Warhammer: Empire Reboot

The next leap in the genetic base will require approximately five million points.

Taking into account daily consumption and war reserves, accumulating ten million points is the safest approach.

Ten million sounds like an astronomical figure.

But the battle on Planet One alone earned him millions of points.

If managed properly, ten million is not impossible.

The fighting is raging in the Klein system.

The Plague Legion's Chaos Space Marines, Plague Marines, Demon Engines, Corrupted Titans, plus the remnants of the God's Defence Force, make for a landfill of high-value targets.

Lawson's lips curled up.

Go to Klein, cause trouble, hunt, and farm energy.

Incidentally, this will keep the Chaos army busy and prevent them from having the energy to fight in their own territory.

Two weeks later, on Planet Three, at the Nest City Shipyard.

Five warships were neatly moored at their berths.

The modification team led by the Dark Mechanicus Grand Sage Xerath has completed all the work.

Lawson toured the keel corridor of the Tyrant-class heavy cruiser and was quite satisfied with the modification results.

The design concept for the five warships was completely overturned.

The standard tactic of the Imperial Navy was long-range artillery warfare, with both sides unleashing massive cannon salvos from tens of thousands of kilometers apart, competing to see who had the thickest armor, the most cannons, and the most ammunition.

Lawson is not part of the Imperial Navy.

His core tactic is to stick close, hold on, jump over, and seize control from within.

Therefore, the modification of all five warships revolved around this word.

The bow ram was specially reinforced and extended, changing from the original standard type to a pointed, penetrating type.

The outer shell of the ram is covered with a layer of high-density refined gold alloy, which increases the hardness by 40% compared to the original.

The tip of the ram is embedded with a plasma melt jet, which ignites two seconds before impact, and a plasma jet of six million degrees will melt the armor of the enemy ship at the point of impact in advance.

Simply put: soften it by heating it first, then insert it.

If an enemy ship is caught by such a ram, how can it break free? It would have to tear half of its own hull off.

The boarding torpedoes were also redesigned according to Lawson's requirements.

The new torpedo eliminated the traditional large crew compartment, retaining only space for two people, enough for two suicide soldiers to curl up inside.

The space saved was filled with two things: explosives and armor.

Its penetrating power has doubled, enabling it to penetrate the second-level armor compartments of a standard Imperial warship.

The outer shell's protective thickness has increased by 60%, significantly improving survivability against point defense fire.

Standing on the bridge of the Tyrant-class heavy cruiser, Lawson made the deployment decision.

The Tyrant-class heavy cruiser and two Sword-class corvettes remained in the Obolos system.

The main ship serves as orbital deterrence and the last line of firepower, while the two escort ships are responsible for patrolling the system and transporting supplies.

The remaining three Sword-class corvettes will accompany him on the expedition.

Some might say that taking only three escort ships out for a trip is too risky.

Lawson felt it wasn't a risky move.

He has a static force field.

No matter which star system his fleet goes to, he can teleport his main force back to the homeland in a fraction of a second.

The three frigates are mobile anchoring platforms, not his full strength.

Taking a small number of ships out has the advantages of being a small target, fast, and having a low probability of being detected.

The hunter's logic: light armor, stealth, and a single, decisive blow.

"Jump ready."

"Jump."

The Geller force fields of the three Sword-class frigates activated simultaneously, and their warp drives tore through the membrane of reality, dragging the three warships into subspace.

The three frigates sailed in subspace for a week.

Starship-001 maintained a high level of concentration throughout, its sapphire-blue eyes tracking the subspace currents and correcting its course in real time.

The swarm intelligence simultaneously calculates hundreds of variables: storm intensity, ocean current direction, and dimensional fold density, pushing the optimal path to the navigator in milliseconds.

The whole process was as smooth as sailing a yacht on an inland river.

On the seventh day, the three escort ships arrived at the edge of the Obolos system.

"Escape from the subspace".

Lawson ordered: "Conventional engine thrust, scan the surrounding airspace."

Three escort ships ejected from the colorful vortex of subspace and re-entered the cold, real universe.

The sapphire eyeball of Starship-001 has been restored to the normal scanning mode.

The swarm intelligence took over all the detection arrays of the three warships, summarizing the data and presenting it in real time in Lawson's mind.

The vast expanse of interstellar space.

Then, the communication array captured the signal.

Faint, but very dense.

From a position approximately 0.3 astronomical units ahead, which translates to about 45 million kilometers in human terms.

The swarm intelligence system completed signal decoding and analysis within 0.2 seconds.

Communication frequency band: Non-Imperial standard. Encryption method is extremely crude, almost equivalent to plaintext. It uses the Howl protocol commonly used by the Chaos Warlord fleets; the name of this communication protocol is apt, as its encryption strength is virtually indistinguishable from the howl itself.

Signal source: forward airspace, at least fifteen independent transmission points.

Ship type identification: based on engine radiation characteristics and thermal signature...

The conclusion of swarm intelligence came to Lawson's mind: one cruiser, fourteen smaller ships.

Chaos Pirates.

Lawson's eyes narrowed slightly.

"Intercepted communications."

Swarm intelligence cracked the Howling Protocol's encryption in less than three seconds. Calling it a crack is an understatement; the encryption strength is roughly equivalent to covering the password with a piece of paper and then writing "The password is below" on the paper.

The contents of the communication began to replay in Lawson's mind.

A rough, hoarse male voice came from the flagship, the cruiser.

The strongest signal clearly came from the leader of this ragtag fleet.

"Shut up, all of you! If you make another sound, I'll dismantle your crumbling ships and use them as ammunition!"

Another shrill voice: "Lord Moran, we've been wandering around this anus-like airspace for five days now. Where exactly is this Obulus system? Are the coordinates that bastard demon gave us outdated?"

Moran roared back, "You fucking question the Great Demon's oracle? Do you want to be dragged out and hung on the bow to dry? The coordinates are fine! It's this damn warp storm that blew us off course!"

"When will we arrive? The brothers' supplies are about to run out."

"Stop complaining about being poor! Once we find that bastard who injured the Great Demon, we'll cut off his head and hand it over to Lord Skragg. The bounty will be enough for you bunch of trash to live on for a lifetime! Then I'll use this cruiser to bid for the position of vice-captain of the Red Pirates! Ha! Do you know where this ship comes from? The Bloodtide! It originally belonged to Hubert, the vice-captain of the Red Pirates' Seventh Fleet! That old geezer was sunk last year when he fought the Imperial Navy outside the Eye of Fear. His spare flagship was sitting at the junkyard being auctioned off, and I bought it for 200,000 slaves!"

Moran became increasingly smug as he spoke, his voice growing louder and louder: "Look at this ship! Twelve cannons, six torpedo tubes, and the ship's air deck can fit three squadrons of Hellblades! This ship may be a bit old, but it's built to a solid foundation. It's a standard Imperial Moon-class cruiser that's been converted! The only advantage those Imperial idiots built was that the ships were sturdy! I spent three months overhauling it, and now it runs like new!"

The captains nearby gave a perfunctory cheer.

"Wait till I chop off that Astartes' head,"

"Take this ship back to the Red Pirates, and with this achievement and the tonnage of this cruiser, you'll get the position of deputy fleet commander."

The communication was abruptly cut off by Lawson at this point.

He'd had enough.

The corners of Lawson's mouth slowly, very slowly turned up.

A cruiser, Luna-class, manufactured by the Empire.

Although it has been modified by Chaos, its foundation is based on Imperial standard craftsmanship.

Does the Rosen need cruisers?

He's desperately lacking.

Although the Tyrant-class heavy cruisers have formidable firepower, there is only one of them, and it must remain in the homeland to guard the territory.

If he wants to project power into the Klein system in the future, he will need more large ships.

Now, a cruiser has delivered itself to our doorstep.

What's even more interesting is that these idiots came looking for him.

Skragh's bounty worked as expected.

Hundreds of Chaos Pirates and traitorous warships are heading towards the Obolos system from all directions. This ragtag fleet of fifteen ships is just one of them.

They got lost in the subspace storm, veered off course, and drifted from the planned jump exit to the edge of the galaxy.

It drifted to where Lawson was.

Lawson recalled an old saying from Earth: "You can search high and low without finding it, but then it comes to you effortlessly."

Swarm intelligence has completed a full assessment of the enemy fleet's combat capabilities.

One Lunar-class cruiser and fourteen small, miscellaneous vessels.

Most of them were Chaos Pirates, mutated and insane, but their equipment and training were far inferior to those of regular Chaos Space Marines.

Rosen's three frigates were no match for a single cruiser in a direct gun battle.

But Lawson was playing a jump shot.

Lawson's gaze fell on the point of light representing the Blood Tide on the holographic star map, his pupils reflecting the cold, golden sparks.