This story is done without any AI. Just thought I might advertise that, given how things are these days.
This story feature has futa. It has impregnation. It also has interspecies, sort of, depending on how you qualify "species"
And, oh yes, it takes place in Warhammer 40k.
If any of those things don't appeal to you, well, I don't know what to tell you, it's what the story is about.
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It's the 41st Millenium and Cadia has fallen.
The Fortress World proudly held up for thousands of years against the worst the Eye of Terror could muster against it. It seemed destined, divinely ordained, to stand forever against the tide. But the turn of the millennium put a stop to the inertia of the Golden Crusade. And that began by shattering this one sure illusion that they all had.
The Cadians did not fail. Even as their planet broke beneath them, they did not break with it. Even with their homeland gone, the Cadians were still everywhere, fighting. Cadia itself might have failed.
But the Cadians have not.
And that was going to have to be enough.
After the fall of the Cadian Gates, the forces of Chaos poured forth into the galaxy like water entered a cup. With the fabric of reality creaking, and daemonic nightmares vanguarding before armies of heretics even made landfall, many worlds fell in instants. Fearing this fate, many planetary governors made the administrative decision to abandon their worlds. Leery of this tide, many worlds followed their leader's lead and joined them in huge immigratory fleets that made their way to safer shores and safer worlds.
But the fall of the Cadian Pylon made Warp travel more dangerous than it already was, and the outpour of old empyrean forces completed the disaster by chasing fleeing prey.
Everything might have been lost, would have been lost, had the Emperor not found it dignified to have one of his sons returned to the Imperium once more.
Acting as a counterweight to the end, Guilliman, that old legend reborn, collected and reforged the breaking Imperium and provided the safe lands and the safe lanes that everyone prayed for.
Pacts were renewed, forces reassembled. Orders were given, and an Empire reinforced. Guilliman was coming back and the Cadians? The Cadians would be on the front lines of it all.
But the people who sought asylum in the safe heavens under the Primarch's rule turned out to pose problems of their own. For what did the Imperium do with all of these people in a time when it needed protectors rather than people to be protected? What could it do, when it needed strength to drive its renewal forward rather than weakness to drag it dead?
Lucky for all, the Imperium well knew how to turn problems...into assets.
Colonel Regina, previously a company Captain of the Cadian 5115th Regiment, arrived at the Theseus with nothing but servitors to carry all her personal and vital possessions. She arrived to a crew that, quite simply, seemed unsure of what to do with her.
Having been a mere Captain in her past Regiment, her recent promotion had filled her with both elation and misgivings in equal measure. Both were inferior, to her determination to succeed all the same. As it should be.
She was to help raise a new regiment from the survivors in a fleet fleeing from Joss' Pearl, a now overrun world. The problem was compounded in that her promotion and summons had not allowed her to take any staff from her Regiment with her. She was supposed, as her writ outright commanded, to "manifest her own upon arrival."
And THAT caused no small amount of consternation.
Essentially, it meant that, most likely, she was going to be assigned newly promoted random Imperial Guard personnel to her. Not the worst thing to have to work with, with everything said and done, but it would be a headache at the beginning when she had to measure and vett everyone's skills and competencies. A hard labor, given that she had absolutely no idea what sort of refugees she was going to be training.
But then, when was soldiering easy?
The worst situation, however, was one she privately prayed she would not face: there was a tradition that turned PDFs, Planetary Defence Forces, into Imperial Guard regiments, by either reassigning their colonels into Guard Colonels...or simply assigning them Guard top brass. A single Imperial Guard Colonel could officially turn the rest of a PDF force into an Imperial Guard Regiment simply through their presence as far as the Administratum was concerned.
But that was PDFs, not refugees. The paper pushers, who knew nothing about making good soldiers except what they saw in a spreadsheet, might not care and expected her to have the same success. If she faced that, having to make lieutenants, captains and sergeants out of the almost literal dirt, well, she would do her duty to the Emperor as best she could...but she dearly hoped they could at least read, or this task was going to lay very heavily on her.
The men she saw as she entered the Theseus, however, gave her some hope. Oh, they weren't particularly impressive specimens of humankind, as a whole, but they were well-fed, and were clearly skilled void mariners. The Theseus was a Vagabond Class, a transport ship, and so the worst wasn't exactly incorrect to expect from it. At 2 kilometers long, with a crew of less than 20,000 people, just this small and humble ship had individuals that reflected well on its previous homeworld.
But appearances were deceiving and it would not do for a Colonel to allow her opinion to be swayed before she even met her troops.
"Captain," she nodded to the nervous Chartist owner of the warp-capable vessel.
"Colonel?" he hesitated for a moment, then made to salute her.
"The Aquila is fine, Captain," Regina informed him, not showing any of the amusement she was feeling inside, "You are not part of the imperial forces."
And then someone coughed.
"That's...not exactly right, ma'm," the Captain informed her and pulled out the Administratum summons that conscripted him, and his whole ship, for use in the Imperial Navy.
The man she was speaking to was, indeed, the Captain of a Imperial Navy transport, not just the captain of a refugee ship.
Well then.
"Permission to come aboard, Captain?" this time, Regina DID salute and made the proper request.
"Granted, Colonel," the man replied.
Then he hesitated once more, "I am under orders to go around the subsector collecting survivors from Joss' Pearl to bring them to you, Colonel. I am to facilitate whatever you need in building your forces."
"They are not all already here?" Regina frowned; why was she summoned before her forces were even mustered?
"We seem to have the biggest collection of them," the Captain said.
"That's good," Regina relaxed a bit.
"All 200 of them," the Captain confirmed.
And that made Regina stare at him as if she hadn't heard right, "What?"
"Is that a wrong number?" the Captain frowned in turn. Since this was getting dangerously close to her complaining about the Imperial acquisitions to a stranger she just met, and an officer from a different branch to boot, she quickly amended herself.
"It is...a bit unusual," Regina said, "But not altogether unprecedented."
Regiments were usually forces composed of mechanized, cavalry, artillery and infantry components. These made the average among them be in the many thousands, at the least. Or in most cases, anyway.
There DID exist Regiments that were composed of less than 1,000 soldiers. Usually, they were simply repleted and waiting to be reinforced. But, sometimes, due to special circumstances like a particular way of making war, small numbers ended up being their "natural" existence.
"Oh, that's right," the Captain gestured towards one of his sub-officers to have Regina handed a scroll, "I was told to present you this."
It was an order form.
There weren't orders to deploy, thank the Emperor, but they were orders instructing her to effectively make her Regiment grow to a "normal" size; The Administratum wanted 5,000 soldiers by-
"There is no set date here," Regina frowned at her order.
"Neither is there in mine," the captain shrugged, "I figured they just wanted us prepared for when they needed us.
Regina hummed as she kept reading.
"The Forgeworlds in this Sector can only provide us with small arms and crew-sized weapons," Regina pursed her lips. She was to command a light infantry-centric force then, "And the Theseus is to double as our training grounds as well as our transport."
"Well," the Captain said, "I guess I am welcoming you to your new home then, Colonel."
"It appears so," Regina rolled the scroll back up and put it in her coat, "As a gesture of appreciation, I will send the men to incorporate the emblems and symbols of the Theseus into our outfits."
Grounding her regiment with a common history and cause would have to be at the top of her list, of course. The loss of Joss' Pearl must be something that can be used to forge their conviction, but that world, as far as Regina could tell, did not have much notable military history. She said she was doing the Captain a favor, but she was in fact going to appropriate what success and feats the Chartist ancestors of the Captain had to make her work easier.
However much she wished, she could not just expect them to be Cadian.
But as she was making plans, a silence descended in the hallway of that ship as the Captain's officers looked at them both with consternation.
And even the Captain was looking befuddled.
"What is the matter?" Regina asked.
"You don't know?" the captain shot back.
"Nothing that merits that reaction," Regina was quick to shoot back.
"Well, in that case," the man invited her to walk deeper into the ship with a gesture of his arm, "it's best that you see for yourself."
Human beings plan and the Emperor laughs.
Regina recalled hearing that somewhere, even if the words edged at the precipice of being heretical. But it was nonetheless true: no human being could think or plan at the divine heights of their Throne-bound Lord, so wasn't it obvious that their plans would ultimately go awry due to not being "pure" enough?
Regina could not tell when, or how, she lacked purity of purpose or hate to merit this, however.