While Roboute Guilliman was wrestling with the Imperium's decay, Bona was dealing with headaches caused by affairs within his own empire.
First among them was the increasingly brazen Adeptus Mechanicus.
The Black Adeptus Mechanicus had begun to make a name for itself. Its rule requiring every new member to contribute fifty percent of their exclusive technologies had drawn more and more Tech-Priests who wanted to join.
Some of those priests even came from the Imperium.
This had prompted the Martian order to denounce this "criminal organization filled with blasphemy, filth, and trash," and Fabricator-General Antonia had also made the Officio Assassinorum's assassination list.
Fortunately, anyone hoping to meet the Archmagos generally had to get past Bona and Horus first. The former could see straight through a well-disguised assassin from several hundred meters away, while the latter had extensive experience with assassination attempts.
Some might wonder: if the Callidus Assassins could not accomplish the mission, what about the other three assassin temples?
Culexus Assassins, who specialized in anti-psyker surprise attacks, would quickly be chopped to pieces when confronted with an overwhelming tide of armored warriors.
The Eversor Assassins, packed with explosives and with high-energy explosive fluid even flowing through their veins, had come close to succeeding. They had killed more than a dozen Astartes in one go before Horus swatted them to death.
The Vindicare Assassins fared worst of all. They would find somewhere to lie with a sniper rifle for over a decade, only for Servo-skulls equipped with gravity-field detectors to catch them almost every time.
Compared with the Dark Mechanicum, however, the four assassin temples' efforts amounted to little more than petty trouble.
Bona had never trusted these people from the Adeptus Mechanicus.
No sooner had he authorized the use of abominable intelligence than they produced a reliable artificial