Chapter 166: Heydrich: Young friend Dante, what are you expecting? (Patreon)

"Young friend, just what are you expecting here?"

Looking at the overexcited Dante, Heydrich spoke with deep meaning.

"Ugh..."

Dante shuddered at Heydrich's words.

"I've already handed the Primaris technology over to the Lion. Now that the war's over, he plans to wait until he's back at the Rock and then roll it out to all the Dark Angels. After that, it's you Blood Angels."

As he spoke, Heydrich didn't dither. He took out the materials he'd prepared long ago.

He didn't even need to think to know what this guy was up to. It was nothing more than clocking out, clocking out, and clocking out.

"Gulp..."

Dante stared at the contents, and at the enormous, practically fatal death rate listed there. Of course, that death rate was for converting ordinary Space Marine battle-brothers into Primaris.

In Heydrich's hands, there was basically no such problem. The reason he'd written it down was mainly that he worried some Chapters would get hold of the method and try the conversion themselves. It was nothing to him, but if they took it back and tried it, they could very well wipe themselves out.

Admittedly, among the named ones, even those Fallen Angels from ten thousand years ago never lost anyone to the conversion.

Still, Heydrich felt he ought to give a warning. Take Space Marine 2, for example. Calgar's First Company had plenty of non-Primaris Space Marine veterans, who looked a whole size smaller standing in front of Calgar.

Of course, that was no longer the case. Once Heydrich guaranteed a hundred percent success rate, Guilliman waved his hand and had everyone converted.

So both the Ultramarines and Heydrich's own people were all Primaris Space Marines, and it was certain that the Lion's Dark Angels would go fully Primaris in the future too.

After all, compared with the zealots whose brains were stuffed with religion, the Primarchs were far more accepting of Primaris Space Marines.

But Dante obviously knew none of this. The moment he saw the danger symbol, he declared that he would go first.

"Good resolve, young man. Let's start with you."

Heydrich smiled and patted Dante on the shoulder, but for some reason Dante suddenly had a bad feeling.

"By the way, your Death Company and the ghouls have gone out in glory by now, haven't they?" (Heydrich didn't know what they called those who'd fallen to the Red Thirst, so he used this stand-in.)

"Yes. The Blood Knights have all fallen in battle."

At Heydrich's words, Dante's face filled with desolation and a trace of envy.

Their story was over, but his went on.

"Let's start by rebuilding the Blood Knights. How are your recruits?"

Heydrich didn't say more. All of the Blood Knights' holy relics, banners and rosters had been preserved intact.

As long as those remained, then by military reckoning the unit hadn't been annihilated, so it could be reconstituted. Besides, the Imperial Fists had wiped out entire units before, and the Imperium had rebuilt them all the same.

"I've already started recruiting on Baal again, but you can see what Baal looks like now."

Dante pointed at the hive below with an expressionless face.

The two of them stood on a platform. Beneath it lay a pit ten thousand meters deep, running straight down to the lower hive, where work was in full swing.

The Blood Angels this time weren't down to just a few hundred like in the original timeline, but even so, their losses were not small.

More than half of Heydrich's fallen Astra Militarum had died fighting alongside these Blood Angels. Heydrich said nothing, but Dante's expression was grim.

It couldn't be helped. The Dark Angels had sent their home-world elite.

The Ultramarines were Tyranid War Veterans as well, and had drilled with Heydrich's auxiliary forces and meshed fairly well. As for Heydrich's own troops, no need to say more: their daily training was all mixed-unit.

The Blood Angels, though, had come with nearly the whole Chapter, and their quality was uneven. On top of that, many of them had gene-seed defects. They hadn't fallen to the Black Rage or the Red Thirst, but some instability while fighting was only to be expected, and in battles this intense that became a real problem.

Anyway, a good portion of Heydrich's dead had been dragged down by these fellows. Some had even died trying to save them.

"Is the shortfall in numbers large? Quite a few of your Blood Angels successor Chapters came this time. Many of them are fleet-based Chapters, and they need to be replenished here."

At that moment Heydrich fell into thought. In the original world, Guilliman had personally reinforced them with Primaris. But now Guilliman was still on his way back to Holy Terra, and as for the Primaris frozen meat, it was all sitting in the fridge.

"Yes. Our gene-seed isn't as stable as the Ultramarines'."

Dante lowered his head, a little ashamed.

"No big deal. There are plenty of planets around here. Just have those fleet-based Chapters take them as home worlds and recruit there. Don't worry about Holy Terra. If they dare make a fuss, I'll wipe them out. Let me tell you, back then..."

"My Lord, please stop talking!!!"

Seeing Heydrich's usual routine starting up again, Dante nearly died of fright. In the original timeline, after the Battle of the Netherworld, Dante had hurled Exterminatus at planets across the nearby sectors to keep the Tyranids from replenishing themselves. This time, of course, he hadn't.

Dante wasn't a lunatic. There was no need for that now.

The Chapters could simply recruit there. As for why Heydrich didn't use his own people, the reason was just as simple.

He was short on manpower himself. He had only been in this world for a little over a decade. He'd barely managed to build up his social structure and talent-training system, and though the foundation was now laid, it would still take at least twenty or thirty years before a boom in talent. For now, the people in his hands were stretched thin.

What's more, he no longer accepted any immigrants, so what remained depended on natural population growth.

At the Imperial birth rate, twenty or thirty years was enough to multiply his population several times over.

Besides, putting his people in with Blood Angels whose values were completely different from theirs would be rather unfair to them. So let those fellows replenish themselves.

"Oh, and you don't need to worry about the Codex Astar-toilet... Codex anymore. Your successor Chapters are one thing, since their supplies can't support expansion. But your parent Chapter, the Blood Angels, can have its headcount cap lifted."

After all, every Chapter had its own territory, and now that the Battle of Baal was over, those successor Chapters would soon return to theirs. Heydrich could supply them with a batch before they left.

But supplies always run out eventually, and they were already embedded in the Imperium's system. Having more people than the supply could support would only cause trouble. The parent Chapter was not a problem.

Heydrich could provide them with weapons and equipment, so there was little to worry about. Besides, given the Blood Angels' current state, even if they were let off the leash, how many troops they could actually churn out was an open question.

"This isn't quite..."

"Here, this is the expansion notice I got from Guilliman."

Heydrich couldn't be bothered with more talk and pulled out Guilliman's handwritten decree.

Sure, the ancestors' laws are not to be changed. But since the ancestor himself had spoken, a little flexibility was fine.

After all, the original Blood Angels had opposed splitting up the Chapter, but Sanguinius was already dead by then. On top of that, the Blood Angels truly had hardly anyone left. They'd even needed to extract gene-seed from Sanguinius's remains, so it ended up the way it did.

Moreover, the Imperium was full of zealots these days, and the parent Chapter was relatively safe. Even the High Lords wouldn't dare brand a Space Marine parent Chapter as traitors on a whim, or the Custodes would genuinely step in.

The successor Chapters, however, had no need to take that risk. Besides, the Imperium now mostly fought policing wars, which suited Chapters perfectly. You couldn't very well break a Legion into pieces to fight policing wars.

So although Guilliman found the Codex Astartes maddening, he had no intention of acting against it.

"Fine. Come with me to the gene-seed vault."

Dante looked over Guilliman's decree and said nothing more. Besides, even if they were allowed to expand freely, how many they could actually raise was a question.

...

Before long, Heydrich arrived at the core gene-seed storage facility of the Arx Angelicum.

Having sensed the Tyranids' advance, the Blood Angels had kept a large stock of gene-seed here. If they couldn't hold out, this would be their last hope. Of course, it had already been planned for evacuation, but the business at the Netherworld had delayed things by a few days, and then there was no need to bother.

"Sure enough, it's Khorne's handiwork. No big deal."

Heydrich picked up one of the samples and studied it closely. Bolstered by the Path of Remembrance, he found Khorne's traces on it.

That guy really did love the Blood Angels deeply. Ten thousand years had passed and the curse hadn't weakened at all.

"I'll handle this for you. We'll start with this batch, and all your successor Chapters will get a batch of purified gene-seed."

Heydrich quickly set to work. Just as he had when cleansing those Sons of Festering Sores earlier, he simply burned it. Of course, burning alone wasn't enough, so he slipped in a bit of private extra.

Or rather, just like his Path seeds, he crudely and directly added the power of the Path. Every recruit implanted with these seeds would receive his people's patent trait: the soul attached directly to the body.

The new gene-seed produced by these people would be the same, and Khorne's influence simply couldn't touch it.

Under these conditions, it would become nearly impossible for Chaos to corrupt them. Scum were the exception, of course. But even scum couldn't defect. The instant they accepted a Chaos blessing, their gene-seed would explode from system incompatibility.