Perturabo successfully won over Chapter Master Hope and personally taught him the full set of gene-seed surgeries.
Hope learned quickly under Perturabo's instruction. It was time to find some people for Hope to practice on.
The combined fleet of the Ynnari and the Space Marines was anchored at the edge of a star system, one of the places where the Carcharodons collected their blood tithe.
Now, Perturabo brought Bashar and Hope down to the planet's surface.
Howens IV was a world capable of yielding precious ores. Thanks to the Creator's perverse sense of humor, the planet's minerals were concentrated on one half of the world, while the other contained nothing but hard, nearly worthless stone.
Thus, the distribution of minerals had divided the planet into two utterly distinct regions.
The ore-rich and prosperous half was occupied by all manner of mining stations and factories. The wealthiest people there were not the nobles, but the factory owners who could squeeze greater profits from the mines.
These factory owners maintained powerful armed forces under their command. Through careful allocation and the division of different social groups, they shifted layer upon layer of conflict downward, ultimately making their rule as stable as a mountain.
The factory owners maintained only the workers' most basic standard of living, pouring their primary resources into security forces. These troops, obedient to the factory owners' orders, had been modified and enhanced.
The other half of the planet was a super-prison spanning the entire continent. Both the guilty and the innocent were thrown into this despairing cesspit, where they used the crudest and heaviest equipment to quarry stone in exchange for the meager value of their lives.
The aircraft landed on the platform of a luxurious building, from which hung an enormous golden Aquila. The structure was largely pure