A heavy silence fell over the conference room.
[The Most Incorruptible Logistics King of the Imperium], who was sitting diagonally across from her, pushed his chair back and stood.
The veteran player—who had been running supply chain logistics since the very first Crimson Dawn base camp—was dressed in a scuffed, plain gray jumpsuit. A brass nameplate was bolted to his chest: Director of the Aurelian Logistics Bureau.
He booted up his own holographic display, throwing a cascading wall of raw data into the air.
"As far as planetary resources go, we're actually sitting pretty." His voice was calm and steady, carrying that bulletproof confidence of a guy who spent his life buried in spreadsheets. "Livestock, raw ores, rations, fresh water, weapons, tactical gear, textiles—you name it, we've got it covered."
"Paul laid down one hell of a blueprint back in the day. Our raw material recycling rate is currently sitting at a staggering eighty-seven percent. On the agricultural front, we're running three hundred and twenty-seven massive mega-farming complexes set up on the outskirts of the major cities."
"Thanks to aggressive vertical farming and state-of-the-art hydroponics, our annual yield is more than enough to comfortably feed forty billion mouths. As for mining, the industrial retrofits on all twenty-seven hives gave us a closed-loop mineral recovery and smelting network. We are operating at a ninety-two percent self-sufficiency rate for raw metals."
"Every essential industrial product needed to keep this planet breathing is manufactured right in those zones and shipped globally. We're easily meeting the demands of Aurelian's citizens, with plenty of surplus to spare."
"On the energy front, we're running twenty-five massive fusion plants and seventeen orbital solar arrays. The power grid is fully juiced. We even have enough excess output to export."
[The Most Incorruptible Logistics King of the Imperium] paused, his tone shifting into something deadly serious.
"But because our population is so ridiculously massive, the rate we're burning through these supplies is terrifying."
He pulled up a line graph. The bright red curve was shooting up at an alarming, visible rate.
"We're barely keeping the cycle stable right now. But in ten years? Once Aurelian IV breaches the thirty-five billion mark, this entire balanced loop is going to shatter."
"When that happens, our food reserves will only last six months, and we'll hit a thirty percent deficit in raw metals."
"Energy might be fine for now, but as industrial consumption scales up, the grid is going to get pushed to the breaking point."
He looked up, meeting the eyes of everyone in the room.
"We have to open up off-world trade. If we don't start importing resources from other planets, we can't stop this crash."
"We either trade our industrial goods, we trade our tech, or..."
"...we trade our Kyber Crystals."
He collapsed the hologram and sat back down.
[Slaanesh Just Wants to Slack Off Today] stood up next.
The female player in charge of public security and anti-corruption wore a crisp, deep-blue uniform of the Dawn Law Enforcement Bureau. The lasgun holstered at her hip was polished to a mirror shine.
Despite her joke of a username, her face was completely stone-cold.
"Overall planetary security is solid."
She booted up her holographic display, flashing strings of data in front of the crowd.
"The Dawn Law Enforcement Bureaus in every city are strictly doing their jobs. We are cracking down hard on any and all criminal activity."
"Over the last ten years, the entire planet has only seen one hundred and seventy-three criminal cases. We have a one hundred percent clearance rate."
"That breaks down to eighty-seven cases of fraud, twenty-three cases of property theft or embezzlement, forty-one cases of aggravated assault, and twenty-two murders."
"Every single suspect was successfully apprehended and sentenced according to the law."
"One hundred and three were sentenced to mandatory hard labor reform, forty-seven got life in prison, and twenty-three... were executed by artillery fire."
Her voice was dead flat, but the moment she said the words 'executed by artillery fire,' the temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees.
"As for corruption..."
[Slaanesh Just Wants to Slack Off Today] paused, a hint of genuine respect bleeding into her tone.
"Thanks to Helovia's administration and her brutal implementation of psychic audits, no one has the guts to try anything blatant."
She swiped to a new data set.
"Over the past decade, we've only uncovered fifty-seven potential leads on corruption across the planet. Every single one came from either internal audits or civilian tips."
"Thirty-nine of those were verified as factual. The embezzled funds ranged anywhere from a few million to hundreds of millions of Aurelian Coins."
"All seventy-three officials involved faced public trial. Sixty-five of them took a shell from a cannon. The remaining eight got life in prison and had all their assets seized."
She looked up, a slight smirk playing on her lips.
"Wanna embezzle?"
"Go right ahead."
"Just ask yourself if you can survive a psychic brain-scan first, and then ask yourself if you're slick enough to dodge the Dawn Law Enforcement Bureau's surveillance grid."
"After the rats pulling tricks in the shadows got dragged into the light and blown to pieces, a lot of people suddenly remembered the sheer terror of Crimson Dawn's original public trials."
"So right now, I won't say Aurelian IV is one hundred percent free of corruption, but we absolutely don't have any major systemic rot."
"Furthermore..."
"...organized crime syndicates basically don't exist on Aurelian IV."
She killed the hologram, sweeping her gaze across the room.
"Because the absolute second a gang tries to form, the local citizens instantly rat them out through the hotlines."
"The tip lines are public, totally anonymous, and strictly protected."
"Within twenty-four hours of a tip, the Bureau deploys a Dawn Inspection Team backed up by an armed Inspectorate Guard."
"They gather the evidence, lock down the targets, make the arrests, run the interrogations, and follow the bloody trail all the way up until the entire network is purged."
"Once verified, we wipe the organization off the map. Complete and utter annihilation."
"And anyone—or any group—caught tying themselves to these syndicates faces the exact same brutal consequences."
"Execution by artillery is just the starting price."
"So, after wiping out the first few idiots who tried to step up, nobody dares touch organized crime anymore."
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