95: Chapter 95 Beneath the Spider's Web (Part 2)

The strange, aria-like tone forced Jean Sart to maintain intense focus to accurately distinguish the precise information hidden within those syllables.

The Tax Chief pulled an appointment letter bearing the double-headed eagle emblem from his desk drawer and placed it on the desktop.

"After deliberation by the Tax Administration, our sector has been tasked with this mission, on the grounds that the tithe from our sector has not been paid for a long time. And I have decided that you shall be the overseer."

As he spoke, he picked up a quill and wrote the appointment in beautiful, ornate high gothic calligraphy on the scroll, then handed the pen to Jean Sart, his face wearing a warm smile that even gave the impression of obsequiousness.

"Overseer Sartre, congratulations."

Jean Sart did not take the pen immediately.

The Tax Chief did not mind, merely smiling as he watched him.

He quickly calculated the risks in his mind.

Ammunition logistics; he was familiar with it.

He had handled countless such military supply allocations.

Inspecting cargo, coordinating transport fleets, liaising with war zones—he understood every step of the process.

This was not a difficult matter to handle, although it was important.

Furthermore, once this was accomplished, his lord would have sufficient grounds to commend him before the High Council of Terra, as the ammunition supply was a requirement of the Regent.

This was an opportunity for his lord to tear a fissure into the rigid power map of Terra.

If he were praised in a public setting, especially by the Emperor's Children, he could become the one to break through Terra's information blockade. With no one able to stop his promotion, he could then expose and exacerbate the contradictions among the Terran nobility; while the heart of the Empire was untouchable for his lord, there were far fewer such constraints in the middle ranks.

In the Empire, local factions feared most being pushed to the forefront; their power derived from private operations, and when forced to stand in the spotlight and declare a stance, they lost all choices.

At that point, if his lord used a sure-fire issue to force the High Lords to take a stance and leave a record, the political consequences could be shared across the entire High Council of Terra.

This would allow him to use the deterrence of the Regent to purge these noble families that were hindering him on Terra.

He took the quill.

The nib paused for a moment on the appointment letter.

Then he signed his name.

The appointment letter was folded into a square, sealed with wax and the Tax Chief's signet, and quickly taken away by a staff officer.

He assumed this was merely an oversight mission within the Tax Administration, a chance to earn merit, a task well within his capabilities and control.

But what he did not know was—from the moment he took that pen, he had walked into a web.

A web not woven for him and his lord, yet he happened to be standing right in the center of it.

Several days later, all preparatory work was complete.

The levy order had been drafted, and the overseer's name had been signed.

But Jean Sart paused before the selection of the "Execution Sector."

His pen hung in mid-air.

He did not know what to fill in.

He scoured every file in the Tax Administration, but he could not find a complete sector tax map.

He went to ask the archives.

The archives replied, "It cannot be provided, because too many worlds have been lost and then retaken, and no one dares to bear the cost of a recording error. Error is blasphemy, and error requires atonement; the sacred territory of the Empire is a gift from the undying Emperor to mortals."

He went to ask his colleagues, and they smiled and told him, "You are new here; don't worry, take your time to familiarize yourself, you will get used to it."

He knew, he understood, he grasped that since the Great Rift opened, the Empire had been like this.

He had even heard of such temporary, specially approved positions within the Tax Administration. The Tax Administration's duty was originally to audit, verify, and supervise the precise collection of the Imperial tithe, but such sudden issuances to satisfy the needs of some high-ranking figure or important department were the norm here.

Those who know, know; in the Empire, the benefits for those handling such temporary departments were immense.

But at the same time, they were also aware of the immense political power involved, and how serious the consequences of any negligence or lack of cooperation would be.

It had been less than a millennium since the Regent Guilliman purged the High Council of Terra.

The levy order was ready, but he did not know where to fill in the target of execution.

The morning of the second day after he submitted his application report to the Tax Administration, a middle-aged man dressed in dark grey Administratum robes knocked on his office door.

He used a high-pitched, aria-like tone with a slight lisp to clarify his intentions.

"Overseer Sartre, apologies for the intrusion. I am a Senior Clerk from the Administratum Archive Coordination Department, ordered to assist you in confirming the target for the levy order."

His attitude was extremely respectful, and he held a stack of organized files in his hands.

The first page of the files contained the names of three sectors, their tax status, and a note written in beautiful, ornate low gothic calligraphy— "Recommended for priority collection."

"These three are the candidate sectors I selected according to the requirements of the transfer order. All are within the collection window, and the most recent tithe payment records have... room for optimization."

Jean Sart was still not very accustomed to the local Terran language, especially the deliberately used aria-like tones and exaggerated lisps of the high noble families.

They turned speech into poetry recitations to highlight the difference between themselves and outsiders.

Jean Sart took the files and flipped through them page by page.

Three sectors.

All three looked suitable.

But he did not recognize these three names and did not know where they were.

He also did not know: the grandfather of the "Senior Clerk" before him, and even generations before that, had served as stewards in the same family estate.

He carefully reviewed, flipped through, and pondered, admitting that he could not distinguish any difference between these three sectors.

He turned the question back to the clerk: "Which one do you recommend?"

The clerk's recommendation was focused and earnest: "The first one. Viridis Sector."

After a slight pause, he added the reason: "This sector's tithe payment record has not been fully paid for a long time; it is the most suitable for collection, and it is in the Ultima Segmentum, closest to the Regent, and near the Regent's fiefdom, the 500 Worlds of Ultramar."

Jean Sart nodded.

He picked up his pen and wrote "Viridis Sector" in the execution sector column of the levy order.

He did not know that the family controlling the Viridis Sector had a family crest of a tulip.

Golden!

In high gothic archives, it was written as Tulipae, but in low gothic, it was Tulip.

A difference in pronunciation, a small trick of language, had pushed him into an abyss of self-destruction.

That was one of the most important political allies of his lord, the Master of Administratum.

When the clerk left, as he stepped out of the Tax Administration hall and the sunlight spread over him, a mocking smile quietly appeared on the corner of his mouth: Hillbilly.

He had not only played a game with accents and words, but also employed an ancient form of manipulation: when giving someone options, place the one you want them to choose first.

Because human default preferences are always the "first" and the "last," and the "first," due to cognitive inertia, will always have the highest probability of being selected.

After the levy order was issued, it entered the standard procedures of the Administratum.

The verifier saw "Viridis Sector" on the levy order and was stunned.

The Tulipae family?

He was one of the few who understood the relationship between this family and the Master of Administratum.

But a line of small print at the top of the document noted it clearly—personally concerned by the Master of Administratum, and the handwriting appeared to be that of the Tax Chief himself.

He hesitated for a moment, then picked up his pen and added a note in the margin: "This matter is personally concerned by the Master of Administratum; all executing units must cooperate efficiently."

He had no malice; he simply wanted to remind those in subsequent stages of the importance of this matter.

But when this note fell into the eyes of the person in the next stage, the meaning became: If you don't collect enough, find a way to make up the difference yourselves.

Thus, the second stop: the Sector Governor Joint Conference.

The projections of seven governors sat around a round table, passing around copies of that document.

"The Master's man is personally overseeing this... Viridis?"

"The Tulip family's sector?"

Silence.

No one wanted to be the first to speak.

But everyone was calculating the same thing.

Had the Tulip family and the Iris family already made their conflict public?

If the Tulip family was being warned, what about them?

No one wanted to be the one who "did not cooperate."

"Each sector... uniformly increase by 30%."

"Agreed."

"Agreed."

Thus, the third stop: the seven worlds under the jurisdiction of the Viridis Sector.