"You actually live inside something built by the Iron Warriors?"
Guilliman, who excelled at administration, was less interested in the intelligence these human slaves provided than in why they were here.
So Guilliman directly questioned the slave leader, who was trembling with fear.
And he received an answer.
"Why do you think the Iron Ring was built by the Iron Warriors?"
"No, they only supplied the manpower. We slaves were originally sent here to build the Iron Ring."
"I don't interrogate people who come to me seeking a way to survive. I risked my life to escape, then settled down somewhere nobody paid attention to."
The slave leader glanced back at the settlement.
"They don't take you back?" Lion demanded. "This is the core of the Iron Ring!"
"The core? A single drainage ditch in the core you speak of is over a thousand kilometers long, and the whole thing is about as long as a planet's equator!" The slave leader spread his hands. "I heard that when construction first began, they sent people after escaped slaves. But as it grew larger and larger, no one came after us anymore."
Guilliman fell silent.
The slave leader before them had not realized that, with just a few casual words, he had accomplished what everyone killed by these superhuman warriors had failed to do.
He had made them uneasy.
Guilliman could easily imagine it. Even without counting the seven planets, the Iron Ring was unimaginably vast. Even if the Iron Warriors piled all their Space Marines and Mortal Servitor forces together, they still could not fill it.
They had already penetrated this deeply, yet they could still find escaped slaves hiding in drainage ditches nearby.
And considering Locke's earlier dealings, it was clear that Inquisitors and others who had previously come here