Inside the holo-rendered council chamber.
"The importance of this purge is no less than any Apocalypse War—perhaps greater."
Grand Inquisitor Deville swept his gaze across the high personages in attendance, his expression grave.
"His Majesty the Savior places extreme weight on this task. It concerns the Empire's future and permits no mistakes.
"I earnestly request the full cooperation of you all, that we may sweep away every rebel with thunderous speed."
The Grand Inquisitor bowed deeply to the assembly, his attitude unfeignedly sincere.
He understood why the Savior had chosen him to suppress the rebellion: that august one wished to cow the entire Empire with swifter, more brutal means—so that the reforms and new policies could push through without obstruction.
That would not be easy.
"Fortunately, His Majesty has granted me discretionary authority and the right to marshal assets as I judge fit," Deville thought as he bowed.
He would not only execute the mission, but execute it beautifully—erasing every obstacle for the Savior, and proving worthy of the trust and power granted to him.
So he exercised a measure of initiative: convening all relevant personnel, assigning them precise roles, and requisitioning the support he needed.
After finishing the briefings and apportioning the plans, he darkened the meeting projection.
Deville stared out through the observation viewport into the void; his face tightened into a snarl. "Those heretic traitors who defy His Majesty the Savior's majesty—none of them will escape!"
Very soon, the secretly assembled large strike forces departed along multiple webway routes toward their targets.
…
One month later.
Ascolon Sector, within a minor asteroid belt.
A dark-gold warship of austere lines nestled behind a rock, masking its emissions until it was all but invisible.
It was a vessel of the Urth Inquisition—the personal flagship of Grand Inquisitor Deville.
Deville paged through the intel compiled over recent weeks on the noble revolt in the Ascolon Sector and the powers behind it.
The contents were shocking.
The Wolter Dynasty—the sector's ruling house—had sunk its talons into every facet of governance, and via political alliances had secured preferential tax treatment.
They had hoarded staggering wealth and built a vast power base.
And they were not satisfied. In secret they raised pirate fleets of their own, with which they harried Imperial squadrons in the sector and surrounding regions—
All to squeeze out more profit.
Deville was not unfamiliar with such behavior. In the Savior's own terms, it was "raising bandits to fatten oneself."
Noble rebels like these could visit catastrophe upon a sector at any time—and they were devilishly hard to uproot.
Nor could he simply scourge them with indiscriminate force and burn worlds to the crust.
That would land His Majesty in a ruinous storm of public censure and ran counter to the Savior's principles of rule.
So every action must be taken with utmost care.
Worse: the Wolter Dynasty was only the front piece. Larger political alliances stood behind it.
At any moment they might send reinforcement—xenos, or worse, the touch of Chaos.
Thinking thus, Deville's brows knit tighter. His focus sharpened to a killing edge.
He would not permit himself any error. He would not betray the Savior's trust and expectations.
This operation had consumed his days, his nights, and a mountain of men and materiel. If, in the end, he failed to seize control—
He would have no recourse but the Emperor's mercy by his own hand.
Bwooom—
A hololithic projection bloomed.
The half-body image of Voladi, Commander of the Redemption Fleet's Third Fleet, flared into being—clearly calling with a report for the overall commander of the purge.
Deville drew a long breath to bleed off the pressure gripping his chest.
"Commander Voladi," he addressed the holo, "how soon can you reach the target? Can you arrive before the time in the operations plan?"
Fresh local reports made it clear: they had to strike early, or face unknowable disaster.
But that required retasking multiple armed groups on the fly.
Voladi—once a gutter-born orphan of Urth and now a high commander—had grown more seasoned over time.
What had not changed was his caution.
He looked as though he had just come off a battle; beyond the command dome a pall of flame still licked the stars.
Those were the wrecks of ships dying.
"I ran into some… obstructions—lost a little time," he said, eyes scanning the incoming lane-data. Then his voice firmed.
"It will not affect the timetable. I will reach the battlespace in roughly two days—still ahead of schedule.
"Grand Inquisitor, trust the Third Fleet and the man who commands it. We have never arrived late. We have never lost a war.
"I will sweep every orbital and deep-space asset from your field the instant I translate in."
The Wolter Dynasty had forged a core hive-capital world and ringed it with dense orbital defenses. Without a fleet to tear away their sky, any ground force would be marching into a killbox.
"Commander Voladi, your record precedes you. His Majesty himself pinned the special honor to your breast," Deville said with frank respect.
"Then I entrust the opening to the Third Fleet. Beyond the defense navy, the Wolters have a hidden pirate arm. End this quickly."
Ending that link, the Grand Inquisitor moved to the next. Tasks were issued, closures arranged, final contingencies sealed.
Preparations complete, the Ascolon Sector purge began.
…
Ascolon Sector capital—Wolter Hive-World.
At the palace atop the uppermost hive spires.
Wolter XIX, the sector's "emperor," hurried onto the plaza in gilded robes.
He glared at the towering statue of his forebear enthroned over the square, fury flashing in his eyes.
"The so-called Savior is even greedier than those jackals on Holy Terra—he would shamelessly strip my ancestor's legacy!"
For millennia the Wolters had tilled this soil; the lands and people were long treated as private chattel.
Yet since the Savior's rise, the New Order would pry it all from their fists.
No high noble could stomach that.
If the Savior's reforms and commercial systems took root, he, the sovereign of this sector, would be reduced to a mere Imperial governor under central oversight.
No more ancient privileges. No more arbitrary tyranny. No more easy ways to shear the flock.
His family's wealth and station would shrink, drastically.
Worse: even this statue of Wolter glory would be pulled down and replaced with the Savior's ugly, nauseating effigy.
That upstart tyrant wants everything!
It was why so many great houses chose open risk and open defiance: the losses were simply too vast.
Unbearable.
They basked in the Emperor's aegis and under the shields of Imperial fleets, yet had long treated their demesnes as hereditary private property.
None but they might lay a hand upon it.
For ten thousand years, Terra's power-brokers had tried to reform such things; most came to grief.
And the old ways returned.
Some paid the price in blood at the headsman's block.
"May Ascolon withstand this trial…" Wolter XIX sighed.
He despised the Savior—but he had not wanted to be the first bird above the hedge, the first to take the arrow.
The alliances left him no choice.
Refuse them, and he might suffer a darker fate.
Sorceries accursed and blood-born hexes coiled in his line; a whisper was all it took to fell him and every heir.
The alliances promised compensation—and escape lines. It was not hopeless.
"Any stir in the surrounding systems?" he asked his chamberlain, worry gnawing his words.
He had publicly defied the Savior. A reprisal might already be in flight. He must remain vigilant.
The chamberlain shook his head. "No news as yet, Your Majesty. Neighboring skies are quiet. No fleets sighted."
"Quiet?" Wolter XIX went paler. "That is the most frightening state—silence births the worst storms."
He fixed the chamberlain with a look.
"Check the evacuation corridors again. I want departure guaranteed at a moment's notice."
He knew he could not hold against the Savior's blow. He had laid his exits long ago.
Once the sector shield shattered—
He would flee with bloodline and treasure. Then he would scuttle the capital and neighboring worlds—either annihilating them or offering them to the warp's corruption.
So the alliances demanded. Only then would the Savior feel true pressure.
"Ascolon's disaster is merely the first cut," he told himself. "Only when enough blood is spilled will greed abate and equilibrium return."
So massive a knot of interests would not be cut by one sector's death. More Imperial marches would meet the same fate—
Until both sides could bear no more, and each yielded a step.
But that would no longer concern him. If this bastion fell, he would light the self-immolation and vanish to the far marches—
To those colony worlds the alliances had prepared.
As the sector lord weighed his bolt-holes, the sky dimmed.
Something had moved before the sun.
"This… this…"
Wolter XIX looked up—and his eyes went wide and wordless.
Above the hive, from horizon to horizon, a monstrous fleet blotted the firmament. The entire world lay ringed by forces translated in for a short-hop encirclement.
Such a cordon-jump was fiendishly difficult and perilous—but that fleet had done it.
"It's that damned Savior. He… he's here!"
At last his voice scraped free, a ragged shriek like a eunuch's cracked cry in a palace corridor.
Terror strangled him. "Where is our fleet? Where are our pirates? How did they miss an approach like this?!"
The Wolters had seeded the region with covert monitor-stations and pirate flotillas.
No way could a fleet slip into the sector and make a short-range warp without so much as a whisper.
And yet—here they were. Which chilled him more than the fleet itself.
"Your Majesty—our fleets… are gone!"
The chamberlain's face had no blood left in it.
Reports had just struck the palace: the Wolter-backed pirates had been surprised by an onrushing armada and wiped out before they could even counterattack.
In truth, Voladi's Third Fleet had cleared them like weeds along the road.
He hadn't even dignified them as enemies. They were just… obstacles.
Before the chamberlain finished, the sky-flotilla opened fire on the hive-world's orbital defenses—
And broadcast into the atmosphere the Savior's decree as the newly crowned Imperial Emperor: the Wolter Dynasty stood convicted of treason.
Judgment: Immediate eradication.
Such an end was inevitable. Under the Empire's iron law, one need only drag a great lord into the light to find enough filth to hang him nine times over.
Truth be told, even the Savior himself might struggle to "pass" under the statute—defying the Emperor's majesty is a capital sin—
but such things depend on who is willing, and who is able, to enforce.
WHOOOM—WHOOOM—WHOOOM—
Through the atmosphere, the shattered hulks of defense bastions fell as fireballs—
a vision of the world's ending.
Interceptor wings quickly lanced them apart before they could hit ground.
Then more blazing meteors came searing down—drop-pods.
"Hurry! We're leaving! Begin the annihilation plan!"
Staring at the apocalyptic firmament, Wolter XIX knew the game was up and bolted for the palace proper.
He would evacuate his blood and hoard.
Watching the rain of pods and the assault craft boring for the ground, he sneered in his heart: Come down. All of you. You'll die with this world.
A petty thrill of vengeance curled through him.
He could already see it—the Savior's grief-stricken face as the casualty rolls and planet-kill reports reached his desk.
Let him regret his greed and his crimes.
But the next reports tore even that last hope away.
A special shadow shroud locked the system. The planned warp-lanes for evacuation failed.
No one from Wolter could flee the stars.
"How… how can this be…"
Wolter XIX fell on the steps, eyes glassed with shock.
He could not fathom why Tyranid tendril-fleets had appeared—precisely to cordon the capital world.
"Perhaps… we will simply die with the Savior's armies."
Hatred flickering, he forced himself upright to meet death.
If he took this world and the Savior's elite with him, so be it.
Then the last message broke him.
The world-kill protocols had failed. Every handler on the project had been smashed by a monstrous psychic interference, their minds… unspooled.
Assassins of the Officio next appeared in the palace—and scythed down his core cadres.
He looked up again. Drop-pods fell like dumplings into boiling water; god-engines of the Titan Legios flashed into reality; banners of Imperial Knights strode through the storm.
And then—
Aquila landers blazed gold across the sky, disgorging towering warriors in radiant auramite—
Full-strength formations of the Adeptus Custodes.
Wolter XIX's knees gave. His ancestors' statue crashed down beside him.
"My… my crimes do not warrant this!"
He had not struck at Holy Terra nor bombed the Imperial Palace. Why must this much fury be unleashed upon him?
He knew then: he had lost. He had nothing left.
The Wolter Dynasty was finished.
…
Aboard the flagship.
Deville conducted the cleansing of Wolter Hive-World, cutting off every accident before it sparked.
He simultaneously ordered the new governor, the logistics cadres, and internal security to assume control of the world, restore order at maximum speed, and broadcast notices to the Empire and neighboring regions.
It had gone this smoothly because he had built a vast task force.
At its spear point:
High Commander Tilis of the Adeptus Custodes; senior commanders from the Redemption Legion, the White Scars, the Ultramarines, and several chapter masters from minor Astartes chapters;
the 2nd Corps Commander of the Storm Group Army; Commander Voladi of the Redemption Fleet's Third Fleet; Archmagos Rena of the Adeptus Mechanicus; the Sector Arch-Bishop of the Imperial Cult; senior psyker Kalina of the Scholastica; the Grand Master of Assassins; and Quartermaster-General Popov, among others.
Beyond that, he had coordinated with the Ork and Tyranid management bureaus—and with the Terror Legion—intending to unleash them at decisive moments if required.
With the Savior's writ in hand, Deville's mobilization had been blistering. In short order he had convened a force that touched every arm of Imperial might:
great fleets, fortress-monitors, Space Marine chapters, assassin temples, Inquisitorial conclaves, Mechanicus cohorts, Titan Legios—
Enough power to ignite a civil war within the Imperium itself… enough to prick Holy Terra's rose.
And their target was only a sector—Ascolon.
No wonder the enemy collapsed in hours.
This was Deville's way—lesson burned into him by His Majesty: caution first, and then face every foe with the maximum force.
He lifted his eyes to the bloodline charts of the Imperium hanging in the air.
That was only an amuse-bouche. The true slaughter had only begun.
—
Not long after.
Savior's Sanctum, office.
Eden sat on the sofa, waiting for the consolidated battle reports, one knuckle drumming with a rare, anxious tension.
He knew his flaw: he was not ruthless enough. That was one reason the great houses dared provoke him.
They knew this Savior would balk for the sake of the lives within the Empire's reaches; he would hesitate, bind his own hands—
And so doom more souls.
So Eden loosed Deville—the mad dog—and gave him full leave to act and to requisition without restraint.
On this mission, the Grand Inquisitor's powers were nigh those of a "little Savior." Eden would neither question nor interfere—lest his own scruples intrude.
Let the dog run.
Only thus would the nobles learn fear. For Deville was madder than any of them.
Now it was time to reap.
Hiss—
Eden scanned the report—and sucked a breath between his teeth, fingers trembling.
"You call this a crackdown? This is beyond Exterminatus!"
The mad dog's results… exceeded even his imagination.
(End of Chapter)
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