novelraw Chapter 203: Mining Sector Mystery (1)
Chapter 203: Mining Sector Mystery (1)
The meeting was held in the grand hall of the Departmento Justitiae's fortress. When necessary, this place also served as a courtroom, but today, it was being utilized as a reception room.
A massive, circular dark oak table was positioned squarely in the center of the hall, surrounded by a ring of Enforcers clad in black carapace armor. Their faces were all hidden beneath their helmets, as if they would never expose their true visages.
The Arbitrator of the local Departmento Justitiae stood behind the table without his helmet—a tough, leathery old warrior. At the moment, he wore only a simple black uniform, which accentuated the silver-plated augmetics and other artificial organs implanted in his body. These devices infused his form with astonishing speed and strength.
Suddenly, the main doors were pushed open.
Soshyan strode confidently into the hall leading a squad of warriors, their movement whipping up a virtual whirlwind within the space.
Finally, he halted before the table and removed his helmet, placing it on the desk to reveal a face with a broad, powerful jaw and deeply furrowed brows.
"Let's keep this brief. I assume everyone here is well aware of our identities."
Soshyan's opening remark was highly efficient. The Arbitrator nodded, replying:
"Yes, Esteemed Chapter Master Soshyan of the Astral Knights."
"I have already reviewed your report, but there are still many details open to discussion.""We also have many new developments that require reporting."
"Then you may speak first."
The Arbitrator recounted to Soshyan everything that had happened after they departed the subterranean mining sector.
As it turned out, they had suffered several waves of interception after leaving the mines. The enemy seemed intimately familiar with their route of movement, always managing to set up ambushes at critical chokepoints.
However, the ambushers were no longer the Purestrain Genestealers from the underground, but rather far more humanoid Hybrids. Disguising themselves as local gangs, they launched sneak attacks against the Departmento Justitiae squad.
Along the way, the squad lost several more men in succession. Had the personnel remaining in the fortress not realized their operation was taking far too long and sent out reinforcements to extract them, they might never have made it back.
Following this, a secret investigation targeting the administrative and governing bodies of Saphonius was launched.
Though the xenos disguised themselves exceptionally well, there were always subtle clues left behind. Soon enough, an astonishing truth surfaced.
The Genestealers on Saphonius had evidently discovered that the Departmento Munitorum was an absolutely perfect hiding place. As one of the Imperium's most massive and rigid organizations, they could borrow the Munitorum's authority to evade less rigorous scrutiny.
As a result, an audit of the Departmento Munitorum could not commence until the Sector Arbites Marshal himself broke through mountains of red tape to personally sign an official writ of authorization.
Yet no one knew exactly how long the Genestealers had been deeply rooted there.
The Departmento Justitiae only uncovered a few highly suspicious individuals who had completely vanished right before the investigation. Every single remaining person was cleared without a trace of suspicion found.
Saphonius was an incredibly wealthy planet with several immensely sized Hive Cities, but these had absolutely nothing to do with the impoverished miners. On the contrary, the guilds merely worked them to the bone, extorting them to the limit, and becoming completely unbridled without municipal interference from the Departmento Munitorum.
Thus, apart from working themselves to death in the underground mines, crime had become one of the extremely few viable means of making a living locally.
Due to the Adeptus Mechanicus's interference, the Departmento Justitiae could neither deploy excessive manpower nor muster enough resources to maintain order across the entire planet. Furthermore, no factions exhibiting any true leadership capable of restoring order had emerged from among the populace.
It was not difficult to imagine just what kind of corruption had bred within the slums after the Genestealers arrived on Saphonius and infiltrated the local Departmento Munitorum.
The source of this corruption might even lie with the local guild masters themselves—a possibility as terrifying as it was realistic.
Even though the activities of the Genestealer Cult were highly secretive, through the relentless efforts of the Enforcers, they managed to connect all the traced information to formulate a vivid, terrifying picture.
For instance, the few Ecclesiarchy churches on Saphonius had been systematically looted one by one over the past fifty years, with all of their holy relics stolen entirely without a trace.
Twenty years ago, a smuggler convoy was intercepted, and a batch of stolen holy relics was seized.
At the time, it merely seemed like nothing more than the violent contraband of smugglers. But looking back now, the xenos had clearly been using violent gang activities as a cover to systematically seize these holy relics in a highly organized manner.
More importantly, the underlying conspiracy highlighted by these details—they were attempting to infiltrate the local religion.
In reality, murders and kidnappings had occurred everywhere throughout the mining sectors over the last century. The Genestealers had been unscrupulously executing their horrific plans.
They randomly selected innocent victims to target, making them completely vanish from the face of the earth, or turning them into feeders for the monsters.
And nearly all of this had never been reported to the Departmento Justitiae by the local guilds or the Departmento Munitorum. Most of the time, they relegated the Departmento Justitiae to handling trivial matters such as gang smuggling and miner riots, as if deliberately attempting to distract them.
Before the Departmento Justitiae tracked the investigation all the way back to uncover the potential xenos corruption within the Departmento Munitorum's central spires, they had perhaps already been hard at work for decades preparing for their masters' return, weaving all kinds of lies to deceive the Imperium's law enforcement and judicial branches.
Yet even with this much investigated, it remained nothing but the tip of the iceberg.
Many of the actions taken by the Genestealers on Saphonius represented a slow, agonizingly difficult-to-decipher grand scheme.
To anyone else, these clues would appear completely disjointed and utterly baffling, but to the Arbitrator, these facts were absolutely undeniable.
However, as the investigation deepened, small-scale riots began to continually break out across the mining sectors and Hive Cities. The Departmento Justitiae was forced to constantly rush between various riot flashpoints, bringing the progress of the investigation to a rapid crawl.
It wasn't as if the Arbitrator hadn't requested the local defense forces to join the pacification efforts. Strangely enough, however, the moment the local Planetary Defense Force joined the suppression operations, the riots somehow escalated even further.
After interrogating numerous captured riot ringleaders, the Arbitrator discovered that they were all perfectly normal locals, many of them leaders of subterranean miner syndicates. The reason for their rioting was a rumor circulating that monsters had appeared underground, and the Imperium planned to detonate the mines to bury everyone alive in the depths.
The sheer presence of the local defense forces only further validated the authenticity of this rumor. Consequently, the miners engaged in massive, collective strikes, refusing to enter the mines entirely, which sparked countless large-scale riots.
Though this certainly fit the Imperium's typical absolute modus operandi, the Arbitrator keenly realized that this rumor had surfaced far too coincidently.
Upon realizing that the local defense forces were no longer reliable, he transmitted an astropathic request for aid off-world.
And eventually, this request found its way to the Excoriators Chapter, before being transferred into the hands of the Astral Knights.
After listening to the Arbitrator's recounting, Soshyan nodded.
"Your work has been highly effective. A massive conspiracy is being unraveled, but I still have one question."
Soshyan gestured to that initial report, still resting on the table.
"How exactly did you make it out of that hell down there alive?"
The Arbitrator froze for a moment, then sighed heavily. Resting both hands against the table, he spoke in a solemn tone:
"To tell you the truth, this is a question I find extremely difficult to answer myself. It is simply because it was far too... unbelievable. Thus, I did not include it in the report."
"We have seen whatever unbelievably impossible things there are to see. You may speak freely."
"It was a group of people, a band of heretics worshipping a so-called Raven Lord. They repelled the Genestealer Cult... No, I feel that isn't quite right. They couldn't possibly contend directly against the Genestealers. It felt like something else entirely."