Warhammer: Empire Reboot

"Grahan Fisher, Warlord of the South District of Hive No. 1. A follower of Khorne. He deliberately condones gang warfare while maintaining order in the Lower Hive, and at least three thousand people die every month under the order he maintains."

One name after another.

Swarm intelligence compares each name against the Department of Justice's database in real time, cross-validating its social relationships, fund flows, and behavioral patterns.

The results were astonishing: over 80% of the names Vespera mentioned showed suspicious but never-investigated anomalies in the Department of Justice's data. This means that what she said was highly likely true; the Department of Justice had indeed discovered clues, but each investigation was misled by moles like Cyrus.

Ten minutes later, Vespera finished calling out the last name.

Within the upper echelons of power in the three nested capitals:

More than 70% of the hive nobles (about 270 families) are corrupted by chaos to varying degrees.

Almost all of the Corpse Guild's high-ranking members have fallen victim to corruption (6 out of 7 high priests have become corrupted).

The high-ranking members of the Water Purification Guild (Vespera's stronghold) need no introduction.

Eleven of the 42 senior judges in the Ministry of Justice have been bribed or corrupted.

Even among the mid- to high-ranking officers in the PDF, at least 30 are suspected of being involved in the chaos.

Only two groups remain relatively clean: the lowest-ranking clerks in the planetary administrative system, too lowly for Chaos to deign to approach; and the local monastic system of the state religion. The nuns' fervent faith is itself the best immunity.

After listening to the list, Lawson understood its significance.

If true, the power structure on this planet isn't "a few bad apples," but rather "a pot of porridge with only a few clean grains of rice."

Vespera poured a second glass of wine.

This time she was smarter and only drank from the left corner of her mouth to minimize leakage from the right side of her body.

"You might be thinking..."

She took a sip: "Why should I tell you all this? The answer is simple: I'm a businesswoman. A businessman's instinct is to make a deal. You're taking my life, so I at least need to make sure you get a bad hand, not a good one."

She put down her wine glass, revealing a rare hint of genuine disgust.

"Poisoning is the most unseemly method. It lacks both skill and artistry. In the judgment of the Master of Change, such a crude method is not even considered a beginner's level. What Tzeentch values ​​most is not the result, but the beauty of change in the process. A perfect conspiracy should be like a game of chess, where every move makes the opponent think they are winning, until the last moment when they realize that they have lost the whole game."

She looked at Lawson and pointed at him with one finger: "If it weren't for you... repeatedly destroying my plans, I would never have resorted to such a foolish method as poisoning. Your speed in troop deployment, your millisecond-level decision-making, you have shattered my entire understanding of the responsiveness of the Imperial bureaucracy."

Lawson finally spoke.

"People like you all have a common problem: you think you're playing against pieces on a chessboard, but you forget that the chessboard itself can be overturned. You lost because you thought you were qualified to be a chess player from the very beginning."

Vespera paused for a moment.

“Well said,” she admitted.

She picked up her wine glass again and leaned against the table.

The right leg was completely transparent, like a ghostly prosthetic limb carved from blue crystal.

"One last question."

She stared at Lawson: "Who exactly are you? Your tactics and equipment blend Imperial, Xenomorph, and even technologies I've never seen before. The only thing I can think of that matches is..."

Her eyes narrowed: "Alpha Legion."

The air in the sealed room instantly cooled by three degrees.

At the same instant, Katarina's chainsaw sword pointed at Vespera: "How dare you insult my lord with the name of the Traitor Legion."

Lawson raised his hand to stop the nun.

In the history of the Empire, the Alpha Legion is an entity that can never be defined.

They could be the most loyal traitors, or the most rebellious loyalists.

Their methods do bear some resemblance to Lawson's: no code names, unconventional approaches, using every available means, including alien technology, penetrating to undetectable depths, and an extreme pragmatism that "can abandon all forms for the ultimate goal."

Silence is the best answer.

Katarina put down the chainsaw sword.

She stared intently at Lawson's retreating figure, then said with unusual seriousness, "I followed the Lord for two days and witnessed firsthand his killing of Greenskins, slaughter of heretics, and rescue of civilians. Every bullet he fired was aimed at the Emperor's enemies; the Alpha Legion could not do that."

The nun said with certainty, "Sir, you are the Emperor's sharpest blade; you don't need a designation."

Vespera shrugged noncommittally: "Think what you want, I'm going to die soon anyway."

Vespera took another sip of wine.

"Since we're all going to die anyway, let's say a few more words. We can't take it with us anyway."

She tapped the projector twice, and a 3D star map lit up.

Three planets orbit a dark red star.

Lawson's swarm intelligence instantly identified the celestial configuration: the Oberlus Triad.

"We are now standing at the Obrolus-III."

Vespera pointed with his left hand to the smallest of the three planets: "The secondary planet, which is this hive world. The population is about 120 billion, and there were about 130 billion before the Greenskins besieged it. Many of them died."

Her finger moved toward the largest planet.

"Oberus-I. Main planet. Hive world. Population 180 billion."

Then there's the one in the middle: "Oberus II. Agricultural world. Population approximately 28 billion."

Vespera's voice turned low.

"The entire system has been shrouded in subspace storms for over a decade. After the Great Rift, most of the shipping lanes in the Agrippina Sector were swallowed up by the Chaos Tides. This triple system has become an isolated island, completely cut off from the Imperium."

Lawson's pupils contracted slightly.

The swarm intelligence quickly grasped the strategic implications of this message: there was no external aid, no supply lines, and no support from the Holy Empire.

Everything on this planet can only be achieved by ourselves.

Vespera continued, “Governor Reinhard von Krause, a truly dangerous man. Unlike this foolish governor before you who only knows how to amass wealth, Krause is a follower of Khorne. He wasn’t tempted into this; he chose it. He worships the power of the Blood Lord and the purity of violence, and he has implemented a gladiatorial system in his hive, using human lives as the sole criterion for class advancement.”

"He has connections with Chaos Space Marines?" Lawson asked.

Vespera gave him an approving look: "You're no ordinary Astartes after all. Yes, Krauser has a secret agreement with a Chaos Chapter operating in the Agrippina Sector. I don't know which chapter it is, but judging from the advanced weaponry he's acquired, they're at least a company-level force."

“Two years ago,” Vespera’s voice dropped even lower, “Klaus sent troops to invade the Agricultural World. The governor of Obolus-II was a nice old man, a pious but incompetent administrator by Imperial standards. Klaus broke through his PDF in just three weeks, executed the governor and his entire family, and took over the Agricultural World for himself.”

She looked at Lawson: "Do you know why this stupid governor in front of you has stockpiled all the elite troops in the Spire district, ignoring the lives of the civilians below?"

Lawson did not answer.

But swarm intelligence is already drawing conclusions based on Vespera's narrative.

“Because of food,” Vespella answered. “Oberus-III is a hive world. Hive worlds don’t produce food; over ten billion mouths rely entirely on external imports. The Corpse Guild’s corpse starch can only be used for recycling to maintain the minimum calorie requirement. The real staple food supply—protein, carbohydrates, and vitamins—all depend on food transport from the agricultural world.”

Her finger traced a dotted line on the star chart from Obulus-II to Obulus-III.

"This supply line has been cut off. After Krauser took over the agricultural world, he cut off our food exports. The stupid governor has been living off his past savings; the strategic food reserves of the three hives, which were full two years ago, are now..."

She held up three fingers.

"Three months, at most three months."

The air in the sealed room seemed to freeze.

"Three months from now, those billions of civilians you heroically saved will riot from starvation. At that time, there will be no need for the Nuguri, Tzeentch, or the Greenskins; they will eat each other. Have you ever seen a famine affecting over ten billion people?"

Lawson remained silent.

Vespera's lips curled into a meaningful smile.

"This is the inevitable course of events, Mr. Astartes. The Agrippina Sector is a meat grinder. The warp storm has trapped this system, the homeworld is under the rule of the Khorne followers, the agricultural world has been taken over, and food supplies have dried up. No matter how many Orks you kill or how many heretics you exterminate, the fate of this planet is already sealed. You can't defeat Krauser's 180 billion people, and you can't escape the warp storm either."

She picked up the nearly empty wine glass and took a final sip with the left corner of her mouth.

"Come to Chaos. The Lord of Change doesn't care about your past; he only cares about change. Your abilities and methods will be a hundred times more valuable on the chessboard of Chaos than in the cage of the corrupt empire."

Lawson spoke up.

"Are you done talking?"

"Once you've said that, you can go die."

Vespera put down his glass, seemingly having anticipated this answer.

But she did not close her eyes.

Instead, a strange, crazed light shone in her grey-blue eyes.

"There's one last thing."

Vespera's voice changed, becoming like an echo rising from the depths of a grave.

"You should already know about the Tzeentch psychic dust in the water. It bears the microscopic imprint of the Lord of Change, and this is only one layer of it."

Her right hand was completely transparent.

A bluish-purple light pulsed within her body, like a star about to explode as a supernova.

"The second layer is the imprint of my soul."

Lawson's pupils contracted sharply.

Vespera's soul signal is fluctuating violently, spreading outward at a strange frequency.

"Ten years,"

Vespera's voice grew increasingly ethereal: "I encoded a fragment of my soul into every grain of crystal dust. This is my last trump card in negotiating with the Great Demon, and also the last insurance I bought for myself."

She opened her arms.

The right half of his body had almost completely dissolved, and he looked like a half-human, half-blue ghost.

"Now I am about to die, and my soul is about to leave my body. And at the moment my soul shatters, the soul imprints scattered in the bodies of billions of people will also shatter simultaneously. The shattered soul imprints will not dissipate; they will turn into a curse, anchored to the soul of every host."

Her smile became incredibly radiant, a martyr's ecstasy.

"Billions of marked civilians will slowly die in irreversible despair and pain. This is my gift to the ever-changing Lord."

Her grey-blue eyes were fixed on Lawson.

“You shouldn’t have pulled me back. If you had let me complete the jump, my soul would have entered the warp intact, and the imprint in the crystal dust would have smoothly detached, causing the civilians a headache for a few days at most. But you insisted on pulling me back, forcibly tearing my phase... Now my soul will shatter on this side of the material universe.”

Her laughter echoed in the secret room.

"So you also killed these people, you were born to return to chaos."