Warhammer: Empire Reboot

"Nonsense, when have I ever done anything like arranging a marriage?"

Lawson raised an eyebrow: "The Empire's current policy on inter-racial integration has always been entirely voluntary."

"I'm just laying out the objective conditions and opening up legal channels for civilian exchanges between the two star sectors. As for whether they can find common ground, that's up to them."

"However, in my opinion, some young sprouts who have suffered enough will eventually understand who their true support is."

Isa sighed helplessly and decided to drop the absurd topic.

"Joking aside, how do you plan to handle the war at the core of the galaxy? Will the Empire intervene?"

"Of course we need to intervene, and we must do it quickly."

"Leviathan's withdrawal from the dark side of the Empire to gnaw on Wotan proves that our previous tactics were entirely correct, but strategically, this is by no means good news to celebrate."

Lawson traced the trails of several major insect swarms: "The swarms are learning to avoid high-loss iron plates and seek hunting grounds where it is easier to obtain high-quality genes and biomass."

"The galactic core is home to trillions of clones of Wotan and possesses abundant mineral resources and high-energy matter."

"Once Leviathan chews up and swallows all those dozen or so Alliances, the Hive Will can not only replenish the biomass lost in the Imperium, but also use Wotan's high gravity adaptation genes to hatch more robust war creatures that are better adapted to extreme environments."

"By then, the well-fed swarms will turn around and press on the empire's borders again. The price we have to pay will be ten times higher than it is now."

"Terren are the common mortal enemy of all normal civilizations in this galaxy. As long as they continue to feed, the war will never end."

More importantly, Wotan possesses strategic assets that the Empire desperately needs.

Compared to those warp demons whose minds are filled with destruction and corruption, and compared to those aliens who are always scheming for their own interests in the shadows, these stubborn and grumpy dwarves are at least a group of people who can understand business contracts and the logic of war.

Isa looked thoughtfully at the deployment of Imperial troops that Lawson had mobilized.

"I know a little about Wotan's personality."

"Their pride is deeply ingrained in their blood, and they are wary of outsiders."

“Especially at this critical moment when the ancestral spirits are damaged, any large-scale intervention by external forces will be seen as a provocation against the sovereignty of the alliance, and may even be misjudged as a predator taking advantage of the chaos.”

"What if the Empire's expeditionary fleet suddenly appeared at the core of the galaxy through the gravitational currents, and those enraged Commanders Karl refused Imperial aid and even turned their cannons on us?"

On the dome of the Strategic Hall of the Seal Master's Palace, golden cursors representing the Empire's main fleet, the nine regular battle groups, tens of millions of cornerstone heavy combat suits, and dozens of combat moons, lit up one by one at the coordinates on the outer perimeter of the galactic core, following Lawson's will.

"Then let's fight the Tyrannosaurus first, then the Dwarves."

…………

One of the battlefields in the core region of the Milky Way.

Karak-Zorn is a heavy metal mining world where the surface gravity is 3.2 times that of Holy Terra.

This area is dotted with mining shafts that run dozens of kilometers underground, as well as industrial transport tracks that extend beyond the horizon.

The last civilian transport ship, fully loaded with non-combat clone larvae and core alloy ingots, broke through the atmosphere amidst the roar of its twelve plasma thrusters.

At the horizon, the siren of a warship travels from the depths of the mantle all the way to the highest mining platform.

"The main energy source for the seventh and eleventh mining belts will be completely cut off."

High-ranking Bloch craftsman Darlin Ironfist stood on an industrial suspension bridge in mid-air, his mechanically modified arm inserted into the main data slot of the control console.

His voice traveled through the internal network to the ears of every Hearthstone warrior and artisan:

"All civilian smelting furnaces were converted to military-grade casting standards, the mining laser array was dismantled and its fixing locks removed, and it was erected on the third outer ring armored wall within thirty minutes. The drill bit was replaced with an armor-piercing warhead, and the demolition chamber was filled with explosives."

The sky above was already dark.

Millions of synaptic escorts covered in chitinous shells, along with hive motherships the size of cruisers, pressed down on the Karak-Zorn low orbit like a web of flesh and blood.

The atmosphere was lit up with dark green sparks by the falling biomass, and a sweet and sour fishy smell began to fill the air.

The Wotans have fought insects before.

One hundred and thirty-seven years ago, their alliance tore apart a Leviathan vanguard tentacle on the edge of this star field.

On that occasion, the Hearthborn fleet blasted hundreds of bio-ships into charred chunks of flesh floating in the void with railguns and conversion beams, while the ground forces crushed millions of insect swarms into slag.

In the Wotan's perception, the Tyranids were nothing more than organic pests that reproduced quickly and required more ammunition to eliminate.

As long as the fire control radar is still running, and as long as the furnace can still produce explosives and refined gold, there is nothing that tens of millions of tons of industrial production capacity cannot destroy.

Until the first batch of airdropped spores rained down on the basalt earth.

"Target within visual range! Open fire!"

On both sides of the ridge, hundreds of ultra-high-power mining laser towers, originally used for stripping the earth's crust, suddenly turned around.

A pale beam of light pierced the sky.

The focusing lens, weighing thousands of tons, hummed under overload.

The first flying tyrant to break through the clouds didn't even have time to erect a psionic barrier before its chest cavity was vaporized by the high temperature. Its remaining wings dragged its charred body as it crashed to the ground under three times the gravity.

Then came the entire flight formation.

The swarm of insects crashed headlong into the laser fire net.

Burnt chitin and boiling bodily fluids fell from the sky.

On the main ground defense line, the vanguard of the three companies, the Hess Guard, had completed the construction of their positions.

These short, heavy infantrymen were as stable as alloy bunkers welded to the ground.

A warrior insect leaped out of the smoke, its bony blade piercing the chest of a Hess Guard sergeant.

"clang!"

The force field trembled violently, the bone blade shattered on the spot, and only a white mark appeared on the surface of the armor. Under three times the gravity, the sergeant remained motionless.

The tall and short heavy infantryman laughed loudly: "Damn bugs! You can't even break through my defenses, die!"

He raised the composite plasma bomb gun and pressed the muzzle against the warrior insect's face.

"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!"

The depleted uranium armor-piercing core tore through the chitinous carapace and exploded inside the insectoid beast's skull.

Behind the Hess Guard line, the industrial exoskeletons of the Bloch Thunder Clan were already in formation.

The power arms that were originally used to transport tens of tons of heavy metal ore in high-radiation mines are now equipped with conversion beam cannons and heavy magnetic railguns.

The first salvo struck, engulfing the twelve-kilometer-long canyon in white light. Subatomic fission wiped out hundreds of thousands of knife-like insects along with the rock strata at the bottom of the valley.

On the main road, several Hecarton land fortresses advanced side by side, their tracks crushing the insect corpses, while omnidirectional heavy railgun turrets fired at the sky and into the distance at a rate of sixty rounds per minute.

Further back at the mine shaft elevator, several colossal war machines, temporarily fitted with composite armor by super-heavy mining machines, slowly rose up.

As the focused cutting beam from the shoulder gate, used to melt asteroids, swept across the battlefield, three charging Zerg fronts were severed in half.

Two deep ravines, several meters deep, were left on the ground, filled with churning lava.

The Wotans' war logic has never required a separate military-industrial complex.

Mining trucks with thickened armor become heavy assault tanks.

An underground tunnel boring machine equipped with ammunition boxes becomes a siege fortress.

Once the self-aware Steel Clan is implanted into the combat logic module, it becomes a tireless mechanical killer.

By the end of the first day, fewer than 30,000 had been killed on the Wotan front.

In front of the mining fortress, a bloody and fleshy area made up of insect corpses extends forty kilometers outward.

Inside the forward command post, several Commander Karl watched the vanguard signal gradually diminish on the holographic radar, and even began to assess it in their tactical logs:

Based on the current resource consumption ratio, this Leviathan fleet will run out of biomass within seven standard Terra days and be forced to retreat.

The next morning.

Guided by radar, the heavy gunner operated the heavy conversion beam cannon and hit an executioner four kilometers away, whose size was comparable to that of a main battle tank.

Based on the data from the previous day, the high-energy particle stream should penetrate the biological shell and cause molecular chain breakage within the organism.

A flash of white light appeared, and the beam of light landed on the surface of the giant beast, producing a sharp, grating sound.

The energy spread outwards, shattering nearby rocks.

The behemoth only shed a layer of grayish-white hard shell. It shook its head with six compound eyes and charged forward again: "Recalibrate the band! Damn it, it has a crystal lattice growing inside its shell!"

The second beam hit the same spot, finally tearing it apart.

But soon on the horizon, tens of thousands of newborn insectoids with the same shells appeared.

Just one night later, the engineers and war beasts that crawled out of the hatching chambers had shed their original reddish-brown shells.

The newly formed chitinous carapace turns into a rough, grayish-white color, with layers of honeycomb-like biological quartz lattices embedded inside.

When a high-energy laser hits the surface, it is refracted and dispersed across the entire body surface.

Although heavy bombs can shatter the outer shell, the newly formed dense liquid shock-absorbing muscles inside absorb most of the kinetic energy.

The slender, knife-like insects that had been moving sluggishly and suffering frequent joint damage under three times the gravity the day before had also disappeared.

The newly emerged predators from the sporangia are smaller in size, with limbs becoming shorter and thicker, joints almost touching the ground, and claws degenerating into large, suction-cup-like gravity claws.

When they race across the rocky ground, which experiences three times the force of gravity, they are even faster than the Wotan people who have lived underground for most of their lives.

The Hive Will figured out the gravity parameters of Kharak-Zorn and the spectral bands of Wotan's main weapons in just one day.

On the third day, the fallen spores changed their form again.

Hundreds of millions of fist-sized suspended capsules floated above the fortress, forming a leaden-gray fog.

A colossus-class war machine has once again activated its mining focus beam.

As soon as the straight beam of light entered the spore cloud, the refractive index changed.

The beam, originally aimed at the head of the bio-titan several kilometers away, deviated by seven meters, only grazing a bone spur on the target's shoulder.

For such a super-heavy focusing weapon, seven meters is enough to decide life or death.

The mountain-like Titan emitted a psychic shriek.

The six bio-cannons beneath the chest cavity and carapace simultaneously lit up with a ghastly green flash.

High-concentration biological and chemical bombs slammed into the armor plates of the war machine.

"Zi..."

White smoke billowed up, and inside the cockpit, engineer Bloch stared at the alarm screen that kept turning red.