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The training ground went dead silent. The recruiting officer's half-smoked cigarette and his notebook dropped straight into his lap.
What kind of physical specin was this? Heavy ammo crates that normally took eight n and a pulley rig to shift, and these two monsters had just carried them over one-handed?
Perfect Imperial workhorses. Obedient, built like siege engines, and mute on top of it.
"Top-grade." The recruiting officer's eyes glazed over. He abandoned his record board entirely, jumped out from behind the desk, and stared at the two of them with barely concealed hunger. "Absolutely top-grade. Too perfect. Obedient, built like fortresses — put them on the front line and what enemy position couldn't they crack open?"
The fixer struck while the iron was hot.
"These three are headed to Cadia. The one in charge says they can't part with their old mining tools, so..."
"Approved! All of it, approved!" The recruiting officer waved his hand and bellowed. "The small one — Kaelen, right? You get Sergeant. These two big fellows go directly into your personal auxiliary squad. Independent cargo bay, no problem, and two extra cart quotas on top of that."
He paused, then slapped the desk hard. "Go to the armory. Draw two heavy bolters for these two. Standard lasguns would look like toothpicks in their hands. Can't waste heavy-firepower material like this."
Twenty minutes later.
Kaelen walked out holding an identity card stamped "Sergeant," several sets of special transit orders, and two heavy bolter requisition slips.
The whole enlistnt process had gone so smoothly it felt surreal, even to him.
Outside the starport, the massive recruitnt vessel Fearless lood like a black leviathan suspended in the void.
At the boarding ramp, an Adeptus Arbites inspector was running final checks.
This was the strictest point of the whole operation. The place most likely to go wrong.
The fixer's after-service had been thorough. He'd already tipped off the ship's captain and the accompanying inspector well in advance.
At the security checkpoint, fully ard Arbites guards gripped hellguns, eyes sweeping across the three figures. Behind them sat a cargo hauler loaded with "mining equipnt", the disassembled power armor components of Horus and Cullen, packed and crated.
"Identity chip." The guard extended a hand.
Kaelen handed it over. The scanner flashed green. All the forged and backfilled registration docunts appeared on record.
Spotless. Impeccably clean.
The guard frowned, studying the tightly wrapped figures of Horus and Cullen. "Remove the face coverings. Facial verification required."
The air around them dropped two degrees. Face coverings off, Kaelen was reasonably confident no one in this era would recognize Horus on sight, but if Cullen's face got recorded, the Dark Angels' Unforgiven would catch the scent eventually. And once they did, Horus's identity would unravel right along with it.
Before Kaelen could open his mouth, an inspector in an officer's peaked cap walked over and smacked the guard across the back of the head.
"Are you blind? Did you not see the Departnto Munitorum special clearance file? These are top-grade heavy Ogryns. You piss them off and they go berserk, one slap drives your skull into your chest cavity. You planning to cover the survivor benefits yourself?"
The guard's neck retracted. He looked again at the two silent giants, their eyes boring through visor lenses directly into him, and his back broke out in a cold sweat.
Ogryns going berserk and tearing apart guards was nothing new in the Astra Militarum.
"Then... the equipnt in the back..."
"That's the Sergeant's personal property. Higher command authorized no-inspection clearance. Let them through!" The inspector waved impatiently.
The heavy blast door ground slowly upward.
No crates opened. No face coverings removed.
Even the most basic contraband scan was skipped entirely.
The three of them moved through the dim freight corridor and into the belly of the recruitnt vessel, cargo hauler rolling behind them, handcart loaded with heavy bolters.
Far from the lower decks where new recruits were quartered, this was an independent sealed cargo bay, decommissioned once, then quietly reactivated.
The hatch clicked shut. The red airtight seal indicator lit up.
Their fortress aboard this ship. Absolutely secure.
After confirming there were no surveillance devices in the area, Kaelen let out a long breath and collapsed onto one of the crates.
"Safe aboard. Half a month of warp transit to Cadia. Finally, a few days of peace."
Cullen ripped the suffocating dust mask off his head and gulped down the ship's ozone-tinged recycled air in deep lungfuls.
"Boarding a ship like this." He threw the mask to the floor. "I don't want to wear this damn outfit for a single extra day."
Horus unhurriedly unfastened the buckles of his work suit. The heavy canvas slid away, revealing his upper body, muscle packed over muscle, hard as rock.
He ignored Cullen's grumbling. Instead he turned toward the two newly drawn heavy bolters.
The Wolf of Luna picked one up, smoothly racked the bolt, and dropped the magazine.
Fluid. Natural. Like handling an old possession he hadn't seen in years.
"This isn't the old days, my Wolf Lord. If you still had your Legion, the forge world working with you could get you any weapon you wanted. Right now, this gun is all you've got."
Kaelen laughed. A bolter seed a bit underwhelming for a Primarch, didn't it? They were basically equipped with plasma pistols or hand cannons.
"My friend, any weapon, at the right ti, in the right place — will always produce its intended effect."
Horus set the bolter down.
At present he had no spare weapons. Only a ritual power short sword hanging at his waist. Before arriving in this era, he had rarely equipped heavy firepower personally, relying instead on Legion-scale operations to carry the weight.
Perhaps it was ti to study the wisdom of Perturabo and Ferrus.
The Wolf of Luna turned the thought over. Modify the Terminator armor. Mount so standard-issue or las-weaponry onto the fra, for unforeseen needs.
"If I had a forge station and weapon assembly tools right now, I could modify my Terminator armor to provide fire support on the battlefield."
"Lord Lupercal." Cullen cut in. "Your Cataphractii-pattern Terminator armor was already modified to fit your physique. Mounting additional standard-issue or las-weaponry on top of that would be extrely difficult. You'd have to strip the external plating and reorganize the internal servo-system linkages from scratch."
"Then do you have a better approach, Cullen?"
"You yourself are the sharpest weapon the Emperor ever forged."
Cullen said it plainly.
"An Astartes is the sa. Even in power armor with no firearm in hand, he is still a weapon that makes enemies tremble."
Horus's brow furrowed. Visibly.
He found this line of thinking deeply repugnant.
During the Great Crusade, he had never considered himself, his brothers, or his sons to be re killing tools. In his understanding, every warrior who bled for the Imperium had to first be a person.
"Cullen, those words sound no different from the cold, emotionless Custodes who stand at my father's side."
Horus's voice dropped. The pressure in it needed no anger to land.
"I don't know how my brother the Lion taught you. But I believe in only one thing: starlight can hide in the dust, but cold iron can never warm the human heart."
"In war, yes, we are the blade that cleaves the darkness. But what about after the war? When the entire galaxy no longer needs killing, should we simply be discarded like a blunted axe? Cast aside without rcy?"
The words had barely left his mouth when a blood-soaked mory tore through his mind.
A secret buried deep beneath the Imperial Palace on Terra. After the Unification Wars ended, the Imperium's first generation of genetically enhanced warriors.
The Thunder Warriors.
What awaited them was not flowers and glory. It was the Custodes and the First Legion, moving without hesitation, without discrimination, without rcy.
A purge.
➤ Next: The Problem Is the Warhamr Universe's Overall Environnt
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