Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

Rhamiel, Battle Brother of the Grey Knights’ 2nd Brotherhood never thought he would ever wake again. He remembered his death, the feeling of a power sword impaling him through the chest still crystal clear in his mind and … there had been something afterwards. Something beyond his death. A battle and a conversation. He recalled both, though faintly, like a dream that lingered only at the edges of his mind, but unlike a dream, it didn’t fade. 

“Welcome back to the realm of the living, servants of the Imperium,” an imposing voice reverberated through the wide-open space, making Rhamiel abort his attempts to recall that fuzzy memory in more detail. He focused, eyes snapping open and fixating on the distant form of the speaker- Only to widen. “I am Octavian Gaius, of His Majesty’s Adeptus Custodes. I serve as the primary liaison between the Imperium and the woman who’s responsible for your presence here. My mandate comes directly from the Captain-General, so do not think you have the right to question me. Now stay silent and listen as I am about to describe what is going to happen in the near future. I suggest you do not deviate; your lives have been spared, or even saved by Lady Echidna, but she is not one for third chances. Not that she will have to get her hands dirty, as I will hunt you down myself if you endanger my mission by causing her trouble. I care not whether you are a citizen, a guardsman, a Sororitas, an Astartes or a Grey Knight. I. Will. Kill. You.”

Rhamiel was on his feet and in a battle stance before the first word even fully left the auramite-clad warrior’s lips. He idly noted the lack of his wargear, and the fact that he seemed to be wearing a basic tunic made of a coarse fabric. His psychic presence reached out searchingly and linked up with three of his brethren, which allowed him to breathe a sigh of relief. One presence was missing, but it should have been two. Rhamiel himself should have been dead. Still, it was a pleasant surprise to find the Brother-Justicar and two more of his Battle-Brothers still drawing breath. 

He did no more than that, for he knew to do so would be to court death, and he recalled vowing not to waste his life on worthless causes. Octavian’s presence was a physical thing that filled the wide open space, coiling around the necks of every single soul present. It was a killing intent honed over centuries, sharpened into a weapon both precise and devastating.

That single Custodian felt not an ounce of doubt in his capability to slaughter every last person within the room, despite there being hundreds of Space Marines present. Rhamiel’s gut told him it was not arrogance, but simple confidence. No, it was more than that. Octavian knew with absolute certainty that he would win, even if all of them were properly armed and armoured.

Not that they were, so it was a moot point anyway. If they fought, it would be a slaughter, an atrociously wasteful and pointless one at that. Rhamiel’s memory of that conversation might have been fuzzy, but some things stuck with him. Foremost of which was a certainty that the psyker they’d come to eliminate was a lethal foe of the Archenemy. 

Without taking his eyes off the Custodian, Rhamiel reunited with his Battle-Brothers, their psychic link allowing the four of them to move as part of a single cohesive whole even without exchanging words. He felt some surprise, tinged with suspicion from his brothers and it was easy to see why: they’d seen him die, and now here he was, hale and whole again. 

He could only hope they wouldn’t insist on his death as a precaution, but knew there was little he could do to convince the Justiciar if he deemed it a necessity. It was well within his Brother’s right to execute a Battle-Brother on suspicions of Chaos corruption. 

“We are aboard the Battle Cruiser Bitter Mercy currently orbiting the Fortress World of Karlack,” the Custodian continued, unbothered by the tangible tension in the room as hundreds of Astartes stared at him with expressions ranging between fury and disgruntlement. “In an hour it will begin its journey towards the Jericho-Maw Warp Gate at the centre of the Well of Night. An escort fleet will accompany the ship until it passes through the Warp Gate with orders to blow it to smithereens if its course deviates even a bit.”

Now that the Custodian was standing in front of him, Rhamiel could finally lay the last smidgen of doubt he held to rest. Octavian Gaius was clean, his presence in the Warp appearing like an unyielding bastion of duty and unbreakable willpower. He never had the opportunity to meet a Custodian before this day, so he couldn’t tell how an average one should feel, but what he could sense from Octavian matched both the descriptions he’d read in ancient texts and his own expectations based on what he knew of the Custodian Guard. 

This man, a member of the ten-thousand most faithful servants of His Divine Majesty, was assisting the psyker warlord entirely of his own will. Or rather, at the behest of the Captain-General. There was no heretical scheme, Xeno deception or Chaos plot to be discovered. Everything was exactly as it appeared. 

It was … a surprise. Even still. These circumstances were so unusual that Rhamiel couldn’t feel any guilt for his prior actions, nor did he lay any blame at the Justiciar’s feet for his decisions. They made the correct decisions based on the information they had. 999 times out of a 1000, it would have been the right decision. It just so happened that this instance happened to be that sole 1000th one where it was not. 

“The topic of the Jericho Reach, and everything concerning it is hereby declared classified under the pain of death.” A new, feminine voice spoke, and Rhamiel’s gaze snapped to the small blonde woman standing beside the Custodian. “Nobody under the rank of Chapter Master, Lord General or its equivalents will be privy to even a single, seemingly significant detail of what has transpired here. Cogitators are to be shut down, servitors are to have their memories erased, and databanks are to be wiped clean. This I declare with the full authority invested into me by His Most Holy Majesty.”

Rhamiel’s eyes narrowed at first, then focused on the amulet hanging from the unassuming woman’s neck. No, not an amulet. It was an Inquisitorial Rosette. An Inquisitor? The plot thickens … but it is no concern of mine. Not anymore. 

The Grey Knights existed outside the standard command structures and bureaucratic hierarchy of the Imperium even more so than the standard Space Marine Chapter, but there was still a single group of people from whom they accepted orders without question: the Inquisition. Usually it was the Ordo Malleus, since the Ordo specialising in hunting daemons were the natural partners for the Grey Knights who made that endeavour their goal in life, but other Ordos held no less authority than Malleus. If he was reading it right, this unassuming Inquisitor was of the Ordo Xenos. Interesting, but again, not something to concern himself with. 

Standard procedure required him to confirm the Inquisitor’s identity, whether the Rosette they held was authentic and furthermore, whether it was actually hers. Alas, his armour was gone and he had no talent for Technomancy, so the best he could do was request it be done by a Magos. He could see none, however, so he would have to be satisfied with the Custodian vouching for her authenticity.  

“Amberley Veil, Ordo Xenos, Inquisitorial authentication codes and Noosphere marks check out.” A droning, monotone voice said a few dozen metres away in the characteristic mechanical static of a vox-caster. Rhamiel’s eyes landed on a heavily augmented Tech-Marine when he followed the voice to the source, then flickered to the heraldry carved into the metallic pauldron of his bionic arm. Storm Warden. 

Rhamiel’s gaze flickered across the nearby Astartes surrounding the Tech-Marine, analysing their stances, body language and what little their expressions showed. He saw nods, familiarity, trust. They knew the Tech-Marine then, which meant he was likely not a plant put there on purpose to spread undue trust in the Inquisitor. 

He wouldn’t fully trust anyone until one of his own Battle-Brothers confirmed everything, but since that was impossible at present, this much would have to be enough. 

Now all that was left to do was make sure whatever serfs or Imperial Navy mooks were stuck piloting this ship actually knew what they were doing. Rhamiel didn’t know why the woman who had killed him and captured everyone else here would bother with the charade if she wanted them dead — maybe politics, he was never too good at understanding the intricacies of that — but a sudden concern that the ones piloting the ship would deviate from the plotted path on purpose just to get them all shot to pieces.

Or that they would conveniently forget to turn on the Gellar Field Generator before making a Warp Jump. Even he knew that a Warp-related accident claiming all their lives would be significantly less offensive to Imperial high command than this up-and-coming warlord just straight up slaughtering them all herself. They could claim sabotage if they really wanted a caus belli for a new crusade, but if they got the message, it could be swept under the rug much more easily. 

Rhamiel paused at that train of thought. Considering the Jericho Reach’s only dependable Warplane to the larger Imperium led through the Warp Gate, and that the entire Achillus Crusade was something of an open secret, anything that happened here would be painfully easy to sweep under the rug if the Inquisition put in some legwork. Just a few messages to Governors and Fabricator-Generals across the Calixis Sector to put on a gag order and it would be done. The larger public barely knew about the Reach’s existence, much less the Achillus Crusade itself, which had always been shrouded in mystery to keep the Jericho-Maw Warp Gate as much of a secret as logistics allowed. 

No one would know. The nobles, Lord Generals, Chapter Masters and High Lords, anyone whose opinion mattered, would sweep it all under the rug to save face. They had far too much trouble with the opening of the Great Rift and the Indomitus Crusade to restart a gutter crusade in the fringes of the galaxy. 

But Rhamiel refused to let his own, and his Battle-Brothers’ lives be wasted just because it would be more convenient that way. He was made for a reason; he had a duty to uphold: to slay Daemons. If he was to die, it would be in the service of the Emperor and surrounded by the corpses of the Archenemy.

******

Well, that’s one problem taken care of. I thought to myself as I watched the memory playback captured by the bioships that escorted the last Imperial ships to the Warp Gate. Being the generous eldritch horror that I was, I’d given the normal humans I’d rescued from Ozkan’s lab a choice. They could stay either on previously Imperial planets in the Reach, join my prisoners on the last ship out, or get integrated into Vallian society. 

Most of them chose to ditch everything here and hope for a better life elsewhere in the Imperium, as far as possible from both the scary Necrons that had captured and tortured them, and the horribly heretical crazy psyker that rescued them. A bit rude, but good riddance. Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded if every last Imperial citizen fucked off out of the Reach, but that obviously impossible. The Imperial Navy had neither the space nor the willingness to evacuate billions of normies, so they were left behind; the storage hangars they could have occupied were likely filled with more important things, such as Mechanicus machines and other assets the Navy valued far more than human lives. 

My new Eldar minions were … around. Only Kaylith got her soul dragged into my Realm on account of the rest of them being obnoxious cunts, but seeing the process in person lit a fire under their bums, and now they were eating out of the palm of Val’s hand. He was in the process of turning them into an elite strike force for me with some help from Kaylith, who was by far the most experienced Ranger out of the lot. I kept myself away from that mess for the most part, other than to hammer it into those idiots’ heads that I was neither any of their Gods reborn from the dead, nor was I some new God that came to save them. I was no messiah either, and I made it clear I’d punt them into the nearest star before I let them turn me into one. 

I’d read Dune in my past life and unlike most people, I actually got the message. Messiahs were fucking dangerous and fanatics even more so. You let people sweep you up into their rhythm, and before you know it, you were leading a Jihad across the stars that slew trillions. Fuck. That. 

So with that mess safely dropped in someone else’s lap, all that was left to do for me personally was ‘hurry up and wait’. We’d gone through every Webway Gate and path Kaylith knew and found no signs of the Suhbekhar. We were stalled, but I was far from giving up. It just meant I had to switch gears. I had practically free rein over the Jericho Reach, and probably months, if not years, until Trazyn got his part of our agreement done.

I just had to look for other Webway Gates the old-fashioned way: manually. Already, hundreds of scout and survey ships were zipping through the star systems under my control, searching for any unrecorded Webway Gates while also serving as decoys. The Necrons could detect my specific brand of gravitational FTL engines, but now there were hundreds of signals spread out across dozens of light-years of space. 

None of that required my own personal attention. It was all automated, working in the background passively while I could focus on something else … except, there was nothing pressing to focus on other than the establishment of an overarching governing structure from my massively expanded holdings. But my mind-cores were handling that with some generous help from the Tau, who were masters of absorbing hostile populations into their Empire and assimilating them. They’ve been doing it for centuries, after all. However, not even that grand undertaking required my personal attention for the most part. My primary thoughtstream and my physical presence were rarely required, and I didn’t need to be there in person to keep an eye on the proceedings. 

So finally I had the time to get started on going through my to-do list while setting aside half of every day for recreational activities. Be that chatting with my affection-starved daughters, spending time with Selene, or just wasting time doing whatever came to mind. I knew I would need every shred of sanity I could claw back from this cruel galaxy during these precious days of leisure. 

Sooner, rather than later, the galaxy would once more test me, so every day where my greatest worry was how to make sure my daughters knew I loved them, or what I should look like that day to drive Selene up the walls, was incredibly precious. I vowed to myself that I would treasure them.