Chapter 148: Heydrich: I'll Tell You Some Stories About Goldie's Childhood (Patreon)

So even the Memetic Virus was something Heydrich would only deploy when the situation called for it — never as a mindless reflex.

That was why Heydrich planned to keep this entire army in reserve, though it would need a certain amount of air support to match. The fighting had reached the point where even the Tyranids were suffering heavy losses.

They'd gone too long without being able to reclaim biomass, and still had to keep feeding more troops into the meat grinder. Some Tyranid bio-ships had already been smashed straight out of the sky — or rather, the Hive Mind had cannibalized them to build more soldiers.

But the charge of that ten-million-strong wave of self-detonating suicide troops had genuinely terrified them. It was simply too uncanny. Even the Great Devourer showed extreme wariness toward something it had never encountered before.

For now, Heydrich needed to deal with Ka'Bandha first, then turn to face humanity — and take the chance to do some proper thinking of his own.

After all, daemons had no biomass. Just looking at them made him feel sick.

"Ka'Bandha's forces can hold out for about three more days. We can rest for two, then move to support him. Better to wipe out both him and this swarm together. Phew..."

Soon enough, Heydrich and the Lion had worked out a new plan: annihilate both enemy forces at once.

And depending on how things went, they might even reactivate Heydrich's War Forge — assuming, of course, that both Heydrich and the Lion stayed rational enough for that.

Hand that thing to some Planetary Governor and they'd get addicted in no time. It really was too useful for its own good.

What they might not realize was that if a reckless crowd got their hands on it, the Path of Destruction would spiral completely out of control. It could produce a madman that even Heydrich might struggle to contain.

Soon after...

"So, what do you make of it — this war? Even across ten thousand years of the Imperium of Man's history, a war like this is rare."

Heydrich finally had a moment of free time, and he called Wondrous Shadow over.

Standing before Heydrich — who currently remained in his towering, hulking form — she looked small and rather adorable by comparison.

Put on the spot by his question, little Wondrous Shadow straightened up at once, looking thoroughly nervous.

"It's brutal... and honestly, are those people even sane?"

Wondrous Shadow fell silent for a moment. She'd studied countless war records at Heydrich's military academy — even the instructors there were commissars and Space Marines Heydrich had personally poached from Macragge — but records on paper were still just records on paper.

Seeing it firsthand had shaken her deeply. Naturally, she'd gone straight to the front lines herself. Heydrich wouldn't let her command troops — she was still too young, after all.

But as a heavy hitter, she was more than qualified. In fact, calling her just a heavy hitter undersold her — her combat strength surpassed that of an ordinary Space Marine. And what she'd witnessed was just how deranged the Imperium truly was.

Especially at the very end, when they'd been pushed past the breaking point and Heydrich had unveiled the war engine. That was the peak of the madness. Wondrous Shadow couldn't quite wrap her head around it.

What kind of logic was it, that a mob of fanatics would duel each other to decide who got sent in on the second wave — and then the chosen one would break down sobbing because he hadn't gotten to leap in and explode alongside the swarm?

Heydrich's own people had their own eccentricities too, of course, but the way that madness manifested was completely different. Or maybe it was just that, living in a normal environment, everyone had some hidden strangeness that simply never got the chance to surface.

After all, Heydrich was firmly committed to rolling out compulsory education and college entrance exams across his own world, giving everyone a fair shot at rising up.

Whether you actually made something of that chance was up to the individual — that part had nothing to do with Heydrich. And after being steeped in a solid education, the people of his world had grown to be quite different from those of the Imperium, at least on the surface.

Their eyes, at the very least, held something gentler, touched with a particular kind of guileless, almost dopey warmth. Not that being a little dopey-looking meant they lacked skill — their capacity for chaos and their combat prowess were both plenty sharp.

Because Heydrich took such good care of them, there was simply no fertile ground for cults to take root. On top of that, his people's souls were essentially anchored to their bodies — they didn't drift in the Warp at all.

Which came with one piece of good news and one piece of bad news: the good news was they were immune to Warp corruption. The bad news was... they were immune to Warp corruption.

There was this one time a group of them went on a business trip to some world in Ultramar. A bunch of street-wandering layabouts stumbled into what turned out to be a Slaanesh cult party.

They'd thought it was just some ordinary party, but partway through, things started feeling off. After all, students from his homeland and locals from the West threw very different kinds of parties, even if both called it a 'party.'

His countrymen usually meant good food, games, board games, that sort of thing. The foreign version tended to involve group drug use and general debauchery.

This one, of course, was a good deal more extreme. Either way, they caught on to what was happening fast enough, and reported it straight to the Legal Department. Then, with impressive martial spirit, they wiped out the entire Slaanesh cult themselves before the Legal Department's enforcers even arrived on scene.

After all, they'd all been blessed by Heydrich's Abundance — sure, nothing compared to the Celestials of Xianzhou, but when it came to melee weapons, their combat ability was more than serviceable. Especially in the Warhammer universe, where everyone was a soldier — the compulsory education Heydrich had set up included a fair amount of military training.

In the end, a group of Legal Department enforcers stood there twitching as this bunch proudly reported their own heroics to them. Normally, in the Imperium, if a situation like this arose, even the survivors would just get executed on the spot.

This time, though, no one raised a hand against them — mostly because their origins made the Legal Department's enforcers reluctant to touch them at all.

In the end, after a thorough review by the Legal Department, they were simply sent back home. As for what became of the sacrificial victims they'd rescued, nobody ever found out.

Growing up in that kind of environment, Wondrous Shadow was, in essence, not so different from a college student.

"There will be plenty more like these people in the future. You need to learn how to communicate with them. In my domain there's a saying: it's all a matter of one sentence. One sentence can make things, and one sentence can ruin things. So much chaos in this world comes down to failed communication, to things left unsaid. Let me think of an example..."

Heydrich fell into thought for a moment, and quickly landed on the single most absurd story this world had to offer.

"After the the Ullanor Crusade, the Emperor appointed Horus as Warmaster. As for himself, he went back to Holy Terra and started digging into the webway — and didn't tell a single soul about it. ...Hm? What's that face for?"

At that moment Heydrich turned to see the Lion looking utterly horrified, while Azrael and Dante had already bolted straight out the door in a mad scramble. Was that really such a big reaction?

"Is this... maybe not such a good idea..."

The Lion fell silent for a moment. What Heydrich hadn't noticed was that, watching him teach Wondrous Shadow, the Lion had felt no small amount of envy. Dante had felt much the same.

This particular Primarch, after becoming a Space Marine, had wanted nothing more than to find his father and proudly tell him the news. But by the time he came out of the blood-coffin after his surgery, far too much time had passed — his father was already gone.

And that was the end of the warm, fuzzy portion of the evening. Heydrich, this walking, talking machine for broadcasting other people's embarrassing history, just had to swerve the conversation right back around to the Emperor.

Good grief — was this really something he should be listening to?

So in that instant, the only ones left in the room, aside from Heydrich's Palace Guard who were long since used to this sort of thing, was just the Lion.

He at least knew the full context behind it all, so his reaction stayed relatively composed.

"Not much I can do about it, honestly. Blame the fact that guy's lived so absurdly long, done so much messed-up stuff, so famously — and left a stink that'll follow him for ten thousand years."

"..."

For a moment the Lion's face twisted like he'd swallowed something sour, wanting to object. But then he thought of the state of the current Imperium — 'a stink that'll follow him for ten thousand years' was true in the most literal sense possible.

"See, that guy's own father died early, and he grew up his whole childhood without a father's love. You expect him to know how to love his own children properly? Does he even understand what that means? Back on ancient Terra, the reason he never caused this kind of trouble was that Malcador used to smack him upside the head whenever he had one of his episodes. After he and Malcador had their falling out, there was nobody left to knock some sense into him when he flared up... Hm? Where'd everyone go?"

Right in the middle of holding forth, Heydrich looked up in surprise to find that even the Lion had vanished.

"Never mind, not a problem. Go rest up, and get ready for the war ahead."

Heydrich ruffled Wondrous Shadow's hair as he said this, reminding her — what he really meant was that she needed to learn to read the room, to speak differently to different people depending on the audience.

Only that way could she properly deal with the people of the Imperium of Man — like the time he'd gone and worked his charm on that crowd of Imperial Cult faithful. Not that Heydrich thought of it as tricking them, exactly, but the results had been remarkably good.

"Hmph..."

There were, naturally, two other people feeling more than a little sour about it — Irena, and Mimi, sprawled across the top of her head.

It seemed the attention Heydrich showered on Wondrous Shadow had left both of them a touch jealous...

"What's with those faces? You two are acting like children throwing a tantrum."

Heydrich looked at the two of them, a little exasperated, unable to figure out exactly what they were sulking about. Still, he ruffled both their little heads, and soon enough their expressions relaxed considerably.

"Go find the Lion and bring him back. We need to get ready."

...

Meanwhile, on the other side, currently deep within the Warp, Guilliman's expression was grim.

Ever since leaving Macragge, he had been racing back toward Holy Terra with the fleet Heydrich had helped him build and the reinforced army under his command.

"The Battle of Baal — I wonder how it's going now. If possible, I'd like to go back and see for myself."

Just then, Guilliman was looking over the documents in his hands, lost in thought.

With a Harlequin aboard, he'd been able to learn of the war at Baal during a supply stop outside the Warp.

The trouble was, while inside the Warp itself, the tavern couldn't be used — since the power of the Path drew on imaginary numbers, which were fundamentally incompatible with psychic power, the signature ability of the Warp itself. So within the Warp's shipping lanes, the tavern simply went dark.

"Right — but more than Baal, you should be thinking about your own situation. From what I understand, Magnus originally planned to strike the Space Wolves' Fang. But now that word's gotten out that you've woken, he's turned his sights on you instead."

Hearing Guilliman's words, the Harlequin beside him offered this warning.

"I know..."

Guilliman didn't seem particularly rattled by this — he'd brought a substantial force with him this time. And if things went sideways, he could always have Heydrich and the Lion come to his aid directly through the tavern.

At that point it would be a righteous three-on-one. However strong Magnus was, could he really outmatch the Dragon Emperor as well?

Truth be told, more than Magnus, what Guilliman really feared was that Magnus might charge straight to Holy Terra to settle accounts with the Emperor.

What kind of nonsense was it — losing his own Imperium and not even mentioning it, blowing through the Imperium's entire treasury on some scheme and coming away with absolutely nothing to show for it?

That was just pathetic. Guilliman could already imagine that if those two ever met face to face, it would be quite the spectacle.

He'd also crossed blades with the Dragon Emperor before — in terms of raw baseline strength, the two of them were roughly even. But if that one ever started tapping into his mysterious Enigmata-derived psychic power, he'd flatten Guilliman like a dog without breaking a sweat.

As for the Dragon Emperor's claim to be a mere psychic muggle — Guilliman treated that claim as a joke and nothing more.

"Become one. The power of Harmony."

Guilliman thought back to the power Heydrich had given him at the end. After that power had settled into him, he'd noticed the bond between himself and his sons growing far tighter — and then... that was about it, really.

Heydrich had warned him repeatedly, but Guilliman still thought of himself as just a human. As a human, none of this strange business should apply to him — and yet he kept discovering more and more unusual things about himself.

Take, for instance, the swarm effect Heydrich had once mentioned to him: the more of his sons stood with him, the stronger he became.

He found the idea of this 'swarm' effect a little strange, but he didn't press the matter further.

"When the time comes, we'll do it this way, then that way. I'll pin down Magnus while you open the tavern and go find the others."

Guilliman had already begun discussing with the Harlequin how to handle a potential encounter with Magnus — but just then...

"We've detected a fleet belonging to the Red Corsair Huron Blackheart — roughly five thousand strong."

"Hm?"

Guilliman's brow twitched at the news. Heydrich had warned him he might well face two enemies this time: one, the second-in-command of Red Corsair Huron Blackheart along with the army he commanded — and this one, under the leadership of Tzeentch's chief Greater Daemon Kairos, would cause Guilliman serious trouble. The original, unaided Guilliman had barely brought any forces with him at all.

Once Kairos pinned Guilliman down with his psychic power, the battlefield had begun to collapse.

As for Lorgar — sure, after his ascension to daemonhood he'd all but one-shotted Kairos, but that was because Lorgar was, arguably, the Primarch who most resembled the Emperor. He was the only one who'd inherited certain traits of the Emperor as the Dark King — for instance, an innate bonus against daemons.

Of course, because so much of his potential was spent on that bonus, he also ended up being the weakest in raw frontal combat among all his brothers.

"Get ready for battle."

Guilliman already knew about the whole business with Huron Blackheart — Heydrich had told him about it. Thinking of what that man had done, Guilliman's brow twitched wildly. Some claimed that if Huron Blackheart managed to hold out until Guilliman's return, he'd earn Guilliman's praise.

But in truth, that was never going to happen — what Huron Blackheart had done was simply too far over the line. Sure, Heydrich had done far worse — but there was one fundamental difference between the two of them.

Heydrich was an ancient sovereign of humanity, a figure who had merely cooperated with the Emperor from time to time. Huron Blackheart was a Space Marine — what did he think he was doing, acting like this? And besides, Heydrich had never once brought harm to the Imperium; his dealings with it had always been carried out with restraint.