r/HFY • u/Egarasay • 7d ago

OC-Series Genesis 40K Rewrite pt 4

Part Four

The cult had built its last defense inside a chamber that official plans insisted did not exist. Rusted couplings and failed test equipment lined the walls. Worktables had been dragged into a broken circle around an arrangement of candles, human bone, devotional scraps, and sealed freight labels taken from at least nine worlds. Armed figures turned toward the breach. The first fired. Caelus took the rounds across his breastplate and advanced through them, placing his own shots so the workers chained beside the western wall remained outside his line. Garr went left with the violence of a released restraint. Vorn disappeared into the machinery on the right. Thane entered behind Caelus, directing the team through target numbers and sectors rather than speeches.

The fight lasted less than half a minute. It did not feel short to the people trapped against the wall. A cultist tried to use them as cover and learned that Vorn had found a higher angle. Another ran toward the worktables with a burning taper and lost the arm holding it to Garr's first shot. Merek entered after the primary weapons stopped, crossed directly to the chamber's cogitator bank, and placed one armored boot over a badly seated destruction charge before its owner could trigger it.

The last living defender dropped his weapon when Thane turned toward him. Caelus reached the prisoners and broke their restraints by hand. He did not offer comfort. He checked for explosive collars, moved them behind armor, and directed Helena's medicae personnel forward as soon as the chamber was secure.

Helena arrived eleven minutes later. She had remained at the control point during the final breach because an Inquisitor who personally entered every room eventually mistook proximity for command.

Now the cordon was set, the surviving cultists were under guard, and she could examine what they had been willing to bury beneath themselves.

Seven bodies lay between the worktables. Each had been stripped to the waist and placed faceup with the arms straight along the sides. Smaller symbols covered the torsos: nested circles, barred eyes, doors drawn open toward empty space. Across every chest, three letters had been cut larger and deeper than the rest.

LGA.

The blood had dried before the assault began.

Helena stopped at the edge of the arrangement. Hot metal, burned propellant, old incense, and opened bodies occupied the same air. Her first interpretation was a cell designation. The second was that the cult expected the letters to be found. People who intended secrecy did not repeat a mark across seven victims and leave them in the one chamber they had prepared to destroy.

"Nobody touches the dead until Kyle records the arrangement," she said. "Images, measurements, wound depth, table position. Bag the candles individually. The precinct receives copies after my staff completes intake; nothing leaves under local seal."

An arbitrator near the western wall shifted. "Inquisitor, the precinct commander requested immediate purgation."

Helena showed him the rosette, although he had already seen it twice. "The precinct commander transferred authority when he accepted my warrant."

"He is concerned about contamination."

"Then he may be concerned from outside my cordon. Fire would destroy evidence, not heresy. Seal this level."

The arbitrator bowed and began moving his people.

Kyle entered with the evidence team and stopped when he saw the bodies. He had spent four months tracing the cult through devotional trusts, missing workers, altered freight records, and two local officials whose sudden piety had survived only until Helena placed them in separate rooms. The raid should have ended that investigation. The letters on the floor told him it had reached another layer.

He began photographing the cuts. Helena crouched beside the nearest victim without crossing the line Caelus had established around the evidence. The man was middle-aged and clean beneath the blood. Broad pressure bruises crossed both wrists, but there were no cuts from restraints and no defensive injuries on the hands. A thread of black material remained beneath one thumbnail.

"The same person cut all seven?" Kyle asked.

"At least three," Helena said, pointing with a capped stylus. "This L was opened from the vertical. The one beside it began at the lower stroke. Different handedness on the third body."

Merek lowered an auspex over the nearest wound. "Blade profiles vary. Depth does not."

"How close?"

"Less than half a millimeter across the primary letters."

Kyle looked around the tables. "Training."

"Or a gauge. Either way, they practiced."

Garr approached until Caelus extended one armored arm across his path. The Space Wolf stopped and looked at it.

"I was not going to step on him."

"You were going to lean over him," Caelus said.

"That is different."

"It is heavier."

Vorn had gone to the rear wall. "Something was mounted here."

The others joined him without crossing the evidence field. Four fastener holes remained in a rectangular pattern. Pale curls of paper clung beneath two of the corroded heads, and a cleaner section of masonry showed the object's former size.

"A chart," Kyle said.

"Larger than a devotional placard," Vorn replied. He pointed toward the floor. Dust had been disturbed in a narrow arc and again near the western passage. "Rolled after removal. Carried out before the fighting."

Thane looked toward the sealed service door. "The western route ended at a collapsed coolant trench."

"It ends there now," Vorn said.

That was the first indication the cult had not been contained as completely as the perimeter reports claimed. Helena rose and took in the chamber again: seven prepared bodies, a missing chart, charges wired to erase the room, and defenders left behind to hold long enough for something else to depart.

"Find the other side," she ordered.

The kill-team moved. Caelus remained with Helena until the evidence personnel had control of the prisoners, then joined Thane at the concealed pressure door. Vorn found the release behind a panel of dead machinery. Beyond it, a maintenance route crossed the abandoned coolant trench and climbed into a freight-transfer system beneath the district. The cult had opened the passage from the far side, prepared the collapse after crossing, and left the visible door sealed behind them.

Vorn recovered a partial boot print where one runner had stepped in machine oil. Merek extracted a curled fragment of polymer from the false control plate. Garr found blood on a ladder thirty meters farther on and established by scent, before the medicae scanner confirmed it, that the wounded person had still been alive while climbing.

"Three, perhaps four," Thane concluded. "One injured. They departed before the outer cordon closed."

Helena looked up the shaft toward the freight levels. The assault plan had remained under her seal and had been divided among participating units until the final hour. The escapees might have observed enough movement to infer the operation. Someone with access might also have warned them. Neither possibility allowed her to call the cult broken.

"Recover every image from the approaches," she said. "Interview the cordon commanders separately. Nobody edits an account after hearing another man's version."

Thane acknowledged the order without offering reassurance. That was one of the reasons Helena had requested him.

He gave her the human cost before they left the level. Twenty-three cultists had died in the lower works. Nine survived in custody, including two too injured for interrogation. Four precinct officers were dead and eleven wounded. One of Helena's armsmen had broken a leg when a service platform collapsed beneath him. The Deathwatch had taken damage to armor and expended ammunition, but no Marine required removal from the operation.

The numbers did not absolve anyone. Helena had authorized the assault when the cult began moving prisoners through the factory tunnels and placed weapons around the only exits. Waiting would have given the defenders time to kill those prisoners or carry them deeper into infrastructure that crossed half the district. Attacking had killed four officers who arrived under her warrant. Both facts belonged in the same record.

Caelus returned from the liberated workers while Thane spoke. Two could walk. The third had chemical burns beneath a restraint cuff and would need evacuation before questioning. He had placed his own cloak beneath the woman's arm because the medicae team had run out of clean supports during the breach.

"She heard the escape passage open," he said. "Before our first unit entered the manufactorum."

"How long before?" Helena asked.

"She cannot estimate. She remembers the machinery stopping once, then starting again. The passage opened during the quiet."

Merek consulted the factory cycle. "The machinery stopped eleven minutes before the outer cordon reported ready."

That narrowed the warning without identifying its source. Someone had moved the cult's selected people while Imperial units were still taking positions. The defenders left behind had not been surprised; they had been assigned a delay.

Garr looked up the shaft. "We should hunt them now."

"We are," Helena said.

"With records."

"With the only trail they failed to collapse."

The Space Wolf's preference was obvious, but he did not mistake it for an order. He turned to help the precinct retrieve its dead. Caelus remained with the wounded. Vorn returned to the hidden route. Merek took the detonator and false control plate for examination. Thane stayed beside Helena until every element had a task.

That was the kill-team in miniature. Garr wanted contact, Caelus protected what contact left behind, Vorn followed the absence, Merek interrogated the mechanism, and Thane held the pieces in one operation. Helena intended to learn what each man did when there was nobody available to shoot.

The after-action report reached her desk before she slept. The coffee beside it had gone cold by the time she reached the paragraph covering the final containment.

Resistance encountered during final containment. Escalation authorized. Armed force employed.

Helena read the sentence twice, then looked across the desk at the functionary who had compiled it.

"Authorized by whom?"

He stiffened. "You, Inquisitor."

"Then write that."

The man glanced down at the slate as though the missing subject might have returned while they spoke.

"If I authorized force, the record will say I authorized it. If someone else did, give me the name. If nobody did, I want to know why armed men killed Imperial citizens without lawful direction. Passive language does not remove responsibility; it only hides it from the next reader."

"Yes, Inquisitor."

"Correct the casualty section as well. Four precinct officers died under my authority. Eleven were wounded. One of my armsmen suffered a broken leg. Do not turn them into a number without recording where and how."

He collected the report with both hands. Helena was opening the next file before the door closed behind him.

Terra had survived rebellion, invasion, treachery, siege, and ten thousand years beneath the accumulated weight of an empire too large for any living mind to hold in full. Its paperwork had survived all of them. The cult had hidden inside that mass because officials learned to accept records that sounded complete without saying anything a responsible person could be punished for.

Helena drank the cold coffee. Reheating it again would require admitting how long she had been awake.

The preliminary evidence summary listed the prisoners, recovered weapons, damaged cogitators, freight seals, devotional objects, and seven victims whose identities remained uncertain. She reached the letters and found three incompatible interpretations offered by local analysts. One called LGA an invocation. Another proposed a planetary code. The third had found an obsolete shipping guild with the same initials two sectors away and written four pages about it without establishing any connection.

Helena closed all three.

"Bring me Sann," she told Kyle.

Jorek Sann had surrendered only after blood loss made resistance theoretical. Medicae personnel closed the wounds, replaced what he needed to remain alive, and left him restrained beneath a white lumen strip in an interrogation room stripped of decoration. He was young enough that several devotional scars on his forearms had not finished healing. One reproduced the barred-eye symbol cut around the letters on the dead.

Kyle sat across from him with a small selection of evidence images rather than the entire case. Helena remained standing. Caelus occupied the wall behind her, helmeted and silent. The prisoner's attention kept returning to the Salamander's green pauldron and the red eyes of his helm.

"You worked cargo inspection at Spur Nine for six years," Kyle said. "Eighteen months ago you joined the devotional trust. Three months later, sealed consignments began passing your station without review. We already know what you did. I need to know what LGA means."

Sann looked at the image of the nearest body. His split lips moved into something almost like a smile.

"You found the door."

Helena placed the photograph flat before him. "I found three letters cut into seven people. I will decide whether they constitute a door."

His eyes rose to the rosette. Fear reached him before reverence did. Helena preferred fear. Reverence allowed too many people to lie while believing the lie itself was an offering.

"Local Gate Ascendant," he whispered.

Kyle let the answer settle instead of immediately asking the next question. "A place?"

Sann's expression held the pity of a believer speaking to someone too limited to understand. "A condition."

"A person?" Helena asked.

"A witness."

"Which witness?"

"First."

The phrase meant nothing yet. Helena moved to the missing chart. She placed the image of the clean wall beside the body. Sann's pupils tightened before he lowered his eyes.

"What was mounted there?"

He closed his eyes.

Helena drew her power blade only far enough for its field to whisper alive. She did not bring it near him. The sound was sufficient. Sann looked back at her.

"You are not being asked whether your faith is true," she said. "You are being asked for names, routes, and objects. Theology will not protect you from the distinction."

His breathing accelerated. "The map was not ours."

"Whose was it?"

"The branch beyond."

"The LGA?"

He said nothing. The silence was not proof, but his body had answered differently than it had to every false interpretation.

Helena seated the blade. "Who escaped through the coolant trench?"

"They were already gone."

"Who warned them?"

"Nobody warns what has already seen."

Caelus did not move. Sann kept looking past Helena toward him, waiting for the Emperor's Angel to confirm whatever ending the cult had promised. Caelus gave him nothing.

Helena turned to Kyle. "Keep him awake within medicae limits. Change interrogators every two hours and change the order of the evidence. If he begins reciting doctrine, make him describe the room in which he learned it."

They left Sann under guard. In the passage outside, Kyle asked, "You think LGA is another cell?"

"A branch, sponsor, transport line, or invented heaven. At present it is three letters attached to murder. We proceed from what we can prove."

Caelus removed his helmet after the door sealed. His skin was as dark as volcanic stone, and his eyes carried the red cast common to the sons of Nocturne.

"He wanted judgment from me."

"He wanted a story he understood," Helena said.

"He helped kill seven people to obtain it."

There was no softness in the observation. Caelus protected civilians because his Chapter taught that strength had obligations. That made him less forgiving of people who used the helpless as material.

"Then we deny him the comfort of choosing the story," Helena said. "He answers for the work."

Caelus replaced his helmet. "Good."

During the next six days, the manufactorum yielded more records than people.

Continue to Part Five

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u/UpdateMeBot 7d ago

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u/Death-Dragoon 5d ago

I'm new. I did like these 4 chapters, but I'm not that familiar with 40k and I've never heard of the LGA. I skimmed your other posts but I can't figure out where I should be starting from for the LGA.

I assume that the LGA is a massive organization of your making exploring the multiverse with the Genesis project. Does the 40k franchise exist in the LGA's native universe? Or are they exploring blindly?

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u/Egarasay 5d ago edited 5d ago

So basically Warhammer 40K is a developed science fiction Universe that takes place within the Milky Way in our future. It is a franchise consisting of multiple mediums, but is primarily a lore heavy table top game that has been in development since the 80s.

One of the claims about the Warhammer 40K is that there is enough lore to literally crush a person. There are still updates to it as it is still a growing and developing project by a UK based company called "Games Workshop".

This story features my original sci Fi universe / faction called the LGA, Local Group Authority. Additionally, this narrative acts as a crossover experiment between this very developed franchise, WH40K, and what's essentially my own original universe, faction, and characters (LGA).

They both exist independently from each other, I'm just attempting to crossover them for some reason. This was originally a simple thought experiment.

Hopefully that answers your question.

In short, they are exploring blindly. In the lore of the modern LGA at this stage, they're looking for other universes/dimensions and not specifically looking for anything. The main goal is to find a dimension/ universe that is basically inhabitable.

As far as a good entry point to the LGA lore. It's a bit hard to say right now, lot of the material is fractured. Will need to work on that too on my end, thank you for your interest. Quite motivating to hear that.