"Let's make a bet — how long do you think those two will keep fighting?"
"Two crates of herring tins on it!"
Watching Russ wave that thing — practically a biological weapon — in front of his face again, Lion genuinely wanted to punch the savage.
Malcador leaned on his cane beneath the blasted hole in the ceiling, gazing up at the shrinking light above, the corner of his mouth twitching.
He was beginning to regret ever going to drag the Emperor back into the world.
He should have known from the start — why would a man so perfect have ended up alienating everyone and hiding away in obscure corners of the galaxy?
It was far too late to abandon ship now.
He turned to face the stunned officials of the Administrative Council.
"What are you standing around for? Get the repair crews in here. And contact Mars — tell them to send another shipment of auramite."
"Get the artificers assembled. This place needs to be redecorated."
Malcador limped to the council table and sat beside the Emperor's seat, watching the two Primarchs still locked in a glaring contest.
The stench in the air was making his stomach turn. Already in a foul mood, Malcador lifted his cane and cracked it down hard on Russ's head.
Russ clutched his skull and dropped into a crouch — and the herring tin he'd been holding clattered to the floor and burst open.
The smell immediately flooded the entire council chamber.
Lion leapt aside instantly, desperately shielding his immaculate power armour from the splashing brine.
Malcador's hand froze. He stared at the black liquid — reeking of something comparable to Nurgle's blessings — spreading across the floor where he usually conducted the business of state. He felt as though this place had been desecrated forever.
(On a barren asteroid, the two combatants finally stopped.)
Battered and bruised, both lay in a crater and gazed at the distant Solar System. Perturabo spoke first.
"I intend to reform Terra and the Administratum."
"You still want to muscle in? I've already handed the Terran defence lines to Dorn. You still have something to say?"
"Not competing with him. I just can't stand watching these maggots and their corrupt methods — and you and Old Mac doing nothing about it."
"What do you mean? Is your head itching again?!"
The Emperor stood back up. What do you mean calling him an idiot?
That was Malcador's job — wait, he couldn't insult Old Mac either!
"You dare say you're not an idiot? Look at what I've done to those populations' psychic conditioning. How many worlds under my rule have rebelled? Now look at yours!"
"Those old farmers were picking up hoes to go after Horus!"
"And you dare question my meaning?"
"I can't be bothered arguing with you. But this —"
"Your so-called salvation of mankind — is THIS how you do it? Don't lecture me about grand ideals."
"Your damned webway project — do you have any idea how many resources it has consumed? If Vulkan and I hadn't busted ourselves shipping psykers and materials, how many more worlds would you have had to strip-mine just to compensate through sheer volume?"
"The Star Torch — I provided the psykers for it! The Silent Sisterhood's sanctuaries — I built those with my own hands!"
"Even half the resources those maggots on Terra lavish on their decadence came from my supply lines!"
"And you want to criticise me? Are you even qualified? I'm telling you — I don't care whether you agree or not. Tomorrow I'm parking the Iron Blood and ten star-fortresses over Terra. I'd like to see Dorn dare say a single word against it."
"Those maggots — I'm going to purge them. I'll tear the hive cities down to the foundations and rebuild from scratch."
"Then I'll establish a New Administratum — staffed with my people and logic engines."
Perturabo faced the Emperor down, refusing to yield. This time, no matter what, he would not allow this farce to continue.
These people were completely insane.
Left unchecked, the Imperium was going to tear itself apart — and at this rate, some of his brothers might start rebelling before the Four Gods even got the chance.
"You want to bring Abominable Intelligence onto Terra? I think you—"
"There isn't already some beneath the Palace? There aren't some in the First Legion? What exactly are you arguing?"
"That's completely different!"
"How? You keep them as a last resort — I use them to build civilisation. What's the difference?"
"I'm not debating this. Everything else — fine. Abominable Intelligence — no."
The Emperor's stance was absolute.
"That's cutting off your nose to spite your face. The Men of Iron took ten thousand years before they rebelled! And the worlds you rule — how are they doing? You'd dare to lecture me?"
"A stellar empire reduced to relying on Astropaths and paper correspondence — doesn't that strike you as absurd?"
"How many Administratum officials die at their desks every year? Do you have any idea how bloated and inefficient the Imperial bureaucracy has become?"
"The wars my sons fought during the Unification — to this day, there isn't a single accurate accounting of the losses. Not one clear figure."
"How long do you intend to let this continue?!"
Perturabo seized the Emperor by the collar.
But the Emperor merely pushed him away, smoothing his garments with a pulse of psychic will.
"Either send your people — or take the Custodian enhancement surgeries and leave. Abominable Intelligence entering Terra? That conversation can wait until after I'm dead. Then you and Malcador can discuss it."
The Emperor vanished, leaving Perturabo alone on the crumbling asteroid.
This broken Imperium truly was beyond saving. Even if he reformed Terra — what then? Eventually the new officials would become the same maggots as the old ones. Administrative efficiency would tick up, then decay again.
Fine. Reform what could be reformed. When it broke again — purge, replace, repeat. The Imperium wasn't short of people, and his worlds weren't short of new recruits.
Perturabo's silhouette dissolved into the stars.
The Iron Blood, already burning hard through the warp toward Terra, suddenly accelerated. The twenty-two star-fortresses behind it were dispatched to his sons' warbands instead.
(Aboard the Phalanx — Training Hall)
The Imperial Fists who had gathered to challenge the Iron Warriors looked on in uniform horror as Ferrix pulled on a powered gauntlet larger than a Dreadnought siege-hammer.
Even Dorn, observing from the side, felt a flicker of surprise at what this brother's get had produced.
"Matthias — come then. Let's see if you've improved at all these years."
Ferrix spoke coldly to the man who had once been a fellow Legion commander and was now his opposite number.
Berossus, Dantioch, and some of the other Iron Warriors stood to one side — completely unintimidated, showing no trace of stage fright.
Nobody knew Ferrix better than they did. Though he rarely showed his hand on campaign these days, the memory of what that enormous powered gauntlet and that thermal cannon had done to them in training was something none of them had ever fully shaken.
Originally they had felt somewhat in the wrong for being approached by the Imperial Fists inside the Imperial Palace. But then the Lord Commander had unexpectedly challenged them to a formal honour duel — and all of them had paused, genuinely confused.
They could still clearly see the fury on the face of their once-fellow "stubby" legion cousins.
"Location."
Ferrix didn't bother with pleasantries. Back down from this? Impossible.
"Aboard the Phalanx. If you have the nerve, follow me."
And so, in the spirit of king-versus-king and champion-versus-champion, First Commander Matthias was pushed forward as the Imperial Fists' champion.
The duel even drew the attention of Primarch Rogal Dorn himself, who attended in person to observe.
"Who do you think will win?"
Plraakus asked Sigismund, who stood nearby with a look of intense, sombre concentration.
"Ferrix."
"You have that little faith in the Commander?"
Though Plraakus privately agreed.
"The outcome is already decided. This duel should have been mine to accept."
Sigismund shook his head. As one of the finest Astartes of his generation himself, he had a keen instinct for the strength of these three Iron Warriors — this was not a match Matthias could win.
The Commander was no specialist in close combat. He would not prevail today.
Dorn said nothing throughout, only watching in silence.
"Size isn't everything, Ferrix."
Matthias raised his blade and faced Ferrix — encased in bespoke Tyrant Terminator plate, his silhouette even more massive than some Primarchs.
"Less talking, more fighting. When did Imperial Fists commanders get so chatty?"
Matthias charged — his stride aggressive and thunderous, clang clang clang echoing across the deck.
To Ferrix, it looked agonisingly slow. Even in his heavy Terminator plate, if he actually wanted to run, he would leave Matthias in the dust.
Watching these cousins — once fellow "bricklayers" of the old Unification era — show so little improvement, Ferrix felt a fresh swell of pride in how far his father had come.
In an instant, he caught Matthias's lunging thrust barehanded. The powered gauntlet fired, wrenching the blade free. Then a single punch sent Matthias stumbling backward.
Ferrix had barely exerted himself — yet Matthias felt his organs shifting, a deep ache reverberating through his torso.
"You've lost."
Matthias had nothing to say. The gap was too wide. Even sparring with Sigismund had never felt like this.
The assembled Imperial Fists were silent. They didn't reproach their commander for the "underwhelming" performance — they could feel for themselves how formidable these Iron Warriors cousins were.
"Let's go."
Ferrix moved toward his brothers, ready to leave. This was their turf; being too arrogant here would be bad form.
"Wait."
But just as the Imperial Fists quietly parted to let the Iron Warriors pass — expressions tight with wounded pride — a voice rang out behind them, resonant and commanding.
The Imperial Fists turned to see who it was. Most wore expressions of stunned shock — followed immediately by deep shame.
"My lord."
"I am also a Commander. Allow me to test you."
"Father—"
Sigismund went pale. This breaks protocol entirely — shouldn't it be him?
Dorn produced a war-hammer from his belt — a weapon he had only recently forged, originally intended as a gift for Vulkan. It would need to be reforged now.
"Whatever the outcome, this hammer is yours. Consider it compensation — so your father knows this was not a case of bullying a child."
"All you need to do is leave a single mark on me. If you can — you win."
Ferrix had no desire for this. But the situation had become difficult to walk away from.
"My lord — we came here without hostile intent. This duel would not be a fair one. Even with this hammer, we would not accept such an honour challenge."
Dantioch stepped forward. He had been at the root of this — he could not allow the commander to bear it.
"If it truly must be resolved this way — then let me stand in the commander's place. One challenger, one bout. That is fair."
"Barabbas."
Ferrix and Berossus reacted immediately, their expressions shifting — they moved to stop him.
"How about you fight me instead?"
A voice came from behind them.
"Father."
Perturabo stepped forward to face Dorn.
"What is this — picking on the younger generation? I wouldn't have expected this from you, Dorn."
"It's only a sparring match. Hardly bullying."
Dorn didn't flinch. He stepped up until he and Perturabo were almost nose-to-nose.
"I helped restore the sections of this ship that you couldn't repair yourself. And this is how you repay that?"
"First — I am genuinely grateful for your help. Second — this is still just a sparring match."
A strange, frozen tension gripped the Phalanx. No one dared breathe.
In the end it was Perturabo who couldn't hold out against Dorn's utterly sincere, unyielding gaze — and he stood down.
"The Emperor has decreed: the Iron Warriors will rebuild the Solar System and reorganise the Administratum."
Dorn's brow furrowed.
"What do you mean by this?"
"You remain commander of Terra's defence cordon. I am only responsible for construction and the reforging of the Administratum."
"I've received no communication from Terra on this matter."
"You will soon. I'm simply giving you advance notice — every defensive fortification and structure your sons have built in the Solar System will be demolished. If you're interested, you're welcome to come and learn how to build a proper defensive line."
"I'll show you how to construct a truly impregnable war-fortress — not a defence grid riddled with holes like the one you've been relying on."
A vein throbbed visibly across Dorn's forehead. Sigismund — the most hot-tempered of the Fists' champions — nearly lost his composure entirely.
"My lord — the defence grid we have built in the Solar System has absolutely no vulnerabilities. The war-fortresses our father has constructed—"
Dorn stopped his son with a gesture. He knew this brother's capabilities. If Perturabo said there were flaws, there were flaws.
"We can discuss the specifics when construction begins. You'll understand then what a true defence actually looks like."
"I'll be watching."
"But your sons will need to help build it."
"...Excuse me?"
One month later.
The Iron Blood arrived in the Solar System with two star-fortresses and a massive fleet in tow.
The sheer scale of the armada didn't even bother to conceal itself — its black-and-yellow chevrons blazed openly for every faction in the system to see.
It even forced Terra's shipping lanes open, causing vast, cascading traffic jams.
"What?! Has the Omnissiah finally launched a coup? They're at Luna already, preparing to bombard Terra?!"
The Fabricator-General Kelbor-Hal's first instinct upon hearing the news was that the moment of loyal intervention had finally come.
But the Sigillite's message from Terra arrived shortly after: this was merely an "administrative efficiency optimisation" initiative. Mars need not be concerned.
Kelbor-Hal sat with his disappointment. Even the tech-priests who had come rushing in at the rumours looked crestfallen.
The nobles and officials of Terra, however, had no such luxury of equanimity.
What did they mean, "reorganising the Administratum for efficiency"?
What was this about the Iron Warriors personally rebuilding the Solar System's defence grid and demolishing and rebuilding the hive cities?
What was this about conducting a thorough audit of taxation and noble income to "ensure no revenue has been misallocated"?
The nobles scrambled to contact their off-world holdings and family enterprises, hoping to obscure assets and perhaps even exploit the chaos for profit.
Resisting the Imperium and an Astartes Legion was out of the question.
Nobody understood better than they did what a Space Marine Legion was capable of.
As for that claim that Astartes and Primarchs were not permitted to interfere in politics...
The Emperor and the Sigillite could say whatever they liked. Did that mean anything in practice?
How many worlds had the Ultramarines reclaimed?
The Thirteenth Legion's Ultramar had integrated no fewer than two hundred worlds.
Did anyone from the Administratum dare go and audit them? Did anyone dare question why they were so deeply embedded in politics?
Not if they wanted to live.
These were men who could plant you in the ground and tell the world you were a rare Terran truffle — and no one would dare disagree. Anyone who genuinely believed Astartes and Primarchs stayed out of politics was either naive or suicidal.
Who had the nerve to direct an Emperor's son?
The Phalanx was docked above Terra. One wrong word and the next morning you'd have a phalanx of yellow tin cans kicking in your door to conduct a full tax audit.
So Terra's officials swallowed their objections. They watched the towering Astartes integrate themselves into the Administratum, and then proceed house by house among the noble families, conducting their "revenue reviews."
The results were staggering.
These maggots had been quietly siphoning at least ten percent of all tax receipts, right under the Administratum's nose.
When the Emperor and Malcador learned of it, they were incandescent with fury.
Right there in front of them — and they still dared embezzle?
Monstrous.
Within three months, the Iron Warriors had struck across the entire Imperium — seizing the assets and landholdings of every implicated noble family and confiscating their estates. Every significant administrative post was filled with Olympian personnel.
The Solar System's entire defensive network was demolished by the Iron Warriors outright.
A fleet of star-fortresses, accompanied by engineering ships and Engineering Titans, made directly for Terra.
Dorn watched the defensive lines he and his sons had spent so long constructing be torn down piece by piece. A faint flicker of grief crossed his eyes.
"Have your sons participate as well. You'll still be the one in overall command — might as well let your boys get familiar with the project."
"You had better actually be able to build an absolute defensive line. Otherwise I will personally report your failure to the Emperor."
Dorn said, the pain clear beneath his controlled tone.
"Terra's construction is underway right now. Don't you want to see what I intend to make of it?"
"What are you planning?"
"I've handed it to my son. I trust he won't disappoint me."
"Your sons are also going to be involved in the construction. Perhaps this Terra will bear the mark of two Legions' combined genius. Doesn't it interest you — to see what a homeworld built by Abominable Intelligence and two Legions together will look like?"
The two Primarchs watched the Iron Warriors and Mechanicus vessels moving ceaselessly through the Solar System.
"Or do you think your sons will let you down?"
"I simply believe Terra cannot afford errors. The Emperor has entrusted this to me. I cannot fail him."
"There's your answer. Did you think the old Terra was built well? What about those hive cities? The polluted environment, the poisoned atmosphere?"
"With me involved — none of those problems will exist ever again."
Dorn said nothing more. He only hoped he could watch closely enough that no mistakes slipped through — because if they did, the blame would fall entirely on him.
"Get rid of those self-flagellation practices in your Legion. A whole Legion falling into that culture — it started with you, the Legion Master, setting the wrong example."
"It's simply to ensure they never forget the duty the Emperor gave us. It steels the will. The greater your capacity to endure pain, the more steadfast you become when all hope is lost."
Perturabo studied his brother. If he didn't know Dorn's character, he would have assumed the man was a masochist — and a particularly unhinged one.
"Do as you will. I only know that willpower has its limits — and your will cannot stop a volcano cannon round."
Dorn declined to respond. His stubbornness was a match for any of his brothers.
Inside the Administratum — Dantioch addresses the council.
"What?! My lord — you intend to cut nearly eighty percent of the Administratum's personnel?!"
An elderly Administratum official — kept alive by dozens of life-sustaining tubes — stirred with something approaching distress.
"Not 'cut.'
Dantioch's voice was calm.
"Optimise."
"The Terran Administratum currently has over two hundred and seventy billion active officials. Seventy percent of them perform no meaningful work whatsoever."
"Their daily function consists of walking from one office to another — signing, stamping, forwarding documents — and then signing, stamping, and forwarding again."
"A relief petition submitted from the underhive goes through four hundred and forty-seven departments. It receives one thousand, four hundred and twenty-three stamps. Processing time: seventy-three months. By the time approval comes through, the petitioners and the refugees they represented have already starved to death."
Dantioch produced a thicker file and placed it before the senior official.
"Streamline the process. Compress Administratum staff to twenty billion. Dissolve six million, seven hundred and seven thousand, eight hundred and ninety-nine redundant departments. Merge all institutions with overlapping functions."
"No approval process shall pass through more than ten departments. No more than thirty stamps. Minimum processing time: one standard week, end to end."
"Those who fail to meet the standard — dismissed. Those who commit graft — executed. The incompetent — gone."
The temperature in the chamber seemed to drop.
"My lord, this is simply impossible!"
A young Administratum official stepped forward in protest.
"A process of this nature, and the Administratum's—"
BANG.
A bolter round took the top half of him away.
An Iron Warriors recruit lowered his weapon.
"Any further objections?"
Dantioch surveyed the room.
He had nothing more he wanted to say to these creatures. The Iron Warriors despised bureaucratic obstruction — but under the Emperor's gaze, appearances had to be maintained.
"I object!"
"As do I—"
One by one, bolter shots punctuated the silence.
After enough of that, even the most stubborn officials found their convictions had evaporated. No more hotheads stepped forward to die for principle.
"Good. No further objections. Everyone get back to work. Shuttles will shortly transport you to fleet vessels for the duration of Terra's reconstruction."
"Effective immediately, your work will be monitored around the clock. No slacking. No falsified accounts. No—"
"Violations will be dealt with at your own expense."
Dantioch and his brothers departed. He had a great deal of terrain surveying to do — the mission ahead was critical.
The reconstruction of humanity's homeworld rested on his shoulders. His father had provided the blueprints and master plans — but actually executing them was his responsibility.
If anything went wrong here, it wouldn't just embarrass him — it would embarrass the Fourth Legion. And they had already torn down every fortification the Seventh Legion's brothers had spent so long constructing in the Solar System.
If he couldn't deliver results — the Fourth Legion might as well never show their faces on Terra again and stay on Olympia forever.
The most severe underlying problem on Terra was water. Once, a Custodian Tribune's mother had sacrificed the very concept of water from the entire planet as an offering — leaving Terra drier than Mars.
Were it not for constant external supply lines, Terra would long since have become a dead world.
As things stood, even among the Administratum's officials, only the absolute upper tier ever tasted clean, fresh water. Everyone below subsisted on water that had been downgraded, filtered, and re-filtered through multiple degradation cycles.
The underhive and deep underhive didn't warrant discussion — those regions were wastelands. Even contaminated, irradiated water had to be rationed and distributed by allocation.
Until this was solved, any true improvement was impossible.
Perturabo's answer: he forcibly hauled ice giants from beyond the heliosphere. The water locked within them was enough to fill a hundred Terras with room to spare.
This gave Dantioch the freedom to work without constraint.
The hive cities began to be dismantled and smelted down. Engineering teams took up positions across Terra. Enormous construction machinery set the entire planet shuddering under clouds of dust and debris.
Incalculable quantities of material were drawn from across the galaxy by the engineering fleet.
The hive cities rose again at astonishing speed. The war-fortresses within them took shape.
Drawing on his long experience as project foreman and chief engineer on countless campaigns, Dantioch not only installed adequate fire positions at every critical point across Terra — he arranged for sufficient fire coverage even in the corridors of palaces and council chambers.
The corridors were hung with Legion banners and portraits of notable figures, along with a scattering of artwork. He hadn't originally intended the decoration — but Terra's prestige couldn't afford to look shabby, so in it went.
The resulting style — minimal yet grand — satisfied even the Emperor, though he noted the absence of auramite detailing as a minor flaw.
The new Terra was modelled closely on Olympia — a near-direct translation in scale — but Dantioch made adjustments throughout to suit local conditions. He even added decorative flourishes to certain structures that most Iron Warriors found faintly embarrassing.
The Imperial Fists, for their part, felt the whole thing was still too spartan — which nearly caused both Legions, already working elbow-to-elbow on the construction, to come to blows again.
It took both Perturabo and Rogal Dorn personally intervening to calm their respective sons.
Within a single year, the ecology of Terra had been revived by the improved seed strains Perturabo had imported from off-world. The environment improved dramatically.
The hive cities were nearly complete — at a speed that left the Imperial Fists and the Martian tech-priests stunned.
And these new hive cities vastly outperformed anything that had come before.
The human population began to be resettled into them. Their roles were assigned. Freedom, from this point forward, was gone — but the grinding, daily torment of their former existence was gone with it.
The Emperor, though he refused to permit Abominable Intelligence in any formal capacity, allowed certain limited experimental implementations in controlled areas.
In his words: so long as it doesn't involve full autonomous intelligence, leveraging new technology for public administration is not entirely unacceptable.
And so, from Terra's orbital ports to the edge of the Solar System, the Iron Warriors and Imperial Fists — alongside the Mechanicus — worked themselves half to death in the greatest construction project the Imperium had ever seen.
Limitless resources poured in from across the galaxy and from Perturabo's Olympian worlds. War-fortresses and hive cities rose on world after world throughout the system.
Perturabo and Dorn worked through the Solar System's old defence grid together, identifying flaw after flaw — and mapping out how the new network should be arranged and weighted.
Firepower was more than adequate. A portion of Perturabo's Abominable Intelligence cohort was embedded deep beneath the surface of certain worlds — a last resort, should circumstances ever demand it.
Perturabo handed the control systems to Dorn.
No one was better suited to guard them.
Meanwhile, Dantioch found himself with a headache of a different kind — finding appropriate posts for a group of veterans who stood nearly as tall as the enhanced Iron Warriors themselves.
"You won't live far from the Imperial Palace — that I understand. But you're asking me to find you farmland? There's no open ground left around the Palace. None."
"We can't do much else anymore. We can't return to the front lines. Our bodies are failing with age. We don't know what role we could even fill."
Dantioch genuinely did not know what to do with them. These were heroes of the Unification Wars. He could hardly purge them twice.
His Commander had told him, when first mentioning these veterans, to give them as much latitude as possible and let them live in peace.
But he had no suitable position for them.
"For now — let me address the physical problem first. Once your age has been dealt with, you can decide for yourselves what comes next. I believe the Emperor may have new assignments waiting for you."
"You have a solution?"
The Thunder Warriors were genuinely taken aback. If the Emperor himself couldn't solve it — these canned marines could?
"Yes. Though it may be difficult to accept. You may choose to become our brothers."
"The Emperor conducted certain experiments on you previously. He found that if the Space Marine enhancement surgeries were restructured around your specific physiological profiles — you could become Space Marines yourselves."
"But the procedure carries risk. You have already undergone extensive augmentation. A second round of surgery of this scale carries a high rejection rate. Even with our Fourth Legion's relatively low rejection statistics — we cannot guarantee all of you will survive."
"Your choice: this path — or I petition my father and the Emperor to have one small plot of farmland cleared near the Palace perimeter, and you continue farming in peace."
The retired Thunder Warriors didn't hesitate for a single heartbeat. If they could return to the field — whole, without limitation — they would choose death in battle over any comfortable retirement.
Even if the comfortable retirement was genuinely quite good.
The Thunder Warriors entered the enhancement surgeries. Preliminary adjustments had to be made for each individual's physiology first — but that was not Dantioch's concern to manage directly.
The Custodian Tribune watched these Thunder Warriors rediscover something that looked like vitality — and his expression remained unreadable.
The Emperor had sent him to observe their situation. As things stood — they had found a worthy place. Better than lingering outside the Imperial Palace every day, gazing toward it with hollow, aching eyes.
Two years later.
The reconstruction of Terra and the fortification of the Solar System neared completion.
Reports came in of what appeared to be a gene-Primarch sighted in the Pax Stellarum region, on Jaghatai's world.
The Emperor personally led the expedition fleet.
Two months later, the Fourteenth gene-Primarch — Jaghatai Khan — returned to the Imperium.
And Perturabo, who had been preparing his farewells to Dorn and the others, found himself staying on Terra for two more months instead.