The nobles of Tarielia World were furious.
After communicating with Gamma World, they had been met with Gamma World's contempt and arrogance.
However.
They did not realize that Gamma World had been assessing them from the very beginning.
By the time they noticed the Gamma fleet brought by the Gravity Slingshot, it was already too late.
Even if they wanted to contact the Human Imperium somehow, there was no time left.
Tarielia's orbit was packed with Gamma World's transport ships. To Gamma World, the only thing of value on this world was its tens of billions of humans. Beyond that, it had no other worth.
Those tens of billions of humans were worth Gamma World spending some effort to persuade into leaving. As for those unwilling to leave, Gamma World's original plan had been to simply raze the place and rebuild it. But blowing up the planet would yield nothing but scrap, while razing and rebuilding it would require an enormous price to govern this thoroughly polluted hive world.
Gamma World would hardly be able to recover its costs that way.
Mining it after destroying it might yield the world's resources, but it was not worth building a Gravity Slingshot on this planet. Its location was extremely close to both an Imperial Forge World and an Ork warlord's forces, so they chose to abandon it outright.
Once those willing to leave had been relocated, this planet could continue as it was.
Gamma dared to do this because the Far East Frontier lay on the fringes of Human Imperium territory. Even if the locals reported this to the Imperium, the Imperium would see it as nothing more than two worlds fighting over territory. If it were closer to Imperial space, the Imperium might intervene, but it was too far away. The