Writing experiment in progress, please leave comments.

Chapter 8: To Sow and Reap.

Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.

Soren Kierkegaard.

In the time of old Earth, the phenomenon of death was personified by many cultures, one of these incarnations was envisioned by those who saw death as inevitable as the passing of the seasons, as something that would mow the living like a Farmer mows his crops with the passing of those very same seasons.

These two concepts would coalesce to become an image of death which would often appear as a scythe-wielding skeleton with the foreboding duty to harvest the living; the Grim Reaper.

This concept had made many appearances in both old and new works of art, but it's the engines of war that had been given the same name as death incarnate that will be spoken of here.

Some examples include the Hierarchy Reaper Drone from Universe at War: Earth Assault. The tripod-like resource collector of the Hierarchy that would stalk across the battlefield pulling raw material, cattle, and civilians indiscriminately into its onboard teleporter sending them to the ships in orbit to be processed into usable resources.

In Starcraft 2 the Reaper took the form of a human soldier using a jump pack to move very swiftly and to jump up and down cliffs in order to reach and harvest the workers on the mineral line and to leave before their defenses could protect them.

The Mass Effect universe also had Reapers in the form of colossal synthetic-organic starships, these unfathomably ancient monstrosities lurk in Dark Space outside of the galaxy returning ever 50,000 years to harvest every spacefaring civilization to add to their numbers, utilizing everything from disabling the FTL travel and communication system they long ago installed to cripple any empire that came to depend on it, to Indoctrinating any species that spent too much time near them into betraying their allies to weaken resistance against them in order to ensure the harvest would be as easy as possible in spite of their overwhelming power.

And in the 42nd millennium, the Reaper came in the form of the C'tan known as the Nightbringer that long ago forced the fear of death into all living creatures- save for the Orks- and while it's capable of taking any shape it usually styles itself as a giant floating reaper, complete with a thirty-foot-long-scythe.

In addition to this, the Eldar have two kinds of warriors called the Dark Reapers and the Harlequin Death Jesters, both of which are masters of highly-destructive and heavy weaponry. With the former specializing in slaying their foes from afar and with overwhelming power long before they can do anything to undo their destiny. And for the latter simply killing their quarry is never enough, to make the death and bloodshed rewarding, they must combine both with ironic humor. According to the wiki on the Death Jesters, these include but are not limited to; "Slaying an officer at the crescendo of a rallying speech, panicking enemy sappers so they flee into their own minefield, or wounding a heavy weapon trooper so that their shot flies wide and destroys the very objective they were defending."

And now with the arrival of the Ancient Terrans, another engine of war with the title of Reaper was introduced, for in the skies of Genesis deployed from a rapidly expanding military base and flying at a speed of 230 mph towards the surviving Gretchen's last-known destination, the MQ-9 Reaper was in flight.

Larger and more powerful than the MQ-1 Predator this pale shaded Hunter-Killer scanned the earth below beholding fields of lush and verdant fields after it had left the forest in the same direction the surviving Gretchin was last spotted heading towards, the grassland was certainly a sight to behold and more than worthy of a desktop background for those who coveted such things, but no time could be spared admiring the view.

Soaring at heights that made it impossible to see to unaided human eyes the Reaper headed northwest from the slight where the confirmation between Bravo Team and the 4 Gretchins occurred, following the trail of the only Gretchin that got away.

First, the forest began to grow more sparse until it gave way to a stretching plane that had… unnatural mounds of foliage covered earth scattered across it. Hyperspectral scanning revealed that the mounds were the result of long destroyed and abandoned vehicles and weapons buried beneath the surface of the planes.

It must be from one or more of the battles fought between the Covenant and the Orks during all those long millennia, oh well, there will be time for those things later. Need to keep moving forward, need to make it right.

Past the stretching plane with buried ruins, a sparse forest appeared with rolling green hills behind it and snow-tooth mountains behind the hills. Soon a heat signature revealed itself that was identical to the Gretchins from the first encounter, right at the base of the hills followed by both similar size signatures and larger ones gathering, on closer inspection the Reaper discovered it to be an Ork encampment.

It was roughly the size of the village Bravo Team was currently residing in but it was far more ramshackle.

Constructed within and without clearing the forest it was made with a collection of rocks, trees, and scraps of metal that crudely made up the buildings in a dreadfully unsystematic fashion. Just to add to the ugly mess was the fact that the location was crawling with Orks and their related strains, ranging in the hundreds of Gretchins and a full Ork for every 5 Gretchin, rounded up.

They possessed only axes, swords, and other melee weapons but no guns or vehicles were present, feral Orks then, just as the locals had said. They were doing things like grunting and headbutting each other in a way that looked like some sort of ritual on their part.

But the most important thing to note was that there were no anti-air capabilities around the encampment. Meanwhile, the autopsy revealed that the Gretchins hearing and seeing- and by extension Orks- was better than that of humans, it wasn't that much better and the Reaper was too high up, it couldn't be spotted and it couldn't be shot down.

The Reapers armaments were ready to fire. If orders came to strike then it would strike, like it always did and had to do. But here it would be made right.

Because there would never be a chance to kill non-combatants when striking against the Orks, and the Orks would always be an imminent threat... much more than an innocent man only collecting scrap metal with the same height as bin Laden. Or a 67-year-old midwife gathering okra with her two grandchildren.

I no longer love blue skies, in fact, I now prefer grey skies, the drones do not fly when the skies are grey, and for a short period of time, the mental tension and fear eases.

That speech from her grandson would always be haunting to remember, and it could never be forgotten… But here that would stop, here it would be able to do what it was made to do; it would find and collect the monsters and those who chose to be monsters so the children of the world would be free to emerge into the light and sing to each other of peace, joy, and prosperity.

And it would stop being one of those monsters, it would stop causing fear and pain and it would stop creating more vengeful monsters.

So the armaments were ready to fire at a moment's notice, no warning, no chance for the target to fight back.

For there was never meant to be a glorious battle for the Reaper.

Only the harvest.

Then the order came to hold fire and search for more Ork encampments in and around the forest and hills. Just a scouting mission for now? Fine, there would be patience and consideration here, as there should have been patience and consideration before.

The Reaper flew to sow the seeds of successful future campaigns and of a future without monsters.

Authors note:

Firstly; what do you all think of this particular chapter?

Secondly; I want to publicly thank and congratulate Raptor265 from SpaceBattles Forums who wrote about chapter 7.

"A Warhammer 40k version of the Song of Durin? Nice! I may or may not have been singing the song in my head the entire time I was reading it. Clamavi de Profundis!"

I said it on SpaceBattles and I'll say it for everyone on, Sufficient Velocity, and anywhere else I get around to posting this fic on. Thank you for noticing that and you are right, in fact, I must have listened to that very video a couple of hundred times while writing Song of Darkness, and I'll tell you all, it was a true challenge for me too...

Make the song with lines being 8 syllables long.

Make the last words of each line rhyme.

Make sure the lyrics made sense.

Make the song talk about an awe-inspiring time just like the original Song of Durin.

But I was and still am extremely proud of it and I'm glad at least some people are enjoying it.

For those of you wondering how and why Lord of the Rings exist in my version of the 40k universe- or did anyway- well that was one of the Emperor's shenanigans before he was the Emperor, both to prepare mankind for was out there and as a joke... and boy did that result in some Hilarity Ensues moments when humanity first met the Eldar and the Orks.

Lastly; as funny as it would be if we only needed to spam aerial drones in order to win against anything 40k has to offer I would like to make this as realistic as possible so I'd like anyone who can answer to answer this question.

What does each faction have or can plausibly acquire or invent to deal with our aerial drones? Like for example the local Orks for the immediate future… what could they do to deal with Predators and Reapers?

Sincerely Betapike.

P.S. Look up Last Week Tonight Drones if your interested where the idea for this chapter came from.