Chapter 118: Heydrich: I'm Going to Prepare a Big Surprise for the Tyranids (Patreon)

Life always finds a way, after all — wherever there's a policy from above, there's a countermeasure from below. This was especially true of these newly founded parent Chapters, whose standing was extraordinarily high.

There was an even funnier fact buried in all this: it was the Chaos warbands who actually followed the Codex Astartes most faithfully.

Mainly because Chaos was such a scattered mess that even warbands on the same side often ended up slaughtering one another.

And no matter how badly the Imperium shortchanged its own troops, it still kept half an eye on logistics and supply. Chaos, by contrast, ran entirely on plunder — they had no right to overstaff their ranks in the first place.

The thing itself was technically sophisticated, too — even Heydrich made use of it, though only as a reference, never as an absolute mandate.

As the saying went: you didn't have to obey it, but you had to know it cold. Honestly, if this book Guilliman had written were dropped into the East, they'd probably have declared him some kind of saint on the spot.

But then again, the whole problem was that the thing was called a Codex — and it had been running, unchanged, for ten thousand years.

"All right then. I'll be heading back to Holy Terra next. As for the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar, I'm leaving them in your hands — feel free to draw on their resources as you see fit."

Guilliman took a deep breath as he said it. There was no help for it. Over these past few years he'd been quietly watching Heydrich's character, and he'd finally arrived at one conclusion.

This bastard was basically a saint. He didn't just clash with the current age — he'd have looked out of place even ten thousand years ago.

And as always, though the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar counted as the pride of the Imperium, they were still the Imperium — meaning that whenever you wanted to actually get something done, you first had to untangle a whole mess of threads and complications.

If Heydrich had wanted to stir things up here, he'd have had to wade through all of that himself — and naturally, he had no interest in doing so. Ordinarily he just used the tavern to run small trades with various worlds; it wasn't going to make anyone rich, but that was fine.

It was enough to keep his own three worlds running smoothly and sustainably. Heydrich stuck strictly to trade and had no intention of touching the region's power structures. Even so, the trade alone was a godsend for the people of the Five Hundred Worlds.

Plenty of worlds had production capacity, after all — the problem was that everything was wildly out of balance. In more than a few sectors, if one agricultural world fell to Chaos, several others would plunge straight into famine.

"Oh, right — those baseline Tyranid specimens you wanted. I've had people lock them in stasis fields and ship them to your lab. Be careful, and don't let things get too out of hand."

Guilliman had a rough idea of what Heydrich wanted the Tyranids for.

Nothing but 'Ultra-Tyranids,' 'Ultra-Tyranids,' and more 'Ultra-Tyranids,' probably.

At this point he had such a heap of bizarre things under his command that he'd gone completely numb to it. And no matter what, he was determined to take the Great Ultra One with him when he left this time — the thing was simply too blasphemous, and he was afraid that if it stayed behind, his own descendants wouldn't be able to keep it under control.

As for the Ultra Necrons, Guilliman had also secured two hundred thousand of them, following Heydrich's usual method of sale — sold warehouse by warehouse, a hundred thousand to a warehouse, and Guilliman had bought two full warehouses.

"Oh, and this — I built these using Necron technology. Specialized tomb-scarabs, modified to produce the living metal the Necrons use. Efficiency isn't great, but the upside is they can convert any metal at all, even plain steel."

As he spoke, Heydrich pulled out a crate taller than himself and set it down in front of Guilliman. Inside were the scarab beetles responsible for producing living metal. As long as Guilliman didn't lose a hundred thousand of them all at once, the supply would more than cover his needs.

After all, Heydrich had also equipped the basic Necron Warrior units he'd given away with tomb-scarabs for repair and maintenance.

"I'd still rather you never have to use them. All right, this time I'll be taking about three thousand Ultramarines with me, along with all the Black Templars and Grey Knights. That force should be more than enough for this age."

Guilliman rubbed at his forehead. The force he'd originally set out with had been less than half this size.

He'd been kicked around like a dog the whole way, and eventually captured by the second-in-command of Huron, leader of the Red Corsairs. That time it had mainly been Kairos's doing — though in the end, whether out of some roundabout loyalty of his own, or simply because Khorne didn't want Tzeentch getting his hands on another Primarch, Khorne dropped a Khorne Bloodthirster — Skarbrand — right on top of the place where Guilliman was being held.

It was only amid the chaos Skarbrand caused that Guilliman found his chance to escape. Of course, the price was losing his own flagship, the Macragge's Honour.

As for the Macragge's Honour itself, it was eventually recovered when the Ultramarines pushed straight into the Eye of Terror to reclaim it. That was partly because Huron knew the ship was too hot to hold onto and didn't press the issue too hard — he even let the Ultramarines' own hands finish off that ambitious second-in-command who'd wanted to break away and go independent. So in the end, the ship found its way back to the Ultramarines after all.

"Take a Harlequin with you — and you have to keep him safe."

Heydrich sighed. The Path of Elation wasn't actually that hard to walk. The trouble was that in this garbage fire of a galaxy, almost nobody could truly understand elation in the first place.

So even now, the main strength of his Path of Elation was still that group of Flower Sprouts — but there just weren't enough of them. With only a few hundred people, manpower was genuinely tight, and Heydrich couldn't spare many hands.

"All I can promise is that he'll be the last of us to die."

Guilliman found it strange to guard a single Sprout so carefully, but he understood the man's importance well enough.

As for using the doors, he'd already worked out a plan of his own. If there was no Flower Sprout to guide the way, he'd simply send Space Marines through wearing specialized all-purpose gear — as long as they weren't dropped somewhere truly hopeless, a Space Marine's constitution plus the equipment would be enough to keep them alive.

Worst case, it would just take a few extra days of struggle to get the message or orders through — but that still beat the Astronomican by a wide margin.

The tavern doors' random transport was more of a prankish inconvenience than a real danger — it would never dump anyone halfway inside a wall or anything like that, so there'd be no 'teleported wrong and died' incidents to worry about.

Of course, the Flower Sprout's real purpose was still to protect Guilliman. If Heydrich remembered correctly, there was a webway entrance right on the moon — the same one a group of Flower Sprouts had once used to guide Guilliman back to Holy Terra, after he escaped captivity all those years ago.

And then, just for good measure, Magnus had been waiting to ambush him right at the webway's exit. Honestly, on that whole journey Guilliman had either been getting beaten up, or on his way to getting beaten up.

And to make sure Guilliman made it safely back to the Imperium's center of power, the entire Eldar race had pitched in both effort and resources. Ever since then, relations between humanity and every Sprout faction except the Black Sprouts had eased considerably.

"Oh, and one last thing to remember — become one."

After all, Heydrich himself now walked the Path of Harmony, which included concepts of collective breeding and gathering. If Guilliman developed that side of it properly, it would give a substantial boost to his own strength.

In the end, under the watchful eyes of Heydrich and Calgar, Guilliman's Macragge's Honour slowly entered the Mandeville Point and set course for Holy Terra, guided by the Astronomican's light.

Aboard it rode an army large enough to tip the scales of an apocalypse-level battle. The Astronomican's light had dimmed considerably these days, but that was enough for Heydrich to be certain that, at least for now, the Battle of the Lion's Gate had not yet begun.

After all, during the Battle of the Lion's Gate, the Astronomican would be briefly extinguished by Khorne's power.

"When are you leaving, and how much of a force are you planning to take?"

Watching Guilliman depart, Heydrich turned to Calgar beside him. As one of the Imperium's pillars before the Primarch's return, Calgar also carried the title of one of the 'Three Pillar Men.'

Guilliman's return had certainly dimmed Calgar's own spotlight, but even so, Calgar remained one of the most important figures in the entire Imperium. If Heydrich remembered right, Calgar had been showing up in the army books since as far back as the second edition.

Back then, forget about someone like Titus — even the basic setting for the Primarchs themselves had barely existed.

"I'll be taking ten thousand troops. The pressure on Vigilus and the surrounding region is severe, so I'll bring every unit except the Tyranid War Veteran Company. Oh, and those Harlequins — right, remember to give me one too."

Calgar let out a weary sigh. He needed rest too, but clearly there'd be no chance for that now.

Now that Guilliman had left, it was his turn to go as well. Guilliman had taken a considerable force with him, but the true main strength of the Ultramarines remained here.

"And give me around three hundred thousand space Necrons too, along with the necessary support gear."

Calgar spoke with deep resignation. These things were blasphemous, and might even get the Ultramarines slapped with some strange label — but he no longer had the luxury of worrying about that.

If something went wrong at Vigilus, the chain reaction that followed could sever the Imperium's connection to the Imperium Nihilus almost completely, and permanently.

Under those circumstances, who had time to worry about appearances? The Ultramarines were loyal — they had to be loyal.

"Fine."

Heydrich had no objection. It wasn't as if the Ultramarines weren't paying for it, after all.

At the very least, throughout the construction of his forge world, the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar had supported him almost to the point of bleeding themselves dry, all under Guilliman's orders.

The accompanying supplies had come at nearly the maximum limit of what they could provide, to the point where several worlds' economies nearly collapsed. If Heydrich's own trade caravans hadn't arrived in time, there would have been real trouble.

"So now, aside from my own forces, all that's left in Ultramar are those ten Chapters they call the Shield Chapters of Ultramar? And even those Chapters have had a huge chunk of their manpower drawn away. That really is a headache."

Heydrich rubbed his forehead at the thought. Just as in the original timeline, Guilliman had appointed Titus as captain of the Second Company and tasked him with bringing the Five Hundred Worlds back under control.

In truth, the forces Guilliman could actually deploy at the time were never limited to just the Second Company — after all, the captain of the Second Company was essentially the Chapter's third-in-command in all but name.

Besides the Second Company, he could call on every other company still resting and refitting at Macragge. And the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar also had several Shield Chapters at his disposal. Though nominally successor chapters, they were in practice entirely under the parent Chapter's control — their personnel decisions really were all handled by the parent Chapter, no different from the Ultramarines' own core force.

So the Space Marines actually under Titus's command numbered at least several thousand — on top of the entire Astra Militarum and Planetary Defense Force strength of the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar.

So while the order to bring the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar to heel sounded a bit outrageous, it wasn't quite as outrageous as sending some minor demon flunky off to take down Tang Sanzang and his disciples.

Either way, Heydrich had no intention of getting involved in the personnel affairs of the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar going forward.

He had his own business to attend to, so he quickly returned to his command room. The main enemy he planned to face next was the Tyranid Leviathan's tendril fleet, so he needed to prepare some proper surprises of his own against the Tyranids.

His own power was still weak, after all — nowhere near the level of stomping the Emperor underfoot or trading punches with Khorne. Since his raw strength was so limited, he'd have to rely on his brain instead.

Before him now sat a batch of Tyranid creatures locked away in stasis fields, including an Executioner serving as a synapse creature.

This thing was, roughly speaking, the equivalent of a heavy tank — or a Dreadnought.

"The Soul-Banishing Death Field is fully deployed now — even if I let them loose, the Great Devourer won't be able to link to them. And if the Tyranid swarm wants to recover certain special genes, or even new combat techniques, it has to be done through Reclamation Pool recovery."

Heydrich found himself at a loss for words over the structure of the Tyranid swarm. The Great Devourer could direct its war effort through synapse creatures well enough, but intel like the special techniques gathered by things such as Lictors or Tyrants could only be recovered by sending them into the digestion pools.

And all these node units could actually provide the hive with was battlefield intelligence. So, to keep the Great Devourer from ever finding out, Heydrich simply deployed a Soul-Banishing Death Field right inside his own room.

He also put a few special protections of his own in place before beginning his work.

"First, I'll collect the Tyranids' genetic information and use it to craft a targeted virus. And that's not all — I also need to observe how the Memetic Virus erodes the Tyranid swarm at different stages of exposure."

He began drawing up a whole list of experiment projects, much as he had once done with the Orks. This time, his Memetic Virus was aimed mainly at non-synapse creatures — the powerful synapse creatures would likely resist it thanks to the Great Devourer's direct interference.

Unless he could infect them while they were still in a raw biomass state during gestation. Either way, it was a complicated process, and Heydrich would need a large body of experiments as a foundation.

"Hyacine, here's your next research assignment for the Cinnabar-Cauldron Bureau."

With everything planned out, Heydrich went straight to find Hyacine — who, with a visible twitch at the corner of her eye, received her new assignment.