This is our Warhammer journey

Chapter 158 It’s been ten thousand years, it’s time for a change (two in one)

There will never be a smooth war. In this universe, there is only bad news and worse news.

Nearly five thousand Astartes, mainly composed of Ultramarines, including dozens of Imperial capital ships, more than one hundred and twenty Astra Militarum legions, and the Ultramar Defense Line built mainly on the ocean fortress world of Tyranids on the edge of the galaxy were torn apart.

Marshal Ledotus sighed in his heart.

Although the annihilation of the Imperial Navy in the Ultramar space was a bad thing, unexpectedly, he finally found the familiar feeling of fighting in the past.

The expeditionary fleet's offensive was too successful, so successful that it seemed impossible for the Empire to accomplish it.

As expected, the Ultramar region is the normal level of the 40k Empire.

In the past, the normal situation was: the sector defense fleet was completely annihilated - the enemy and our side began to fight each other over the space region - the sector government received the news and reported it, and Terra spent years or even decades processing it - because of the efficiency of information transmission, support from the Astra Militarum, Astartes, and Mechanicus arrived one after another, and both sides gradually increased their efforts, and the intensity of the war began to gradually increase over time -

By the time the next round of support from the Imperial Navy arrived, the planet would have either been recaptured through the heroic sacrifice of Imperial soldiers, or would have fallen into chaos or been completely plundered by aliens.

There is rarely a time to catch up.

And the beginning of all these tragic sacrifices——

It was just a problem that could be easily solved after the Imperial Navy "carefully analyzed the strength of both sides, fought around the planet's air defense system, and fired two shots at the planet's surface after winning the space battle."

Anyway, he felt that the reason for the defeat must be inseparable from the navy's independent action, or some forces arbitrarily changing the defense line, or the Terra government mobilizing troops, which led to a series of chain reactions, so that Ultramar had to send an urgent request for help.

"Lord Romulus."

Ledotus spoke.

"Please say."

Romulus took a deep breath. As the initiator of the meeting, he even forgot that everyone was present and was still thinking about the problem.

The four lords should have some understanding of the Empire, especially those who were responsible for the overall affairs of the expedition. They also spent a lot of effort to integrate a series of combat experiences, compiled them into a book, and then sent it to Calgar in Macragge through special channels of the Inquisition.

Ledotus looked at the seemingly calm expression, but he could see an emotion called bitterness and hatred in the furrowed brow.

All arms are unilaterally transparent, and the actual combat guidance is like this
Fortunately, the elders are unaware of the current situation in the empire. I guess once the detailed battle reports are analyzed, anyone who can maintain a mentality like Lord Romulus will be considered well-educated.

"I will use the Black Templars' emergency contact protocol to learn what happened in Ultramar."

Ledotus didn't know what to say, so he could only do what he could.

The Black Templars' footprints are all over the galaxy, and their fleets can be found in almost all five major star regions.

Long before everyone planned to rush to Macragge's aid, two small fleets that had not received the Emperor's call were patrolling the Northern Ultramar star field. They were now fighting under the command of Calgar, the Lord of Ultramar and Chapter Master of the Ultramarines.

They should be able to bring back first-hand news from the battlefield.

"The trial court will also use its own channels to collect evidence and restore the truth of the incident as much as possible."

Aglaia also quickly added that she had a lot of information channels recently, including the direct contact information of the Grand Master of the Assassin's Court. The various High Lords' Councils had also given her more or less authority, hoping that she could make good contributions to the empire.

I can only say thank you to the expedition fleet for being willing to take her along, as a bunch of benefits just fell down out of thin air.

As for the phone number of the Grand Master of the Assassin's Court, under normal circumstances, she shouldn't have known about it until she died.

Many colleagues within the Origin Tracing Order have already been trying to curry favor with her, hoping to get more support in their future historical research activities.

Oh, it’s such a wonderful thing to be able to move together with the expedition fleet.

But now, someone wants to stir up trouble, someone intends to tarnish this expedition that should have been completed with absolute victory and glory from beginning to end.

"If you have any questions about obtaining information, you can come to me."

She made it clear directly that everything should be done in a safe way.

Of course, Aglaia knew where her power came from, so she never thought about causing trouble. She was not a psychic of prophecy who was suspicious every day.

Steady, steadily complete the duties assigned by the Empire, steadily do your own job well, and steadily assist the expeditionary fleet to win the expedition—

Then retire safely!
Aglaia, who kept reviewing the news of the collapse of the Macragge defense line and trying to figure out what information he could get from it, showed a slight nervousness in his eyes.

"She seemed to be thinking about something else."

Karna prompted.

"Her villa is in the Ultramar sector, on the agricultural garden world of Esteria."

Arthur replied on the internal communication: "It is a private space covering 39% of the coastline of the Garden World planet and an area of over million square kilometers."

At first he wondered why Aglaia cared so much about a villa, and why she was still thinking about it even after becoming an inquisitor.

After learning more about it, I realized that he was being presumptuous.

The empire has such a vast territory, but there are only a few hundred garden worlds in total. Aglaia directly obtained the ownership of one ten-thousandth of them. For this, in addition to spending all his savings, he also owed a lot of favors to various high-ranking officials of the empire.

It would be unreasonable if I didn't think about it from time to time.

"Then I'll trouble you."

Romulus tried his best to concentrate. Seeing that everyone was there, he realized that they all understood the current situation after being reminded by Dracula, so he didn't say anything more.

After all, it was just a notification, and the specific content of the incident could not be delivered.

"Order the navigator to start planning the route. We will set off first."

"Yes!"
-
The commanders quickly left and returned to their fleets.

Suddenly, only four time travelers and their personal guards, some visible and some hidden, were left in the command center of the Dawn.

"Hey."

Romulus sighed, his expression quickly fell, and he looked melancholy. A question lingered deeply in his heart.

'Is that right?'

The part that understood the empire told him, "Yes, yes." The part that was rational and logical told him, "No, no."

How can we lose this?

How can we lose this?

Because he had not received any specific battle reports, Romulus could only simulate in his mind the ways in which the Zerg would try to break through the blockade of Ultramar based on the known combat power of the Ultramar star field, and the results became increasingly unacceptable to him.

It was pure torture.

And Karna's smile disappeared.

the reason is simple.

Apart from the fact that they fought an expedition for various reasons and earned enough fame to lay the foundation for their future, which might come at an unknown time, there was no fundamental change in the empire.

Have they changed over the years?
No! If the Empire's various abstract problems are not resolved, they will continue to win, even to the outside of the Milky Way, and then look back and see everything explode.

Sun Lord Macharius himself was an extremely painful lesson.

"After the Battle of Ultramar, no matter how urgent the incident, it must give way to our plans."

Romulus spoke, his face more serious than ever.

It is really impossible to fight abroad. The empire has been in such a state of war on its own soil. It still needs to be governed first.

I'll have to have a good discussion with Terra about the tax issue later.

He could accept paying taxes, and he could accept supporting imperial worlds like Cadia that were suffering from harassment. It was worth pouring as many resources into them as possible, and even going to those remote star regions to alleviate poverty was not out of the question.

However, Dawn Wings must be able to decide where these taxes should be used.

Isn't it okay as long as we don't use it in this star area?

"Ah."

The three of them nodded seriously.

They have all intuitively felt the consequences of excessive military differentiation. Although such operations effectively avoided the emergence of collective rebellion, the internal ideological confusion also directly led to the empire's extremely ugly handling of various emergencies.

Such a situation must never occur in their country.

Ten thousand years.
They looked at each other and then clenched their fists.

It's time to change.
-
The Invincible-class battleship 'Magnificent' of the Inquisition Fleet.

Inquisitor Aglaia always gives people the impression that she is busy, and many times people even subconsciously feel that she is easy to fool.

She never had a terrifying expression on her face, and she rarely used force to force others to do anything they didn't want to do.

But that never meant she wasn't dangerous enough.

In fact, as the only surviving apprentice of the most powerful Grand Inquisitor of the Order of Origin, Aglaia can be said to have single-handedly completed the unification of Terra's political power and sent all of his competitors of noble birth to the Imperial Ministry of Government.

She was the first and only throne deputy of her generation to step out of the library as an inquisitor.

It was precisely because her methods and abilities were so astonishing that when the senior officials of Terra's government department mentioned this Inquisitor, the first thing that came to their minds was not that she was the apprentice of the Grand Inquisitor, nor the glory of the Origin Tracing Order, but herself.

Aglaia maintains a spy organization called the "Gray Hats".

These unknown people, born from the Terran nobility, have their own purposes and patrol Terra and the entire galaxy for her, searching for all valuable information and historical texts, and establishing connections with various high-level officials.

It was also because of this that she was able to seamlessly take over a series of tasks assigned by Terra as soon as Terra learned about the expeditionary fleet.

You don't really think that the high lords whose personal professional qualities have reached the pinnacle of humanity can be fooled by you just writing a bunch of reports whose authenticity is unknown, right?
There is no problem in fooling around, but the prerequisite is that you have to do it well and satisfy your leaders, then you are qualified to let them turn a blind eye.

But at this moment, the Inquisitor did feel a tension second only to that during the Pierre de Sorbonne period.

Aglaia is grateful for her past, which has given her the opportunity to survive to this day.

After all, not every psychic in childhood can survive the invasion of the Ministry of Justice's black ships and become an inquisitor after being carefully screened by the Imperial Guards.

Compared with his colleagues, Aglaia believes that he is much more emotionally stable, has excellent identification ability, has a specific understanding of his own strengths and weaknesses, has good business capabilities, and can quickly find a suitable position in a group.

Because she will make distinctions instead of relying on intuition to deal with things unilaterally.

Fortunately, she also has this talent.

This allowed her to survive the silent battles in the library during her youth, and also allowed her to forge deep friendships with a considerable number of nobles who had been tortured beyond recognition by their family environments.

Aglaia believed that all this was left over from her childhood experiences, and at the same time she couldn't help but feel grateful for her luck.

When she was young, the Emperor's guards gave her a chance, and after she grew up, Lord Arthur also gave her such an opportunity, otherwise she would have died because of her damn identity as a psychic.

Aglaia sincerely believed that other people, children like her, should have such rights.

She is also trying, trying to see if a better environment can nurture better people.

So Aglaia chose Ultramar, a garden world.

She used her connections to hire the best teachers and arranged the best growth environment for them, then sent her subordinates who shared the same suffering to send those psychics who had been personally screened by her.

From the Emperor's Guards, to herself, and then to what she saw and heard on her journey, everything proved that she seemed to be on the right path.

But she seemed to have overlooked one issue.

Looking at the planet outside the porthole, one side of Opt's fortress has already come under the sun's illumination.

The magnificent buildings were reduced to ruins, and the originally rich golden color had now turned into a uniform iron-gray color due to the war.

This is war, it only brings destruction.

No matter how bright the fire is, nothing will be left under the crushing flames of war that leads to the destruction of a nation and a race.

"Lord Aglaia."

When the man in the gray top hat, whose entire face was hidden under a holographic image, pushed the door open and walked in, Aglaia had a bad feeling.
-
The expeditionary fleet left Opto just like that.

All parties began to collect information about the destruction of the Macragge Defense Line through their own channels, and then held a detailed discussion in a series of meetings.

This will be a long process.

The reason is also very simple.

Limited by the vast territory of the empire and the abstract way of information transmission, no matter how anxious the time travelers were, they could only order their fleet to rush to Macragge first.

After all, apart from this piece of urgent news, everyone's specific understanding of the Ultramar star region only remained at the level of "steady and improving" in previous daily communications.

Then I received a big one.

In short, due to the incomplete information at hand, the fleet can do nothing but speed up its journey.

Fortunately, thanks to the Emperor's blessing, although the navy did cause a big mess, which directly led to its own annihilation, the expeditionary fleet's stable navigation was still not disturbed by the Chaos enemy.

Navigators can still reliably determine the time of arrival in Ultramar.

The expeditionary fleet will continue south, first heading to the Tigrus Forge World south of the Obsidian Swords Chapter's home planet.

There, the Great Sage Cawl prepared the last round of ship supplies for everyone, and then prepared to cross the northern space of the Five Hundred Worlds of Ancient Ultramar.

A mysterious region of the universe that has been shielded from the Empire's vision by the Warp Storm.

The fleet will pass through there at its fastest speed and then rush to support Ultramar.

(End of this chapter)