Warhammer: Striving to Be a Grinding Man

Chapter 97 Garros PDF

The dome rises abruptly from the wasteland.

A new dome rose from the southeastern part of the equatorial plain, its golden framework erected from the foundation, transparent armor plates pieced together. Construction machinery welded the trusses high in the sky, their blue exhaust flames flickering in the twilight. Beneath the dome, the city grew, streets extending in all directions like veins, squares, factories, schools, hospitals, shops—everything was being filled in according to the blueprints.

The population of Garros had reached nearly fifty million. Piloted by the Resolute, immigrant convoys repeatedly traveled between Amegiddon and Garros along segmented transport routes. The five Odysseus-class battleships were the mainstay—carrying a total of seven million people on each trip—while the Resolute and the ten Wanderer-class smaller ships carried less than three million people per trip.

The agricultural area under the dome is expanding. Connected greenhouses form a silvery-white sea at the edge of the dome, with automatic drip irrigation lines hanging from the shelves, and tender green seedlings peeking out from the soil.

The civil service team has taken shape. Selected, trained, and assessed from among the immigrants, batches of administrative clerks, assisted by administrative servants, handle household registration, housing allocation, material dispatch, employment registration, and medical coordination. Daily data flows into the Thinker's mainframe, where it is categorized, processed, and distributed to various functional departments. Cohen doesn't have much time left each day; he flips through reports, approves a few documents, and then can move on to other tasks.

The Planetary Defense Force has expanded to 600,000 personnel. It's still far from a million, but the framework is in place.

Cohen and Kara established an organizational framework based on a million-strong army: five legions, each with 200,000 men. Below the legions were regiments, battalions, companies, platoons, and squads—a hierarchical structure, an extension of the Astragalus system on Garros. But a framework is a framework, and people are people. Of the 600,000 troops, fewer than 20,000 were veterans with actual combat experience; the rest were all recruits from the immigrant population, undergoing physical examinations, assignments, and training. The shortage of officers was even greater than that of soldiers. Most commanders at the battalion level and above were promoted on the front lines: a veteran who had led a company on a wrecked ship might be directly promoted to regimental commander; a sergeant who had served as a platoon leader in the Black Pearl garrison might become a battalion commander overnight. Their qualifications varied, their tactical skills differed, and their understanding of combat ranged from profound to superficial.

Commander Cole of the Planetary Defense Force privately told Cohen, "These people wouldn't even get a foot in the door of a regular officer's school if they were in the Star Force. But we don't have the resources to train them slowly right now, so we can only let them learn on the job."

Cohen understood. In a war, those who survive are the qualified commanders.

The planetary defense forces' equipment deployment is progressing in tandem. All 600,000 troops have been re-equipped with CMC-100 power armor, and production lines in the underground industrial zone are casting ceramic steel plates and fiber bundle muscle layers day and night.

The equipment deployment of armored and artillery units is progressing much slower. Several armored regiments have been nominally formed, but few are fully staffed. Cohen extracted a large number of weapon blueprints from the layers of wreckage of the spaceship—and then reassembled them in the database. The chassis of the Lemanrus battle tank rolled off the production line at Garros and were stacked in warehouses, awaiting the installation of weapon systems and fire control equipment. With limited metallurgical capacity, Cohen couldn't afford to personally build tanks—his energy had to be focused on more important matters.

The Lemanrus battle tank, the main battle tank of the Imperial Astragalus, has fought countless battles across the galaxy for millennia. It is characterized by its simplicity, efficiency, and ease of production. Currently, Garros can only equip the standard model—a configuration with a 120mm smoothbore cannon and a laser cannon as secondary armament. More commonly used variants on the battlefield, such as the Eradicator with twin automatic cannons and the Destroyer with twin laser cannons, require specialized equipment and skilled technicians, and mass production is not yet scheduled. The Chimera armored personnel carrier, based on the same chassis, is the main troop transport vehicle for the Astragalus' mechanized infantry. Garros' production line can only produce chassis in low quantities, and many armored infantry squads are still awaiting deployment. The Petrified Lizard self-propelled howitzer mounts a ground-shaking cannon on a Chimera chassis to provide artillery support at medium to long ranges; the Medusa siege gun has a limited range, but a single shot can obliterate enemy fortifications and bunkers. These two types of artillery are in extremely large numbers in the Astronautical Artillery Corps' equipment inventory, and the production line in Garros is gradually ramping up.

Air force is another large and slow system.

The Raiden heavy fighter is the backbone of the Imperial Navy's air force. It is a robust, durable, and fully armed heavy fighter with multi-role capabilities, switching between air superiority, interception, and ground attack missions. It boasts powerful nose-mounted weaponry and underwing pylons capable of carrying missiles or bombs. The Raiden's production complexity far exceeds that of ground vehicles; only one squadron of the first batch has been produced to date.

The Valkyrie transport aircraft is the mainstay of the Garros Air Force. Its chassis offers the most extensive modification potential: the basic model is used to transport airborne troops, equipped with a nose-mounted cluster laser cannon and heavy explosive rounds on both side doors; the derivative gunship model is fitted with additional armor and firepower, equipped with three twin-mounted laser cannons, and can act as a tank hunter after deployment. The Valkyrie chassis can be mass-produced and is currently the mainstay of the air force's equipment.

The Garros Air Force also possessed a small number of Avenger attack aircraft—a specialized ground attack platform designated by the Imperial Naval Air Force as a "tank killer." Under its fuselage was an Avenger bomb cannon, a six-barreled rotary cannon specifically designed to penetrate armor; each wing root had a twin-mounted laser cannon, and underwing hardpoints could carry anti-personnel or anti-armor munitions. Due to a shortage of pilots, previously only a few retired pilots were able to fly these attack aircraft.

Cohen knew that ground attack aircraft and air superiority fighters alone were not enough. Orbital assault and amphibious landing operations required dedicated transport aircraft units.

The Devourer transport ship is a massive orbital-to-surface transport vessel of the Imperial Navy. Each ship has two decks: the upper deck houses infantry units, while the lower deck stores heavy equipment and vehicles. It can haul hundreds of fully armed soldiers along with their armored vehicles to the planetary surface in a single amphibious assault. Upon landing, its nose opens like a four-lobed jaw, and retractable landing ramps extend, allowing vehicles and infantry to quickly disembark and engage in combat. It is not a combat unit, but its twin-mounted heavy laser cannon turrets are sufficient to suppress enemy fortifications during the landing. Garros's production line is currently unable to mass-produce these behemoths, but Cohen's plan is to initially deploy them in small numbers. A single wave can deliver an entire infantry regiment to the enemy.

The Alvus light transport ship took the opposite approach. This multi-purpose light shuttle was used by the Imperial fleet to transport supplies and could also serve as a ship-to-ship or ship-to-planetary personnel transport, carrying one small group at a time. It was small in size.

With its low production complexity, Garros's production capacity could easily handle it. Its significance lay not in the assault, but in logistics. Once the landing zone was established, the continuous resupply of follow-up troops and the evacuation of the wounded would require a large number of Alvus tanks to frequently shuttle between the rails and the ground.

The Claw-type Valkyrie replaces its personnel transport pod with an electromagnetic crane claw, capable of slinging airborne sentries and light assault vehicles, but unable to lift heavy vehicles like the Chimera and Lemanrus. Its armor is weakened to a mere self-defense level, making it extremely vulnerable. Cohen's intended use was clear: solely for slinging light reinforcements and ammunition supplies to the front lines after establishing a foothold on the landing zone, and never for participating in the first wave of assault.

Cohen paid special attention to those with flying experience during the immigrant recruitment process, but few met the requirements. The formation cycle for air force personnel is the longest of all military branches. The Valkyrie chassis production line can operate at full capacity, but what's lacking are pilots: the Avengers and Devourers production lines can't be started, not because they lack pilots, but because they lack precision components.

Cole convened a large-scale military conference, bringing together the commanders of all the legions. The 600,000-strong force was deployed to various dome-shaped barracks, and the training progress, equipment shortages, and personnel arrangements of each unit were reviewed item by item at the meeting.

"Legion A, 91% full strength. Power armor issued at 100%. Heavy equipment issued at 67%."

"B Corps, 88% full strength. 100% power armor issued. 52% heavy equipment issued."

""

"C Legion————"

The numbers were read out one by one. Cohen sat at the head of the long table, listening to the reports from each legion. Satisfied?

Not satisfied. Satisfied? Somewhat satisfied. Not perfect, but usable.

"Training for each corps cannot stop," Cohen said at the end of the meeting. "The equipment shortage is being filled on the production line. The personnel shortage is being filled by immigrant ships. But the shortage of tactical skills can only be addressed through your own training. If the armored regiments don't have enough tanks, then use infantry to fill the gap. If the artillery doesn't have enough cannons, then teach them firing data and calculations. If the air force has planes but not enough pilots, then continue training them."

He paused for a moment.

"Once the equipment arrives, you need to be able to use it immediately. There's no time for you to gradually adapt."

The Star Tower's surveillance reports have recently begun to change.

It wasn't the content that changed—the Greenskins' activities were still increasing, and the Imperial Navy's battle reports still emphasized "repelling" and "intercepting," still brimming with that unsettling confidence. What had changed was the frequency. The signals were becoming more numerous and frequent. The reconnaissance reports from the Armageddon Theater Fleet had gone from one or two per month to weekly, sometimes even intercepting debris for several consecutive days. This in itself was a signal: even the Imperial Navy was beginning to sense something was wrong; otherwise, they wouldn't have been issuing so many reports.

At the end of her briefing to Cohen, Hera Worth added a note: "Psionic communication traffic in the Solar System has increased by forty percent compared to last month. There are more duplicate signals, which may indicate that frontline units are repeatedly confirming orders from higher command."

She didn't continue. But Cohen understood her unspoken message: things were starting to get tense over there.

He went through the fragmented information piece by piece. He still couldn't piece together the whole picture; it was still filtered through layers of psionic currents and bureaucratic systems. But the puzzle was falling, piece by piece. He didn't close the data panel; instead, he flipped back and reviewed the reports from the past few months. The coordinates of the Greenskins' activities formed a discontinuous arc on the star map, extending from the edge of the solar system towards Amegiddon. Not just once, but many times.

He turned off the data panel, stood up, and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window.

The stars of Garros burned brightly above the dome, and the spaceport's guide lights formed a luminous arc in the darkness. The Black Pearl, the Truth, the Dauntless, the Glory, and the Ten Cobras—fourteen ships in total—waited silently in the berth lights. Beneath the dome, the city quietly expanded with each passing day, and an army of six hundred thousand men repeated tactical maneuvers on the training grounds.

Amighadoon. 941. The countless billions of people on that planet are unaware that the sky above them is about to collapse. Perhaps they never will.

He stood by the window, gazing at the dark yellow star that remained forever suspended in its orbit. Five months. Not long, not short. The industrial gears of Garros were turning, the army was expanding, and the fleet was waiting.

He looked away, turned around and walked back to his desk, opening the next document.