Warhammer: Striving to Be a Grinding Man

Chapter 184 The Cyber ​​War (1)

The moment the Black Pearl passed through the Gate of Hessonic, the ship did not vibrate—the gate was stable, and the current flowed smoothly through the psionic conduits, like a properly connected circuit.

Ripples of emptiness flowed along the edge of the porthole, and the cold white luster of the spirit bone shone briefly on the armor plate before dissipating.

Outside the porthole, the Calasta unfolded in view.

It is a node on the spine of a hub-and-spoke network, a structural fulcrum planted by the Old Ones in the middle of the galaxy. The Eldar call it the "City of the Inconceivable." During the Eldar's rule over the network, it was one of the largest transit centers. Broken spires rise from the darkness, collapsed domes spread in every direction, and the remains of Eldar architecture float like debris in a vast cavity—a cavity itself measured in light-hours.

Several tunnels extend from the hub. Each one is large enough to allow an entire star to pass through. Some of them have been corroded by the subspace and blocked by chaotic energy accumulated over millennia, like scabs forming on a massive wound. Others retain their structural integrity, with psionic patterns extending along the walls, gleaming with a dim, cold white light, leading to long-forgotten coordinates deep within the network.

Amid all this, the Imperial fleet is unfolding. Oracle Fortress has established its core position, but on the scale of this hub, it is but a speck embedded in the cracks of a skeleton.

On the edge of distant airspace, intermittent flashes of light emanated from a dark purple chaotic rift—artillery fire, on a battlefront tens of light-seconds away. The muzzle flashes of the macro cannons flickered briefly in the darkness, like distant stars. Cohen didn't try to pinpoint the source of those flashes. There was fighting there, but it wasn't his battlefield.

On the communications panel, static from the unencrypted channel seeped in intermittently. A binary hymn pulse, compressed to its limit, slid across the channel's edge, followed by the Astragalus channel flickering deeper—someone was shouting "Hold the flanks," others were chanting the Emperor's name. Those sounds were fragmented by the psionic background of the network, like a storm heard across the water.

Cohen stood at the porthole, watching everything unfold without a word. He was recalibrating his sense of scale. The scale of the network was something the human empire could not replicate. It took him a few seconds to process this fact.

The communications panel lit up behind him. Marcus's voice came through: "Director, a communication request from General Mars Forging, encrypted channel."

"catch."

A holographic image of the Martian Forging General unfolded in the center of the bridge, his massive, Titan-like silhouette maintaining its imposing presence. He wasn't in the Martian Forging Abyss, but on a mobile command platform on the edge of Karasta, against a backdrop of the Eldar ruins. His sensor array turned toward Cohen, the optical lenses adjusted their focus for a moment, then spoke, the electronic voice from the transmitter as steady as ever.

"His Excellency Cohen Severus"

Cohen nodded slightly.

Mars Forging General simply stood there, like a pause between battles.

"The day the Emperor awoke, all of Terra was shaken. The High Lords were in chaos, the entire Imperial administrative system was changing, and someone—" He paused, "Mars needs to know who is standing on the other side of the Web."

"Now you know."

"Yes. That's why I contacted you." The Martian Forging General's voice paused for a moment, "just to confirm one thing—that you are a monk of our Mechanicus, and what you need."

"Garros can be a great world-forging force, and the great Mars is a close ally of Garros; this point needs to be made clear."

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"Greatness is beyond doubt, you will get everything you want." The Mars Forging General did not hesitate. "The Titan Order of Mars has entered Karasta. The total number of the Apostolic Army will exceed thirty million in the coming weeks. The Mind Control Legion is being awakened, the Engineering Corps has begun boarding ships, and the dormant Servant Legion will be activated. Mars will go all out. Great Mars has welcomed its greatest ally, and the Double-Headed Eagle has truly lived up to its name."

Cohen did not answer. The Mars Forging General's sensor array tilted slightly, as if listening to some distant communication, then turned back.

"A detachment of the Black Legion has appeared in the airspace outside Karasta. So far, only one battleship and several cruiser escort squadrons have been confirmed—the eyes of the Four Gods have drawn the Chaos Raiders to the rift in the Webway. Abaddon's Legion has answered the call of the Warp, attempting to stifle the Imperium's resurgence of control over the Webway."

"Righteously, the demonic armies of the Four Gods are more worthy of attention at this stage."

"Mars has already prioritized resources for reinforcing its outer defenses," said Mars Forging General. "The current focus is on fortifying the fortress and preparing to withstand the impact of the four gods."

Cohen didn't look away. "You didn't come here just for this?"

Mars Forging General paused for a moment. "The Emperor's chosen one. Mars needs to know where Garros stands."

Cohen paused for a moment. "So you already have the answer."

"Confirmed," General Mars Forging said. "The encrypted channel remains open. No need for the theater command chain. Contact me directly if you need anything."

The image fades away.

Cohen stood alone on the bridge, looking in the direction the holographic image had disappeared. Then he turned around, his gaze returning to the area deep within Karasta outside the porthole, filled with dark purple energy. His fingers paused on the armrest, confirming that the weight had settled where it should.

"Marcus, advance toward the bridgehead. Black Pearl, move to rear positions. Stormstrike Force and two companies of the Second Guardsman Regiment, prepare to disembark."

The Black Pearl emerged from the flank of Oracle Fortress and cruised at a steady speed toward the bridgehead at the edge of Karasta. Ahead, the outline of the Martian Titan Legion was emerging from the ruins; a Battle-class Titan marched in formation amidst the crumbling walls of the Eldar ruins.

Cohen stepped off the bridge and walked down the corridor toward the hangar. As he passed the Garros Guard's troop formation, the soldiers silently maintained their ranks, checking their weapons and equipment.

An unencrypted channel on the wall was playing a battlefield situation report from the front lines, with fragments of binary hymns alternating in the background noise, like a constant pulse. An encrypted channel flashed by to the side, with a voice shouting that it wasn't a human voice—then it was cut off.

Kara was already waiting in the hangar. She was wearing power armor, with her helmet tucked under her arm.

"We have reached the rear of the bridgehead."

The Black Pearl came to a stop beside the base of an Eldar spire on the edge of Karasta. This position had been cleared out three times by the Imperial Guard and the Grey Knights, but the psionic energy channels on the walls still pulsed continuously at a low frequency—energy that wasn't just the network itself, but also the embers left after millennia of Chaos' erosion. As Cohen descended the gangway, his boots landed on the spirit bone ground, and the field automatically expanded, stripping away, dissolving, and dissipating the dark purple resistance—like water flowing into a dried-up riverbed, unstoppable. This was the persistent, underlying noise he experienced while walking through the network; he didn't stop, continuing deeper into Karasta.

Mars Forging General has already stated his position. Repairing the network is Cohen's responsibility, and beyond that—

That war, those fleets, those demons—that's someone else's business.

Cohen advanced along the edge of the Karasta region. His work was simple and repetitive: find the blocked psionic channels and reconnect them; find the areas where the boundary membrane had collapsed and regenerate them. Most of the time it was just routine decomposition and reshaping—the field covered the fracture, the layer of resistance was stripped away, and new sacred bones rearranged at the atomic level.

But he soon noticed something.

After the break was mended, he sensed that the flow of psionic energy didn't stop at the boundary of the section he had repaired. It continued to extend forward, spreading along the wall, like a nerve that had been reconnected, its signal traveling further along its original path. The psionic energy channels recovered even faster, and the pulsations on the adjacent, unrepaired walls also accelerated, as if echoing the section that had just been awakened.

The network is alive; it is self-repairing.

Starting from the repaired path, it extended forward along the still-intact wall structure, covering the blank areas left by the cleared fractures. The recovery was slightly faster than the advance of the Chaos Erosion—but before it began, the Bone Wall had been in retreat. The tug-of-war had been reversed; with each repair of a critical fracture, the balance tilted slightly towards recovery. Eldar bone repair was incompatible with the Bone Structure; on the astronomical scale of Karata, conventional bone mending wouldn't even cause a ripple.

Cohen entered the next site of damage to the sacred bone, his field covering the entire exposed area of ​​the fracture. A cold, psionic light spread from the repaired area to both sides, slowly advancing along the wall, leaving a thin, shimmering white trail in the darkness.

Just then, a binary hymn squeezed in from a distant communication frequency.

Its source was untraceable—possibly from a advancing Titan legion tens of light-seconds away, infiltrating all nearby communication bands through the network walls as a conductive medium. The pulses were slow and heavy, each beat like the heart of a behemoth pounding in a dark chamber. It was the hymn of the god of machines, the resonance of the machine spirits emanating from the armor plates as the war machines that forged the world moved forward.

Cohen's consciousness remained on the skeletal wall. He felt the vibration of that binary hymn—through the wall and the edge of the field. It was a Martian Titan legion engaging the enemy deeper within; the war was taking place elsewhere.

Not far overhead, the silhouettes of a squadron of Imperial ships swept across the airspace—several light cruisers passed by at formation speed, their thrusters leaving long, thin blue streaks in the cold psionic light, briefly obscuring the faint psionic glow in the area above him. They were simply maneuvering from one direction of the battlefield to another. The ships passed through his field of vision and then disappeared into the psionic aura of Karasta.

The binary chant lasted for several tens of seconds before being replaced by another low-frequency pulse—the calibration signal emitted by the Titan Legion as they adjusted their artillery positions. Cohen recognized the pulse's pattern but then set it aside and moved on to the next break.

The indicator light on the encrypted channel flashed twice before lighting up. The voice of the Grey Knight High Grandmaster came through the communication panel, brief and direct: "Forging Director. The energy density in the area you've passed through continues to decrease. The psionic conduits are extending on their own. Is this what you expected?"

"Yes," Cohen said. "The network's self-repair is accelerating. It will get faster and faster."

"What does that mean?" the Grand Tutor asked.

"This means the repair speed will exceed the erosion speed," Cohen said. "Time is on the Empire's side. If the front lines hold, the Web will heal itself. By then, the power of the Four Gods will no longer be able to fully penetrate the Web."

There was a moment of silence on the communication channel. "The Empire will hold. Over." The Grand Master cut off the communication.

Then the Emperor's psychic will resounded in Cohen's mind.

"it is good."

A stream of information surged in. It was a confirmation, pressing down from the macroscopic psionic level; an authorization, carrying the weight of will; a permission personally granted. The Imperial Guard's modification path, the helical gene map, the structural parameters of the Alarius type, flashed through Cohen's consciousness for a moment—they had always been there; He had simply told him: you can use them. The more, the faster.

Cohen didn't stop to respond. He received the word and the data stream, archived them under the corresponding category in the higher-dimensional space, and then continued on his way.

He was used to it. Every now and then, the Emperor would stuff something into his consciousness—sometimes blueprints, sometimes protocol data, sometimes fragments of ancient memories, like someone pulling an old notebook from a bookshelf, opening it, reading it, closing it, putting it back, and pulling out the next one. He never waited for his response. He simply stuffed things in and moved on to the next thing.

Cohen knew that the Emperor himself was a powerful technological master—his design logic, energy constraint schemes, and structural optimization methods were completely different from the path of the Mechanicus, yet every detail was precise and unique. This knowledge was like design manuscripts burned directly into his consciousness, spanning thousands of years. It wasn't just a blueprint. It was a project that the Emperor had completed ten thousand years ago, and now He was bestowing it upon him.

He had learned not to overreact to them. Some were fragments of memories from an old battle, some were design concepts for a weapon system, and some were snippets he had captured while gazing at the warp from the Golden Throne. He didn't deliberately sift through them. His psionic consciousness was like a continuously flowing river, and Cohen simply stood on the bank, occasionally scooping up a few useful stones.

He filed the blueprint and moved on. There was no response; He didn't need a response, He needed him to keep working.

A few seconds later, his consciousness re-locked onto the next broken section of the spirit bone wall, and the field reopened. He was the new advanced tool. But he could also be his ally. It depended on whether Neos or the God-Emperor could suppress the other.

The newly formed edges of the wall. He could feel the flow of psionic energy accelerating—spreading outwards from the repaired area and extending forward along the still intact wall structure.

Dozens of hours earlier, the Archbishop of the State Church had appeared on his communication panel as a holographic image. This cardinal, who had demanded "confirmation of the Emperor's will" upon his arrival in Terra after questioning Trajan's motion, now appeared completely different. His robes trailed across the adamantite floor, his hands clasped in prayer to the "human walker of the god of many machines" to convey the Emperor's will. Cohen did not respond. He allowed the communication panel to automatically disconnect.

Mars Forging General has stated his position, and the Grey Knights have confirmed the significance of the war. The faith of the State Religion seems to be converging on him under the Emperor's intervention; this is a struggle between Neos and the God-Emperor, and Cohen has become a fishpond.

Repairing the network was Cohen's responsibility, while everything else—the titles, the gestures, the narratives that were reshaping the imperial power structure—was someone else's business.

His gaze fell upon the vast tunnel, measured in light-hours, deeper within Karasta. Its walls were riddled with cracks, from which chaotic energy seeped, like a long, drawn-out wound. Yet, between the cracks, sections of the wall remained intact—

Those segments were still alive; the psionic energy pathways pulsated slowly on the wall. They didn't need to regrow, they just needed to be reconnected.

With the added benefit of such extensive network repairs, he began to understand how the network worked. What it needed wasn't new walls spanning thousands of kilometers, but rather a sufficient number of critical nodes being reconnected. Once enough critical network psionic pipeline nodes were operational again, the network's own psionic circulation would spread along the still-intact wall structures, following the paths that were already there, automatically impacting blockages and multiplying the sacred bone layer.

Cohen continued along the edge. The resistance dissipated as he passed, and he was already looking at the next section of structure that needed repair. He knew his repairs were merely triggering a larger process. That process had existed before he even began, only suppressed to near stagnation by millennia of chaotic sedimentation. What he had done was simply to restore weight to one side of the scale.

Cohen stood atop the Eldar spire, gazing down at the ruins being cleared section by section by Imperial engineering forces. Tens of thousands of servants were laying permanent life support pipes and communication cables along the areas he had repaired. The outlines of terracotta were beginning to emerge from the Eldar ruins. In the distance, flashes appeared at the edge of the airspace, followed by a second and third barrage of artillery fire at extremely short intervals.

Deep within the Nexus, where those colossal tunnels, measured in light-hours, converged, a gaze rose from the depths of the rift. It saw the trail of light stretching into the darkness—segments of psionic energy being reconnected, and the reconnected patterns didn't stop at the repair boundary, but expanded further. The trail of light was small, insignificant on the scale of Karasta. But it was moving, it was spreading. The psionic energy surging from the repair, like a pressed pulse, spread segment by segment along the intact walls, each triggered pulse initiating the next. It was piecing itself back together along the remaining skeleton of the network.

The gaze from the depths of the rift was withdrawn. There was no panic, no anger; it was merely confirmation of the existence and direction of the light trail before returning to the depths of the rift.

In the real universe, Terra, conscription is proceeding at the speed of an empire.

Along the outer edge of the Lionsgate spaceport's berth area, dozens of massive transport ships had their cargo hatches open, swallowing up rows of people like an endless stream. They came from the lowest rungs of the hive—settlements deep within factories, mines, and sewer corridors—and had completed their transformation from civilians to soldiers within a few standard days of the conscription order arriving. No one had asked them if they were willing. The conscription order was an administrative directive, not a choice.

A dull click echoed as the armor plates were sheathed. The latches engaged, the breastplate met the backplate, and the neck armor closed at the throat. Those ceramic steel plates, pressed together on the assembly line for millennia, were now pressed onto another person's torso. Some received worn-out armor, the breastplate still bearing the previous user's identification mark; others received brand-new stock unearthed from the depths of the warehouse, sealing wax still clinging to the hinge seams. No one picked and chose. As the laser gun was pushed into the palm, fingers touched the cold grip, reflexively tightening, loosening, and tightening again. The metallic clanging of the energy modules snapping into the grip base echoed through the ranks, like a rough rhythm.

The cargo hold of the transport ship had been converted into troop transport compartments. Folding bunks tumbled down from the bulkheads, stacked in three layers, the passageways so narrow that only one person could pass at a time. The air was stagnant, mingled with the smell of sealed plastic fittings and the heat of countless people breathing simultaneously. Some stood leaning against the bulkheads, their eyes unfocused, staring at some non-existent point. Others sat on the edge of the bunks, repeatedly checking the guns they had just received. Some were shivering, but certainly not from the cold.

They have no right to point their guns at the devil. They can only point them at those who have been consumed by chaos—those on the same food chain as them.

Never before had the berths of Lionsgate Spaceport been so neatly lined with countless transport ships, along with requisitioned cargo vessels, all loading simultaneously, like a blood-filled artificial artery pumping in the same direction. Those standing at the cargo hold doorways glanced back at the Terra skyline. Beneath the grey-brown clouds, the steel silhouette of the hive city stretched to the horizon. This artery continued to pulsate. And another torrent was converging in sync.

After the Emperor's will manifested in Terra, the war horns of the State Church never ceased. Cardinals stood beneath soot-blackened icons, their voices hoarse as they proclaimed: The Emperor needs you. The Holy War has begun. He needs flesh and blood to mend the rifts.

The news spread to every hive city in the Solar System, and the faith that had been suppressed for nearly ten thousand years amidst industrial fumes and steel boiled over within days. Hundreds and thousands of ships poured out of the harbors, and then more, pouring out from the corners forgotten by the Empire. Troop transport ships were not enough, civilian transport ships were requisitioned, cargo ships had their bulkheads removed and converted into troop compartments, and even tugboats were towing fully loaded barges.

Men and women dressed in tattered work clothes and wearing cheap "I" badges around their necks huddled in the cargo hold, repeating the pastor's words over and over again—they weren't just shouting, they were pressing their faith into their veins. No one told them what the enemy was; they didn't need to know.

The first wave of pilgrims bypassed Pluto's orbit and headed straight for the Netgate. Then came the second wave. The third wave. More ships kept emerging from the direction of Mandeville Point, their engine exhaust plumes forming a chain of light spanning millions of kilometers in the darkness.

Until the shadow of the Mountain Formation obscured half the sky. The massive gun emplacements cast shadows spanning the ship in the starlight. For the first time, outside the fanaticism of the State Religion, another command was heard: Stop. Arm yourself. Or die.

The military's transport fleet, constantly being deployed from the Mountain Array, nearby rail supply depots, and even further afield, continued its relentless release, day and night. Thousands upon thousands of transport ships, trailing blue plumes of flame, weaved between the pilgrimage vessels. Quartermasters stood at the gangways, piles of armored vehicles and laser guns behind them. Sealed crates were kicked open, energy packs rolling like pebbles across the metal floor. Armored vehicles were stuffed into outstretched hands, laser guns slapped into open palms. One group of ships completed its withdrawal, the next group approaching.

A young Anglican priest stood in the cargo hold, holding an icon of the Emperor, the silhouette of the Mountain Array filling the entire porthole. Those around him rose and shouted the first slogan. Then the second. Then the entire ship. Holy War. The Emperor's Will. To die in battle is an honor. The slogans echoed from ship to ship, the waves of sound cascading down like an ever-flowing tide.

And more ships were arriving from further afield. The quartermaster's hands never stopped. The Mountain Array silently spun in the starry sky, watching the endless torrent of pilgrims pour in.

Deep within Karasta, the cold, psionic light continued to extend along the walls.

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