Chapter 99 - The Regent Seizes Power
~ Every 100 Power Stones = Bonus Chapter! Your votes keep this climbing. Thanks!
The Senatorum Imperialis. The shadowed galleries beneath the great dome.
Kallen leaned against a massive carved pillar with a plate of sliced fruit he'd lifted from the Imperial Palace kitchens, watching the spectacle below with relish.
The circular hall down there was a disaster.
Hundreds of finely-dressed senators, high officials, and High Lords clustered together, spraying spit at each other. An Administratum director so fat his neck had vanished into his collar was clutching a parchment scroll, screaming at the Imperial Navy fleet commander across the floor. Flecks of spittle were visible from a dozen meters off.
Off to one side, a cluster of Ecclesiarchy archbishops in heavy robes were bellowing scripture at the top of their lungs, trying to squeeze a few extra zeroes onto the budget allocation in the name of the God-Emperor.
This was supposed to be the power center steering humanity's fate across the galaxy.
It looked like a fish market.
"Centralize in wartime. Divide in peace."
Kallen tossed a piece of fruit into his mouth and muttered it around the bite.
Beside him, Kullen kept one hand on his sword hilt. The old knight watched the farce below with naked disgust, not even bothering to respond.
Loken's brow was knotted tight. Heavy breathing rasped from beneath his faceplate.
"Watching these vermin haggle up there is torture." Loken finally broke, his fist clenching with an audible creak.
"In peacetime, factions check each other — all the squabbling actually keeps one or two big fish from swallowing the whole pond whole." Kallen wiped his hands and set the fruit plate on the railing. "But the Great Rift just split the galaxy in half. Warp daemons and xenos are existential threats now. Balancing power at a time like this? That's just suicide with extra steps."
He nodded his chin at the officials below, faces red, necks bulging.
"If Guilliman wants this rusted machine turning again, he has to clear out every one of these obstacles. Become an absolute dictator. Military, political, religious — all of it, one man." Kallen's lip curled. "Basically a Space Caesar. Space Augustus. Whatever you want to call it."
Loken was quiet for a long moment.
He was remembering Terra during the Great Crusade.
"In our era, the Sigillite was here." Loken's voice was thick with nostalgia. "As long as Lord Malcador was standing on that floor, nobody dared run their mouths. Not even the most arrogant planetary governor. They fell in line."
He turned to look at Kallen, still chewing on fruit.
"So... Uncle Kallen."
Kallen's hand jerked. The plate nearly went over the railing.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop." He waved a hand, cutting Loken off. "Me and your dad Horus? We're buddies. Equals. You calling me 'uncle' makes me sound like some eighty-year-old fossil. Just Kallen."
Loken wasn't used to addressing one of the Warmaster's peers so plainly, but he corrected himself.
"Then, Kallen. Could you use that ability of yours to bring the Sigillite to this era?" The Cthonian asked it with naked hope in his eyes.
Kallen had pulled the doomed Horus back from the brink. Resurrected Sanguinius. Resurrected Loken himself. In Loken's eyes, the man's power had no ceiling.
Kallen brushed fruit pulp from his fingers, was silent a few seconds, then shook his head with absolute finality.
"Can't pull him."
A pragmatic answer.
"Why?" Loken didn't understand.
"Malcador isn't like the rest of you. He's not just a psyker, he's the cornerstone of the entire Imperium's operating system. Soul, flesh, every concept that makes him him, all of it got welded to the man on the Golden Throne a long, long time ago."
"Even if I could pull him, the Emperor would never let go. Malcador is His shadow."
There was another reason. A more important one.
"And besides, let him rest, Loken." Kallen sighed, the flippant edge sliding off his voice. "He worked himself to death for the Imperium. The Golden Throne drained his soul and his life dry at the end. The man's earned his sleep."
Beside them, Kullen nodded in deep agreement.
"The mess the old generation made, stop expecting them to come back and clean it up." Kallen clapped Loken's broad ceramite pauldron. "This era belongs to you. The new Primarchs. The new warriors. Keep looking backward and you'll walk yourselves off a cliff."
That was the moment the clamor below cut out.
Not because the officials had run out of breath.
Because the heavy adamantium doors had just been kicked open from outside, the sharp hiss of pressure valves shrieking with them.
A column of golden-armored Custodians filed in. Two files, guardian spears at the ready.
Enormous boots came down on the marble in chilling, muffled thuds.
The Administratum director who'd been spraying spit thirty seconds ago now looked like a fat goose with its neck wrung, swallowing his curses whole.
The Senatorum went so silent you could have heard a needle hit the floor.
Three immense figures crossed the threshold.
Roboute Guilliman walked dead center. The Regent of the Imperium had not worn the loose ceremonial robes today. He was in full plate, the heavy, deep-blue Armour of Fate.
On his left: the towering figure of the once-Arch-Traitor, the former Warmaster of humanity. Horus Lupercal.
On his right: the Great Angel Sanguinius, white wings folded close, face unmarred and perfect.
Set this lineup against a few hundred politicians? Forget politicians. Set them against a million Orks and the floor would still get flattened.
Guilliman strode directly to the speaker's dais at the center of the chamber.
The Master of Ultramar planted both hands on the brass.
"All of you. Time is short. I'll be brief." Guilliman didn't bother with an amplifier. That penetrating voice slammed against every eardrum in the room anyway.
"From this moment forward, I formally assume all supreme authority, administrative, military, and ecclesiastical, over the Imperium of Man."
No preamble. He laid out the terms in the next breath.
"The private military levies in your hands. The sector financial audits. The materiel interdictions. All of it is surrendered to me. From now on, the Senatorum Imperialis retains advisory and executive functions only. Every order will pass under my seal before issue. Anyone who delays, or nods publicly and resists privately, will be charged with treason."
The words landed.
The Senatorum exploded.
The High Lords and senators who'd been kings in their own sectors now wore faces uglier than men who'd swallowed rats.
"Lord Guilliman! This is not protocol!"
A white-haired senior Adeptus Arbites official lurched to his feet, shaking with rage.
"Just days ago, at the banquet, you told us the Imperium needed every faction working in cooperation! You praised our budget proposals as thoroughly prepared! How can you reverse yourself like this?!"
He was practically weeping it.
Because for weeks now, Guilliman, desperate for the supplies the Indomitus Crusade demanded, had been smiling. Negotiating gently. Playing along.
Which had given these politicians the most absurd delusion imaginable: the Primarchs are nothing special. Stick together, and even the Regent has to read our faces. We've already inked the carve-up in private.
And today, the hamster of Macragge had flipped the entire table.
So all the compromises, all the gentleness, every word of it had been a goddamn stalling tactic.
Cunning Roboute.
Damned Guilliman.
A thousand vicious curses churned in the bellies of every politician in that room. Not one of them dared speak them aloud.
"Cooperation requires that you are actually working for the Imperium." Guilliman's face was ice. He tossed a heavy data-slate onto the brass.
It rang sharp.
"I now hold the evidence. Every embezzlement. Every bribe that cost us battles. Every collusion with xenos."
The temperature in the hall dropped.
"You cannot rule by decree like this!" Another Administratum representative, emboldened by the crowd, lurched up to his death. "This is the Senatorum! Our authority rests on ten thousand years of legal tradition! Regent or not, you cannot bypass procedure and strip us of our lawful seats!"
A shameless line. Dragging out ten thousand years of "tradition" to muzzle a Primarch.
Horus, standing at Guilliman's flank, could not hold it in any longer. He let out a cold laugh that nearly shook the rafters.
The Wolf-of-Wolves took half a step forward, placing himself in front of his brother.
"Tradition?" Horus's voice was loud enough to rattle the chandeliers overhead.
"Has it occurred to any of you that the man who perfected and rebuilt the institutional traditions of this very Senatorum was my brother, Roboute Guilliman?!"
He extended one massive finger and pointed it, one by one, at the trembling officials in the front row.
"And now you lecture me about tradition? Fine. If we are speaking of tradition, then trace it back ten thousand years to the Great Crusade, and that era was ruled by Malcador the Sigillite, the first Chairman of the Senatorum Imperialis! Roboute Guilliman, as his political successor, is wholly entitled to do exactly this!"
Killing intent.
Pure, unfiltered murder bled out of the Wolf and washed across the chamber.
Several of the smaller-spined officials felt a warm spread down their thighs. They'd pissed themselves.
This was the Arch-Traitor, and the Emperor had pardoned him.
Sanguinius kept that heartbreakingly gentle smile in place. He raised one hand and patted Horus's arm, easy, brother, and turned his head toward the Administratum representative who'd started this.
"This gentleman raised the matter of lawful seats. A fine suggestion." The Great Angel's voice was soft as a breeze. The words landed like hailstones. "Roboute does dislike punishing without warning. So, we will form a special investigatory committee. Its task will be to audit every account, of every one of you, going back through the years. Financial. And otherwise."
At the word audit, the blood went out of more than half the faces in the room.
"Th-this, this is naked tyranny!" An Astra Militarum high officer broke completely. He knew exactly how big the holes in his books were.
He flailed his arms in the air, voice cracking.
"We refuse to accept this baseless intimidation! You only want to purge dissenters! We demand procedure! Imperial law! Sufficient evidence — a fair trial — only then a verdict!"
He howled it raw, trying to whip the men around him into shared outrage.
Guilliman did not anger.
The Master of Ultramar nodded, perfectly calm.
"Granted."
A simple reply.
"Since your desire for trial runs so deep, how could I refuse the request of a loyal servant?"
The words had barely landed.
From the ceiling directly above the high officer's head came a grinding, teeth-on-edge scrape of metal.
CRACK!
A ventilation panel smashed down onto the marble and shattered.
Every eye in the chamber jerked upward.
Then they came falling. Human skins. Severed heads. Tumbling down one after another, the white-glove proxies, the cutouts and middlemen the noble senators had used to launder bribes and authority.
And in the black mouth of the open shaft,
A massive figure with wild, ragged hair and skin pale as paper hung upside down like an enormous bat, legs hooked around the duct, suspended in soundless silence.
Konrad Curze's pure-black eyes glittered with manic delight.
Those pale, taloned hands were rubbing slowly against each other, claws ringing in faint metallic notes.
"The guilty..." Curze's mouth split open above the terror-frozen officer, his rasp drifting down. "...won't have to wait long for sentencing."
(This chapter may be OOC, the author doesn't really understand High Lord politics either, so just wrote it this way and moved on.)
➤ Next: The Indomitus Crusade (1)
— .—— .—— .—— .—— .——
Enjoying the story?
Read 60+ chapters ahead on Patreon.
Join the free community tier for early access to the latest updates:
patreon(.)com/DarkGolds