Chapter 165: In Essence, It's a Human Problem
The Dawnlight was quietly anchored in the near-orbit of the Bork'an Sept world.
As the flagship of the entire fleet, she maintained a perfect distance from the planet's surface, allowing her on-board observation equipment to clearly capture surface dynamics while also effectively avoiding potential ground-to-air counter-fire.
The main fleet was currently conducting a saturation bombardment on the starport and important industrial areas. The light from the orbital strikes was clearly visible in space.
At the same time, dozens of Astartes assault squads had already breached the atmosphere. The Stormbirds, braving the relatively weak low-altitude anti-aircraft fire, had precisely landed on key strategic nodes.
The planetary archives, the higher academy of sciences, the military data center... these facilities would all suffer a devastating blow, but before that, all valuable T'au technological data would be systematically scanned and copied.
Thanks to the T'au's meticulous planning of their own planet, at least the Space Marines did not have to face an environment as despair-inducing as a hive city.
Romulus stood on the observation deck, staring at the planet below through the reinforced glass.
The Bork'an Sept was a beautiful planet.
The atmosphere was a dreamy pale purple. The land was covered in vast expanses of verdant vegetation. Even the polar regions grew cold-resistant crystalline lichens. The most eye-catching feature was the honeycomb-like hexagonal building complexes. They were layered and staggered like naturally grown crystals, perfectly integrated with the mountains and rivers.
The sparsely distributed Pikton ruins presented a completely different aesthetic style, with their twisted spiral towers and fractal-structured domes, silently telling the story of this extinct race.
"The advance of the assault force is exceeding expectations. Your tactical predictions are quite accurate."
A sudden voice broke his contemplation.
Romulus tilted his head slightly and saw that Archmagos Cawl had, at some point, been standing in the shadows of the corridor. The master-crafted cog-staff in the Adeptus Mechanicus representative's left hand cast a long, thin shadow on the ground. The data-slate in his right hand was displaying a 3D anatomical diagram of an XV8 Crisis Battlesuit.
"It is an inevitable result."
Romulus's gaze returned to the planet. The bridge's lighting system cast a flickering light on his well-defined profile.
"Of course, the T'au have an excellent population evacuation mechanism. As long as we deliberately leave some areas open, they will concentrate their population transfers there. A large amount of their effective strength will be spent on this process, and the armed forces resisting the attack will naturally be reduced."
The T'au's social system was built on a strict collectivism. When dealing with their own members, they always prioritized humanitarian rescue.
There was a clear example during the Damocles Gulf War. When the Imperium launched a punitive operation against the T'au colonial star in the Syr'kell system, the warriors of the Fire Caste, even at the height of the battle, would prioritize covering the retreat of the scientists and administrators of the Earth and Water Castes. This seemingly stubborn rescue procedure often gave the Imperial army a significant advantage in the early stages of the war.
The funny thing was that the Imperium, in the later Second Damocles Gulf War, had even come up with the tactical joke of "attempting to attack a human colony that had submitted to the T'au Empire to force them to redeploy," which had completely baffled the enemy commander.
The thought of this made Romulus feel like he was going to laugh with rage again.
The thought processes of these battlefield commanders were truly strange.
One had to admit that the T'au Empire, at the planetary governance level, was far more advanced than the current Imperium. Leaving aside the hive worlds that were struggling in misery, just the "vibrant and flourishing" scene of the Imperial capital, Terra, was enough to suffocate a person.
This was not because the Imperium lacked technology or talent, but pure indifference. The high and mighty noble lords did not care about the condition of the planets under their rule. As long as the taxes were paid on time and they nominally submitted to Imperial rule, whether the lower-class populace lived like human beings had nothing to do with them.
Of course, there were exceptions.
For example, the second—the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar.
Even under the high pressure of war, the Ultramar of the Great Crusade era still maintained an astonishing development speed. Unlike other Legions, in Ultramar, the candidates who failed the Astartes modification surgery were not executed or demoted to Chapter serfs, but had the opportunity to enter core government positions.
Countless un-armored, or surgically failed Astartes entered the government. The various planetary governments, with their assistance, maintained an extremely high efficiency.
The nation was prosperous, and the people were stable.
These superhuman warriors might have had their flaws, but bloat and corruption were definitely not among them.
The Invictarus Suzerain regency team, led by Drakus, had had their perceptions refreshed more than once while helping Romulus deal with the affairs of the various planets along the way. The more they compared it with the past, the more disappointed they were with the current Imperium.
Romulus's fingers gently tapped on the railing of the observation deck. His gaze fell on the T'au city in the distance, which was erupting in sporadic fire. The flickering firelight reflected a fine golden gleam in his deep red pupils.
He suddenly said, "I'm beginning to understand why the Emperor so strictly limited AI and was so extremely hostile to xenos."
"AI and xenos are not the problem."
Cawl's mechanical eye flickered slightly, data-streams flashing across the lens. He clearly had his own understanding of this decision.
"In essence, it's a human problem." His voice held a rare note of emotion.
If their conversation were to be overheard by the Inquisition, it would be enough to have them tied to a stake and burned for three days and three nights. But at this moment, in this chamber, which was shrouded in a stasis field, they exchanged a tacit, understanding look.
In fact, the so-called AI did not easily cause problems. The Rogue Traders also dealt with various xenos quite a bit. The Adeptus Mechanicus claimed that the beings that inhabited certain facilities were Machine Spirits, but were they really Machine Spirits? The Rogue Traders claimed that the goods transported by their merchant caravans were dynasty specialties, but were they really "specialties"?
Cawl had also emphasized more than once that with the power of an AI, it was extremely difficult for Chaos to corrupt it. Even a planet-level sacrifice might not be able to break through the constantly updating algorithms of those AIs.
The ones who easily caused problems were, in fact, the humans.
"There is a very vivid example right before our eyes," Cawl said, as if the conversation had opened him up. Or rather, this Archmagos had long had his own views on this, but had never had anyone to talk to.
"The same integrated fleet, and the naval power of the Ultramar sector is even stronger. Why is their performance 'unsatisfactory,' while the crusade fleet is always victorious?"
One side used a fleet to liberate hundreds of worlds, rebuild order, and improve the people's livelihood, and is still bringing prosperity to the sectors it passes through.
The other side used a fleet to drop a big one, costing the Imperium hundreds of Imperial worlds.
The Archmagos posed a question, and then continued, "Are you aware of the Unification Wars of Terra?"
"Of course." Romulus nodded.
"From 990.M29, when the Emperor established his armed forces at the former residence of the Sigillite in the Himalayas, to 712.M30, when he reclaimed Pluto, the Emperor consolidated his control over Terra and officially declared the victory of the Unification Wars. It lasted for 722 years."
"In 798.M30, the Emperor completed the ideological and military unification of the various factions of the Sol System, and the Great Crusade officially began."
Cawl's processor emitted a faint hum. The aperture of his mechanical eye contracted for a moment, silently storing this piece of history in his memory core.
A rare hint of human-like confusion appeared on the Archmagos's mechanical face—
What in the world did these four lords do in the past?
"The time it took for the Emperor to unify Terra was far longer than the time it took for him to conquer the galaxy," Cawl's vocalizer emitted a low sound, his mechanical fingers gently tapping on the edge of the data-slate, hinting.
The Emperor, who had swept across the galaxy like a hurricane in two hundred years and had reclaimed a million worlds, had spent eight hundred years on his own homeworld.
"Because of the boundless abuse of various forbidden technologies by the Terran warlords, the most dangerous of which was AI. The Battle of the Storm Corridor, in which the Eighteenth Legion participated, was a battle against an exterminator-relic sent by a warlord. They won the war at the cost of being nearly wiped out."
A powerful self-evolution capability, a one-click, idiot-proof operation. Even if you were a pig, you could become a warlord with an AI. In the Age of Strife, these Terran warlords had shown all of humanity, with bloody facts, what a "humanity's shining moment" was.
Why was the Emperor always so strictly on guard against xenos and AI? Why was he so wary of power that surpassed that of mortals?
Romulus stared at the battlefield markers flickering on the tactical hologram. He had been commanding the troops all this time.
Just in their brief chat, a thousand Astartes had almost completed the control of the planet's important facilities. The scars left in the long campaign were, at this moment, telling a certain warning.
Because these existences could increase the influence of an individual on the collective by a geometric multiple. When power and virtue did not match, all that would be brought was an endless disaster.
After all, when humans were pushed to the brink, they could even drain the last of Terra's oceans. If you gave them an open-ended choice, who knew what they could do.
If this were to be let loose, humanity might just pull some big one.
So, to save time, he had to be extreme, to make a clean cut. The remaining problems could be solved by you guys fighting a civil war after the matter was settled.
Unfortunately, the Emperor's gamble had failed. The human empire, which had been temporarily built, had also, in a very abstract way, survived for ten millennia in a precarious state.
Romulus's gaze swept over the busy servitors on the bridge. These beings, half-human, half-machine, were the most typical contradiction in the Imperium's attitude towards technology.
Their current servitors were modified from hand-made flesh-men. What about the others? The punished laborers?
"I think the Archmagos's example is more appropriate."
Having sorted out his thoughts and gained a new understanding of why the Emperor had always avoided certain things, Romulus said, "Few people can be like the Archmagos, who, after ten thousand years, holding endless wealth, can still maintain his original intention."
The transmigrators were still self-aware. If not for the good luck of transmigrating with a special ability, and being able to do things according to their predetermined ideas, they should now be watching all sorts of disasters descending from the heavens and crying, "I can't do anything!" and beating the ground. If they had had the bad luck to be born in the underhive, then this life would be over.
"You flatter me." Cawl's optical lenses on his faceplate contracted slightly, displaying a data fluctuation that was similar to pleasure. His voice still maintained a certain calmness.
He accepted the praise, but his mechanically synthesized voice still maintained the restraint characteristic of a scholar.
The conversational style of the several Primarchs was indeed comfortable. They had abandoned the arrogance common among the high-level officials of the Imperium and were more inclined to use facts and logic to carry out discussions. When faced with a difficult situation, they would first think about the "root of the problem" and the "solution," rather than selectively ignoring the contradiction.
It was this rare empathy...
"Lord Romulus, in my opinion, I'm afraid these xenos are not an object that you can unite with," Cawl said with some caution.
"Why would you think that?" Romulus couldn't help but look surprised. He was indeed deeply dissatisfied with the current state of the Imperium and also appreciated the T'au's efficient governance model. He told Imperial jokes every day—
But this did not mean that he would be naive enough to abandon the human camp to unite with the xenos.
Moreover, the T'au Empire was indeed not a worthy object of unity.
His gaze swept over the T'au strongholds marked on the tactical hologram. Around those seemingly harmonious hexagonal building complexes, the architectural ruins of another xenos species still stood.
The T'au Empire could clearly recognize its own weakness and seek more allies. This showed that they had a clear definition of themselves. But the expansion of the T'au Empire was never as gentle and harmless as it seemed on the surface.
They also ate people.
The first Damocles Gulf War, the fact that the T'au Empire had been beaten by the Imperium was purely their own fault.
Several decades had already passed since the first contact between humans and the T'au.
In the decades of trade, a large number of xenos goods had flooded the Imperial border. Even the most sluggish sector governor should have noticed the anomaly.
But over the years, the successive governors had all tacitly chosen to turn a blind eye.
After all, in the vast expansion sectors, worlds that secretly colluded with xenos were everywhere. Even the Throne Gelt had become a hard currency in the Dark Eldar's lair of Commorragh. What was one more T'au?
Moreover, because of the production assisted by the AI system, the products of the T'au were also of good quality and low price, and had considerable competitiveness in the various Imperial worlds. A quick flip could make the nobles of the various sectors a fortune.
Originally, this matter could have just passed like this. You sell your goods, I sell my resources.
The Warp storm around the T'au Empire's core worlds had made the Imperial Rogue Traders have no interest in exploring the route for thousands of years, let alone the High Lords, who had been tormented enough by the Macharian Crusade.
But look at what the T'au Empire did.
The Water Caste, while conducting diplomacy and trade, also did a bit of espionage on the side, investigating the social conditions of various places, arming rebels, and inciting the local residents to rise up and overthrow the planetary government and join the T'au Empire.
By the time the Damocles War began, more than a dozen human fringe worlds had already been incorporated into the T'au Empire's map. The ruling governments of many planets had openly announced their joining of the T'au's "Greater Good."
Let alone an extreme government like the human Imperium, even any of the sovereign nations now would not be able to tolerate this.
And then, when the punitive fleet was at their face, they knew to negotiate?
You can't wait until the Imperial fleet's macro-cannons have fired, and the war of aggression has become a war of national defense, to remember that you need to send the Water Caste to talk to the Imperial authorities.
No matter how beautifully it was packaged, the T'au Empire was ultimately an expansionist regime in its ascendant phase, with a natural need for expansion, and was destined to be incompatible with the conservative and extreme Imperium.
And the human Imperium was a typical existence that was cruel both internally and externally. In this wave, not just the T'au, but their own people would also suffer.
(End of Chapter)