Ten years passed in a flash. Over those years, the Green Templars, the Chapter Evan belonged to, fought a guerrilla war among the stars. In their own words, they hunted.
Recruits like Evan mainly carried out reconnaissance missions, occasionally pursuing fleeing enemies.
For those of White Scars stock, the most important thing was—speed! From Space Fighters to Land Speeders in the atmosphere and tactical bikes on the ground, the warriors of the Green Templars could handle any fast vehicle with ease.
After ten years of training, Evan had mastered all basic tactics and weapons handling. He was now a fully qualified Space Marine.
Why ten years? Because Astartes augmentation was based on gene-seed. A single seed could transform a mortal into a Space Marine. The failure rate was quite high, but unless the process had reached its final stages, the gene-seed could still be recovered even if the augmentation failed.
This all-important gene-seed was mainly obtained once a Space Marine's first seed, located in his neck, matured in his fifth year. An Apothecary could then easily remove it through surgery.
The second gene-seed matured in the tenth year, but it was inside the Space Marine's chest cavity, making surgical extraction more dangerous. Leaving it in place also allowed it to keep releasing special biotin that helped the Astartes grow stronger. In most cases, a battlefield Apothecary only harvested it after the Astartes died in combat.
Primaris Space Marines, however, had solved this problem. Their newly implanted chorionic gland took over the gene-seed's task of gradually releasing biotin. Even removing both seeds had little effect on their subsequent development. Moreover, their physiques were even tougher than those of ordinary Space Marines, making death during surgery virtually impossible.
The gene-seed's other property-inheriting the previous warrior's combat experience-was replaced by the exceptional learning ability granted by a Primaris warrior's newly added capacity for parallel thought. Gene-seed usually imparted its previous bearer's experience slowly over several decades, but Primaris warriors could learn that experience and knowledge themselves in less time.
Having fully recovered from surgery, Evan was finally ready for the last rite of becoming an Astartes—donning his Power Armour. This was a Space Marine's most important ritual, proof that everyone recognized him as a qualified Space Marine.
As Instructor Fro put it, "Although the Chapter Master requires every Primaris Space Marine to spend at least ten years as a recruit, he's the first in nearly a century to graduate right on his tenth anniversary."
Every Chapter trained its recruits for a different length of time, but that duration revealed how intense the fighting was in the region where the Chapter operated.
Chapters in peaceful regions might train recruits for fifty or even a hundred years. For Chapters stationed in areas of extremely intense warfare, the shortest recruitment period was... none at all. In the Carcharodons Chapter, for example, recruits could be dragged onto the battlefield halfway through Neophyte Transformation. Those who survived continued the process.
The attendants devoutly chanted hymns of blessing and anointed Evan with blessed fragrant oils. Assisted by various machines, they fitted the modular Mark X Power Armour onto his body piece by piece. When they reached the pauldrons—the hardest parts of the entire suit—recruit instructor Florisi insisted on engraving 13 in Old High Gothic on the inside of Evan's shoulder armour, to protect the warrior he had long held in high regard.
His fully developed black carapace connected to the armour's servo systems for the first time. With a mere thought, Evan could move the Power Armour freely, as though it were part of his body.
Clad in imposing white Power Armour, Evan stood at the entrance to the arming chamber. Numerous Servitors and Combat Servitors knelt around him—the latter mainly survivors of failed Astartes augmentation—to welcome another new warrior into the Chapter. From this day onward, another recruit would inherit the designation Rookie 13. Henceforth, he was Evan.
Today, Evan would report to the Fourth Company. His friend Gajie had graduated six months before him and already joined it.
Here was another rule that differed from the Codex Astartes.
Newly serving warriors were generally assigned to reserve companies as Destruction Squad members, destroying enemies with firepower. Only experienced veterans served in Assault Squads, wielding melee weapons and dancing on the knife-edge of death.
Did the White Scars have such a rule? Not a chance. Everyone got a bike. Off you went to race.
Evan walked down the corridor. Around him were no longer the recruits he had spent ten years roughhousing with, but true Astartes warriors from various combat units. A large 4/3 was painted on the dormitory door. Presumably, this was the Fourth Company's Third Combat Squad. Evan pushed the door open, and seven Astartes immediately turned their eyes toward him.
(Note: The White Scars and their successor Chapters call their companies brotherhoods. For consistency, they are referred to as companies here.)
"Oh-ho-ho! Old buddy, you're here! Come on, let me introduce you all. This is Evan, my good brother from the recruit company. He's a pretty good Marauder-type Motorcycle rider."
"Hello, everyone. I'm Evan. I'm new here, so I look forward to learning from you." Evan looked around. Including himself, there were eight Astartes. Only he, Gajie, and one warrior he did not know were Primaris Astartes. The other five were ordinary Astartes, three of whom were already century-old veterans.
He remembered his roommate's little stories from before he transmigrated saying that Astartes all had private quarters, along with their own storage rooms for combat equipment and other facilities.
Now... well, never mind. Rumors and reality were different, after all.
"Come on, let me introduce you. This is our Combat Group leader, William. He's been fighting for over a hundred and ninety years, has plenty of combat experience, and is steadily approaching the great milestone of two hundred years of service."
"Hello, squad leader."
"Good, good! Another fresh recruit for our Combat Group. Welcome, welcome. How about you take this bed?"
"Of course. I'll follow your arrangements." Evan did not care where he slept.
"Now, this is our deputy squad leader, Kshevich."
"Hello, recruit. I hope you live a little longer."
"Uh, hello, hello..."
"Don't mind him, Evan. That's just how he is. That's already the greatest blessing he can give you."
"This is Charles, and this is..."
Under normal circumstances, Gajie, as a sniper, should have belonged to a Suppressor Squad. His task would have been to use a jump pack to seize high ground and carry out anti-materiel sniper attacks. But the Green Templars Chapter had its own unique organization.
What son of the White Scars wasn't an expert racer? They carried anti-materiel sniper rifles and blasted speeding enemy armoured vehicles apart while racing along themselves!
Evan had joined a battle company.
At that very moment, another Space Marine Chapter—the Shadow Venom Blade Chapter, an Iron Hands Successor Chapter conducting a penitent crusade—was preparing to head for a rebel world that had risen up four hundred years earlier: the Atris Terrestrial Colony in the Atris System.
After reaching the outskirts of the system, the Shadow Venom Blade Chapter found no enemies. Only numerous wrecked warships suggested that a battle had taken place there. Scanning the floating debris revealed an enemy they had not expected-Orks.
Orks were weapons of war through and through, a warrior race suspected to have been created by an advanced civilization using biochemical modification technology.
They had enormous heads, and their huge mouths took up a substantial portion of them. Their powerful limbs could easily smash human armour. Unlike ordinary organisms, their bodies were animal, plant, and fungus all at once. They could replenish their energy by eating or by basking in sunlight and photosynthesizing.
Ork reproduction was unusual as well, using spores much like mushrooms. In short, if an Ork's corpse was not immediately burned after death, it released vast numbers of microscopic spores. Within a few months, countless Orks could sprout from the soil.
If you thought the Orks terrorized the galaxy through their powerful physiques alone, you were gravely mistaken. Every Ork was surrounded by an invisible psychic energy unique to their kind. Since Orks only shouted "Waaagh!," this energy was also called Waaagh! energy.
In a certain sense, this energy could warp the physical laws of reality. For example, an Ork might build a ramshackle bike and reckon it ought to run. Even if it violated the laws of physics, that wreck of a bike could miraculously start moving. Thus, this was also called the power of belief.
The horrors of the Orks did not stop there. Many of those that sprouted from the ground were tiny "deformed runts" known as Gretchin, the most despised creatures at the bottom of the hierarchy. Unhappy? Beat a Gretchin. Happy? Beat a Gretchin. A missile lacked a guidance system? Stick a Gretchin on it, and Gretchin guidance was ready to go.
The slightly larger ones were called Ork Boyz. When these ordinary Orks gathered together, if one of them thought, I reckon I can be the boss, he could influence the others' waaagh energy and really begin growing bigger and stronger until he became the boss.
Defeating a powerful enemy in single combat or doing anything else that earned the Orks' admiration accelerated this process.
An Ork who became a Big Boss generated an enormous Waaagh! energy field around himself, attracting more Orks and growing even stronger.
If you thought they were merely a barbaric race that became formidable when gathered together, you had been fooled again. Their technology did not need to be developed. It seemed to be directly imprinted in their genes. The more Waaagh! there was, the faster their technology advanced.
If enemies were present, or the Orks remained in a constant state of war, their technology grew explosively. Perhaps this month they fought you with crude axes, but the next month you would discover that, according to Ork belief, their big guns ought to fire.
Within a few years, the Orks could enter the age of spaceflight. Their technology also had distinctive features: large calibers, tremendous power, and instability.
Most frightening of all, their collective intelligence changed with the size of their waaagh energy field. Ten Orks together might be ten idiots, but ten billion Orks together could become ten billion clever bastards.
They had a terrifying capacity for war and an equally terrifying desire for it. As the Imperial Daily sharply observed, they were the happiest race in the entire galaxy. As long as there was a fight, they were overjoyed. If there wasn't one, they created the conditions for one.
There was only one way to defeat the Orks: kill their boss, then wipe them out before they could gather in sufficient numbers, burning every corpse and the surrounding ground.
The Imperium's usual approach was to send in Astartes, the navy, and the Astra Militarum-a space navy composed of mortals, commonly called the IG-to swiftly deal with small-scale Ork invasions. If a large-scale invasion proved too difficult to drive out, it issued Exterminatus outright, destroying all life on a planet, generally with Virus Bombs, Vortex Torpedoes, or orbital bombardment.
Of course, there was usually no need to deploy Vortex Torpedoes that would destroy the entire planet. Virus Bombs were enough, and an ecosystem could gradually be transplanted back afterward, though that would take a very long time.
Clearly, clearing an entire planet of Orks was far too difficult for the Shadow Venom Blade Chapter, which had spent over eighty years on a penitent crusade without resupply and had only around three hundred warriors left. They did not even have enough fuel to burn the corpses. They immediately decided to request aid from other Space Marine Chapters.
The Shadow Venom Blade Chapter's Strike Cruiser rapidly advanced toward the Atris colony world. They needed to stabilize the situation as soon as possible, at least preventing too many Orks from spawning before reinforcements from other Chapters arrived.
If they could not curb the war, they had to curb the enemy's numbers by continually assassinating the bosses of small Ork clans. Their technology would not advance while they were scattered.
The Green Templars received the emergency transmission. Chapter Master Deika swiftly recalled all his forces and completed the muster within two hours. The delay was mainly because a few lads had gone out rac—on routine patrol a little too far away.
The Green Templars' Strike Cruiser, the Blessed Forest, was equipped with three lance batteries for long-range attacks, along with eight Macro-cannon batteries on each side to destroy any enemy vessel that dared approach. Comparatively speaking, it carried rather few Macro-cannons. During repairs following its last battle, four badly damaged guns had been removed from each side and replaced with eight torpedo tubes.
What made this ship special was the addition of two small hangars, with exits at the very rear of the cruiser, capable of deploying fighter and bomber squadrons.
Drop Pods hardly needed mentioning. The Emperor's Angels of Death excelled at boarding enemy vessels or plunging onto planets to carry out decapitation strikes.
The Blessed Forest activated its Gellar Field, a protective field specifically designed to prevent Warp Daemons from invading the ship during Warp travel. Its Warp Engine began operating at full capacity. The Chapter Master understood the Orks' nature. Every minute earlier they reached the battlefield meant fewer casualties in resolving this crisis.
In Chapter Master Deika's personal opinion, roaming guerrilla warfare was what they did best as a White Scars Successor Chapter. They were better suited to fighting enemies such as Chaos Space Marines, whose combat effectiveness dropped significantly when their supply lines were cut and their warehouses raided.
Orks, however, had no supply lines to begin with. Their weapons and equipment were all handmade from battlefield scrap. Even if their so-called supply lines were severed, they could continue fighting through photosynthesis. They might even become more savage because they could no longer eat their "delicious" mushrooms.
The Imperial Fists Chapter and its Successor Chapters were better at battles that required holding ground to the bitter end. For frontal assaults, the Ultramarines and their Successor Chapters were experts.
"Connect to the Techmarine's communications channel... Techmarine, how much promethium do we have left? Are all five Dreadnoughts operational? How many heavy guns are still usable?"
"Static-Chapter Master, we have three thousand tonnes of promethium remaining. The Dreadnoughts are in good condition. As for artillery, hmm, counting the auxiliary troops' tanks, we have a total of a hundred and twenty-eight guns." The Techmarine's slightly electronic voice was highly distinctive.
Although they had only one mothership, their armaments were plentiful. This was also one reason they slept in shared dormitories: housing Dreadnoughts and vast quantities of weapons required a great deal of space.
Thirty-one hours until we reach our destination. Hopefully we won't be too late, the Chapter Master thought. He decided to visit the warriors and bolster their morale. Though he did not want to admit it, there was a good chance that after this battle, he would never see many of his battle-brothers again.
Meanwhile, after Evan received the news, squad leader William dragged every member of the squad to the armoury.
"Squad leader, are you sure we need to bring all this?"
"Of course. Take as much as you can carry. As long as it fits inside the Drop Pod, stuff it in."
Gajie had been the one to ask. By now, he was bundled up like a dumpling in equipment and ammunition. Despite being a sniper, he carried not only a specially made high-powered Lasgun on his back, but also a Plasma Gun and a shoulder-mounted Capacitor Cannon. A ring of Melta Bombs hung around his waist, three rows of grenades covered his chest, a Bolter and Combat Knife were attached to his thighs, and several loops of Bolter ammunition were wrapped around his calves.
As they spoke, the elite Astartes veteran wound several more loops of Bolter ammunition around Gajie's arms.
"Squad leader, if this ammunition cooks off, there won't even be ashes left of me."
"What are you scared of? With Orks, a weapon actually hitting you is practically supernatural. As long as the Shadow Venom Blade Chapter holds them back and keeps killing their bosses, there won't be enough of them to develop technology that can penetrate your pauldrons. When the fighting starts, just show them a shoulder and blast your other weapons into the crowds. Remember, aim for the biggest Orks."
Apart from the three newly graduated Primaris Space Marines, the other five had all fought Orks before. William in particular had fought them in over a dozen battles, large and small. His experience boiled down to one lesson: when fighting them head-on in a defensive battle, bring plenty of weapons and pour fire into the densest crowds and the biggest Orks.
Evan was not much better off. After putting on his Nuclear Power Pack, he had a huge promethium tank fitted onto his back, with a spraying nozzle attached to his left arm. In his right hand, he held William's custom Twin-linked Bolter—simply two Bolters tied together with leather straps, since welding them might get you branded a heretic by the Techmarine and those superstitious Adeptus Mechanicus members. Bolter rounds covered his chest, another ring of Melta Bombs hung around his waist, and a Chainsword and Land Mines were strapped to his legs.
Evan said nothing. After that infusion of souls, he understood all too well the horror of the Orks' endless numbers. Most Astartes warriors died fighting them hand-to-hand after running out of ammunition. The squad leader's insistence on bringing extra ammunition was entirely understandable, until...
"Squad leader, why are you hanging two loops of detonators on my helmet?"
"You think supplies will reach us easily once the fighting starts? Whatever else you say about Orks, their supernatural antiaircraft weapons are downright uncanny. Supply ships have a hell of a time getting down."
"I understand that, but why hang detonators on my head?"
"Are you stupid? Tie a detonator to anything that explodes, and you've got an improvised bomb. Tie those detonators to Bolter rounds, and they're perfectly good grenades."
For a moment, Evan could not decide whether his veteran squad leader was impressively experienced or bizarrely inventive.
William was attaching a grenade rack to his own Bolter when his ears suddenly twitched. He immediately turned toward the doorway.
"What's wrong, squad leader... Lord Chapter Master!" Gajie turned around and jumped in surprise.
"Your hearing hasn't deteriorated, William."
"Of course not. No matter how noisy things get, I'll never forget the sound of your Terminator Armour. That sound has pulled me back from the Emperor's side several times." Space Marines called dying in battle "returning one's soul to the Throne," meaning returning to the Emperor.
"Haha, same as ever, William. Looking at that loadout, you'd think you were planning to blow up the Eye of Terror."
"I wouldn't need to make such a fuss for Chaos warriors. But since we're facing Orks, I'm going to have a good time killing."
"Good, good. Enjoy the slaughter, old brother."
Chapter Master Deika walked toward the next squad. He was not worried about William. Covering himself in equipment like this was a lingering habit from his first battle against the Orks. It also showed that he was eager to fight but had no intention of dying. The warriors sitting silently to one side, soothing their Power Swords' machine spirits, were the ones whose morale he really needed to bolster.
Loaded down with equipment, the Fourth Company's Third Combat Squad arrived at the ship's chapel, where the Chaplain was giving everyone their final blessings. Several members of the squad, of course, were already on the verge of dying of embarrassment.
Everyone else carried ammunition crates and weapon cases. At worst, they attached ammunition hoppers to their packs and connected them to their Bolters with feed belts. Why were we the only idiots who strapped everything to ourselves? Boo-hoo.
Fortunately, strapping on all that equipment had taken so long that they were the last squad to reach the chapel. They hid silently at the back, not daring to make a sound. The Chapter Chaplain looked at the final squad in surprise, but understanding dawned on his face when he spotted William.
Once the Chaplain finished the blessings, the entire Third Squad fled straight to the Drop Pod launch area, trying to get inside before their other battle-brothers arrived. Absolutely no one else could see them. It was too embarrassing-no, too embarrassing for Astartes.
As a combat attendant prepared to open the Drop Pod's hatch with all due sacred ceremony, he looked up and met the murderous gazes behind several Astartes' tactical lenses. He hurriedly opened the door.
"Good grief. Space Marines really are something. Just look at that killing intent when they're off to war," the combat attendant muttered.
Before you continue