Warhammer: Empire Reboot

Ella's regimental headquarters still exists.

The Imperial Star Forces issued a call to action to every Caldian with combat experience.

She was assigned to the 7th sector of the Agrippina Defense Front.

Before leaving the quarantine area, Ella handed her father her three months' worth of military pay, two boxes of antibiotics, and a laser pistol.

She held her younger brother in her arms.

Thomas was very thin. Thirty-four days of warp space travel had made him half a head shorter than when he left Cardian, and his cheekbones had sunken in.

Ella took off the Cardian Internal Defense Force identification tag from her neck and hung it around her brother's neck herself.

“Protect your mother,” she said.

"elder sister."

Thomas grabbed her wrist. The boy's palms were sweaty.

"Sister, when you come back... could you bring some canned minced meat? I want to eat canned minced meat."

Ella nodded.

"I promise you. I'll bring you five boxes when I win."

She would survive on the front lines and use her military merits to earn the right to transfer them to the Ministry of the Interior's safe haven.

Ella boarded the armored personnel carrier bound for the front lines.

The Seventh War Zone is a network of trenches stretching for two thousand kilometers.

Ahead lies a line of Chaos Space Marines, Mutant Cultists, and Daemon Engines.

The battle continued without pause.

The night is orange because the sky is always burning. The day is dark red because the exhaust plumes of artillery shells are always hanging in the clouds.

The soil was mixed with blood.

The laser rifle's energy magazine overheated and melted during continuous firing.

The ground was bombarded daily.

Ella spent twenty-seven standard Terra days in the trenches.

Her platoon had four different groups of people.

Veterans die. New recruits take their place. The new recruits die again.

She couldn't remember the names of any of the new recruits.

The first rule the class monitor taught her was: don't memorize. Memorizing will only make you feel worse.

Ella survived.

She demonstrated the tactical sophistication characteristic of the Kadians.

She knew how to find shelter from artillery fire before it hit.

She knew how to judge the rhythm of a charge by the mutated cultists' steps. She knew how to precisely stab the gaps in the Chaos Soldier's bulletproof armor with a dagger.

During a defensive battle, a corrupted armored vehicle from the Nuggets breached the defenses.

At extremely close range, Ella used a molten metal bomb to sever the armored vehicle's tracks and then accurately shot and killed the commander with a laser rifle.

Her left cheek was burned by the toxic gas, leaving a large dark red scar.

The scars ran down from behind her ear to her neck, making the remaining half of her face look more like she was forty than twenty-four.

She received a commendation from the company commander and a Bronze Skull Medal from the Star Guardians.

The Seventh War Zone successfully completed its initial defensive phase. Elara's company suffered a 78% casualty rate.

The command issued an order to retreat and rest.

The company was withdrawn to the third logistics transit station in the world of forging, awaiting the replenishment of new recruits and the replacement of equipment.

Ella was granted 72 hours of free time.

She used her military merit points to redeem five boxes of high-purity minced meat, three bottles of water purifier, and a brand new winter blanket.

She stuffed the supplies into her tactical backpack.

The can's metal shell was cold and made a dull thud when it hit the lining of the backpack.

She went to quarantine zone number four.

The transportation system of the Forged World consists of massive maglev trains and tracked freight vehicles.

Ella rode in a truck that transported scrap metal.

The truck bed was crammed with scrapped servo skulls, broken adamantite gears, and some breastplates, riddled with bullet holes, salvaged from some unknown battlefield.

She sat amidst a pile of twisted metal, a tactical backpack resting on her lap.

She imagined Thomas opening the first can of food.

The boy would definitely stuff the minced meat directly into his mouth, burn himself, spit it out, and curse. Kadian's children start swearing as early as five years old.

She imagined herself pinning the bronze skull medal to her mother Martha's apron.

The mother would pretend not to care.

But she would secretly wipe the dust off the medal after Ella turned away.

She imagined her father, Colin, looking at her mutilated left hand, remaining silent for a long time, and then pouring her a small glass of the rationed liquor.

Five hours later, she arrived at the coordinates of quarantine zone number four.

She stepped off the truck with a tactical backpack on her back.

The sight before her made her stop in her tracks.

The abandoned shipping containers and shantytowns of my memory have disappeared.

Instead, a giant square building covering tens of square kilometers was erected.

The building's exterior walls are made of gray reinforced plastic. Huge exhaust pipes spew black smoke into the sky.

Above the building’s main entrance hangs the emblem of the Mechanicus, consisting of gears and a skull.

There are no refugees here.

There are no traces of ordinary people's lives.

Only the rumbling of machinery could be heard emanating from inside the building.

The roar was deep and muffled, like some kind of huge metal stomach digesting something.

Ella stopped a passing patrolman from the defense forces.

She showed her military badge and medals.

“Where did the Kadian refugees from Quarantine Zone 4 go?” she asked.

The patrolman looked at her medals, then at her missing left hand and the scars on her face.

"Sector 4 was requisitioned by the Mechanical Repair Society thirty days ago."

The patrolman replied, "This is now a secondary servant conversion factory."

“What about the refugees?” Ella gripped the sling of her rifle tighter.

"I don't know. The Ministry of the Interior is in charge of the handover."

The patrolman turned and left. "You can check the records at the Ninth Data Processing Center."

Ella went to the Ninth Data Processing Center.

This is a massive tower filled with parchment files and data terminals.

Low-level technical priests and machine servants moved among them.

Ella found a clerk in charge of refugee registration.

She pushed a can of minced meat onto the clerk's desk.

In Agrippina, pure minced meat is hard currency.

The clerk put away the canned goods.

His right eye is a mechanical prosthetic eye.

“Query. Batch: Cardian Exiles, landing on star calendar 114.M42, Quarantine Zone 4,” Ella reported the data.

The clerk's mechanical fingers tapped on the data tablet.

"Data retrieval complete." The clerk looked at the screen. "Isolation Zone 4, total registered population: 324,000."

"Where does it flow?" Ella pressed.

“Resources are being reallocated,” the clerk replied. “Thirty days ago, the Agrippina main forge faced a labor shortage. Ammunition consumption at the front was exceeding limits. The Governor’s Office and the Mechanics Society signed an Emergency Wartime Resource Requisition Agreement.”

"What is resource reallocation?" Ella's voice turned cold.

The clerk didn't look at her and continued reading the data on the screen, as if reciting a procurement list:

"324,000 people."

"Of these, 12,000 young men who met the age and physical fitness standards were assigned to the Star Guardian Cannon Fodder Filling Regiment."

"The remaining 312,000 people, including the elderly, children and the disabled, have been transferred to the Bio-Logic Department of the Mechanical Repair Society."

Ella's stomach twitched.

"Transfer to the Mechanical Repair Society?" she repeated.

"Processing result: Secondary servant modification." The clerk closed the data panel. "Modification completion rate: 99%. Batch code: Omega-77."

Ella stopped breathing.

"Their current coordinates."

"The Omega-77 batch is currently deployed at the Third Logistics Transfer Station, on the Seventeenth Loading Deck. They will soon be heading to Theater One with the Fourth Armored Group to fill in the gaps."

The third logistics transfer station.

This is where the Ella company rests.