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The sun shined lethally on Desolatia IV, cracking the rocks and drying whatever humidity was still in the terrain. The local population, a barren village to the standard of the Imperium, kept to itself and left the Guardsmen alone to their devices. The Valhallan 12th Field Artillery was dutifully destroying the enemy of the Imperium while nesting in the safest location on the planet, if someone discounted the unrelenting heat and the dangers of dehydration. Gunner Erhlsen had just gotten himself another week of latrine duty.
Commissar Ciaphas Cain collected the last paperwork of the day, humming an upbeat tune that predated human spacefaring technology. Life in an artillery regiment was unabashedly boring and devoid of thrills or chances to cover oneself in glory (or, more likely, in the gore of one's fellow Guardsmen before being unceremoniously cut down immediately afterwards). It was a dead-end posting that meant an unfulfilling career spent in mediocrity and obscurity for many officers, where most of the excitement came from wiping somebody's savings in a game of tarots.
In other words, it was everything he desired.
It is a disgrace, that's what it is.
Just like that, Ciaphas's good mood evaporated. He groaned at his chronic headache.
What a bothersome reincarnation you are.
Shut it, Ciaphas retorted lamely.
Why do you insist on this wasteful charade? Mankind needs my guidance more than ever before.
I sat for ten thousand years on that accursed throne in unbearable agony, feeling my body rot away, my psyche being constantly torn apart by the powers of the Warp, and watching thousands of people die in vain in my name every single day. I believe I deserve a vacation.
“Cai?” Toren Divas's worried voice cut into his internal monologue/debate, something Ciaphas was immensely grateful for as Divas was technically free to attend to other duties instead of keeping him company in the office. “Are you feeling all right? You're acting like that dataslate has done something personal to you.”
Divas wasn't wrong; Ciaphas had been gripping the slate hard enough that his fingers had depressed its surface. The damage was, however, purely cosmetic. Ciaphas flashed Divas a smile of reassurance. “Merely contemplating the current state of the Imperium. I wouldn't want the tranquillity of our assignment to cause me to grow complacent,” his words were punctuated at that moment by the Earthshakers living up to their names, something that barely fazed him.
Divas nodded, sighing at the reminder that they were stationed far away from the frontline. Albeit his determination to serve mankind and protect the people from all threats was commendable, the lad was far too full of fire and foolish dreams of honour, in Ciaphas's opinion. He was sure Divas would keel over from pure shock if he ever knew the Emperor himself (or, more precisely, his reincarnation) found his boasting to be just a tad bit annoying.
It was more likely that Ciaphas would be branded a heretic and hunted down by the Imperium he had founded. Rogal would have found it hilarious.
The Warp was a funny phenomenon. There were more than a few examples of spaceships that entered the Immaterium in a specific year only to reappear at their destination a few years before they originally departed. There was an Ork Warlord who had killed his past self to loot his weapons. So the fact that the golden throne was going to fail in several centuries, finally killing what remained of the physical form of the Emperor, which was going to result in his splintered soul miraculously bouncing back in time to when his first incarnation still sat motionless on the blasted contraption and latching on the first unborn baby it found, was not as mindbogglingly impossible as it may have looked like.
The memories of his past life, and the knowledge of who he was, had not emerged until he had been handed the Commissarial sash and shoved out of the door; then, he had spent weeks in the Warp dwelling upon them (who was the bride of the Emperor now, Selenia?). Unfortunately, the memories came with a psychic connection to his past self, who had wasted no time in shaming him for his choice of kicking back and relaxing for a century or two instead of immediately taking up the banner of the Imperium once again.
Ciaphas and Divas exchanged a few more pleasantries as they exited the tent designated as the Commissarial office, with Divas expressing his confusion about Ciaphas's lenient approach with the Guardsmen in his charge (a notion that evoked a petulant feeling inside Ciaphas, although he took care not to display it. It wasn't him being lenient; it was the system that had perverted his teachings into a self-defeating machine. Case in point, all the Commissars who were either abandoned to the mercy of the enemy or were assassinated by Guardsmen who had realized they outnumbered the brain-challenged officer thousands to one), when his palms started tingling. He sighed internally and braced himself.
Immediately, events to come filled his mind. Among them, the clearest (and closest to happening) was an Agri-world under the hegemony of a hidden enemy, along with-- a hundred bio-ships full of Tyranids inbound for Desolatia IV.
He could swear he heard his past self laughing all the way from Holy Terra, the prick.
“Sir! Commissar!” Jurgen, gunner first class and powerful blank, shambled with haste toward them from the battery offices, preceded by his odour, which was particularly potent in this heat. “The Colonel wants to see you right away!”
“What's wrong?” Ciaphas asked, more to keep up with appearance than to prod for information.
“Nothing, sir,” Jurgen saluted perfunctorily in Divas's direction with a huge smile plastered on his face. “They're pulling us out!”
The migraine pounding in Ciaphas's skull begged to differ.
---
Physically, Ciaphas was in the command post watching intently the tactical display with Colonel Mostrue fussing most discreetly over the confusing development on the screen to his side; mentally, he was among the Guardsmen of the Valhallan 6th Armoured to extinguish as many mycotic spores as possible without raising suspicion. Many caught on fire or were shredded with their organic cargo before they could touch land, giving the force the respite necessary not to succumb under a not-so-endless tide of reinforcements.
Truthfully, Ciaphas wasn't fully aware of the extent of the powers he had been reborn with. The memories he had inherited were vast and deep, and the weeks he had spent perusing them had scarcely been enough to cover the basis. More importantly, they often came with unendurable torment, which made it extremely difficult to focus at times.
It is about time you lived up to your legacy. However-
Busy slaughtering hostile xenos while hiding in a tent, call me back later.
“We have you to thank for this,” Colonel Mostrue suddenly said, breaking Ciaphas's concentration for a second. Ciaphas immediately regained control of the battlefield, not before a conspicuous number of spores marvellously combusted before rather bewildered Valhallan soldiers. Thankfully, the assault had begun to ease up, and his assistance wasn’t heavily required. “Without your warning, they'd have been all over us.”
“You'd have coped,” Ciaphas dismissed nonchalantly, gesturing at the monitor. “The Emperor has favoured us, it seems,” and didn't he know that. “We should have enough time to evacuate everyone. Toren?”
Divas snapped to attention. “It's going slowly, but…”
His next words were lost in the Warp as another vision overcame his senses-- one of utterly simple minds that were barely sentient if left to themselves, but which formed a veritable wall of death when united under a single, greater intelligence.
No.
They and their ravenous instincts hurdled with incredible speed toward the Valhallan 12th Field Artillery, having ignored the soon-to-be victorious 6th Armoured. They would flank them before the Guardsmen could redirect the cannons, catching them unaware and slaughtering them to the last man.
No. No. No.
I attempted to warn you, but you wouldn't listen.
If the regiment was annihilated and Ciaphas was the only survivor (which he was bound to be), the Imperium's bureaucracy machine may set its ungodly eyes on him. Some could even go the whole way to have him shot (good luck to them, they would need it) for negligence or desertion or whatever reason they could find. If he let himself be shackled by that shambling abomination, he could wave his vacation bye-bye.
Or, you could reveal your identity to them and start whipping this place back in order.
He'd have to go underground. Change his face. Create a brand new identity. Wait for the best time to re-emerge-- again.
Stop ignoring me.
The Guardsmen praying for his protection would die.
“Commissar?”
“There's nothing more that I can do here,” Ciaphas recovered admirably from his inattention, in his opinion. “This is a job for a real soldier.” He turned to Colonel Mostrue and bowed his head, letting the Colonel appreciate the moment, and took his leave with an excuse about raising the troops' morale.
Nonetheless, he did not shirk from his Commissarial duties, making small chat and cracking a few jokes with the soldiers to break up part of the tension enveloping the battery due to the incoming battle, until his feet led him near the court where their vehicles were parked. Only then did a possible solution that didn't involve massive psyker powers take form in his mind.
“They're here!”
Ionised air cracked all around, the night sky momentarily but persistently lit up by the continuous discharging of a sea of lasguns. Soon, nightmarish shapes began to fall lifeless on the ground, occasionally landing on hapless troopers whose attention was elsewhere. Not all the creatures died to the shots of lasguns, and the survivors exploited the confusion to open fire with their dreaded fleshborers on the soldiers caught in the open.
The trooper standing not far from Ciaphas went down with a strangled scream, their throat devoured in mere instants by unsightly beetle-looking vermins.
“Oh, frak off!” Ciaphas yelled, swinging his chainsword, which was already humming away at full speed, over his head and neatly decapitating a gargoyle who had been aiming at Gunner Erhlsen.
Ciaphas peripherally acknowledged Erhlsen thanking him for the save, before turning to the more urgent matter at hand. He let instincts take over – he unlatched the lasgun from his scabbard and shot off the head of another of those abominations, although his weapon shouldn't have produced an explosion capable of blowing up a cluster of the things – while he assessed the situation.
Already he could sense the small assaulting force was taking to the air, nimbly evading the fire of the Hydras, and leaving stragglers to soak up the gunfire. A distraction then, meant to probe the defences of the Regiment and divert their weapons so that the Tyranid cavalry could find them unprepared.
That didn't mean that the gargoyles left behind acted any less aggressively. They swooped down from the sky like dark shadows, the crimson red discharge of the lasguns revealing their monstrous features for a second before they fired fleshborers and bio-plasma at the first convenient target. Ciaphas ducked in time for a plasma bolt to pass over his head and detonate the tents behind him; the roar of the explosion was swallowed by the screams of the 12th Field Artillery.
Squirming worms covered the dusty ground, and Ciaphas squashed them by the dozens wherever he stepped. Charging at the gargoyles within his reach in the open would normally be a terrible, if not outright suicidal, strategy for anybody else, and the bodies of those unfortunate enough not to have jumped for cover in time were proof of it; Ciaphas was still rewarded with a torrent of malodorous ichor splashing the rest of his greatcoat and ruining it beyond salvation, along with encouraging shouts from living troopers.
Still, the path to the vehicles was clear again.
Fending off another gargoyle that showed an incredibly poor sense of preservation, Ciaphas ran toward one of the vehicles parked in the open that had yet to be toppled over by the assailants. From the void in the Warp, Jurgen had taken refuge between the tracks of the Salamanders.
“Gunner Jurgen, this vehicle has been requisitioned by the Commissariat,” he ordered, blocking the butt of a lasgun poised against his skull with a hand. Jurgen looked at him with a familiar air of befuddlement before allowing himself to lower the weapon in relief. “Get this thing started. I fear this attack is only a diversion,” which it was, but Ciaphas certainly couldn't tell anyone how he had discovered it. Rather, if he could alarm the regiment and lure the Tyranid horde to the best place for the Hydras to reduce them to an unsightly smoking puddle (after thinning their lines with fire without witnesses around who would raise awkward questions), he would save his comfortable position, and nobody would be any the wiser.
...Words fail me.
“Sir,” bless his utter deference to authority, Jurgen immediately got behind the wheel and revved the engine. It was a far more pleasurable sound than the fleshborers' projectiles crunching under his boots. “Where to?”
“West toward the mines, full speed,” Ciaphas replied as he mounted the vehicle and fiddled with the voxcaster. By his name, those Tyranids would regret setting their greedy eyes on Desolatia IV.
---
A full barrage of Hydras and a generous helping of arson later, the grey wave of murderous chitin was reduced to a mulched pulp that was serving as target practice while the last of the Guardsmen waited for extraction.
Ciaphas quietly slipped back into his tent after yet another short debriefing with Colonel Mostrue and Divas. The good Colonel was among those officers that had their heads screwed on well (a disposition that the Schola Progenium tried hard to beat out of their cadets), and, while his suspicion was going to be the cause of trivial difficulties in the future, Ciaphas wouldn't trade him away.
He should not dare to speak against you. He serves you, not the contrary. Why do you refuse to remind him of his place in the Imperium?
And the bothering Emperor was back, joy. You are in urgent need of a pastime that is not pestering me. Have you considered watching holodramas?, Ciaphas grumbled.
Holodramas are an insufficient and erroneous source of information, prone to exaggerate or minimize the reality of the facts as to attract as many viewers as possible. Convincing you to fulfil your role in the universe is far more important.
La la la la la, I can't hear you, la la la la la...
This bout of immaturity does not befit you. What happened to my desire to see mankind at the helm of the galaxy, to lead...
The booming voice quieted, the trail of thought decaying as the fragmented attention of his past self turned toward another matter. But the damage was done, and Ciaphas's satisfaction at having preserved his undistinguished position thoroughly dissipated. He muttered an unflattering epithet and turned back at the paperwork that had accumulated on his desk in record time.
In moments like these, he fervently wished he could have been only Ciaphas Cain, mediocre Commissar whose destiny was to fade into oblivion.