Chapter 17

321. Stay warm: We fight on a lot of planets out there in the infinite void in the galaxy. Here's the thing about the galaxy, most of the planets out there aren't habitable for a multitude of reasons. Too inhospitable, lack of oxygen, lack of an atmosphere, those kinds of things. But one thing that is very common is that they're too far away from the star in their system and they're freezing cold, or in the middle of an ice age. We tend to get issued winter equipment for those missions (I say tend to, every once in awhile it gets sent to the planet covered in deserts and volcanoes by mistake, because the Administratum can't tie it's shoelaces without filing ten forms and then waiting four to six business weeks for a reply) and you need to use them. I don't care if you're hot or sweating while we're on the ship, because you'll be needing that puffy, stupid looking outfit the second we get planetside. The number of people I've lost to the cold because they think it's an ugly fashion statement to bundle up, I swear to the Emperor. SOME PLANETS ARE SO COLD THEY CAN KILL SPACE MARINES IN FULL ARMOR YOU STUPID FUCKS!

322. Alcohol does not hydrate you: Speaking of planets covered in volcanoes and deserts, I had to spent six months on one when I was cleaning up the remnants of the Chaos Lord's first campaign. It was a miserable experience, not going to lie. You ever been to a planet where the coldest it gets is 37 °C? I have, it isn't fun. Constantly sweating your ass off, struggling to see through the heat haze, and you're always thirsty. We had gotten extra water rations, but even then we had to be stingy. Of course, there was one idiot who thought that she would be fine replacing her water rations with her alcohol rations, thinking it would keep her going. She's dead now. Death by dehydration, because it turns out booze makes you piss more.

323. Don't go out of your way to make everyone your enemy: Look, we're pretty much going to have to fight and kill everything else out there if we want to get through all of this crap and come out still alive. You know that, I know that, everyone knows that. But you don't need to remind our enemies of that. I was part of an invasion force that was sent to reclaim a conquered Imperial colony, only to find that it had become the battleground of a three way orgy of violence between the Necrons, Chaos and the Eldar. All the civilians were dead or corrupted, so that popular vote was to just hang back and let all three factions tear the shit out of each other. But the lead general thought it'd be fun to get on the vox, loudly announce our arrival, and talk shit to all three enemy armies. Yeah, he managed to get all of their attention on us. Most of us were smart enough to run. He wasn't.

324. There's a time and a place for hymns: I understand that people really like to sing these things for quite a few reasons. I never saw the appeal personally, it's not like saying something in a high pitched voice makes it more sacred to the Emperor, but what do I know? This, this is what I know, keep your damn mouth shut if we need silence. Apparently some people still read the Imperial Uplifting Primary, and stupidity is still being spread because of it. One of its infinite words of wisdom is to recite a hymn every time you throw a grenade. Kind of ruins the effect we're going for when we're trying to ambush a passing Chaos patrol by throwing a dozen grenades at them. Doubly so if you take too long and the grenade explodes in an idiot's hand, taking her arm off and causing her to bleed to death.

325. Battles are not spectator sports: So, I want you to imagine something for me. Imagine you've been on a front against Chaos for a month, and things have devolved into brutal, grinding trench warfare. Of that month, you've spent half of it in the front line trench. You're filthy, you're miserable, you just want to take a shower and bash the head of anyone who says you can't in with a shovel. Now imagine, at that point, that a bunch of noble twats head into the trenches with armchairs, saying that they've come to "watch the festivities. I was about to explode at them, probably would've gotten executed but I was that angry at the sheer arrogant swagger they had, when Chaos made a push. We had to fall back to the previous line, and I saw the enemy generals using their heads for footballs to celebrate. Not sure how they expected that to go.

326. No spinning your guns: This is a pretty recent one, because it turns out that you can't go five seconds in this Emperor forsaken Millennium. Had an idiot in my platoon that was twirling is las pistols to show off for his girlfriend. Like it's something impressive to do, anyone can do it. You can do it. Pick up a keychain right now and spin it on your fingers. Go on do it. See? It's easy isn't it! It's not something to brag about if you can pull off, but either this guy was an idiot or his girlfriend was easily impressed. Ugh, maybe the trick was that he was trying to do it with loaded pistols without them going off. Except that didn't work out because both of them got blasted through the head and I'm not sure which one I hate more.

327. Alien animals cannot be tamed and/or converted into weapons: YES I REMEMBER THE SPACE MONKEYS AND NO I DON'T FUCKING CARE ABOUT THEM! Technically they're not even animals so shut up. So if you find some form of multi headed thing with twelve sets of claws and spits acid. The local thing to do would be, I don't know, shoot it dead and then set the corpse on fire to be safe? Apparently not, because apparently some stupid people think this thing can be harnessed. Look, as fucking hilarious as it would be to have this thing rip an Eldar in half while I watch, I don't see it working out. It had five heads and they were trying to kill each other, what makes you think that they won't rip yours off the second they get a chance? BECAUSE THEY DID!

328. Chemicals splash: I think I mentioned way back when that I had gotten barrels of acid instead of the equipment that I needed for the upcoming mission, so I had to trade around to get it. Said acid turned out to be bought by a couple of...eccentric soldiers who thought it'd be a good idea to dump the acid on Necrons. Well, credit where credit is due, it actually did turn out to be rather effective. Just one teensy tiny little problem, kind of like I pointed out before, it splashed. Yeah, their faces were gone.

329. You can not make precision shots with artillery: Sometimes enemy forces utilize a strange little tactic. They take one extremely powerful unit and send it charging directly at our center line, usually Tyranids and Orks. It does a good job of getting everyone else to shoot at it while they try and do something else. It sucks, but we pretty much have to take out the one powerful thing that's charging at us before it reaches us, so they force our hand. That being said, when we do end up in a situation like that when we have to take out a single thing, artillery isn't ideal. So no, when we have a lone Carnifex that is charging at us, full sprint, no using the fucking Basilisk! We had a Leman Russ Executioner you dumb shits! What, did you not want to scratch the paint jobs on it because it was a gift from the local nobility and you wanted to return it in pristine condition so that you fuck the noblewoman who gave it to us? I'LL DIG YOUR CORPSE OUT OF THE CARNIFEX AND I'LL SEE IF SHE GETS WET!

330. No "honorable" combat: So, not long after Mr. and Mrs. dumbass got their brains blown out by the galaxy's lousiest circus act, I had to deal with a local PDF that had fallen to Chaos and dug into a cave. My sister and I managed to kill them all but we took a couple of losses, it happens no matter how well you approach a battle. So I had made peace with the fact that I had lost a couple of men. Until it turned out that one of them had drawn his knife and let the enemy charge at him instead of, I don't fucking know, SHOOTING THEM! Why do people want to fight Chaos in a fair fight? THERE ISN'T A SINGLE SPECIES IN THIS GALAXY THAT WILL SHOW US THE SAME COURTESY! DON'T GO FIRST!

331. Dark Eldar cannot be bribed with drugs: I can actually follow the logic on this one. Those things are the worst attributes of hedonists personified, so it makes sense to try and persuade them with something that would bring them pleasure. Except there's a couple of problems that this plan runs into in practice. First and foremost, a very much doubt that there is a human drug that can utterly fry your brain the way Dark Eldar drugs can. Secondly, they'll probably just kill you and take if if you somehow do manage to get a drug like that. Third, communicating with Dark Eldar? Yeah, good luck. You'll probably end up with your body inverted, hung from a hook and still alive.

332. Things can ALWAYS get worse so keep your mouth shut: No. Stop right now. Keep your mouth shut. No matter how tempting it might be to say it, never fucking say "things can't get any worse." EVER! KEEP YOUR FUCKING MOUTH SHUT! You'd be surprised how good Genestealers are at sneaking into cramped little nooks and cracks. And they can always jump out at the worst time. SO BE FUCKING QUIET! Unless you really want one to stuff your entire head in its mouth.

333. Self given augmentation doesn't really work: You want to give yourself a bionic arm? Well, first of all, you'll have a hell of a time convincing the higher ups that you're worth it, so you'll probably have to get a black market one second hand. Which I don't really recommend but it's your body to twist and deform. Just don't act surprised when you get cancer or Emperor knows what else, you can get from the rusty scrap pile the thing was pulled from. But assuming you manage to get one, don't give yourself the operation. Yes someone has tried it. I honest to god had a stupid ass trooper walk into my room, holding her bionic arm her remaining hand. Her other arm was just a stump and she was bleeding everywhere "I didn't think this through." No fucking shit.

334. Whips are lousy weapons: The only time I've seen whips used as practical weapons is when Chaos has them, and when that happens they usually summoned a daemon and then stuffed it into the bloody thing. In that case it's not really a whip being used as a weapon as it is whacking people with a daemon that happens to be using a whip as a vessel. Whips that haven't been turned into shitty apartments for Warp spawn on the other hand kind of suck. At most you can pull people to the ground or really hurt them. So if you're a bounty hunter, a torturer, or dealing with someone who gets off to pain, then you can use a whip. Otherwise, you're wasting your time. The whole immobilization thing doesn't really work on most things the Imperium fights anyway.. You ever see someone try to pull an Ork off his feet? I have. The thing thought that that idiot doing it to him wanted to play. So he took the whip and used him as a yo-yo. Not that he knew how to use a yo-yo, but he did his damndest to learn.

335. Idly being an "innovative" Tech Priest: So here's the thing. Tech Priests take their whole worship of technology thing VERY seriously. I've covered it a couple of times in the past, but let me cover it again. They think that technology in sacred, particularly designs created in the Dark Age of Technology (minus abominable intelligence) and that we should be heading back to those designs instead of creating new ones. And that attempting to create new ones is heresy of the highest order. They only allow it in the most dire of circumstances, something like the Ordinatus only happens when they think there's no other option. I don't care how sneaky you are about it, you will get found out if you try to pull it off. I've seen the results, a lot of spikes were involved. Not that this guy even tried. Someone asked him to make a translation device, and he did. Wasn't on the list of allowed tech. I mean maybe he had taken his vows to the Omnissiah to mean he should live under a rock, but you'd think he'd be better at blending in.

336. Wraithbones are not weapons: You know, people really need to read a glossary for all the various tools and weapons in this millennium. I mean, I can understand some misunderstandings, like not being sure if I'm talking about a Tyranid or a Sabbat Crusades era commander when I say Gaunt, but there's just some utter pathetic misunderstandings going on. During a push to take an Eldar forward base that had been set up on some moon, one rookie found a crate full of Wraithbone. Wraithbone, from what I understand, is an Eldar construction material, a bit like Ceramite. This "brave" young soul thought he had found a powerful weapon and started chucking chunks at the Eldar. They did not react well to that. And by that I mean they threw a rod of the stuff at him so hard that it went straight through his throat. Like, all the way through.

337: Conscripts make lousy NCOs and officers: Look, conscription is something we have to do from time to time. I'm not proud of it, but sometimes we need extra hands firing extra guns. But we usually try to be smart about it. Having them be put in charge of squads or even platoons is a sure fire way to make it so that those units end up being target practice (or lunch) for the enemy. They just know nothing about tactics or formations. They don't even understand basic concepts like flanking or pincer maneuvers. It's always just "call in an airstrike on everything." I've seen ten dipshit conscripted NCOs die this way. Nine died because they were too busy calling in airstrikes to order their squads out of the open, and the final one got his air strike and called it directly down on his position. And the pilots listened.

338: No throwing axes: Oh good for you, you were able to kill someone from a fair distance away without having to close that distance. And you did so in a way that required you to sacrifice your weapon. If only you had another weapon that allowed you to kill from across the room while staying perfectly still. LiKE A FUCKING LAS RIFLE! Yeah, no fucking showing off! You have a rifle, use it! If you lower it for any reason, even if you're empty, to go for an axe or a knife or whatever, you're hobbling yourself. Even if you hit your target, you've given up a melee weapon and it'll only work if you have exactly one guy trying to kill you. Assuming you don't miss and leave yourself exposed to the guy who most likely won't try to overcompensate like you just did.

339. Nobles have guards, not milita: Emperor's sake, some nobles are so worthless they aren't even good at being elitist pricks. I went to a backwater planet that was just barely above a feudal world and had to interact with the nobility there. Now let me tell you about personal guards for nobles, with Zamora as an example. Her family's guard has been trained since the tender age of twelve. It's been their job their entire lives to defend her family, and it shows. Highly drilled, best equipment the family can find, and they're very well cared for. Hellguns and carapace armor, and even poorer families tend to go with flak armor and lasguns that are higher quality than average. These nobles had a bunch of inbred, out of shape bumble fucks who had some shotguns and autopistols and no armor except for dirty overalls. They were just a bunch of poor peasants who became guards in exchange for three square meals a day and a place to sleep. I honestly felt sorry for the poor fucks. Not so much for the jackasses who thought that they would make a good last line of defense when the local rebels attacked. Surprise surprise, the poor starving peasants grabbed carts full of food and ran, while the nobles were lynched outside the capital building. The rebels were actually easy to negotiate with once they were in charge, they didn't have a problem with the Imperium, they paid their tithes like they were supposed to. They just had a problem with the dipshits running their planet. Hey, I don't blame them.

340. Deep strike missions on heavily fortified worlds are suicide: It's not easy to get at some of the major leaders of an army. They usually play it smart and stay far away from the front lines, often not being on the same planet or system as the front lines. Mainly because, even if there's a chain of succession, things have a tendency to go to shit when the top of the chain is broken. As such, deep strike operations, dropping off soldiers far behind enemy lines, is very popular. But they're nearly always one way trips.

First of all, getting there is a logistical nightmare. There are some tricks, like running silent, but they're damn hard to pull off and easy to mess up. It's all too common for these teams to be vaporized before they even make planetside. And even if they get to the planet, they have to get to the right part of the planet. You can rarely drop right on top of the general location for the target, which means sneaking through hundreds or thousands of kilometers of enemy territory. Another part that the team rarely survives.

So, the ones that manage to make it this far now have to worry about getting past the guards of their target, which is usually the best they can get. After the slaughter that's that fight, they finally have a shot at their target. Sometimes they get lucky and it's a squishy leader who isn't a fighter. Las bolt to the head and they move on. Other times it's a Warboss or an Eldar Farseer, and is actually the most difficult part of the mission. Another hurdle where so many of the men and women sent on these missions die.

Finally, there's extraction. For the teams that completed the mission, this is where so many of them fall. Extraction is around twelve nightmares flash fused together, because now the planet is on high alert and the strike team needs to find a safe place to extract. When the entire planet is looking for them. If the Imperium even bothers. Often they don't.

Why do I bring this up? Because it turns out the Chaos Lord has been busy. She has a son. A FUCKING SON! He's been given command of a good chunk of her forces and he took one of the two planets that went dark. The Harlequin told me about him, so he's in the Imperium's sights now. He's the target of a deep strike, the Lord herself is too hardened a target, so we're settling for Jr.. GUESS WHO GOT SELECTED FOR THIS MISSION!

Yup, the Harlequin is being sent on this mission and I'm tagging along with him. Space Marines can't be spared (IE I'm more expendable than them) and I attract less attention (Sure, that's why) so a couple of others and I will be heading out there. So. Yeah. I thought I might be writing my own entry one day. Let's see if this ends up being it.

(Please note that I have given these notes to a dear friend of mine that I can trust. He's been giving me some notes on similar experiences to mine, but from the perspective of a tanker. Almost enough for a chapter. He'll be releasing this chapter a month after I'm sent on this mission, when it will be over one way or another, so that it doesn't get compromised. If I somehow don't die, I'll be back to write new chapters. If not, well, I guess this is where the book ends.)