Chapter 167: They Lost |
It was absolutely horrifying. To think that one day, he would actually have to try and figure out which turd smelled better.
Whenever he thought about how the Imperium treated traitorous Imperial worlds in the original timeline, Romulus could not help but sigh again.
The Sector Governor in charge of the Damocles Gulf was probably sweating bullets right about now.
"To be honest, I often feel deep sympathy for the citizens of the Imperium."
Ever since he began intervening in the administrative affairs of the planets along their route, Romulus had come to deeply understand the true meaning of living in dire straits.
Truth be told, as they fought their way across the stars, it became blatantly obvious that many of the planetary heresy issues and Chaos outbreaks could be entirely blamed on atrocious governance.
It was a miracle humanity could even survive in such hellish social environments. Turning to Chaos was understandable, though unforgivable, but the fact that these people did not rise up in rebellion meant they possessed an unfathomable tolerance for suffering.
"Many civilized worlds within the Imperium still harbor numerous distinct nations. Their living standards vary drastically, yet it is exceedingly rare for a city-state to abandon its heritage and people to join a rival nation simply because the latter offers a better life."
Cawl could not help but point out.
"Heh."
Romulus suddenly chuckled upon hearing this, though his laughter carried a bitterness he could not hide.
"Of course, I am well aware of that."
Withdrawing his gaze from the Archmagos, he looked out the viewport at the war-torn planet. Beyond the luminous halo refracted by its atmosphere lay the boundless sea of stars.
Nothing was more ironic than this: humanity today would rather defect to Xenos than believe another human regime could offer them a better life.
"In the ancient eras of Terra, there was once an impoverished and weak nation. She boasted a prime geographical location, a massive population, vast territories, and abundant natural resources. Take a guess at what she did when faced with several far more powerful and advanced regimes?"
"With such a strong foundation, how did it ever fall into ruin and poverty to begin with?"
Cawl could not help but ask.
"..."
'Is that really what he chose to focus on?'
Romulus fell silent for a moment. The nebulae drifting past the viewport cast mottled shadows across his power armor. He suddenly inhaled sharply, as if suppressing a rising tide of emotion.
"That was the fault of those in power."
He finally replied, the words squeezing out from between his gritted teeth.
"...Understandable."
Cawl sensed that Romulus was subtly jabbing at the Imperium again, so he politely humored him.
"I am quite curious to know how that regime managed to survive when surrounded by wolves."
"They fought, they learned, and they kept fighting. Eventually, they forged their own path."
Romulus replied.
"But the humanity of today—or rather, this current Imperium of Man—seems to have entirely lost that drive. They have lost the confidence to say, "You are doing this well, but I can learn from it and eventually surpass you.""
This resulted in Imperial decisions often looking utterly ridiculous. In fact, they truly were ridiculous.
"How dare you abandon your brothers and stop eating shit? Unacceptable! Get back here and eat shit with the rest of us!"
And then they would use absolute violence and unyielding cruelty to drag you back into the muck.
It was a living, breathing hell.
"...Indeed."
Cawl nodded in genuine agreement.
Whether the reason was an inability to change or a sheer refusal to do so, the reality remained that the Imperium was thoroughly rotten to its core.
Even a brief glance at their military deployments was enough to induce a headache.
Never mind the atrocious strategic misjudgment during the Tyranid conflicts that resulted in the complete annihilation of the mobile fleet, dragging hundreds of Imperial worlds into the crossfire.
Just look at the present situation. Over a dozen battleships were idling in the Damocles Gulf, achieving absolutely nothing. Given the lackluster combat power of the T'au, the punitive fleet should have crushed them and pushed deep into T'au Empire territory ages ago.
"So it is not that I think another race is inherently better and wish to defect. Rather, I want us to provide humanity with an alternative—an answer that saves them from having to turn to Xenos."
Romulus stared at the data-slate in his hand.
It contained comprehensive intelligence gathered from across the planet—demographics, technological development, social structures, and the world's intrinsic value. All of this data was streaming into the device as one information hub after another was secured by their forces.
'If they do it better, learn from them,' he thought. 'Admitting your flaws is not shameful. Giving up on improving yourself is what is truly disgraceful.'
"..."
Cawl nodded.
'I was overthinking things,' Cawl realized. 'These Primarchs have a far clearer and more definitive vision for the future than anyone could have imagined.'
Just as the Archmagos opened his mouth to reply, the communication matrix aboard the Wings of Dawn suddenly chimed with an urgent alert.
Romulus raised a hand, and Cawl immediately fell respectfully silent.
A scarlet "Emergency Comm" notification flashed across the tactical display, followed by a stringent decryption sequence:
"Connection established. Password verification: The First Primarch is eternally loyal!"
"Verifying... Verification successful."
"..."
'Rameses and his ridiculous passwords...'
'Well, I suppose no one in this universe would ever guess a phrase like that.'
Romulus kept his face carefully blank as he accepted the transmission.
"Technology recovery is complete."
Arthur's voice echoed through the channel.
The visual feed showed him standing deep within the core sector of the Bork'an Central Research Institute. Rameses stood by his side, while squads of Dark Angels conducted their final sweeping sweeps of the perimeter.
"We have secured the physical Undercurrent Module prototypes. We will need a transport vessel to extract them."
Arthur continued his report, his voice crystal clear thanks to the mysterious metaphysical link they shared.
"We have also secured the Earth Caste scientists and the Artificer Tech-Team. It has been officially confirmed that the alien engineers providing technical support to the T'au are indeed Space Dwarfs from the Leagues of Votann. They have all been successfully sequestered within the Warp enclave and handed over to Rameses for interrogation. Full details are in the attached file."
"Copy that. Notify the ground forces to wrap up their operations and initiate the evacuation protocols."
Opening the attached files, Romulus issued his final orders before cutting the transmission.
Since their primary objective had been achieved, there was no reason to dawdle.
"A beautiful planet."
Romulus turned around, stealing one last glance at the verdant world of Bork'an, and could not help but sigh in admiration.
Cawl chimed in, "It will soon be a beautiful world ripe for human development and colonization."
Bork'an boasted superb natural conditions: temperate climates, incredibly rich veins of rare minerals, and an orbital asteroid belt teeming with precious metals. Furthermore, a Death World orbited even closer to the system's star—an absolutely ideal location for establishing a new Forge World.
"I certainly hope so."
Romulus withdrew his gaze. The servos of his power armor let out a deep, bass thrum as he turned away from the viewport. Stepping up to the command throne, he took his seat. The hydraulic systems hissed, automatically adjusting to accommodate his armored frame, elevating his imposing presence to an even more majestic height.
"Cease the orbital bombardment. Order the entire fleet to prepare for Warp translation."
His authoritative voice echoed across the bridge.
Captain Aurora's fingers danced across her command console, bringing up a sprawling holographic star map.
"Are we making a direct strike on Dal'yth?" she asked.
According to their original strategy, they were supposed to jump to the critical border world to resolve the ongoing war between the Imperium and the T'au. After handling the punitive fleet, they would then redirect the armada to reinforce Ultramar.
"No," Romulus declared. "Set course for the T'au Homeworld."
He reached out and swiped his finger across the holographic projection. The star map zoomed in rapidly, bypassing the border lines and centering directly on a heavily fortified star system deep within the T'au Empire's heartland.
"Signal the strike fleet. Authorize the Exterminatus Strike Protocol using Bipolar Torpedoes."
Captain Aurora's pupils constricted slightly in shock, but she immediately snapped to attention.
"By your command, my lord."
——
In this grim universe, every major species possessed some sort of profound, almost mystical connection to their ancestral homeworld.
Setting aside the immensely ancient Necrons and Old Ones, one only needed to look at the Aeldari, the Orks, and Humanity to see the undeniable proof of this phenomenon.
First and foremost was the mighty Imperium. Even though the Emperor was confined to His Golden Throne, reduced to a decaying, skeletal husk, humanity still stood as the dominant power in the galaxy, ferociously maintaining absolute dominion over Holy Terra.
Then came the Orks. Even though their original homeworld of Ullanor had been conquered by humanity, relocated, and renamed Armageddon, the greenskins had never stopped hounding the Imperium ever since the brutal War of the Beast.
Before the Tyranid swarms invaded the galaxy, the Orks were humanity's greatest existential threat next to Chaos itself. In the original timeline, roughly a century from the current date, they would mount two catastrophic invasions that nearly broke the Imperium.
And finally, the most pathetic and tragic of them all—the Aeldari. When Slaanesh was birthed with a cosmic scream, their core Crone Worlds were violently sucked into the Eye of Terror. Now, whenever the Craftworld Aeldari attempted to return to their ancestral worlds to harvest Spirit Stones, it was like a mortal man diving headfirst into an active volcano—an absolute suicide mission.
For ten thousand long years, their entire species had been trapped in a state of terminal decline. They were merely delaying the inevitable, holding on by a thread through sheer individual prowess and ancient technological supremacy.
All of this perfectly illustrated the immense, undeniable importance of a racial homeworld.
In the original timeline, the Imperium had deployed fifteen mighty battleships for this punitive crusade. They had fought a grueling three-year war, only to get permanently bogged down at Dal'yth without achieving any meaningful strategic victories.
In this altered reality, the punitive fleet possessed an even more massive armada, having recently concentrated their forces at the Tyran Fortress World. Yet, despite their overwhelming numbers, they were still failing to make any headway.
And the common denominator in both timelines? A commander by the name of Inquisitor Roster.
"Ten hours,"
Romulus muttered, his fingers rhythmically tapping against his data-slate. The screen illuminated the staggering list of victories they had secured in that brief window—an entire colony world had been completely subjugated.
He had barely even intervened in the fleet's tactical maneuvers, proving unequivocally that the sheer combat power of their ships was never the issue.
If the troops were not the problem, then the fault lay squarely with leadership.
Romulus held no delusions that these incompetent buffoons could successfully dismantle the T'au Empire. This was an enemy that had long outgrown the ability of the local Sector Governor's bureaucracy to manage.
——
As the devastating first wave of radiation bursts pierced the planet's northern pole, the ionosphere ignited with an eerie, violent violet aurora.
The very instant the Bipolar Torpedoes struck the polar ice caps, the planet's poles imploded, cratering inward into perfect, terrifying parabolas. The massive tectonic plates shattered like porcelain struck by a colossal, invisible hammer. Deep fissures ripped across the crust, racing down the planet's meridians at terrifying speeds.
The planetary core let out a seismic scream. Volcanic magma erupted violently across the equatorial circulation belt. Gravity waves churned the atmosphere into a apocalyptic, spiraling vortex. In the swirling eye of a stratospheric hurricane, scorching mantle material jetted outward, instantly cooling into colossal spires of anorthosite crystals.
By the time the first shattered fragment of the planetary core violently breached the atmosphere, the planet's rotational axis had already been violently shifted by dozens of degrees.
Torn apart by catastrophic gravitational forces, the tectonic plates slammed against each other in chaotic ruin. The once-pristine azure sky was choked with bruised, purple-black ionizing clouds, painted an unnatural, sickly fluorescent green by the mass bleed-off of escaping oxygen ions.
The final, fatal disintegration arrived with shocking suddenness.
Stripped of its protective magnetic field, the atmosphere vanished silently like a burst bubble. Entire oceans, now mercilessly exposed to the vacuum and the system's burning star, flash-boiled into steam.
Buckling under total gravitational collapse, the entire planet violently distended into an unnatural ellipsoid. Billions of tons of blazing mantle material spewed out along the invisible threshold of the Roche limit, violently tearing the once-proud homeworld into endless fields of jagged debris.
Twisted metallic husks—the last testaments of a thriving civilization—now drifted aimlessly in the cold void. A planet that had stubbornly existed for three point six billion years had, in an instant, been utterly reduced to a silent ring system orbiting its sun.
Meanwhile, deep within the immaterium, the treacherous Warp Storms that had historically shielded the T'au Empire's domain ever since they first evolved on their homeworld... finally began to dissipate.
"So... is this the cataclysm that sent a collective shudder through our entire species?"
The supreme commander of the Dal'yth war zone, Shas'o Vior'la Shovah Kais Mont'yr—revered by billions of T'au as Commander O'Shovah—stared blankly at the horrifying visual feed. His voice emerged as a rough, hollow rasp.
Around him, his senior adjutants could only watch the apocalyptic destruction of their ancestral world. Many buried their faces in their hands, utterly paralyzed by grief.
"What is the enemy's current vector?"
His four-fingered hands gripped the edge of the holographic tactical table with white-knuckled intensity as O'Shovah turned to question the Water Caste Diplomatic Overseer.
"Immediately following the obliteration of the T'au Homeworld, the human armada altered course directly for Dal'yth. Every planetary defense fleet that stood in their path was ruthlessly annihilated. Our administrative centers, massive industrial complexes, and primary starports have suffered apocalyptic orbital bombardments. The technological infrastructure on those targeted worlds has been forcefully regressed by centuries."
"Furthermore, the enemy has unleashed a terrifying cyber-warfare capability that aggressively subverts our AI networks. Interplanetary communication and logistical coordination have almost entirely collapsed."
The battle-hardened Commander rested his head heavily on his hands as he listened to the grim report. He stared with absolute, icy focus at the projected trajectory of the Expeditionary Fleet. Outwardly, he appeared completely composed, as if the unimaginable loss of their homeworld had not shaken his tactical brilliance.
"And what of the human colony worlds along their invasion route? How have they dealt with them?"
O'Shovah rapidly traced the tactical overlays as he shot back.
"They bypassed heavy engagements entirely by executing flawless orbital drop decapitation strikes against the planetary governments. However, their treatment of the local human populace drastically contrasts with the brutality of the other Imperial fleet. They employed calculated pacification policies, intentionally preserving all the civilian infrastructure and public works we had established. Consequently, they encountered virtually zero resistance from the populace."
"No mass executions or purges?"
"None whatsoever."
The Diplomatic Overseer quickly elaborated. "They rapidly restructured the planetary administrations, appointed various mid-level representatives from different societal castes, stationed a small cadre of religious personnel and bureaucratic overseers, and then immediately departed. Their operational speed is terrifyingly efficient. Current projections estimate they will break through the Dal'yth system defenses in roughly twenty homeworld rotation periods."
Since the T'au Empire had actually been quite popular on those human colony worlds, establishing covert spy networks to gather intelligence had been relatively easy.
O'Shovah stared intensely at the holographic star map, remaining absolutely silent. The command deck's overhead luminators flickered erratically for a moment. His sharp, angular facial features—unusually pronounced for a T'au—reflected grimly against the curved observation viewport, blending seamlessly with the cold, distant starlight.
Even when staring down the massive, seemingly endless waves of the Imperium's punitive fleet, he had never experienced such a suffocating, terrifying pressure.
It was now terrifyingly clear: moving forward in their expansion into Imperial territory, the T'au Empire would find it almost impossible to peacefully assimilate humanity.
After a suffocating silence, the Commander finally spoke.
"...We have lost."
He stood up abruptly, his voice ringing with absolute, unflinching authority. "Mobilize the surviving fleets. You are in charge of immediate civilian evacuation. Prioritize the relocation of the non-military castes. I will rally the Fire Caste to hold the line and cover our retreat."
The holographic projections distorted as he slammed his hands on the table. Raising a finger, O'Shovah traced a definitive, desperate escape vector across the tactical display.
"We retreat toward the northern galactic fringes, away from our destroyed homeworld."
"But what about our remaining colonies? Are we truly going to abandon them?"
'Do we even have the logistical capacity to salvage a population violently regressed to the Early Industrial Age?' he thought grimly.
"Yes."
A profound flash of sorrow and painful struggle gleamed in O'Shovah's eyes as he spoke the grim truth.
"We must abandon them entirely."
——
Back in the governor's office, Romulus and Dracus were diligently sifting through intelligence alongside the stoic warriors of the Invincible Iron Guard.
Even from high up in the citadel, they could clearly hear the cacophony of war echoing from the planetary surface below.
The rhythmic staccato of bolter fire, dying screams, frantic curses, and the thundering footsteps of desperate rebel reinforcements surging forward—they heard it all.
Hovering Servo-skulls monotonously broadcasted tactical updates from the ongoing siege of the Planetary Governor's Palace, while Romulus and the others calmly aggregated information onto a comprehensive data-sheet.
"The Correlation Between Elevated Human Living Standards and the Spontaneous Manifestation of Chaos Corruption."
As the commander of the Invincible Iron Guard, Dracus was intimately familiar with the pristine living conditions maintained across Ultramar back during the 30th Millennium. However, an entire epoch had passed since then. What they needed now was unadulterated intelligence from the present era—
Accurate, cold, and utterly irrefutable data.
Unfortunately, the current Imperium was governed by nothing but abstract nonsense. They couldn't find a single functional, prosperous world to use as a baseline, but there was a limitless supply of hopelessly decayed, miserable planets to study.
The pampered Pleasure Worlds and Garden Worlds offered zero statistical value, and their fleet had not yet reached the borders of Ultramar. Fortunately, the T'au Empire had inadvertently provided the Wings of Dawn with several pristine, highly developed case studies right on their doorstep.
Whenever a human colony defected, the T'au Empire immediately dispatched resources to aid in local development. But unlike the Imperium's brutally simple administrative model of "neglect, tax, violently suppress, and bleed dry," the T'au were incredibly meticulous.
They painstakingly rezoned residential hab-blocks, tailored industrial growth to the planet's unique natural resources, conducted precise planetary census operations, radically elevated social welfare, and systematically scrubbed the toxic pollution from the environment.
Their advanced AI seamlessly handled the grueling logistical calculations behind these operations. Naturally, with such a comprehensive overhaul, the average standard of living across these defecting worlds skyrocketed.
When the Expeditionary Fleet arrived, the mid-level representatives of these worlds had proudly presented a unified front, fiercely declaring they would rather die than abandon the T'au Empire. Their blatant, zealous defiance had genuinely made the four leaders of the Wings of Dawn laugh out of pure, frustrated disbelief.
What else could they do? It was not as if they could simply kick the planets back into a bleak state of survival worse than the Medieval Era out of sheer spite.
Instead, they chose to maintain the local infrastructure. Arthur and Karna deployed in two separate teams—one overtly conducting administrative oversight and the other covertly gathering intelligence from the shadows. Then, they compiled their findings.
And the moment they finished generating those data-sheets, the real problem surfaced.
The Imperium's so-called "necessary evils" were fundamentally unnecessary.
As long as a Planetary Governor possessed even a shred of basic competence and humanity, the probability of a world falling to Chaos plummeted drastically.
Of course, increased prosperity was not without risks. Elevated living standards invariably birthed a culture of hedonism, particularly among the upper echelons of society. While the vast majority did not slip into the depraved excesses necessary to summon the gaze of Slaanesh, they had undoubtedly begun to lazily neglect their civic duties.
However, the lower classes remained perfectly stable. Both planetary production efficiency and the overall ideological health status of the working class were phenomenally well-maintained.
So, the question remained: was it easier to purge the elites at the top, or to subjugate the billions at the bottom?
When wielding the unyielding iron fist of Astartes might, decapitating the corrupt upper echelons was infinitely easier.
The leaders of the Wings of Dawn found themselves in absolute agreement on this doctrine.
The chaotic sounds of battle echoing from the hololithic feeds had ceased entirely without them even noticing.
"Governor's Palace Operation complete."
The tactical strikeforce seamlessly transmitted their final after-action report.
"Execute Protocol Thirteen across the planetary leadership," Romulus commanded smoothly. "The fleet will depart in exactly one Terran day."
Having cleanly assessed the strategic picture, Romulus finalized his orders.
As he mentally mapped out the next leg of their interstellar journey, his gaze fell upon a remarkably ostentatious, wax-sealed invitation resting on the desk.
It was an official missive from none other than Inquisitor Roster.
"..."
For a fleeting second, an incredibly rare emotion flickered across Romulus's eyes.
It was pure, unadulterated killing intent—birthed naturally from a deep, profound revulsion toward a single, utterly incompetent individual.