The Imperium’s Astra Militarum had just wrapped up the first phase of the fighting, seizing Andrallo’s factory.
They were stunned to discover that an agri-world like this actually possessed industry this advanced.
Even more shocking: mutants and Imperial citizens had actually been working side by side in the factory.
Enraged, the Astra Militarum gunned down everyone present on the spot.
The mere existence of mutants was a blasphemy against the purity of the human genome, and one that invited corruption from the Warp’s own foulness besides.
Of course they deserved to die.
These Imperial citizens had seen the mutations on those creatures with their own eyes, plain as day, and still dared to let them work openly alongside them in the factory.
Just as guilty, just as deserving of death!
The Astra Militarum commander looked out over the planet below him, an uneasy restlessness gnawing at him.
A Warp storm had swept them off their original course only recently, and by the time they’d come out the other side, they’d found themselves at this forsaken backwater of a world.
As it happened, they’d also picked up the Planetary Governor’s distress call.
Since the Warp storm had left them unable to leave anyway, dealing with the enemy on the ground became the obvious priority.
“The Sisters of Battle, wiped out?
Tell me you’re joking!”
The commander bellowed at the messenger, unable to believe his ears.
The entire Sisters of Battle contingent, wiped out?
What kind of joke was that?
Those fanatical women carried nothing but hand-picked wargear, meltas, bolters, power swords, the works, to say nothing of the armor and firepower unique to the Sisterhood itself.
“Wiping out an entire Battle Sister contingent, on top of the Warp anomaly reported here.
Oh!
God-Emperor, is this the trial You’ve set before us?”
Not the entire Astra Militarum force had taken part in this operation.
The bulk of it remained aboard the fleet in orbit, with only eight million troops and a modest contingent of armor deployed to the surface.
Even so, a force that size was more than enough to strike fear into any enemy of the Imperium.
The moment the Planetary Governor caught sight of the Astra Militarum’s strength, he threw himself at them at once, sobbing and streaming tears as he poured out every one of Andrallo’s crimes.
By his account, the World Eaters and the Emperor’s Children warband had both been drawn to the planet by Andrallo.
The mutant rebellion had been led by Andrallo.
Even the planet’s tithe grain had been stolen by Andrallo.
In short: every last bit of it was Andrallo’s doing!
The Astra Militarum commander cared nothing for the specifics of any of it.
Andrallo was getting purged regardless.
What he actually needed was intelligence.
While the two of them talked, the Astra Militarum had already retaken every factory site on the planet except the one where Andrallo himself was.
The local workers were purged wholesale.
Every village and city carrying so much as a trace of the Warp’s taint was put to the torch, vast numbers of civilians reduced to ash, all to root out Chaos’s influence completely.
Gunfire never stopped, day or night.
Everything Kaides and the workers had built through such hard labor was reduced to nothing, but there was no time left to mourn or grieve.
Everyone had to clear the factory before the orbital bombardment arrived.
This site was simply too exposed; orbital fire could locate and destroy it with ease.
Kaides had built a set of backup facilities inside the original mine shafts, and now was exactly the moment for them to prove their worth.
The relocation went quickly.
Andrallo didn’t board the transport right away, though, choosing instead to stand in the graveyard, looking over the rows of fresh burial mounds.
Maen and Charlotte came over, gently reminding him.
“My lord, we need to go.
These graves will be under Astra Militarum fire soon enough.
Lingering here won’t change that.”
“They didn’t deserve to die like this.
Cut down and trampled underfoot like weeds.” Andrallo stood motionless, staring at the gravestones.
“I know.
But that’s simply how the Imperium works.” Maen let out a sigh.
“Manpower is the one thing the Imperium never runs short of.
If you spend enough time out among the stars, my lord, you’ll see this many casualties is nothing but a single drop into the ocean, not even enough to raise a ripple.”
Andrallo raised his head.
He turned and walked over to stand in front of the two sisters, his breathing growing heavier by the moment.
“So their lives just don’t count, then?
Is this really how you treat your own people?
Or is it that you nobles simply don’t care about anyone beneath you at all?”
The string of questions left Maen drenched in a cold sweat.
She knew she’d angered Andrallo, and she dropped her head at once.
“I’m sorry!
Lord Andrallo, that was careless of me to say!”
Charlotte quietly stepped in front of Maen, shielding her sister behind her, and addressed Andrallo with careful deference:
“My lord, this universe is filled with powerful enemies on every side.
Warp fiends, traitors, heretics, xenos, all of them eager to devour humanity alive.
Despair is the one constant here.
Even the God-Emperor Himself can’t change that.”
The dark-haired girl pressed a hand to her own chest, and spoke to Andrallo with humble reverence:
“Lord Andrallo, my sister meant no offense at all!
It’s just that you…
you may not have seen what the rest of the Imperium’s worlds actually look like.
We’re bound to come across places like that eventually, and when we do, you’ll understand.”
The two girls watched Andrallo anxiously, their doe-like eyes trembling with fear, their whole bodies drawn in on themselves, like children begging forgiveness from an adult.
Andrallo let out a heavy sigh.
He reached out with both hands, stripped of their armor by the fighting, and gently stroked the sisters’ hair.
“I’m sorry.
He took one last look at the graveyard.
This was goodbye, for good.
Even in death, these poor souls wouldn’t be allowed a trace of their existence to remain, and all Andrallo could do, powerless, was climb into the departing convoy.
The group quickly took shelter inside the mine shafts.
Kaides had reworked the whole site extensively, factories, living quarters, mining tunnels, everything they needed was already in place.
Recycling systems and hydroponic farms supplied everyone with clean air, water, and food, while automated mining machines chewed straight through the rock like ants building a nest, tunneling deep into the ore layers.
Vast quantities of ore were processed, refined, smelted, and forged, and in the end emerged as war-body after war-body.
To prepare for the fighting still ahead, Maen, Charlotte, and Andrallo all went to Kaides together to learn how to properly wield psychic power.
“Chief, your psychic power leans more toward a kind of presence.
The way anyone caught inside your psychic aura gets stronger, any psyker linked to you can draw on your power the same way.”
“Miss Maen’s precognition can be amplified by borrowing the Chief’s psychic power.
The same goes for Miss Charlotte, and for me as well.”
Charlotte looked puzzled.
“Lord Kaides, then what exactly is your own ability?”
Kaides, a scion of Vagro, laughed and tapped a finger against his own strange skull.
“My brain is the strongest weapon there is.
Even with no help at all, I’m worth every scientist on an entire research world put together.
Once I’m hooked into the Chief’s psychic power, I’ll be able to serve everyone even better!”
Andrallo’s own goal was clear enough.
He wanted to learn offensive disciplines.
He had no interest in being reduced to nothing but a debuffing relay.
…
Time passed quickly.
Somehow, by whatever means, the Imperium’s Astra Militarum eventually tracked down Andrallo’s group’s hiding place after all.
War broke out again, inevitably.
Dust rose off the open ground.
Autumn had already settled in; the dry air had wrung every trace of moisture out of everything, and the temperature had dropped along with it.
It should have been a perfect season for rest and leisure, but the war upended all of that.
Artillery moved into position, engines roared to life, and the Astra Militarum stood ready for battle.
The Imperial soldiers stared out at the distant mine, already picturing whatever enemy waited for them there.
A Chaos warband?
Heretic cultists?
Or an army of mutants?
Whatever the enemy turned out to be, not a soldier among the Astra Militarum doubted they’d win.
They hadn’t even bothered calling in the Imperial Navy, borrowing only a handful of reconnaissance craft instead.
And then, the Imperium’s Astra Militarum caught sight of a crowd of silver giants striding through a sea of violet mist.