The Emperor’s Angel of Death

The Biologis Magos echoed Marakin's words in agreement.

"Battle Brother Marakin's description is precise. Yes, an assassin. Its entire design revolves around that function. It was the discovery of this creature that gave us a deeper understanding of the Tyranid hive mind."

"Indeed, this implies that the Tyranid hive mind can differentiate between the ranks of opponents, even evolving highly specialized bio-weapons to carry out assassinations and decapitation strikes... This is terrifying."

Andar interjected with a change of subject.

"How was such a creature killed? I don't recall anyone reporting the discovery of such a thing."

"Likely it was accidentally destroyed during a large-scale bombardment."

This explanation was somewhat far-fetched, but Andar didn't delve deeper, only glancing at Sotha Nul.

"Therefore, everyone must pay close attention to such creatures during combat. The Tyranids won't create just one. I suspect they intend to use this weapon against human commanders."

Sotha Nul nodded in response, then extended his hand.

"Thank you very much for the efforts of you and the other Tech-Priests. We won't disturb your work any longer."

After shaking hands with the Magos, Sotha Nul was about to lead his men away when the Biologis Magos stopped him.

"Chapter Master Sotha Nul, there is one more thing."

"What is it?"

"It can now be determined that this hive fleet is a new hive fleet never before recorded by the Imperium. According to past practice, it needs to be assigned a designation. I don't think anyone is more qualified than you."

Normally, this task would be done by the Ordo Xenos, but since the Magos said so, Sotha Nul felt that he had been running back and forth and racking his brains to compete with the hive, indeed no one was more qualified than him to name his opponent.

After a moment of thought, Sotha Nul said a name.

"Then this hive fleet will be named Cerberus."

Hearing this name, Seth nodded.

"The three-headed hound from the sulfurous hell, a very fitting name. Now this hound has had two of its heads chopped off by us."

Sotha Nul smiled slightly.

"If we don't find a way, the heads that were chopped off will grow back."

Not long after the meeting, the fleet arrived at the Vestro System in the Saint Caspalen diocese, which was the closest system to the war zone. Refugees evacuated from the Venosi System, the Longobardi System, and the Saint Trigo System would first be transported here, and then transferred to other systems in the diocese. Therefore, when the fleet arrived, the starport here was already full of transport ships. Not only that, but even the only three habitable planets were now overcrowded, with makeshift refugee camps everywhere.

As a result, all sorts of overwhelming problems poured in on Sotha Nul: hunger, disease, and unrest. The local primitive feudal administrative system simply couldn't withstand such an impact and fell into complete paralysis from the start. Some people even took the opportunity to make war profits, hoarding food and raising prices, trying to squeeze the last promethium coin from the refugees. There were even large-scale human trafficking phenomena. Although there was a fixed standard of sustenance rations for each person, less than half of it might actually reach the refugees. Less than five days after arriving in the system, Sotha Nul saw shocking cases of corruption, even involving high-ranking servitors of the chapter responsible for material distribution. The amount of relief food involved reached more than eight thousand four hundred tons. They colluded with layers of connections to deceive their superiors and subordinates, and massively embezzled the already extremely tight food, medicine, clothing, daily necessities and other emergency supplies by forging personnel lists and overreporting losses, which led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

But this was even considered good, at least there was a relatively spacious environment on the planet. The refugees who were forced to crowd on the transport ships were even more miserable, not only had to endure the turbid air, but also had to endure the sanitary conditions that were about to collapse. Coupled with the severe shortage of supplies, many people had to take risks to commit crimes in order to survive. Many women had to sell their bodies to become prostitutes in order to obtain survival supplies to support their families. The dark environment and poor security further fueled the resentment and anger in people's hearts. Riots occurred from time to time, and the captains often chose to suppress them severely. Some captains even claimed that they used more bullets than food. In order to survive, young refugees had to band together to form gangs. What was even worse was that some heretical cult groups began to appear inside.

The people of the diocese were devout, but also fragile. When they faced the deepest darkness and despair, and found that their faith was completely useless, they were very likely to turn to other things.

As for why such a chaotic situation was created, of course, one of the reasons was that the system was underdeveloped, with almost no environmental modification capabilities. Many planets were simply uninhabitable because the environment was relatively harsh, and there was no way to build orbital settlements, let alone satellite cities.

Considering that the number of refugees gathered in this system had reached 2.4 billion, even a developed hive city would find it difficult to accommodate such a large population in a short period of time. Although transport fleets were transporting refugees to the arranged rear areas non-stop, due to the greatly reduced number of habitable worlds in the diocese, as well as communication problems and the speed of decision-making, only 13 million people could be transferred out each month.

Overcrowding was one of the root causes of the problem. The second was the diocese's relatively backward administrative system and industrial capacity, and the priests often seemed flustered when faced with emergencies.

Sotha Nul didn't have a good solution to this situation, so he could only do it himself, using an iron fist to quickly establish order. All refugee camps were militarized and managed, with families as units, ten households as one jia, and ten jia as one bao. Every family with two or more adult males would send one person to be a bao ding, who would conduct military training in their spare time and maintain order by patrolling and guarding. The jia leaders and bao leaders were preferably those with some military experience, followed by those who had held administrative positions, followed by those with wealth, status, and reputation, and finally those who were elected by the bao households themselves.

Homeless men, women, old people, and young children were sent to unified orphanages, while young adults were incorporated into the Faith Watch, receiving complete military training as militiamen or serving in other positions. The elderly or disabled were arranged jobs by the church.

Accompanying this was a strict joint liability system, with each household jointly guaranteeing each other.

This temporary system was recommended to Sotha Nul by Andar, who told Sotha Nul that this baojia system was very popular in the Achilles war zone. Its main advantage was that it could save a lot of military investment and establish a strict security network. Although this greatly restricted personal freedom and it was difficult to avoid severe oppression and enslavement, freedom was the most useless thing to the Imperium, and oppression and enslavement were already the norm within the Imperium.