Walnut-chan - Chapter 171: Heydrich's Follow-up Plan

The Stargate Project was something Heydrich had thrown together as an emergency measure. This war had shown that the tavern's problems were still far too serious.

He was in the same boat as the Imperium: troops he couldn't bring to bear, though at least supplies could still get through. Even so, the effort had run him ragged and left him limping. Of course, there was another reason he hadn't brought the project out back on Baal.

He had no navy. The thing needed a stable space environment to operate, and back then the swarm would have destroyed it with ease. Besides, Baal, deep in the Imperium Nihilus, was much too far from here.

The timing was about right now. The war on Armageddon had ended early because of Heydrich's own intervention. He suspected that ending was only a rest in the music, though. Bonebreaker's main horde hadn't really lost much, and the bastard would very likely come back.

Still, there'd be no trouble in the short term. The Tyranids were in much the same situation. The Great Devourer would surely be psychologically scarred after the beating Heydrich had given it, so from here on the Tyranids would move through the galaxy with great caution, and might even break up into small groups.

As for the Necrons, they'd sunk into the mire of civil war. For the next few decades at least, the only enemy Heydrich had to face was Chaos. And the biggest Chaos offensive of late had come from the Stars of Calamity, not far from here.

Now Heydrich's craftworld was here, and so was the forge world that mattered most to him.

So there was no way for his forces to avoid the fight. If it couldn't be avoided, the only choice was to charge in and settle it head-on.

"So aside from linking my forge world and the Stargates at Macragge, I plan to put the rest here."

As he spoke, Heydrich marked a point on the star chart. It was a fortress, the closest position to the Stars of Calamity.

If Mortarion wanted to enter the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar, he'd have to come through here.

In truth, an Ultramarines army had always been garrisoned here. But those so-called armies hadn't held out long against a Primarch who had freed his hands and led his troops in person. The story barely even mentioned it.

Afterward, once Mortarion was let into the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar, he'd blown things apart from the inside and battered the Metalica, a forge world of truly ancient standing, quite badly.

Now Heydrich meant to connect this place directly by Stargate. And unless Chaos blanketed an entire star system, nothing could block this portal.

"This is... Could it be that we'll really face a Daemon Primarch in the future?"

Looking at the spot Heydrich was pointing to on the map, the crowd exchanged glances. Linking straight to Macragge was no problem.

After all, Macragge was the very heart of Ultramar, and it held that position mainly because of its extremely stable Warp route.

That route reached the large region nearest Macragge with great stability. It was the hub of all Ultramar, and even of several neighboring sectors.

That region, however, was rather remote. They had heard it was running into some trouble, and had even sent a Space Marine company to help defend it. But if the Stargate were placed there...

Then they'd be facing only one possibility: the Daemon Primarch Mortarion.

They had heard early on that a Daemon Primarch seemed to have appeared, and had even entered T'au territory.

But that was only a rumor, with nothing concrete to back it up. If it was true, though, the pressure on them was frankly terrifying.

After all, Macragge was hollow on the inside right now. Magnus the Red had taken a portion of its strength, and Calgar had taken another.

In the original timeline, they didn't have the strength to stand against Mortarion until Magnus the Red returned with the Indomitus Crusade fleet. Of course, even Heydrich got a headache facing these things now.

Four of the Daemon Primarchs were especially troublesome, because they had masters.

Masterless dogs could be beaten at will, but dogs with masters were another matter. Even Heydrich couldn't say what would happen if those Primarchs directly petitioned the Ruinous Powers behind them for a divine descent.

After all, Khorne had once descended into Angron and, in a single blow, punched through the Emperor's Champion and destroyed a Choral Engine. And that was Angron fighting under a debuff.

Heydrich had no confidence he could beat that. Since that was the case, he couldn't go flipping the table at every turn.

When he'd fought the Tyranids and the Orks earlier, it was mainly because of the powers behind them. The Great Devourer couldn't take the field in person. Or rather, he was taking the field in person every moment, but it was the usual GW problem.

He's amazing in the background, then flames out the moment he lands on the tabletop. Showing up all the time means never really showing up.

As for the Orks' Gork and Mork, all Heydrich could say was that they hadn't taken the field at Ullanor back then, and they hadn't in the War of the Beast either, the war that came closest to wiping out humanity.

Anyway, as long as Heydrich didn't actually wipe out the Orks, there'd be little problem. Incidentally, Bonebreaker was only one part of the Orks. He couldn't even represent most of them, since the Orks were thoroughly fragmented.

They also kept no records of history at all, which doomed them to never amount to anything.

The Imperium of Man held together because it rallied under the Emperor's banner. The Orks had nothing like that.

So the Orks were a sort of knock-off of humanity. Whether you wanted to make the Orks great or destroy them, neither was possible.

It wasn't that there were no far-sighted Orks. Those just died faster, dealt with by their own kind.

So when fighting them, Heydrich could flip the table as he pleased. Flipping the table against Chaos was another matter entirely.

"Sigh... I'm still too weak."

Heydrich couldn't help sighing. His strength still wasn't enough. If he could just elbow all four Dark Gods flat, he wouldn't need to prepare so much.

"All right, that covers two of them. Where do you think the last one should link to?"

With two locations settled, Heydrich put the last one on the table for the group to decide.

"..."

For a moment everyone just exchanged glances. What they really wanted to ask was whether it could go straight to Holy Terra.

Of course, that was unlikely. Macragge was extremely far from Holy Terra.

Heydrich couldn't remember exactly how far, and the official material had probably never said. But going by the galaxy map against the galaxy's actual size, it was probably tens of thousands of light-years. Linking directly would take a number with several hundred zeros.

Besides, a passage like that was extremely fragile. If even one or two nodes were damaged, the whole thing would collapse.

So in Heydrich's eyes, it had to be laid out as something like a spider's web, with three or four routes into every region. That way it could withstand serious risks.

So wherever he decided to lay it, it had to be done layer by layer. Not rushed against the clock like the Emperor's Great Crusade. That way was more stable.

After all, this time Heydrich didn't need to race the Warp. He didn't need to exploit the gap of a few hundred years after Slaanesh's birth.

Only by building power without relying on the Warp could one truly stand against the Dark Gods of the Warp.

In that case, there was no need to hurry. He could take his time and lay a solid foundation. This was only the first step.

"My Lord, what kind of output can these Stargates reach?"

The Chancellor of Macragge turned to look at Heydrich. The little old man, in his seventies or eighties now, had a shrewd gleam in his eyes.

For modern people, seventy or eighty meant the final stretch of life. But for the Imperium's upper echelons, with rejuvenation treatments, living three or four hundred years was no problem, provided you weren't killed or worked to death.

"The first year's numbers will be low, around five or six pairs. After that we can add seven or eight pairs every year. How many more than that depends on the supply of resources."

Although Heydrich had made this his top priority, there was no way to push production to its limit in a short time.

But demand for the things was nearly infinite. Even millions wouldn't be too many.

Or rather, the demand was nearly infinite because the Stargates weren't as stable as the Emperor's webway project, nor as free of side effects.

"I'll need to prepare several more sets of STC templates, so they don't get lost again in the future..."

Anyway, Heydrich had already decided that if he got the chance, he'd find a way to slip away himself. But before slipping away, he had to get everything ready.

The main problem was that he couldn't find anyone from Dragon Nation. These white-skins didn't care about preserving heritage down to their bones.

And it wasn't only technology. Look at their attitude toward history. People say the Enigmata faction fabricates history, but look at today's world. There's even a term for it: the Western pseudo-history theory.

How does the West do history? A bunch of so-called scholars set up a salon, start chatting with each other, and settle history through the chatting. They're the real History Fictionologists, so naturally you get a ton of bugs.

The West also loves minting demigods, Alexander the Great above all. By their account, he reached the East, conquered the East, and then ran headlong into China.

The result was that China pulled out its detailed history books and asked them to line up the dates, and that was the end of it. They simply changed "the East" into India. That's why Western historians hate China the most: how is your record so detailed?

So don't expect these white-skins to value heritage. Just look at the Adeptus Mechanicus today. Meanwhile, the Celestial Empire has almost never had an important tradition die out. The only ones that might have are those with real cultural value but little practical value.

So Heydrich could only prepare a huge number of STCs, and hope that nothing would truly be lost after he slipped away. As for reproducing the actual technology, that would have to be left to his people to research slowly. After all, the things he made had a certain Ork reckoning beauty to them.

[Author's Note: There's one more update coming, but it might be a bit late.]