The banquet hall was a shambles.
The expensive furniture and exquisite decorations had been hacked into scrap by Huron’s power sword, and only then did he manage to regain some semblance of calm.
Looking at the Vatt family servants who were paralyzed with fear on the floor, he patched into the Chapter’s vox-link and issued orders to the high-ranking officers on standby: “Initiate the contingency plan.
Control all hive transport and wipe out every noble stronghold.
Additionally, launch all available warships to blockade the orbital space.”
“Any enemies or resistors are to be killed without mercy.
Those who surrender are to be detained for trial.”
“Understood.” Everyone in the Chapter immediately moved according to the plan.
The Captain of the First Company led over 800 Astartes in Thunderhawk gunships to strike the spire from high altitude.
Meanwhile, the Second Company collaborated with the Astartes from the Chapter’s four other non-combat departments to seal and purge all noble factions starting from the Upper Hive.
Odinson took command of all mortal forces, ordering the armed police to blockade the transport hubs of the Upper, Mid, and Lower Hive, while the Special Operations Division began preparing for assault missions.
The first to suffer were the PDF soldiers of Palatos Hive.
Due to the clever schemes of the nobility, most of these soldiers were outsiders recruited from other hives.
Not only did they not speak the local dialect, but they also had no friends or family in the hive, allowing them to carry out suppression orders without any psychological burden.
Therefore, Odinson ordered teams led by several Astartes, backed by the Special Operations Division and armed police, to rapidly surround the various PDF barracks and broadcast demands for immediate surrender.
Most PDF soldiers, who had been chatting or playing cards, surrendered the moment they saw the opposing force.
Their training was mediocre at best—barely reaching [Level 1] by system standards—and they had no desire to fight to the death.
Furthermore, with the Emperor’s Angels personally present, an entire opposing force equipped with exoskeletons, and Chimera fire support vehicles literally in their faces, the message was clear.
If they surrendered any slower, they’d be eating bolter shells.
They didn’t even understand what was happening.
As a military force that was only slightly better than a street gang, who could expect them to go toe-to-toe with the Emperor’s Angels for the sake of the nobles?
Pay back the wages the nobles had been embezzling first, then they could talk!
The surrendering PDF were disarmed by the armed police, their weapons confiscated, and then they were locked inside their barracks under de facto detention.
As for the few who were foolish enough to resist, or those PDF units that had developed an emotional attachment to doing the nobles’ dirty work, they were wiped out by the Special Operations Division and the Astartes with thunderous efficiency.
Tens of thousands of bolters fired in unison, coordinated with the heavy siege fire from Chimera support vehicles and the plasma weapons wielded by the Astartes.
The PDF barracks defenses were little better than wet paper.
Aside from a few fortifications built into the hive’s main structure, the rest—quick-set concrete and plastheel works—were blown to shards.
The Astartes led the Special Operations Division through the breaches to engage in urban combat.
Upon seeing this, the PDF soldiers’ morale collapsed instantly.
Although Badab Primaris was not the home world of the Astral Claws, the Chapter had chosen the orbital station above it as their Chapter Monastery.
For centuries, the people of Badab Primaris had grown up on stories of the Emperor’s Angels.
Now, realizing they were the ones being disciplined by those very Angels, they lost all will to resist.
The Astartes stepped over the kneeling mortals, charging directly into the PDF command centers to execute the high-ranking officers attempting to hold out.
Once the weak but numerous PDF forces were neutralized, everyone immediately redeployed: the Astartes went to purge the noble factions in the Upper Hive, while the Special Operations Division and armed police focused on clearing and blockading the noble interests in the Mid and Lower Hive.
In truth, there were almost no noble interests left in the Lower Hive.
The Astral Claws’ infrastructure projects had absorbed five billion people; nearly every Lower Hive family had benefited.
The few who hadn’t caught on were quickly given a “physical education” by their neighbors.
However, to prevent noble remnants from fleeing to the Lower or Underhive and causing future trouble, blockading the transit routes was necessary.
This task was handed to Old John, the former instructor turned high-ranking officer.
He was now in command of twenty armed police divisions of 50,000 men each, as well as a 10,000-man Special Operations Division.
To be honest, he hadn’t dared to dream of this even in his wildest sleep.
In less than a year, he had gone from Lower Hive scum to an army group commander.
It wasn’t just him; everyone in the command center had once been a resident of the Lower Hive.
None of them had expected to reach such heights.
Old John slapped his cheeks, reining in his wandering thoughts, and walked to the command center’s sand table to check for gaps in the troop deployments.
As the largest and most populous hive on Badab, the Lower Hive of Palatos covered six million square kilometers—nearly half the size of the United States.
And unlike the US, which had large tracts of undeveloped land, almost every inch of the Palatos Lower Hive showed signs of human activity.
Combined with the uniquely complex environment of a hive, trying to completely seal the border between the Mid and Lower Hive with only a million-plus men was utter fantasy.
But he couldn’t simply blow the transit tunnels; the subsequent repairs would likely cause more trouble than the noble remnants.
So, Old John chose a middle ground.
He ordered the armed police to use information tortured out of various gang bosses to mark the private hidden passages used by the noble families.
They then moved high-density ceramite blocks to plug the exits.
This way, even if those nobles used the passages to reach the Lower Hive, they would simply be trapped inside the tunnels by the ceramite.
The nobility of Palatos had operated for hundreds, even thousands of years; such secret passages were everywhere.
A million men were nowhere near enough to cover them all.
Worse still, he had to divert a significant portion of his manpower to maintain the curfew in the Lower Hive, making his already thin resources even tighter.
Old John used to wonder why the Chapter Master hadn’t dealt with the gangs and nobles sooner.
Now he understood—insufficient manpower was a major reason.
However, he was now a bit confused himself.
Things had been going so well; why the sudden total conflict with the nobility?
If they’d had more time to prepare, to discharge more administrative staff back into service and form more armed police divisions, they wouldn’t be as stretched thin as they were now.
But complaining was useless.
When problems arose, one found solutions.
Old John’s solution was to utilize those tens of millions of administrative staff and mobilize the 200 million laborers who had been working under them for over six months to replace the armed police in plugging those tunnels.
The job didn’t require much technical skill, and for laborers who had spent half a year doing civil engineering, it was second nature.
Furthermore, everyone had seen what the Astral Claws had done over the past few months, so the laborers responded enthusiastically.
Though they didn’t know exactly what was happening, they naturally voted with their feet for the sake of their own interests.
After all, if the Astral Claws won, who knew what the future held—but if they lost, the workers would certainly suffer.
Even just returning to their previous lives was something they could no longer bear.
No more talk—let’s get to work, brothers!