---o---
The lavish palace was now decorated with something considerably less tasteful than before.
Dismembered limbs. Scattered everywhere.
Every surviving member of Aestia's ruling class was on their feet, staring at the scene around them with expressions of unconcealed terror. That included the Workers' Guild representative — the Genestealer. The White Scars would have very much liked to put a bolt through him too. Chris had stopped them.
The Planetary General and the Planetary Governor stood side by side, both sweating through their formal attire.
"It appears the Ecclesiarchy has been thoroughly compromised."
Chris narrowed his eyes at the Governor. His gaze was the kind that came loaded.
The Governor felt the full weight of it and broke into a fresh sweat. There was nothing technically wrong with the Inquisitor simply shooting him on the spot. But Chris was clearly not inclined to do that.
Because if things descended into actual chaos here, an Exterminatus would start to look like the only viable option.
And that would be an absolute failure. He would not resort to it unless he had no other choice.
---o---
"My lord—"
Chris was already past him.
He crossed the hall directly to the Genestealer representative. The cult leader looked up at the Inquisitor with a flicker of something that might have been reverence — or simply the self-preservation instinct of a man who understood exactly how precarious his situation was.
The forehead ridges were impossible to ignore, of course. Chris noticed them immediately. He did not reach for his boltgun.
"Unity is the only means by which we defeat our enemies."
"Yes, my lord."
"Then go."
"...Pardon?"
"Rally everything you can. Have your people in position before dawn. This is our moment of pride — for the God-Emperor, and for Aestia."
"Yes, my lord. The brothers will give everything for Aestia."
---o---
It should be noted: outside of pureblooded Genestealers, the hybrid members of a Genestealer Cult were largely just individuals whose minds had been warped. The Golden Throne's representative still carried genuine authority over them. A sufficiently experienced Inquisitor could point that authority like a weapon.
Chris was sufficiently experienced.
A handful of carefully chosen words, and the cult leader had marched his followers out of the palace with the enthusiasm of someone who had just been told they were the chosen instruments of the Emperor's will.
"Go." Chris watched them leave. "If you and your people give everything for Aestia, I will report to Terra. You will be recognized as a true part of the faithful — here, on this world — in place of the corrupted Ecclesiarchy."
"Leave it to us, my lord!"
The cult leader and his flock were gone in seconds, swallowed by the palace corridors at a pace that would have been impressive under any circumstances.
The hall was considerably quieter without them.
---o---
"My lord, you— "
"Governor of Aestia." Chris's voice was flat. "You harbored xenos within your population. You allowed Chaos to operate under your nose without detection."
"I—"
"Your Star of Terra protected you. Go and conduct gene-screening across your forces. And when the fighting starts — seal the under-hive."
"...Yes, my lord."
---o---
"Tsk, tsk, tsk..."
Zhou Ye was the only person in the room who looked comfortable.
He had been eating steadily throughout all of it, and he had every intention of continuing to do so. Chaos, Genestealer Cults, none of it was sufficient reason to interrupt a meal.
As for the Tyranid Hive Fleet—
Honestly, the Hive Fleet didn't even register on his personal threat scale compared to The Swarm from Star Rail. The Hive Fleet just wanted to eat — biomass, protein, raw material. Very straightforward. The Swarm, on the other hand, could actually transform you into one of their own. That was a qualitatively different category of problem.
The Star Rail universe had its terrifying corners. The Swarm was genuinely worse, in his estimation. The only reason it didn't feel that way from a distance was that Star Rail's universe happened to have plenty of proper divine powers to push back — which made the whole picture look slightly less apocalyptic than it actually was.
This universe, by contrast, had exactly one genuine divine protector of humanity. And that protector was currently sitting in a chair on Terra in a state that could most diplomatically be described as deeply, deeply unwell.
Zhou Ye's personal policy on the Golden Fiend was to maintain the maximum feasible distance at all times. The faith energy, in particular, was something he had no intention of getting involved with. It wasn't like psychic energy — it operated on a completely different register, and the Emperor happened to be the single greatest concentration of it in the entire known universe.
Touching that was not on his agenda.
---o---
"You — go and purge what remains of the Ecclesiarchy. Let the Emperor's light shine over Aestia again."
Chris glanced once at Zhou Ye — still eating, apparently without a care in the universe — and found the sight slightly baffling.
"Mm."
The Deathwatch Kill Teams made no comment. Bolt rounds in hand, they turned and walked in the direction of the Ecclesiarchy chapels. No loyal Astartes could refuse that particular task. Least of all when the heresy was this blatant.
Zhou Ye could already guess how that was going to end. The entire local Ecclesiarchy, root and branch.
"Go prepare for the battle ahead. There are still heretics outside these walls that need your attention."
"Yes, my lord..."
The room emptied. Chris waited until the last figure was gone, then turned and walked toward the door, pausing to gesture at Zhou Ye.
"What?"
"Come with me to the Navigator's Court. I may need you to service some equipment."
"Fine."
Zhou Ye set down his food with the resigned air of someone being asked to do something deeply unnecessary, then followed him out.
Outside, passing through a stretch of open ground, he passed a patch of sand.
He stopped.
He took out a small pouch.
He scooped up a few handfuls.
"What are you doing?"
Chris looked at the pouch with genuine curiosity.
"Nothing in particular," Zhou Ye said. "If it's the Thousand Sons, I have a special technique for them."
"...Technique?"
Chris studied him for a moment. He had been wondering since the chapel. He was now reasonably certain that this Tech-Priest's expulsion from the Adeptus Mechanicus had absolutely nothing to do with refusing cybernetic augmentation. Something else was going on. Something considerably more abstract.
Might not even be heresy, Chris thought. Might just be... whatever this is.
---o---
The Imperial Navigator's Court.
In a world this isolated, the Navigator's Court was the only thread connecting Aestia to the rest of the Imperium. The communication infrastructure of the 41st Millennium was, to put it charitably, absolutely terrible, which meant that every inhabited world existed in a state of profound disconnection from everything around it.
Zhou Ye stood beneath the vast dome and updated the command core of his automaton. Strictly speaking, the procedure was unnecessary. His machine possessed an artificial intelligence of extraordinary capability — it didn't need explicit instructions for most situations. More often than not, Zhou Ye barely needed to form a thought before the thing had already begun acting on it.
But there was an Inquisitor standing three meters away.
Performing unnecessary maintenance was the socially acceptable thing to do.
He was also aware that if he let something genuinely heretical slip in front of Chris, the man would probably find a way to look the other direction. They had both seen what the other was carrying. Neither of them was entirely clean.
Still. No reason to push it.
---o---
The great doors swung open slowly.
Zhou Ye took in the interior.
Ancient gloom. Dim, archaic light. And there, anchored at intervals around the chamber — several psykers, wired in place like batteries. The Astronomican burned through psykers on an industrial scale to keep the Emperor's beacon alight. Standard Navigator's Court operations required much the same.
"I have intelligence that needs transmitting."
Chris addressed the Court attendant directly.
"State what you require."
The Navigator emerged from the shadows and regarded the two of them.
No pleasantries. No ceremony. Just the flat, functional exchange of an institution that had long since ceased to pretend at warmth.
But—
"...A Thousand Sons sorcerer."
To Zhou Ye's eyes, the Navigator was an empty shell.
Whatever had been inside was gone. What occupied the body now was something else entirely — armored in deep, shifting blue, riddled with mutations, staring out from behind borrowed eyes.