Compared to how stunned the ordinary civilians were, the mutants took it all in stride, and some of them even looked back at the crowd behind Andrallo with a distinct air of showing off.
We used to be the slaves, and you were the free citizens and the masters.
Now it’s all flipped around: the masters look like backwater hicks, and the slaves have turned into respectable people overnight.
The mutants’ expressions were enough to make the crew and defense force flush with anger on the spot, but the lunch Kaides pulled out a moment later shut everyone right up.
Kaides had already seen how people lived on this planet.
He knew the local population was just as starved and threadbare as anyone else, so he simply used food as bait.
Andrallo looked over the standard meal the mutants wheeled out: blocks of starch, lettuce and bok choy, eggs from some unidentified bird, and a slab of meat dusted generously with spices.
The old Andrallo would have definitely called it cheap, mass-produced slop.
But he’d been in this universe long enough now that, by the standards of a Chaos warband, this practically counted as a feast.
He looked around once more and asked Kaides:
“There’s no farmland anywhere near here.
You built hydroponic farms?
And livestock too?”
“Of course, Chief.
These are just the basic infrastructure of any colony.
If I’d had more time, I would’ve built a food-processing plant too.”
In Stellaris, these really were just the most basic buildings a colony could have.
But Andrallo, who’d been living off nothing but corpse starch this entire time, couldn’t help himself.
“If I’d found you sooner, I wouldn’t have had to suffer through all that.”
As the smell of the meat drifted through the air, the starving people around them could barely hold themselves back.
If Andrallo hadn’t been standing right there, they’d probably have started fighting over the food already.
Andrallo wasn’t in the mood to torture anyone further.
He waved a hand.
“Go ahead, eat.
It’s not poisoned.
But keep it orderly.
Anyone who causes trouble, I’m throwing them out.”
The moment permission was granted, everyone surged forward at once, forming a tense but orderly line to collect their meal.
The crew hesitated a little, genuinely uneasy about food coming from mutants, but watching everyone else devour theirs, even these hardened fighters eventually gave in to their own hunger.
The planet’s own civilians had none of that hesitation.
Without Andrallo, they’d never have gotten a meal this good more than a handful of times in their whole lives.
Even if it turned out to be some trap set by that blue mutant, it didn’t matter. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
Eat first, worry later.
Maen and Charlotte, for their part, kept things far more refined, unable to fully shake their noble upbringing even now.
But after so long eating nothing but corpse starch alongside Andrallo, no amount of refinement could hide their excitement.
Aside from not eating with their bare hands, the two of them ate about as eagerly as everyone else around them.
Watching everyone lose themselves in the meal, Andrallo smiled and went to tour the factory with Kaides.
What they’d seen so far had only been the workshops producing small arms and tools.
The workshops turning out heavy artillery and transport vehicles were further back.
Andrallo had to admit, Kaides really was a genius, turning out this much production from nothing but an agri-world’s basic industry.
No wonder he’d become a level-10 leader back in Stellaris.
“Chief, you’ve already burned your bridges with the Governor.
So what’s the plan from here?”
Kaides looked at him, waiting for an answer, just like the old days when the two of them used to work things out together.
“Besides the two of us, is there anyone else from home in this universe?”
“There is!
I can sense the psychic engine signature of Governor Ashwind.
But it doesn’t seem to have noticed us yet.”
“Little Ash is here too?!”
Andrallo’s eyes lit up at once.
Ashwind and Kaides, a nanite mothership and one of his own finest gene-engineered offspring.
With the two of them together, whatever came next wouldn’t be a problem at all.
Kaides could sense his own elation mirrored back.
He and Ashwind had both served Andrallo for years, and he knew exactly how powerful she was.
With Ashwind’s military backing secured, he was confident he could build a nation within ten years that wouldn’t need to fear any power in the galaxy.
“Chief, if I push myself, I could still put together a science ship for exploration.
From there, we could take a small trusted group, use the planet’s gravity well for a hyperspace jump, and it wouldn’t take long to reach Governor Ashwind.
It’s really just a matter of what you want to do.”
The offer was tempting, but Andrallo had other ideas.
He’d already committed to saving the ordinary people of this world.
There was no way he was going to be the first one to run.
He turned to look back at the lively mess hall, where civilians tasting food this good for the first time in their lives already had tears in their eyes, dropping to their knees one after another to thank the Emperor for His mercy.
Kaides saw the reluctance in his Chief’s eyes and felt the shape of his feelings through their bond.
He understood at once: Andrallo wasn’t going to abandon these people.
If I leave now, they’ll face nothing but merciless retaliation.
I can’t leave until they’re safe.”
Exa Kaides smiled.
In that moment, he was completely certain that Andrallo was still, and always would be, his Chief.
“As you wish, Chief.
I’ll support you with everything I have!”
“Kaides, you don’t hold it against me, dragging you into all this mess?”
“How could I?” Kaides gave a small bow.
“This is exactly who you are.
If it were any other way, you wouldn’t have adopted me the moment you dug my escape pod out in the first place.
Hearing your decision now, all I feel is glad that you haven’t changed at all.”
The two of them reached an agreement quickly, and the work that followed was simple enough.
Andrallo took charge of talking to the crew and the defense force, winning them over to stand together against their enemies, while Kaides pushed weapons production into overdrive.
Cannon after cannon and vehicle after vehicle rolled out of the factory, shells and rounds coming off the production line like links of sausage.
The sheer speed of it startled every soldier watching.
It was a good thing there hadn’t been a fight outside earlier; there was no telling how many shells they would have eaten otherwise.
Before long, the crew found themselves joining the mutants’ own training sessions, having discovered, to their own wounded pride, that their marksmanship couldn’t match that of these creatures the Imperium refused to even recognize as people.
When the veterans arrived at the firing range, they were stunned to see a mutant firing a plasma rifle on full automatic.
The rifle was only slightly bigger than the standard lasgun the crew normally used, with no exposed magnetic containment coils, and it barely gave off any excess heat at all.
The crew watched as the mutant used it to melt down ten massive steel targets in the distance, one after another, then simply swapped out the empty magazine, slammed in a fresh fuel cell, and kept firing without missing a beat.
The crew felt a chill run straight through them.
They’d stumbled onto no ordinary mutant.
If the Imperium, or the Adeptus Mechanicus, ever found out about any of this, they were as good as dead.
A mutant with an obviously altered skull, sitting on multiple STC templates, and here they were, openly siding with him against a Governor appointed by the Imperium itself…
“Christ, it’s way too late to worry about that now!
Listen up, brothers, our only shot is to bring down the Governor ourselves and declare that he was negligent in the fight against the heretics.
That’s the only way any of us walk away from this!”
Every defense force soldier and crew member present understood there was no going back now.
Only fighting to the death would keep them alive.
“These guys.
I don’t even know what to say anymore.” Andrallo looked at the crew’s expressions, like they’d all just bitten into a fly, and in the end couldn’t help laughing along with Kaides.