40 Thousand Reasons

Chapter 9: Amusement

My armor regiment takes a few months to be upgraded to my needs, with hunter-killer missiles and multi-lasers, the tracks and drive train modified for more reliability, auspex sensors for day and night combat and so on.

I even manage to obtain ceramite facing for the frontal glacis of my tanks. This will make frontal assaults of fortified positions much less costly.

Adamantium is too heavy and expensive for lesser machines, unlike for Baneblades or Titans.

Plus, without shields most ground units are considered expendable anyway. Too many things can and will pierce armor or ignore it completely.

It is the very reason I designed the new corvettes with triple shielding. Armor composition doesn't need to be adamantium if you have three void shields.

The grenadier regiment gets replenished to full strength as well, although it comes it a few Imperial Guard officers of dubious provenance and loyalty. Might need to sacrifice them on some glorious mission.

The Eastern Fringe is dangerous enough, without problems caused by insider grumbling and friction.

My new ships also receive some upgrades in meantime, and the torpedoes and missiles are re-stocked, which is always a problem once you leave the logistic train.

The new frigate is named Ode for the Vanquished, to keep the theme and I have to part with another competent relative and send her to become Captain. Lisanna Quinta is either a sister or a cousin, but she is the same age as me and looks much like me.

Pale blond hair, blue eyes and a thin but robust body. She served in gunnery and boarding actions before, and she's as trained as any clan member. Hopefully not a glory hound like my brother, but you never know.

Gyron stays on Antax to await his Manufactory ship being reading for permanent departure from Empire space.

Thus, the trip to Ileviar is strange, without my mentor and his constant lessons. I have Henna and the two concubines, so I'm not bored or lonely, but I still feel I lost something.

Of my 3 kids on board, 2 are Blanks, and Decima has another Blank boy with her. So it's 3 out of 4 so far, a sign of a truly useful mutation.

Henna is aiming to become pregnant again, but the void marine girls decide to wait and get back in shape.

Their training has slacked, and they try to return to peak health and strength. They also rotate as nurses and guards for the nursery, which lets me sleep better.

I train my body as well, with the new grenadiers. It's an old trick, but always works. It binds troops to their commander, if they see him sweat beside them.

Then hours of officer lessons, both as teacher and student.

Wentian and Whitelance teach advance courses in ship boarding, planetary assault and maneuver, and I need to learn it all. Even if I don't intend to practice the stuff in person, sometimes the war comes to you.

Then I go to my lab and tinker with STC designs, struggling to create ever simpler and more rugged patterns for various war machines, as well as common tools like lamps and flashlights and anything powered by electricity.

Except computers.

Although I'm almost certain I could reproduce working PC designs, the Immaterium would notice and certainly infect them with ghosts, demons or other worse stuff.

Keeping everything analog is tedious, but much safer. Not completely safe of course. Nothing is.

Late into the evening I mostly listen to clan stories or amazing feats from Wentian and Whitelance, immersing myself in the culture of humanity.

Then I return to my wife, and make love and babies. Hopefully another Blank, safe from the Warp and psykers.

It will take decades for them to grow up and competent, but I have time. Even my new cruiser will need 90 years to be refit and upgraded.

Doing things by hand is slow. Even if you have twenty metallic tentacles instead, like the tech-priests of the Cult Mechanicus.

But then, if even the Emperor accepted them and signed the Olympus Treaty, so there must have been a good reason for it.

I focus on vox and video transmissions next, as communications are always important in combined arms warfare.

Changing a thing and there, then testing and changing again. After a month of constant improvement I complete a more resilient but clearer vox transmitter pattern.

I will wait to arrive at Ilevar to 'discover' it in some catacomb and then sell it to the Mechanicum in a few distinct variants.

Generally it takes 3 or more variations for a new pattern to be accepted as distinct, especially if it has a different focus, like range or strength or reliability.

The tech-priests are not stupid, and some of them have tried this themselves. But they never had a good cover story like I do, returning from the beyond with ships and weapons and patterns after conquering new planets.

It is exactly the mandate of my Warrant, and nobody can blame me for being successful.

I kinda expect that Antax's Fabricator General knows or suspects something, but I will never admit it, and he will never ask.

He has plausible deniability if he doesn't ask.

New STC patterns, found by a Rogue Trader in barbarian ruins. The Cult sends expeditions out for the exact same reason, after all.

But as this is a Hive world, I can improve other urban machines, like it is expected a Hive world would have. And if they are simpler and more efficient, all the better.

Of course, this is 40k and the good times never last.

We arrive at Ilevar to find it under attack by an Ork Waaagh.

Is not a huge invasion, like the kind able to conquer a forge world, but Orks multiply fast. Like fungi. Because they are fungi, only slightly sentient ones.

And as they gather mass and numbers, they become smarter and more potent in Warp manipulation, from immense luck to simply ignoring the laws of physics or common sense.

A few hours later, as we approach the inhabited world, we regroup with our cruiser and other destroyer and gather for a strategy conference.

"Three Hive cities have fallen and the Orks are looting everything to create more weapons." Decima reports and marks the fallen cities. Perhaps 10 billion people on the planet, and 3 billions are already lost.

This is not a huge Hive with a trillion people like in the Empire. The cities are big, but are still mostly self-sufficient.

A trio of Ork Roks, sort of powered meteorites, that serve as landing craft for their armies have landed on top of the indicated Hives, possibly because the pirates have already looted their void shields and everything that could have helped.

In space, there's a dozen of Ork Kroozers, also of human origin maybe, but refurbished by the greenskins in their usual manner, guns everywhere and rusted steel spikes. Can't tell what they were before.

A Kill_Kroozer should pose no problem if logic applied to Orks. Simply blast it from afar until it falls apart. But these ships are painted black, so they should be way more durable.

They also move quite fast and throw tremendous firepower out. More Dakka than I have, by 100 times.

A squad of these bastard ships can even take on a battleship. And I don't have a battleship anyway.

I open the galactic map and look for a diversion. Larnano was right in the way.

"Oi, you big boss captain! You want a fight?" I send via the vox channel, to the surprise of everyone on the bridge.

"You big hero hummie?" another gruff voice answers.

"You think you're hard and strong killing weakling hummies in cities? The big bugs would eat you all, like they do at Larnano. Big fight there, a thousand Navy ships lost." I explain politely.

As expected, greed and stupidity shouldn't mix. The Navy might have lost some ships, but there's ten thousand Hive bioships why.

The Kroozers receive coordinates for Larnano and depart, leaving their brethren on the ground without support.

Expendable grunts, like expected.

Now it's mop up and training for our armored regiment, the grenadiers and the combat servitors.

We even manage to save one Hive city and half the inhabitants.

If only all our enemies were such morons.

I mean, we still lost like 2 billion people to a bunch of overgrown mushrooms, so it's not all nice.

The Baneblades have a field day, basically immune to anything the Orks can throw at them. Like spears and javelins. Bullets too, but they only make pretty sparks.

We barely lose 100 Chimeras and a thousand grenadiers, due to combined arms attacks, including orbital firepower.

The locals become much friendlier at once, and now we have a recruiting planet for a thousand regiments.

And while I meet the Nobles and Merchants to discuss their new fate, Decima selects a dozen new concubines for me.

This will bind the planet to me even more, and I decide to plant the flag here, and make this world my capital.

The tech-priests and the combat servitors descent into the lower levels of scum and villainy to conscript more human resources, while I begin the long task of rebuilding and civilizing this planet.

Cleaning the pollution and the warfare scars will take decades, but overall the planet is in better shape than Retribution. They even have some factories and electrical generators, so I don't start from scratch like I feared.

Training sadly falls to the side, merely one hour every morning. Then it's politics and administration, which is no fun without computers.

Luckily I have implants and a hundred tech-priests in my staff to help keep up with everything.

Then Gyron arrives with his Manufactory ship a year later and everything is well.

The Orks do not return, not that I expected them to defeat a Hive splinter, no matter what Dakka they had.

"The Quest for Knowledge drives the Mechanicus to the stars" Gyron says as his greeting.

I blink and consider his words. "You were named an Explorator for the Mechanicus?" I wonder and pat his mechadendrite that he holds out.

"See! You can learn. One day you will discard this silly flesh body and turn to the machine for salvation." he proclaims in a confident tone.

I shudder and shake my head. "Not for many years, mentor."

The Magos laughs out loud, seeming amused.