[You know this city. Moloc's data has been running through you since you first sat on that brass throne, and what it has given you on the subject of Holy Terra's political landscape is more than enough to work with.]
[Strip away the hundreds of billions of ordinary citizens and the vast administrative machinery that exists to process them, and what remains of Terra's ruling class is essentially three factions.]
[The dividing line is simple: do you support Regent Guilliman's reforms or not?]
[The conservatives are the louder faction at present. Their most prominent voice is the former Lord Administratum: a man so old and so thoroughly augmented that his body requires eight servo-crane units to move him from room to room. He occupies an enormous life-support frame and governs from inside it, which has not reduced his capacity for political maneuvering in the slightest. Beside him stand the former Ecclesiarch, the Grand Provost Marshal, and several other High Lords who have held their positions through multiple regencies by being useful to whoever held power, along with the Grand Master of Assassins and the Master of the Administratum. These are the people who sent a transfer order to the Minotaurs Chapter. These are the people who intend to use you.]
[They are also the people you intend to deal with first, once the immediate situation on the streets permits.]
[The reformist faction is quieter but structurally stronger. Its most significant figure is the Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica: an Alpha-Plus level psyker of such raw power that he requires two Null maidens as a permanent escort simply to prevent him from accidentally killing everyone within range when his concentration lapses. He fought beside Guilliman when the Regent first returned, and he has been the principal architect of the reforms that the conservatives are trying to undo. The Paternoval Envoy of the Navigator Houses stands with him, more radical in temperament, willing to say aloud that ancient doctrine has become a liability to Imperial war capacity. The Lord High Admiral, the Speaker for the Chartist Captains, the new Ecclesiarch, and the new Lord Administratum are all reformist sympathizers.]
[Then there are the permanent neutrals: the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Inquisition, and the Knight Households. None of them enter factional disputes they cannot fully control. They watch, and they wait, and they offer support only when the outcome is no longer in doubt.]
[And then there is the military situation. Setting aside the regiments garrisoned on Terra, the armed forces capable of actually deciding the outcome of any confrontation on the Throneworld are three: the Astra Militarum units inside the walls, the Imperial Fists, the Adeptus Custodes, and the Minotaurs.]
[This is why you left a slip of parchment in Garadon's hand. The Imperial Fists are not conservatives and not reformists. They are the defenders of Terra, and their institutional instinct is to protect the Throneworld from any force that would damage it from within. What you gave Garadon was the Chapter's covert communication frequency. If the moment comes when action is required, you want them reachable in seconds, not minutes.]
[There is one other fact worth acknowledging: you are not here in your true form. If you were, many of these problems would resolve themselves rapidly, because a Primarch's physical authority over the Astartes and the reaction of the Terran population to a living son of the Emperor would clear the political board in hours. But a Primarch appearing unannounced on Holy Terra would also create upheaval of a scale that Guilliman's own return, already considerable, would seem modest by comparison. There are things that cannot be undone once they are set in motion.]
[For now, you are the Chapter Master of the Minotaurs. That is enough to work with.]
[The junior official who intercepts your column in the outer precincts of the Spaceport is young, thin, and visibly frightened. He holds out a bound parchment scroll with both hands, as if the formality of the gesture might protect him from whatever response it produces.]
[You take it without breaking stride and open it while you walk. Inside is a transfer order signed under the former Lord Administratum's authority, directing the Minotaurs Chapter to deploy to a series of specified coordinates: private residences, administrative compounds, positions that would, if occupied by your Chapter, function as a personal guard force for the conservatives rather than a combat operation in any meaningful sense.]
[You close the scroll.]
[ "All Primaris, halt." You address the column. "One hundred warriors: form up on this official. You will accompany him to the coordinates in this document and provide protection for the persons indicated there." You fold the transfer order and hand it to the nearest battle-brother.]
[The junior official, who has been standing with the rigid stillness of someone trying not to become more visible, risks a question.]
[ "Commander, will you not be leading them yourself?"]
[ "Tell your lord I am occupied with other matters," you say, and keep walking.]
[The remaining Primaris reform around you without being asked, and you continue toward the outer city.]
[The first thing you notice as you move through the outer settlement zones is that the streets have their own logic, different from the logic of military engagement. There are people in the shadows of every structure, watching you from the gaps between prefabricated housing stacks and the recessed doorways of bolted-shut workshops. Their clothing is worn past the point that most hive worlds would consider functional. Several of the children you can see have the slightly enlarged heads and foreshortened limbs of protein deficiency in early development.]
[Holy Terra is not an agricultural world. It does not produce food. The supply lines that feed hundreds of billions of people are complex, politically managed, and currently disrupted. The people in these streets are the ones at the end of those supply chains, the ones where the shortfalls accumulate.]
[The large-scale appearance of Astartes in the outer settlement has not, historically, meant anything good for the people who live there. This is visible in the way the crowd moves when you advance: not fleeing, exactly, but opening space, putting distance between themselves and your column, pressing back against the walls with the practiced efficiency of people who have learned that available exits matter.]
[You stop. You know why you brought the Primaris instead of veterans. The Chapter's seasoned battle-brothers have fought too many campaigns in too many ugly places. The Primaris are newer, and there is something in the way they carry themselves, the slight residue of the humanity they have not yet entirely outfaced, that might be readable to the people looking at them. You are not certain it will be enough, but it is the better option available.]
[You try the direct approach.]
[ "I am Moloc, Chapter Master of the Minotaurs. I have come to this city in the Emperor's service to put an end to the cult operations in the outer settlements. We are the Emperor's Astartes, and we mean you no harm."]
[The crowd watches you in silence. If anything, the distance increases slightly.]
[You consider the result of this for a moment. An eight-foot figure in Terminator plate declaring peaceful intent in a voice calibrated to carry across a battle is not, objectively, a reassuring sight. The speech was technically accurate. It was also not the right speech.]
[You try again.]
[ "Do you want clean water? And food?"]
[The silence takes on a different quality. You watch it happen across fifty faces at once: a shift in the eyes, a swallowing reflex, a careful stillness replacing the flight instinct. Holy Terra is a hive world. It does not grow food or filter water locally. What arrives here from the supply lines is distributed according to administrative priority, and administrative priority has not been looking at this neighborhood.]
[You have their attention now. You continue.]
[ "The cult operations can wait. Tell me where the settlement gangs are operating. The ones that take from you when the official supply lines fail to deliver. Tell me that, and we can talk about the water and food."]
[Several people in the front of the crowd shift uncomfortably. A few look at their feet. The calculation running across their faces is readable: this could be a trap, it is almost certainly a trap, every similar offer in the past has been a trap of one kind or another, and yet the person making it is standing in Terminator plate with a hundred Astartes behind him and if he wanted to hurt them he could have started already.]
[A boy steps forward.]
[Thin. Malnourished, the evidence of it in his proportions. His forehead is slightly prominent, his wrists narrow. He is perhaps ten years old, possibly older. Malnutrition makes the estimate difficult. His expression is not hopeful exactly, but it is considering.]
[ "I know where several of the gang territories are." His voice is smaller than his posture suggests he intends it to be. "If I tell you, will I actually get food and water? Extra?"]
[You look down at him through your visor for a moment. Then you move.]
[You lower yourself to one knee. The Terminator armor makes the movement slow and deliberate. Around you, the crowd pulls back another meter in a wave. You ignore this and reach out, very carefully, and lift the boy by the torso with both hands, raising him to the level of your shoulder armor and setting him there.]
[The boy goes very still. Then he grabs the edge of your shoulder plate with both hands and looks out at the crowd from six feet off the ground with an expression that is still not quite sure what is happening to it.]
[ "Show me." You rise to your full height again. "Everything I take from the gangs, you and your neighbors get."]
[You turn your helmet toward the column behind you.]
[ "All Primaris. Forward."]
[The boy on your shoulder lifts one thin arm and points.]
[And something changes in the crowd. It is not loud. It is the particular quality of watching something you did not expect, something that does not fit the pattern of everything that came before it, and not being sure yet what it means. But the eyes that were cold are no longer quite as cold, and the people who were pressed against the walls have taken a step forward to watch you go, rather than a step back to let you pass.]
[Perhaps this one is different.]
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