Chapter Text
Kladosh ‘Clade’ the Bloodsucker, Chaos Lord of the Brotherhood of Blood warband, stood on the bridge of his vessel, the 'Impaler.' She was a Hellbringer Class Planetary Assault Ship, and Clade was just about to brief his crew about such a raid.
"Ok, chaps, listen up: As you well know, we became quite short in the marines department lately..." Clade began to speak. The Brotherhood of Blood, being true bastard sons of Chaos, had a massive beef with other heretics and renegade warbands about many things, in recent history most notably the claim to the 'Planet of Steel,' a Fortress World of Brigannion Four lying just outside the Eye of Terror.
“Well, no shit Clade!” One of the battle brothers voiced his opinion, and the others nodded.
"Yeah, when we attacked these fucking Iron Warriors for the first time, it was hundreds of us!" another one noticed.
Clade nodded.
"That's right, brother, that first time was a complete disaster. Remember who led us back then?" Clade asked, and his men began to wonder aloud, but none could recall the name of the other loser. When his question went unanswered, Clade continued. "Fair enough, but do you remember what he said back then?"
"Fool us once..." the chorus of marines repeated. Everyone remembered that because it was actually quite fitting that their former commander sealed his death at the hands of his own men in this way, the transhuman guys were, of course, massive suckers for this kind of dramatics.
"That's right, and we attacked again almost immediately; no plan, no nothing, the amount of gear we lost, was just bonkers, so we killed this fucking guy - my idea and ate his gene-seed - also my idea, and shit on his corpse - not mine byt still great idea"
"That was my idea!" one of the battle brothers shouted and waved his hand. Clade smiled approvingly, gave him a thumbs-up, and continued.
"Still without a good plan, you listened to the idiot who called for another attack immediately with the slogan 'Third time's a charm'. Remember who was that? Who led you back then?" Clade asked again, and when no one could remember, Bloodsucker dangled one of the skulls hanging from the chain at his belt in a pointed manner.
"I'll give you a hint: it's his head!" their current Chaos Lord bared his fangs in a grin.
"Brian?" one of the battle brothers asked uncertainly. Clade was a bit surprised that anyone had even responded. Brotherhood of Blood members, like most of the transhuman supersoldiers, especially those corrupted by Chaos, were the proud bunch and were fast to forget about potential failures and misfortunes. Or maybe it was a bargain that Kladosh struck with some daemon? Hard to say... Clade glanced at the 'remembering' marine, who had flaunted the Tzeentch symbol painted on his armor.
"Good memory, brother! Lord of Change truly favors you!" Clade quickly praised. The marine in question became curious.
"Oh... do you think so?" The heretic astrate asked with a hopeful voice, so typical for the devotees of Lord of Change. Clade licked his fangs.
"I know that brother” He fed the Tzeentchians' hope even more and continued “you know why?" Clade asked theatrically. The Tzeenchian waited in anticipation of some great truth being revealed to him.
"Because I am Lord of Chaos Undivided,” Clade proclaimed, “blessed by all the Four Powers! It was I who led us into the fourth siege of Planet of Steel. The fourth siege for the four gods! So we have been noticed!" Bloodsucker shouted, and his marine began to nod.
“We struck the Iron Warriors as well as other rivals like the Black Legion, Death Guard, Night Lords, and Sons of Hate!”
"We actually got fucked up pretty badly as well..." one of the marines remarked.
"And the fucking Iron Warriors didn't fucking budge!" another shouted angrily.
Clade glanced sideways at those two salty guys. Veterans were an asset to any Chaos Lord's forces, but they were also more of a pain to manage.
“Well, we all can agree that Brigannion Four's unimaginably vast fortress of warp sorcery and machinery got just ridiculously impregnable…” Clade allowed himself a pinch of honesty but quickly changed his tone: “But this can't be said about the nuns we encounter next, right?!"
To that, all of his men reacted with a gleeful roar, even though they lost no fewer battle brothers than in earlier skirmishes when fighting those Corpse Emperor's crazy groupies. The nuns still had guns and power armor, so they were considerably tough when in them. Until they got nonconsensually unarmored... Clade always liked to remind his warband of that particular campaign because none of the marines ever moaned about the losses they had suffered—guys only remembered the fun they had with the nuns they managed to ‘subdue’. Some of these captives had spent years with them... it was simply incredible how much mortals could endure while truly clinging to life. The 'sisters' that ended up on the lower decks became 'moms' to the whole generations of beastmen or mutants that served on their ship.
"We earned many favors, both material, like the best loot; just look at your gear, guys! As well as divine, all of you brothers are chosen or aspiring champions of chaos! Well done to us!"
Clade raised morale even higher and took in his gaze all of his last dozen or so veteran marines... all of the astartes he had left. On this ship, he had nearly a hundred thousand mortal cultists, beastmen, and other mutants under his command, but if something wasn't done soon, they would simply become a beastmen-only warband with just a few actual astartes under him acting only as icing on the massive pool of puny mortals. In fact, this may already be a reality! And that just wouldn't spell good for Clade's plans of demonhood and galaxy domination.
"Now is the time to inject fresh blood into our Brotherhood! To boost our numbers since you all are great chaos role models for the next generation of heretic astartes," Clad announced and deftly segued into a tactical display of their next target.
"So obviously, we're not just planning on taking in dozens of some vagabond smartass; we're going to do it old school," he began to explain.
"Old school? You mean like recruiting and shit? It is boooring and takes forever," one of the battle brothers began to complain.
"We don't even have an apothecary. I mean, who's going to stitch these new guys up with a gene-seed and all? Do we have any?" certain Chaos Champion voiced his doubts.
Clade waved a hand dismissively.
"Not 'so' old school. We'll just use neophyte; I mean, take someone's," Clade explained and pointed to a hologram of a planet. "This little beauty is Khortus Prime, home and the sole recruiting world of the Imperial Paladins." A bunch of bars with additional data appeared around the planet hologram.
"That's nice intel, boss; where did you get that?" one of the marines asked.
"Well, we're not doing this raid ourselves; the intel is from the guy who organizes this party and acts as an agent between his and our groups." Clade explained.
"A Night Lord?" Someone asked. The Brotherhood of Blood had no sympathy for the Night Lords, who were their rivals as much as any other warband, but it was clear to Clade's veterans that with their dwindling numbers, no large group simply needed them; they were in real danger of being marginalized, which was exactly what Clade was trying to prevent. The Night Lords were, however, at least in this area, fragmented enough to be an option.
Clade shook his head.
"Nah, these guys are renegades; they go under the name ‘Covert X’. Long story short, the imperial church fucked them over big time. They are still shy about the gods and stuff, but I have a feeling they will come around soon." Bloodsucker said quite honestly.
"So what do they want from it?" his people began to ask suspiciously. Almost every collaboration with other warbands was based on the tricky feat of how to fuck the other side, or at least not let yourself be fucked.
"The deal is, we take the neophytes; they are more into the gear." Clade explained.
"So we won't get a gear? What the fuck?" Shouted the outraged veteran in an accompaniment of many similar angry comments expressed by the rest of the battle brothers. Clade sighed.
"I didn't say that, but our priority is the neophytes: we really need those gene-implanted rookies, so the longer it takes to herd them, the longer the other party will be looting Imperial gear uncontested. But we have an agreement that when it comes to slaves, it's every marine for himself, so I think we have an advantage here: our horde of cultists can cover more ground. so there you go." Bloodsucker reassured and continued: "Ok, listen, intel is solid; these Paladins are just another budget version of Ultramarines, all blue and shit, and a whole Khortus Prime was set to be a budget, backward version of Macragge. The natives live in mostly just an Iron Age civilization, so apart from air defenses of the chapter's fortress-monastery, the invasion is a walk!" Bloodsucker spoke convincingly as always.
"Ok, that's all fine, Clade, but this is still a space marine's fucking chapter world. And we have what? A hundred thousand mortals and our dozen?" one of his veterans asked skeptically.
Clade shook his head.
"According to my intel, Imperial Paladins were recently 'asked' by the Ultramarines for reinforcement. As a result, the entire Khortus system remains in the care of one Nova Frigate! and the fortress monastery and the entire planet are under the protection of a total of thirty marines from the 7th Company and our prize: seventy neophytes who run errands around the whole planet, playing scouts. The rest of their forces, under the command of the Chapter Master himself, went to the aid of the Ultramarines." Bloodsucker explained the situation.
"Why would they ever do something so dumb?" His veteran asked a reasonable question.
"Dunno, maybe they read it in the Codex Astertes or something." Clade scoffed and laughed at his own joke along with a dozen of his last battle brothers, and when the cackling died down a bit, he then cleared his throat and added more seriously: "No, but in all seriousness, we all know how this successor chapter bullshit works with the Smurfs: they made so many clones of themselves that they have literally thousands of reinforcement marines on standby. and still pretend that there are only 1000 of them. The fucking Ultramarines are so greedy! it's time someone stole a little piece of their pie!" Bloodsucker agitated his men.
"You're right, boss, but seriously, how many of these little kids do you think we'll be able to recruit?" someone asked.
"I trust your charm, guys, and besides... I have an idea..." Bloodsucker smiled slyly and then walked away from the tactical display. "Chaps, I feel really good about it; it's time to hype the masses," Clade said as he sat down on his massive command throne, which was able to easily accommodate the leader's figure even when covered in terminator armor, just like now. Clade straightened his hair and then grabbed the handrail-mounted mic. The Chaos Lord turned on the ship-wide vox and video and began:
"Attention crew, this is your Lord Kladosh the Bloodsucker speaking…"
On all decks, countless crowds of mortals, mostly beastmen, listened attentively, and whoever could crowded around one of the many screens or mega screens. Normally, on these video boards, the population, consisting of at least 99.9 percent males, could watch hentai played in the loop. Therefore, when suddenly the ultra-realistic, vampiric face of their demigod lord appeared on all these screens, a large number of viewers pissed and shit themselves in shock.
"Soon we are about to invade the Imperial world. A world where nearly a hundred million women live. I know that some of you are probably not so great with numbers, so I will dumb it down for you: that's a thousand women for each of you, a thousand pussies and a thousand pairs of tits for each of you; that's a number that would make even the Greater Daemon of Slaanesh blush. Of course, for those of you who like to swing the other way, there is an equal number of pesky males there, just the right type to get decapitated or fucked in the ass, or both. There are obviously some 'obstacles' there, but make no mistake—this is the holy crusade in the name of the Four, and all who die in battle will be embraced by his chosen deity and taken to a well-deserved paradise! There is like literally no question about it!"