I raised my hand, and words flickered up on holo next to me. “Kneel, and give the Corunsun your Oath,” I said calmly.

There was a moment of hesitation, and then the Commanders of the Legions of the Empire, the great war sword of the Emperor, knelt down to me and the Corunsun name. Deep voices called out the words of the Oath there, freely given, and power surged and sparkled in the air, surprising them as it resonated with every syllable and gave deep, deep meaning to what they were saying.

I nodded. “In the name of the Corunsun, I accept your Oath. Rise, Legionnaires... and get ready. Things are about to move very, very fast.”

They all blinked, and like hunting cats, rose to their feet.

The tables and chairs about them all snapped up to the ceiling, getting them instantly out of the way. The doors on the sides of the halls and behind me streamed open, and a whole flood of Ranthas and psions came out of the former, and Briggs Boys wheeling in mech suits and contraptions started racing in the other.

“You’re getting Marked up! Present an arm, limb, or other place of flesh!” I called out, as the women and psions streamed across the chamber. “This Chamber right now is Interdicted and under Null and Source suppression! The Emperor cannot see what is going on here now or in the future! That sphere extends from the Rantha taking her place beside you!”

Tat kits were unveiled, and with the expertise of having done this thousands of times each, the kids went to work, while the psions reached up to put their hands on the faces of the Commanders, some having to step up into the air to do so smoothly.

“You are all getting injections of genetic viruses that are going to be psionically accelerated through your system and remove the Necrus Markers placed in your cells! The psion administering it is going to harmonize with you and attune your biological defense system to the viruses to accelerate the process and make sure they are not rejected! They are your ammunition, your mind and body is the gun! Get ready to pull the trigger!”

The Marks were etched in quickly. In some cases of extremely cybered commanders, it had to be etched on the skull or cheek.

Markspace lit up. Despite themselves, their eyes went wide as suddenly they realized they were the focus of billions of eyes, and the chants and prayers of multitudes swirled around them with physical force.

They were the champions of humanity, the weak and normal, powerless members of the human race, uplifted to become their great warriors and defenders. They suddenly realized those poor, weak, feeble humans that they had once been knew this, understood this, and wanted them to live!

Billions of them!...

They shuddered, and then all eyes fell to Wayland Briggs, a Nineteen glowing there like a Silver Sun, demanding their attention.

-Follow my lead,- he /said, his /voice rumbling through them, and Null and Psion were smoothly out of the way as he stretched out a beefy arm, and a thousand Commanders imitated the gesture, lifted and turned and grasped and pulled there...

Stabbing pains and shouts and curses, even from the metallic voxes of the cybered. Heads snapped around, where small, hard blades in colors of silver, blue, and even crimson glowed in their hands.

Crimson souls...

This was most prevalent among the Serpents, and despite themselves, they hissed upon seeing it, as the knowledge swelled in them that they were programmed to be crimson, the choice had been removed from them...

“Pull that trigger!”

Hypos were inserted into necks, viruses hissed and were inserted, and using the Markspace to enhance the effect, Metaconcerts were put into massive effect. To the prayers and chants of billions, psionic energy poured through them.

Even Legion Commanders shook at the energy moving through them, trying to be anything but aggressive, but still looking, looking for those markers in their altered genecodes, a clarity of knowledge and impossible awareness blowing through them as they saw themselves, the alterations made to them, and even, buried down below it all, the remnants of the humans they had once been, which yet tied them forever to the human race.

They were the defenders of humanity, made into its guardians, and humanity wanted them to live!

Despite rigid mental control, the sheer amount of empathy and goodwill was overwhelming. Even the nigh-emotionless Serpents were rocked by feelings they had not felt in decades, or even centuries, realizing what they had missed, to say nothing of the other, more emotional Legions.

Psionic energy blew through them, and from each and every cell of their bodies, and the master codes burned into implanted organs too, the extraneous codes were removed, neutralized, and rendered inert, absent, and inoperable.

As this was happening, and the Commanders guided this removal of the death built into their genes, mechsuits were being brought up by the Briggs’, set in front of the cybered Commanders, and the psions reached out and brought them to life.

The lethal cybertech was forced from the bodies of the commander, and psionic power kept them alive as their organs and flesh were transplanted to temporary new shells, designed to keep them alive for the moment, and simply sever the connection to the killtech they’d been wearing.

The other commanders gasped as their cyberware was forced out of connection with their bodies, nerve-cables, synthi-flesh, neo-muscle, and grafted metallic bones cleanly cut away from true meat and nerve and organs, bursting free, ejected like long threads of wire from within them, skin and flesh opening up to let them pass, and just as quietly melding back together.

Regeneration protocols began instantly and repeatedly, monstrous amounts of psionic power keying replication and proper reproduction of flesh and bone back into existence. Full containers of raw organic matter were strapped onto the commanders, streams of the stuff being drawn from the packages as limbs, eyes, skin, bone, and organs long lost began to be replaced with great speed, weaving themselves together out of nowhere.

---

I watched this whole process taking place calmly, noting the full Empowerment of the Marks, all of them +4 Wisdom, to hurry along the advancing of their psionic potential and aid in the understanding of their psionic gifts.

The killtech was basically dropped where it was, to be fed into a recycler at some other time. Highly cybered Commanders were plugged into new mechsuits not really made for combat, but programmed to give way and reform into armored support as their bodies regrew from the biomass included in their kits.

The cybered naturally had more tech to remove and had to get fit into their new mech-suits. The organic had a lot more cells that needed purging. All in all, it took about half an hour to get the non-interfering stuff out of the way, and all the Commanders back to motility and awareness, even if all the regenerating was not yet done.

“Commanders, are you ready to save your Legions?” I asked calmly, as they steamed visibly from the psionic purging in front of me.

“What do you intend, Contessa?” Commander Halavior replied promptly.

“You’re about to be initiated into something we only reveal to those who are Marked. You are going to be sent back to your Legions, with sufficient forces to begin the purging of all of them... and you are going to be on your homeworlds within one minute of beginning!” I looked over all of them as they stared back in disbelief. “We are racing against the clock here. If the Emperor notices that the timelines where he can snuff you all are vanishing, he will begin to act as soon as he can.

“This will require admitting active armed forces into your headquarters, because any of your own forces who use the compromised weaponry to defend themselves... are going to be converted.

“You will be armed and armored as quickly as we can manage. Line up with your Rantha and your psion.” Holographic stars winked up across the chamber, fifty of them. The Commanders allocated themselves rapidly, with the speed of experience. I looked over them all in the Markspace, and the travel paths they had to take showed up in their Markspace.

They blinked when they could finally focus on me... and their Ranthas... and the Ten psion assisting them. They were also all at least Tens, but that did not mean they had mental and spiritual power on the psion... and all of us Ranthas were like burning suns standing next to them, completely daunting them on the mental level.

“Go!”

Blades hissed through space from the other side, and the Rifts sliced up, and opened into Spidey Base One.

They surged forwards at a run, and neither Ranthas nor psions had problems keeping up as the Commanders surged into our base in the heart of Gloom.

---

They couldn’t help but look up as they came through into the vast open space, and saw the great Gate looming overhead in the shadowed sky, figured out what it was, and gawked at the implications. Then they saw the vast space around them, crammed with men and equipment gathered here in great lines and circles, waiting for them.

All of them!

The Rifts were close together on one side, but not on the other, split up so as to allocate themselves among the forces and devices waiting for them.

Among them were standing suits of power armor on custom rigs, the glowing lines in their minds leading right towards where they needed to go.

With superhuman coordination, they stepped right onto the footmounts, and the armor slapped shut against their spread arms and bare chests. The reverse suit snapped into place telekinetically from behind, interfaced and interlocked, powered up, and glittered once as the proper heraldry, colors, and rank insignia was painted across them.

Those who hadn’t brought their custom Weapons found unfamiliar firearms and melee Weapons pressed into their hands and equipped, humming with a new power that harmonized with the new seed of psychic energy inside themselves.

-The instant you broadcast the news to your troops, the clock is ticking. Our most generous scenarios paint five minutes, the more rigid say you have two, and if we are phenomenally unlucky, one. I will give you fifteen seconds to go over the words you want to say, how you want to say them, and how you want your men to gather.- Their eyes turned to forces of men in power armor, and Ranthas not, in the center of their circles, the latter with grim and ready faces, and Blades out. They clearly expected to have to deploy as rapidly as possible somewhere very quickly.

There were a lot of troops in power armor... very good power armor, something both reassuring and threatening.

-These are your arrival points.- Maps of their bases formed in their heads, swirled down to centrally located plazas, marshaling fields, hangar bays on ships, and similar areas. The fact we had such detailed schematics was both daunting and impressive, too, as was the idea that they’d have no problem interfacing with the communication systems of the Legions.

Ranthas with swords drawn and glowing with power waited for them to pound towards them, and there was no pause as the Rifts were opened in front of them.