Chapter 315: Aftermath

“Impressive efficiency,” Anton said calmly, his voice steady despite the devastation that lay between himself and the intruders. “You arrived and killed your way here rather quickly.”

Seeing the enemy arrive, Anton showed no outward panic. Nor did he posture in defiance, shout denunciations, or invoke the Emperor’s name in hollow protest. Instead, there was a strange sense of relief etched across his features, subtle but unmistakable, as though a weight he had carried for years had finally been torn from his shoulders. The man looked exhausted rather than afraid.

Grey was suddenly reminded of a former planetary governor during the Talon Sector Consolidation. That man had opposed the plan alongside an Inquisitor, only to be executed by him in the underground bunker of his own residence.

At this moment, the two governors wore exactly the same expression.

This had always been a desperate, doomed act of resistance, a gesture of defiance doomed by scale and inevitability, like a mantis trying to stop a groundcar. If there had been any other path left to him, any compromise that did not end in annihilation, Anton would never have chosen to flip the table and make a last stand.

“Can you at least grant us a measure of dignity?” Anton asked. His voice did not tremble, but it carried the fatigue of a man who had negotiated with monsters and lost. His hands moved slowly and deliberately as he produced a laspistol, the weapon well-maintained despite its age, and laid it flat across his knees with ceremonial care.

Members of the governor’s family followed suit. Some drew laspistols from beneath layered formal robes marked with heraldic threadwork; others produced slim vials of fast-acting poison, sanctioned chem-compounds designed to induce a painless death within seconds.

“They can,” Chen Ye said coldly, glancing briefly at the others before fixing his gaze back on Anton. His voice carried the clipped certainty of a Space Marine accustomed to judgment without appeal. “But you can’t.”

“Oh?” Anton chuckled softly, the sound hollow in the vast audience chamber. Without further hesitation, he raised the pistol and pressed the barrel firmly against his temple.

Just as he was about to pull the trigger, Anruida activated bullet-time.

The chamber froze. In that suspended instant, Anruida stepped behind Anton, crushing the governor’s arm with a single augmented grip and locking his other hand around Anton’s throat.

Bullet-time disengaged. Anton’s perception snapped violently back to reality just as Anruida completed a direct neural interface with the governor’s cranial augmetics. Contact icons flared briefly across Anruida’s internal display as security protocols were overridden by brute-force authority codes.

The mind-reading protocol initiated.

Neurons and synapses were forcibly overstimulated. Anton’s body convulsed violently as memories surged back without restraint, every betrayal signed in quiet chambers, every bribe laundered through shell guilds, every compromise struck with inhuman intermediaries. His cranial temperature spiked catastrophically as the implants struggled to cope with the flood.

By the time his skull began to boil from within, Anruida had extracted everything of value.

Witnessing Anton’s fate, the remaining family members chose death immediately. A brief chorus of swallowing sounds and sharp gunshots echoed through the chamber. One by one, their life signs vanished from the Thunderborns’ tactical displays, replaced by flat lines and archival timestamps.

“He did collaborate with Genestealer elements,” Anruida reported. “The so-called ‘Usurper’ they mentioned was assassinated by a Purestrain Genestealer operating within the inner hive strata.”

This explanation was meant for Chen Ye. After all, he wasn’t a Thunderborn and couldn’t access the shared datastream flowing silently between the augmented warriors.

“Understood,” Chen Ye nodded once. “What about the patriarch of those vermin?”

“Already sent to the Underhive,” Anruida replied, disconnecting the interface and turning to Grey. Anton’s body collapsed bonelessly to the floor as the last neural safeguards failed.

After brief consideration, Grey said, “We wait for the Talon Guard.”

“The cult leader has reached the Underhive, and you want to wait?” Chen Ye stared at him in disbelief. “They could spark a full-scale uprising.”

“Exterminating vermin is the Guard’s responsibility,” Grey replied calmly. He would have agreed to immediate action if not for the assurance that the anti-Genestealer countermeasures developed by the Lord of Talon remained viable.

Chen Ye remained uneasy, but he knew the Thunderborns did not make judgments lightly. In the end, he chose to trust them.

Even if the Genestealer Cult rose in open rebellion, it would take at least three standard years before they could directly threaten District One-Hundred, protected as it was by layered defenses and constant surveillance.

“The fighting here is over,” Grey said, returning his chainsword to its mag-lock across his back. “Guiding the Army into the Underhive should be trivial for you.”

“Leave it to us,” Yoan said with a nod.

“Go on,” Anruida grinned beneath his helm. “Go teach that female officer how to swim. There’s still time. But if she drowns, well…”

“If I hadn’t put her up in a hotel, she’d have drowned already,” Yoan replied. “She’s from Talon I, same as us. Born landlocked.”

“Then be careful not to drown tonight yourself,” Anruida teased. “We’re landlocked too.”

“What? I don’t sleep in water, how would I—oh…”

“…”

After a round of laughter, Grey teleported back to the Thunderborns’ vessel.

Anruida, Yoan, and Chen Ye remained on Beisu I, continuing to resolve the remaining administrative and security matters.

From this point onward, everything proceeded smoothly. With two Thunderborns and a White Scars Space Marine present, the greatest immediate threats within the hive city had already been neutralized.

Before departing, Chen Ye asked Yoan, “Will Khurai become the new planetary governor?”

“That depends on the sector’s ruling,” Anruida answered. Yoan nodded in agreement.

“Living as an ordinary man wouldn’t be a bad fate for him,” Chen Ye said, slinging his boltgun and glancing at Anton’s corpse. “That bastard and his family have paid the price they deserved. I’m satisfied.”

“Returning to your Chapter?” Yoan asked.

Chen Ye nodded. “I’ve been away for several months. It’s time to return. But… there was still something weighing on me.”

….

The next morning, transport flotillas carrying five hundred thousand Talon Guard troops arrived over Beisu I, their engines churning the polluted cloud layers and casting vast, moving shadows across the hive spires.

Anruida coordinated their deployment, directing armored spearheads and infantry columns into the Underhive access routes.

An extermination-agent carrier entered low orbit. After scanning the corpses of the Genestealer organisms on the planet, its systems encoded their genomic signatures into sealed canisters. The agent was then released into the atmosphere as artificial rainfall, saturating the surface of Beisu I.

Yoan and Chen Ye stood atop the wall of District One-Hundred in the Lower Hive, gazing down at the streets and buildings below.

Swarms of drones sprayed green disinfectant mist across the district. Children stood beneath them, laughing as they bathed in the falling liquid, unaware of its true purpose or the horrors it was designed to prevent.

Logistics drones moved from building to building, installing water lines, power conduits, and data-cables, marking the first stages of full hive reconstruction under sector authority.

Beyond District One-Hundred, sentry drones and Talon Guard infantry exchanged fire with gangs that refused Talon reoccupation, las-bursts flashing between decayed hab-towers and rusted sky-bridges. Resistance was sporadic, disorganised, and ultimately futile.

Order was descending, inch by inch, upon the Lower Hive and the depths beneath.

“I heard several Inquisitorial agents have arrived in the Beisu System,” Chen Ye said. “They’re trying to extract intelligence before full annexation.”

“Of course,” Yoan replied. “Once everyone is numbered, logged, and archived, even the Emperor Himself couldn’t sneak them in.”

Chen Ye fell silent, choosing not to comment, and continued to watch the district below.

After a long while, he asked quietly, “This place… the hab-zone I grew up in… all of them. What happens next?”

Yoan considered. “To prevent corruption, the population will be catalogued and transported district by district to temporary habs. Construction engines will rebuild permanent residences. Then the people will be returned. Clean foundations make clean minds. Those who grow up in hell have no resistance to daemonic temptation.”

“I haven’t seen it happen yet,” Chen Ye said with a faint smile. “But I know you’ll do it.”

He turned to Yoan.

“It’s time for me to return to my Chapter.”

Yoan looked confused. “Didn’t you say yesterday that unresolved feelings were slowing your blade?”

“They’re resolved now,” Chen Ye said. “Thank you, for everything you’ve done for these people.”

He removed a shard of ceramite and handed it to Yoan.

“I’ll probably never return to my homeworld again. This shard once took a shot for me before it shattered. Keep it. May it turn misfortune into fortune for you.”

Yoan accepted it with both hands. “I’ll make it into a pendant for my daughter.”

“As long as you don’t stab anyone with it.”

“You joke, but it could work,” Yoan laughed. “I had a friend on Cadia who got stabbed several times with ceramite shards…”

Chen Ye was about to remark that anyone reduced to stabbing with armor fragments must have been truly desperate, but before he could speak, a transport craft descended into the central plaza of the hab-Destrict.

Chen Ye turned.

The ramp lowered. Ten Talon Guard soldiers in power armor disembarked. Their officer asked the assembled civilians for Khurai.

As the man stepped forward through the gathered civilians, the officer gestured for him to board.

“By decree of the Lord of Talon, you are appointed Planetary Governor. Proceed to the Spire to meet your assigned aide.”

Khurai looked toward the wall, saluted Yoan and Chen Ye in gratitude, then boarded the transport.

“A governor’s aide?” Chen Ye asked curiously.

“Someone to help and protect the governor,” Yoan replied.

Chen Ye did not know the ‘assistant’ was a Stone Man construct. He assumed it was merely a sector-trained administrator, like the scribes that served Imperial nobility, and did not press further.

“Before you go,” Yoan said, “I have a gift for you as well.”

“A gift?”

“A more impressive jetbike. The frame is printed directly from a single block of refined adamantium. It has an integrated short-range teleport and a defensive field generator. It can switch to grav-hover mode and includes a basic fabrication unit for repairing weapons and armor.”

Chen Ye froze.

“By the Throne…!”

He immediately followed Yoan to his new treasure.