Story 9 The Longest Short Bus. Chapter 17

The flight back down to Tertium had to be done a bit more circumspectly in order to avoid the traitors blasting us to bits with the captured very potent defenses the Hive City had at its disposal. 

And I didn't waste time as even on our way down back to the Hive City I was hard at work as I worked on the information I had on the Guardsman and Enforcers I was given command of. First was the actual numbers, in the grand scheme of things. three hundred soldiers wasn't shit compared to the untold literal millions of traitors living in the Hive City of Tertium which had a multi-billion population.

But still to myself, three hundred soldiers was a good deal of people and I was going to make the best use of them as I could... First, to start things off, I was going to have them help me secure another large work area in Lower Hive's geothermal plant so I had more power at my disposal, then I would work to enhance every single one of the Guardsmen with the Super Soldier Serum. 

Then after they have been enhanced it would be time to arm them. And for arming hundreds of people I knew that Fallouts Power Armor would be the best thing for me to use along with some kinetic energy shields to block lasers and slug throwers.

"Adelieth, what is the likelihood of more Sister's of Battle entering my band?" I asked not looking up from my datapad.

And a moment later I heard Adeleith reply bluntly. "I was part of a contingent that followed Inquisitor Grendyl... That contingent only has a dozen survivors from our time trying to retake Tertium." 

'Well that sucks.' I thought before I looked up and looked at that ugly ass chain sword and grimaced. "Why... I said the chain sword is inefficient and prone to getting caught on armor and the filth of the heretic."

Adelieth actually smiled as she said. "The roar of the holy chain sword will drown out the screams of the heretic and litanies of evil Jake." 

My lips twitched at that and I just shook my head in dismay. Knowing the sister couldn't be dissuaded I shut up and opened up my datapad to read up on the information on the humans in my squadron.

'So three hundred guardsmen/surviving enforcers and within the three hundred is thirty Ogryns of various genders and... Yeah Grendyl definitely is fucking with me.' I thought as at the very end of the list of personnel was a fucking Felinid woman.

A Felinid was a brand of abhuman that had been genetically modified to live on a fucking stupidly hostile planet millennia ago and had evolved to take on cat-like features including being covered in fur, and having a tail/cat ears. All for helping to survive the almost constantly dark death world the race originated from.

'If I clear out the genetic fuckery of the Felinid would that leave her as a proper catgirl? Or would she revert to either a jacked scary as fuck cat or a pure human?' I thought before shaking the thought away as from the comms system the pilot spoke up. "Touch down in a couple of minutes. Prepare yourself." 

Barghest's knee started bouncing anxiously and I could see the Custodian look at that bouncing knee and back up to Barghest's face before he looked away. "Alright, so the first thing we are going to do is get clear of our landing site and then we will push as quick as we can to this geothermal power vent. From there we can use the large storage area's in the area as our operating base." I spoke and even as I said that, I used my data slate to send said message to the squad leaders of the soldiers.

Adelith and Barghest didn't have anything to say in denial of my plans while the Custodian... He didn't say anything at all unless he wanted to, so I didn't seek out his opinion. As I knew his job was to simply to protect me and let me do what I wanted to naturally do which would supposedly fall into the Emperor's designs.

'I really fucking need to make some anti-scrying wards or something as well.' I thought with a grimace but then with a loud thudding noise the back of the ship unsealed itself and as our ship swung around for a quick hard landing we were already climbing out as the ships literally couldn't be sitting there for minutes at a time.

"Grab the supplies and move people!" I roared out as other ships landed in quick succession and in turn, the soldiers began carrying or dragging out crates of food, I saw trio of Ogryns being the bestest of boys as they were using oversized dolly's to wheel huge boxes down the ramps and onto the ground

With the men and supplies taken off the ships in great time, within not even three minutes of landing the ships had taken off back towards orbits with their engines screaming with the effort as they punched it to avoid spears of red light that were the anti-air defenses that the traitors had captured.

Taking a breath I ordered everyone to fall in and using the maps of the area I had I took our precession through more tight-knit corridors so that even if we got pincered with Barghest in the back of the procession the bulk of my soldiers would be fine but thankfully our prior the trip itself to the Geothermal plant was mostly quiet besides the odd Poxwalker zombie we ran into that was quickly put down by my Suros.

Once we reached said main facility I looked to the Custodes beside me as I could feel... Something off in the area. "I can feel evil within that power plant, probably a Deamonhost or a Chaos Spawn." 

The Custodes looked at me for a moment and then his comms system came to life as his voice stated bluntly. "Deamonhost then. The area is too silent, if there was a mad chaos spawn there would be more heretics in the area... But even the heretics are well aware that staying anywhere near a pysker who had a daemon forced into their body is a terrible death sentence."