“The problem with living on the edge of the final frontier,” Calgar said ruefully as he stared at the empty mantelpiece, “is that you never get any Christmas cards.”

“No, sir,” Brin Milo said without thinking, “that’s the problem with being a cantankerous prat who nobody likes.”

Calgar turned to his human underling, regarding him with the same revulsion a little girl might show to an Ogryn with poo hanging out of its bum.

“Milo, if I were a poncey Farseer, I would elaborate on your million possible futures, ninety-five per cent of which involve my right leg burying itself in your colon right up to the knee.”

“And the other five per cent?” asked the young Tanith adjutant, looking very nervous.

“I’m glad you asked. They involve the nerve glove, pain level: watching all the episodes of Merlin where Arthur falls under a love spell. Now bugger off and remember, as the nerve glove does its painful work: there is redemption in torment, but there is no redeeming an episode where the enemies are glowing fairies. Hey! I made it sound like Twilight.”

Milo set off for the Reclusiam, ashen-faced, already thinking of Chaplain Derrick’s holy glee as he delivered the sacred proctological exam. Nobody knew why they needed Derrick’s armoured finger up their arse prior to sitting in the nerve glove. Milo was a lot smaller than the Astartes yet it somehow seemed to hurt Derrick to examine his bumhole, judging by the agonised groaning Derrick gave out every time Milo bent over.

Calgar looked at himself in the large mirror above the mantelpiece. He had developed a phobia of doing so several years ago, when Milo had said “What are you doing, sir? You’re tempting seven years’ bad luck!” The august leader of the Ultrasmurfs lacked the creative thinking to understand this so he always flinched when he saw his reflection.
If this were some hack novel banged out by someone lacking creativity, this is where I’d give an elaborate, over-written description of our hero, Marneus Calgar, leader of Ultramar, the protagonist who puts the tit in titular. But I don’t like you very much because you probably never comment on my fiction, so you can imagine what he looks like your-fething-self.

Calgar was standing in his cell within Smurf HQ on the mountainous world of Macragge. Calling it a cell is like calling Katie Perry “a bit leggy”. It was as ornate as any Roman palace and this year Calgar had gone a bit mental with the Christmas decs. He’d starred in way too many Christmas specials to still be a stingy bastard during Yuletide. As for Katy Perry… fair enough, she is basically a scrubber, I mean who actually has a relationship with something like Russell Brand, but God-Emperor, those fething thighs.

The Ultramarine Primarch himself, Roboute Guilliman, had once used these quarters as his own. If I hadn’t read Abnett’s novel The Unremembered Empire, I would have taken great pains to make Guilliman sound like an idiot here, but the Primarch was quite clearly an aspie so he is suddenly awesome.

Let’s face it, not even death can stop Guilliman – he’s a corpse sitting in a stasis field, yet being an aspie, he’s so fething badass he’s still going to heal his wounds, damn it. No wonder every Space Marine and Primarch who ever lived apparently now wants to be him. Even Horus would have chucked his own Warmaster laurels in the bin and painted his armour blue if Christian Dunn hadn’t gone apoplexic when Ward or McNeill suggested it (come on, we all know they must have done!).

“Why don’t any of those tight bastards send me a card?” Calgar sighed to himself. “After all, the Blood Angels and Space Wolves and everyone else want to be me: you can tell by the way I’m not a vampire and I don’t ride horse-sized wolves into battle, and they are and they do. Have people given up on the fantastic writing of Ward and McNeill? Ungrateful gakkers! I’ll knock together every head in the entire universe.”

It never occurred to him that constantly sending them to the nerve glove and calling them “wallies” might strike him off their lists. He mooched over to the window and looked out over the snowy vista. Mountains rose in the distance like those strangely-shaped rocks in the first levels of Doom, but to Calgar they resembled a woman’s breasts. Even in the 41st Millennium, the universe revolved around a pair of tits.

There was a clamour from the doorway as Cullinus Rex tripped over the thick shag carpet* on his way in. The elderly Astropath, whom Calgar had christened the Master of Sendings among much toilet-humoured smirking, was too feeble to get up. Calgar strode across the room and hauled the old git to his feet in an uncharacteristic display of gallantry.

* Yep, Calgar purchased an ancient, horrendously expensive and almost always foot-catching shag carpet, just so he could chuckle every time someone mentioned it, usually after they tripped over it on the way in.

“My Lord,” Rex wheezed, “I bear news from the wider Imperium.”

“Oh God-Emperor,” Calgar said. “Let me guess, Gluteus Maximus of the Emperor’s Stripes Chapter had another brain fart and decided to share it with me.”

“He did indeed, my Lord. Would you like me to relay it?”

“No, but you’ll keep bugging me about it until I’m forced to shoot you, so get on with it.”

Rex composed himself and cleared his throat. His voice changed to the weird, high-pitched whine of an American. As the Astropath relayed Maximus’s message, frost began to form within the chamber, causing Calgar’s nipples to harden and his uber-winkle to huddle protectively against his body, making it even tinier than usual.

“Yo Calgar,” Maximus said through the Astropath. “Hope I haven’t interrupted your beans on toast or whatever crap you English guys are eating right now. How’s it feel to lose the second annual Horus Heresy campaign in a row? I know the Fists and the Smurfs were on the same side in real life, but damn it, if I’m paying fifty bucks for one squad I’m fighting who the hell I want. Britain sucks!”

Calgar cursed the other Chapter Master with gusto. Calgar himself had fluffed the game when he’d thrown his Guilliman model into assault against Maximus’s Dorn, then proceeded to roll nothing but ones and twos for two entire turns. Needless to say, Guilliman went back in the carry case while Dorn rampaged through two Dreadnoughts, three tactical squads and one of those big tanks that costs fifty quid and never appears in any of the novels – before a lucky bolter shot to the back of the head had killed the mighty Primarch of the Fists. That was another two Loyalist Primarchs dying like bitches.

“Tell that fat, over-emotional Yank git to show his spiritual liege some respect. Fair enough, Dorn would probably have kicked Guilliman’s arse in a real fight, but Guilliman didn’t secretly wish he was Dorn. Just ask Matt Ward, guardian of Ultramarine honour – the Wardian! I must name my honour guard the Wardians. Take note, 4DChan!”

Rex sagged with relief after he sent this rambling monologue, word for word. He could have phrased the message more politely, or at least more professionally, but he basically thought “sod it”.

Calgar returned to his winter view. He looked over his shoulder a few moments later, irritated and slightly disturbed to feel Rex’s eyes boring into his back.

“Why are you still here?” Calgar snapped. “I wish to log onto my computer and look at that Battle Sister picture from my illegally downloaded 40K book.”

"My Lord, there is another message coming through,” Rex said. He looked scared.

“Feth’s sake, has he replied already? I hate it when people reply to my messages before I’ve had time to fething blink. What does he want now? Is he starting a World Series of something, but only inviting America to it?”

Rex’s eyes glazed over and he began to speak in a female voice.

“Know this, Calgar of Ultramar,” the woman said. “I am watching you. I am near you. And one day soon, I shall kick your fat, spotty ass in the name of Grandfather Nurgle. I am coming for you, Calgar. You big bitch.”

The message finished with a tremendous, stinking burp, befitting a disciple of the Mucky God. Calgar flinched back, pulling his armoured suit up over his nose and mouth.

“Fething hell, mate, orange-juice burp!” Calgar cried. His eyes began to water and the sharp, sick-bitter stink caused his skin to secrete a waxy substance intended to protect him from exposure to the void.

“Lord Calgar,” Rex said in his own voice, “I am genuinely crapping it here. I do not know who this woman is or where she sent her message from, but I was briefly connected with her. I felt how her boobies tingle for you, and there was a strange moisture in my loins, yet by some perverse double standard, her threats against your life are serious.”

“What are you saying?”

“I am saying you may have fethed it here, my Lord.”

“Rex, I get death threats all the time. Even after I was elevated to Scout I slept with one eye open in case my mum infiltrated the barracks and battered me to death with a rolling pin. She never forgave me for that time I shat in her hotpot and she unknowingly served it to our entire family and her boss. I tried to tell her I was only twelve, how was I supposed to know how to behave? You can still taste your mother’s breast milk at that age.”

“Er – indeed, my Lord,” Rex said with evident horror. One of his hands went to his manly boob area, the other began to make its way further south. A sly look came over him. “Please excuse me, Lord Calgar. I must retire to my secret cubby-hole where I will purge this female influence again and again.”

“Yes, bugger off,” Calgar said. “You’ve already had more than enough time in this story for a minor character.”

The Chapter Master looked at the grey sky, hoping to see Father Christmas on his sleigh, though it was only the beginning of December. Calgar had put his tree up in August this year, hoping it would fool Father Christmas into coming early, but no such luck – Calgar hadn’t got so much as a fething hand-drawn joke card with “Merry Christmas, you’re the best Space Marine ever, PTO” on one side and “Hahaha up yours loser” on the other. Last year, Dick Bannerman had so many Christmas cards sent by admiring females, they’d had to send them all down in a drop pod, which ironically had crash landed on Calgar’s bathroom while he’d been sitting on the toilet playing Crossy Penitent’s Path.

Calgar didn’t give another thought to the threat he’d just received. Who would be insane enough to attack a Space Marine Chapter Master on his homeworld, in the middle of the best-defended part of the galaxy outside blessed Terra?

As usual, Calgar was being a prick: there were plenty of people mad enough to strike at him even if he was on Terra, surrounded by dreadnoughts, in the Emperor’s throne room, sitting on the fething Emperor’s lap. (Which, incidentally, would certainly get him struck at by the Custodes, the Emperor’s elite bodyguards who could kick the crud out of any Space Marine, even an overweight, complaining Chapter Master with fists so big it looked like he’d put his thumbs in his mouth and exhaled sharply.)

Tserena Vombuck stood on the bridge of her corrupted Firestorm-class ship, staring at Macragge as it turned slowly before them. The power of Nurgle gave their starship the Shrouded 5+ special ability, bumped up to 2+ with a re-roll for the purposes of this story (think of it as plot armour). Basically the ship gave off a greeny-brown fart cloud which acted like a portable nebula. Nobody would ever suspect it, mainly because there was no smell in space.

Vombuck was of average height for a woman, and Nurgle had blessed her with an attractive appearance, a fine in-joke which made the Plague God chortle – beauty without, hiding the fith within. Vombuck didn’t exactly put herself about – partly because her skin was covered in a layer of slime and most men ate their dinner backwards in her presence – but on those occasions where she had disguised her slimy self with a glamour, she had made a few men itch enough to rip their pubes out. She looked forward to giving Calgar the blue balls. It seemed appropriate.

“My lady,” hissed Upchuck, her deformed manservant. The little hunchback looked at his mistress with genuine affection, recalling the way she’d saved him from a lifetime of cruelty when she attacked his world and liberated every cultist, malcontent and mutant, adding them to her army and killing the crap out of their Imperial oppressors.

Vombuck stared down at Upchuck. A blob of slime dripped from her short black hair. Some scuttling thing, a puny relative of a Beast of Nurgle, scuttled across the rusting deck to lap it up.

“We are ready to commence the sacrifice,” Upchuck said. He chortled and drooled, doing a weird dance from foot to club foot.

“No need to bust a move,” Vombuck smiled. “We haven’t kicked Calgar’s ass yet. Guys,” she called to her command crew, a loathsome, pox-ridden bunch of scruffs, “Let’s do this.”

There was little trace of the formality she’d threatened the Smurf with. She grinned with anticipation, showing teeth that would even make Charlie Sheen think twice, as the crew gurgled and cheered her name.

Calgar was already dead, he just hadn’t caught up with the fact. A canker would spread from the heart of Ultramar to encompass the Five Hundred Worlds… and people would finally learn what a “canker” really was.

This would be Grandfather Nurgle’s ultimate “FU” to Khorne, and even the Games Workshop Powers That Be would stop focusing entirely on the Blood God and produce decent, powerful models for the other Chaos Powers. She hadn’t been involved with the hobby for more than a millennium as she couldn’t afford the rulebooks or models, so she didn’t know that a lot of the best stuff already belongs to Nurgle, and only Tzeentch’s stuff tends to suck harder than Katie Price – leading to the strange situation where the Plague God could stick his middle finger in the Architect of Fate’s face and say “Haha, just as planned, nonce!”.