Chapter 119: Cosmic Drifter Lion (Supplement 3) (Patreon)

"This will be the main research topic for your Cinnabar-Cauldron Bureau going forward. Time's short — I want concrete experimental data and a full report from you within a year."

As a properly qualified boss, Heydrich certainly knew how to pile on the pressure. This kind of foundational research — the sort with plenty of established precedent behind it — wasn't something he could be bothered handling personally.

No sooner had he finished speaking than he reached out and grabbed the cheek of the girl standing beside him.

"Starting today, you're working under Hyacine. Whatever dirty, exhausting work comes up from now on — or if you two cook up some monster you can't handle — she's the one who deals with it. And don't expect me to keep sending you a monthly allowance anymore."

Heydrich looked on, expressionless, at Irena — her face still pinched out of shape from his grip — and simply handed her off to Hyacine.

She and Celestine had been freeloading at his place for several years now. As for Celestine, Heydrich had just kicked her over to Guilliman.

She was traveling with him back to Holy Terra now, while Irena remained here.

Heydrich was honestly a little worried the girl would end up completely useless. Sure, there was war happening somewhere in Warhammer every single moment — but the stage was simply too vast. In truth, over ninety percent of people in the Imperium lived out a life that was short and miserable, but relatively peaceful.

After all, compared to those who died in outright war, the vast majority died from the Imperium's own systemic policies.

So, in truth, his own domain had stayed peaceful for a long stretch of time. Heydrich couldn't exactly blink himself to every battlefield in existence, and most of those battlefields amounted to nothing more than planetary-scale civil unrest anyway. It wasn't really his place to wade in and start fighting whoever — if he actually did that, there'd be no end to it.

Most rebellions within humanity's Imperium were sins humanity had brought upon itself — though it wasn't fair to say every Planetary Governor was a monster. It was more that under the Imperium's shit-tier system, an entire systemic apparatus of oppression had taken root.

Even Guilliman's Indomitus Crusade — for all it looked like a heroic turning of the tide — had directly caused the deaths of countless people.

After all, for an entire world, even a mere 0.1 percent increase in the tithe became an astronomical burden once divided out over every single person.

"This next part is the most important thing for me right now. I'm already developing as fast as I possibly can, but the biggest problem remains — my troop numbers still aren't enough. And my power projection is terrible. Ideally, I'd want to fight this whole thing out on a single world."

By now Heydrich had started turning his mind to what came next. He was already pumping out troops as fast as he could manage.

But even stretching things out as long as possible, there was only so much he could produce. Thirty thousand Space Marines was likely already his ceiling — though the Blood Angels had also fielded thirty thousand at the Battle of Baal.

Where he actually outpaced them was in Titans — he was pushing to build up his Titan strength to the point where it could match a frontline Imperium Titan legion.

By his reckoning he needed at least twenty more Warlord Titans to barely clear that bar. As for the Astra Militarum, even if he had sufficient numbers—

—there was no way he could deploy them at full scale anyway. The tavern doors simply didn't have the transport capacity for it.

"So under these circumstances, fighting the Tyranids on sheer numbers is flatly impossible. Well — not entirely impossible. I don't want to use it, but I'll need to have it ready regardless."

Just then, Heydrich turned his gaze to another device before him — one radiating a presence that set the heart on edge.

It was, unmistakably, the thing he'd prepared specifically for the Tyranid swarm — a discount War Engine, a creation born of Destruction.

"This thing can mass-produce phantom troops modeled on Destruction — though of course, the quality doesn't hold a candle to what you'd get in Star Rail. Their Path, after all, already blankets the entire cosmos, while my own power of the Path is nowhere near sufficient."

Looking at the weapon in his hands, Heydrich understood one thing clearly: there was no way this could push a converted subject up to anything near the strength of the antimatter legion.

But that wasn't really a problem, because Heydrich had never intended to go toe-to-toe with the universe using his current level of the Path of Destruction.

Using this thing against the Tyranid swarm meant turning every one of his soldiers into a walking bomb — the swarm would gain absolutely nothing from the kill. In fact, for every one they killed, they'd have to pour in even more just to compensate.

"I need to modify the original War Engine design and put my focus into strengthening its Deathrattle effect."

Heydrich studied the War Engine in his hands and sank into thought, turning the problem over and over.

He'd need to rework his whole design approach to target the Tyranid swarm specifically. The swarm could only strengthen itself by harvesting biomass — and Heydrich intended to make sure his design left that pack of Tyranids without so much as a scrap to scavenge.

"From here on it's a race against time. I've already sent several Harlequins ahead to Baal."

Heydrich fell into thought again — he had indeed already dispatched a handful of Harlequins to Baal.

He'd sent them through the webway to Baal, and to the Underworld Sector known as the Shield of Baal. The moment the Tyranid swarm launched a full-scale assault, they were to open a tavern link straight to him.

That way the time-flow on either side shouldn't be disrupted, and he could still guarantee he'd make it in time.

As for the navy and everything else, Heydrich couldn't be bothered thinking that far ahead. If he could save them, he would — but any rescue hinged on those Sprouts relaying word back in time. Either way, he had no naval strength of his own to speak of right now.

"Keep preparing, then..."

While Heydrich threw himself into frantic preparation, Calgar was leading his own main force into the Mandeville Point.

Like Guilliman, he'd taken a Flower Sprout with him too. If troop numbers ever ran critically short, he could still ask Heydrich for reinforcements. Worst case, he could go all-in on the 'Ultra Ribs' — blasphemous as that nickname was.

But as always, the Ultramarines had already gone through every necessary procedure to secure the Ecclesiarchy's sign-off on it. Besides, it was very much a last resort — and in that respect, quite different from what those other two Legions had done.

The Second and Eleventh Legions had truly gone off the deep end. One of them ran wild tampering with its own gene-seed — take, for instance, an Imperial Fists successor Chapter called the Soul Drinkers, whose gene-seed had mutated to the point of sprouting extra arms and legs.

There was no way something like that could still count as human, which was exactly why it got stricken from the records. As for the other Legion, it looked very much like they'd gone straight to AI Space Marines — and possibly even worse than that.

The Ultramarines, by comparison, had it easy — all they'd done was corrupt some Chaos and xenos material. They hadn't altered their own bodies at all, so their situation was fine.

Meanwhile, on the other side of things, within the Imperium Nihilus.

By now, nearly every Space Marine Chapter had converged on the Baal sector — even the Flesh Tearers, a single step away from being branded traitors, and the Knights of Blood, utterly consumed by the Red Thirst, had come.

Nearly all of Sanguinius's sons had gathered here — every successor Chapter except the Lamenters had come. Even Chapters currently fighting in their own war zones had sent a company, or at least a few squads. That included the Angels Vermillion, who seemed to have already turned traitor, yet still sent several companies.

Mephiston, Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels, turned to look at Dante. He was shouting directly into the star-torch — by now, the shadow of the Tyranids had already fallen over the entire Baal sector.

After devouring vast numbers of Space Marines, the Great Devourer had come to recognize just how formidable Primarch flesh truly was. So now they needed Primarch flesh and blood in bulk — and in the entire Imperium, as far as anyone knew, only two places still had it.

Macragge and Baal. But given the positioning and the Great Rift, the Leviathan fleet had settled on Baal — even though the Great Rift had already swallowed up a large portion of that fleet.

What remained was still no small number, and Mephiston had a very clear prophecy about it.

"If we fail here, they'll be the last seed left. It's just a shame we can't find any trace of them, no matter what — the galaxy's simply too vast."

Hearing that, Dante let out a breath of relief — he'd already made his preparations. If they truly couldn't hold, he would destroy Sanguinius's flesh and blood himself. That, under no circumstances, could be allowed to fall into the Tyranid swarm's hands.

As for actually holding Baal — that was something Dante had never once counted on.

The Tyranid swarm was simply too enormous. Numbers like that might have been manageable back when the Blood Angels Legion was at its peak — but not in the state things were in now.

Ever since the Horus Heresy, the Blood Angels' numbers had never really recovered. And especially after their Primarch's departure, the Red Thirst — once kept well in check — had only grown worse and worse.

On top of that, there was the Black Rage. That the Blood Angels had survived to endure this long at all was already something of a small miracle.

After all, other Legions had at most one curse to bear. They alone carried two.

"Dante."

Just then, another great ship emerged from the Mandeville Point, and Seth, Chapter Master of the Flesh Tearers, stepped down from it. His expression wasn't good either — clearly his own Chapter had no small troubles of its own. Seth had come here, one could say, with a resolve to die.

He needed to find a final resting place for a Chapter teetering on the edge of losing itself entirely to the Black Rage. What he needed was a death with dignity on the battlefield — not to go down remembered as a traitor.

At the sight of Seth, Dante's expression finally eased a little. The Flesh Tearers had been founded during the Second Founding — among the oldest of all Blood Angels successor Chapters, over ten thousand years old by now. And even they had come back.

Meanwhile, elsewhere.

Out on the wastelands of Baal, a green vine — utterly out of place against the world's native color scheme — swept across the sky, and out of it stepped a massive, tin-can figure standing over four meters tall.

"This is Baal?"

The giant tin-can figure gazed up at the several huge moons hanging in the sky, and down at the blood-red earth below. It let the Lion — who had only just arrived — recognize the place immediately: Baal, homeworld of the brother he owed the deepest debt of guilt to.

After all, once Konrad Curze had brought word that Holy Terra still stood and the Emperor still lived, the Second Imperium had dissolved on the spot.

The three of them — their great geniuses, so to speak — had then split into three paths. Sanguinius took the newly opened passage and launched a death-march straight for Holy Terra. Guilliman led the Ultramarines through the conventional route. And the Lion himself hadn't returned to Holy Terra right away at all — instead, he'd gone off to burn every supply depot and line of retreat the traitor forces had.

In the end, of course, Sanguinius did make it back — to Baal. It was the one piece of good news Rogal Dorn had received since Isstvan V, and it meant Holy Terra had one last reinforcement before the final battle: the Blood Angels Legion.

Guilliman, for his part, arrived nine hours too late. The Lion was later still. By the time he finally returned to Holy Terra, there was nothing left to find — Sanguinius had already died in battle, and the Emperor had already been placed upon the Golden Throne.

If Guilliman's conflicts with the others stemmed from the Codex Astartes and the splitting of the Legions, then his own failing was worse still. Guilliman, whatever else, had at least rushed to get there with everything he had. He himself had lagged behind, dawdling.

That was the single thing the Lion felt most guilty about, deep down — and he'd never have guessed he'd end up standing on this very world now.

"Father, was this part of your plan too?"

Though the Lion still couldn't fully master his own Wandering, he now knew that the old man who had been guiding him all this while was his father. It was just a shame that the man's condition was so strange — the Lion couldn't communicate with him at all, and the figure seemed only able to direct him in a mechanical, unthinking way.

Now, just like Guilliman, he'd received one of his father's old weapons — a shield representing absolute defense. As for his primary weapon, he was still carrying the cheer stick Heydrich had given him.

The thing looked bizarre, sure, but it handled beautifully — its quality wasn't much beneath that of his shield at all.

"The current Blood Angels Chapter Master should be named Dante, if I remember right. I'll go find him first. Come to think of it, if this really is the Imperium Nihilus, I might be able to reach the Dark Angels too."

The Lion found himself thinking of a certain 'genius' who'd once gone and bombed the Taliban — if he could get in touch with them, that would be the best outcome of all.

"Whoever that person really was, though — I left in too much of a hurry back then, and I've no idea if Guilliman ever made it back to Holy Terra. With him there, at least I don't have to worry about anything going wrong on that side. What's left for me now is stabilizing the situation here in the Imperium Nihilus."

The Lion soon settled on his own plan: with Guilliman holding the Imperium's holy domain, nothing serious would go wrong there — which meant all he needed to do was manage his own side of the Imperium Nihilus properly.

But very soon...

"Who are you..."

A massive transport craft descended slowly overhead, and its hatch swung open. A handful of Space Marines emerged, and the one leading them hesitated at the sight of the Lion — the man before him was simply too tall, well over four meters, and worse still was the feeling he gave off.

It was the kind of feeling you only got standing before something utterly unbeatable. He knew that for this unidentified, four-meter-tall tin-can of a figure, killing him would be no harder than wringing a chicken's neck.

"I am Lion El'Jonson, the Lion. Son of Sanguinius — take me to see your Chapter Master, Dante."