"The Emperor has not abandoned you! He let you survive so that you could bring the flames of war back to the enemies who destroyed your homes!"
"From today onward, the 99th Regiment, the Pride of Cadia, is no longer just a designation!"
"It is a hearth! A home!"
He pointed to Sergeant Orik beside him.
"Veterans like Sergeant Orik are the hottest, glowing coals in this hearth!"
Then he pointed to the recruit who had been knocked to the ground and had only just climbed back to his feet.
"And recruits like you are the newest, driest firewood in our home!"
He spread his arms as though he meant to embrace the entire camp.
"Every one of us is part of this hearth! We will use our hatred to kindle the flames! We will use our unity to sustain their heat! We will use our sacrifice to make those flames burn higher and brighter!"
"We will become the hottest branding iron in the Emperor's hand! We will sear the Emperor's wrath into the face of every xenos and heretic!"
"Now! Tell me! You forgotten embers! Are you willing to burn again in this home?!"
His words exploded like thunder in the depths of every soldier's soul.
The numbness in their eyes began to thaw.
In its place came an emotion suppressed for so long that it had almost been forgotten-hope.
A feverish hope born of finding somewhere to belong and a reason to exist.
"...We are!"
Someone in the crowd let out the first roar.
Then came a second, a third...
At last, the entire camp erupted in an earth-shaking roar, like the bellowing of wild beasts.
"-WE ARE!!!"
Alexander watched the soldiers before him begin to "burn." Seeing the fervor and adoration on their faces, he smiled in satisfaction.
His "hearth" had been built.
Now he only needed to wait for the first battle to... feed its fire.
War came sooner than anyone had expected.
In the third week of Alexander's "ideological reorganization" of the 99th Regiment, an urgent order arrived from sector high command on that godforsaken little asteroid.
The order was brief and brutal: an Ork Waaagh! fleet of unknown size had bypassed the outer early-warning outposts and, with a savage maneuver that amounted to leaping straight into their faces, plunged directly into the heart of the Taranis System. Its target was the system's most important agricultural world.
This planet was the breadbasket of the entire subsector. Billions of Imperial citizens, along with the Astra Militarum stationed there, depended on its vast fields and enormous food-processing plants. If Viridia fell, the resulting chain reaction would be catastrophic.
As the nearest and only mobile force still drawing breath, the 99th Regiment, the Pride of Cadia, was ordered to embark and depart within twelve hours. It would serve as the first wave of reinforcements to Viridia Prime and hold the key food-producing regions at any cost until the main fleet arrived.
For the 99th Regiment before its reorganization, this order would have been nothing less than a death sentence. Sending a band of battered survivors to fight an Ork Waaagh! of unknown size? That was no different from tossing a rusty spoon into a meat grinder running at full speed.
But after their baptism in Alexander's "hearth" theory, when the order reached every soldier's ears, it provoked an excitement bordering on ecstasy.
"Orks! It's the Orks!" A scar-faced veteran who had once been a Hive City gang enforcer excitedly licked his cracked lips. "I've been itching to kick those green bastards' heads around like balls!"
"At last, a chance..." The recruit whom Orik had once seized by the collar now gripped his Lasgun tightly, the flames of vengeance burning in his eyes. "To avenge my family! For the Emperor! And for... the Commissar!"
Despair had been transformed into longing, hatred channeled into drive. They no longer feared death, because the idea of "home" had given them something more important than life-a sense of belonging and honor. They yearned for a glorious, decisive victory to prove to their Commissar, Alexander, that they were not trash. They were embers capable of setting the plains ablaze.
At regimental headquarters, however, the mood was far less optimistic than among the soldiers.
The regimental commander, Colonel Valeus, a middle-aged man with half-gray hair and deeply sunken eyes, stared fixedly at the blinking red icon on the star chart that represented the Ork fleet. He was a typical Imperial officer, born into a military family: meticulous, rigid, but experienced. Alexander's "family theory" among the soldiers instinctively provoked an almost physical revulsion and wariness in him. In his view, an army needed discipline and obedience, not some nebulous notion of "warmth."
Yet he also had to admit that this young Commissar's arrival had indeed rekindled... a kind of "vitality" he could not understand in a force on the brink of collapse.
"Commissar," Colonel Valeus said hoarsely without looking up, "what do you think?"
Alexander stood beside him, his black Commissar's uniform lending him a particularly straight-backed presence in the dim light of headquarters.
"An opportunity, Colonel. An opportunity for the 99th Regiment to prove its worth to the Imperium once more," Alexander replied calmly.
"Prove its worth?" Colonel Valeus gave a self-mocking laugh. "We're only at seventy percent of our authorized strength, with virtually no heavy weapons. Half the engines on our Valkyrie transports are still waiting in the repair queue. We can't even issue three spare power packs to every soldier. You call this an opportunity? I call it marching to our deaths."
"Marching to our deaths and making a sacrifice are two different things, Colonel." Alexander walked up to the star chart, the map of the system reflected in his pale golden eyes. "Marching to our deaths is a meaningless waste. Sacrifice is the honorable price paid to protect something more important."
He reached out and placed a finger on the green planet of Viridia Prime.
"On this planet, there are farmers and workers, their wives and children. Just like our own families once were, they are unarmed, facing the butcher's blade. If we do not go, they will die. Their homes will become slaughterhouses and latrines for the Orks."
"My people, my 'family,' all understand this."
Colonel Valeus raised his head and, for the first time, studied the young man before him seriously. In Alexander's eyes, he saw neither hesitation nor fear, only a conviction like steel-no, something that burned hotter than steel.
"...I need a plan, Commissar. A plan that will let us survive and complete the mission. Not a rousing speech before battle."
Before you continue