Chapter 240: The Terran Warming Incident
12.11.761.M41
Throneworld - Terra - Office of the Master of the Administratum
Terra, also known as Holy Terra, was once called Earth. It is the homeworld of humanity, the final resting place of the Emperor, and the most sacred and revered place in the Imperium. As the capital of the Imperium, Terra is also the primary headquarters of many important Imperial organizations, including the central Administratum, the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, the Departmento Munitorum, and the four major non-Ecclesiarchy controlled Orders of the Adepta Sororitas.
After a long day, the Master of the Administratum finally escaped from a complex internal meeting and returned to his office to begin approving the documents that had been filtered through the countless layers of his department and still required his personal decision.
Click...
An external cogitator-node, designed to assist with neural processing, began to vibrate, awakening its master at the preset time. A stimulant, formulated by Terra's finest bio-artisans, was pumped into his skull, forcibly clearing the grogginess from his mind before he could even savor the last moments of pre-awakening haze.
How long has it been since my last sleep?
Accompanied by the Custodes, he had managed to snatch a few brief moments of rest during his transit.
Click-hiss...
As the office doors opened, the Master of the Administratum, with a heavy heart, slowly moved from his cogitator-throne into the radiant hall. He felt numb. The ambition to control the power of the Imperium had long since been ground to dust by a mountain-range of documents. The Master of the Administratum felt like a corpse, strapped to a life-support machine, able to do nothing but think.
He looked up and saw the mountains of files. He decisively ignored them and went to his desk, beginning to process the newer, visibly smaller stack. These were the urgent matters of the Throneworld.
Rustle...
As he picked up a parchment, a silent, ancient servant promptly served him a prepared beverage and, taking advantage of this private moment, began to check and adjust the Master's life-support systems, and to set the hall's temperature to the optimal level.
The climate on Terra had gotten hotter recently. During his standby periods, he had even witnessed several mushroom clouds rising over the Terran wastelands. And the man before him was the sixth Master of the Administratum he had served.
The Master of the Administratum raised a hand and picked up his quill. The accompanying Custodian had already begun to review the other documents, searching for the information he wanted. The Master showed no anger at this usurpation of his authority. He couldn't finish it all anyway.
These guardians of the Emperor's court, while conducting their review, would also assist the Administratum in signing some non-sensitive documents, relieving some of the pressure of the other sectors' administrative affairs. It was said that six Masters ago, his position had even had the spare time to deal with matters outside the Throneworld, and could even communicate with the four Lord Primarchs in the distant Ultima Segmentum.
But ever since the Primarchs' critique of Terra had arrived, the entire Throneworld, led by the Emperor's Custodes, had entered a state of self-examination.
At first, everyone had been optimistic. The Throneworld, the place where they had grown up, the headquarters of many of the Imperium's most important departments... if there were any problems, they would have known long ago. What could these Primarchs of unknown origin, who had perhaps never even set foot on Terra, know about it?
But as the investigation deepened, the problems became more numerous, and larger.
A genetic mutation investigation turned into a xenos threat.
A secret society investigation turned into an Alpha Legion infiltration.
A heretical faith investigation turned into a daemonic incursion.
The scope of the involvement and the scale of the impact were unprecedented in ten thousand years. And with various high-yield weapons being detonated on Terra's surface, either by heretics and xenos, or in the process of annihilating them, the average temperature of Terra had risen by about five degrees in ten years.
And they still weren't done killing.
The various affairs of the Throneworld had also begun to increase exponentially. Terra was now caught in a severe chain of suspicion. No one knew if their own family members were trustworthy. They didn't even know if they themselves were trustworthy.
In ten years, there had been six Masters of the Administratum. This was unprecedented in Imperial history. And they weren't even the most extreme case. The Inquisition next door had gone through thirteen High Inquisitors. The Ordo Malleus, responsible for dealing with daemonic threats, had been particularly decimated.
Yes, daemons.
With the bombs on Terra being detonated prematurely, the gods of the Empyrean were certainly not going to let their long-laid plans come to nothing. Daemons, mainly of the Khornate variety, had basically entered the field of vision of the entire Imperial high command and a large number of grassroots civil servants.
As the daemon-purging Grey Knights, no matter how fanatical they were, they couldn't just kill all the nobles and officials of the Throneworld, could they? Would the Imperium even function? So, after a symbolic swearing of a vow of secrecy and a promise never to leave Terra, these civil servants continued to do their jobs in the Administratum.
But this had planted the seeds of disaster. Because of the high pressure of the Imperial departments for ten thousand years, and the glimpse of a divine power other than the Emperor, the problem of heresy was now rampant in every department. The Grey Knights and the Ordo Malleus no longer had to run all over the galaxy. They had plenty of work to do right here on Terra.
Rustle...
As he picked up the first document, he couldn't help but frown in pain. The Navigator's Quarter, a giant island floating above Terra's surface, a sanctum of the Navigator houses, had suffered a heretical incursion. The Alpha Legion, in league with disguised mortal agents, had introduced an unstable toxin into the genes of several Navigator houses, corrupting them. The infected became highly unstable psykers, their third eye often connecting directly to the most dangerous regions of the Sea of Souls.
The incursion had ended in an Imperial victory with the help of the Space Wolves, who provided security services for the Belisarius Navigator house, but it had resulted in extremely heavy casualties. In the subsequent clean-up by the Grey Knights, a large number of tainted Navigators had been executed.
The Belisarius family, a Navigator house that had made a pact with the Wolf King Leman Russ back in the Great Crusade—they would provide Navigators for the Space Wolves, and the Wolves would provide security for them and fight their necessary wars. This pact had been well-kept by both sides, which was why the Belisarius family was still one of the most powerful Navigator houses in the Imperium.
After the War of the Beast, the Custodes had passed the Terran Defense Act, which forbade Space Marines from being stationed on Terra. Due to their pact, the Space Wolves were the only Space Marines who could set foot on Terra's surface. Of course, the Captain-General of the Custodes had since changed his mind. Given the current grim situation on Terra, even the Custodes needed all the help they could get. The Imperial Fists were now also stationed in their former monastery, operating as a rapid reaction force, and their Chapter Master could even attend the High Lords' council to better grasp the situation on the Throneworld.
"Haaa~"
Sipping the most delicious beverage from his memory, the Master of the Administratum, who was now beginning to allocate resources for the recovery of the Navigator's Quarter, let out a dry sigh. The changes on the Throneworld in the past ten years had been more dramatic than in the past ten millennia, second only to the War of the Beast in their unexpectedness.
Beep~
A meeting request chimed, making the Master, who was already numb from the complex administrative work, look displeased. He didn't remember having such an appointment.
"This was a meeting signed by the 692nd Master of the Administratum, von der Leyen, my Lord," the old servant who was on standby said. "The members you will be meeting with are Shield-Captain Valerian of the Custodes, and the Administratum representative for the Dawnbreakers, Itu-Hamathelion."
Oh, something from six Masters ago. The Master of the Administratum immediately returned to his numb state. "Let them in."
The remote conferences with the Primarchs and the High Lords had left a deep impression on him. In just three short years, they had completed the political restructuring of Ultramar, the development and deployment plan for the Maelstrom, the centralized development plan for the Baal system as a holy world, and the development strategy for the former T'au Empire, now the Ultima Segmentum Joint Exchange Special Zone.
And the then-Master of the Administratum, von der Leyen, had, based on this, issued a ten-year development report, the specific affairs of which were to be handled by Shield-Captain Valerian and Itu-Hamathelion, who had been part of the Terran delegation at the time. Unfortunately, man proposes, god disposes. In less than a year, von der Leyen had died at his post from overwork, trying to deal with the continuous problems erupting on Terra.
He raised a hand and looked at his own skin, which was already beginning to swell from the overdose of drugs. The current Master of the Administratum felt he was not far behind.
"Emperor preserve us—"
Escorted by the Custodes, Hamathelion, having "fought his way through," finally saw the current Master of the Administratum, who was the same age as himself. And looking at Hamathelion, who looked no different from ten years ago, a rare feeling of jealousy welled up in the Master's heart. He pulled at his stiff facial skin and said, "Let's skip the pleasantries. Just report."
"Yes, my Lord," Hamathelion said, quickly pushing forward a cart loaded with thick documents and, with the help of Shield-Captain Valerian, moving them in front of the Master. This was the appendix. The subsequent documents would need to be reviewed by the various parties, compiled, and then submitted.
"My dear Itu..." he sighed.
"?"
"Can you give me the verbal summary?" he asked, picking up his quill in despair and signing another document whose plan had already been written. "I will review the specific content later."
"Of course, my Lord," Hamathelion said, looking at the documents and instantly understanding the other's difficulty. It couldn't be helped. Compared to the High Lords of the post-Age of Apostasy, who could occasionally attend family gatherings, the past few years since the 'Return of the Primarchs' had been nothing but endless suffering for them. Terra alone was a killer. They also had to investigate the eight important warp-route node-worlds connecting to the Sol Sector, and then expand further outward.
In the Dawnbreakers' memory, aside from Vorlese, the closest node to Terra, the other seven had fallen in the blink of an eye during Abaddon's Thirteenth Black Crusade, and had been deployed with a large number of corrupted Blackstone artifacts. Just like Terra, the problem had been there for a long time.
It's endless. It's simply endless.
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