“You will have no problems from my Companies, Your Grace,” Captain Oroska said plainly. “Although it might be wise for us to be busy with other matters, elsewhere.”

Briggs’ smile was grim and plain. “Captain Oroska, it will not surprise you that there are plenty of enemies out there willing to occupy your time...”

The other Captains also gave their word that they would not interfere in this civil matter... but they would be watching.

Briggs expected no less, and also promised to keep them fully informed of developments. He then dropped a truckload of intelligence data on them, and the Captains all swore at the degree of corruption, infiltration, and subversion that had taken place in the sub-sector.

They did indeed have a whole lot of work to keep busy with...

“This same information is being dispersed to the elements of the Fleet who will not be kept on station in Ogedai. It seems a number of the worlds so subverted are the homeworlds of many of the Marines and Fleet officers who have been fighting here... who, not surprisingly, were not informed of such issues. You may wish to coordinate with them and determine a proper course of action for your forces.”

Acting on information provided by him was a far, far cry from acting on his orders, and they all knew the difference. That this level of difficulty existed at all was a testament to the ineptitude of the administration of the Sector, and the need for it to be replaced.

---------

-Sounds like it went mostly well?-

-If they aren’t all Good men, they at least weren’t bad ones, and they were honorable enough to fight alongside,- Briggs /sighed. For making Nineteen, he wasn’t too happy, but given he’d had to watch literally billions of people die for that to happen, I could see why.

-Leveling in this place is a true bitch,- I /mused to him. Probably because of the Warp, although personal combat against worthy foes was definitely faster. -I imagine it was just another something the Warp Gods put in place to counter the Emperor. Not having lots of high Level supporters would definitely put a crimp in his plans.-

-Agreed.- Just another reason the place was mostly E10. -So, what are the Elvar saying, now?-

-The Rift closed a light year the instant you broke Contrival. Its been receding ever since.-

-They are closing the Rift to start the civil war between us. It will only increase as we chase them out of Khagan.-

A light year a day would still take years to have a truly measurable effect, but it meant a fleet or messenger vehicles might be able to circumvent the Rift soon enough... at which point they would find out what had happened here, if such were allowed to return.

Also, letting the Rift fade meant losing the shroud against the eyes of the Emperor. He probably would not be happy to have every single one of his long-term predictions instantly trashed by the emergence of a Source-led galactic power with a much higher level of technology. Upgrades were perpetuating across the systems behind Briggs as populations were retasked, and tech that could make tech to make tech was put in place over and over again.

The Empire was bigger, and had far more resources... but the resources we had were being exploited to the maximum, and our quality level was higher with them.

We also knew their tech inside and out, unsurprising for general tech that hadn’t changed for thousands of years. Our conflicts with the Mekkers had proven just how dangerous our ships were against them, and the ships we were making now were only getting better.

We were also suffering far less disruption in our own territories. The kids were relentless in dealing with raiders coming in to exploit the situation, and making no bones about their victories. Word was spreading, and the other species out there were keeping their distance if they had the choice. If they were raiding from worlds inside our claimed space... their time to do so was getting shorter and shorter. Khagan Sector had long been on The Map, and we knew where everything was... and who was there.

-What was your decision on Rimcrown?- I /asked. He was the Source... I could advise and wheedle, but I wouldn’t make his decision for him. Even if it was dumb... he was a Nineteen Source! It would probably work out better that way, anyway!

-Continue the flow of information and sabotage their propaganda. The people in place can disseminate the news, and let’s see how far non-lethal opposition to their pogroms go. Once they start shooting, it will be time to shoot back.-

-You are aware that religious unrest there is huge,- I /pointed out. The Cult of Man was starting to get extremely violent against the God of the Machine... and mysterious priests who could actually work miracles weren’t helping things. They were triggering religious conversions on the one side and screeching condemnations of demon-worship and Warp Sorcery on the other.

The fact no traces of Warp influence could be found in such places was really disheartening to the investigators, but religious wars didn’t need facts, just belief. That so many of the churches were infiltrated by secret Warp adherents didn’t help matters, as even when revealed, it was only more hysteria to drive the faithful to a frenzy.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Frenzies led to action, action led to violence, violence got people killed, tempers flared, and the killing grew rapidly...

-I don’t want innocents to die, but every fanatic who isn’t here when the Rift is gone is one more saboteur we don’t have to worry about.- The creed of the Cult of Man was that the Emperor was divine and the hope of the human race. Any human who turned away from the Emperor for any reason was damning their soul, and it was better they be killed to hopefully save their soul than tolerate their existence.

There were earnest and good people who blew up their own planet to do just that, thinking they were saving everyone, instead of just delivering them to the Warp for such ultimate betrayal of their people.

Religious wars were the worst. Thinking someone was evil because you were told, and then killing the innocent, was one of the highest and most enjoyed forms of Evil, turning others upon their own.

War was inherently neutral, and could be fought for a multitude of reasons. Holy war that was not holy was all too common...

Breaking the indoctrination of the Cult of Man was one of the main things the Great DM had to do. It was progressing pretty nicely, with just the underlying foundation of “The Emperor is not a god”, and progressing from there. The Cult wasn’t taking that truth very well at all... but trying to deny the power of the God of the Machine when it imprinted that message in its text on all their computers, and they couldn’t get rid of it, certainly didn’t help matters, cheeky bastard that It was.

It did lead to mass abandonment and a further condemnation of technology, which further marginalized the Cult... and inspired more frenzy, hysteria, and shooting.

Ugh. The Warp was loving it... even as its adherents trying to infiltrate the Great DM’s movement were running into constant problems involving abruptly shortened life expectancy.

It was war, and people were dying, even as we were trying to save them.

The Emperor had built a great big brainwashing machine, every bit as effective as that of the Mekkers. Breaking the Mekker system had precipitated the collapse of imperial authority in the whole Sector. Breaking the Cult of Man would bury it entirely, given how closely intertwined it was with the imperial hierarchy.

Oddly enough, this was a fight the Legionnaires definitely wanted no part of. They knew the Emperor wasn’t a god... they inherited some of his bloodline, after all. Did gods have flesh and blood? The fanaticism of the Cult of Man also offended those with the Emperor’s Gift, the psions of the Empire.

Like sharks to blood, the most rabid preachers brought in the Light and the Scepter, too. Be it just deluded fanatics or rabble-rousers, they passed by, and false priests died, sometimes one or two, and sometimes entire churches were emptied out and burning bodies were fed to the Land...

As for the Marked... they could see Grandmother, way up there; no less than three Worldminds; plant intelligences with memories that went back farther than mankind had existed; and the Great DM itself, fulfilling its duties and obligations in return for faith, a contract neat and clean.

-Want me anywhere special?- I /inquired. I was currently performing overwatch duty on yet another Xenosym swarm raid, the Blacklight Beamer modules cycling quickly to punch holes in bioships ten times the size of the Dojo, who promptly stopped waving all their tails and tentacles around so energetically. Young Gardeners fluttered past like flower-butterflies and wrapped around the dead Xenosyms, munching away happily, and sending their roots in to crunch and pulp the crews before they tried anything funny.

The Xenosym Fleets naturally knew something was going on now, but they were spread over literally thousands of light years, and couldn’t actually get together that fast. Clumping up was unwise, as one Warp Storm might be able to take all of them out. They were sending out fleet after fleet up into the galaxy as their buried agents sent out the Eat Me! alerts, but all those going into Corunsun territories were going strangely silent, strangely quick... and those in the neighboring subsectors were also going violently silent if the defenders swallowed their pride and called on the Corunsuns for aid.

There were old families feeling old ties from before the Empire, and swearing old oaths of fealty, supported by Geases and similar things. Nothing that couldn’t be removed, but not without the recipient of the Oath knowing they were an Oathbreaker.

They would have been truly shocked to learn there was a true Duke Corunsun, and not just a Contessa standing in for both Family and Foundation...

-Everything from the Voids suggests you’re in the place you should be, and they’re working around what I’m doing.- Even Voids couldn’t deny the power of a Source’s Oath once it was in effect, and working around it was much, much easier than working against it, even for them. -They are quite certain the Emperor knows you have naval assets far in excess of what you have declared if the Corunsun Realm is able to wear down the xenosym assault hitting all other corners of the Empire.-

-What with Warp raids from the Abyss suddenly dropping to a thousand-year low and major Cult involvement dying across half the Empire, can’t imagine why,- I /replied dryly. It was true that the Void Brothers deliberately concentrated on planets we controlled, but there were more and more of them both graduating and being discovered basically every day, so the effect was snowballing.

Most of them were on the far side of the Rift for now, but one active Void on an inhabited world rapidly bred more of them there, so visiting multiple worlds basically caused an explosion of young Voids being born... which we quickly took away, but this time with the intention of bringing them back.

It also introduced more Vortices, and the ‘retired’ Silent Sisters had decided to start their own monastery world to handle this rapid influx of new little sisters.

It also brought out a new tradition for them, the Senior Awakening. If a Sister could never have children once she was Awakened, then the solution to that was to delay the Awakening, train her up to be a Seven, and Awaken her at that time... after she had her children, had her Classes in place, and could basically form a Vajra instantly.

The infusion of new Sisters into the main Temple on Titan was enough that they successfully stopped making Vatted Sister clones entirely. Outsider personnel in the Temple had been slowly and thoroughly cycled out by now, and currently consisted entirely of Marked working in support of the Sisters, as well as the few outside overseers with cushy jobs who basically made sure the Sisters could bark out the Litany of the Gospels of Man, shout out about loyalty to the Emperor, and otherwise act like guileless brainwashed psi-killer bitches. That fewer and fewer Sisters had to be officially retired past their due dates was a happy event that removed one of the few minor inconveniences from their posts.

After all, they certainly weren’t going on those trips to gather up psions in the Silent Ships...