You were ready to get back to work building the future… before the world got transported into a grim, dark future with fascists everywhere.
Life has a nasty sense of humor and you hope it chokes.
"General, what the hell is going on?! We've been fighting these foul xenos for ages, making them bleed for every inch they've taken, losing brave men by the thousand. You show up with just a few hundred weirdoes, and in less than a day… In less than a day… their air superiority is shot. We're barely getting shelled anymore. My scouts, the Stormtroopers… they all say their leadership is in utter disarray. What in the Emperor's name happened?"
— Colonel Rustrod, discovering what G.I. Joe can do.
"Excellent. Now that our victory is assured, it is vital that we perform a cowardly retreat!"
— General Hawk, making a Commissar spray recaf through his nose.
Ironhide: "…psychic. They're one giant civilization of sports hooligans who live for violence, and our current, most likely hypothesis is that they're all psychic! That their psionic powers are basically keeping their tech from malfunctioning, like supernatural duct tape and WD-40!"
Alpine: "You realize this isn't alcoholic, right?"
Ironhide: "Shhhh. Don't ruin the sweet, sweet illusion."
"The Schola Progenium has demanding marksmanship courses. While the requirements for Commissars are not as demanding as those for Tempestus Scionis, but - IS HE DRIVING THE SENTINEL ON THE ROOFS?!"
— Cadet-Commissar Kaltberg on her first day with G.I. Joe.
"The 12th are from Revelation, a cardinal world. And they're drop troopers. So there wasn't any chance of them not being assholes."
— A soldier from the Araman 190th.
"Your utterly 'bizarre' regiment breaks every rule in the Tactica Imperialis, and several rules that no-one ever wrote down because they assumed no-one would ever be crazy enough to need such rules! Your uniforms are everything but uniform, your tactics are unorthodox in the extreme, your psykers are unsanctioned because your entire planet spent millennia cut off from the Imperium in general and the Telepathica in particular…
"…and you fight better than I actually thought was possible for anything less than Adeptus Astartes. I grew up surrounded by Stormtroopers and Sororitas, and they wish they could slay the enemies of the God-Emperor as efficiently as you do."
— Cadet-Commissar Kaltberg
'Sci-Fi: "That is spectacularly cool."
Ironhide: "That is spectacularly stupid. Cobra experimented with giant robots early in the war, and there's damn good reasons they eventually ditched them and started mass-producing BA Ts instead."
Sci-Fi: "I'm sorry, am I hearing a condemnation of giant robots from a guy codenamed after an Autobot?"
"Logic is the tool by which we figure out the most efficient path to our goal, but emotion is what drives us forward along the path. Show me someone without emotion, and I'll show you an unresponsive mess. Of course, we mustn't let our emotions overwhelm us, but that's not the same thing as denying them. And within the Guard, you'll find that while duty and loyalty to the Emperor will get many men in the trenches… it is usually friendship with each other that keeps them in the trench. When the worst monsters in the galaxy's nightmares come barreling at you, the more abstract motivations tend to fade away in the face of terror… but the desire to protect your friends, your comrades, your loved ones, that becomes sharper. Should you want to keep soldiers from deserting, Commissar, you will find that the threat of execution accomplishes far less than asking them to defend their comrades. Far, far less."
Scarlet: "To think of all the hours I spent on disguises during the Cobra War. Using Synthoids almost feel like cheating."
Ironhide: "Too easy?"
Scarlet: "Hell no. If you're not cheating, it means your enemies are getting one over you,"
Bifrost: "Ironhide has the right of it. There's a good person in there, under all the Imperial conditioning. Kaltberg is dedicated. She wants to do the right thing, and all her life, she's been fed a twisted version of what the right thing is. Deprogramming this kind of indoctrination would be a long-term project, but not impossible. She needs some positive influences in her life, instead of the constant drip of Imperial values."
Beachhead: "Excuse me, but is this really worth discussing? It sounds like you're thinking of a months-long, maybe years-long, plan to fix the head of a single person. We don't have time for that."
Flint: "Maybe not as our primary mission, no. But having a political officer who is easier to work with would be preferable to the current situation."
Beachhead: "Our Commissar is Popov."
Poker Face: "Popov is a solvable problem."
Lieutenant Hamman: "I suppose it works to our advantage if they send a small patrol boat, but what if they show up in one of the larger crafts?"
Ironhide: "Then a larger number of them dies."
Lieutenant Hamman: "…Your confidence is enviable."
Ironhide: "I killed a Meganob last week with a Leman Rus's main turret."
Lieutenant Hamman: "…I want to hear that story."
Ironhide: "Our story begins, like all good stories do, with a Commissar thinking he knows how to conduct war better than the people of the Imperial Guard…"
On a Hive world, human life is cheap. Cheap enough that growing human bodies in vats is simply not market-competitive.
Meaning every single one of the organic war machines you see standing in perfect formation used to be a person with their feelings and hopes and dreams. (Well, they were living in the Imperium, so the "hopes" part is questionable.)
"Beautiful, is it not?" says Magos Gamma. "Twelve times twelve rows, twelve times twelve columns. A number pleasing to the Omnissiah."
Twelve to the fourth power. That's over twenty thousand people this psychopath has lobotomized.
"It's not much, I know," he says. "However, every single one of them is superior to a typical Guardsman, being invulnerable to fear. These Battle Servitors will never retreat, never surrender, never show an ounce of cowardice before the enemies of the Omnissiah.
"My Tech-Priests have worked for years to streamline the process, perfect the logistics," he goes on. You suppress the need to hurl. Menlo… has closed her eyes, and her lips are quickly moving silently. Probably distracting herself to avoid, well, hurling. "If only my manufactorum is allowed to unleash its full potential, we can produce twelve thousand Battle Servitors per day, every day!"
That's… You…
"Just imagine! We would need to slightly reduce other industrial outputs, of course, but within the span of a year, four million servants of the Omnissiah could be sent to the frontlines! In two years, eight million! Such power would suffice to finally, at long last, drive the alien off Cavitus for good!"
You close your eyes.
"And why stop there? The hive-cities are full of candidates! Cavitus could export hundreds of Servitor regiments to other fronts across the Xanadu Sector!"
Why won't he stop talking.
Ironhide's mother: "…and that was about the single most interesting thing to happen in Anchorage all week. So, how's the big bad space Reich treating you?"
Ironhide: "They keep us on our toes, you can bet on that. They've got this clergy bigwig who wants us to help him unleash a pogrom on their massive indoor ghetto."
Ironhide's mother: "Of course they have an indoor ghetto. Who do they put there? Space Jewish People? Gay people? Space communists?"
Ironhide: "Shockingly enough, the Imperium might actually be less homophobic than the USA."
Ironhide's father: "That's the saddest thing I've ever heard about the United States."
Ironhide: "I know, right? But to answer your question… It's poor people, people who have broken Imperial law, descendants of people who have broken Imperial law, and of course, mutants."
Bystander: "This man is a holy servant of the Emperor! You scum will not touch him!"
Ironhide: "My friends, I appreciate the support, but there is no need. My friend and I are not in danger."
Bystander: "…You aren't?"
Underhive ganger: "…You aren't?"
Ironhide: "None whatsoever."
Striker: "I dunno, if we're not careful, they might bleed on us a little."
Ironhide: "Then by the grace of the God-Emperor, we shall clean those stains!"
