Chapter 113: Titus and Landrus (Patreon)

Now that he could return to Macragge and his own Chapter—and had, in the bargain, witnessed the Primarch's awakening and helped protect Macragge—

for the Ultramarines, that alone counted as an honor beyond measure.

Granted, the other party was blasphemous to about a hundred million degrees, but considering that even his own gene-Primarch, Guilliman, hadn't said a word about it—

Titus, as an Ultramarine, kept his own silence on the matter too. Blasphemous as this business undeniably was, at least it wasn't the kind of thing that corrupted worlds or toppled planetary governments.

So it seemed even xenos came with their own priority rankings—and this particular breed, being controllable, sat about as low on that list as it was possible to sit.

Naturally, Titus felt no resistance whatsoever to temporarily following Heydrich. Especially since, over these past few years, the Ultramarines had gained a great deal of reinforcement through this man.

After all, ten-thousand-odd men were nothing to sneeze at for present-day Ultramar—especially with every one of them decked out in full Mark X Primaris power armor, complete with a matching set of Terminator armor and a portion of Centurion armor besides.

Though the Terminator suits were the common Indomitus pattern, that pattern had its own particular virtues.

First, it was the pattern every Space Marine of the current era knew best—easy to operate, with no learning curve worth mentioning.

Second, after all this time in service, this pattern of Terminator armor had proven itself the best fit for the present environment. As for the Tartaros pattern from the Great Crusade era—not bad either, but the cost ran far too steep. And with Centurion-grade firepower already on hand, the need for it wasn't especially pressing.

On top of that, once Heydrich's fleet had spread rapidly outward as a trading fleet, it had stabilized the entire Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar. So by now there wasn't an Ultramarine, high or low, who had a single complaint left about Heydrich.

Though Heydrich had never once claimed with his own mouth to be loyal to the Emperor or the Imperium of Man—

what he actually did put to shame anyone who could only shout slogans, and so naturally a great many things went smoothly as a result. Take, for instance, having the Ultramarines help drill Heydrich's own troops—something Heydrich himself simply couldn't do better.

As the single most battle-hardened warband in all of Warhammer 40K, their combat experience ran deeper than anyone's. So it was a good thing all around, whether for Space Marines or the Astra Militarum, to train under them—because you certainly couldn't have Heydrich do the instructing.

Most of the time his method boiled down to "left hand: high damage, right hand: even higher damage," or else pulling out one of his great treasures and letting the other side enjoy themselves. Letting him teach anyone would be nothing short of leading students astray.

Because at the end of the day, Heydrich simply steamrolled everything with raw numbers—and if you didn't have his numbers, you had no business copying his style.

"All right, come with me. The Primarch means to return to Holy Terra now, and I'm bound for Vigilus myself."

As he spoke, weariness filled Calgar's eyes. The Great Rift had only opened a few years back, so for the moment things were still manageable. The sooner he set out, the more time he'd have to prepare.

He'd been gathering intelligence on Vigilus all the while, but the more he gathered, the more it wore his spirit down.

As for just how dire the situation at Vigilus had grown—the Munitorum had gone so far as to dispatch that whole crowd of young lords from Vitria. Of course, things weren't quite that bad yet.

But simply working through the intelligence Heydrich had supplied was enough to leave Calgar feeling like his own cerebral cortex was trembling.

So he'd wasted no time notifying the Munitorum of the Extremity star region, urging them to mobilize every soldier they could spare.

The trouble was, he had no idea whether his astropathic message would even arrive in time.

So Calgar had already braced for the worst: that at Vigilus he'd be able to call on nothing but local forces and those from a handful of nearby sectors. Which meant that before he left, he needed to take as much strength with him as he possibly could.

...

Meanwhile, back in the Fortress of Hera, Heydrich had also taken a seat at the table. Since Guilliman stood so tall, of course, Heydrich normally used phantasm-crafting to scale himself up to roughly match Guilliman's own height.

Bang!!!

With one heavy, weighted punch, Heydrich silenced the thing outright—and while he was at it, pinched shut a mouth that had sprouted from it, before glancing over, faintly bemused, at Guilliman's table.

"Catachan craftsmanship really is something. I'll have to get one made when I'm back."

Heydrich found himself rather taken with this table, which had gone ten thousand years without losing an ounce of vitality.

"That's just a Catachan table. I'd wager that Eternal Spirit Tree of yours could swallow an entire planet whole if it ever slipped its leash."

Guilliman remained plenty wary of whatever Heydrich happened to be carrying around. Fortunately, the man had a decent sense of proportion about his own creations, and had never once actually pulled out the truly world-breaking ones—he kept a strict limit on how far such things were allowed to spread beyond his own reach.

As for his own Catachan table, it was nothing compared to the one Heydrich had tossed onto the Ark.

And now that Guilliman possessed the Path of Harmony, he could clearly feel the sheer horror radiating from that trunk of Heydrich's—an overwhelming, monstrous vitality. It had once made him wonder whether that Spirit Tree could give even the Lord of Plague a run for his money in the physical universe.

Just as Heydrich himself had said, every power needed constraint. Once it slipped its leash, the danger it posed could rival—or even exceed—Chaos itself.

After all, Chaos was still Chaos: even it lost a considerable measure of strength the moment it crossed into the physical universe.

"No need to worry about that. I'm careful with all my powers."

Heydrich wasn't in any hurry over the matter. He hadn't unlocked his own Hunt yet, but he still had ways to keep Abundance in check—he'd even worked a measure of restraint into every one of his people.

Right now he walked further along the Path of Abundance than anyone else in this universe—further, even, than along any of his other Paths.

Further than Erudition, which he'd mainly been walking, or that inexplicable Destruction. And there was no Aeon here to contest it.

So he held the final word on the matter, and with the authority that came with it, he could reclaim the Spirit Tree outright whenever he chose.

Because he genuinely wasn't an Aeon, nor a Path-creation—so even doing something that ran counter to the Path itself cost him nothing at all.

"As long as you've got it under control, I'm not worried. I have to head back to Holy Terra now, and Calgar's off to Vigilus. I'm afraid the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar will have to rest on your shoulders—I've got no spare strength left in hand, and once the two of us are gone..."

"You're sure? Appoint yourself a proxy, and have him coordinate directly with me."

Hearing this, Heydrich shook his head flatly, though the corner of his eye twitched as he said it.

If Pearl weren't already managing things for him, the headaches from just those three planets alone would be more than enough to leave him tearing his hair out.

Now they wanted him to manage the whole of Ultramar on top of that? What kind of joke was this. Granted, the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar counted as the best-run region in the entire Imperium, but even the best of it was still built on the Imperium's cesspit model of governance.

Heydrich genuinely couldn't handle it himself, and Pearl probably couldn't make sense of it either. Every world he'd built up slowly, one by one, had its own organizational structure suited to it.

After all, right from the very start the Imperium had been laced with plenty of minefields and restrictions Malcador had deliberately buried, all meant to keep another rebellion as sweeping as the Horus Heresy from ever happening again.

Granted, his policies could hardly be called good by this point—bad enough that even a Tzeentchian Greater Daemon, or Tzeentch himself, would drown trying to wade through this cesspit.

The original design hadn't been quite so much of a disaster, but every mine buried "just in case" had gone off, every last one of them.

In any case, the Imperium as a whole was such a mess that even Tzeentch, looking at it, would want to die.

And on top of that—

"You really are shockingly irresponsible..."

The Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar might sit far from the Great Rift, but calling it peaceful would be a stretch. Or rather—as the undisputed protagonist warband of Warhammer 40K, if this place were actually peaceful, there'd be no story worth telling.

So the troubles here ran deep. First, there was the Tyranid swarm. This region sat along a critical Tyranid corridor, one there was simply no avoiding. Second, there were the T'au, camped right next door to the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar.

And finally, the biggest headache of all: the Plague Wars. Mortarion was even now massing his strength for something big.

Of course, that particular move was still a long way off, so Heydrich wasn't in any hurry about it. The Great Rift had only opened these past few years, and Mortarion had only just recently solved the problem of moving freely through the physical universe.

As for striking first, that was out of the question too. Heydrich had no interest in charging headlong into a swarm of Nurgle's Stars of Calamity.

"There's nothing I can do about it either."

Hearing Heydrich's words, Guilliman let out a long, deep sigh. If this were still the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar at its absolute peak, none of this would register as a problem at all—but that wasn't the world they lived in anymore.

In any case, Heydrich's central Ark sat right here, and there was a forge world here too. So if trouble ever hit Ultramar, he would be the very first one caught in the blast.

At this point Heydrich had no real choice in the matter. So once Guilliman and Calgar left with the bulk of the forces, the burden of the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar landed squarely on his own shoulders. The endlessly ambitious Guilliman, of all people, had gone and squeezed this poor old geezer of a mere thirty years.

As for whether Heydrich himself might turn ambitious and quietly swallow up the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar—

if this had been ten thousand years ago, Guilliman might still have worried about it. But these days he didn't care in the slightest. If Heydrich genuinely harbored that kind of ambition, Guilliman would take him straight to Holy Terra himself and simply hand him the entire Imperium on the spot.

All anyone could say was that whoever actually had to live inside this enormous cesspit would find out soon enough exactly what it was like.

"Once you've stabilized things on Holy Terra, remember to head straight back to the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar. Nurgle's going to make a major move soon. I'll be mobilizing the strength of Ultramar's Five Hundred Worlds to draw Nurgle's plague army toward the T'au homeworld instead."

At that, Heydrich began working through strategy with Guilliman in earnest—though in truth, he already had a plan of his own in mind.

The T'au weren't exactly good news either, but they still couldn't hold a candle to Chaos. Given that, why not let them serve as bait to draw the enemy's fire?

The method itself was simple enough. Beyond building a defensive line to make Nurgle's plague army come away bloodied, all he needed was to construct an Abundance-creation of enormous vitality right in the heart of T'au territory. Whenever Heydrich crafted one of his more powerful Path-creations—

he would normally apply a certain amount of imaginary numbers to it. Even so, that still occasionally drew a curious glance or two from the Warp.

But this time, he planned to expose himself a little on purpose. Nurgle would surely send his Stars of Calamity to go take a look.

As for how to actually get into the T'au homeworld's core system—that would fall to the Flower Sprouts.

Call it a warm welcome to the grand galactic stage for the T'au. Commonly known as: the grand galactic stage, no invitation required.

As for the Tyranid swarm, there was no rush on that front either, since Heydrich had already sent the Ultra-Ork off to hold that particular corridor.

Heydrich had restricted the spread of his Memetic Virus, but if the swarm actually went and devoured one of his creations outright, he wouldn't be responsible for the consequences—because according to his own experiments, there was a real chance it could infect the Tyranids as well.

Add to that the fact that the Great Devourer's main attention wasn't currently fixed on the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar, and the problem wasn't too severe. Heydrich figured he could hold the line for at least a few more decades.

As for what came after that, all Heydrich could say was: leave it to fate.

Which meant that, when the time came, Guilliman would need to lead the First Fleet of the Indomitus Crusade back here in person—because every measure Heydrich had put in place could only buy time, nothing more.

"Father, Titus and Leandros are here. This time Titus will serve as company captain of the Tyranid War veteran company, and Leandros will be its Chief Chaplain."

Just then Calgar arrived, bringing Titus and Leandros along with him, and a flicker of interest crossed Heydrich's face.

Behind him came Titus, stern-faced and utterly humorless as ever, along with Leandros, wearing an expression like a man who'd just swallowed a Nurgle spirits whole.

Heydrich had already told Guilliman about this particular mess back when the two of them were chatting—or, more accurately, had complained about it at length.

Guilliman's face had gone black as thunder at the time. The Ultramarines valued due process above almost everything else, and what Leandros had done had crossed a serious line.

Of course, Guilliman never did end up punishing Leandros for it afterward—mainly because Heydrich had already taken matters into his own hands.

Not that he'd resorted to any actual corporal punishment, mind you—physical pain simply wasn't much of a deterrent to an Astartes. For them, punishing the mind mattered far more than punishing the body.

So Heydrich's solution had been blunt and simple: he'd dumped every single one of his novice Chaplains straight onto Leandros's hands.

And every one of those Chaplains happened to be a Word Bearer. Heydrich had made it crystal clear to Leandros besides: an Ultramarine, leading a whole flock of Word Bearers, expected to properly train them in their Chaplain duties on top of it. Never mind that they were bright-eyed young men practically radiating naive stupidity, on top of already carrying the Word Bearers' name.

All told, Leandros's temperament had stayed remarkably lovely these past few years—though under the combined orders of both the Primarch and Calgar, his days had turned out nothing short of spectacular.

Now, seeing the three men gathered in the room, Leandros found he had no fight left in him at all. As for Titus—staring at the man who'd cost him a full century locked away—he too found himself at a complete loss for words. If anything, this felt worse to him than if the man had simply killed him outright.