Chronicle, entry number fifty-eight.
I ate the burger.
It was called the “Triple Nitro-Burger with Turbine Sauce.” It was three stories tall, had an onion ring the size of a steering wheel and an Imperial flag stuck in the top with a toothpick.
Primarch Jaghatai ate four.
Then he looked at me and said, “A good hunter eats when he can, chronicler. He never knows when the next race will begin.” It began that very afternoon.
I.
Races Between Worlds
In that universe, Earth sat at the center of a war almost no one knew about.
Two alien races—the Vandals, primitive barbarians, and the Red Sentients, cold and calculating machines—were competing for control of the Battle Zones: racing worlds linked by portals, where whoever won the race won the planet.
On humanity’s side there was only one team: Battle Force 5.
Six young drivers, led by Vert Wheeler, a kid with more nerve than experience, and guided by Sage, an alien artificial intelligence shaped like a blue sphere who had come to Earth fleeing her own war.
When Jaghatai Khan, Primarch of the V Legion, came through a Webway portal and appeared in the middle of a Battle Zone with two hundred white motorcycles behind him, the race under way came to a dead stop.
Vert slammed on the brakes.
His car, the Saber, skidded to a halt a few meters from the Khan’s bike.
“And who are you?”
Jaghatai looked at him from his bike.
He looked at the car.
He looked at the track.
“Someone who knows a good racing line when he sees one,” he said.
“You took that turn too tight.”
“Hey! I took that turn perfectly!”
“You lost two tenths.”
Vert opened his mouth to answer.
He closed it.
He had lost two tenths.
II.
The Sphere That Thought
Battle Force 5’s base was an enormous garage hidden in the desert.
When the White Scars arrived, Sage greeted them hovering at the height of Jaghatai’s head, giving off a soft hum.
“Welcome,” she said in a warm voice.
“My name is Sage. I am a Blue Sentient, protector of humanity and guardian of the Battle Keys.”
The expedition’s Tech-priest, a Magos named Semeric, went as stiff as a post.
“Potential heresy detected.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Sage.
“Thinking machine. Autonomous. With a pleasant voice.” Semeric raised a mechanical arm fitted with a welding torch.
“I request permission to…”
“Denied,” said Jaghatai.
“But, my lord, the doctrine is clear…”
“The doctrine also says to obey your Primarch.”
Semeric lowered the torch.
Very slowly.
He spent the rest of the campaign following Sage at a prudent distance, noting down every single thing she said on a data-slate.
By the end of the week, the file was titled “Observations on the Blue Machine, Volume 4.” Sage gave him a wrench as a present.
Semeric had no idea what to do with his emotions.
* * *
The rest of the team reacted to the White Scars in very different ways.
Agura Ibaden, the most reckless driver, challenged the first Astartes she saw to a race.
She lost.
She challenged him again.
She lost.
By the fifth time, the Astartes shook her hand and told her she raced “like a sister of Chogoris.” Agura had no idea what Chogoris was, but she decided it was a compliment.
Stanford Isaac Leopold, the group’s British aristocrat, asked whether the Astartes had a protocol for afternoon tea.
They did: it was called “combat.”
Spinner Cortez, Vert’s little brother and the team’s technical brain, tried to take an Imperial motorcycle apart to see how it worked.
The bike’s machine spirit gave him an electric shock that left his hair standing up like a scrub brush.
“Awesome,” he said, smoking.
“Awesome, awesome, awesome.”
Zoom Kagi, the youngest, and Sherman Cortez, the cousin, took charge of the most important thing of all: taking the White Scars to the diner in town.
III.
Nitro-Burgers
The diner was called Nitro-Burgers and had seating for forty.
That afternoon, two hundred Astartes walked in.
The owner, a short man in a grease-stained apron, stood staring at the line that stretched all the way to the highway.
“You all want burgers?”
“All of us,” said Jaghatai.
“How many?”
The Khan thought about it for a moment.
“All of them.”
The owner closed the diner to the public for three days and hired his brother-in-law.
By the end of the third day, he had made enough to buy the building next door.
The White Scars gave him a V Legion banner to hang on the wall.
Today the diner is called Nitro-Burgers — Official Supplier to the Legion, and it has a burger called “The Khan”: five stories, wild boar, Chogorian chili sauce and a certificate of survival.
IV.
Vandals and a Fanatic
The first joint battle was against the Vandals.
The Vandals were huge barbarians with horns and scrap-metal armor, led by a warlord named Kalus, who drove a skull-shaped vehicle and roared every time he took a breath.
His racing strategy consisted of going very fast in a straight line and smashing everything in his way.
Jaghatai watched them for a while from the top of a hill.
“They are brave,” he said.
“And stupid. It is an honest combination.”
That day’s race for the Battle Zone turned into an ambush.
The White Scars scattered across the dunes like the wind, swept around the Vandals’ flanks and cut their column into three pieces before Kalus understood what was happening.
Vert and Battle Force 5 slipped through the middle and crossed the finish line.
Kalus was captured.
His warriors, demoralized, surrendered one by one.
All except one.
Zick, a scrawny Vandal with crooked horns, approached Jaghatai with shining eyes and trembling hands.
“You,” he whispered.
“You are the Great Rider. The legends spoke of you. The one who runs faster than the wind. The one who hunts without being seen.”
“I don’t know what legends you’re talking about,” said Jaghatai.
“Doesn’t matter! I believe in them!”
The Khan looked at him for a moment.
Then he drew one of his hunting knives, a Chogorian blade with a bone handle, and handed it to him.
“Then learn to use it.”
Zick held the knife as if it were a newborn baby.
His eyes filled with tears.
“THIS IS THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME IN MY WHOLE LIFE.”
He slept hugging the knife for a month.
Kalus, from his cell, watched him in disgust.
V.
The Red Machines
The Red Sentients were harder.
They were calculating machines, cold and fearless, that used drones and combat vehicles capable of adapting to any strategy.
What he didn’t know was the V Legion.
“Their calculations are based on patterns,” Sage explained at the strategy meeting.
“Give them a pattern and they will anticipate it.”
“Then we will give them none,” said Jaghatai.
The battle that followed is studied today in the academies of the Astra Militarum as a model of tactical improvisation.
The White Scars changed direction forty times in ten minutes.
They attacked and withdrew for no apparent reason.
They stopped halfway.
They accelerated toward nowhere.
The Red Sentient drones, confused, began crashing into each other.
Sever ended up trapped in his own vehicle, his systems overheated from so much recalculating.
“This… is… not… logical,” he said before shutting down.
“Exactly,” Jaghatai replied.
Semeric, the Tech-priest, contemplated Sever’s remains with an almost religious satisfaction.
“May I…?”
“Yes,” said Jaghatai.
“That one, yes.”
Semeric took out the flamer.
* * *
That night, in the garage, Vert sat down next to the Khan, who was cleaning his bike.
“What happens to us now?” he asked.
“To the team, I mean. If the Imperium controls the Battle Zones…”
“You will keep racing,” said Jaghatai.
“But no longer to defend Earth. To defend whoever needs it.”
“What does that mean?”
The Khan set down the rag.
“It means that one day, on some world, there will be someone fleeing across a desert in a truck. And you will get there before anyone else.”
Vert looked at him without fully understanding.
But he smiled.
“You’re going to take us with you?”
“If you want to come.”
Vert didn’t have to ask anyone.
From the other side of the garage, Agura was already yelling yes.
Chronicle, entry number fifty-nine.
Battle Force 5 has joined the V Legion as “special reconnaissance auxiliaries.” Sage will open portals for the Legion.
Semeric has volunteered to accompany her “for reasons of doctrinal surveillance.” I asked him whether it wasn’t because he’d grown fond of her.
He told me that was heresy.
Then he asked me not to tell the senior Magos.
I won’t tell him.
I’ll write it down here, which is worse.
VI.
Commander Butcher
Many worlds away, Angron had gone back to war.
And he had brought a guest.
Billy Butcher, the man who had helped the XII Legion clean his world of corrupt superheroes, had accepted the Imperium’s offer.
Now he wore the uniform of the Astra Militarum with a commander’s stripes, a long coat he never took off, and a French bulldog named Terror that followed him everywhere with a face that said it wanted to bite something.
“Another world full of capes?” Butcher asked as he read the report, lighting a cigarette.
“Fuck me. I love this job.”
The world in question was protected by the Guardians of the Globe, a superhero team in the style of the Justice League.
And by something far more dangerous: Omni-Man, an alien from a planet called Viltrum who passed himself off as Earth’s greatest hero.
But Omni-Man had a secret.
The Mechanicus uncovered it in three days, by analyzing transmissions in orbit.
“Viltrumites do not protect planets,” the tech-magos explained to the war council.
“They prepare them. Omni-Man is here to weaken Earth before handing it over to his empire.”
Angron listened in silence.
Then he clenched his fists.
“An empire that conquers worlds by lying to them,” he said.
“I know that kind of people already.”
“Your orders, my lord?”
“We get there before he does.”
VII.
The Guardians
They didn’t get there first.
Omni-Man had already made his move.
When the World Eaters landed in Washington, they found the Guardians of the Globe’s headquarters in ruins.
Omni-Man had killed them all in a single night, because they knew too much.
Angron walked among the rubble.
He found a torn red cape.
He held it for a moment between his enormous fingers.
“He didn’t even let them fight,” he muttered.
Butcher, beside him, spat on the ground.
“Reminds me of Homelander. They all remind me of Homelander.”
* * *
The Earth of that universe had other heroes.
Mark Grayson, Omni-Man’s teenage son, who had just discovered his powers and still believed his father was good.
Atom Eve, able to rearrange matter at will.
Robot, a genius stuck in an artificial body.
And Cecil Stedman, head of the Global Defense Agency, a bald man with the face of someone who had slept eleven hours in the last five years.
Cecil received Angron in his bunker.
He looked him up and down with absolute weariness.
“Well,” he said.
“I suppose I can’t stop you from staying.”
“No.”
“And you’re going to kill Omni-Man?”
“Yes.”
Cecil sighed.
“I’ve spent weeks trying to figure out how to do it myself. You want coffee?”
“I do,” said Butcher.
Terror barked.
“And a bowl for the dog,” he added.
VIII.
An Accident with an Armored Carrier
Not every hero accepted the alliance so quickly.
Atom Eve, furious over the death of the Guardians and distrustful of the red and white giants, tried to stop an Imperial convoy heading for the city center.
The convoy was being driven by Frenchie, Butcher’s old comrade, who had joined the Astra Militarum as an armor driver “because his hands needed something to do.”
Atom Eve landed in the middle of the road and raised her hands.
“Stop!”
Frenchie saw her too late.
He hit the brakes.
The armored carrier, which weighed forty tons and had the machine spirit of an angry bull, didn’t quite stop.
She survived, because she was Atom Eve.
But she ended up sitting on the asphalt, covered in strawberry ice cream, staring at the sky with no idea what had just happened.
Frenchie jumped down from the carrier and ran over.
“Pardon! Pardon, mademoiselle! The brake! The brake is very religious!”
Hughie Campbell, riding shotgun, leaned out of the window.
“Are you okay?”
“I’ve got ice cream in my hair,” said Eve, dazed.
Mother’s Milk, from the back, let out a deep sigh.
“This doesn’t go in the report. Nobody is putting this in the report.”
They put it in the report.
IX.
Father and Son
The battle against Omni-Man took place over Chicago.
Nolan Grayson attacked with the fury of an entire empire behind him.
He was stronger than any being on that planet.
He flew at impossible speeds.
His fists could punch through mountains.
He destroyed two gunships, a Rhino and half a skyscraper before Angron caught up with him.
When they met in midair—Angron leaping from a tower with his twin axes, Omni-Man hurling himself at him like a missile—the impact was heard fifty kilometers away.
“You’re strong!” Nolan shouted, smiling for the first time in years.
“I’ve never fought anyone on this planet who…!”
“I am not from this planet,” Angron roared.
“And neither are you.”
The fight lasted minutes that felt like hours.
Omni-Man was fast; Angron was relentless.
Every blow the Viltrumite landed, the Primarch absorbed and returned with greater force.
Then Mark arrived.
“Dad!”
The boy threw himself at Angron, without understanding, without knowing, screaming at him to leave his father alone.
Angron swatted him aside with the back of his hand.
Mark came down in a park, several blocks away.
Nolan froze for a second.
He looked toward where his son had fallen.
It was enough.
Angron seized him by the throat.
“What is that boy to you?” the Primarch growled.
“Your son? Or your tool?”
Nolan took a moment to answer.
That second of hesitation saved his pride, though not his life.
“Both,” he said.
“Wrong answer.”
* * *
Mark woke up in the infirmary of an Imperial ship.
His mother, Debbie, was at his side, her eyes red from crying.
Cecil was standing in the doorway.
“Your father’s dead, kid,” Cecil told him bluntly, because it was the only way he knew how to say things.
“He killed the Guardians. And he was here to hand Earth over to his people.”
Mark said nothing.
He just stared at the ceiling.
Angron came into the infirmary later.
He stayed in the doorway, not coming any closer.
At his size, he filled the entire frame.
“I struck you,” he said.
“You were in the way. I should not have.”
Mark looked at him.
“Are you apologizing to me?”
“I don’t know how to do it properly,” Angron admitted.
“I am practicing.”
X.
The Hunt
Viltrum was thousands of light-years away.
Not for the Webway.
The XII Legion reached the Viltrumites’ home planet two weeks later.
The subsequent reports are terse: the planet’s defenses, designed to face alien empires, were not designed to face twenty Titans and an Exterminatus fleet.
Viltrum ceased to exist.
But not every Viltrumite was on Viltrum.
They were scattered across the galaxy, on missions of conquest, on planets they were preparing for invasion.
And so began what the XII Legion called, with worrying enthusiasm, the Hunt.
Angron personally led the first expeditions.
At his side was Khârn, his most loyal Captain, with his chainaxe and his crooked smile.
And behind them, with his long coat, his cigar and his dog, Commander Billy Butcher.
“You know what the best part of all this is, Terror?” Butcher would tell the bulldog while they loaded an assault ship.
“Finally there’s someone crazier than me doing the dirty work. And I get paid for it.”
Terror barked.
“Yeah. Love you too, mate.”
After the third hunt, an Astra Militarum commissar informed Butcher that he had been “promoted” to Commissar.
Butcher asked whether the post involved giving speeches.
They told him it did.
He asked whether it involved being allowed to shoot cowards.
They told him it did.
He accepted on the spot.
* * *
Chronicle, entry number sixty.
The archives of the XII Legion record, as of today, forty-seven Viltrumites captured or eliminated.
The estimated total number is unknown.
One of them, a certain Thragg, who appears to be the leader of them all, has not been found.
Butcher has his photo pinned to the wall of his cabin, with a dart stuck in its forehead.
Terror growls at the photo every morning.
It’s his routine.
Mark Grayson, Omni-Man’s son, has stayed on Earth with his mother.
Angron sends him a letter every month.
They are very short letters.
The last one said only: “Are you eating well?” I wonder who dictated it to him.
I am informed that my next posting is a place where time has frozen in an ancient war.
Primarch Rogal Dorn’s VII Legion has found a world where the Second World War of old Terra is still being fought.
I am told to stock up on warm clothing.
And on vodka.
Above all, on vodka.
I’m an aspiring writer with countless stories yet to tell and a lifelong passion for Warhammer.
I love bringing dark worlds, epic battles, and beautifully flawed characters to life.
I write to learn, grow, and become a better storyteller.