Warhammer: Empire Reboot

silence……

Then, Victor was the first to move.

The platoon leader, whose right leg was broken, threw away his crutches.

He stood on his left leg, drew his power sword with his right hand, and said slowly and deliberately, "Behind the city walls, there is no way back."

After Viktor finished speaking, he slammed his fist heavily against his breastplate with the hilt of his sword.

Then came the second sound, "Orilian." He drew his power sword, the hilt striking his breastplate.

Third tone... Fourth tone...

Thirty extreme warriors took turns drawing their swords and pounding their chests.

The sounds of metal clashing together echoed across the city walls.

Below the city wall, four thousand Starbound soldiers watched this scene.

Lieutenant Colonel Heinz stood at the very front.

Then he drew the officer's sword from his waist with his left hand.

He raised his sword and struck his chest with the flat of the blade.

Bulletproof vests are not power armor and cannot produce that metallic clanging sound.

But the soldiers behind him heard it.

An old soldier raised his rifle and struck his chest with the butt.

again.

again.

Four thousand Astronaut soldiers pounded their chests with rifles and bayonets.

The voices were uneven and chaotic, unlike the uniformity of the Space Marines.

Some were crying, some were laughing, some were praying quietly, and some said nothing but repeatedly pounded their chests with the butts of their guns, making their ribs creak beneath their bulletproof vests.

Quintus watched all of this.

He recalled another statement he had given to a pastor two hundred years ago, a statement he had never relayed to anyone.

"One day, you will be standing in a place where you have run out of ammunition and face an enemy you cannot defeat. At that time, you will find that the real weapon has never been the sword in your hand."

"What is that?" the young Quintus once asked.

The old pastor smiled: "It's the fact that you're standing there that matters. As long as you stand, the empire hasn't lost. As long as you stand, those behind you still have a tomorrow. Even if you fall, the next person to take your place will hold on for one more second because you once stood here."

"Just one second?"

"One second is enough. The entire history of mankind is written by countless people who held on for just one more second."

Quintus never forgot this conversation.

He now stands on the walls of Reaper's Keep, facing the endless death in the plague fog, with thirty million lives behind him whose names he will never know in his lifetime.

The ammunition can last for another week.

Four thousand and thirty people.

These are the last defenders on Klein-IX.

PS: Update complete, brothers, please vote!

Chapter 135 Betrayal of Aster? No, it's the Emperor's trump card!

There are no flat roads in subspace.

Even with Starship-001, the perfect navigator who would never go mad, and even with swarm intelligence calculating the direction of subspace currents and the density of dimensional folds every millisecond, the Blood Tide's hull continued to tremble.

The old sailors of the Imperial Navy called this feeling the breath of the deep sea.

It means you can feel something huge breathing in and out of the ship's hull.

When a regular Imperial fleet is sailing in the warp, this turbulence can throw unsecured tools and parts all over the place.

When encountering a subspace storm, the entire ship will roll around like it's been stuffed into a washing machine. It's common for crew members to vomit while clinging to the railings, and it's not uncommon for them to be thrown around and break bones.

Lawson's fleet is much better.

Starship-001's navigational accuracy allowed the Blood Tide to always sail on the calmest subspace currents, with turbulence only about one-third that of a normal Imperial fleet.

But Lawson still didn't like it.

He inspected the modification progress aboard the Blood Tide and, after confirming that everything was proceeding according to plan, he used the stasis field to teleport back to the top of Planet Three.

T-001 entered the depths of the engine bay, followed by tens of thousands of servants.

After Lawson returned to Planet Three, the swarm intelligence pushed a summary of the entire war preparation system's progress into his mind.

Logistics is the first module to be started.

The 117 military-industrial complexes and 400 ammunition factories on Planet Three have switched to wartime production mode.

Heavy explosive grenades, plasma batteries, laser gun charging packs, anti-armor rockets, miniature shaped charge cutters, medical supply packs—all the consumables usable on the battlefield are rolling off the production line at a three-shift pace.

Lawson's logistics system is completely different from the Empire's cumbersome and sluggish supply chain.

Each type of resource is dispersed and stored in hundreds of small warehouses across the three planets.

Each warehouse is garrisoned by twenty non-combatant suicide soldiers.

Need heavy explosives at the front? The suicide bomber in the nearest heavy explosives depot activated the armory interface, and a fraction of a second later, boxes of ammunition appeared at the front-line firing position.

The front lines need plasma batteries? The same process applies.

Do the front lines need food and clean water? Yes, they do.

The terrifying thing about this system is that it completely eliminates the transportation link.

The traditional military supply chain, from rear factories to warehouses, from warehouses to transport teams, from transport teams to transit stations, and from transit stations to the front lines, is subject to the risk of loss, delay, and interruption at every link.

Lawson's system compresses this chain into a single point.

Whatever is needed, it will be delivered instantly.

When Lawson was developing the operational plan for the Klein system, he specifically allocated a logistical priority to food reserves.

The reason is simple: the Klein system is under siege by the Plague Legion.

Those imperial garrison troops and civilians who are still resisting are most likely already facing severe food shortages.

Starving soldiers cannot fight. Starving civilians will riot.

Lawson allocated 200,000 tons of "Spark-3" mixed canned goods from the canned goods reserves of Agricultural World No. 2, and distributed them into 300 warehouses.

If the Imperial garrison at the front lines were truly running out of ammunition and food, this food could save their lives.

Planet Three, the Pinnacle Zone.

The area at the top of the tower is very quiet.

After the Great Purge, more than 80% of the nobles on Planet Three were eradicated.

The remaining 20%, consisting of minor nobles and technocrats who were found to have no direct connection with the Chaos forces during the investigation, were relocated to designated residential areas in Zhongchao.

They retained basic property and dignity, but lost access to the upper echelons.

The top section now only has two groups of people living there.

The first group was Lawson himself.

The second group consisted of four combat nuns.

Katarina, Sera, Sena, Vera.

They lived in a monastery-style room in the east wing of the spire, which included a prayer room, meditation room, small training ground, and simple living quarters.

The nuns rarely stayed in the spire area during the day.

They have become fully integrated into the daily operations of the Nest City.

Katarina and the twins were responsible for patrolling between the three hive cities, maintaining the public image of angels and saints, and endorsing Lawson's policies in the name of the Imperial State Church.

Vera, on the other hand, spends more time in the lower and lower hives, visiting the residential areas that have just been liberated from gang rule.

They witnessed firsthand how this nest city world was changing.

The steel skeleton of the hive city won't turn into a garden just because a new ruler comes along, but the details will change.

The corridors are clean. The air circulation rate has improved. The rationed food now contains salt.

The sheriff's response time was reduced from three months to three minutes.

These changes accumulate little by little, and the eyes of ordinary people also change.

From numbness to confusion, from confusion to tentative exploration, from tentative exploration to a cautious, unbelievable hope.

When the nuns walked down the corridors of the hive, the commoners would stop and bow respectfully.

Some people would whisper, "May the Emperor bless you, Holy Maiden."

When you encounter Vera, that respect transforms into an almost reverent awe. This living saint once spread her golden wings and soared beneath the entire sky of the hive, personally purifying the Tzeentch Dust within the bodies of over a billion people.

That day was spontaneously designated as the Day of Holy Light by the residents of the Nest City. On this day, the common people of the Lower Nest would light their homemade oil lamps in the corridors, forming a long line that stretched all the way to the prayer square in the Middle Nest.

When Lawson returned to the spire, the nuns were still awake.

As he walked through the east wing corridor, he heard hushed conversations coming from the prayer room.

Katarina peeked out, saw Lawson, and immediately straightened her back.

"grown ups."

Lawson waved his hand: "I need to talk to you."

Katarina stepped aside to let the door open.

"Sit down." Lawson found a chair and sat down.

Four nuns sat in a row opposite him.

Lawson got straight to the point.