Warhammer: Empire Reboot

One person kneels to set up the heavy logging gun, another person clears obstructions from the firing line, and a third person inserts the ammunition box into the feed slot and completes windage calibration within two seconds.

Alpha air defense positions.

Chaos's long-range artillery fire is exploding on the perimeter.

Several escort aircraft became deadlocked due to a conflict in logical commands.

[Foundation Sequence - Engineer] Charges up the base despite falling shrapnel.

An engineer's shoulder was grazed off by shrapnel, but the pneumatic wrench in his hand remained firmly locked to the loose base, without even a painful tremor. Before the commander of the Christian Expeditionary Force could react, all twelve heavy-duty anchor bolts had been driven into the concrete.

Fire control nodes on the third underground level.

An anti-aircraft laser turret was contaminated by the Steel Warrior's discarded code, and its muzzle began to randomly turn towards friendly forces.

[Keystone Sequence - Technician] They didn't call for an exorcism. They simply sliced ​​open the armor plates at the bottom of the turret, violently removed the contaminated logic board, and used a hot melt gun to burn the erroneous code along with the silicon chip to ashes. Then they inserted a brand new interface board, with a copper wire directly connecting it to the wartime central control. After being paralyzed for four seconds, the turret raised its barrel again and locked onto the sky.

Southern refugee gathering place.

More than 40,000 refugees crowded the square, and the [Foundation Sequence - Government Affairs] personnel scattered throughout the crowd spoke simultaneously in unison. Diversion, verification, and distribution of rations—within three minutes, the chaotic refugee tide was divided into one hundred orderly square formations.

Field medical tent.

[Keystone Sequence - Medical] Standing before the operating table, holding a plasma scalpel. Facing an Astronaut soldier infected with Nargum bacteria, the blade steadily cuts through the decaying tissue, precisely removing, burning, and suturing in one smooth motion, like a ruthless body repair machine, the entire process taking less than two minutes.

Lawson looked at the images and nodded in satisfaction.

"Each harvest cycle."

"Deploy two million Cornerstone militiamen onto the surface of Agrippina."

Lawson issued a second order: "Disband all the original Agrippina's Guards, Technical Priests, and Servant units. Integrate them into the Cornerstone Order in squad units. Transfer all defense command to the Cornerstone Order."

"Summon all the senior commanders of the Mechanicus from the Third and Fifth War Zones to the Fourth Training Ground, along with their most elite escort squads."

Fifteen minutes later, at the No. 4 underground training ground.

Twelve local senior technical priests and three commanders of the apostolic army stood on the high platform.

They felt deeply humiliated by Lawson's order to forcibly disband the organization.

Lawson stood in front of them, pointing to the center of the drill field: "Watch a three-minute exercise."

At the other end of the training ground, the Thinker Array projected a holographic simulation of a Chaos "Warhound" class Titan.

This 15-meter-tall killing machine is charging toward the defensive line at a speed of 80 kilometers per hour.

"Old formation, defend the turrets," Lawson ordered.

A squad consisting of twelve standard apologists and one technical priest entered the position.

The warhound Titan enters firing range.

Captain Alpha of the Guardians spotted the target and sent a fire request to the Priest via data link. The Priest received the request, checked the enemy armor data, and input the activation code into the macro cannon's spirit. The spirit confirmed the command, and the turret began to slowly turn. The heavy weapons operator waited for the turret to lock on.

Throughout the entire process, they strictly adhered to the Mechanic Order's fire engagement doctrine.

Time taken: 42 seconds.

When the macro cannon finally opened fire, the holographic simulated warhound had already crossed the defensive line and crushed the turret and the squad into a bloody pulp.

The technical priests on the platform fell silent.

They knew this was true, but in their logic, the awakening of the machine spirit was indispensable, and forty-two seconds was already an excellent performance.

"Reset the position. New formation, defense," Lawson said coldly.

A mixed squad entered the position.

Three Cornerstone militiamen, one Cornerstone technician, six friars, and one technical priest.

The Titan Warhound has respawned and is charging.

The moment the charge began, the eyes of the three Cornerstone militiamen locked onto Titan.

In the second, the Foundation Technician bypassed the soothing ritual and physically connected to the macro cannon control panel.

In the third second, the heavy weapons operator of the religious guard pulled the trigger under guidance.

In the fourth second, a solid shot from the Hongpao was fired.

The shell, carrying devastating kinetic energy, struck the weight-bearing knee joint of the warhound Titan's left leg with perfect accuracy.

The simulated Titan's left leg exploded midway through the charge, causing its unbalanced body to crash heavily to the ground, sliding for over a hundred meters before coming to a stop in front of the position.

During this process, the only thing the technical priest did was frantically try to calm the overloaded machine spirit and cooling lines after the shells were fired.

Time taken: four seconds.

Lawson turned around and looked at the group of senior priests and commanders who had just been protesting.

"I only have one question."

"Do you want to live, or do you want to die in perfect formation?"

No one protested anymore.

Faced with a tenfold efficiency gap and a matter of life and death, all dogmas become worthless.

……

On the stands at the edge of the training ground, Colonel Steker, the old commander of the 114th Regiment of the Kadian Army, witnessed the entire exercise.

As a veteran who had fought in trench warfare his entire life, he knew all too well what those four seconds meant.

That means survival.

Strick had assumed that Lawson would cram these Cardinal veterans into these high-speed killing machines to teach the dead how to fight, or simply turn them into cogs in the machine.

Now he knows he was wrong.

The experience he had gained in his life, rolling in mud and blood, was utterly insignificant in the face of this system.

The old colonel closed his eyes and let out a long sigh of relief.

A surge of intense relief welled up in my chest.

Because this means that the Kadian refugees behind him, the children left behind by his comrades, no longer need to be given a crude laser rifle and sent to the minefield to act as human shields to slow down the enemy.

The veterans of Kadian were assigned to the second-line civilian defense zone. Political officers were sent to manage the refugee situation. Artillerymen were placed at observation posts.

Most importantly, Lawson ordered that the veterans themselves would be responsible for training the orphans of Kadian, and that Kadian's flag would continue to fly over the camp.

Lawson did not allow the Cardinals to be overwhelmed by the assassin system.

He allowed the Qadians to continue standing in the Qadian way, in a human posture.

……

Over the next seventy-two hours, a silent but dramatic change was taking place on the main planet Agrippina.

Instead of becoming more fortified, this massive metallic planet was transformed by Lawson into a bottomless death trap.

In the urban ruins of Zone 7, the Cornerstone Engineers demolished several load-bearing walls, deliberately leaving seemingly weak street gaps to create a tactical funnel to lure armored forces deeper into the city.

Within the industrial zone, Cornerstone Technicians have infrared-camouflaged over a dozen abandoned factories, moved empty ammunition crates inside, and connected them to high-heat dissipation equipment. In the Chaos Fleet's orbital scans, this location will reveal the alluring features of a core ammunition depot.

The exposed heavy anti-aircraft turrets of the Papacy on the square and main roads have disappeared. They have been sunk by the Foundation Engineers beneath the base of the statue of the Pantheon. The muzzles will not be opened until the very last moment.

In the vast underground transportation layer, thousands of modified magnetic rail mines were laid around the load-bearing pillars, just waiting for the hundreds of tons of Chaos Knight mechs to step in.

The outer anti-aircraft laser wells had all their external indicator lights turned off. From the air, they looked like abandoned, dead wells.

The entire planet's surface appears dilapidated, its defenses riddled with holes.

Inside the Fire Control Temple, Lawson looked at the first two million cornerstone sequences on the holographic star map. The white dots had completely blended into the planet's landscape and were now completely hidden.

At the edge of the star map, chaotic red landing wedges are regrouping, preparing to launch a truly large-scale orbital airdrop.

The defense is complete; now it's time to attack.

Agrippina Main Star, outer perimeter of the First War Zone, Chaos First Landing Wedge.

Iron Warrior, Battalion Commander Karen, stood atop the desecrated Imperial watchtower, his high-precision divination device slowly scanning the riddled defenses ahead.

After reviewing the probing damage report from a few hours earlier, he was convinced that Agrippina's fire control system had been replaced.

In response to this change, Karen abandoned her aggressive siege tactics and instead adopted an absolute hedgehog defense.

Thirty-two earth-shattering cannons and siege mortars were moved into reinforced bunkers thirty meters underground; four Slaughter Demon Engines were placed behind anti-armor trenches; two Chaos Warhound-class Titans extinguished their glow and crouched in the shadows of the ruins on both flanks.

The first ten-kilometer-long trench was filled with 60,000 traitorous Ascendant soldiers and mutated slaves. Their sole mission was to use their flesh and blood to wear down the enemy's ammunition.

From the high ground, the Iron Warriors' heavy weapons squad set up a quadruple automatic cannon, pressing the firing arc firmly against the front of the defensive gate.

The anti-transmission anchor point was activated at full power, the abandoned code tower radiated low-frequency interference, and 80,000 sensing mines were buried in front of the position.

Karen considered all the possibilities. If the Empire wanted to remove this landing wedge, it would either have to bombard it with artillery for months or send elite troops to forcefully airdrop through the warp turbulence.

He was prepared for everything. He believed he was facing an old fortress that had grown a new brain.

Then, a high-energy reaction alarm popped up on the oracle screen.

The massive, 10,000-ton, and over 80-meter-thick gold defensive gate in front of them slid open slowly, accompanied by a screeching sound.

Karen stared intently at the black gap.

There was no expected ground-clearing by macro cannons, nor was there a sweeping attack by plasma lances.

The first to rush out of the gate were infantrymen.

Those were enhanced combat suicide soldiers under Lawson's command who had completed their fifth genetic leap.

The advance force of 50,000 men was uniformly equipped with unmarked heavy bulletproof armor and carried standard-issue explosive guns, chainsaw axes, and alloy heavy shields.

In the vision system of the Iron Warriors, they are just a group of ordinary infantrymen without power armor.

"Heavy artillery positions, provide covering fire! Infantry in trenches, fire freely!"

The underground ground-based artillery roared, and hundreds of heavy grenades traversed deadly arcs as they crashed into the open ground. At the same time, 60,000 rebel soldiers in the trenches pulled their triggers, creating an impenetrable wall of fire.

Faced with such firepower, even Space Marines would seek cover and advance in alternating shifts.

But Karen witnessed something that defied the norms of war.

The running speed, ballistic judgment, and synchronization rate of these 50,000 infantrymen completely exceeded the limits of human physiology.

Before the shells even landed, the charging formation had already shifted like ripples on water, completing a precise evasion ahead of time.