The Captain's Thoughts

The battle by the river bend had already ended.

The serfs who had been trembling in the crowded bunks of the several crude barracks next door were driven outside. The junior noncommissioned officers of the Waste Mine Company announced that the Planetary Governor had liberated them and that they were now free.

The serfs showed no reaction at all. They had never thought freedom was anything good. They didn't even understand what it meant.

Did freedom mean the uncertainty of whether they'd survive another day while wandering the wasteland? Did it mean the hunger and cold of scraping out a living at the foot of Revival City?

They'd been pretty free back then, able to do whatever they wanted—except they had no food or clothes, and every day they saw people dying. Some starved to death, some died of illness, and some were robbed and murdered... all sorts of deaths.

Winter was the hardest of all.

Compared to those days, they were fairly satisfied with their lives now. The food wasn't good, and the work was exhausting, but they were laborers in the fields, and their masters wouldn't let them starve to death—at least not before they lost the ability to work.

Then a group of people claiming to serve the Planetary Governor showed up and beat the hell out of everyone. Their masters seemed to be finished, and they themselves had been liberated and given their freedom.

But they were at a loss.

Huh? I'm free?

They nearly burst into tears.

The explanation that followed, though, put them at ease.

They didn't know what was so good about freedom, but they knew bread was good.

A plentiful supply of food was handed out. The serfs, who had always been able to eat only until they were half full each day—well, they were free now—wolfed it down.

While they ate, someone informed them of the arrangements going forward.

They were no longer serfs, but free people under the Planetary Governor's rule. The Governor would personally administer the entire Mantan Valley Manor, and needed plenty of agricultural laborers. Food and lodging would be provided, along with a modest bonus that would increase with their output. They were free to come and go, with no restrictions, and anyone willing to stay could take a job.

Only a fool wouldn't stay.

In an instant, the panic, confusion, and helplessness in the serfs' hearts all but vanished.

They didn't need to know anything else. As long as they knew they wouldn't go hungry or shiver in the cold anymore, that was enough.

Once they'd eaten their fill, it was time to get to work. The bodies had to be cleared away and burned, the walls damaged in the fighting needed repairs, and the fields that had been trampled and blasted apart needed tending so they could salvage as much of the harvest as possible.

The whole manor was already bustling with activity.

After Yan Fangxu had more or less finished arranging everything, there wasn't much else for him to do.

He gazed blankly at the rolling hills across the river bend.

The Psyker—or rather, the Cultist—he'd just encountered had made him think about his own future.

When he'd been assigned to the surface as the Planetary Governor's bodyguard, he'd thought his prospects had gone dark.

He still remembered the day. Before the Planetary Governor left the starship to land on the surface, he'd asked Captain Yelicia for armed protection. The general had initially planned to assign him three hundred Servitors and call it a day.

But he'd been bored that day, chatting with his colleagues, and had brought up the joke about how a woman with no experience had been promoted to captain at lightning speed, all the way to general.

More importantly, the captain had heard him.

God-Emperor as his witness, he hadn't really had any particular problem with the female captain. His colleagues had all joked about it, so he'd joined in with a few remarks.

But why did the captain have to hear him at the exact moment he was speaking?

Damn it!

As it happened, the Governor named Gu Hang had been complaining that three hundred Servitors weren't enough. So Yelicia had waved a hand and ordered him to take thirty Marines and join the Governor's retinue.

Amid his colleagues' cheerful laughter, full of both relief and schadenfreude, the young Marine Corps captain had no choice but to take thirty men down to the surface.

He'd been devastated, convinced his life was going nowhere.

Everyone knew the Planetary Governor of Nuxiao Planet was a disposable asset, replaced every two years. A lowly captain like him had offended the captain and been dumped on the surface in what amounted to exile. Even if he protected the Governor, that man would still be executed in the end for failing to pay his taxes. He'd waste two years of his life on Nuxiao Planet and get nowhere.

But he still had to do his duty. Partly, that was a soldier's sense of responsibility. And partly, if the Tax Department executed the Governor, that was one thing—but if the man died under his protection, he'd be in serious trouble.

As for the Governor somehow meeting the tax demands, securing his position as Planetary Governor, revitalizing the entire planet, and eventually repaying the help he'd received in his early days by becoming Yan Fangxu's patron and helping him rise to prominence?

He'd dreamed about that, but he didn't dare think of it while awake.

Of course he hoped things would turn out that way, but it was far too unlikely. Especially since the Governor had the wild idea of developing his territory from scratch instead of quickly taking over the Alliance government and finding a way to raise the tax money... God-Emperor above, where did he think he'd get the time?

Then again, what did it have to do with him? He wasn't the one who'd be executed.

But as time passed, he gradually began to entertain the idea. Some of the thoughts he'd only dared to have in his dreams when he first landed on the surface now occasionally crossed his mind while he was awake.

Could Gu Hang really succeed?

It wasn't just the way the Planetary Governor always seemed to have everything under control. He'd seen plenty of people putting on airs. He didn't know whether the Governor was one of them, and didn't want to find out.

He didn't care about appearances. He believed only in facts.

And the facts were that the Governor was an unusually rare Psyker and that he joined them in battle. They'd won two fights and taken two camps. It wasn't much—not nearly enough to save their lives—but the Governor was indeed carrying out his plan.

And somehow, the Governor had gotten hold of two Black Box Fabricators. The Imperial Mechanicus would probably pay a fortune for those miraculous devices.

All of this gave him a little more confidence in the Governor, beyond what his sense of duty required—especially those two black boxes.

Maybe there was actually some hope after all?

Today, he and the Governor had met a Psyker together. At first, he'd thought the man named Vaughan was just an ordinary Psyker, but according to the Governor, he was a member of a heretical cult.

A cult, a heresy... That was a very useful enemy. If that so-called "Primal Owlbear Cult" was officially declared a heretical cult, the credit for wiping it out would be considerable.

But he still had doubts. Was it really a "cult"?

Was the Governor making it up as an excuse to ask for more support, or was it true?

I got Tzeentched. Chapters 22 and 23 were supposed to go up tomorrow, but I set the schedule wrong...

Just consider it an extra chapter today, brothers! Tomorrow will still have the usual two chapters.

My advance chapters have taken a serious hit...

If you haven't read 22, you can scroll back and read it now. It's already up.