"Where'd he go?"
The short veteran scratched his head, puzzled.
The big guy had been right there a second ago. How did he vanish in the blink of an eye?
Worried, he called over the other pilgrims in the same compartment and had them help search for Dorn, that big fellow.
If they could not find him, they would have to report it.
After all, that simple-minded giant was from some distant frontier.
If he got separated from the pilgrimage group and wandered around, he could easily be detained and questioned by the Terran guard. Worse, he might miss the pilgrimage procedures.
That could become a regret for an entire lifetime.
The warmhearted short veteran searched anxiously, but found nothing. In the end, he reported the matter to the priest in charge.
Rogal Dorn was missing.
He had slipped away from the pilgrimage group and blended into the crowd, trying to reach the Imperial Palace on Terra by a faster route.
As for whether he would be discovered?
The Praetorian of Terra knew the Imperium well. He understood that the number of humans coming to Terra on pilgrimage was counted in the hundreds of millions, even billions.
A few people disappearing would never be noticed.
The Imperium would not care, and it had no way to care.
That was simply how things were.
As one of the builders of the Lion's Gate Spaceport, and with the concealment provided by a forbidden relic, Dorn was confident he could use a hidden passage within the port to reach the subterranean network beneath Terra.
That black beehive of underground routes, packed tight and left behind across countless eras, could lead into the depths beneath the Imperial Palace.
He knew of one particular underground corridor that reached an ancient sepulchre guarded by the Adeptus Custodes, a direct path to the Golden Throne.
Terra's surface might have changed drastically, but the secret routes buried deep below should not have changed much.
"If I can do that, I can make contact with the Custodes in secret, without revealing my trail."
"Not only can I avoid alerting the new Imperium, I can also confirm the truth of this 'Savior' directly with Father."
That was Dorn's thinking.
Right now, besides the Emperor himself, he trusted no one.
As long as he reached the Golden Throne without anyone noticing, he could seize the advantage in any coming conflict and buy himself more time to react.
Even if the "Savior," the new Emperor of the Imperium, truly harbored rebellious intent, it would be hard for him to respond in time.
"That is the critical step. I cannot afford the slightest mistake…" Dorn's stern face grew heavy.
He used the forbidden relic to cut off machine surveillance and detection, then moved with the crowd to evade the patrols inside the spaceport.
Every step Dorn took felt like walking a tightrope, dangerously close to exposure.
He was simply too tall, which made stealth far more difficult. At any moment, he could be spotted.
Fortunately, a primarch's sharp instincts and ten thousand years of wandering experience let him slip out of the port concourse and dodge multiple patrols.
If the monitoring systems could have tagged and tracked him, they would have captured an absurd sight.
A massive man sneaking around, hunching low one moment, rolling the next.
Or wriggling along the floor.
The Praetorian of Terra used one acrobatic move after another to stay out of the patrols' sight, careful not to trigger the instincts of those keen-eyed warriors.
Soon, he followed the route in his memory into an internal passage reserved for personnel and reached a sealed door.
"Found it!"
Dorn stared at the small alloy portal ahead, excitement flashing through him.
Beyond that door was the secret passage he had left behind.
It had not been easy getting here. He could not even rely on the simplest communications network.
He had tried using a dataslate to interface with the system and pull information about Terra, but the instant he connected, he was counter-traced.
He had nearly exposed himself.
After that, he did not dare try again, afraid the Imperium's tightly woven psychic network would lock onto him.
Even if he could use a dataslate, he would not have the access needed to learn anything about the defenses of Holy Terra, especially the true state of the Lion's Gate Spaceport.
Fortunately, a primarch's mind and memory were terrifyingly powerful. Like a living map, he still found the correct path through the spaceport's complicated internal layout.
"Next, I just need to open this door, then enter the conduit lines in the corridor beyond and slip into the hidden route."
Dorn reviewed the sequence in his head.
Forcing the door open through data intrusion or physical breach carried enormous risk. It would trigger the spaceport's alarms.
But by the time patrols arrived, he would already be deep inside the spaceport's hidden corridors, linked into Terra's underground network. No pursuit could easily track him from there.
Humm.
A rune-covered metal device floated in midair as he prepared to perform a psyker's intrusion.
But just as Dorn reached the alloy door, it opened on its own, slowly, quietly.
"What is this? The access permissions have been opened?"
The Praetorian of Terra stared into the corridor beyond, which looked unfamiliar, and a bad feeling immediately rose in his chest.
Something was off.
He moved down the corridor searching for the large conduits he remembered, but found nothing. After turning a corner, a wave of noisy voices hit him head-on.
Ahead was another spaceport hall, bustling with crowds.
Dorn went numb.
The Lion's Gate Spaceport he had once known felt utterly foreign.
Two hundred years ago, that Imperial warrior he encountered in the warp had claimed the Lion's Gate had not changed much.
This was "not changed much"?
Only now did Dorn truly realize the scale of the reconstruction.
Through the hall's vaulted ceiling, he could see docking yards layered upon docking yards, machinery stretching to the edge of his vision.
It was a sight he could not see from the ship's hold or the other hall he had passed through earlier.
In the old Imperium, long crippled by decadence and stagnation, for ten thousand years, or at least until a century ago, the Lion's Gate Spaceport had barely changed at all.
It had kept its original layout, at most shifting personnel deployments and swapping out a few defensive elements.
The biggest "change" was that the machinery had grown old. Some areas became impossible to maintain and were gradually sealed off.
That situation continued until a century ago. After the Savior seized supreme authority over Holy Terra, he began refashioning the heart of the Imperium.
The Lion's Gate was a major focus of that work. The stated reason was simple: it was too small and too ugly. It did not fit the new Imperium's grand design, and it did not match Terra's renewed environment.
So the relevant departments undertook a sweeping overhaul of this ancient port to suit a new era.
Calling it an "overhaul" was almost too gentle.
They used the old Lion's Gate as a foundation and built an even larger spaceport complex around it.
As a result, the original Lion's Gate became only a small section of the new port. Staff had gotten used to calling it the Old District.
After multiple rounds of expansion, the new Lion's Gate was several times larger than before. It could accommodate thousands of capital-class vessels at once, along with countless smaller craft.
It was among the most magnificent spaceports in the galaxy, and a horrifying orbital gun platform besides.
Even Dorn, master of fortification, could not help but lose himself for a moment in its scale and splendor.
If the Imperium had possessed a spaceport of this size back then, perhaps he could have held Terra. Perhaps that tragedy would never have happened.
Then he snapped back to the real problem.
A rebuild on this scale meant the hidden passage he had left behind was gone.
"Perhaps staying with the pilgrims until we reach the surface would have been the better choice, even if it took longer."
That was Dorn's conclusion.
Ding-dong.
Suddenly, the hall's broadcast system chimed, cutting through his thoughts.
He looked up and saw the central projection array throw his own virtual likeness into the air.
A four-to-five-meter-tall half-body projection, huge enough to seize everyone's attention.
???
"I've been exposed?!"
For Dorn, who had been attempting stealth, the scene was a catastrophic shock. In an instant, his brain nearly shut down.
Like an assassin creeping through darkness, only to be hit by a dozen spotlights at once. Instant mental collapse.
Then a gentle, perfectly enunciated female voice spoke in Low Gothic, casual and down-to-earth:
"Honored pilgrims, we will now broadcast a missing person notice.
"We are seeking a pilgrim named 'Dorn,' a tall, honest-looking abhuman from the frontier, nicknamed 'Big Guy.'
"If you see Mr. Dorn, please kindly guide him to the A-zone service platform of Hall SG-013, or contact the nearest patrol unit. His friends are anxiously waiting.
"Thank you for your cooperation and assistance. May the Savior bless you."
With the spread of the psychic network, the spaceport had been divided into tens of thousands of zones, allowing far better management of the flow of people.
Service platforms were even installed, very humanely, to help those who were lost or in need of guidance.
The clerk's tone sounded exactly like a broadcast for a missing child.
In fact, that was basically what it was.
Dorn's friend, the honorably discharged veteran, had specifically told the service platform that Dorn was a big dope and probably not too bright.
Some abhumans were like that, after all. Ogryns, for example.
These days, the Imperium's official stance no longer treated Ogryns as the symbol of stupidity. Instead, they were a species with untapped potential for cleverness.
If you disagreed, you could argue it with a "giant warrior" by trading punches.
"Big Guy, he's over there!"
Before the clerk even finished, pilgrims had already spotted Dorn and pointed in this direction, calling to the patrol units.
There were simply too many eyes.
Even with a forbidden relic, Dorn could not conceal his existence once the crowd had a fix on him.
Under the weight of so many stares, Dorn wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole and disappear. The humiliation was unbearable.
But he understood exactly what situation he was in, so he could only stand there, blank-faced, and continue playing the part of the confused big guy.
Soon, a patrol unit arrived.
With soft voices and careful manners, they guided him into the adjacent hall, the one where Dorn had disembarked earlier.
"Haha, there you are at last. Big Guy, you got lost again, didn't you?"
The short veteran finally relaxed when he saw Dorn return.
He patted his chest, openly relieved.
"This place is huge and complicated, but don't be nervous. Stick with me and you won't get lost again."
Dorn's face darkened. He answered the veteran's warm concern with stiff, empty responses, his mind going numb.
This was one of the few moments in his life he would never, ever want to speak of again.
His only comfort was that he had not been exposed and pinned down on the spot.
If that had happened, his brothers really would have laughed at him for centuries.
The Lion's Gate Spaceport, and the new Imperium's management of transit personnel, had surpassed the Praetorian of Terra's understanding.
A man cannot imagine what lies outside his own frame of reference.
For ten thousand years, the Imperium had prohibited intelligent systems and networking. Its population was vast, fragmented, and locally ruled. Administrative efficiency was worse than a feudal age.
Old Terra was the worst of all.
Before the Savior's rule, the Terran institutions could not even manage basic population statistics. They did not even know how many officials they had. It was one of the filthiest, most corrupt worlds in the galaxy, a place where you could find nearly every kind of alien and heretic imaginable.
Under those conditions, Dorn naturally could not imagine the Imperium ever achieving this kind of fine-grained management.
He had fallen into the trap of experience.
In the new Imperium, that was not uncommon. Plenty of people had made fools of themselves the same way.
Times had changed.
"Maybe there are other defensive gaps…"
Dorn thought hard, searching for a way past the spaceport's security. But the next moment, he tensed.
An alarm sounded outside the hall.
Xenos and heretics had breached the port, in a hall several kilometers away.
Dorn looked over, and with a primarch's vision he saw it clearly.
A hidden Chaos daemon, fairly strong, had been exposed and triggered the defensive alarm. Multiple barrier fields rose at once to protect civilians.
Then a flood of heavily armored Space Marines surged in. Several Dreadnoughts lumbered after them into the engagement zone.
A heartbeat later, more than ten Grey Knights arrived wreathed in holy light, psychic lightning arcing and crackling in their wake.
Then came the roaring storm of muzzle flashes, electrical arcs, and burning detonations.
The scene was brutally one-sided.
The Chaos daemon looked like a rat that had wandered into a pack of cats, taking slap after slap after slap until it shuddered into a corner with both hands raised.
It almost looked like it was pleading innocence.
At the same time, the entire hall separated from the surrounding docking structure, sealing every corridor. Naval guns and even more automated turrets locked onto nearby voidspace, casting a net no intruder could slip through.
More Thunderhawk gunships were already inbound.
Dorn was shaken to his core, his breathing turning heavy.
Even he, a master of defense, had never seen such brazen, extravagant fortification.
One Chaos daemon, and they had mobilized what looked like half a Chapter.
How much firepower had this port been holding in reserve?
This is how the Savior uses his armed forces?
There was a simple reason.
The Emperor's safety was everything, so the Savior had stationed absurdly excessive forces here.
More importantly, it had been far too long since any Chaos incursion.
The warriors assigned to garrison duty finally caught one. Of course they were going to hit it as hard as possible and rack up some performance numbers.
"With defenses this dense, my earlier assumptions were careless…"
Dorn swallowed. Even if he could withstand heavy artillery, he would not be able to endure naval guns and melta turret grids.
One or two guns might be manageable, but this many? No one could just walk through that.
He felt grateful he had not acted rashly.
From this unexpected incident, Dorn was able to roughly gauge the Lion's Gate's defensive posture.
It was pure wealth and overbuild, crude and simple.
Normal defense meant calculating manpower, deciding which regions to abandon and which to hold, then establishing defensive lines at critical points.
Who defends everything like this?
The Savior had stacked dense, excessive turret arrays and armed forces into layer after layer of defensive networks, then modularized the whole system so any intruded zone could be isolated.
Even if an enemy had the defense maps, it would not matter.
The map was filled.
Where was the weak point supposed to be?
"Damn it."
"If I'd had forces this rich back then, I would have blown Horus and Perturabo's heads clean off."
Dorn could not help feeling a sting of envy.
When had he ever been able to defend walls and bastions with resources like this?
During the Siege of Terra, the Imperial Fists and the other Legions were scattered across countless fronts.
The forces he could truly command were stretched to the breaking point, teetering on collapse.
"At least this suggests the Savior cares about Terra's safety. He doesn't want Father attacked."
After seeing the Lion's Gate's wildly excessive defenses, Dorn's prejudice against the Savior eased a little.
That man might be hungry for power, but he still cared about the Imperium, at least enough to show loyalty in action.
He did not seem like Horus, becoming a slave to Chaos.
Dorn could sense the Savior's hatred of Chaos. Otherwise, he would not have built such defenses.
Still, it was only a guess.
He would confirm the truth only after meeting the Emperor, that Father, in secret.
For now, the Praetorian of Terra behaved himself. He abandoned any thought of forcing his way through the spaceport's security.
He did not want to be caught and humiliated again.
Once he reached Terra's surface, he could act. With a primarch's strength, moving on the ground would be far easier.
Dorn used his pilgrim identity to take a space elevator down to the surface, then seized a chance to slip away from the pilgrimage group.
He found an entrance to the ancient sepulchre passage that led toward the Golden Throne.
Standing before the old stone-slab gateway, he let out a long breath.
"By the Emperor, this will finally be over."
…
Several days later.
On Terra's eastern continent, deep within a primeval jungle.
Dorn's hard face was smeared with grime, his clothes in tatters. Anyone who saw him would think he had just crawled out of a hive's underlevels as a starving refugee.
The Praetorian of Terra stared at the Himalazian mountains in the distance, trembling all over, teeth grinding as he spat out a curse.
"I swear, that Savior is out of his mind. That bastard."
(End of Chapter)
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