Chapter 311: Very Bad News

…

The Spire

Governor’s Palace

Anton moved through the underground corridors beneath the palace spire.

From time to time, muffled screams bled through the ancient stone, mingling with the thunderous concussions of heavy weapons fire. The deep bark of heavy stubbers and the chattering roar of industrial autoguns echoed endlessly through the tunnels.

All of it came from the direction of the Audience Hall.

There was no mistaking how fierce the fighting had become.

“Thunderborn…” Anton muttered under his breath. “Troublesome to the very end.”

Yet there was no panic in his demeanor. His posture remained straight, his pace measured, boots clicking softly against the ferrocrete floor. He continued strolling through the underground passageways at an unhurried pace.

An attendant followed close behind, doing his best to mask his fear. Sweat slicked his collar despite the chill of the under-palace air recyclers.

As they descended deeper into the under-palace, the attendant noticed the walls were lined with framed pict-captures, each sealed behind plasteel casings trimmed with tarnished brass.

Every single one showed Anton’s Grandfather, alongside a mechanical hound and beside them, a different woman in each image.

They were crying in each pict. Their mouths had been surgically altered into iron canine maws, teeth riveted directly into flesh. Their hands had been amputated and replaced with steel claws, crude approximations of a hunting beast’s forelimbs. The augmetics were unmistakably non-standard, bore the ugly hallmarks of heretek craftsmanship.

It was immediately obvious what they were meant to be.

Wives.

Of the hound.

This was the first time the attendant had ever accompanied Anton into this place. He had entered the Governor’s service barely half a year ago. In all the official archives and public records, the former governor’s images were of a normal dignified noble family, never once had he seen these… hunting trophies.

Among the spire nobility, displays of overt degeneracy were not considered madness. They were excess ritualized into status. When one possessed absolute authority over billions of lives, novelty became the only remaining currency. Degeneracy was not rebellion against the Imperium; it was an inevitable byproduct of surviving too long above consequence.

The Imperium demanded order, not morality. So long as tithe quotas were met, manufactoria met output, and unrest was contained, the Arbites and Administratum rarely asked how a governor entertained himself.

But this was still too much.

Unable to restrain himself, the attendant finally asked, voice trembling:

“G-Governor… why did your Grandfather… cherish that mechanical hound so deeply?”

Anton replied flatly, without any expression on his face.

“About eighty years ago, our family went hunting in the lower hive. My grandfather brought that hound with him. It was a gift from a Tech-Priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus he was on… favorable terms with.”

The attendant nodded. Among hive nobility, hunting live prey in the lower hive was an open secret, one of many sanctioned degeneracies of Imperial high society.

“We chased a family into an abandoned drainage system,” Anton continued. “There were things living down there. Insectile things. And men who were… no longer fully men.”

The attendant stiffened. Mutants. Aberrants. The unclean detritus of the lower hive.

“The household guard was slaughtered. My mother was torn apart. The hound had already been separated from us, pinned to a wall by one of those men using a crude spear.”

Anton’s voice remained calm, almost detached.

“In the end, only my Grandfather and I remained. When one of those creatures opened its jaws and was about to devour me… the hound returned.”

Anton paused.

“Despite its damage, it charged through the tunnel. It butchered its way to us, shielded us, and drove the monsters off.”

He exhaled slowly.

“My Grandfather believed the hound had been sent to him by the Omnissiah and the God-Emperor themselves. It saved our lives. From that day on, our entire family adored it.”

Understanding dawned on the attendant.

No wonder the former governor had cherished that machine so obsessively, so much so that when it was destroyed by usurpers, he had willingly sold off an entire habitation district’s population to raise the funds to ship its remains to Forge World Agrippina for reconstruction.

“Governor…” the attendant hesitated.

“Yes?” Anton glanced sideways.

“Why…” The attendant swallowed hard. “Why did the hound’s wives keep changing?”

Anton stopped walking and looked at him.

“What do you think?”

The attendant immediately shut his mouth and said nothing more.

They continued on in silence.

For a full half-hour they walked, and every half-meter along the corridor hung another pict: the governor, the mechanical hound, and yet another new wife.

At last, they reached a massive adamantium door sealed with sigils of authority and gene-locks.

Anton sliced his palm open and pressed it to the biometric seal. The door drank his blood and slid open.

Inside, in the dim light, the attendant saw something seated upon a throne of bones.

A monster.

It had arms and legs, but its flesh was grotesquely bloated, its skin a sickly purple. Its bald, swollen head was obscenely large, unmistakably inhuman. Vestigial limbs twitched along its torso, and faint psychic pressure bled into the chamber like static.

Anton knelt and bowed.

The creature inclined its head in return.

“After the Thunderborn completed their investigation,” Anton reported respectfully, “I immediately organized my forces and launched a direct assault.”

“You fool.”

The creature’s mouth did not move. Its voice echoed directly inside Anton’s and the attendant’s minds, slick with contempt and alien patience.

“You have exposed everything. If you had not exposed us, perhaps only you and your bloodline would have died. Others in the cult could have gone to ground, waited for the stars to turn again.”

Its psychic pressure intensified, forcing the attendant to stagger.

“You’ve ruined the entire grand design.”

Anton frowned, visibly displeased.

He was still human.

Unlike these purple-skinned, bald fanatics, he had no intention of sacrificing his entire bloodline for some distant, abstract destiny.

“And what good does revealing ourselves do?” the creature continued coldly. “Can you defeat the people of Talon?”

“We can’t,” Anton snapped back. “But we can struggle. And if we hadn’t revealed ourselves, what then? Could you survive the purge the Talon bring long enough to continue your so-called Great Plan?”

The creature fell silent.

A full minute passed.

At last, it hissed with barely restrained fury:

“Do you forget? In the lower hive, it was I who spared your lives! Did you truly believe the mechanical hound alone could save you? And afterward, it was I who helped you reclaim the Governor’s throne!”

“And what is it you want to say?” Anton asked coldly.

“That no matter how this ends,” the creature replied, “we are maggots tied to the same rope.”

Anton nodded once.

“Yes. That much, I understand.”

“Then bring me food,” the creature said, closing its eyes. “I must gather my strength for the coming battle.”

Anton glanced at the attendant beside him.

“I already have.”

…

Five Minutes Later

The vast Audience Hall was piled high with corpses, forming a grotesque mountain. Blood pooled across cracked marble tiles, clogging drainage channels never meant for such volume.

Thunderborn Anruida dragged the final enemy corpse from the wreckage of a penetrated battle tank and threw it atop the heap. He ignited it, and flames roared upward, consuming flesh, banners, and noble heraldry alike.

He then sat down directly ontop the burning pile of bodies.

His synthetic skin blistered and burned away, exposing the metal endoskeleton beneath, but he no longer cared. Most of his external tissue had already been destroyed during the battle.

The fight against the noble guard had held no drama. It had been nothing but methodical slaughter.

Though officially a civilian administrator within the Thunderborn, Anruida still possessed the full combat capability of an elite Champion.

“One… two…”

He counted the noble family sigils he had collected, cataloguing each house in his internal database.

Each crest represented a traitor bloodline.

They would all be purged.

Once the records were complete, Anruida tossed the sigils into the flames and sent an urgent transmission.

“Governor.”

When Qin Mo appeared in the holo-projection, Anruida saluted and delivered a full report of everything that had occurred on the Beisu system.

He concluded with his recommendation:

“I advise a full purge of the hive.”

“I was thinking the same,” Qin Mo replied absently. “Yoan, the Astartes, you, and Grey. The four of you should be sufficient to cleanse the Spire. Eliminate all traitor families at the top, then guide the Army in clearing the lower- and underhive. Then start a compliance campaign across the other hives and purge anything unwanted.”

“By your command,” Anruida replied.

The transmission cut.

It was clear that the Lord of Talon was not particularly concerned about the emergence of Genestealers in the Beisu system.

The infestation here was undoubtedly massive, far greater than what had once existed in Talon I when it was still a normal hive world.

But this was no longer the same age.

[Multiple hostile entities detected.]

A warning flashed across Anruida’s vision.

On the tactical map in the upper right of his display, countless red markers converged on the Audience Hall.

Soon, the first wave came into view, remnants of noble guards and Spire security forces emerged, forming a tight encirclement under armored support.

Anruida watched them calmly from atop the burning corpse pile.

By now, the fighting in lower hive Sector One Hundred had concluded.

Thunderborn Yoan and Chen Ye, a warrior of the White Scars, teleported directly from the depths of the hive to Anruida’s side.

Information flowed freely among the Thunderborn. Yoan already knew the Lord’s orders.

Grey arrived moments later, not by teleport, but by orbital drop.

Those on the ground saw a blazing fireball tear through the sky and slam directly into the Audience Hall, shattering remaining columns and pulverizing stone.

From the smoke and shattered stone emerged a figure clad in heavy powered armor, carrying only half of a chainsword.

The Genestealer officers present felt terror the moment they saw that weapon.

They could sense it.

The lingering wails of their own dead, trapped between the teeth of the blade.

“Allow me to share some very bad news,” Grey announced, his voice amplified across the ruins. “One Hour ago, I was on Talon III teaching a Naval officer how to swim.”

He paused.

“And then I got called here. Really. Thank you for that.”

The only response was a storm of lasfire and solid-shot rounds crashing against his gravitic shield.

The purge began.