Chapter 60: The Big Boom
"What is your duty?"
"To fulfill the Emperor's vision!"
"What is your purpose?"
"Death is also my purpose!"
"What is your death?"
"The destruction of my soul is my end!"
"Who are you?"
"We are the Emperor's Angels of Death!"
Chaplain Colin stood on the high platform, delivering a pre-battle sermon to the solemnly standing Space Marines below. It was his duty, his mission.
A Space Marine Chaplain is a special figure in a Chapter. They are the spiritual leaders, the most knowledgeable in the Chapter's creed. This knowledge is put into practice as the Chaplain tends to the spiritual health, discipline, and faith of his battle-brothers. The bond between a Space Marine and his Chaplain is incredibly strong. A Chaplain is present in a Space Marine's life from the moment he is chosen as a neophyte, guiding him as he grows into a true battle-brother.
If you ever meet a Space Marine on the battlefield in black armor, wearing a skull helmet, and carrying a Crozius Arcanum, muttering to himself, you had better understand what he's saying and join him in praising the Emperor. At the same time, take off your helmet, reveal your perfect and pure skull to prove your loyalty. Otherwise, the Crozius Arcanum might make very close contact with you. And if this Space Marine Chaplain tells you his name is Asmodai... immediately, using any means you can think of, kill yourself. And be quick about it...
(Asmodai: I think the Primarch looks like a Fallen Angel! Should I make him repent?)
After confirming that the daemonic legions at the warp rift had been lured out, the second phase of the plan was quickly deployed.
The enemy this time was a Great Unclean One of Nurgle, a being that had corrupted and destroyed countless worlds. No one could guarantee that they could resist the daemon's influence. A pre-battle sermon was essential. And no one was more suited for this task than Chaplain Colin, a son of... ahem, a son of Vulkan. This was something the Chief Chaplain of the Knights of Iron had grudgingly admitted after a conversation with Colin.
The second phase of the battle plan was direct: a lightning-fast strike at the warp rift, concentrating all top-tier combat power to banish the Great Unclean One and close the rift before the daemons could reinforce, thus ending the war on Teyedan for good.
The hammer of the assault would be the Knights of Iron Chapter. They excelled at using firepower to destroy any obstacle in their path. The Ultramarines would assist in commanding the mortal forces, following behind the Knights of Iron, establishing a defensive line to secure the rear and their path of retreat. The Covenant of Fire, with their vast knowledge of esoteric lore, would work with Inquisitor Griffin to suppress the daemons in the area most heavily affected by warp energy, the rift itself, to weaken their power.
Finally, a veteran force of Space Marines, led by Captain Ventris and Chapter Master Isaac, would face the Great Unclean One directly, to banish this obstacle standing before the warp rift.
Does it feel like something is missing? What were the cog-heads doing in this plan? Well...
During the previous war council, the plans proposed by the Magi were generally... harmful to "personnel harmony." They had turned the commanders' faces a little green. All their proposals had been rejected, which had angered the Magi to the point of preparing to act on their own. These proposals included:
Converting all wounded soldiers who could no longer fight into combat servitors.
Equipping front-line soldiers with explosive packs and ordering them to carry out suicide attacks on high-value targets.
Surgically removing the part of the soldiers' brains responsible for "fear."
Equipping the troops with more powerful radium weapons and radiation bombs.
...
The Magi: Is there a problem? This is already the most dumbed-down version of the standard Skitarii protocol. If you can't even do this, you bunch of parasites! How can we save our great Teyedan with you?!
The Commanders: Are these cog-heads insane?! What kind of madness would make them say such things with a straight face? If we had implemented this plan today, we would have been strung up by our own men in a mutiny today!
The Worker-Soldiers: Now you know why we are loyal to our eternal leader, Young Master Omega? It's because we don't want to fall into their hands again... and what's been said is the least of it. The most important thing is Young Master Omega's charisma and noble character!!!
A difference in values had led the Magi and the commanders to despise each other. Both believed that if they followed the other's proposal, the war would be lost. So, while ensuring the technological needs of the allied forces were met, the Magi were also preparing their own plan.
But the Magi faced a problem: they had no troops. That's right. The Archmagos had only assigned them to the army to increase their participation. Teyedan, having just gone through a brutal civil war, was at its historical low point in terms of military strength, even lower than when the Forge World was first built. Veyl had regained some strength thanks to his "son," but he was unwilling to lose any more of it. So he had come up with the idea of using the Tech-Magi to fill the numbers.
The value of a senior cog-head was something that could not be quantified. How many troops they were worth was a metaphysical question. It depended on what the cog-head had on hand, and what he could cobble together from the available materials.
Fortunately, the reinforcements were all lackeys of Regent Guilliman. They knew what the Archmagos was up to. They were a little annoyed, but they also knew that they would not be stationed on Teyedan forever. The Archmagos had to preserve his strength. Otherwise, the moment they left, Teyedan would be overrun. Both sides had a tacit understanding.
The Archmagos had packed all the idle Magi into the allied forces. Out of sight, out of mind. So the number of Magi in the allied forces was not small.
While Chaplain Colin was giving the battle-brothers a spiritual buff, in the Tech-Priest quarters of the allied command, an internal Mechanicus meeting was also being held.
"According to my calculations, their plan has a success rate of less than 27%," one Magos said.
"You are overestimating their conventional forces. How can the weak flesh defeat a daemon?"
A Magos specializing in bionics, hearing this, said angrily, "So ungrateful! How many people have begged me to perform modification surgery on them, and I wouldn't even bother? Now I'm offering it to them for free, and they're still unwilling. Foolish meat-bags!"
"We can't count on them. Our plan has a much higher success rate."
"The preparations are complete. Let's wait and see. The moment they fail, we will execute our plan."
"Yes, all we can do is wait."
So, what was the Magi's plan?
After becoming completely disillusioned with the meat-bags, to save their own property, to save the Forge World, they had decided to risk their lives to deal with the warp rift.
(Veyl: Did you forget who else you're supposed to be saving?!)
A lifetime of collected treasures were all in their labs at the Grand Manufactorum. They had only come to carry out the task assigned by the Archmagos. Who would bring their good stuff with them on a trip? A few guards or robots would suffice. But they never expected that soon after they left, their home would be besieged by Chaos, and they were at risk of becoming destitute cog-heads, spending their old age homeless, forced to sell the knowledge in their heads to maintain a semblance of dignity.
What Tech-Priest could stand that? To avoid this unfortunate end, the Magi had united as never before, even more so than when they were fighting the Temple. They all pointed to the Omnissiah and swore: "We will fight the daemons to the death! If I die, my property is yours! If you die, your property is mine!"
Err... there seems to be a problem with that oath... but no matter. To be able to put aside their tradition of infighting, to set aside their disputes and unify, without a leader, was a remarkable step forward.
After unifying their thoughts and formulating a plan, the Magi quickly discovered a problem: they had nothing... They only had themselves and their guards for troops, and only their personal technological relics for weapons. Although this was a formidable force, their opponent was a Nurgle daemon army. The former was no match for the latter. Even if they wanted to use their knowledge to create powerful weapons, they lacked the materials for production. They were Tech-Magi, not Greenskin Mekboyz. They couldn't just cobble together a super-WAAAGH! weapon from a pile of scrap.
But the Machine God would not abandon his priests. The Omnissiah would bring water to his thirsty lambs. Just as the Magi were lamenting their inability to fight the enemy, their fate of being stymied by a lack of materials, they received a report from a low-ranking Tech-Priest who was salvaging, no, recovering, submerged technological treasures from the ruins of the former Temple faction: they had found a functioning plasma reactor.
The Magi: Praise the Omnissiah! My property is saved!
A plasma reactor is an advanced power supply device. Most of the starships, planetary settlements, hive cities, space stations, some vehicles, and other large facilities in the Imperium are powered by plasma reactors. It generates electricity in the form of high-temperature plasma produced by a fusion reaction.
(Omega: Is a fusion reaction that advanced? I feel like even if I hadn't transmigrated, I would have been using it.)
After confirming that the news of the "plasma reactor" was correct, the Magi all had the same thought: I'm going to blow the daemons and the warp rift to smithereens!
As far back as the 2k era, humanity's most powerful weapon was the "atomic weapon." In the 42k era, the "atomic weapon" was still a strictly controlled "world-destroying weapon." The Magi didn't want the fusion material in the still-functioning reactor. What they really wanted was the reactor itself, which could still create the conditions for a fusion reaction.
Theoretically, all matter can undergo a "fusion reaction," but the lightest matter requires the lowest conditions, and the heavier the matter, the higher the conditions required. Even the conditions inside a star cannot achieve the fusion reaction conditions for "a certain substance" (?).
(After some research, I believe that in the Warhammer setting, matter is different from reality, so "iron" has to be replaced by something else...)
But the great Machine God had given humanity grace. The Omnissiah had bestowed a blessing upon humanity. The humans of the Golden Age had already built "plasma reactors" that could burn most of the matter in the universe. And this grace given by the Machine God still shines on humanity in the 42k.