I Blame You, Too

by Whitestrake

J.J. Abrams is producing a Half-Life movie AND a Portal movie.

@#@#@# Amos's POV @#@#@#

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes as I looked at the missive from the Inquisition. We would be leaving the Warp soon, possibly within the next thirty hours, but the news carried to our astropath was rather grave. Lord Inquisitor Dorosa, a crone of a woman if there ever was one, seemed to still be alive, and even when I was helping her take down two renegade inquisitors, she still managed to look too deeply into things. Where Dahl had me smuggling xeno-tech, honor forced me to hide the existence of Equus, a planet that, should what I had been told hold true, belonged more to the Warp than reality, yet seemed mostly immune to its ill effects.

“What does it say?” Delphine asked, peering over my shoulder. She was dressed in the simple robes of a sister hospitaller, and, thankfully, had her missing eye obscured by a piece of rough cloth. She didn't know the ins and outs of the Inquisition like I, having been as close to Dahl as I was. Alexander would be better able to decipher the message, but he was incapacitated at the time.

“They know; I'm not sure how much, but it's best we assume they know everything.” The letter was mostly a simple sketch of the Taylor dressed in his armor, and the words Lord Inquisitor Dorosa requests your presence were scrawled beneath his feet. Psychic overlay was likely to blame for the information leak, an afterimage of the genestealer slaughter that had messed with the mind of our astropath. “Now we need to figure out how to go about this. Dorosa doesn’t mess around; we can expect her to bring in as many inquisitors as she can, including chamber militants.”

“So perhaps my sisters will see the good over the... bad,” she replied after some hesitation. She didn't want to call Taylor a heretic, as she so often did, but she also didn't think of him as a hero of the Imperium and champion of its will.

“I'm more concerned with the Deathwatch,” I said, shuddering a bit. While they spent most of their times hunting xenos, members of the Deathwatch were elite Space Marines, drawn from every loyal Chapter in the galaxy, who specialized in fighting all manner of aliens. There would be at least a single kill-squad, which meant they would have a superb marksman and close-combat specialist amongst them. “Space Marines aren't exactly easy to fool.”

“Then we shouldn't lie,” she moaned, looking as though she saw faint doom through the ship's hull. “He's done nothing to hinder Imperial interests, and they can't extract any useful information about Equus.” She pulled out her bolt pistol, which was still shiny with sacramental oils from Martellus's most recent maintenance ritual, and check to see if it's magazine was full. “We don't have the coordinates, and the Warp is unlikely to spit them out in the right place again.”

“Could you fetch me a pen?”

@#@#@# Taylor's POV @#@#@#

“Carte blanche,” Celestia said, sipping her tea. We were in my home, sitting as comfortably as anyone could when there were four princesses crammed into one room. I could only stare at her in amazement; Chrysalis and the other princesses mirrored the gesture.

“Come again?” Shining Armor asked, looking between me and the princess in question. Celestia cleared her throat and spoke again.

“Carte blanche, access to royal funds, in addition to the usual tithe to the Inquisition.” Unlimited access to royal funds, all devoted to defending this planet from outside invasion. “How soon can you muster a passable defense for us, enough to repel the first few waves of an invasion?”

“Honestly?” I asked, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “Provided you can get me the conscripts, indoctrination materials, ammunition, fuel, armor, and food, I can have a planetary defense force whipped up in about a year.”

“Against this?” Luna asked, waving a hoof to the autopsy photos spread on the coffee table. Genestealers and the Black Legionnaire were cut open and on display in the picture, all taken using a standard Polaroid camera to eliminate any chance of a leak. “One of these aliens can rip a tank apart, if our entomologists are correct. And how many years of combat experience did you say this human had?”

“Ten thousand, according to him. And the correct term would be post-human, given their incredible gene-mods and implants.” Space Marines had more going for them than fancy armor and big guns, but it didn't take a genius to figure that out. As much as I wanted to rip out his Progenoid glands and attempt to recreate his Chapter's gene-seed, nothing Horus had going for him would be of use to anything inhuman, provided this guy was even a Son of Horus before the Heresy. Still, they were on ice until made my decision regarding the use of augmentation. It's a rather sore subject. “They're barely human, and I'm not sure if that makes them less or more than the rest of us.”

“Ten thousand years... ,” Celestia began, but her voice dropped off after a while. She looked worried, and I knew how serious things were if she was showing her emotions. “How many of them are there?”

“Chaos Marines? No idea, but it's a few million, easily.” Celestia's eyes darkened for a moment, and I could only wonder at the gears turning in her head. Ten thousand was the largest army ever raised before the war five years ago, and even the, we only had about one hundred thousand soldiers, not counting support units and vehicle crews. “That's not counting the loyalist Chapters, or the ones who are renegade but haven't turned to Chaos.”

“What chances do we have if we go on the offensive, carve out a piece of the galaxy for ourselves?” Twilight asked, much to Celestia's shock. I had requested she bring the subject up, but not so bluntly. “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

“The same if we focus entirely on defense: zero.”

“Isn't there something we can do to increase our odds, and I mean only defensively?” Cadence did her absolute best to remain a valiant defender for peace, or defense in this case. She and Twilight had the best views of the carnage, if you didn't count Chrysalis. From what I could tell from Amos's information regarding the system the Valkyrie would enter, we were damn close to the Damocles Gulf, and therefore the Tau Empire, who, as much as I didn't like the idea, were arguably our best chance for allies. “Didn't you work on hormone and cybernetics therapies to increase combat efficiency?”

At that moment, you could have heard a pin drop from across the house. Twilight and Shining Armor had no idea what she was talking about, but the rest of us knew. The official story, so far as Luna and Cadence were concerned, was that the applicants died on the operating table. Truthfully, the applicants were kidnapped from the local populace to be used against their will, and were killed after things went wrong. Celestia had been told the lie, but she knew the truth, and she knew I knew she knew.

“Yes, and I may be able to use the Space Marine as a template for augments.” I looked Celestia in the eye and made my peace with my ancestors. “But only maybe, given how fickle human genes can be.”

@#@#@#@#@#@#

From the Journal of the Burned Man

11 September, 1013 AC

I'm looking at the Progenoid glands right now, and the genome research notes are on my desk. Chrysalis is upstairs asleep, and Scipia is at Gingersnap's house for the night. Right now, it's just me and Leviathan awake, or as close as either of us get at one in the morning. In these little bits of meat lie the gene-seed necessary to create a Space Marine, though it likely has more than its fair share of mutations from its time in the Warp. I can create nineteen identical pairs organs from these two bits of meat, and play god in doing so.

The information I could get from using these on a human child could prove invaluable, plus I would have the spare set to study independently once they matured inside another subject. It would take time, but the gene-seed could be re-purposed, made to work with pony physiology. I damaged the corpse enough to remove any sign of deliberate removal of the Progenoid glands, but questions would still be raised.

I'll sleep on it, and make my final decision in the morning. For now, these things are going back on ice.

Comments

[G S tol Kriaal]

*reads title* That is probably the best news I've heard all day

[Rhodesm96]

3173017 What if it was a Half-Life AND Portal movie in one?

[Cobra of England]

19 organs? Hmmm... If we count the Burned Man as well, then...

Yep. That's 20 pony-equivilents to the Primarchs, a.k.a enough for a Heresy.

[Whitestrake]

3174119 No, you need nineteen organs to create one Space Marine, but one organ is the Progenoid glands, so one becomes two becomes four becomes eight. Besides, you need to be under 17 (ideally), to allow the organs time to grow and mature, otherwise they either won't work entirey or at all, unles you take serious counteractive measures.

[Useless Machine]

I'm still thinking this story will end with everything on Equus dead and the planet under Imperial control.
Really, I'd say just about everything is against Equestria at this point. Apologies for being fatalistic, but I see no possible way this will end other than this.

[Whitestrake]

3176265 Aw, way to be realistic.

[Razzy]

Wolverines!