Warhammer: Empire Reboot

Vera stood still, her gaze passing over the culture tanks and looking further into the distance.

Further away, there is a closed metal tunnel, one end of which connects to the side of a culture tank, and the other end...

A suicide bomber stood at the exit of the passage.

He held an industrial cutting knife in his hand, the blade reflecting the cold white light of the overhead lamps, and in front of him was a conveyor belt.

The gate at the entrance to the passage has been opened.

Squig, inside the pool, smelled the protein attractant released at the other end, and its round body instinctively rushed towards the exit.

They were crammed into the passage, their short, stubby legs trampling each other, their serrated teeth snapping together in the air.

The first Squirrel rushed out of the tunnel.

The assassin's blade fell.

Head severed.

The corpse was carried away by the conveyor belt, and the second Squig was already at the blade.

The knife fell, and the head was severed.

The third, the fourth, the fifth.

Assembly line slaughtering.

The decapitated corpses slid past one after another on the conveyor belt, and green blood flowed from the cross-section into the recycling tanks on both sides.

Katarina had fully drawn her bomb gun.

"Sir, please tell me what this is."

Lawson pointed ahead: "The cultivation pool you see here has a fourteen-day cycle, and a single pool can produce two hundred tons of pure meat per cycle."

All four nuns were looking at him.

"Two hundred tons of pure meat is enough to feed 20,000 people for half a month. If it is mixed with seaweed powder and trace elements in a 7:3 ratio and pressed into a comprehensive ration, it can feed 130,000 people for half a month."

Sera's mouth opened slightly, and she subconsciously repeated, "130,000 people..."

“There are nine hundred culture pools here.”

"At full capacity, one cycle can produce 180,000 tons of net meat. Combined with seaweed, it is enough to feed 20 million people for half a month."

“Twenty million…” Sera’s voice was dry.

"Expanding production to three thousand units could cover thirty percent of the planet's population."

"If we expand production to 12,000, we can feed all 118 billion people on the planet," Lawson said.

This number hit the four nuns' heads.

Katarina loosened her grip on the bomb gun slightly, then tightened it again.

Her eyes darted back and forth between the culture tank and Lawson, the muscles in her forehead taut.

There was something complex in Sena's quiet eyes.

Lawson continued, "You know that the current food reserves on Planet Obolos III are less than two months' worth. The only food warehouse has had its supply lines cut off by the rebels on the first main planet. If the food supply stops in two months, guess what will happen?"

They didn't need to guess. Anyone who had ever lived at the bottom of the empire knew the answer.

If 118 billion mouths are not fed, then on the first night of hunger, the city will tear itself apart.

It's a dog-eat-dog world, with the lower classes eating the upper classes.

Riots, massacres, plagues, Nurgle's feast.

"So this is your choice."

Katarina looked directly into Lawson's eyes: "Cultivating aliens... to feed people."

“Yes,” Lawson said.

Katarina remained silent for five seconds.

“This goes against the doctrine,” she said.

"The Holy War Book, Book VII, Chapter 3, Section 12: The blood of the alien is filth, the bones of the alien are poison, and the soul of the alien that enters the mouth is also filthy."

“I know,” Lawson interrupted her. “So now I’m giving you a choice.”

He walked to the nearest culture tank, looked through the observation window at Squiger tumbling inside, and then turned away.

"Imagine there are 118 billion ordinary people standing in front of you. They haven't eaten for three days. The children can't cry out because they don't even have the strength. Mothers are breaking up pieces of plaster to feed their babies, but the industrial paint in the plaster will poison their children within seventy-two hours."

"Right behind them are 10,000 tons of meat from these pools. Clean, completely purified by the system, pure protein without any spore residue. The nutrient density is four times that of corpse starch."

He looked at Katarina: "What do you plan to do, Captain? Burn this meat and recite a prayer to send the children on their way? Or distribute it?"

Katarina's jaw clenched so tightly it made a grinding sound.

Lawson then looked at Sera and Sena.

And you?

Sera lowered her head, her fists clenched tightly, while Sena kept her eyes closed, her lips moving silently.

Finally, he looked at Vera.

Vera stood at the very back of the four, looking directly at Lawson without looking away.

And you, Vera?

Vera's lips moved slightly: "The Emperor... created humanity so that humanity could live."

Katarina turned her head sharply to look at her.

"If the emperor wishes for his people to die of starvation,"

Vera continued, her voice trembling, but every word was clear: "Then He will not send His light to me in the darkest hour."

She looked at the culture tanks, at the wriggling green creatures inside, and then at Lawson again.

"My lord made me the vessel of the Emperor's Light. The Emperor's will was conveyed to me through my lord. Therefore..."

She took a deep breath: "If Your Majesty chooses to save His people in this way, then this is the way the Emperor allows."

Sera looked up, glanced at Vera, and then at the culture tank.

“The living saint is right. I, Ceira Aurelius, have chopped off more alien heads than I’ve eaten hot meals. If you’re telling me that this rotten flesh can save billions of lives, then I’ll accept it.”

She wiped the sweat from her face: "But you have to make sure the meat is clean."

"The processing will drain all the active spores and life energy from the green skin."

"What's left is just pure protein fiber and fat," Lawson said. "It's cleaner than any piece of synthetic meat you can buy at the Mid-Nest Market."

Sena remained silent for a long time, then nodded slightly.

Katarina was the last one.

She slowly holstered the bomb gun and put the safety back on.

“I am a battle nun. My duty is to eliminate aliens, heretics, and cultists. I was taught from the age of nine that aliens deserve only one treatment: death.”

She looked up and stared at Squig's corpse flowing along the slaughter conveyor belt.

"But you turned their deaths into the lives of 118 billion people."

Her gaze shifted from the conveyor belt to Lawson's face.

"I choose survival."

Lawson nodded, turned around, and continued walking deeper into the dome.

"Come with me. There's more to see."

He led four nuns through the passageways between the cultivation pools to the processing area on the other side of the dome. The air temperature here was even higher, and dozens of compression molding machines were humming away. Squiger chunks, processed on the slaughter line, were conveyed into a shredder, emerging as light brown meat fibers. These fibers were mixed in a specific ratio with dark green seaweed powder fed in from another pipe, and then entered a high-temperature sterilization compression chamber.

What finally slid out of the exit were fist-sized, extremely dense, dark brown cubes.

Spark Type I Comprehensive Rations

Lawson picked up a freshly pressed ration from the conveyor belt and broke it in half.

The cross-section was a uniform green, with a faint salty and savory smell. He handed half of it to Katarina.

“I’ve already eaten,” Katerina said.

“I know you’ve eaten it before,” Lawson said, “but you didn’t know what it was made of before. Now you do. Eat it again.”

Katarina looked at the half-eaten ration in her hand.

Then she stuffed the whole piece into her mouth, chewed it three times, and swallowed it.

"The taste hasn't changed," she said.

Sera snorted, took the other half from Lawson, and took a big bite. "Damn, it's still delicious."

Sena took a piece from the conveyor belt, took a small bite, and chewed slowly.

Vera didn't take it.

She stood beside Lawson, watching the rations slide out of the outlet, watching the non-combat soldiers pack the rations into standardized metal crates, and watching the full crates being transported by forklifts to the distant storage area.

“My lord,” she said softly.

Lawson glanced at her.

“You…” Vera hesitated, but she continued, “You possess a pure soul bestowed by the Emperor. You could have chosen a more… doctrinal way to solve the food problem, but you chose this.”

Her gaze swept over the steaming incubation tanks, the slaughter lines flowing with green blood, and the roaring processing machinery.

“You take all the blame upon yourself.”

Lawson looked at her and remained silent for two seconds.

“There is no sin,” he said. “Killing aliens has never been a sin.”

“But raising them,” Vera said. “In the doctrine, raising aliens is tantamount to conspiring with heresy. You chose to go against the doctrine because…”

"Because doctrine cannot be eaten."

Lawson's tone was flat: "No matter how beautifully the Holy War Bible is written, it can't fill a child's stomach. Those mothers you saw yesterday when you were purifying the remaining plague in the Second District of the Bottom Nest, with their emaciated babies in their arms, do you think they needed a prayer or a piece of meat more?"

Vera's eyes reddened. A single tear slid down her cheek, gleaming faintly with a golden light under the dome's lights.