Chapter 302: The Beisu System (Patreon)

…

At the same time.

Yoan stood on the bridge of a transport vessel, gazing through the armored viewing port as the ship slowly approached its destination world.

It was a Hive World, vast beyond reason, far larger than Talon I had ever been before its rebirth. Even from high orbit, the planet’s surface was clearly visible beneath the haze of pollution and cloud cover: endless geometric scars of steel and ferrocrete, continent-spanning lattices of hab-blocks, manufactoria, transit rails, and spires, etched across the planet’s surface.

The cities did not merely sit upon the world, they replaced it, sprawling networks of steel and adamantium that marked the outward growth of the hive cities themselves. Entire oceans had been paved over in adamantium and plasteel centuries ago, their former depths reduced to forgotten names in Administratum archives.

This world did not possess merely a single hive.

It hosted many.

Across the planet’s surface lay countless rhomboid metallic scars, great and small alike, each one a massive hive city in its own right. Some rose like mountains of metal, others spread low and wide, choking entire continents beneath their mass. The lesser hives were invisible from orbit, swallowed entirely by the scale of the planet’s urban sprawl.

“Beisu I,” someone said softly. “As you can see, a major Hive World. This is the capital of the system.”

Anruida stepped up beside Yoan, holding a glass of amasec. He passed it over without ceremony and stood shoulder to shoulder with him, both of them watching the planet grow larger as the ship descended along a sanctioned orbital corridor.

The moment Yoan noticed him, irritation flared in his chest.

By all rights, he should have been on Talon III right now, on leave. Perhaps diving into the oceans with his daughter, holding her as they descended into the depths, using the built-in systems of his Thunderborn-grade body to glide through the underwater world. A rare luxury, and one he had already promised.

But that was no longer happening.

No matter what, Anruida had insisted on dragging him back into active duty.

“‘Beisu,’” Yoan murmured, swirling the amasec but not drinking it. “The name sounds… strange. Does it mean anything?”

Anruida shook his head slowly.

“Although the planetary governor bears an uncanny resemblance to me,” he said dryly, “I have no idea what the name means, nor how it was chosen.”

Yoan snorted softly and let the matter drop. The Imperium was filled with worlds bearing nonsensical names, half-remembered languages, and traditions older than recorded history. Compared to that, this was trivial.

What mattered was something else entirely.

“Why did you insist on calling me here?” Yoan asked.

Even before his departure to kill Bellona, he had known Anruida had been constantly moving along the fringes of the Talon Sector, absorbing nearby systems, aligning logistics, folding them into the growing Sector. The goal was clear: a ring-shaped defensive zone, a layered bulwark against xenos, heretics, and the endless entropy of the galaxy.

The Gate of Talon.

But Anruida was a Thunderborn, one of His Companions and more than that, a specialist in administration and compliance. He was a weaponized bureaucrat, capable of turning planetary governments inside out with parchment and precedent alone.

What kind of obstacle could prevent him from incorporating this system into the sector?

“This system is… special,” Anruida said after a pause. “And this hive is special as well.”

He did not explain immediately, instead turning to the system’s history.

“Do you remember several years ago,” Anruida asked, “when you fought on the Forge World Agrippina? The one you, Grey, and the Celestial Engine defended together?”

Yoan nodded once.

“Yes,” Yoan replied, slower now.

“This system,” Anruida said, gesturing toward the planet, “supplied aspirants to the White Scars two thousand years ago. Then again, two hundred years ago, a single recruit was accepted into the Chapter.”

He turned to Yoan.

“That aspirant was Chen Ye.”

Yoan stared at Anruida, eyes widening despite himself. He had never imagined that the Beisu System had ties to the White Scars, nor that Chen Ye, whom he had last seen on Agrippina, was connected to this place.

“He told me he was a newling,” Yoan said, surprised.

“A newling by Astartes standards,” Anruida nodded. “But Chen Ye may have concealed certain details. He is not as new as he claimed. And he is currently on Beisu I.”

Yoan frowned slightly. “The White Scars, I heard, recruit from Chogoris, their homeworld,” he said. “Almost exclusively.”

“Correct,” Anruida replied. “They are among the most conservative Chapters when it comes to recruitment.”

He folded his hands behind his back, voice calm, instructional.

“The White Scars believe that culture is as important as gene-seed compatibility. Chogoris does not merely produce physically capable warriors, it produces men shaped by a nomadic warrior ethos, raised in constant motion, accustomed to independence, speed, and personal honor.”

“Those traits,” he continued, “are not incidental. They are foundational to how the Chapter fights, commands, and survives.”

Yoan listened in silence.

“For that reason,” Anruida said, “the White Scars almost never recruit beyond Chogoris and its immediate protectorates. To do so risks inducting warriors who cannot truly assimilate into the Chapter’s way of war.”

“Then why Beisu?” Yoan asked.

Anruida inclined his head slightly.

“Because exceptions are permitted under very specific conditions.”

“Occasionally,” he said, “a world will demonstrate cultural convergence, independent warrior traditions, mounted or high-mobility combat doctrines, clan-based social structures, and a demonstrated resistance to rigid hierarchies. Such worlds are rare.”

He gestured again toward the planet below.

“Beisu I was identified millennia ago as one of them.”

Yoan’s gaze returned to the hive world, its endless steel expanses sliding past the viewing port.

“Long before full hive consolidation,” Anruida continued, “Beisu maintained steppe-born nomad cultures across its landmasses. When industrialization came, those traditions did not vanish, they were absorbed. The lower hives still produce gang-clans, courier-warriors, and independent enforcers accustomed to speed, violence, and personal initiative.”

“A hunting ground,” Yoan said quietly.

“A proving ground,” Anruida corrected.

“The White Scars do not maintain permanent recruitment facilities here,” he added. “They never will. That would imply ownership, and the Chapter rejects that notion.”

“Instead,” Anruida said, “once every few centuries, an emissary is dispatched. If a candidate proves worthy, they are taken. If not, the Chapter departs, and the world hears nothing further.”

Yoan nodded thoughtfully, then asked again, “So why call me here?”

“Chen Ye has been dispatched as an intermediary,” Anruida said, producing a parchment sealed with the handprint of the White Scars’ Chapter Master. The vellum bore purity seals and astropathic verification codes. “The White Scars wish to support the integration of the Beisu System into the Talon Sector, but with the condition that they may continue to recruit from this world in the future.”

“And Chen Ye himself has an additional request,” Anruida added. “He wishes to speak with someone he knows. That someone is you.”

Yoan glanced at the parchment and nodded.

He did not know why Chen Ye insisted on speaking to him specifically, but he was willing to make the trip in person. If nothing else, he owed the man that much.

“I’ll go with you to the hive spire,” Yoan said.

“No,” Anruida replied immediately. “I’m heading to the spire to negotiate with the planetary nobility.”

He glanced downward, toward the lower strata.

“Chen Ye is in the lower hive.”

….

When the Lord of Talon’s Thunderborn arrived on Beisu I for the first time, the planetary elite had been caught unprepared.

When they arrived the second time, Beisu I ensured that it welcomed them properly.

A grand parade swept through the upper hive.

The Planetary Defence Force marched in flawless formation, ranks perfectly aligned, weapons clean, armor maintained to parade-grade standards. These were no ragged PDF militias of a backward world, but disciplined soldiers drilled for both internal security and planetary defense.

The Noble Guard followed, nearly a hundred thousand strong. They were not mere household retainers, but a formalized standing army, equipped with carapace armor, armored transports, and officers trained in Imperial tactical doctrine. In some respects, they rivaled regiments of the Imperial Guard.

Anyone with eyes could tell that Beisu I maintained a formidable military. Over tens of thousands of years, isolated almost to the same degree as the Talon System itself, the Beisu System had been forced to rely on strength of arms to safeguard its survival.

The planetary governors gathered atop a gilded spire in the upper hive, standing beside Anruida as they watched the parade unfold below. They feasted, drank, and spoke eagerly, each governor carefully signaling loyalty, expressing their willingness to have their forces absorbed into the Talon Army under favorable terms.

Every one of them was polite. Cooperative. Sensible.

None of this had anything to do with Yoan.

He stood alone in the lower hive, waiting for Chen Ye amid filth-choked streets.

Compared to the upper hive and the spire, the lower hive was squalor incarnate, worse even than the underhive of Talon I back when it had still been a normal Hive World. Here, the air itself felt heavy, saturated with chemical residue and the unwashed press of humanity.

Perhaps the population density was to blame.

As if that were not enough, acidic rain fell from the polluted sky, hissing as it struck metal and stone alike.

Talon’s hives had not seen acid rain since the rebel governor had transferred heavy industry to Talon II, so Yoan had not prepared for this, but thankfully, the adaptive membrane coating his synthetic skin neutralized the corrosive droplets on contact, leaving faint steam trails as they evaporated.

“Call Saul! I’ve been detained by the Arbites! I have the right to call Saul!”

“…”

As he waited, Yoan glanced at a pitch-black holo-advertisement board mounted to a leaning hab-wall. Against expectation, it was playing something genuinely entertaining, or at least functional.

An Adeptus Arbites female officer appeared on-screen, dressed in a stylized uniform that made her resemble an entertainment-district worker more than a law enforcer. She snapped manacles onto a man who stared at the camera with exaggerated terror, loudly reciting rehearsed advertising lines.

Then another man appeared on-screen, respectably dressed by lower-hive standards, delivering his lines with dramatic facial expressions. 

“Were you framed by a bald man? Dragged before the Arbites? Lost your case because that man is an exemplary Imperial citizen and the Ministry of Justice believed him instead of you?”

He leaned closer to the camera.

“I am Saul. I fight for you.”

“...”

Yoan watched in silence, then muttered, “It seems this hive governor’s administration is… competent.”

The very existence of such an advertisement suggested that Beisu I’s rulers at least respected procedure. They would not do something absurd, like unleashing servo-hounds to sniff two suspects and then execute whichever one got bitten.

“You’re only seeing the dying light of the sunset,” a voice said behind him.

Yoan turned.

Chen Ye stood there.

The White Scars Space Marine looked nothing like he had on Agrippina. He wore no power armor, only a black rain cloak that shed acid like oil on water. His body bore extensive crude augmetics, muscle bundles artificially swollen and reinforced, making him resemble a cybernetically enhanced brute rather than a noble Astartes.

They did not greet each other. They did not salute.

They simply locked eyes.

Neither of them was a man of words.

But both remembered fighting back-to-back, carving their way out of the arena alive.

That was a bond forged in blood.

A bond that did not require ceremony.