Morning light spilled over the Governor’s sprawling palace, and for the moment, this ancestral seat of a noble house that had endured for a thousand years sat calm and quiet.
Sunlight streamed through the tall windows down the hallway, and the portraits lining the walls gleamed under the shifting play of reflected light.
It should have been an ordinary, pleasant day for the Governor’s family.
Instead, what kept him company wasn’t tea and pastries, but battle reports and one warning after another.
“These traitors!
These disgusting xenos!
They deserve to be burned to nothing under the God-Emperor’s own wrath!!”
Andrallo moved fast.
Vast stretches of the Governor’s territory had already slipped from his grasp, his raw-material factories dwindling by the day, while the enemy’s forces and weapons only kept getting more advanced.
The Governor couldn’t understand why his own weapons weren’t working.
He’d spent a fortune arming his personal guard, buying up heavy artillery, even purchasing Leman Russ tanks and Chimera transports.
And yet every last piece of it was destroyed before it ever laid eyes on the enemy.
Some of his Leman Russ tanks had been reduced to nothing but puddles of molten steel.
The Governor couldn’t make sense of it.
How had someone this powerful ended up on a nothing little agri-world like this?
With strength like that, why not go conquer some vital Imperial world instead?
“Damn it!
At this rate the ritual won’t be able to continue.
Is there nothing left but to beg the God-Emperor for help?”
The Governor rolled up his sleeve and stared at the double-headed eagle etched into his own arm, a mark he’d carved into himself as an offering, made to draw power from the God-Emperor.
Now he felt a cold, burning ache every waking moment, a wound struck at the level of his own soul.
But the God-Emperor was fair, at least.
In exchange, He’d granted the Governor a gift of foresight.
That was exactly why he’d dared to let the planet suffer under the Chaos warband’s assault in the first place.
The Governor had already received the Emperor’s own revelation: if he offered these Chaos Astartes up as sacrifices in the proper ritual, the Emperor Himself would tear through the Void and descend once more, and the Governor would become His faithful servant at His very side!
The Governor made his way to his family’s hidden sanctum, where the rest of his household had already been waiting.
Together, they knelt in devout prayer before nine stone pillars, each burning with golden flame.
“God-Emperor above!
Grant me the strength to defeat these traitors, and I will give everything I have, without reservation, to You!”
While the Governor prayed on, blind to what was actually happening, Andrallo was already carving through the outer districts, taking ground with every step.
When they broke into the Governor’s warehouses, the sight of food piled up like mountains only fueled Andrallo’s anger further.
“Christ!
With this much food sitting here and not a scrap of it going to the people on this planet, if that man had even one shred of decency, this world never would have rebelled in the first place!”
Whether it was because of the Chaos invasion or not, some of the grain hadn’t been properly stored in time, and Andrallo could see mold spreading through it. You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
Moldy or not, the sheer volume of it was still staggering.
Andrallo gave the order with a wave of his hand, and Kaides led the logistics teams in to requisition it all.
With this much food secured, the newly liberated population finally had enough to eat, and the hydroponic farms no longer had to run at full strain just to keep up.
The civilians and the rebel forces cheered without hesitation, but the two Westminster sisters voiced their own concerns.
Maen: “My lord, if I’m not mistaken, this grain was set aside for the tithe.
Is it really a good idea to use it up like this?”
Charlotte added, “As far as the Imperium’s concerned, fighting the Governor isn’t really that big a deal.
But falling short on the tithe?
The Imperium will send an entire army to wipe us out for that.”
Andrallo looked puzzled.
“The tithe?
Isn’t that just a tenth of everything?
It’s not like I’m going to waste it.
Can’t we just let them count it up whenever they actually show up?”
Maen and Charlotte both shook their heads at once.
“It doesn’t work that way.
The tithe isn’t simply a tenth of anything, and it isn’t even necessarily a tenth of this year’s production.”
“The Imperium’s bureaucracy is incredibly inefficient.
A backwater world like ours, chances are no one’s actually come to verify anything in ages.
We were hit by a Chaos incursion this year, and production’s down, but the tax officer might still be working off figures from decades ago.”
Andrallo and Kaides both froze on the spot.
Data from decades ago?
Was Imperial bureaucracy really that slow?
“I’ve got a question.
What happens if we come up short?” Andrallo already had a vague sense he wasn’t going to like the answer.
The moment the words “come up short” left his mouth, both sisters flinched, an instinctive shudder running through them.
Charlotte: “There was a planet under our own family once that fell only slightly short on its tithe.
The tax officer had the local Governor shot on the spot.
It set off a war among the great houses for the Governor’s seat, and it nearly plunged the whole world into civil war.”
Maen, the elder sister, squeezed her eyes shut, her brow twitching as those old, horrifying memories surfaced.
And that wasn’t even the worst outcome she could think of.
“My lord, having just the Governor shot for falling short is actually one of the better outcomes.
Sometimes the Administratum downgrades the entire world’s status outright, revokes its protection, or sends in the army to crush it directly.”
“In short, the tithe is not something to joke about!
Storm clouds gathered on Andrallo’s face, and finally broke into a long sigh.
He raised both hands in helpless surrender.
“Fine.
So when’s the next tithe collection?
I’ll get everything ready ahead of time.”
“We can’t be sure, my lord.
Tithe collections don’t run on any fixed schedule, and Warp travel can always run into complications, so there’s no guarantee when the collection ship will even show up.”
“So what if we just report our situation now, and get that…
whatever it’s called, the Administratum, to grant us a reduction?”
“That’s possible, but you’d need to file a petition first, and it only takes effect once it’s approved.”
Andrallo: “Then let’s write it now!”
“That won’t work.” Maen shook her head.
“Right now it’s extremely hard to even reach Terra from here, and even if we managed it, our petition wouldn’t get processed for decades, and there’s no guarantee it would even be approved.”
Andrallo was starting to get genuinely irritated.
The more he learned, the less he understood how this Imperium actually managed to function at all.
“So can’t I just owe it, then?
Pay it all off together next time?”
The Westminster sisters shook their heads so hard they might as well have been rattle-drums.
Andrallo could tell at a glance there was no hope left.
He reached up to press a hand to his aching forehead, only to remember he still had his helmet on.
Kaides walked over and gave Andrallo’s shoulder a light pat.
“Chief, I don’t think we should be putting our energy into how to pay the tithe at all.
What we should be doing right now is developing this planet as much as we can.
Once our shipyard is up and our first ship launches…”
Kaides let the sentence trail off at just the right moment, but Andrallo could already read the rest of it in the faint curl at the corner of his mouth.
Right.
Why was he even bothering to worry over some Schrödinger’s tithe he might or might not owe?
Once he had a warship of his own in orbit, he’d pay it if he felt like it, and if he didn’t, he’d just tell whoever came collecting to get lost.
A grin spread across Andrallo’s face, and he reached over to give Kaides’ shoulder a conspiratorial pat of his own, both of them wearing the same sly smile.
The whole exchange left Maen and Charlotte thoroughly unsettled.
“These two…
they’re not actually planning to just refuse the tithe outright, are they?”