40 Thousand Reasons

Walking past me, the Primarch grabbed the spear from Rafen and used it as a walking stick, entering the crowd of adoring fans that knelt in respect.

I wasn't feeling like kneeling though, so I vanished with my Nexus to check on the loot, in this case Fabius Bile held in phase-iron chains and watched over by two Blank Blood Angels.

"Hey, busy day right?" I quipped while looking over the prisoner curious.

"Dad! You can't be here!" Jonas exclaimed looking at the corner where a bunch of auspex sensor monitored the room.

"Sanguinius is back though. Big commotion among your Blood Angels too." I said in a casual tone, while stabbing the Chaos Sorcerer with a Necron control spike.

"...Oh. I guess it would be your style. So you brought the Angel here and what, put him inside the body?" Jonas asked in a rather indifferent voice.

"Exactly. My kids are so smart, right Fabius?" I asked the traitor.

"Mind-control? It won't work on me." the guy claimed rather bravely.

"Everyone says that, in the first minute. Now be so kind and download all your research on this datastack." I commanded with an override thought, while connecting the dataport in his skull with my device.

"....grrrr. Never...my mind..." his voice muttered while the transfer already began.

"Dad is so cool! A dozen Librarians failed to break the traitor, and he just downloads everything in a minute." my son Vincent exclaimed in praise.

I waited for the download to finish, leaving the mad scientist a gibbering wreck.

"This guy cloned Horus, you know? Came out mutated, but still held his memories. Also, there's a genestealer infiltration on this world." I commented wryly while retracting the datastack and the Necron wires.

"You're cheating again, dad! But you're worse than Victor!" Jonas muttered and pointed at me accusingly.

"I am, and so what! Catch me if you can." I quipped and vanished again.

Time to visit the armory and borrow some rare and exotic Blood Angel weapons while everyone was occupied. My Lamenters could use them one day, after I obtain STC designs for them.

When I returned, I found an empty seat at the Captain table, where Sanguinius was wolfing down more food than a Custodes. And those guys could eat.

"Food! And you even saved me a seat. I almost feel welcome here." I exclaimed in a joyous tone and sat beside the Primarch, then pushed his elbow a little to grab some food for myself.

A dozen Blood Angels glared at me as I ate without a care, and ignored everyone.

Sanguinius gulped a liter of ice water and kept eating, probably busy repairing his mangled body or something.

"Primarch, Lord Lancefire has threatened to burn a recruit world for every Blank recruit that dies during training. That's unacceptable!" The Lord Commander Dante told on his Primarch, while pointing with his finger accusingly, right at me.

He was even right. It was possibly not enough.

"Is it too few? I can make it two worlds, Lord Dante. There is a single kind of Astartes who can never fall to Chaos, and that is my Blank sons. The Eye of Terror is filled with failed Space Marines, even Brothers of ours. Even his Brothers." I grumbled with a glance at the silent Primarch.

"Why don't you have the organs installed yet, Pef?" Sanguinius asked softly, pointing out the difference between me and my sons.

"I don't really trust them. Plus, I don't need them really. I can defeat everyone on this planet, at once. Including the genestealers and the chaos cultists." I explained politely, throwing a bone over my shoulder and having Canis appear and snatch it in mid-air.

The Primarch sighed and kept eating, while his Angels stared at me like I had two heads. It was just Canis, eyeing the full table with hungry eyes.

"Saves on food, I guess." Sanguinius muttered after eating an entire grox leg, even the tendons. More calcium, perhaps. Then he threw the bone to my famished wolf, who caught but waited for my agreement.

"Anyways. Roboute wants to march on Terra, and clean up the corruption. Only the High Lords won't take it laying down. We'll have to go and break some heads. A billion at least." I muttered while pouring myself some expensive wine.

"I remember some things, Pef. Not very clearly, being dead and all. Was the blonde woman...?" he asked gently.

"My mother, yes. She is only light now." I answered after gulping my wine.

"I never had a mother...but I'm sorry for your loss, my friend. We'll make things right somehow, even for Blanks." my Primarch said with compassion and patted my hand.

"Yes, we will. But first, we have to fix your father. I brought a small fleet to make things simpler." I said while releasing the Lamenter capital ships from the labyrinth, not quite above the planet to avoid friendly fire.

Sanguinius glanced at the sky, his psyker powers sensing the new fleet just as soon as Mephiston did. "Your other sons...the Lamenters. And where are we going, Pef Lancefire?"

"There is an artifact called the Shariax, on the world of Occludus, in the Eastern Fringe. The Emperor sent an Astartes Chapter there to guard it, until it was time to be used." I explained while feeding Canis lots of expensive food.

Sanguinius will rule an empire soon, he could afford it.

"I don't know of it. But then again... I have the small excuse of being out of touch. It will take me some time to adjust to this new Imperium. The Emperor worshiped as a god, priests ruling the masses, sisters of battle...it's a bloody mess." the Primarch said in sad voice, perhaps not too happy with how things were.

"Faith helps right now. Keeps people compliant, and even wards demons away. Same with the techpriests and their machine rituals, which kinda do work. There is immense corruption, of course. Priests get rich and fat, taxing the masses and burning dissenters. The sisters are mostly alright. We'll need to unite them with the Silent ones, give them proper military training and take them away from the Imperial Cult. By the way, the High Lords disbanded the Silent Sisters and execute Blanks on sight now. I wonder why." I commented wryly while Sanguinius took mental notes, and probably exchanged a dozen messages with his psyker buddies in the Librarium.

"The Navigators...Ecclesiarchy...the Administratum. Is there anyone still loyal in this bloody Imperium?" Sanguinius shouted and stood up in anger.

"Not really, no. It's everyone for himself, and thousands of cults and cabals form every day, Noble Houses and Governors try to get richer, renegade techpriests and Inquisitors experiment on whole worlds. Meanwhile Chaos forces mass for another Black Crusade, the Tyranids are swarming in tendrils of trillions, and the ancient Necrons are awaking and flaying every living thing. Well, the Dark Eldar are mostly gone though. Paid them a visit and burned most of Commorragh." I answered mixing the bad with a little good.

"All right, Pef Lancefire. We'll leave next week, I just need to digest everything." the Primarch said in a kinder voice. "Dante, be nice!" he continued with a glare at his Chapter Master.

Then he stepped away and vanished, and Mephiston followed a second later.

I could still see him in a gilded room, as he just stared at a painting of the Emperor in silence, while Mephiston began bringing out cogitators and holoscreens.

All right, he had much to catch up with.

Meanwhile, I could clean this place up, exterminate the cults and the genestealers, and bring over millions of ice comets and metal asteroids for later use. Given how expensive ice water was, those comets could possibly buy me an entire moon.

With some difficulty I could scoop out irradiated dust and throw it into the sun, and did that around inhabited places. It was just too much to clean up a planet and two moons right now.

This blasted place called Baal, had been the site of many wars, some carried out with atomic weapons. It wasn't really a place worth living, but most Astartes homeworlds were like this.

Instead of defending humanity, they protected magma worlds or irradiated planets, or ice deserts and feral worlds. It made no sense to me, but such was the sad reality of this galaxy.

Nothing made much sense, not even me.

Lord Dante still glared at me from over the table, while I was busy fixing his star system and preparing the place for war.

"Something on my face, Brother?" I asked curious.

"You show no respect to anyone, Lord Lancefire. Not even your own Primarch." he muttered in an angry voice.

"Your trainers were trying to murder my sons, loading real munitions in the training dummies. Your Apothecary brought Fabius Bile here, to corrupt your gene-seed and desecrate your Primarch. And you defend a burned world, instead of something important. As for Sanguinius, he can speak for himself now. I think he said you be nice?" I asked naively.

"Maybe it's the Blank aura. Makes people uncomfortable." Dante said in a more peaceful tone.

"Very likely it is the Blank aura, but I don't care. Blanks are the future of humanity. Everyone who doesn't like them, does not get my protection. Everyone who hurts them, will die. If I have to exterminate trillions of rabid zealots, I can and I will." I said with a kind smile.

In the end, everyone else is expendable. I had my own cabal to look after.