Chapter 15

281. You cannot become the pupil of a high ranking general: Usually it's Creed (Oh God Emperor PLEASE let him be alive) but everyone talks about how they're so good that they can be the student of some high ranking general. It's infuriating really. "Oh, I figured out how to outmaneuver the fucking Orks exactly once and never again, I should be treated like royalty." Except all these generals have, you know, actual important stuff to be doing. So when you march up to them and demand lessons starting Monday, don't be surprised if you get riddled with las bolts. It was the sixth person that day.

282. Do not try to woo anyone in the Death Korps: First of all, there's a fifty percent chance that there's no one in there of the gender you're attracted to (word through the grapevine seems to be that the Korps are all male so if you're attracted to women, you're shit out of luck. But even if you're attracted to men, just don't bother.). Secondly they live to die and they view romance as getting in the way of that. So if you can't take a hint and keep pressing on, they react badly and let's just say bayonets get involved, ok? Don't try to screw the gas mask wearing, self hating fanatics. Weirdo.

283. Never say that anything is for "Kay-Ohss.":...Look...someone made a joke about that, I blacked out, woke up twelve hours later in a room that had blood on every surface and I the next hour of my life was a frantic sprint as I had to scrub every last surface in half a kilometer, along with hiding all the various bits and pieces of body. I'm not the only one. I swear, I've walked in on similar scenes where someone else was covered in liquidized human and the last thing that they heard was that stupid fucking joke. It inspired homicidal rage in all who hear it. I have no idea how or why, it just does. Just don't.

284. Explain things: There is a lot of shit that goes on in this galaxy. Very few people are aware of all of it, thanks in part to the Inquisition actively (and inconsistently) trying to suppress knowledge of our enemies. So it's good to know if the people you're working with actually know the ins and outs of what we're fighting. If you're working with a PDF to hunt down a Genestealer cult and you spot that one of them has been infected? Shooting them in the head is perfectly fine. Just, you know, make sure the people around you know what you're doing. Because if an off worlder randomly shot one of my friends in the head because of some thing I just learned about today and didn't have it explained to me, I'd be pretty pissed. And so were the soldiers in that PDF. Couple hundred solid rounds to the torso got fired before someone managed to explain exactly what a Genestealer is. We should've lead with that.

285. Recognize when rescue missions are futile: I know we like to hold onto some form of nobility in these dark times but we need to recognize when something is beyond our ability. Someone has been captured by Dark Eldar? Odds are very unlikely that we won't be able to break into Commorragh. Same for any major enemy that gets our people on the wrong side of a major stronghold. So please. Don't. We've lost enough people. Don't besmirch their tragic fates with your stupid ones. Trying to break into a Ork fortress with just a crack commando team just leads to a Warboss trying to figure out how he can use human skulls as a bumper.

286: We cannot slap a text to speech device on the Golden Throne: First of all, shut up. Second of all, interfering with the Golden Throne is probably up there with abominable intelligence in terms of tech ultra heresy. Thirdly, NO! Fourthly, if the Tech Priests could do this, don't you think that they would have done this by no? Fifth. NO! NO! NO! NO! Sixthly, if the Emperor could speak to us, he'd probably wouldn't because he's too busy doing a hundred other important things. Keeping the Astronomicon powered on top of everything else. I've just heard stories of people who try and tamper with the Golden Throne, and needless to say, they and their entire families are dead or worse. The Custodians don't mess around, clothes or no clothes.

287: Aliens diseases are a thing and they're terrible: When we think of disease and pestilence, we mainly think of Nurgle and his gang of pedophiles. This isn't a bad thing, but we need to recognize that there are diseases that come from alien worlds (or hell, even worlds that you're just not used to) and they are nasty. I really don't want to remember the time me and a thousand other men drank local water and 17% of us didn't survive the experience. We requisitioned extra water rations, but the Administratum said nooooooooooooo. Just drink the local water, you'll be fine. Cunts.

288. You actually have to hold worlds that you've taken: Ownership is a little iffy at the best of times, considering how convoluted our legal system is. But usually what it comes down to is someone saying "This is mine" and knocking the teeth out of anyone who disagrees. That's more or less what warfare over control of planets is. Seeing who can knock teeth out harder and better. The thing is, after you've one a planet, you need to keep people on it to continue knocking teeth out of people who think they can take it and this metaphor is getting tortured. Long story short, we spent a year conquering a fortress world and then had to conquer it a second time because the dipshit commander didn't want to leave a garrison behind. Yeah, he was orbitally inserted into the thickest front on the second conquest. Without a drop pod.

289: Don't take prisoners when you can just kill someone: When you're slapping the shackles on someone, ask yourself. Do you really need them alive? Do they have vital information? Do they have rare and unique talents you can exploit? If not, why are you bothering? Put a bolt round in their head and call it a day. Trust me, you do not want to know what a Kroot prison riot looks like. Mainly because the Penal Colony governor who wanted to make an example of them learned a hard lesson. The Kroot word for "riot" also means "feast." Yeah. I lost my appetite for awhile after that.

290. Learn Low Gothic for frak's sake: Zamora is reprinting this entire book in High Gothic just so I can get this point across. Learn how to speak the language that 90% of the Imperium uses for basic communications. You can still keep High Gothic, it is a holy language after all, but I don't think the Emperor intended for his holy language to be used for quick, frantic vox orders. When I'm receiving orders under fire, I need to understand what I'm hearing. And the person I'm talking to needs to understand what I mean when I say "for the fifth fucking time, I don't speak High Gothic!" and not just repeat his instructions more loudly and angrily. Doubly so when the orders were to protect his command center from a Tau flanking maneuver. A very successful one.

291. You do not steal military hardware from the Imperium: There are a lot of commanders out there that will kill you for trivial reasons. Stealing vital warmaking tools is not a trivial reason though. From the mundane acts of trying to lift a crate or two of lasguns, to the much more braindead attempted theft of a Leman Russ. See, tankers care about those things, so if you get caught trying to see them, expect to be part of a non-sexual wrench gangbang. Assuming commanders don't get to you first. Turns out they really don't like having their theatres sabotaged by greedy and selfish assholes. And Baneblades? Forget it. A single comment on where the keys are kept is enough to get a jumpy tanker to shoot your dick/tits off. Dumbest thief ring I've ever seen. Five people, same day, same tanker.

292. Don't rely on the Praetorian Guard to save the day: Seriously, these guys utilize tactics that haven't exactly aged well. It's all fine and dandy to use line and volley tactics when you're a primitive civilization that only has las-locks to deal with, but once you get proper lasguns, those same techniques become rather boneheaded. You're out in the open, vulnerable to enemy fire, being attacked by people that aren't going to be stupid enough to stand still in a big group like you are. Saw them trying to fight Orks this way and one had enough brains to lob a couple of grenades (if you can call Squiggs with dynamite shoved in their mouths grenades) and it killed half of them. Then one of them, trying to find out where his legs went, said that the Orks were "cheating."

293. Clockworks do not make for good cybernetics: People do some weird shit on the fringe of civilized space. And I'm not just talking about piercings and braiding pubic hair (seriously I've seen that, no you may not ask how.). I'm talking about weird and disturbing body alterations. This one planet has bizarre clockwork implants that just jut out of people. They walked around stiff and lifeless, and when they died they were like broken toys. They're like weirder, more primitive and more stupid Tech Priests. Because it turns out those exposed gears are dangerous. I spent a week on that planet and twice a day someone got a body part stuck in someone else's gears. To this day I don't know if those things were a religious statement or just a tacky fashion trend.

294. Not every time is singalong time: Look, I understand how faith in the Emperor helps people get through day to day life in this messed up galaxy, and that hymns are an important part of that faith. But for FUCK'S SAKE there's a time and place! And that time and place is not when I'm trying to make my voice heard over screaming and gunfire, it's not when Orks are smashing into our front lines, and it's certainly not when the Orks are bearing down on you and your Barbershop Quartet and you should be FUCKING SHOOTING THEM! You know what the worst part is? The Orks were singing as they ripped the idiots apart, and they were actually carrying a tune better. And they were just singing "we'z da best, yes wii iz," over and over again.

295. No you cannot have fancy weapons: You get a lasgun. Either learn to work with it, get a promotion so that you get a hellgun, or scavenge something. Stop wasting the Administratum's time demanding plasma weapons, power armor, and all the other stuff you'll never get unless you fuck a blue blood. So knock it off before they get fed up and start sending you hardened Grox waste instead of power cells for your lasgun. And no, you cannot throw it at the enemy. I saw one lady try. It did not work.

296. Don't go jamming needles in your neck: It's bad enough that people keep sticking all kinds of Emperor forsaken drugs into their body, but now some people can't even do it right. I'm stuck in a trench with a nimrod who wants to take on the rebels man to man, do she takes a dose of frenzon. Ignoring all the problems with that drug, she didn't know where the vein in her neck was, nor how to reach it. The result was that she stabbed herself in the neck so hard that death was instantaneous. Makes me wonder how the frenzon could've possibly made her more violent or more stupid.

297. Stay away from mountain sized lifeforms giving birth: There are insane things that live out there, bizarre, alien and very dangerous wildlife. One planet had actually repulsed Orks because the apex predator was the size of a mountain range and just as heavily armored. (Ok, apparently it was an omnivore because there's no way for something that big to be a carnivore, but this isn't a science lesson). Anyway, we were checking to make sure there weren't any Ork holdouts and giving these things a wide birth. They're docile unless provoked (I guess we're too small to bother hunting down unless we piss them off) except for one. It was convulsing and a platoon thought that it was sick and that they could kill it with satchel charges in an opening. What happened next reduced me to alternating between drinking and crying into my wife's arms for the next two weeks. Death by placenta.

298. No you cannot "handle things on your own.": Pass things up the chain of command. Even if it's an incompetent chain of command, pass things up so that they're heard. Command needs to know about things so that they can be dealt with. Or at least so that we can get more lasguns pointed at the problem. Don't launch commando raids on the hidden Eldar camp you just found to prove what heroes you are. You'll lose and they'll carry out their plans to make a local volcano erupt. So that the Farseer's girlfriend wouldn't die. Feel like heroes yet you twats?

299. Don't get too cuddly with the Tau: Yes they're like one of the only species that will make a deal with us and not instantly stab us in the back. They're still out for themselves first. They still want to assimilate us if possible and will go to war with us if they can't. We're not friends just because we fought together once or twice. One married couple thought that we were permanent allies with the Tau after a few repelled Tyranid attacks. They promptly got a few gut shots when the Tau tried to expand into our territory again. Offering hugs did not help

300. Recognize how many damn fronts there are in this galaxy: We are trying to fight pretty much everything and everyone. I don't know if people can really wrap their thick heads around this, but the galaxy is big, two million planets is a lot, and we're trying to stake our claim to all of it. Check out the history books and you'll see plenty of times we lost worlds or wars because soldiers were pulled out of pre-existing fronts to fight wars that were considered more important.

What's the death here? What's my personal experience with this? Oh, no death this time. See, the Imperium is under new management now. Or at the very least, there's a new guy steering the old management away from their more stupid decisions. Roboute Guilliman has been ordering a lot of forces recalled to Terra, but he's also been rearranging positions a lot in a way that actually makes sense. Worlds that have a less than zero chance or being attacked, or had a surplus of soldiers, are being sent out to reinforce battered lines. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of soldiers have been deployed to the front I'm on, which is a damn good thing...we need them.

A couple of nearby planets have gone dark. Warp storms have been even more insane lately, but they aren't what caused this. Those were heavily defended Fortress Worlds, there's no way that they would've just dropped off the map by that. The announcement about what's really going on happened yesterday, but I suspected before that. Nothing having to do with me being a magnificent detective or anything, I've just...been getting a very familiar and horrible feeling. A feeling of overwhelming dread that seeps into my very bones. And I was right. She's coming back.

To celebrate the Fall of Cadia, the Chaos Lord that nearly started a Black Crusade is giving it another go. Two more worlds have fallen to her and apparently she's not that far away from where I'm stationed. No idea how long that'll take her, no idea if she'll want to consolidate her gains or wait for backup or if she's trying to lure the Space Wolves into joining the fight so that she can get even with the Old Wolf. There have been scattered reports of the Thousand Sons supporting her to a limited degree. At the very least, she has a company with her. None of the big names, but a lot of Magnus' men nonetheless. In addition to the other random minor warbands she managed to get to march with her.

The worst years of my life are about to get a repeat. The galaxy really is going to shit, even more than it already was. I'm not going to lie to you, I don't know how this is going to end. We've been fighting for ten-thousand years and things don't seem to be getting better. If anything they've been getting worse. The return of Guilliman was the only piece of good news we've gotten in a long time. But no matter what happens, keep fighting. If we're doomed to lose, make these bastards pay dearly for their victory. Make their triumph a hollow one. And pray. Pray that Guilliman can pull us back from the brink. Pray that the Emperor has a plan.

I have to go now. The feeling is worse than ever. Command says that we have no idea where the Lord is going to strike, but it's going to be here. I can feel it. It's like there's something alive and vicious inside my bones, wriggling and trying to go out. This planet I'm stationed on is where she was turned back. Where she lost her arm to the Old Wolf. Where she tasted defeat. I have to put my affairs in order. Every time I go to sleep I night I know something for a fact. She's coming.