Chapter 152: Heydrich: This Is a Kind of Mercy (Patreon)

So as a mentor, Leandros was feeling more than a little overwhelmed at the moment — but there was one piece of good news.

Half the Imperium might not know it, but as founding Chapters, both the Ultramarines and the Dark Angels held onto a remarkably intact legacy. They even possessed a complete copy of the Imperial Truth — after all, Guilliman had read it too.

Heydrich called it toilet paper, sure, but then again, he called the Codex Astartes toilet paper as well.

So nobody bothered arguing the point anymore. This guy ran his mouth about the Emperor every single day and never once got smacked for it — so be it.

After all, this was the man who'd openly used the Emperor's longest-held name — say it as a Chaos heretic and you'd be burned on the spot; say it as Guilliman and even the Emperor might react. But Heydrich, who talked like that constantly and never suffered so much as a scratch for it? Truly unheard of.

And the man couldn't go three sentences without bringing up the Emperor, always managing to dig up some terrifying thing the Emperor had once done that made everyone else's skin crawl.

...

As time passed and Ka'Bandha withdrew, new targets soon began appearing on the augur array — quite different from the suffocatingly dense formation that had come before.

This time the swarm's density was sparse. But even at that sparse density, the lowest-tier units present were all Tyranid Warriors.

Tactics like this from a Tyranid swarm were unheard of — mainly because Heydrich's self-detonating Voidrangers had spooked them badly.

After all, each self-detonating Voidranger cost only a single life, and on the Netherworld Star there were more than twenty billion of them to spare.

When one of those things went off, prepared units like Tyranid Warriors or Executioners could sometimes dodge the blast, but Termagants and Hormagaunts had no chance at all.

A single detonation would wipe out an entire cluster — the bugs simply couldn't sustain attrition on that scale.

The real reason these two units were cheap wasn't that they were cheap to make. It was that they recycled with brutal efficiency.

So...

"This is truly unheard of. The war engine really is terrifying," Titus said.

He set the data-slate down, a flicker of surprise crossing the old veteran's face.

He'd faced plenty of Tyranid swarms in his time, but he'd never once seen anyone drag a swarm into a war of attrition like this.

Normally, when a swarm couldn't win, it could always cut its losses and pull back. So what had gotten into these things now?

Heydrich wasn't the only one who couldn't make sense of it — Titus was just as baffled.

For all his combat experience, he couldn't puzzle out what the swarm was doing, even though this route ran toward Baal.

Baal and the Netherworld Star lay in the same sector, though, so a longer detour wouldn't have been any trouble.

"The swarm's gone mad. But like the old saying goes — since they've come, let's deal with them," Heydrich said.

He raised his high-powered binoculars, watching the Tyranid swarm charge in from the distance. This time was a little different from before.

The Astra Militarum's artillery had become mostly useless. Blowing up an ordinary Tyranid swarm used to be quite satisfying.

Because the swarm's density used to be so overwhelming, aiming had barely mattered — a single blast would send a whole cluster of Hormagaunts and Termagants flying. Now it was a different story.

Tyranid Warriors were, at minimum, units comparable to Space Marines — fast enough to dodge out of the blast radius before a shell even detonated.

The shrapnel and shockwaves were still dangerous to them, but as long as they avoided vital hits, they'd survive just fine.

"Keep up the suppressive fire. It won't inflict instant mass casualties like it used to, but it'll slow their advance. And it's clear these things are mainly targeting my war engine — keep feeding in Voidrangers, let the swarm think we're still churning out endless troops," Heydrich ordered.

He issued the instruction quickly. If the war engine were treated merely as bait,

the swarm might conclude it had already been worn down nearly to nothing, and spread its formation out accordingly.

A swarm of this quality breaking into the Astra Militarum's position would mean a one-sided slaughter, easily punching straight through the whole line.

Behind that lay the civilian shelters — if the swarm broke through there, the losses would be far worse. Corpses were biomass to the swarm, but to humans they were nothing but a burden. Setting aside the loss of manpower, leaving bodies unattended alone was enough to draw Nurgle's attention.

On an ordinary world, that would mean, at worst, a plague. But in the Warhammer universe, any plague came with a touch of the Warp riding along.

After all, even a bacterium's life was still life. Grandfather Nurgle loved every one of his children equally — even one that was nothing more than a paramecium.

"Prepare for first contact. Stay behind me," Titus said.

He set down the data-slate and binoculars. Behind him stood the squad Heydrich had assigned to accompany him.

This wasn't trench warfare anymore. Space Marines were essentially comparable to armored vehicles, and on a battlefield made up purely of Space Marine units, trenches lost most of their usefulness.

In effect, the fighting had upgraded from First World War tactics to Second World War tactics — dominated mainly by maneuver.

Under those conditions, trenches offered limited value, all the more so given the long front lines and the vast disparity in numbers between the two sides.

What Titus could rely on now wasn't his brothers, but Heydrich's auxiliary troops.

And it wasn't only him — nearly every Space Marine there was in the same position. There was, however, one exception.

That was the young man Heydrich had personally awakened — and, with characteristically bad taste, given a name for: White.

Heydrich had actually wanted to call him "Jurassic," but on second thought, decided against it.

"Tyranids!!!"

At the sight of the charging Lictor, wild frenzy spread across the young man's face. Heydrich hadn't bothered sending anyone to accompany this one.

Simply because no one could keep up. This one liked to duel Lictors one-on-one — he might not be able to beat Titus outright, but for sheer mobility, even Titus with a jump pack might not catch him.

Seeing the Lictor bearing down on him, he burst into wild laughter and charged forward. At least this time Heydrich had given him a proper set of gear, so he wouldn't have to tear the thing apart with his bare hands — that method was simply too inefficient.

Though he still looked plenty savage doing it...

Meanwhile, on the other side, the Lion was under no small amount of pressure himself. Unlike Heydrich's line, which looked like a motley gathering of monsters and demons,

his position was far more conventional. Aside from his own Dark Angels, there were large numbers of regular Blood Angels troops. As for those consumed by the Black Rage or the Red Thirst, Dante had dumped every one of them on Heydrich's side.

The Black Rage cases weren't so bad — that was basically a berserker buff. The Red Thirst, though, genuinely crippled combat effectiveness.

"Father, the position has been fully set up. Every bunker firing point and every explosive charge is in place. The only uncertainty now is these auxiliary troops," Azrael reported.

He was giving the Lion his status update, and one point mattered a great deal — Heydrich's auxiliary forces.

"Just keep them safe. If they take heavy losses, I won't be able to explain that to him," the Lion said.

He sounded a little exasperated, though at least, apart from now looking like an old grandfather, the man had grown considerably steadier overall.

Just how reckless he used to be could be judged from his combat record — especially at the Battle of Rangdan, which turned into an absolute mess, where he'd blown up two Gloriana-class battleships outright.

GW never spelled out the details, but you only had to consider how he'd once orbital-bombarded his own homeworld over some disagreement to get the picture.

"Let's get ready..." the Lion said.

He stopped hesitating and simply hefted his Emperor's Shield. Carrying the cheer stick Heydrich had given him, he strode to the front line, where countless Tyranid Warriors could already be seen charging toward him.

At that same moment, on the other side, Heydrich's brow twitched.

"You Blood Angels have quite a lot of oddballs, don't you. That one's a Blood Knight, isn't it — practically degenerated into a vampire already. And then there are those without even names..." Heydrich said.

He looked at the bound Space Marines before him and let out a sigh he couldn't hold back.

This batch of Space Marines had no auxiliary support at all. Their task was singular: die.

Kill off as much of the enemy swarm as they could manage first. Their flesh was pure poison — if the Tyranid swarm ate it, well, Heydrich figured, let them eat it; they'd inherit the gene-seed's curse right along with the meal.

As for why these Blood Angels were behaving themselves for now, it was mainly because Heydrich had them suppressed. Most of them had little left but savage, animal instinct.

But even animal instinct includes seeking gain and avoiding harm — and in their perception, Heydrich was a rampaging beast they simply couldn't defy.

"You're one piece of paperwork away from being branded traitors. In a way, that's already a disgrace to Sanguinius," Heydrich said,

turning to look at Jool, Chapter Master of the Blood Knights. Hearing the words, Jool bowed his head deeply.

Insulting a Space Marine outright didn't amount to much. But telling one he'd shamed his gene-father was a genuine blow. Of course, that didn't apply to those who'd defected to Chaos — and despite falling to the Red Thirst's curse, these men genuinely hadn't gone that far.

"I never expected that even after ten thousand years, I'd see the old Ghouls again. This is fine, in its way," Heydrich said.

Loken, standing beside him, looked a little surprised — as a former high-ranking officer of the Luna Wolves.

He knew exactly what the Blood Angels had been like before Sanguinius returned: pure, disposable cannon fodder. They represented the Emperor's bloodiest side, and wherever they were deployed, every other Legion steered clear, sometimes for a very long time afterward.

People always said the Night Lords represented the Emperor's judgment, but the ones who truly drew the Emperor's harshest hand were the old Ghouls. So while Loken was startled to see them now, his reaction stayed measured.

That was exactly why Heydrich had called him over — Loken genuinely knew how to make use of men like these.

"I'll give you a glorious end. Your Chapter will be preserved. New Blood Knights will be born — but the new era has no place aboard for relics like you," Heydrich said.

His words weren't kind, but everyone present knew he'd been speaking the plain truth the whole time.

It was, in a way, even a kind of promise. Space Marines were soldiers in the end, and there's an old saying about the barracks standing while the men who fill them come and go. The most terrifying thing was never total annihilation — it was the loss of the unit's structure itself.

Heydrich had now promised to help rebuild theirs. To these Blood Knights, that was already the greatest promise imaginable — arguably an act of mercy.

As for the men themselves, there was no way forward. Heydrich could cleanse the curse from them, certainly, but for people this far gone, that would be worse than simply killing them outright — after the cleanse, the only difference from death would be the fortune in resources needed to keep a ward of vegetative husks alive.

As for gradually feeding in new recruits... that was impossible too. The curse was contagious. They'd taken in ordinary new recruits before — even ones from the Blood Angels — and those recruits quickly ended up the same way. All Heydrich could say was that the curse spread, and it had a cluster effect.

Of course, gene-seed that Heydrich had personally treated would likely be fine. But the problem wasn't Heydrich's consent — it was that they themselves wouldn't agree to it.

Unlike those other oddballs, the Angels Vermillion, who believed themselves sacred — who believed even the Red Thirst itself was sacred, and organized regular sacrifices to relieve it, justifying it as a way to save more people in the long run — the Blood Knights were fully aware of just how profane they had become.

But hearing all this now, they were startled to learn that the Blood Angels had such a shameful history even before Sanguinius returned — though back then, Loken and Horus likely hadn't known about the Red Thirst.

They had certainly known, however, how dire the Legion's state was otherwise. After all, before the Primarchs returned, the two worst-off Legions in the entire Great Crusade had been the Blood Angels and the Space Wolves.

Setting the Blood Angels aside, the Space Wolves had been disorderly enough to need a commissariat detachment — the only Space Marine Legion that ever required one. As for the World Eaters and Night Lords, whose reputations would later turn infamous, the truth was both had once been disciplined, well-ordered Legions. The War Hounds went without saying — essentially an early version of the later Ultramarines. And the Night Lords had, in fact, been a highly efficient special-operations force.

Then one Legion got undone by its own Primarch, and the other got undone by its Primarch's own homeworld.

The Ultramarines' predecessor, the War-Born, ironically had a poor reputation back then — mainly because their methods of fighting were far too savage and fanatical.

It made other Legions see them as a band of war-crazed lunatics, rather than the disciplined, efficient soldiers they would later become.

"The Black Rage cases are fine as they are. Loken, go pick a final battlefield for them," Heydrich said, without elaborating further, sending Loken off to choose their drop point.

It just couldn't be too close to friendly forces. The Black Rage cases weren't much of a concern — they could still tell friend from foe, more or less, or at least kept some priority order among their targets.

"This spot should do — it's a blind spot for the artillery," Loken said.

He settled on the location quickly. From there, Blood Knight or Blood Angel alike, every man consumed by the Red Thirst was teleported straight onto the battlefield, and the restraints binding them fell away.