Chapter 173: The Second Tyranid Founding (Patreon)

After all, if the swarm gathered too densely, it might be corrupted. To keep his swarm safe, the Great Devourer had to do something.

Above all, he had to separate the swarm's high-end units, Warrior-class and above, from the ordinary Termagants, Hormagaunts and some of the psychic broods.

That way, if only a group of Warriors betrayed him, he would lose a Hive Tyrant, a few dozen Tyrant Guard, about a thousand Warriors, over a dozen Tyranid Carnifexes and Lictors, and a few Hive Ships.

It would be a heavy loss, but nothing compared to the total annihilation last time.

And if the basic units like Hormagaunts and Termagants betrayed him, he only had to call up a few high-grade units to suppress them quickly.

These Termagants and Hormagaunts would be split up further, too, so their numbers never grew too large. That meant steering clear of some of the harder worlds. Then there was the matter of the high-grade Hive Fleets.

Their numbers had to be strictly limited. They could not be allowed to grow too vast. In the earlier fighting, the sight of high-grade creatures betraying him in swarms that covered the hills and plains had been simply too terrifying.

After all, the Memetic Virus and the seed of Destruction that Heydrich had unleashed were limited in number, and the higher the grade of the target, the more it cost to corrupt.

In truth, only about thirty percent of the swarm had been affected. The rest had been wiped out in cooperation with the Imperium.

Being beaten by the Imperium, or even by dragons, he could have accepted. He had fought plenty of battles against his own food, after all.

But being beaten by his own creatures was something that had never happened before, and it had left him with a psychological scar.

The blow had simply been too great. Splitting the swarm up like this would make it harder to take on the large worlds, but it would raise his efficiency against smaller ones, so it was not much of a weakening.

"Second, the food must be separated as well…"

At that moment the Hive Mind pressed on with the allocation. It was obvious that this time it had probably eaten something it should not have.

So even meals would be served individually. First, the basic fleets would receive their regular supplies: take a planet, then strip it down to the bone. As for these high-grade Hive Fleets…

"From now on, each of you must choose a planet as your homeworld. Your replenishing biomass must come from that homeworld alone."

The Hive Fleets quickly received their orders. They could replenish biomass only on their own worlds, and only up to a set limit. Going over the limit would be treated as corruption, as if they were plotting something big against him.

On the other side, another portion of the swarm was split off to handle special vehicles. They could even spawn Hierophant Bio-Titans, and this branch was the very core of his power.

After all, judging by their performance in the last war, the Hierophants had been utterly loyal. Not one of them had betrayed him. All had fought to the last moment.

There were two reasons. First, the Hierophants had been deployed early and had never been captured by Heydrich. Second, and more importantly, they were so huge, and so costly to corrupt, that Heydrich hadn't bothered with them.

As for the Norn Emissaries, the Hive Mind now regarded them as the very symbol of disloyalty. They had simply betrayed him too many times.

Soon, vast Hive Fleets scattered on the Great Devourer's command and vanished into deep space.

History would call it: the Second Founding of the Tyranid Host.

***

Meanwhile, on a certain planet in the Segmentum Pacificus, an air of despair hung over the whole world.

"Why?!"

The local Planetary Governor stared at the Administratum adept before him, his face twisted with despair and madness.

The adept across from him looked much the same: equally despairing, equally frantic, equally pained.

"I know. But the Great Rift has opened. The Imperium has raised your sector's tithe grade, and there's nothing I can do."

"What do you want me to do? What can I do?!"

The Planetary Governor was numb by now. He pointed at the window. Through the glass of his opulent palace, the local upper-hive was visible, and countless people with vacant eyes were shambling down the streets like walking corpses.

Those were the upper-hive nobles. If the upper-hive looked like this, one could imagine the state of the rest of the planet.

To put it in an ancient phrase:

"In the year of the great famine, men ate one another."

Only because a host of loyal, devoted workers had put down countless rebellions was the whole planet not already exploding.

Adding even one more portion to the tithe would be nearly impossible, even if every one of those loyal workers worked himself to death.

The sector nobles had no choice either. If the tithe went unpaid, the Planetary Governor would die first, then they would follow.

So the entire planet had pulled together, from the upper-hive down to the under-hive and lower-hive, where workers toiled with no regard for their lives, and at last they had scraped together enough for the tithe.

Then came the bolt from the blue: their tithe had been raised by one grade, and what they had prepared was no longer enough.

"So what do you want from me? It's been fifty years since you last came to collect the tithe. Do you know how I got through those fifty years? The resources I spent just preserving the tithe were worth more than the tithe itself!"

The Planetary Governor had blown his top. There was no way to pay it now, no matter what.

"I have no choice either! Even if you killed me, there's nothing I can do!"

The adept wore the look of a man resigned to death. Other Administratum adepts on Holy Terra might work themselves to death at their posts.

Adepts who collected taxes were different. Most collected the tithe only once in a lifetime. When the collection was finished and they returned to Holy Terra, glory awaited them, yet to the adepts themselves it was torment.

Some even put a bullet through their own heads, committing what the Western world counts as the gravest of sins: suicide.

This time he had no recourse over the raised tithe, and a world that had gone decades without collection was especially dangerous.

For many planets, paying the tithe once a year on schedule is no great problem.

The trouble is a world that has gone decades without paying. Its storage costs may exceed the cost of the goods themselves.

Of course, if the tithe has just been collected and another wave arrives a few months later, that problem is much smaller.

The receipt for the earlier payment already exists, so the Administratum can only collect for those few months. And if those months' shortfall isn't wiped from the books outright, that's a problem too, but not a fatal one.

After all, the Imperium doesn't kill you the moment you miss a tithe. You really can run a debt for a while, though not too large a one, and exactly how much depends on the circumstances.

The Imperium wouldn't kill a Planetary Governor over a few months of arrears. As long as he made it up later, it was no big deal.

But decades of nonpayment meant certain death, especially with the tithe raised on the spot.

"According to Imperial records, your planet paid its full tithe on time for the past three thousand years, so the Administratum considers your world a wealthy one…"

The adept said this quietly, and on hearing it the Planetary Governor slumped back onto the sofa behind him.

What kind of logic was this? You paid your tithe on time, so the Administratum raised your tithe grade. And for a world like his, with no special products, the Imperium's demands were limitless.

"I can't pay it anymore…"

Beep, beep, beep!

Just as the Planetary Governor was about to give up, alarms suddenly blared. A fairly sizable Hive Fleet burst out of the streaming light of the warp.

"A Tyranid Hive Fleet!"

The adept and the Planetary Governor cried out almost together.

***

At the same time, elsewhere in space, a Hive Fleet dropped out of faster-than-light travel, and a planet choked with exhaust fumes appeared before it.

"This is the place…"

The will of this Hive Fleet, a fragment of the Great Devourer's will, looked down at the planet below. It was teeming with Genestealers.

They had provided clear coordinates. By the great Devourer's command, and by the sacred Codex Astartes, the fleet was to make this entire planet its homeworld.

This high-grade Hive Fleet would also need to support the wars of the other Hive Fleets in this sector, so the planet was of great importance to it.

The old way of draining a pond to catch every fish would no longer do. They had to take the planet and keep it alive. Only then would they have an endless supply of resources. And so…

The Hive Mind spotted the Administratum's tax ship. It had devoured many planets.

It knew full well what these tax ships were, vessels that sent every noble in the Imperium of Man running in terror. If they collected their tithe, it would be a catastrophe for the whole planet. And so…

By the Hive Mind, how dare they let sacred biomass slip away! And so…

We need a sacred Boarding Action to help this planet reclaim its biomass. And so…

A sacred Boarding Action!

Soon the Hive Fleet charged at the Administratum tithe ship through the planet's orbital defenses. It wasn't a fortress world, after all. There was a planetary defense system, but its firepower was too weak to matter, and the fleet simply endured it.

This time, one principle governed the Great Devourer's rebuilding of his host: separate quality from quantity, since only then could another Great Heresy be avoided.

So the Hive Ships were of extremely high quality and could shrug off the planet's orbital defenses.

***

Down on the planet, the Planetary Governor and the Administratum adept stared slack-jawed at the Hive Fleet.

As everyone knew, before a Hive Fleet arrived, a world first had to face endless Genestealer uprisings. Yet this planet, miserable as it was, had never had an uprising.

The Planetary Governor knew exactly why, but there was nothing he could do about it.

So the Hive Fleet's sudden appearance found him without the slightest defense. And this Tyranid fleet was strangely behaved. It didn't follow the usual tactics of finding a safe spot to drop its troops. It charged, reckless of cost, straight at the adept's ship.

A tithe ship was no warship, and it had no Battle-Brothers aboard. When a Hive Tyrant led its horde to board in person, every ship was quickly overrun.

The swarm didn't blow the ships up. Instead it let them all drift slowly down toward the planet.

By the swarm's logic, the ships were packed with biomass. What a waste to take it away, better to leave it on this planet.

Many Imperial citizens watched in astonishment as the Warriors and Lictors showed no interest in fighting. They raced out of the fallen, mostly intact ships with all sorts of energy bars stacked on their heads.

The things were not tasty, but that was their only flaw. They actually contained a fairly complete range of nutrients. For over ninety-nine percent of Imperial citizens, they were the most delicious food they would ever get their hands on.

"Still collecting taxes now?"

Everything had happened so fast that it was over before the adept had even come to his senses.

More importantly, the Tyranid creatures attacked no one. They dashed out of the hive and into the wastelands beyond.

"…"

The adept looked at the Planetary Governor, who wore the same dumbfounded face as his own, then at the empty planetary orbit. His expression turned to despair.

With the ships gone, what was there left to collect? He would have to stay here forever.

"My daughter is just the right age now, and I wonder if you…"

A thought struck the Planetary Governor: this man would probably never see Holy Terra again in his lifetime.

He would most likely spend the rest of his life here, and since he was an envoy of Terra, the Governor, a political animal to the core, had already worked out a great many angles.

As for the Tyranid swarm…

He didn't know what had happened, but a Tyranid swarm of this size was nothing special.

"Distribute the tithe among everyone and prepare for war. I doubt we'll ever have to face a tithe again in our lifetimes."

The Planetary Governor split up the tithe without a shred of hesitation. The Administratum's ships had already crashed here anyway. And the wrecks were still fairly intact. The Tyranids had carried off a lot, but plenty remained.

If the Imperium came again, he would say everything inside had been destroyed by the Tyranids. For the first time, he found the Tyranids rather endearing. What a great sage of balancing the books.