With the last of the Light Lizardmen wiped out, the entire system had been brought under the Imperium's rule. The survivors began clearing the battlefield and tending to the wounded, while the intact units swept the surrounding area to eliminate any surviving Xenos.
Flesh regenerated. The twisted tentacles retracted and reshaped themselves into a whole arm. Hogg didn't mind showing the Legion that inhuman sight. His loyal, brainless Blackwatch soldiers would only see it as the Father's might. The Father was awesome.
Kicking aside the corpse blocking his way, Hogg led squads of Techmarines into the core buildings of the royal city. He wanted to see what the device capable of generating a shield over an entire continental plate looked like.
The blue beam had shot out from within, piercing the sky. Two guards, quick to read the situation, pushed open the heavy doors. Inside lay countless Xenos corpses. The old, weak, women, and children who had likely fled into the royal city were all here. No wonder they hadn't seen any Xenos civilians.
An excited Candice Laza approached the giant machine in the center of the hall. Laser beams shot from her tentacles, scanning the powerful construct before her.
"Primarch, I can confirm this is human technology. It should be a planetary shield generator from the Golden Age, but it's damaged. Otherwise, we would have faced a powerful shield surrounding the planet."
Mechanical tentacles crawled across the device's surface, triggering a switch. The giant blue beam faded, and the machine shut down. In the shadow of the machine, Hogg and the others found a group of Xenos who had committed suicide, along with several cages filled with Xenos corpses. A few wires connected them to a massive device nearby.
Human technology, lost for ages, had ultimately been used by the Xenos to defend against humanity. It was hard to imagine a better example of Warhammer's dark humor.
The logistical units and Imperial Guard got to work. The Blackwatch troops, overcome with a hoarding frenzy, collected the plasma weapons scattered across the battlefield, while the fleet's airlift crews helped move the various supplies in the Xenos' storehouses.
The engineers built a research facility near the royal city. They dismantled the building that enclosed the shield generator, then removed the entire device, packed it into a container, and shipped it to the Blacklight for reverse engineering.
During those few brief hours of the final battle to wipe out the Xenos, the fighting had reached a ferocity comparable to an Apocalypse War. Armored units suffered devastating losses, and even two Warlord-class Titans were crippled, forced to return to the forge for major repairs.
Even the Blackwatch, who had inherited Hogg's powerful regenerative abilities, lost an entire company. Among the dead were many experienced veterans. Facing a deluge of plasma fire, the Mark III Power Armor worn by the Blackwatch proved utterly inadequate. Some Gene-seed could not even be recovered.
Compared to the Space Marines' casualties, the losses among the Imperial Guard were even worse. Entire formations of soldiers had been wiped out. That was only after two hours of fighting, and the full toll of the battle was still being tallied. That was war for you; it always came with casualties.
Hogg stared at the casualty report on the display and felt a headache coming on. The 4th Company had suffered the worst losses. Only a few Techmarines remained. The former Fourth Captain, that short, green-haired man with a buzz cut, had lost everything below the chest and gone into a Dreadnought.
"We'll have to reinforce the 4th Company."
He opened the tablet and checked the new recruits' rankings for killing Xenos, then made his appointments: Ginny would take over as captain of the 4th Company, and Jill Valentine would become its deputy captain. Together, they would command 700 female Space Marines.
With the fighting over, the Rogue Traders from the Imperium arrived at Aiers, along with ships carrying vast quantities of supplies.
On the third day after the battle, several Rogue Traders were granted an audience with the Primarch in the Blacklight's conference room.
The Hitlari House had been a major family near the new district of Alicia. Its leaders had once obeyed orders only when it suited them, but the Blackwatch had launched a purge and surprise attack. Hill Albert, the sole survivor, had become the head of the family.
As a Primarch, Hogg had the authority to grant Rogue Trader licenses. After leaving Hill Albert a signed license, the Imperial Administratum also renamed the Hitlari House the Albert House and entered it into the Imperium's records.
"Primarch! The colonists we brought from a nearby Death World have arrived."
"Excellent work, Albert." Hogg waved for him to sit, then continued, "I don't care how you govern, as long as you don't make everyone hate you. Do whatever you like. Of course, you've been to Alicia. If you can't provide the local population with at least the minimum standard of living that Alicia's residents enjoy, then the Planetary Governor here will simply disappear—physically.
"I have no use for incompetents. I'll leave a squad of Blackwatch in this system to oversee its development. Do what you like about the Imperial Tithe the Imperium demands, but don't short me a single bit."
Hill Albert had gone from a fallen branch-family member to the new head of his house. He obeyed Hogg without question, since Hogg was the benefactor who had made him head of the family. If Hogg told him to do something, he did it. Even the Imperial Administratum wouldn't make a difference.
Knowing that you had to balance a stick with a carrot, Hogg continued:
"Of course, I know you've got your difficulties. I'll leave the sale of Alicia's surplus goods to you. All I want is people. I don't care where you get them—even Abhumans are welcome to settle here, as long as they're loyal to the Legion. My chief steward, Emilia, will discuss the details with you."
"Come with me." Emilia Aziz, the Blackwatch's chief steward, had undergone the enhancement surgery and become a Space Marine. She led Albert away to sign a series of agreements backed by the Blackwatch Legion.
The conquered planets needed to be colonized, and that meant bringing people in from elsewhere to develop them. Hogg couldn't conjure them out of thin air, so the wait for colonists became a chance for the Blackwatch to rest and recover.
Fully mastering the technology left behind by the Dark Age of Technology wasn't easy. But for Hogg, who had absorbed a shard of the Void Dragon and become a bootleg, budget mini-C'tan, it wasn't a problem.
Emerald lightning coursed around him, and the Tech-priests nearby began to cheer. These fanatics believed Hogg was the incarnation of the Omnissiah. Though they weren't entirely wrong—the Void Dragon's shard was still imprisoned on Mars, after all. The Adeptus Mechanicus members began humanity's time-honored craft: prayer.
As a higher-dimensional remnant, Hogg gained nothing from their prayers. Their faith couldn't make him any stronger.
But something interesting happened: when some of Hogg's fanatical worshippers died, their souls would pass through the Warp, fly toward the mass of black, twisted tentacles, and be captured. Then they would vanish without a trace.
After brainwashing a few test subjects, Hogg confirmed it wasn't a coincidence. Only the souls of true believers had a chance of reaching the tentacles and dissolving, as if they'd been erased by a rubber.
And being sincerely prayed to by others did feel pretty good. The Tech-priests also became more obedient, so Hogg let things continue.
However, for some species, complete death in this universe was a blessing they could only dream of. Soon, a group of unusual visitors would barge into Hogg's life.
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