The players were still excitedly discussing everything they had seen and heard today.
The natives were lining up for dinner. They were given extra rations today, with everyone receiving an additional half-potato and a block of synthetic protein.
Over on the Aurelian Youth League's training grounds, their slogans still rang loud and clear.
"Labor for survival! Dignity through struggle!"
"For the Crimson Dawn! For a better tomorrow!"
Zeke stood by the window in the sixth-floor corridor, watching it all unfold.
He was reminded of a certain someone's words.
"Someone has to hold up a torch in the dark."
At the same time, in the upper hive of Aru City, at the Aru Group headquarters.
Busir Hysman slumped in his gilded chair, his purple robes a mess and his eyes unfocused.
A recently delivered Imperial document lay before him. The wax seal on the document bore the clenched fist insignia of the Iron Hands Legion.
The contents of the document were incredibly simple, consisting of only three lines of text.
Effective immediately, all promethium mineral exports from Aurelian IV are under the temporary control of the Iron Hands Legion.
All local armed forces are required to report their formations, equipment, and personnel rosters to the Legion High Command within fifteen days.
Violators will be punished under the charge of treason.
With trembling hands, Busir picked up the wine glass beside him and downed it in one gulp.
The liquor was fire, but it couldn't suppress the chill deep within his heart.
He knew that the eighty-year rule of the four great factions keeping each other in check was over. Even with backing from powerful figures, it was completely useless now.
–
Aboard the Fist of Iron, on the bridge.
There were none of the gorgeous decorations typically found on a Gloriana-class battleship here. There were no golden reliefs, no grand murals singing praises of the Emperor's deeds.
There were only cold metal pipelines, flickering data streams, and three hundred and seventy-two real-time tactical interfaces suspended above the holographic projection table.
Ferrus Manus stood before the main control console.
His 3.7-meter-tall frame was encased in a specialized suit of Terminator power armor. The surface of this armor, known as the Medusan Carapace, was covered in interfaces, data slots, and weapon hardpoints—a purely functional design.
His hands, sheathed in living metal, were currently interfaced with the ship's main cogitator.
Precision probes at his fingertips read the data stream at a frequency of seven hundred times per second, feeding every detail of the entire battleship, the entire fleet, and the entire surface battlefield of Aurelian IV directly into the Primarch's brain.
"Father."
4th Company Captain Karon Santos stood three meters away. Even at 2.6 meters tall, this Iron Hands warrior still appeared dwarfed in front of Ferrus.
His voice emanated through his power armor's external vox-speakers, carrying that characteristic, nearly mechanical flat tone of the Iron Hands.
"Purge progress report for Industrial Zone Sector Seven."
"The First, Second, and Third Companies have completed the purge of a three-kilometer radius around the Warp rift."
"Confirmed kills of minor Warp entities total nine thousand four hundred and thirty-seven. Among these, seven thousand nine hundred and four were of the blue variant, one thousand four hundred and twenty-nine of the red variant, and one hundred and four other mutated units."
"The Mechanicus purification squad has arrived at the rift's core region."
Karon called up a holographic image displaying the depths of the Sector Seven ruins.
The underground structures that collapsed under orbital bombardment eighty years ago had now twisted into some kind of warped, anomalous space.
The walls were fluid, the ground undulated, and strings of numbers that glowed without any light source floated aimlessly in the air.
"High concentrations of Warp corruption detected. Source confirmed."
The image magnified.
In the deepest part of the ruins stood an altar constructed from human skulls, mechanical parts, and some sort of blue crystal.
Suspended in the center of the altar was a...
Tome!
It was a tome stitched together from countless pieces of human skin. Every page turned on its own, and the text upon them wasn't written in ink, but seared into the flesh like burn scars.
The legacy of House Alar.
Ferrus's cybernetic eyes flickered with a cold blue light.
He recognized that script. Eighty years ago, when the Iron Hands Legion purged Blaec House, he had seen something very similar in the archives of Dawn City.
It was some sort of pre-human civilization psychic code. By stringing together specific numerical combinations, it could rip open a temporary gateway between the material universe and the Warp.
"The god they worshipped..." Ferrus's voice echoed across the bridge, every word striking like a forging hammer against steel. "...was called the Dream of the Compassionate Father, claiming to hail from a realm of love and acceptance deep within the Warp."
"Fascinating." The corners of the Primarch's mouth pulled back into an entirely emotionless arc. "Compassion? In the Warp?"
Karon remained silent.
As a veteran with over one hundred and fifty years of service, he had seen far too many fools bewitched by the Warp. Those idiots always believed they could find warmth, wisdom, power, or love in the swirling madness of Chaos.
And then they all mutated into Warp-corrupted heretics.
"House Alar held a massive sacrificial ritual on the eve of Blaec House's destruction." Karon continued his report. "According to fragmented records we seized, they attempted to use the life energy of Sector Seven's five million residents to forcefully drag this so-called Compassionate Father into the material universe but when the ritual reached its third phase, our orbital bombardment rained down."
"Conclusion: The ritual was incomplete, but a Warp rift was still torn open. For eighty years, the rift remained in a dormant state, right up until it was recently reactivated by an external force."
Ferrus tapped his fingers against the control console.
A cascade of data popped up. The rift's stability sat at thirty-seven percent, with the Warp corruption spreading at a rate of zero point three kilometers per day. Its estimated time for a complete natural closure was nine hundred and forty-two years. The tactical overlay proposed several treatment protocols: direct detonation using heavy melta charges, ritual sealing via a psyker array, or employing Mechanicus holy relics for containment.
"Tell the Mechanicus personnel." Ferrus selected the third option. "They have three months to complete the foundational sealing and suppress the rift's activity to under five percent."
"In three months, I will inspect it personally."
"If they fail..."
He left the sentence hanging, but Karon understood completely.
The Iron Hands Primarch's tolerance for failure was about the same as the Emperor's tolerance for heresy—absolutely zero.
"Understood."
Karon logged the command into the tactical data-net, then pulled up the second report.
"Comprehensive data regarding the current state of Aurelian IV has been compiled from the Planetary Governor's estate, the archives of the four major factions, and the local Mechanicus branch."
The holographic interface unfurled, and dense blocks of text, charts, and video feeds began to scroll past.
Ferrus's mechanical eyes scanned the information at speeds incomprehensible to a mortal human.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
"Hah."
The Primarch let out a laugh.
A cold laugh, brimming with absolute sarcasm.
"Eighty years ago, under my Father's orders, I led the Legion to conquer this world."
Ferrus's voice was soft, yet every Iron Hands warrior present could hear his words with crystal clarity.
"Back then, the Mars representative, that Fabricator-General named Kelbor, stated during the battle debriefing that Aurelian IV's promethium veins held significant research value. The Mechanicus volunteered to shoulder the administrative duties to provide logistical support for the Imperium's Great Crusade."
He paused.
"Father agreed."
"And then, eighty years passed."
Ferrus swiped his fingers across the holographic interface, summoning four distinct dossiers. First was the Atens Knight House, functioning nominally as an independent local militia; yet in reality, their Knight walkers were sourced entirely from Mechanicus armories, with their maintenance crews consisting one hundred percent of Tech-Priests. Next came the Hysman Merchant Guild. Outwardly a commercial syndicate, it actually controlled eighty-seven percent of Aurelian IV's mineral exports, and every trade route required clearance from the Mechanicus shipping divisions. Then there was the Conmo Psyker Dynasty. Following the Iron Hands' purge eighty years ago, the Mechanicus bailed out these psyker descendants from the Black Ships' quotas to strictly monitor planetary psychic activity. Finally, the Order of the Omnissian Mind operated as the direct Mechanicus branch on Aurelian IV, led by Occus Kane, who reported straight to the Fabricator-General of Mars.
"Four great factions?" Ferrus's cold smile twisted into undisguised mockery. "No. There is only one faction. The Mechanicus turned this entire planet into their personal mining pit, weapons testing ground, and psychic observation post."
Karon stood there quietly.
As Iron Hands, their feelings toward the Mechanicus were highly complicated. The Legion itself was heavily mechanized, with many of its warriors undergoing Mechanicus augmentations, leading to intimately close technological cooperation between both sides.
But politics was a completely different matter.
Mars had constantly sought to expand its sphere of influence, absorbing more worlds into its Mechanicus Protectorates to secure vast resources and a louder voice in Imperial affairs.
Aurelian IV was a textbook example.
"And now, their management has run into a catastrophic problem."
Ferrus closed the dossier interface and pulled up the casualty report for the Industrial Zone campaign.
"Three hundred thousand local PDF casualties. Thirty-one out of fifty-one Knight suits destroyed. A complete wipeout of three hundred psykers, and those are just the direct combat losses. The indirect losses are simply incalculable. With the planetary defense forces reduced to a void, if they face a foreign invasion within the next five years, the probability of the world falling exceeds seventy percent."
The Primarch turned his back, gazing out the bridge's massive observation port.
Outside the armaglass, Aurelian IV slowly rotated. On its gray surface, the scorched earth of the Industrial Zone stood out like a hideous, gaping scar.
"The Mechanicus failed to fulfill their administrative duties, allowing this world to suffer a Warp threat and severely crippling its defensive capabilities."
Ferrus punctuated every single word.
"In accordance with Article Seventy-Three of the Great Crusade War Zone Management Regulations, when local administrative bodies display gross negligence that endangers a world's security, frontline Legion commanders are authorized to temporarily assume executive and military command until the crisis is resolved and a new governing body is established."
Karon's eyes widened fractionally.
He understood.
His Primarch father's arrival here was only superficially about purging daemons.
The true objective was the planet itself.
"Father will not object."
Ferrus seemed to be muttering to himself, yet simultaneously declaring it to all his subordinates.
"Mars will undoubtedly protest, but the facts are right in front of them. They screwed up."
"Eighty years ago, they took custody of this world from me and my Legion."
"Eighty years later, their utter incompetence nearly saw this world swallowed whole by the Warp."
"So now, I am taking it back."