Connections? Parachuted In?

"You want my unit to take in this soldier? There isn't even a reason listed on this Departmento Munitorum transfer order. Is he some well-connected kid?"

"Are you dreaming? What well-connected kid would want to worm his way into the Astra Militarum?"

"What if he was filtered up from the Planetary Defense Force?"

"Give me a break."

Inside the metal compartment of the barracks, a colonel and a senior commissar were arguing over a sudden Departmento Munitorum transfer order. The document was so crude and strange that anyone would initially assume it was a malicious prank or a conspiracy by saboteurs. Yet the intricate seals on it genuinely proved that it had come from those pigs at the Departmento Munitorum.

Colonel Mark, commanding officer of the Astra Militarum's 37th Regiment stationed on Karmaklan Agri-World, had always enjoyed a good relationship with his commissar. Both men had survived countless brutal campaigns, forging steadfast friendship and unshakable devout faith amid war. The Departmento Munitorum rewarded them for their outstanding contributions—though in truth, so few people survived each battle that their continued survival made them stand out all the more.

Yet none of those who survived campaign after campaign were ordinary. They were the finest of the finest, distinguished from millions of soldiers. The combat experience and command ability of these veteran survivors and officers were among the Imperium's most precious assets.

That was precisely why the two of them had been rewarded with an assignment to this scenic Karmaklan Agri-World, free of severe industrial pollution, where they trained the recruits of the 37th Regiment while awaiting deployment to purge the Emperor's enemies.

Colonel Mark curled his lip, the scar on his face twisting with it. "Then let's see what this kid can do."

"If he's useless, I won't let someone like him disgrace the God-Emperor's glory."

Commissar Aude worked the action of the bolt pistol in his hand and gave a vicious grin that only the two of them understood.

"Soap? What kind of parents would give their child such a damn name?"

Colonel Mark looked at the young man before him. His black hair and black eyes seemed somewhat out of place, but Mark's long years of service had taught him that the Imperium was vast, and all sorts of people were perfectly normal.

This Soap was Lin Fan. After speaking with the Emperor, he had been dragged by Trajan and his corn-colored companions into a secret chamber for all manner of training. Lin Fan could lift weapons that ordinary mortals could not, but his only problem was controlling the threshold at which he shattered things. After crushing piles of weapons and daily necessities, Lin Fan finally learned to control his strength under the Adeptus Custodes' training, using it perfectly without crushing anything in his hands.

At the same time, the various champions and shooting prodigies among the Adeptus Custodes helped Lin Fan improve in close combat and marksmanship. His shooting earned unanimous approval throughout the Adeptus Custodes. As long as something lay within Lin Fan's line of sight, his shooting was on par with any master marksman among them. Yet his mortal body imposed the same limitation: his fighting skill could only be called the limit of what a mortal could achieve. Though he could shatter weapons and destroy anything sturdy, his unmodified and unenhanced mortal flesh could not match the movements of any Adeptus Custodes. He could see what an Adeptus Custodes facing him intended to do, but he simply could not evade those attacks. Their instruction had ended. They could no longer strengthen a mortal body any further, and could only hope that Lin Fan's future enemies would be brutes like the Blood God—charging headlong into his embrace and being torn to pieces.

Afterward, they quietly mobilized the forces they had planted throughout the Imperium's various departments to create an ordinary yet utterly flawless identity for Lin Fan. It contained every piece of information needed for his false identity, and to fit the Imperium's administrative inefficiency, it was deliberately buried beneath mountains of documents in some unknown archive.

Unless someone knew beforehand and had an agent search for it, anyone trying to dig into Lin Fan's background would experience a true mountain of books and sea of paperwork. Those heaps upon heaps of documents were enough to wear down any unprepared fool until he died of old age.

But when asked what name he wanted, Lin Fan immediately declared that he wanted to be called "Soap."

This everyday item had still endured through the long years, after all. Making soap was hardly difficult.

But the Adeptus Custodes still shared Colonel Mark's opinion of the name. "What kind of garbage name is that?"

Lin Fan did not care. He had been waiting for someone to mock his name so he could experience that ancient 141st Task Force storyline with its proper 40k flavor.

Of course, Lin Fan would probably have a hard time finding his Price.

"I think Soap is a good name. Simple, distinctive, and memorable."

Commissar Aude stroked his large chin and offered his opinion.

The Imperial commissar aesthetic.

"Alright, Soap. I don't care what kind of connections you have at the Departmento Munitorum, but now that you're in my unit, you obey orders and serve the Emperor. Understood?" Colonel Mark glared at Lin Fan with an unfriendly look.

"Yes!" Lin Fan's military boots struck the ground with a sharp impact as he saluted the colonel and commissar.

After meeting his superiors, Lin Fan was assigned to 3rd Company, a small company of five hundred men. It had only recently been formed and lacked training; even its equipment was not the best. All the best gear had been assigned to 1st Company and 2nd Company. Still, it was far better off than 4th Company and 5th Company below them, which existed merely to fill out the reserves. At least every man in 3rd Company had a Lasgun.

As a newly established Astra Militarum regiment, the 37th Regiment's personnel could not be called weak. Unless the Imperium had truly been driven to desperation, most Astra Militarum soldiers were already the best warriors that could be selected from among ordinary mortals. They were not all Rambos, but most of them would have been considered tough men in Lin Fan's era.

The shortage of standard equipment could only be blamed on the Imperium having too few Forge Worlds and too many armies. Every Forge World operating beyond capacity was like a gigantic mouth, endlessly devouring astronomical quantities of minerals fed into it, then continuously producing vast amounts of weapons and ammunition for the Astra Militarum stationed in every direction.

The regiment to which the 37th belonged defended the entire Casare Sector. Their equipment had to be manufactured on Kasare I Forge World within the sector and delivered to the troops by transport fleets. If the Emperor blessed them, the next shipment of equipment would probably arrive in three years. Until then, they could only rely on crude weapons manufactured by this planet's basic industrial facilities to equip the unit.

At 3rd Company's station, Lin Fan was assigned down through platoon-level and squad-level combat units, eventually meeting the burly tough men who would be around him.

"Hello. You don't look like a native of this world, do you?" A bald, honest-looking giant of a man, nearly one hundred and eighty centimeters tall, greeted Lin Fan.

"Ah, I was transferred from another world." Lin Fan was equally astonished as he looked at the big man. Those muscles, that build—he was practically a miniature Space Marine.

"I'm Sergeant Kreik, 37th Regiment, Casare Astra Militarum, 3rd Company, 1st Platoon, Assault Squad. You're one of us now. Go over to the squad barracks and put together a bed." Kreik's thick fingers, so thick one might worry about their usefulness, pointed toward a distant underground bunker.

Lin Fan felt that the place looked more like an emptied-out cellar than barracks.

He carried his backpack all the way over, and the strong smell of cooking confirmed that his judgment had been correct.

Four or five burly men, each a size smaller than Kreik but still far sturdier than Lin Fan, emerged from the cellar. They cracked their knuckles, their expressions unfriendly.

"Hey, kid. We've got an old tradition in the assault squad. First, you have to prove yourself. Beat any one of us, and you'll earn our respect. Otherwise, get lost and help us haul ammunition! Hahaha!" Rough laughter rang out, and Lin Fan's first conflict after arriving at the military station began just like that.

In the distant forest, Commissar Aude watched Lin Fan's every movement through binoculars. Not every new Astra Militarum recruit made him this wary, but a single soldier being transferred so abruptly by the Departmento Munitorum was exceptionally strange. In over a decade of experience, Aude had never seen an assignment that consisted of only one soldier.

The Departmento Munitorum sometimes produced idiots who made bizarre arrangements, but Commissar Aude still felt there was something wrong with this man. It had nothing to do with evidence or intelligence. His instincts simply kept ringing alarms.

Commissar Aude had risen step by step from an apprentice commissar to his current position through several previous campaigns, even gaining a bolt pistol of his own, by relying on those instincts. He believed his instincts were the Emperor's guidance and holy decree, recognition of his Loyalty.

Commissar Aude disliked people like Lin Fan, who had been parachuted in. Service in the Astra Militarum ultimately had a fixed term. When a soldier was fortunate enough to survive the battlefield and return home, the Departmento Munitorum awaited him with generous retirement benefits. It might be an estate, or perhaps a position in a department on his homeworld with a steady salary, allowing him to live out the rest of his life in peace and leisure.

Those benefits were far better than what the Planetary Defense Force received, so there were always plenty of people from relatively safe worlds trying every possible way to transfer from the Planetary Defense Force into the Astra Militarum, eagerly waiting for retirement.

The Casare Sector was such a peaceful place, far from the Imperium's borders. Most people on its planets would never see the great enemies and horrors that Commissar Aude had encountered in their entire lives. They had not even seen a proper rebellion.

Naturally, that was thanks to their planetary governor being a capable, decent old man. Even while meeting the Imperial tithe, he still tried to create a green paradise where the people of his planet could live with enough food and clothing. The Imperium was vast—vast enough that some planetary rulers governed so badly that even Orks would manage better than they did. Yet the Imperium's sheer size also left enough room for truly capable, decent people who loved the citizens of their worlds.

Commissar Aude would catch Soap by the tail and throw him out of the Astra Militarum without mercy. If things grew worse, the commissar would not mind letting the machine spirit of his long-unused bolt pistol roar once more, just as it had when he executed deserters and cowards in the past.