Chapter 330: Judgement, Part III
The Planetary Governor laid out his reasoning, still on his knees.
"When the rebellion first broke out, I agonised over whether to suppress it.
I convened my advisors and had them assess the risks of both options.
If I chose pacification, it would be ten billion industrial citizens waging war against twenty billion agricultural citizens. The outcome would have been a pyrrhic victory at best.
You know what the rebels are like. They march under banners of freedom. They shout about casting off oppression.
They carry an ideal of a better life in their hearts, and that gives them a spiritual strength that's almost impossible to break.
If I'd committed to a full-scale war against people like that, the result would have been mutual destruction.
Infrastructure shattered. Entire generations of young men and women consumed by the battlefield.
Even if I'd won in the end, all I'd have had was a ruined planet and an agricultural population that would almost certainly revolt again."
Kian believed him. He still remembered Old Sen — the rebel leader who'd charged a firing Chimera on horseback.
Setting aside the fact that this was the Warhammer 40K universe, the rebels on this planet genuinely represented the more progressive side.
They were liberators who had pulled ordinary people out from under crushing taxation. They deserved respect.
They'd shown the common folk what light looked like. How could those people ever accept being dragged back into the dark?
Even if the Governor had launched the most brutal suppression campaign imaginable and reclaimed every hectare of land, the seeds of revolution had already been planted.
It wouldn't be long before twenty billion farmers rose up again. And then it would be an endless cycle — suppress, revolt, suppress, revolt.
The Governor had seen this clearly. That was why he'd chosen to let it go.
He knelt on the floor, anguish carved into every line of his face.
"If I'd chosen war and destroyed the infrastructure, my advisors calculated that by the time the tithe fleet arrived, repayment would become nearly impossible.
By the time we'd finished paying off the arrears and the punitive surcharges, our planet might have only a few hundred million people left alive.
But if I chose not to fight — if I waited for the tithe fleet to arrive — the rebels would see the Imperium's overwhelming military force with their own eyes. They'd read the situation clearly and fall in line.
Then we could leverage our intact public infrastructure to service the debt. In that scenario, a hundred years from now, we'd still have somewhere under five billion survivors."
The pain on his face as he spoke was unmistakable. Kian and General Zeppelin understood him.
The dead end he'd been backed into was, in every meaningful sense, the rebels' doing.
The rebels were idealists waving the banner of revolution, casting the Governor as their oppressor, nailing him to a pillar of shame.
And yet he'd had no choice but to plan for the welfare of these very people who despised him — ultimately taking no military action at all, simply waiting for the tithe fleet to arrive.
That decision left him with zero room to manoeuvre. Zero grounds for appeal.
Even if the Inquisitor sympathised with him personally, the white phosphorus sentence was unavoidable. The Governor had deliberately left himself no escape route from the very beginning.
Kian asked:
"Why did you go this far?
If you'd at least pretended to make some effort at suppression, you'd have a sliver of room to argue your case now."
The Governor let out a heavy sigh.
"Even though those revolutionaries hate me — even though they've made me into the source of all their suffering — they're still my people. I have a responsibility for everything that happens to them.
I needed to broker a de facto ceasefire between the PDF and the rebels as quickly as possible. That meant I couldn't show even the faintest hint of wanting to suppress them.
If my generals and nobles had caught so much as a whiff of that intent, they'd have gone on a rampage, hunting rebels for the glory and the promotions.
A ceasefire would have been impossible. Open war would have become permanent. Infrastructure would have been destroyed. And the repayment timeline would have ballooned by half a century."
General Zeppelin's eyes went wide with sudden understanding.
"So that's why. That's why the rebels ran rampant for all those years and you never once issued large-scale military commendations.
Officers who achieved major victories received nothing — no recognition, no rewards. Eventually everyone just stopped trying. You engineered that on purpose."
The Governor nodded. "This is my home. These are my people. The void is vast, but there's only one home."
The words hit like a physical force. Kian and General Zeppelin both found themselves looking at this obese, sweating Governor with something close to reverence — as though the man were radiating gold.
Then the Governor's tone took a sharp turn, and both their expressions curdled.
"I want to use whatever's left of my efforts to make the coming years even slightly less brutal for the people of this world. Even if it's only by the smallest margin.
And to do that, I have decided to use any means necessary."
His eyes locked onto Kian with burning intensity. Kian's stomach dropped.
"Count Voss. I know what you are. You're a psyker. An Immortal. A saint under the Emperor's own protection.
A person like you is extraordinarily valuable. If I can deliver you to the Inquisitor, he'll leverage his connections to redistribute tithe obligations from other worlds to help offset ours.
That 0.05 per cent reduction, spread across a hundred years of debt repayment, could mean the difference between life and death for twenty million people."
Kian's brow furrowed.
"Sounds like you've done your homework on me. Then you should also know that a man with my temperament doesn't take well to being put on a leash."
The Governor nodded.
"Yes. My advisors profiled your personality thoroughly. If you're forced into something against your will, you'll go to war with everyone involved.
The Inquisitor knows this too. And besides, he doesn't want a servant. He wants a comrade-in-arms — someone who'll stand beside him and walk into the lion's den.
In other words, he needs you to join voluntarily.
And to make that happen... the contemptible man that I am... I had to give you a push."
When Kian heard that he hadn't actually been sold — that the Inquisitor wanted him to come willingly — the tension in his brow eased slightly.
But the moment the Governor mentioned a push, his guard snapped right back up.
The Governor's gaze drifted to General Zeppelin. The General flinched and took a step backward.
"After my death, I will recommend you as the next Planetary Governor."
"What the— You son of a—!!"
General Zeppelin nearly had a stroke on the spot. He lunged forward, open palms flying, and slapped the Governor across the face so hard the cracks echoed off the walls.
"I was just feeling moved by your little speech, you dog! And you turn around and stab me in the back?!"
Planetary Governor was not a job any sane person wanted. Especially not with a century of debt repayment ahead. The position was visibly, obviously, catastrophically thankless — and if a single instalment was missed, it was probably another white phosphorus execution.
General Zeppelin kept slapping, one after another, but tears were streaming down his own face.
"You bastard! I've only got eighty lousy years left! I was looking forward to retirement!
And you — you think I'm living too long, is that it?! You're trying to kill me! I'll... I'll... I'LL KILL YOU FIRST!!"
Kian rushed in to pull him off, his own expression dark.
He understood. General Zeppelin was collateral damage — his collateral damage. The Governor had deliberately nominated Zeppelin for the governorship as leverage.
Once the debt burden landed on Zeppelin's shoulders, Kian — as Zeppelin's adoptive nephew — couldn't exactly stand by and watch.
You calculated that I'd never abandon family. You factored that in too, you bastard.
Kian stared at the Governor's swollen, battered face and cursed silently.
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