Chapter 143: Heydrich: This World Is Too Crazy (Patreon)

As one of Heydrich's Fabrications, this existence had no idea when it might be discovered.

But manpower was genuinely short right now. More importantly, thanks to whatever that crowd had been praying for, this Fabrication's infiltration ability had actually improved quite a bit.

So the next phase of the mission would have to be left to it, along with this newly grown batch of Alpharius.

"This is the swarm's special pheromone. It's how they tell friend from foe."

Just then, the Fabrication produced the pheromone Heydrich had developed. After all, the Tyranid swarm was still a swarm.

Most of the bio-forms had no intelligence of their own, so they could only tell friend from foe through this so-called special pheromone.

Of course, this stuff wasn't a pheromone in the conventional sense — it carried a touch of the Warp in it.

Still, it wasn't foolproof. Run into a sufficiently powerful synapse creature, and things could still go wrong.

That was why this operation carried real risk, and why Heydrich had this Fabrication of his lead the mission personally.

Because of how Fabrication worked, the outcome would be much the same whether Heydrich infiltrated in person or sent this construct — and besides, he had no time to go seeding the Memetic Virus into one biological pool after another.

"Everyone, move with me. Our mission this time is to deploy the anti-Tyranid Memetic Virus into the Tyranid biological pools."

Soon the group vanished from where they stood, slipping quietly into the swarm using Alpharius's already rather murky, hard-to-track abilities.

Ordinary synapse creatures, like the Tyranid Warriors, could only take simple commands — they had no good way to relay information back.

As for things like Hive Tyrants and Lictors, it was enough to just keep a safe distance and avoid being spotted directly.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Heydrich had temporarily left the command room, leaving everything in the Lion's hands.

He himself had gone to a position very close to the front line, where he could already make out, faintly, the swarm's Bio-Titan.

Though Heydrich and the Lion could each lead a strike to cut the thing down outright, doing so wouldn't solve the real problem.

Right now the two of them shared a single approach: don't act unless necessary, but once they did act, strike with absolute, total Destruction.

Besides, as the war dragged on, the swarm had actually been losing out the whole time. Heydrich had so much explosive ordnance that every time the swarm seized a position, they were met with a fresh round of detonations.

This tactic left them with no way at all to reclaim biomass, since the so-called biomass simply went up in the air along with the position itself.

For the Tyranid swarm, this was simply unacceptable.

You only had to look at the bioships hanging in space now, all withered and shrunken, to see it — clearly they were still accelerating their commitment of forces regardless.

Of course, "not much recovered" wasn't the same as "none at all" — after all, Netherworld was an entire planet. The Netherworld hive was really just one continent on that planet, and human beings were scattered all across its wastelands.

These people had all been abandoned by the Sector Governor — and honestly, there was no other choice. They simply weren't core assets, and the hive couldn't have supported feeding and housing so many more people anyway.

Not to mention these people weren't exactly clean stock either — cultists, mutants, every vice under the sun could be found among them.

All of it was biomass the Tyranids badly needed to reclaim. Chaos-tainted flesh counted as inferior stock to them, sure, but once the corrupted, mutated portions were carved away, the rest was still barely edible.

"How does the battle situation stand now?"

At this point Heydrich had switched back to his hulking, power-armored form. For the Imperium's more benighted citizens, plenty of concepts simply didn't register — a giant frame in power armor made communication far easier.

"Our defense is extremely difficult right now. Several Titans in the Titan legion have already been knocked out of action. Fortunately, thanks to the A-Ruan Pouches, once the crews evacuated they simply packed up and left, so none of the wrecks fell into Tyranid hands. But the threat from the Bio-Titans is still enormous — we've never had a record of so many Bio-Titans appearing at once."

Hearing Heydrich's question, the General standing before him answered with a troubled frown.

This was the General of Heydrich's Titan legion, the one responsible in battle for commanding and assigning Titan deployments and coordinating with the Imperium.

He didn't look old — barely into his twenties — yet half his hair had already gone white. It showed just how much the strain of commanding these battlefield weapons had cost him. If not for the blessing of Abundance Heydrich had given him, he'd be in far worse shape.

After all, the commanders of Mechanicus Titan legions were usually their Archmagi, whose heavily augmented mechanical bodies granted them far greater computational power.

But Heydrich wouldn't allow that here — he would never let the Mechanicus grow too powerful to control.

So all his commanders came from the military side. His Mechanicus branch did have things like Frateris Militia units, but within the army they mostly served as logistics personnel — similar to the tech-sergeants embedded within Space Marine chapters, and for that matter, many of the Imperium's own Astra Militarum regiments worked the same way.

In any case, Heydrich had never seen Tech-Priests sent charging to the front line, unless an entire regiment was about to be wiped out. After all, a Tech-Priest was a rare, high-value asset for the Imperium — and if a Tech-Priest was willing to enlist,

an entire Astra Militarum regiment would be built around him. Such regiments were mostly heavy formations, carrying far more vehicles than an ordinary regiment — after all, a Tech-Priest's battlefield repair capability was too valuable to waste.

"Keep at it. Once this war is over, I'll give you a year's leave."

Looking at the General before him, Heydrich had little choice. Humans could rest, but war never did. By now the man had already started forcing himself to stay awake with stimulants — and it was only because he was a Warhammer 40K super-human, plus the blessing of Abundance Heydrich had granted him, that he could still function at all.

Put a modern person in his place and their body would have collapsed long ago — no matter how strong the will, this was already past the limits of the flesh.

"Truly a great being…"

Just then, an old man beside Heydrich, dressed in ornate yet stiffly formal robes, spoke up with obvious excitement. The moment the General saw him, his eye twitched.

Heydrich had designated the Imperial Cult as the sole recognized religion of his world, with everything else branded heresy.

But he also kept a tight lid on the Ecclesiarchy. It wasn't even allowed to preach in public, let alone have its scriptures included in the school curriculum — after all, his people had nothing to fear from corruption.

Especially since every newborn came into the world under his blessing of Abundance. It couldn't compare to the Celestials of Xianzhou — nowhere near their regenerative power or lifespan — but this touch of Abundance was more than enough to keep them from ever becoming mara-struck.

The greatest benefits were twofold: first, it fused soul and body completely, so that even in death, both perished together, leaving nothing behind to twist. Second, however faint the touch of Abundance, it still made them tougher. They were already Warhammer 40K super-humans to begin with — paired with the blessing of Abundance, they were bound to be stronger still.

So in the end, under Heydrich's careful management, plenty of people still worshipped the Emperor, but nowhere near as fanatically — in fact, some had already begun drifting toward atheism or materialism.

As for whether materialists could accept things like psychic power and Chaos — actually, that was easy enough. These things were objectively real, and if they existed, that meant they had their own logic worth understanding, so people still needed to know something about Chaos's traits and methods.

In this respect, the Emperor's Imperial Truth was itself a kind of self-deception — it was precisely because that doctrine forcibly redefined Chaos out of existence that Horus had paid such a heavy price for it. You could say the Imperial Truth looked materialist on the surface, but underneath, it carried a heavy dose of idealism all the same.

Naturally, Heydrich felt an instinctive distaste for this local Ecclesiarch and his fervor.

"Come with me. I don't like it, but I don't have a better option right now."

After bidding his General a temporary farewell, Heydrich set off with the Ecclesiarch toward the local Ecclesiarchy cathedral.

The line Heydrich had drawn was bound to be broken sooner or later, and once it was, these civilians would find themselves face to face with the Tyranids — and there were simply too many of them. For Heydrich to deal with it, his only options were to blow the entire planet skyward, or use Vision-Flesh to bring the whole world to life.

Short of resorting to either of those measures, Heydrich would need to make use of the war engine.

But once someone went in, there was no turning back. The power of the Path was still weak in this universe, so once inside, one's life would begin counting straight down — though at least the death would be clean and complete.

Since he meant to use it, Heydrich had no intention of tricking anyone into it. He planned to tell people the truth outright, and for that, he'd need the Ecclesiarch's help.

The Ecclesiarchy's standing could gather large crowds quickly, which would make things easier for Heydrich.

Except…

Crack!!!

When Heydrich — over five meters tall, black-haired, black-eyed, clad in ornate power armor — arrived at the cathedral grounds, everyone who saw him dropped to their knees in an instant. This time Heydrich hadn't scaled himself to Primarch proportions at all; his size matched the Emperor directly.

After all, this world carried more than a little of Britain's old bloodline snobbery, and within that lineage-obsession, black hair marked ancient Roman ancestry, sitting right at the top of the pedigree.

Just look at the Emperor — textbook black hair. As for his eyes, thanks to his psychic power, you could barely make out the eyeballs themselves. But going by the various CG artwork GW had released, especially the newest one, No Peace, the Emperor's eyes were most likely black too.

What's more, in this world China had vanished into obscurity entirely, so by looks alone Heydrich already carried tremendous Enigmata and menace.

Then—

"Has a god walked among mortals again?"

Looking up at Heydrich, towering over five meters, the crowd fell utterly silent — no one even kowtowed anymore.

If this had been a Primarch, they might still have worked themselves into a frenzy, but this clearly wasn't a Primarch — it looked far closer to the Emperor as depicted in paintings.

Seeing this, the crowd even forgot to lose their minds.

"I'm not…"

At that, Heydrich couldn't help but try to correct them — only to notice the crowd's eyes on him carrying a very particular look, something like…

That's the one — the kind of look you'd give a secondhand item rated ninety-nine percent like new.

Heydrich gave the Ecclesiarch beside him a pat. This man was, after all, one of the senior figures of the Cryptus System — the top religious authority for the entire sector. In fact, since this was something close to a theocracy, his word carried even more weight locally than the Sector Governor's.

He naturally knew that the one commanding the battle was the Emperor's eldest son, Lion El'Jonson, and so he also knew Heydrich's identity — or at least the identity Heydrich had Fabricated for himself.

A Perpetual older even than the Imperium of Man itself, one whose existence stretched back far enough to rival the Emperor's.

Since the Lion himself had confirmed it, and since Heydrich hadn't denied that the Emperor was mankind's one true god, nor denied the Imperial Cult, then as far as the Ecclesiarch was concerned, he was practically one of their own.

Heydrich had no desire whatsoever to be mistaken for the Emperor — that would be nothing but bad luck.

"This is an ancient sage of humanity. His existence traces back to before mankind ever left Holy Terra. He walked alongside the great Emperor through the whole of human history — not the Emperor himself, but a great being all the same."

Clearly Heydrich wasn't some religious zealot himself, but he lived by the principle of speaking to people in the language they understood — so he could still get along just fine with this crowd of fanatics… probably.

"To think I'd live to see so great and ancient a being — what a blessing this is! I shall etch your sacred visage into memory forever—"

Right then, before Heydrich's blank stare, one of the faithful gouged out his own eyes, and held the bloody eyeballs up, facing him.

In that instant, Heydrich wanted nothing more than to sink into the ground and disappear. He'd never imagined that meeting him would drive someone to gouge out both his own eyes — and by the time he registered what was happening, the man had already done it.

"What kind of Warhammer 40K running gag is this…"

Heydrich was at a total loss for words. What on earth was even happening?

Damn it. He was starting to wonder if he was developing social anxiety.

"Sacrifice is the cornerstone of the Imperium, but even the Emperor wouldn't wish to see reckless sacrifice."

Sticking to his usual principle of telling people what they wanted to hear, Heydrich continued explaining to the crowd. Sure enough, as soon as he finished speaking, everyone dropped to their knees to listen with rapt attention.

What Heydrich didn't notice was that the Ecclesiarch had already moved beside a scribe, kicked the man aside, and seemed to be writing something himself — in a pigment that looked distinctly red.

"The Tyranid threat looms before us even now. The citizens of the Imperium are the cornerstone of the Imperium. To defend your homes and your families, brave souls must step forward…"

By now Heydrich couldn't be bothered to keep track of whatever the Ecclesiarch was doing. He was starting to regret coming here at all — he should have just grabbed a Space Marine instead, or failing that, had Dante come, since the man was famous wherever he went.

So now all he wanted was to get the important business done quickly and get the hell out of here.

But as Heydrich's words settled over the crowd, silence fell over the whole scene.

Then the first person to snap out of it broke into a spine-chilling grin, swallowing back what looked like a trickle of drool…

"Bliss eternal!!!"