Hearing Irena’s words, Heydrich was rendered a little speechless.
What was that supposed to mean, “loyal just like a heretic”?
But at least this bolter-girl hadn’t actually put a boltgun round through him.
And as for this particular individual, Heydrich was honestly a tiny bit surprised—she wasn’t one of the middle-aged matrons you so often saw in Warhammer.
Instead she had the look of a young, pretty girl, which caught Heydrich somewhat off guard.
But when it came to bolter-girls, he had always kept a respectful distance.
Yet compared to these Genestealers, the matter coming up next was the real headache, because their objective was a little town called Locomotive Town located outside the hive.
It seemed a contamination had broken out there, and the people in it, far from dying of cold and starvation, had instead erupted with a horrifying vitality.
Now a sea of emerald-green flowers was spreading throughout the whole of Locomotive Town.
Before the Hive Fleet arrived, the Genestealers were, as far as the Planetary Government was concerned, more beneficial than harmful.
So in fact, as long as you found the right way to communicate with them, you could still exploit that false loyalty of theirs to strike a certain bargain.
But if it were Chaos…..
That was an entirely different matter.
The Chaos cults were humanity’s true great enemy.
Their ceaseless, every-moment corruption made one’s scalp crawl, and so upon hearing Heydrich’s words, Irena’s brows knit deeply together.
Although both the Genestealers and Chaos were great enemies of the Imperium, the two could not be spoken of as one and the same.
Now, after hearing Heydrich’s news, Irena finally couldn’t hold back.
“No.
We absolutely cannot go there.”
“How many troops can you mobilize?
Is it really just the two of us?
Where are the main forces of the Planetary Defense Force and the Astra Militarum right now?
If you gave me a few tens of thousands of men, I could crush every last one of them.”
Hearing this, Heydrich felt rather helpless.
The holy F2A—that was a man’s romance.
“…..”
Hearing Heydrich’s words, Irena fell into silence.
“So where are the main forces?
And the people from your Sisterhood?”
For these bolter-girls to be so reasonable, Heydrich knew without even thinking about it that there had to be a reason they had no choice but to act this way.
“Vigilus.”
Hearing Heydrich, the girl slowly spoke.
“Huh?”
At this Heydrich was stunned for a moment.
What a familiar name.
“Although I don’t know what happened, Vigilus sits in the Imperium’s inner core region.
There’s no especially great threat around it, but somehow—we received prophecies from the Space Marine Librariuses, and now the entire sector is mobilizing as many troops as possible to send over there.”
“Mm….”
Hearing this, Heydrich couldn’t help but twitch his brow.
Vigilus—now that was all too familiar.
With the opening of the Great Rift, the entire galaxy had been split in two.
But that was exactly where the problem lay.
Strictly speaking, the opening of the Great Rift had been almost the joint work of all Five Chaos Gods.
Over that millennium the Imperium had sunk into absolute despair and corruption, and so the Emperor chose to stake everything on a single throw—letting the Great Rift tear apart the void directly, so that His power could be projected more effectively into the material universe.
For with the opening of the Great Rift, the strength of every Space Marine Librarius and of the Imperium’s psykers had received an enormous boost.
“Then come with me.”
Hearing this, Heydrich feigned confusion and scratched his head, then said nothing further.
Instead he came to the outskirts of the hive, where a vehicle had long since been prepared by someone.
It was a modified half-track scout car, its body welded all over with crude armor plates and reinforced steel slabs scavenged from who-knew-which Mechanicus workshop.
A double-headed eagle emblem was riveted to the engine hood, each eagle head clutching a length of live electrical cable in its beak, sputtering with blue sparks under the dark green skylight of the wasteland.
Heydrich couldn’t be bothered to waste any more words on it.
One stomp of the accelerator and he charged out past the hive’s towering, cloud-piercing walls.
Then the wasteland—riddled with gullies, garbage, and toxic fumes—appeared before the two of them.
If he could, Heydrich truly didn’t want to come to this place.
They had been traveling like this for less than two hours when Heydrich suddenly slammed on the brakes, bringing the specially-built vehicle to a forced halt.
Because what now appeared before the two of them was a vast, dense, endless throng of refugees, their bodies rotting and bloated.
Maggots and disease coursed through their flesh, and what made Heydrich’s hair stand on end was that even though these people had degenerated to such a degree, their faces still beamed with happy, blissful smiles.
Poxwalkers!!!
Seeing this scene straight out of a Resident Evil game, Heydrich couldn’t help but draw a deep breath.
Zombies—if they were in some other world, with his stat panel he could absolutely go in and enjoy a round of FPS fun.
But this was Warhammer, and these Poxwalkers were no joke at all.
Click!!!
Almost in that very instant, Irena gripped the boltgun in her hands and charged straight out of the car, leveling it at one of the walking dead.
Bang!!!
Only the shot didn’t strike that zombie—just as it was about to hit, a hand pressed it down with absolute force.
The one who had acted was none other than Heydrich.
!!!
Irena looked at Heydrich with some shock—not shock at being interrupted, but shock that Heydrich could actually force her weapon down.
One had to understand that, in GW’s lore, the Sisters of Battle had originally been female Space Marines.
It was only because the technology of the time made them look too unsightly that the project was later scrapped.
Afterwards it was reworked into the Sisters of Battle, and with her suit of power armor combined with these 40K superhuman physiques and the blessing of faith, she had the ability to barely hold her own against some Space Marines for a while.
But now she had actually been pinned down with one hand by Heydrich—what kind of strength was that?
“Calm down, don’t alert the enemy.
How many bolt rounds do you have?
No matter how loyal your machine spirit is, it can’t fire off ammunition hundreds of thousands of times beyond its own capacity—and just look at how many of these zombies there are.”
At this moment Heydrich paid no heed to the furious Irena, but instead pointed at that vast green expanse.
Even just the Poxwalkers within line of sight numbered at least several million.
By now the Poxwalkers had reached such a scale that they could even carry out a small-scale sacrificial ritual.
So behind those Poxwalkers, there was no telling whether there might be a Beast of Nurgle, a Plague Beast, or even the Death Guard.
Boom!!!
Only at this moment the ground before the two of them suddenly heaved, and then a bloated, towering presence walked out from among the walking dead.
Seeing this, Irena was on the verge of firing, but was still pressed down hard by Heydrich.
Mortal Champion of Nurgle.
“O lost believers, will you not join us on this great journey of benediction?
We shall bring vitality and happiness to this world.”
Gazing at the two before him, the Mortal Champion of Nurgle’s great maggot-filled mouth slowly opened, offering the two of them a broad smile.
“Come, join us.
Join the great family of Grandfather.”