The orbital bombardment continued.
Massive shells had pounded Kaides’ factory in a relentless storm during the opening phase, but once the Imperial Navy realized it wasn’t accomplishing much, they scaled back the frequency.
According to the Astra Militarum survivors who’d made it back, this was an extraordinarily powerful xenos force, one that had even allied itself with heretic traitors, and those machines were xenos-built.
The Imperial Navy and the Astra Militarum hadn’t been above trying a bit of trickery either.
They sent grunts out to die as bait, then waited for the war-bodies to come out before sweeping the ground with orbital macro-cannon fire.
The KDA on that move left even the war-bodies in the dust.
By Kaides’ rough estimate, the number of Astra Militarum killed by friendly fire alone had already far outstripped however many the war-bodies themselves had managed to kill.
But the captured Astra Militarum and Sisters Hospitaller took the news with total indifference when they heard it.
“That’s standard practice.
Their sacrifice was a necessary step on the road to victory.
The Astra Militarum fulfilled its duty as a cornerstone of the Imperium.”
The comment left Andrallo genuinely furious.
He ordered whoever had said it thrown onto the production line, with their daily work hours extended to fourteen.
“Chief.” Kaides sounded a little worried once he heard.
“That would violate prisoner-of-war conventions, you know.
If the Galactic Community ever found out, they’d absolutely vote to sanction you over it.”
“Then let those old fossils come see for themselves.
I don’t believe for a second they’d hold their tongues after hearing something like that!” Andrallo shot back angrily.
The bombardment gradually tapered off.
The Imperial Navy’s macro-cannons had wiped out well over a thousand war-bodies in their last strike, but when they tried organizing another offensive, several hundred more war-bodies came pouring out of the factory, driving the Astra Militarum commanders on site right back into retreat.
What’s more, since the ground around the factory itself had no shield protection, the large-scale orbital bombardment had blasted it into a sunken crater, which, ironically, left Andrallo’s own position standing above the surrounding terrain like a fortress, easier to hold than ever.
The Imperial Navy and the Astra Militarum abandoned the offensive.
They knew pressing on would accomplish nothing except wasting more Astra Militarum troops.
Not that they cared much about the lives of the Astra Militarum’s grunts, but heavy enough losses would still reflect badly on the officers’ own reputations and records.
This situation had, by now, moved well beyond anything they could handle on their own.
It would take an Astartes Chapter and the Inquisition to sort out.
No matter how the Imperial Navy kept up its bombardment, though, Andrallo’s own plan never wavered.
He needed to deal with the prisoners, while Kaides worked on developing early-stage spacecraft.
Their current position was simply too disadvantageous.
They had to get into space eventually, and even boarding actions would beat sitting on the ground taking hits passively.
First, though, came the work of handling the prisoners and drawing out as much intelligence from them as possible.
Fortunately, there were sharp minds among the prisoners too.
Seeing that Andrallo had no intention of sacrificing them, they wasted no time telling him everything they knew.
That was when Andrallo noticed something wasn’t adding up.
“Maen.
Charlotte.
Didn’t you two tell me the Imperium of Man had twenty-one Primarchs in total?
“Um…
well…
my lord, after the Great Heresy, the Imperium destroyed all record of the traitor Primarchs.
They’d once been the Emperor’s loyal sons too, bringing truth and liberation to the Imperium in His name, but the Imperium obviously can’t go around glorifying traitors.”
Maen and Charlotte exchanged a somewhat awkward glance with Andrallo.
They’d forgotten there was even anything to explain here.
“So the records concerning the traitor Primarchs were either destroyed or falsified.
All later generations know is that the Imperium suffered a great catastrophe, and that the Emperor led nine angels against nine daemons.”
“Wait!” Andrallo cut them both off.
“Didn’t you say twenty-one?
Where did the other three go?”
“Because one of the angels was actually a set of twins.
The other two were erased from existence entirely by the Emperor, for crimes considered unforgivable.
Only a handful of records even mention any of this.
If ordinary citizens ever learned of it, the Inquisition would move to purge them immediately.”
Andrallo looked at the two of them, thought it over for a moment, and finally let out a sigh.
All he could really say was that the Imperium was an absolute mess.
“So, where did you two even learn all this, anyway?”
Charlotte thumped her chest proudly at the question.
“From our family’s library, of course!
My sister and I used to play in there as children, and we found this one fascinating book.
All of this came from that.”
Maen nodded in confirmation beside her.
Andrallo supposed that made sense.
The two of them had been able to give him detailed information about Fulgrim and the Emperor’s Children early on, which had helped him enormously; that book was clearly the genuine article.
That gave Andrallo an idea.
He was going to root out the prisoners’ religious devotion, completely, down to the last trace.
But in a corner nobody was paying attention to, a single thread slipped its way into the factory.
Under the destructive force of the violet psychic power saturating the place, the thread couldn’t accomplish much of anything directly, but it carried every scrap of information from the site back out regardless.
…
Up in orbit above the planet, the Imperial Navy and the Astra Militarum trained, rested, and conserved their strength, waiting for reinforcements to arrive.
All at once, a violet mist enveloped everyone at once, burning away every purity seal in sight.
Then, in the gap that opened, a wash of blue light slipped through, and a single image rose in the mind of every soldier, officer, and even ship’s servitor present.
Andrallo’s voice sounded out over the vox systems.
“The Emperor is not a god!
At his core, he’s a human being with tremendously powerful psychic abilities!”
The instant the words landed, everyone froze.
It was as if the whole scene had been paused, the only proof that time was still moving at all the low hum of the machinery around them. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
After a brief silence, everyone erupted into gut-wrenching wails at once.
Great numbers of crew members deafened themselves on the spot, desperate to pretend they’d never heard it at all.
The Ecclesiarchy priests roared “heretic!” and some members of the smaller sect denominations even began mutilating themselves.
“What are you all waiting for?!
Shut down the vox system, now!!”
“Sir!
We can’t shut it down!!”
“Useless.
All of you…”
The Imperial Navy, the Astra Militarum, and the servitors alike descended into chaos, but Andrallo’s address carried on regardless.
“This Emperor you keep invoking personally liberated your own ancestors ten thousand years ago.
If you’re lucky, some of you might even be descended from the very soldiers who marched to war under him back then.”
“The Emperor is powerful, no question.
The old records show power from him that might as well be called miraculous.
But has he really never made a single mistake?
Do gods make mistakes?”
“Take a look at the old Imperial Truth.
It’s full of lies, sure, but the whole point of it was to keep you from falling under the Warp’s influence.”
“I know you want to argue with me, but have you ever stopped to ask where the Imperial Cult actually came from?
The Lectitio Divinitatus.
Yes, that book.
And who wrote it?
Lorgar!
One of the Emperor’s own Primarch sons, one of the traitor Primarchs from the Great Heresy itself.”
“Look at yourselves.
You’re worshipping out of a book written by a traitor, one that turned the Emperor into the exact thing he despised most, and you still have the nerve to cry loyalty at the top of your lungs?
What you should actually be doing is understanding what the Emperor himself actually believed, and building on that, standing on his shoulders and moving forward, instead of blindly turning yourselves into disposable consumables the way you are right now!”
…
Andrallo’s address kept going.
The thousands of prisoners present were struck speechless by the sheer audacity of what he was saying.
They’d heard countless heretics sneer the words “False Emperor” before, but never once had anyone lectured and educated them the way Andrallo was doing now.
Watching the prisoners in front of him, so stubbornly closed-minded, Andrallo grew more and more worked up, until his own psychic power tore straight through the surrounding Warp storm and carried his words out to countless worlds.
And trailing behind him, countless threads of blue light followed in his wake, carrying those same words out across innumerable Imperial worlds.
Deep within the Warp, the god of change watched world after world descend into chaos upon hearing Andrallo’s words, and couldn’t help bursting into fits of laughter.
Far away on Terra, atop the Golden Throne, that withered husk of bone caught a fleeting sense of Andrallo’s presence in that same instant, and in the end, all it could do was let out a single sigh.