V3 Chapter 115: The Purge Plan Called the Primarch's Whip
By the time Duvette returned to the Tower of Hegemony once more, Captain-General Trajann Valoris entered the command chamber almost right behind him.
Both had finished the tasks Guilliman had set them. Grand Provost Marshal Avelisa Delakhma, Lord Commander Militant Mar af Ashariel, and a number of the rebellion's core participants had already been locked away separately by the Custodians in cells deep within the Palace.
What awaited them now was a trial presided over by the Imperial Regent himself.
Some would be executed. Others, those who held important intelligence, or for whom simple death was judged too light a sentence, would have their memories extracted before undergoing punitive servitorisation — some even converted into living Cogitator cores, kept conscious just enough to go on serving the Imperium indefinitely.
Duvette glanced at Trajann, standing beside the command table, then turned to Guilliman. "How did it go with the Lord High Admiral?"
"The fighting's over." Guilliman set a report from Terran orbit down on the table. "The Minotaurs cleared out nearly half of the flagship's critical sections. Everyone who refused to surrender and kept resisting was executed, Merelda Perez included."
The Minotaurs' boarding force had already secured the flagship's bridge, reactor, and comm hub, and the order records held in the ship's own Cogitators had fallen into their hands as well.
The remaining naval personnel chose to surrender once they saw the Regency decree, and loyal officers took temporary command of the ship.
Duvette wasn't the least bit surprised. This was simply how the Minotaurs operated.
Give that lot a clear enough order, and they'd carry it out by the most direct route available. How many died along the way never entered into their calculations at all.
He was just a little curious how Moloc would react once he learned his Third Company had been all but wiped out.
Still, Ulrich was the one who'd given the order to fire first, and the complete combat record sat in Italeo's hands now. However unhappy Moloc might be about it privately, he'd likely have no choice but to lay that particular debt at the feet of the already-dead Cimotrion.
"Juno and Heinz are interrogating the personnel we've brought in." Guilliman went on. "Fidicus has returned to the Assassinorum as well. He'll recall every deployed assassin under Custodian supervision, and open every mission record connected to this incident."
Duvette nodded.
The armed rebellion the High Lords had launched had, for all practical purposes, come to an end. What remained now was cleaning out everyone hiding deep within the vast institutions and noble families.
Guilliman glanced at Duvette, who'd fallen quiet, then picked up a data panel and handed it to him.
Duvette took it and glanced it over. At the very top, written in High Gothic, was a name only just finalised.
The Terran Emergency Reorganisation Decree.
The decree suspended, for the time being, the independent appointment authority and military deployment powers held by every implicated institution across Terra and the Solar Domain, and froze the positions and assets of every individual involved.
Every family under investigation would lose its transit clearance, and its access to the Astropathic Choirs and cross-domain encrypted channels would be revoked at once.
The scope of the investigation began with the falsified execution order, then radiated outward along the administrative record.
The scribes who'd altered the order, the cipher officers who'd supplied the authority codes, the administrative officials who'd cleared the transit routes, and the archivists who'd helped move the evidence: all of them appeared on the investigation list.
The list kept growing. Behind many of the names lay a vast web of interest all their own.
Those High Lords controlled countless institutions through blood relations, marriage ties, and officials they'd personally promoted; the power the Imperium had granted them had long since been converted into a tool for maintaining their own families' standing.
"Only a few thousand?" Duvette asked, scrolling through the list.
"For now, yes, only a few thousand." Guilliman answered. "But that number will keep climbing as the investigation continues, until it covers every interest group standing behind them."
He walked around to the other side of the command table and called up holographic images of several Terran administrative districts.
Hundreds of archive towers, family estates, and orbital facilities lit up marked across the display, some of them already under surveillance by the Custodians and loyal Adeptus Arbites personnel.
"Anyone who took direct part in the rebellion will be executed or subjected to punitive reformation, according to the weight of their guilt." Guilliman said. "The chief conspirators, and those directly responsible for the killings, will be put to death. Among the rest, anyone of intelligence, technical, or administrative value will be stripped of their identity once interrogation concludes."
"They'll be handed over to the Adeptus Arbites' penal workshops and the Mechanicus for memory-wiping and neural reconstruction."
"Some will become labour servitors, serving for the rest of their lives. Those with a talent for calculation and record-keeping will be embedded into Cogitator arrays instead, until whatever organic tissue remains finally gives out entirely."
"Anyone who knew the conspiracy existed, and still provided personnel, funding, or armed support, will have all their assets seized and their titles revoked." Guilliman went on. "The lesser offenders will be exiled or sent to penal worlds. Those more deeply involved will be servitorised — their bodies will go on paying back what their families stole from the Imperium."
"Anyone who obtained their position through family connections, but took no part in the rebellion itself, will be suspended pending review."
"Among them, anyone guilty of long-term dereliction of duty, selling positions, or embezzling Imperial property will be punished. Those who genuinely have the ability, and have committed no crime, may continue working after a demotion."
As for the collateral family members and minors who had no part in the politics of it, Guilliman would spare their lives, while still stripping the entire family of its hereditary privileges.
They'll be relocated to other worlds, forbidden to return to Terra for the rest of their lives, and barred from ever re-entering the Imperium's core institutions of power.
"You mean to make these families disappear entirely." Duvette said.
"Their bloodlines can go on. Their power ends here." Guilliman answered evenly. "A family that lives off the Imperium's own sustenance, and yet treats the whole of that Imperium as its private property, has no business continuing to exist in the first place."
Duvette kept scrolling down the list, and found a further batch of officials whose connection to this particular rebellion ran thinner.
Some of them had embezzled expeditionary supplies; some had falsified tithe records; others had spent years concealing wars breaking out within their own jurisdictions, simply to protect their own standing.
Guilliman looked once more at the marked administrative towers in the holographic display, his tone unchanged.
"There are people on this list who altered nothing more than a few tithe figures, and in doing so, cost billions, tens of billions, their food. Or who withheld an expeditionary force's supplies, and let an entire front collapse under enemy attack for it. And not one of them ever thought of themselves as having killed anyone."
"Death would be far too easy for people like that." Guilliman said. "They'll keep just enough consciousness to understand exactly what's become of them, embedded into the very archive towers and tithe-Cogitators they once controlled, still processing the lives they always treated as numbers on a page."
It was obvious to Duvette now: Guilliman meant to use this opportunity to reorganise the whole of Terra's upper echelons.
Even those who'd had no part in the assassination or the rebellion would still face investigation and punishment, so long as clear corruption, dereliction, or abuse of power could be shown.
Recommended sentences had already been appended after each name on the list, and execution made up only a fraction of them.
The number sentenced to punitive servitorisation kept growing, and a further batch of officials skilled in administration and finance were slated to be converted into dedicated Cogitator nodes, put to work recalculating the very accounts they'd falsified.
Just then, the command chamber's doors opened again, and Chancellor Lev Tyrion strode in quickly.
He saluted Guilliman first, then noticed the data panel in Duvette's hand.
Guilliman ran through the contents of the Terran Emergency Reorganisation Decree for him.
When Guilliman mentioned that corrupt and incompetent officials would fall within the investigation's scope as well, Tyrion's face stiffened, just for a moment.
He'd used no small number of methods over the years, ones that couldn't survive being brought out into the open, simply to keep the Imperial Council running at all.
Money, position, and private deal-making were all simply part of politics. Held to the strictest letter of the law, Tyrion couldn't guarantee every one of his own records would survive scrutiny either.
"You chose to help me at the critical moment, and you've proven your own worth." Guilliman glanced at him. "So long as nothing in your past touches treason, heresy, or premeditated murder, I'm willing to let it go, for now."
Tyrion lowered his head. He could hear the room Guilliman had deliberately left in those words — he'd been given the chance to keep working, but the final verdict on him still rested entirely in the Imperial Regent's own hands.
"You know most of the Imperial Council's senior officials personally, and you know which of them can actually keep an institution running." Guilliman went on. "You'll be responsible for forming a temporary Reorganisation Committee, appointing interim heads for each department, and taking over the records, communications, and finances the implicated families currently control."
"Before the mass dismissals begin, a successor has to be ready for every important position."
"Some genuinely capable mid-level officials will need to stay on as well, to keep the Administratum, the War Office, and the Adeptus Arbites from all grinding to a halt at once."
"As you command." Tyrion answered.
"As for who actually carries out the purge itself..."
Guilliman raised his head, and settled his gaze on Duvette.
Duvette had been studying an entry on the list — a noble family with control over more than a dozen administrative departments — and only raised his head slowly once he felt the weight of Guilliman's gaze.
"Me?" Duvette raised an eyebrow. "I'm just a commissar."
"It's precisely because you're a commissar that I'm putting you in charge of this." The faintest trace of a smile crossed Guilliman's face. "In a certain sense, it's no different from the duty you've always carried. You are, after all, a man who tends the flock for the Emperor."
Duvette's mouth twitched. He felt Guilliman's understanding of what a commissar actually did had a few problems in it, but thinking it over, he couldn't really find much to argue with either.
"I'm granting you the standing of Special Commissioner of the Imperial Regent." Guilliman's smile faded as he spoke. "You'll carry out this Reorganisation Decree in my name. You have the authority to investigate any implicated institution, arrest anyone who refuses review, and put down any armed resistance you encounter."
Duvette looked down at the list, already numbering in the thousands and still growing, and was quiet for a moment before asking, "Can't the Inquisitorial Tribunal handle this instead?"
"The Tribunal needs investigating too." Guilliman said. "The current Inquisitorial representative has ties to this very conspiracy. She's no longer fit to hold her seat on the Imperial Council."
Guilliman had no intention of directly controlling every Inquisitor, though.
Juno and Heinz would convene a special conclave, investigate the Inquisitorial factions active within Terra, and a new representative would be chosen once the investigation concluded.
"This is no small operation." Duvette kept scrolling through the data-slate. "Purging thousands of senior officials, taking over the institutions they leave behind, and whatever reckoning comes after that: this is going to take years, not months. And the Imperium beyond Terra is hardly steady right now either."
"I know."
Guilliman rose to his feet and walked to the tall window on one side of the command chamber.
From here, part of the Inner Palace lay visible below, and farther still, the Eternity Gate stood guarded by countless defensive installations.
"That's exactly why I have to set Terra's upper levels in order first." Guilliman said, his eyes on the distant gate. "The root here has already rotted through. If I let them go on controlling the Imperium, then however many victories I win beyond Terra, they'll bleed every one of them dry, piece by piece."
Duvette nodded. With the Great Rift not yet open, Guilliman still had time to sort out Terra's own problems for now. Still, Mortarion's threat against the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar hadn't gone anywhere, and Duvette wasn't sure how the Regent planned to handle that.
Guilliman paid no mind to what was going through Duvette's head just then. He turned back around, and observed that a reorganisation on this scale, one that would run for a very long time, was bound to disrupt the Imperium's tangled bureaucracy regardless.
"So, I intend to establish three new departments." Guilliman said. "They'll bypass the current, inefficient administrative structure entirely, and answer directly to the Imperial Regent."
"Three?"
Duvette blinked. As he recalled it, in the original timeline Guilliman had established a single new logistics department for his campaigns. Now, apparently, that number had jumped straight to three.
"One will be called the Officio Logisticarum, responsible for coordinating supply logistics across the expeditionary forces, the Astra Militarum, and the Navy." Guilliman explained. "One will be called the Order of Historical Truth, tasked with restoring falsified history, and reorganising the Imperium's archives."
"The last department will be called the Imperial Inspectorate, responsible for investigating official corruption, auditing administrative efficiency, and overseeing enforcement of the Regency's decrees. It handles only matters internal to the Imperium's administrative apparatus, and won't involve itself in heresy, Chaos, or traitor affairs, which remain the Inquisitorial Tribunal's responsibility."
"It's still in the planning stage for now." Guilliman looked to Duvette. "Once the matter with the Ecclesiarch is settled, I'll tell you the full arrangement. You'll hold an important position within the Imperial Inspectorate as well."
"Why does this keep involving me?"
Duvette's brow furrowed again, his mouth twisting. If there was one thing he genuinely hated, it was all this winding political maneuvering, and now here was Guilliman, apparently ready to plant him directly inside Terra's highest seat of power regardless.
Guilliman offered no further explanation, and turned to Tyrion instead. "What response has the Ecclesiarch given?"
Tyrion paused a moment, then repeated back the words the Ecclesiarchy had sent publicly.
"'In three days' time, the great Primarch of the Imperium, Roboute Guilliman, shall stand before the God-Emperor's Grand Basilica, and prove to the children of Terra that he has truly received the God-Emperor's recognition and appointment. The method of proof is his to choose. Should he fail to provide it, the purge of the High Lords must cease at once.'"
"The Ecclesiarch has no authority to demand you suspend the exercise of your Regency." Tyrion added. "But the whole of Terra is waiting on your answer now regardless. Enormous numbers of the faithful are already making their way to the Grand Basilica, and the Ecclesiarchy has already begun broadcasting the terms of this agreement to every hive across the planet."
"Heh."
Duvette gave a cold laugh, then met Guilliman's eyes. Each read the same thing in the other's gaze: Slester had gone and chosen, of his own free will, the one option he should never have chosen.
"Tell him I accept." Guilliman said. "In three days, at the place of his own choosing, I will prove that my father has recognised both my identity and my authority."
"In the meantime, the asset freezes, the evidence preservation, and the arrests of the core participants all continue. The final judgment on everyone else can wait until after the demonstration concludes."
Tyrion bowed his head and accepted the order, then asked, "And if you succeed in the demonstration, what's to be done with the Ecclesiarch?"
Guilliman fell silent. He only glanced at Tyrion once, then turned his gaze back to the window.
Tyrion already had his answer.
"I'll send our reply to the Ecclesiarchy at once." he said, and left the command chamber.
Duvette watched the direction Tyrion had gone, then glanced over his own skills once more. Three days would be more than enough time to put together a miracle the whole of Terra couldn't possibly deny. As for how the Ecclesiarch himself might react to it, Duvette found he was already looking forward to it.
Guilliman stood at the window a long while, his gaze fixed on the direction where his father lay. The High Lords' rebellion had ended. What remained to be cleared out now was the corrupt structure that had sat entrenched atop Terra for thousands of years. This time, he would cut the tumour from the Imperium's body with his own hands.
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