10 Gain their respect so that they would take the bullets for you

Thanks to the help of two guardsmen, I managed to arrive at the bridge where dozens of servitors and crewmen tried their best to repair whatever could be repaired.

Seeing me enter through the door, all of the crewmen saluted me, and unlike how they saluted me before I got to command the entire regiment, this time I could see how much did they respect me which to be fair I'm not saying that I don't like this feeling, but I did what I have to do so that I could survive, heck I'm not a hero, I'm as cowardly as a mouse and I'll do anything to keep myself alive.

"Lord Commissar on the bridge!"

"At ease, corporal. How's our situation and how badly stranded are we?"

"Good to see you are fine, my lord. Currently, the tech priests are trying to restore our engines, but as of right now, they barely managed to seal the exposed parts of the engines. While we don't have any engines, our warp drive is still stable and functional, and Praise the Emperor for that, or we would have to spend the rest of our lives here in the Immaterium. There are also some sections of the ship that are lightly damaged, thankfully nothing too hard to repair, but one of the cargo bays was badly damaged and the tech-priests had to seal that place completely, as for what we lost when the cargo bay was hit…well weapons, ammo, and supplies. As for our current destination…the navigator has no idea, my lord. He strongly believes that we will appear in friendly space, but the chance of getting into enemy territory is still possible."

"Emperor protects, we are as good as dead if this problem persisted for another day or two. Can we even get out of here without our engine?"

"Theoretically speaking, we should be possible, but until now no one has done it and lived to tell the tale. My lord, can I ask you something slightly personal?"

"Go ahead, I'm really curious what do you want to ask me."

"How did you manage to choose between the lives of all the people on board of the Hellfall and your life? And how did you face the madness of the Immaterium?"

When did I even choose? The only choice I had to make was if I die without fighting or if take down some traitors with me…but who am I to tell the truth to someone that deeply respects me.

"It was quite a simple actually, you see between these two sides, I've decided that the best outcome would be for a psyker, and I was the only one on board at that time, to protect the ship from the corruption of the warp and the only possible way for someone to do that is to open themselves fully to the warp, thus putting the psyker in a mortal risk, but Praise the Emperor for his protection, because only Him helped me regain my mind."

Then I got a good look at his hopeful expression and felt as though I'd stepped on a nonexistent final stair. He was absolutely shocked and marveled at my words. Emperor helps me, he was really pleased to see me and hear my bullshit story. Things must be even worse here than I'd imagined. Just how bad they actually were I had yet to discover, but I already had some presentiment. For one thing, the palms of my hands were tingling, which always means there's trouble hanging in the air something that I had apparently inherited thanks to the genes of Ciaphas Cain or so I was told.

After that, I dramatically left the room, with the help of the two guardsmen that helped me walk in the first place, such a good pair of loyal minions.

The day passed quite fast, if you ask me who just sits in my quarter room looking over reports and thinking about promotions, after all the best way to ensure loyalty is to give them a goal to strive for. The worst thing in my opinion was the take care of our dead while surprisingly enough, Zaraen took care of the traitorous marines for what purpose, I don't know and from what I have learned about the Astartes and the traitorous ones, only the corrupted ones can use the Gene-Seeds of the loyalist chapters, the reason for that is that most of the chaos marines gene-seeds were too corrupted to produce more of them, thus they had to resort to stealing.

Just as I was about to pick up one of Andre's books about leading troops and how to effectively fight against some of the Xenos, I heard knocking on my door.

"Lord Commissar!"

Recognizing the voice, I quickly went to the door and I was right, Zaraen was standing in front of my door seemingly exhausted, but who wasn't after what we experienced?

"Are you sure you are fit enough to get out of your room, Lord Commissar?" Zaraen asked, a faint frown of concern appearing between his eyebrows. I nodded and adjusted the sling I'd adopted for dramatic effect. It was black silk, matching the ebony hues of my uniform, and made me look even more dashing, I thought, but then again the glances the women of my regiment were giving me, clearly told me that I was right.

"I'm fine, my lord. Our enemy got the worst of it, thank the Emperor."

After a day since we fought against the heretics, my body had more or less healed, the medic assuring me that I'd suffered nothing worse than slightly severe bruising. It was still stiff and ached a little when I move, but all in all, I thought I'd come off lightly. Far better than Alexey had, anyway. He'll spend the following weeks in the infirmary, and Emperor knows if he would ever walk again. For all that, though, he was as irritatingly cheerful as ever, which to be fair was doing him more harm than it should have done.

"That they did indeed, tell me Lord Commissar, how did you become a lord commissar in the first place? Regardless of your response, we will help you, because little to no one would have done what you did for me, and for that, I will be always grateful."

"Not many guardsmen know the truth about my origin, but a very large part of them can recognize this face anywhere and I believe that even you can speculate who I may be."

"You are not wrong, commissar, you are the spitting image of a hero of the Imperium of Man, Ciaphas Cain and if my deduction is right, you should be either a clone or his biological son."

"The first one, my lord. I was cloned by one of the High Lords to inspire the men and women of the Astra Militarum and eventually become what Ciaphas Cain was, a hero that protect the Imperium with his life. As for my rank…I've been trained for almost all of my life to become a commissar, unfortunately, they found out that I had an affinity with the warp, thus they handed me to the Inquisiontin to be trained as a psyker and as you may have already learned, didn't work as they planed, mainly due to me having a very weak connection to the warp and I could barely do anything using it."

"Interesting backstory, Lord Commissar, but from what I'm seeing you have become rather good at using the warp."

"Unfortunately, my lord. I learned how to better use it without losing my mind thus saving thousands of lives from a horrible death."

"That you did, my main reason for coming here is to ask you something regarding the heretics. As the highest authority on this ship, excluding us, what do you want to do with the bodies of those heretics?"

"If I may speak directly and rather improper for someone that has such a political position like me, then I would answer your question, my lord."

"Go ahead, after all, who would hear us here?"

"We don't have anything to gain from keeping their bodies, but you would surely need them or at least parts of them. I may not have lived hundreds of years, but I have read some books about the Astartes and I'm fairly positive that their armors and weapons can be purified and used by you once again without the taint of chaos, of course. While I don't know if it is possible to purify the corrupted Gene-Seeds, their bodies may still be used by the apothecary ."

"I can purify them indeed, but not alone, for that I would have to ask for your help as for the Gene-Seeds, we can't do anything to them. The heretics were too corrupted and the only way to create more of them is to steal our Gene-Seeds."

"I'm willing to help, my lord if that would ensure the survival of my people and yours, of course."

"I may be an Astarte that has lived for a long time, but I know that your people need a hero that isn't an Astarte, the Emperor's children that are similar to gods on the battlefield while you, a somewhat normal human fought the heretics, the warp, and corruption and still survived, that's what they need and that's what I did."

"So all the respect that they show me is due to you, my lord?"

"Indeed, now follow me to the bridge, because we have a lot to do if we want to leave this place."