Tan Asuryani lost on the Path of the Seer had confirmed all her worst fears. Attacking directly a Mon-keigh camp where for each Aspect Warrior they were likely one hundred enemies was not risky: it was sheer folly. If the Mon-keigh didn't break in the first seconds, their force was going to take horrible casualties.

By Isha, what sort of soul-induced madness had the self-proclaimed 'Sunsight' seen in his visions to make this plan?

"What is your will, my Seer?" the tone of Gilfarian was cold and his intention clear. Maea grimaced, before placing her mask on her visage as the Falcon grav-tanks accelerated to get out of the swamp and fire at the unsuspecting Mon-keigh.

'IN THE NAME OF KAELA MENSHA KHAINE, ATTACK!'

The psychic command was so powerful for a moment her thoughts weren't hers and determination that wasn't hers was in her head and her heart.

"Stay at the limit of the swamp and use your skills to stay out of the Mon-keigh range..."

It didn't sound brilliant, and Maea was not an expert in war operations, but it was the only reasonable option she had in mind. The Banshees had already crossed half of the distance separating them from the Mon-keigh army, the Falcon grav-tanks had begun to fire and the rest of the Asuryani which were not engaged were soon going to be.

The riposte of the enemy shocked her by its rapidity and scale. Tank shells and hundreds of lasers fired before Kaeran managed to make contact with the first lines. There was a psychic agitation sent by the Farseer and hundreds of Mon-keigh were thrown off the poor animals they were torturing and mounting.

One Banshee fell as they reached the enemy lines. The black giant, the creature the Mon-keigh called 'Space Marine', narrowly avoided her scream before striking her with a crude long blade.

"Kill the gene-enhanced warrior before..." She stopped her order before the end.

The first actions were getting more difficult to perceive, and the Mon-keigh in the rear were almost invisible. Tens of thousands local insects were flying like angry clouds towards the battleground chosen by the Farseer, hampering the vision of her rangers and making long-range support completely useless.

And then the Falcon grav-tank in the central position blew up in a spectacular pyre of black and red.

"How in the name of Cegorach?"

"We had the holo-fields activated! This is..."

"Close in! Close in before they kill us all!"


Major Taylor Hebert

She didn't know why she hadn't arrived to this conclusion before, but Taylor was beginning to think a fairy of ill-luck had cursed at her birth.

Seriously, how many heroes at the start of their career faced a villain able to transform himself in a dragon on their first night out? And it hadn't stopped there, oh no. First attempt to rob a bank, and instead of two or three Wards, they had been greeted by nearly the entire roster of junior superheroes. And of course just after a war against the ABB, Leviathan had chosen this moment to attack Brockton Bay. The rest of the events which had led to the disastrous fiasco of New Delhi against Behemoth was barely worth mentioning, truly.

But in a new galaxy, Weaver might have prayed the 'God-Emperor' and whatever being ruled her fate to visit one planet or two without everything exploding around her and the only solution was to draw chainswords and lasguns before exterminating whatever enemy had crawled out of nowhere.

Fay. Wuhan. Andes.

One could have been an unfortunate incident. Two could be a huge and unlikely coincidence. Three?

Three was enemy action and the sign that someone, somewhere, had decided to make her life a succession of battles and misery. How exactly it was possible Taylor had no idea, but it could wait until the end of this fight.

Because clearly, after the orks, the Tarellians, the Necrons, the pretender-Inquisitors and the rest of the opposition she had met on the visit of the Civilised World and the Hive World, there was one more xenos species which had to be taught what a bad idea it was to face the Fay 20th and her bugs.

"Activate the pheromone-dispersers," the parahuman screamed to Wei, Alya and the rest of her staff once the Astartes had identified their opponents as 'eldars'. "NOW! Chimera concentrate on the tanks and the long-range support of these xenos. Infantry, take cover and stop their runners to come to close range!"

The next orders she gave were to the supporting artillery as she raised the beginning of a glutton-mosquito wall to screw with the enemy visibility.

But the 'eldars' attacked with a celerity which left her open-mouthed for two seconds. It was possible she hadn't examined the outer left of the spaceport metre by metre, but there had to be at least a full kilometre between the swamp and her position, if not more. Gavreel Forcas may have ran this distance in a good two minutes.

The aliens did it in less than ninety seconds.

And just as the first blades sung and the screams of agony began, there was a sort of disorientation effect and in one second, the horses-zebras of the Ulm regiment went completely crazy, killing discipline and order faster than a volley of lasguns.

"Commissar !" She screamed on Zuhev frequency. "I need someone to put the Ulm-Andes force in order!"

"Give me a minute and they will charge the xenos with the God-Emperor's name on their lips!"

Every other time, Taylor would have felt guilty to sick what was in effect the executioner-in-chief of her regiment on exhausted men, but their panic was contagious and dangerous. In mere seconds, their entire line was collapsing and she couldn't afford that.

Fortunately, the new enemy was lightly armoured. Strictly limited to cloak them in clouds of glutton-mosquitoes and about two hundred black razorbeetles, the bug-controller had already killed seven of the white lithe beings with their long guns.

Fortunately, because their weapons were destruction incarnate. Each time they shot a guardsman, it was like the soldiers of the Imperial Guard were sliced to the molecular level with lethal precision. Arms, legs, throats and chests were pulverised in bloody mists in the blink of an eye.

"What are you doing with your Chimera cannons?" She shouted to two Sergeants, materialising mosquito-clones in their turrets. "There are only two enemy tanks! Finish them!"

"They are generating quantities of illusions, Major!" The reply came after she killed two of the dark green xenos warriors.

Shit, the decoys and the electronic warfare didn't work on her since she had bugs directly on top of them, but her gunners had not that advantage.

"Then saturate the battlefield on the coordinates I'm going to tell you..."

Ten seconds after her adjustment, the left eldar vehicle burst in flames, but it was not one of her Chimera which had killed it, it was the big battle-tanks of the Andes Mechanicus seventy meters. Obviously the cogboys had been listening on her frequency...

"Major!"

The warning from one of the 6th Company Corporals was late, as she had already seen the problem. Jumping an height and a length which would have made an Olympic athlete jealous for the rest of his life, one the white-coloured xenos with the ugly mask and a red lion-like mane charged her like like a supersonic rocket.

Having seen the effect of their screeches from afar – able to kill all her bugs and plenty of front-line warriors – the last razorbeetles she had kept in reserve flew at her throat before she landed.

It was one second too late. The black insects swarmed and devoured her opponent but not fast enough: the diminished sound blast projected her several metres away and she suddenly was very glad to have put her ear protections before the first shot was fired.

Standing up with her mouth tasting her own blood was not a pleasant experience. Especially as she still had to maintain her multi-tasking with the clouds of bugs arriving attracted by the pheromones. And with no one having trained for these conditions or for that matter, thought there was going to be a battle today, the bloodbath had long abandoned anything which could be considered orderly. They were winning, half of the eldars were lying dead on the ground. But the number of men and women dead was nightmarish and more died every second.

She raised her eyes towards the figure on the tank turret she was suddenly next to, and for a moment the Brockton Bay parahuman thought she was finally hallucinating.

"Dragon?" Taylor managed to articulate. It was impossible, no? Dragon, like all heroes and villains of Earth Bet, couldn't be here. Surviving New Delhi was already unlikely, but finding her way to a new galaxy...

"Skitter or is it Weaver now?" replied the Guild heroine. "I should have known you were here the moment I saw the glutton-mosquitoes behave differently."

The conversation was urgently stopped there as a dozen Wuhanese guardsmen were torn apart by green lightning and an eldar wearing outrageously decorated red robes.

"Elsar'bryn, give it to me Mon-keigh!"

So they could understand human language...and yet they wanted to massacre them anyway? Moreover...had the alien just tried to insult her by calling her a monkey?

"I am going to feed you my swarm insect by insect," Taylor snarled back and as she ordered a true storm of glutton-mosquitoes to descend upon him, she was almost amused to listen Dragon groaning.

"I hope this galaxy is more prepared than Brockton Bay..."


Author's Note: As you can probably guess, in the next chapter, eldars and humans are not going to swear eternal friendship...

More links for support or if you want to comment on the Weaver Option:

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