A "gift" from Terra

"Commissar," he said quietly, his voice low enough that only the two of them could hear, "I know what you've done, and I know you've earned the Lord Primarch's favor. But I must warn you: as long as I remain this unit's military commander, I will not allow any form of personality cult or heretical thinking to continue spreading here."

"My soldiers need obey only two things: the laws of the Imperium and my orders, not some nebulous 'Fireplace' or 'Elder Brother.'"

"Oh?" Alexander raised an eyebrow. "Then what do you intend to do, Colonel? Court-martial all three hundred-odd of them and charge them with... hmm, being too 'loyal'?"

"I will reshape them into true soldiers, the Mordian way." An iron resolve gleamed in Colonel Carsten's eyes. "I will use the strictest discipline, the dullest drill, and the most painstaking uniform and discipline inspections to grind away the 'individuality' they should never have had. I will make them forget those insane ideas and remember what true loyalty to the Emperor means."

Alexander looked at him and suddenly smiled. It was a smile full of pity, as though he were watching a naive child trying to empty the ocean with a spoon.

"Colonel, I admire your courage. Truly."

"Well then, good luck."

With that, he paid the bewildered Imperial officer no further attention. He turned and spread his arms toward his three hundred-odd "family members," whose faces were already filled with hostility and contempt.

"Brothers! Our new regimental commander has brought us our first gift from Terra!"

"Let's welcome him with our loudest roar!"

"For the Emperor! And for... Colonel Carsten!"

"ROAR!!!"

More than three hundred throats of steel erupted in a deafening roar at once. The sound brimmed with strength and fanaticism, but held not a trace of respect for their new commander.

It sounded more like the bloodthirsty, savage roar of beasts in an arena welcoming a challenger they were about to tear apart.

Colonel Carsten's face instantly darkened.

He knew his first war within this unit had already begun. And his enemies were neither Chaos nor Xenos, but his nominal partner and the three hundred and fifty-one fanatics under his command who had offered their souls to the "Fireplace."

The long, painful work of reorganization began amid these strange undercurrents and this atmosphere of confrontation.

As Guilliman's decree had promised, the 99th Regiment, the "Pride of Cadia," received the Imperium's highest priority for reinforcements and supplies. Yet in the face of the Imperium's vast, bloated bureaucracy, "highest priority" remained a bitter joke.

In the first week of reorganization, they received their first shipment of supplies: ten thousand brand-new, crisply pressed ceremonial uniforms from some aristocratic world, embroidered with ornate heraldry in gold thread and accompanied by ridiculous feathered dress hats.

The Imperial Logistics Department clerk escorting the shipment arrogantly explained to a bewildered Colonel Carsten, "These are the latest instructions from the Indomitus Crusade's logistics headquarters. To demonstrate the Imperium's heavenly might, all newly organized units must adopt a standardized uniform. Here are your sizing forms. Fill them out, sign and stamp them in triplicate, and submit them to the Logistics Department's Uniform and Discipline Division for approval."

Looking at the ornate uniforms, which offered no ballistic protection whatsoever, Carsten was so furious he nearly drew his Bolt Pistol and blew the clerk's head off on the spot.

In the second week of reorganization, the thousand standard Cadia-pattern Lasguns they had requested finally arrived. But when they opened the weapon crates, they found a thousand shoddily made gunpowder flintlocks from some feral world, which even required manual loading.

The Adeptus Mechanicus Tech-Priest handling the handover explained in an emotionless synthesized voice, "...By the will of the Machine God, the production capacity of Terra's armories is currently allocated to Space Marine Chapters as a priority. Calculations indicate that, within fifty meters, the damage inflicted by a single shot from this batch of 'Loyalist' Mark I muskets exceeds that of a standard Lasgun by 3.14 percent. They meet combat standards. Please sign for receipt."

Colonel Carsten stared at the muskets, which were more primitive than museum antiques, trembling with rage and unable to utter a word.

In the third week of reorganization, the first batch of replacement troops they had eagerly awaited finally arrived. They were three thousand criminals, gang members, and vagrants from the lowest levels of Terra's hive cities, whom the Adeptus Administratum had stuffed into transports like garbage and shipped to their doorstep.

Every one of them was sallow and emaciated, their eyes filled with apathy, cunning, and hatred of authority. They could not even stand in a basic formation. Within a day, the training uniforms issued to them were filthy, and some had even tried to gamble them away.

As Colonel Carsten looked at these "soldiers," who were unfit even to serve as cannon fodder, a hint of something called "despair" appeared on his iron-hard, resolute face for the first time.

He felt he had come not to reorganize a heroic unit, but to be exiled to a cosmic madhouse populated by lunatics, con men, and scum.

And just as this bureaucracy with its "distinctive Terran character" and these "high-quality" recruits left him overwhelmed and on the verge of collapse...

In stark contrast to Colonel Carsten's harried state, his partner, Commissar Alexander von Lawrence, acted as though nothing were wrong, spending every day in an exceptionally fulfilling and cheerful fashion.

Faced with the ten thousand ceremonial uniforms, Alexander showed no anger. Instead, with a grand wave of his hand, he announced the "99th Regiment's First Military Fashion Show." He had the three hundred-odd veterans put on the ridiculous dress uniforms and strut across the training ground, competing for the titles of "Prettiest Cross-Dresser" and "Most Dashing Hunk." The winners would receive a bottle of aged wine from his private collection, produced on some now-extinct world.

The entire training ground became a sea of laughter. The soldiers doubled over laughing, considerably easing the usual atmosphere of repressed madness. In the end, they used the uniforms as targets during shooting practice and blasted them to shreds.

Faced with the thousand primitive gunpowder flintlocks, Alexander did not complain. Instead, he announced the founding of the "99th Regiment Vintage Weapons Research Association." He personally led a group of veterans and recruits with a keen interest in machinery in dismantling and studying every musket, then "radically modified" them under the "technical guidance" of a Tech-Priest who had been at least partly coerced.

They fitted these antique guns with laser sights, switched to high-explosive ammunition, and even went so far as to strap chainsaw bayonets beneath their muzzles. In the end, these "antiques" became bizarre-looking, astonishingly powerful close-range killing machines steeped in the style of "Ork technology."

And when it came to the three thousand replacement troops treated like garbage, Alexander displayed a patience and warmth that Colonel Carsten could not comprehend at all, like a loving father.