Chapter 476 - 476: Church Politics

For a good stretch of time afterward, Kian's people were busy shuttling Sentinels back and forth in a continuous relay.

The Sentinels sitting in the vault storage were all packed in preservation oil, their batteries drained, needing a full maintenance pass before they could even start up.

Each Sentinel weighed roughly eight tons, and moving several hundred of those eight-ton hunks of metal all the way up to the surface was an enormous undertaking.

Fortunately, the tech-priests came up with a plan.

They planted charges on the surface first, widening the existing crater, then flew Devourer shuttles down and landed them directly at the upper sump level.

Tech-priests operated hoists, forklifts, and tow rigs, descending into the lower vault, loading Sentinels onto the rail carts, running them back up to the top level, and then transferring them onto the waiting shuttles.

The entire relocation operation took just over two days. Throughout it, scattered Ork forces periodically launched half-hearted assaults against them.

These attacks were listless, barely committed, and were repelled without difficulty by the troops holding the surface plaza.

Once Kian's team had finished transporting every Sentinel to the fleet of orbital vessels, Magos Robert sent word.

He'd completed the copy of the STC template. The reassembled cube was ready to be handed over.

Afterward, Kian's force was shuttled back up in waves. He arranged for a generous supply of fine liquor and food aboard the flagship, giving his troops three days to celebrate properly.

He himself, carrying the STC template, flew straight to the Titan Temple to hand it over to Tech-priest Boothe.

Boothe personally received the cube and gave it a thorough inspection.

Once he finished, he shot Kian a long, meaningful look.

Kian kept a perfectly straight face, pretending not to notice a thing.

He knew full well what that look meant. Boothe clearly suspected, maybe even knew outright, that he'd cracked the template open and made a copy. But Kian was betting the man wouldn't dare say anything out loud.

Some things only matter once you actually weigh them on the scale, and once you do, even a thousand pounds of consequence won't hold you back.

Right now, this planet was still crawling with greenskins, and Inquisitor Trasolh's flagship still sat in orbit overhead. Kian was fully confident the Mechanicus wouldn't dare turn on him over this.

Sure enough, Boothe merely gave a soft, knowing chuckle and said nothing more.

"STC template recovery confirmed. My lord, per our agreement, you've earned 100 million in value. Is there anything you'd like to purchase with it?"

Kian said, "Convert all of it into jump-pack power armour."

Boothe confirmed the order had been queued for production, then his expression shifted, growing visibly troubled as he looked at Kian.

That look caught Kian off guard.

"Tech-priest Boothe, is there something you wanted to say to me?"

Boothe's eyes held the kind of worry usually reserved for family.

"My lord, I have a favor to ask of you. My sister, Lieutenant Colonel Noa, has been detained by the Ecclesiarchy..."

Kian blinked, utterly baffled.

"Wait, your sister? Detained? What happened?"

That was when it hit him, he hadn't seen Noa since the last battle. She'd been the Governor's assigned liaison, constantly at his side before that.

Boothe laid out the whole situation, and Kian's blood pressure spiked straight through the roof.

Remember the last engagement, when Kian had used the Preceptor to blow up a statue of the Emperor to crush the Mork Walker?

That statue's collapse had crushed the Mork Walker cleanly.

What Kian hadn't known at the time was that the statue, over fifty meters tall, had been the single largest Emperor statue on the entire planet, a genuine cultural landmark and heritage site.

The moment Kian destroyed it, the planetary Bishop had gone completely off the rails, publicly declaring Kian a heretic and demanding he be burned at the stake.

But the Ecclesiarchy's influence on this forge world was pitifully weak, weak enough that the planetary Bishop wasn't even permitted a seat at the same table as the Planetary Governor.

Kian was a Knight pilot, commanded his own private troops, and served as a direct retainer to Inquisitor Trasolh besides. The Bishop wouldn't dare lay a finger on him.

One of the Inquisition's core responsibilities, after all, was to oversee and keep watch over the Ecclesiarchy itself.

Church officials tucked their tails the instant an Inquisitor was in the room, never daring to cause trouble.

Unable to touch Kian directly, the Ecclesiarchy had turned its attention to Lieutenant Colonel Noa instead.

Noa had originally been local PDF, later folded into the Astra Militarum, a native of this world.

During the battle against the Gorkamorka Walkers, she'd served as commander of a Rogal Dorn tank on the field.

Operating on the principle that if they couldn't touch the Inquisitor, they'd punish his Astra Militarum instead, the Ecclesiarchy sent officers to arrest Noa, along with every other soldier who'd witnessed the Emperor statue fall and failed to intervene, over six hundred personnel in total.

All six hundred were now being held inside a church cathedral, awaiting religious trial.

Kian was floored. The Ork crisis wasn't even fully resolved yet, and these people were already turning on each other over internal politics?

Kian asked: "Your sister and every soldier arrested with her fought and bled for this planet. Is the Governor and the rest of the Marshals just letting this happen?"

Boothe sighed.

"My lord, you must understand, while the Ecclesiarchy's influence here is weak, it still carries real weight, especially among the ordinary citizenry of the hive cities.

Many of our recruits enlist specifically because the Church encourages them to.

If the Governor and the Marshals openly antagonize the Church, and the Church retaliates by interfering behind the scenes, it could genuinely threaten our recruitment pipeline.

And as you know, my lord, the Ork offensive has just broken. This is the critical moment for reclaiming the planet. The Governor is throwing every last resource he has at the front line, I've even heard his own son picked up a rifle to fight the greenskins personally.

At a time like this, sacrificing my sister and six hundred decorated soldiers to keep the rear stable isn't a difficult decision for the Governor to make at all."

And there it was, once again, the grim, recurring truth of the Imperium of Man: a human life was a quantifiable resource, one that could be spent whenever convenient.

You could fight and bleed to save an entire world one moment, and the very next, be handed over to the Church and tied to a burning stake, all in the name of keeping the rear quiet.

Kian felt his temper flare. Noa had fought alongside him, in the field, side by side. That made her a comrade in arms. How could his own side treat her like this, discarded and disposable?

He stood up immediately.

"Understood. Leave this to me. Your sister is not going to the stake."

Boothe added a warning:

"My lord, this planet's Ecclesiarchy has spent years suppressed and overshadowed by our Mechanicus. That resentment has built up over a long time, which makes them prone to extreme measures.

They know full well my relationship with my sister. My guess is they're targeting her specifically to hurt me, and through me, to strike a blow at the Mechanicus's standing here. Which means they won't let go of this easily."

Hearing all that, Kian understood exactly what he was dealing with: a tangled, ugly political struggle.

His first instinct had been to lean on his status as a Pious Crusader of the Church, playing that "face card" to smooth things over and get the Church to release Noa and the others as a courtesy.

But if this was already a naked, entrenched power struggle over real stakes, that particular card wasn't going to work.

Fortunately, Kian had other options. There was more than one way to skin this cat.

Damn it, when it came to dealing with the Church, an Inquisitor was the ultimate professional.

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