Chapter 11 – A Fresh Start
The first thing he'd done when he arrived at each system after building extractors and generators was construct new ships that were sent away to further nearby systems to further his expansion. He would not make the same mistake of limiting himself again. If he was discovered, so be it, he would punish any who attacked him with resources drawn from a thousand different systems.
After that, he'd spread across the system like an infestation, covering continent after continent, world after world. He'd shoved his frustration down and thrown himself into his self-appointed tasks. He didn't bother wasting any materials on defenses, he knew if the necrons came looking for him any system they found was done for anyways. He put everything into the expansion of his industry.
More extractors, more generators, more storage, more factories, more fabrictators, more shipyards, more ships, more systems, more worlds. More, more, more.
He didn't notice the point where he breached a hundred systems under his control. He didn't notice the moment when he'd covered his thousandth world in his industries. He barely noticed the passing of time. It was just a number, a day, a week, a month, a year. It was just a number slowly ticking up in his mind.
It was his six-hundred and seventy-second system he expanded into that broke him from his self-induced stupor.
In the system he had dubbed System-673, he had found life. And not just any life, but human life, occupying the third and second to last planet from the sun. He had found a hive world, one in the midst of civil war and evacuation.
It wasn't hard to figure out why. The massive fleet of Tyranids inching closer and closer to their next meal kind of gave it away, as did the presence of what he assumed were genestealers and heavily mutated humans on one side of the war.
It had taken him a day to get to the planet and build factories in the barren wastes outside its massive hive cities. Another day for the dust locusts to infiltrate the cities and begin scouting the situation.
The governor of the planet was long gone, having been aboard the first ship to evacuate along with his family the moment the Tyranids arrived in system. The nobles who could afford passage were next, then the high-ranking priests, government workers who were considered important, and then military officers who were not deemed expendable.
After that, the few remaining ships were swarmed with refugees attempting to escape. These attempts to flee quickly turned into riots when it was clear not everyone would be able to get out. From what he could gather, there were a hundred billion humans on the planet, including a regiment of Imperial Guardsmen that had originally been a hundred thousand strong with heavy support. He was quite sure those numbers were no longer correct, but he estimated roughly a tenth of that, if that many, almost entirely within the largest hive city. He hadn't gotten a good count and apparently no one else was even bothering to try. No point counting the soon to be dead.
Still, the people left behind were making do with what they had. The regimental commanders who had drawn the figurative short straw and gotten left behind had enacted conscription of the entire, unmutated population, pressing them into service as cannon fodder against the mutated revolutionaries. Or at least, they had given whatever spare weaponry they had to anyone they saw who wasn't actively attempting to kill them and told them to go kill the mutants for the glory of the God-Emperor. Whether that person actually did was entirely situational. Many joined the mutants in an attempt to survive or because they believed the god-emperor had abandoned them. Others joined gangs and fought for a piece of territory in the chaos. Most just hid and starved in the meager safety of their homes, praying for salvation.
It was a pitiful site, a textbook example of society breaking down into anarchy even as the guardsmen tried to maintain order where they could. The presence of so many genestealer cultists within their own ranks wasn't helping matters, as sabotage and assassinations further weakened them. The Tyranids were months away, but this planet already looked like it had suffered the apocalypse.
Then again, that might just have been because it was a hive world.
His dust took samples of the local construction materials, infiltrated computer systems, devoured discarded weapons, a ship that had been sabotaged and crashed. For the first time in a while, he had gained some new technologies, yet he didn't feel particularly pleased about it. Rockrete, ceramite, plasteel, flak armor, lasguns, meltas, engine schematics. Small things in his mind. Nothing that would help him against necrons or similar foes.
At least I can reclaim the Hive cities after the tyranids are finished for easy metal…
He paused. That thought, there had been no emotion in it, no care whatsoever for the people he saw dying down there. That wasn't like him, was it? He wasn't kind or benevolent by any means, but he wasn't heartless like that thought made him sound, right?
Right?
He felt his anxiety rising again as questions about his morality began to surface, about his humanity, about the fact that he wasn't human-
He stopped. He stared down at the rifleman sitting in front of him. The rifleman stared back and began to rock back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Seeing the motion soothed him, and he returned to the situations.
People were dying. He could argue with himself all day about whether he was a good person or he could keep those people alive. There were a few ways he could do that.
He got to doing them.
48 Hours Later
Sergeant Agnes ducked behind the pillar of rockrete, muttering curses as small pieces of debris showered her, dislodged by the stubber fire of the cultists. Just her luck she'd end up in charge of a group of conscripts rather than actual guardsmen. She'd gladly trade a hundred of the terrified civvies for just one other member of the Gansoran 103rd with a proper lasgun and the know-how to use it.
"KEEP YOUR FRAKKING HEAD DOWN!" She all but screamed at the five terrified conscripts. She'd started out with a squad of twice that. Two had disappeared the moment she took her eyes off them. Another two had walked into enemy fire, though she couldn't know if they'd done it on purpose out of a hatred for life or were simply that incompetent. The last was lying next to her, the stump where his head once was spurting blood. He'd been an idiot and stuck his head out of cover when the guns had gone quiet.
She glanced at her five remaining 'soldiers', trying to figure out what she could do. The rebels had managed to make a killbox just beyond their cover in a large, open plaza, using a heavy stubber to keep them pinned. At the moment, the crazed mutant that was firing the gun and laughing and screaming nonsense seemed content with that much, though she doubted it could last.
The other units should have been there by that point, yet there was no sign of them. Given how much ordnance these cultists had managed to gain, she chalked them up as being probably dead. She hadn't known any of them prior to this mission. All the men and women she had known in the Guard were already dead or had evacuated.
The firing stopped and the rebel cultist gurgled and screamed, more nonsense. Then, it fell silent, and Agnes knew she would have to move soon. The mutant had likely realized no more heads were popping out for it to shoot at, so it would change tactics. Throw a grenade or send in other forces to push them out into its range.
"On three, we're going to jump out and rush that bastard, alright?" Agnes said in a low voice to her 'troops'. They looked shocked that she would even suggest the idea.
"B-but, look at what h-happened to T-tarrin! Sergeant!" One of them stuttered out, quickly adding her rank when she glanced at him. She hadn't bothered to learn any of their names nor tell them her own. To them, she was just 'the Sergeant'.
"Would you rather stay here and get blown up?" She asked in a sickingly sweet voice, sneering at the man. She turned, not bothering to look back at them. "On three… one… two… THREE!"
She leapt out of cover, rolling to the side as her lasgun's sight found the heavy stubber… with no one to fire it. The mutant was gone.
She spared a glance at her so-called squadmates, unsurprised to see that they hadn't moved and were now looking up at her fearfully. They'd likely thought she would die. She had too, but she'd had to make the effort.
She would deal with their insubordination later when she wasn't so wary of an ambush.
In other words, likely not for the rest of her life.
She moved forwards, slowly, her eyes scanning the area, taking in every nook and cranny of the plaza as she inched towards the heavy stubber. They probably expected her to rush in, but she was not so easily caught.
She came upon the heavy stubber and saw the mutant, the barrel of her gun immediately lowering to point at it. When she saw what had happened to the cultist, only her training and recent experiences saved her from feeling anything but a squirming in her stomach.
The mutant's bones were showing, a myriad of needle-thin holes marking almost every inch of its body, leaking small streams of blood and other bodily fluids. Its eyes had imploded, looking like nothing so much as pools of white and red goo. What was most disturbing, however, was the fact that it was still moving. Slight shakes in various limbs, a spasm in its face, the mutant gurgled in clear pain.
She fired once and ended its suffering, even as she wondered just how this had happened.
Across the planet, similar events were occurring. Cultists were being found either dead or catatonic, their bodies littered with the same wounds. Many believed it was the God-Emperor's blessing, others thought it was some kind of plague the cults had brought about and feared it would come for them next. Many thought their fears justified when non-cultists began to show up alongside the genestealers, and in larger and larger numbers. Gang leaders and racketeers, those seeking to take whatever they could before the end came, all were soon found dead. Crime continued but then even the gang wars that tried to fill the power vacuum that followed would come to an end, as its members realized that any who participated in such events ended up killed by what was slowly becoming known as the Shakes.
The Shakes never came for the guardsmen, however, nor for any of the innocents of Gansoran. What did come, however, were new formations of troops in shiny white armor that seemed to scour clean the furthest depths of the hive cities. None recognized these troops. Those on the lower levels believed they were another regiment of guards that had arrived on planet. Those on the higher levels believed they were just a large and well-equipped gang. It was only those in the very depths these soldiers patrolled who knew what they really were.
They were Angels.
Give me your stones no souls no that is not right your car hahaha