bookbashuk Chapter 37 Tax Bill
Chapter 37 Tax Bill
Three days after the Black Pearl docked, Liu En went to the office of the Imperial Executive Council's Tax Service in Lucis.
The grey building stood on the outskirts of the Temple Quarter, nestled between two machine gun repair workshops. Its exterior was a single piece of cast-iron armor plating, inscribed with the double-headed eagle emblem of the Tax Service and the year of construction in both Low Gothic and Classical High Gothic. Below this followed a line of faded gold lettering on a black background: "Tithing is the cornerstone of the Empire; the Emperor watches over every account." Only two Ministry of Justice guards, clad in semi-powered armor, leaned against the doorframe, laser rifles in hand. There was no queue; there never had been.
Tithes are the collective collection of resources and manpower levied by the Empire on millions of worlds. Every regular world within the Empire's territory is obligated to pay taxes. These taxes are collected by the Ministry of the Interior. The Tax Bureau is merely one branch of its vast reach across various star sectors. Taxation is perpetual; the Empire doesn't care who governs a planet or how they govern it. As long as taxes are paid on time and in full, the Empire doesn't care who sits in the governor's chair. But what if you fail to pay? The Empire won't kill you. Once the due date has passed, the Empire will retrieve the world's data from its pre-stored contingency plans and deliver it, along with its armed fleet, to you. Your only obligations are loyalty to the Empire and timely payment of tithes. This land is not your private property; you merely manage it on behalf of the Emperor.
So Liu En came.
He pushed open the door and entered, giving his administrative number from the Garros system. The clerk who greeted him was a man in his forties with three parallel mechanical implant interfaces on his forehead, and a badge on his chest indicating he was an assistant auditor at the Imperial Tax Service's Lucis office. He entered the data a few times, frowned, tapped the old Thinker terminal, and then retrieved the file.
"Development license activated." His voice was dry. "The current tithe—overdue for more than 300 days, including principal and interest—is 106,720 Throne Coins. The tithe for this period will be recalculated from today."
The Empire never determines taxes based on actual production figures from that year. It uses a fixed tax schedule calculated by experts from ancient reports, and even if your planet has transformed from a barren wasteland into an industrial hub, your tax bill will still show the figures from that era. Accept it or die. There is no room for negotiation.
Liu En took out an encrypted data crystal from his pocket and placed it on the counter along with a metal prepaid card used by the tax bureau. The money in the prepaid card was from selling equipment in Wandering Harbor last month—the Valancius family's orders accounted for more than half of it, and the rest came from small-batch purchases by several regular merchants, wanderers, and mine owners.
"First, pay the outstanding amount for the current period. Then, prepay one-tenth of the taxes for the next ten years. A tax payment certificate is required."
The assistant auditor took it and processed it for a while, then looked up at Liu En, then looked down and pushed the paper tax payment certificate and metal document bag over.
"Gallos System, the current tithe arrears have been settled. The prepaid tax covers 936.M41 to 946.M41. Please submit a reassessment application to the local office of the Tax Service or any Imperial authorized agency before the expiry of the next millennium assessment period. If the declaration is not completed within the specified period, the Tax Service has the right to adjust the tax amount based on existing file data without further notice."
The assistant reviewer added, "You can also apply for a re-evaluation now, provided you can provide a complete development report on Gallo's full industrialization over the past century. If you cannot provide that—" He tapped the counter lightly with his finger and then closed the data panel.
What Liu En prepaid wasn't money, but time. Buying ten years of peace in Garros with 100,000 Throne Coins a year—it's a win-win situation no matter how you look at it.
Liu En put away the tax payment receipt and walked out of the office. The two Ministry of Justice guards were still leaning against the door frame, their posture unchanged.
Upon returning to the Black Pearl, several newly boarded veterans were completing their formalities at the gangway. The garrison had expanded to over six hundred men, and with the addition of new logistics personnel, the total number of people on board exceeded seven hundred. The corridors were busier than usual, but orderly.
Liu En walked through the passageway and entered the reception room. The emperor's statue stood silently overlooking the room, and the smoke from frankincense slowly rose in the dim light.
He sat down at his workbench and retrieved an ancient exploration record from Marcus's data core. This data came from the abandoned outpost discovered at the bottom of Amighiddon, one of the legacies Marcus had acquired and left behind during his lifetime. Similar coordinate information was abundant in the data core, but most were marked with extremely high risk levels or were too old to be of any use.
Liu En spent several hours sifting through the data and even made a special trip to the Temple Archives to cross-reference several candidate coordinates with the Empire's recent navigation records and the Mechanicus' internal reports. Ultimately, he narrowed it down to two coordinates.
The first one is located in the eastern frontier of the extreme star field, a space that is marked extremely vaguely even on the official star map of the empire.
Marcus's records contain a brief excerpt: "Dullob Sand." In mid-M37, the Imperium launched its first expedition to this world, immediately encountering fierce resistance from unidentified alien creatures. The main force of the expedition suffered heavy losses in a protracted war and was ultimately forced to evacuate under the cover of "Purification" bombing. The planet's surface was marked "conditionally sealed off." The Imperium did not establish any permanent facilities afterward, nor did it send any follow-up troops.
Beside the file, Marcus wrote a note in a mix of binary and High Gothic: "It is believed that a locked 'Silent Core' is buried in the ruins of the Expeditionary Force Headquarters, whose technological features overlap with the early technological remnants of the emerging anomaly force on the eastern frontier (file number: Xenos_Minor_Tau). If recovered, its value in reversing the underlying protocols of thought logic loops will far exceed that of recovering conventional military equipment."
Marcus added at the end of his note: "I really want to see it."
But he didn't get his chance.
Unlike the Empire, the young Tau race did not despise or fear artificial intelligence. They simply deliberately limited the development of self-awareness in their own mech AI to prevent repeating the fate of the human "Iron Rebellion." However, the "Silent Core" was far larger than the capacity of a conventional tactical mech, and whether something even more ancient was preserved inside remained a mystery Marcus's records did not provide an answer. Dulob Sand was an open tomb. After the expeditionary fleet withdrew, the Empire did not send any follow-up troops. How much remained of the "Source of AI," untouched for three thousand years? What else was buried in the tomb? He wanted to see for himself.
The second coordinate is also in the Eastern Sector. Marcus's log contains only a single, concise description: "Space wreck, coordinates verified." The risk assessment is marked in yellow, next to which is a handwritten note: "Genestealer infection confirmed. Signs of Greenskin spread. Risk manageable, worth investigating."
Derek ships are one of the most common threats in the warp. Hundreds and thousands of ships lost in the warp collide and merge in the chaotic tides, forming irregular aggregates of wreckage, space stations, and various types of space debris. Some wrecks are teeming with greenskins, while others are teeming with gene-stealers. Marcus notes "risk manageable," indicating that, in his assessment, the greenskins and gene-stealers have not yet reached a significant scale. However, he also warns that fungal jungles are spreading inside the wrecks, and pure-blooded gene-stealers tend to mutate faster and become more aggressive in this environment.
Marcus added a sentence at the very end of that note, his tone more nuanced than his usual archival-like sternness: "The risks are manageable, but we must not let our guard down in this place."
Liu En's reasoning for choosing this coordinate was simple. Many of the coordinates marked in yellow were already occupied, but this location was remote and dangerous enough that no imperial fleet had sent ships there in the past three thousand years. The first coordinate was used to probe the Tau race's technology, and the second to fill gaps in military-grade equipment blueprints. He currently possessed mostly generic equipment salvaged from wrecked ship warehouses; he needed things that could truly enhance combat capabilities, and the chances of finding them through unconventional means were far greater than through official channels. However, the space wrecked ships still needed to be carefully assessed once they arrived there, given their age of several thousand years.
Liu En marked the two coordinates on the star map and turned off the projection. The frankincense in the incense burner had burned out, leaving only ashes. The emperor's statue was now just a blurry outline in the darkness.
After returning to Lucis, during his rest days in port, Liu En took some time to visit his workshop in Zhongchao. He sculpted another body—ordinary-looking, 1.9 meters tall, with a broad frame. He named this body: Enpu. That was the name of his first mech servant, which had long since been replaced by a number, leaving the name blank. Now he gave it to this clone.
The hatch of the life support capsule closed, and the vital signs monitoring lights flashed rhythmically. Enpu lay dormant in the nutrient solution, awaiting his first awakening.
Liu En's consciousness ascended into a higher dimension. Two anchor points floated quietly—Cohen's bright, like the nuclear flame of a star, and Enpu's steady, like magma slowly flowing deep within the Earth's mantle. His consciousness lightly touched Enpu's anchor point, and his consciousness surged into that body like a tide.
Inside the life support pod at Zhongchao Workshop, Enpu opened his eyes.
The glass hatch slowly opened, and the nutrient solution silently receded. He sat up, his dark gray robe folded on the metal table beside him. He pulled it over and draped it over himself, habitually pulling the hood down low. His 1.9-meter height made the low ceiling of the workshop seem somewhat cramped.
Enp is the right person to go to Garros. The Black Pearl has its own path to follow, while he will start from scratch on that forgotten planet of the Empire and build the foundation of an industrial world with his own hands.