Warhammer: Empire Reboot

The morning light outside the window had fully illuminated the room.

The expectation in his eyes completely turned into satisfaction.

At the crossroads of 100 million elite soldiers, he was not given a simple and brutal new type of soldier.

It provides the evolution of the entire system.

Agriculture will become more stable.

The borders will become easier to open up.

The administration will find it easier to appease the public.

Screening will detect contamination and foreign species more quickly.

The combat sequence has finally begun to have its own psionic combat layer.

From this moment on, the Avengers no longer relied solely on equipment, templates, black holes, and golden fire to intimidate their opponents.

It began to spawn a true psionic officer corps.

These psionic cultists are not trained, prayed for, or feared individually like ordinary think tank members.

They belong to a bee colony.

Their power is also under the unified command of the bee swarm.

Lawson lit a cigar and took a deep drag.

The smoke slowly dissipated.

In swarm intelligence, more and more special nodes light up, like tiny stars emerging in a sea of ​​stars.

The special assassins' first real achievement did not occur on the battlefield.

Instead, it is a hive world called Castor-7 on the edge of the Agrippina sector.

This planet is located at the end of the old shipping lane.

Before the Great Rift, Castor-7 was one of the population supply sites on the outer edge of the Agrippina Sector.

It has three primary hive cities, twelve secondary hive cities, a vast waste salt sea, two orbital elevators, and an aging starport defense ring.

The records show that Castor-7 was stable for a long time.

For the past 150 years, this planet has not experienced any large-scale rebellions, open chaos worship, serious arrears in tithes, or even subterranean gang wars, which have all remained within "acceptable attrition" limits.

Imperial bureaucrats like this kind of planet.

Quiet.

obey.

Hand over the person on time.

Pay taxes on time.

Every so often, the Governor's Palace would also present Agrippina with a respectfully worded declaration of loyalty, the contents of which were nothing more than the eternal glory of the Golden Throne, the Emperor's protection of the stars, and Castor's eternal adherence to the human bloodline.

The paper is very clean.

It was so clean that the swarm of sub-brains under Lawson's command first put it on the "low-priority takeover list".

The Bixie battle group hasn't reached here yet.

In the early stages, only a small number of cornerstone sequences, infiltrator peripheral nodes, and a few administrative reconnaissance teams entered Castor-7.

Their task was also very simple.

Investigation. Infiltration. Audit. Confirm the access control structure of the orbital defense network.

Mark the relationships between the Governor's Office, the Water Purifiers' Guild, the Grain Bureau, the Corpse Guild, the Promethean Guild, the Star Harbor Authority, the remnants of the Ministry of Justice, the Council of Nobles, the Underground Gangs, the State Monastery, and the local army.

The experience of Albitl-3 has proven that the Bi'an Legion was able to control a planet within half an hour not because the drop pods were heavy enough.

The real key lies in what happens before the parachute landing.

The cornerstone sequence was infiltrated ahead of schedule.

They disguised themselves as pipeline workers, granary clerks, corpse handlers, Star Harbor cargo hold managers, downhill maintenance crews, civil defense data clerks, and cleaning and maintenance mechanics for aristocratic mansions.

They investigated the control chain of the railgun emplacement in advance.

The grain bureau's accounts were copied in advance.

Mark the secret passage of the Governor's Palace in advance.

Investigate the Ministry of Justice's remaining evidence database in advance.

By the time the Bi'an battle group landed, the planet had already been seized by the swarm intelligence, which had grasped several of its most crucial bones.

The same goes for Castor-7.

This time, however, the first to send back the warning was a foundational sequence that had just emerged with gene-sniffing abilities.

Number: Cornerstone-Castor-9173.

Identity disguise: Third main hive, mid-level water purification pipeline inspector.

The position is very ordinary.

So ordinary that every day he travels through a dozen blocks, entering hundreds of residential areas to check water pressure, valves, filters, and circulation pipes beneath the residential areas.

This kind of identity wouldn't attract attention.

In the hive, people are wary of the Ministry of Justice, afraid of the Civil Defence Force, dislike tax collectors, and feign piety towards the Nationalist missionaries, but rarely pay attention to a gray-clad plumber.

Pipeline workers can pass through many doors simply by keeping their heads down, carrying their toolboxes, and smelling of rust and disinfectant.

The first time Cornerstone-9173 sensed something was wrong was at the 17th District Water Purification Station.

That place is responsible for supplying drinking water to 300,000 middle-class residents.

As he checked the valve pressure according to procedure, a local union deputy manager walked past him.

That person was very friendly.

She smiled and even asked him if he was newly transferred.

"The General Administration has been conducting frequent inspections lately, and there are many new recruits. You've worked hard."

Cornerstone-9173 looked up at him.

The next second, he smelled a scent.

It was a fishy-sweet smell hidden beneath the skin.

Like a wet carapace.

Like insect eggs.

Like an alien organization wrapped in human perfume and union uniforms.

Cornerstone-9173 lowered his head and continued to tighten the valve.

"He's newly transferred and isn't familiar with the procedures yet."

The deputy manager smiled.

"Take it slow. Castorians are rule-abiding, and those who follow the rules always survive longer here."

This statement appears to be just a casual reminder.

Swarm intelligence, however, labels it as a trial.

After Cornerstone-9173 left the branch station, it did not report directly to the public channel.

He bypassed two blind spots in the monitoring system, entered the lower maintenance well, activated the micro silent node, and transmitted the sniffing records to the swarm's thinking.

[An individual suspected of having a genetic abnormality.]

[Location: Castor-7, Third Major Hive City, Water Purification Station in Sector 17.]

[Individual Identity: Deputy Supervisor of the Water Purifiers Association; Name: Luca Finn]

[Abnormal Detection: Non-standard human tissue odor, suspected to be caused by alien crustacean genetic contamination.]

This report was initially classified as a yellow alert.

Gene sniffing capabilities are still emerging and require extensive cross-validation.

The division of the bee colony into its brains is not easily defined.

As a result, more cornerstone sequences were quietly moved.

The next day, a temporary porter at the grain bureau recorded a similar odor.

The goal is to become a food auditor.

On the third day, in the crematorium of the mortuary union, an old worker responsible for sorting the lower-level corpses was marked.

On the fourth day, at the Star Harbor Cargo Storage Authority, two mid-level dispatchers were marked.

On the fifth day, a nun from the State Church's affiliated almshouse was marked.

On the sixth day, in the archives of the Ministry of Justice in the Third Main Nest City, a clerk was marked.

The connection to the anomaly point has been established.

Initially, the brain splitting of bee colonies was suspected to be caused by some kind of local genetic disease or genetic mutations caused by long-term industrial pollution.

The feedback from the gene-sniffing foundation sequence is very consistent.

The flavor comes from "Alien".

On the seventh day, the infiltrator's outer node purchased a smuggled potion from the lower nest black market.

The drug is nominally intended to treat bone marrow failure in miners, but its actual ingredients contain trace amounts of non-human gene-inducing substances.

The T-series remote analysis yields the following conclusions.

A suspected gene-stealing cult has a long history of contamination.

The swarm brain immediately forwarded the report to a higher level.

Planet Obolos III, Spire.

Lawson is inspecting the construction progress of the green-skinned culture pool in the Agrippina sector.