Warhammer: Empire Reboot

But the things the Space Marines wore had value.

Power armor.

A pinnacle of imperial technology. It incorporates a miniature fusion reactor, a power amplification servo system, a fully sealed life support system, and multi-layered composite ceramic steel armor plates.

A complete set of power armor can increase the wearer's strength by three to five times, speed by more than two times, and provide enough defense to withstand direct hits from heavy weapons.

“Let’s go take a look,” Lawson said.

Fekus led the search team of Class 3 through a series of extremely remote auxiliary passages.

The location and orientation of these passageways are almost entirely disconnected from the main transportation network of the wrecked ship, like a dead end forgotten outside the city planning map.

The entrance was mostly blocked by the collapse of an ancient structure, leaving only a gap less than half a meter wide.

The assassins spent ten minutes widening the gap before filing in.

The auxiliary passage meanders for about two kilometers through the metal structure of the wrecked ship.

The cross-section of the channel gradually changed from a normal rectangle to an irregular shape that was squeezed and deformed.

Obvious metal folds and tear marks can be seen on the bulkheads on both sides, which are structural deformations caused by the collision and fusion of the wrecked ship in subspace.

At the end of the passage was a vast space.

The open space, with an area of ​​at least 5,000 square meters, may have originally been the hangar or assembly hall of an imperial warship.

The ceiling is twelve meters high and is supported by giant I-beams.

Under the beam of the tactical flashlight, the ground appeared as a strange, large area of ​​darkness.

Jia San shone the flashlight beam downwards.

Blood that has dried up for hundreds of years.

The bright red blood of the Imperial humans mingled with some kind of dark green alien fluid.

The bloodstains had oxidized and turned black over the long years, but under the strong light of the flashlight, the red and green base colors were still faintly discernible.

Then, the beam of the flashlight swept to a more distant place.

Jia San stopped in his tracks.

Lawson accessed Jia San's field of vision through consciousness communication.

He stopped breathing.

Corpses were everywhere.

The first body was lying about ten meters to the right of the entrance.

He was lying on his back, and his height exceeded 2.3 meters.

Even after death and hundreds of years of dehydration, its body still appeared exceptionally robust, with shoulders at least twice the width of an average human, and the muscle contours of its limbs still clearly visible beneath its shriveled skin.

He was wearing power armor.

It has a gray-black paint job and is covered with dense battle damage marks.

The chapter insignia on the left shoulder armor was clearly visible under the flashlight beam: a white human skull facing forward, with two crossed bones below the skull.

Lawson quickly searched his memory.

Grayish-black paint job, skull and crossbones emblem. The paint jobs and emblems of over a thousand known warbands flashed through his mind.

No exact match found.

That's not surprising.

The Empire has over a thousand recorded Space Marine Chapters, but the actual number of Chapters in the galaxy far exceeds that figure.

Those nameless chapters that fought alone in the dark side of the Empire, on the edge of the galaxy, and in forgotten sectors, never appeared in the official archives of the Empire.

A battle group that had never been documented before fought its final battle here.

Lawson temporarily put aside the issue of warband identification.

What matters is what they are wearing.

Jia San led his team deeper into the deck space, the beams of tactical flashlights sweeping across the corpses lying one after another in the darkness.

The deeper you go, the denser the corpses become.

These Astartes were killed in a direct battle.

Lawson deduced the final stage of the battle from the distribution pattern of the corpses, noting a clear circular defensive line remnant in the central area of ​​the deck.

A dozen or so Astartes corpses lay back to back in a roughly circular formation, each with a number of enemy corpses lying in front of it.

The enemy's corpses had decomposed even more thoroughly.

Centuries later, only some bone fragments and rusty weapon remains of the green-skinned spore-based body remain.

Judging from the density and distribution of the remains, these Space Marines must have slaughtered at least dozens of times their number of Orks before they died.

Jia San's flashlight continued forward.

The beam of light reached the innermost ring of the circular defense line.

Lawson's gaze froze.

This body was different from the others in Astartes.

A red cloak was attached to his power armor, which had faded to dark brown over the centuries, but the texture and weave of the fabric indicated that it was not ordinary cloth, but a ceremonial garment that only high-ranking officers were entitled to wear.

He still held a power sword in his left hand. Although the force field generator had long since stopped, the physical integrity of the blade indicated that it was a master-crafted piece.

On the ground to the right lay fragments of a bomb pistol, its barrel twisted into a pretzel shape and its magazine missing.

This gun was discarded only after it was completely destroyed.

There was a huge penetrating wound in the center of his breastplate.

He knelt on both knees, leaning slightly forward, his power sword held horizontally in front of his chest.

A stance of fighting until death.

In front of him, there were at least twenty orc skeletons piled up together.

One of the skeletons was much larger than the others, with the remaining skeleton showing a height of over three meters.

A War Chief, the highest-ranking warrior in the Greenskin tribe, second only to the War Chief.

Before his death, this Astartes, with a pierced chest, his pistol destroyed, and all alone, dragged a war boss down to hell by himself.

Lawson watched this scene through a telepathic connection.

In the darkness, the flashlight beam illuminated the kneeling figure, whose posture remained unchanged for hundreds of years.

He was silent.

Lawson has seen too much death, but some deaths are worth a living person stopping to watch quietly for a few seconds.

Then he began to count.

The search team at A3 spent nearly two hours completing a comprehensive survey of the deck space.

Final inventory results.

A total of 117 remains were found in Astartes.

One hundred and seventeen Space Marines, one hundred and seventeen power armor suits.

According to Imperial standards, this was at least two full-strength combat companies, a tenth of a battle regiment, lost on this unknown deck.

No one buried them. No one erected a monument for them. No one knew they were here.

until today.

Considering that some remains may have been completely destroyed in the battle or looted and discarded by the Greenskins over the centuries, the actual number of participants may be higher.

Two companies of Astartes fought to the last man on this forgotten deck.

"Begin collection. Disassemble and salvage all power armor, including damaged ones. Prioritize collecting the individuals in the best-preserved condition. Simultaneously search for all available weapons, ammunition, and equipment. Leave no part behind."

Chapter 55: 12 Complete Power Armor Sets

The next four hours were a large-scale dismantling operation.

Two teams from the third division moved among the 117 Astartes remains.

They carefully removed the power armor from the remains.

This is not an easy task.

Space Marines' power armor is directly connected to the wearer's body via a black shell neural interface. Even hundreds of years after the wearer's death, some of the interfaces remain firmly embedded in the dried tissue, requiring the use of the Katachon's Fang to sever them one by one.

117 powered armors were disassembled, inspected, and sorted one by one.

Centuries of neglected storage, coupled with physical damage from combat, have rendered over 70% of the power armor irreparable scrap metal.

The chest armor was pierced, the servo muscle bundles were severed, the power backpack was crushed, and the entire leg armor was melted through.

Each type of damage may be repairable individually, but when they appear simultaneously on the same suit of armor, the amount of repair work exceeds the limits of Lawson's current technological capabilities.

But the remaining 30%

Lawson instructed Jia San to categorize all the intact power armor components according to their model, size, and function, and then begin assembling them.

The body with the left arm intact, paired with the body with the right arm intact.

The one whose breastplate wasn't penetrated, paired with the one whose backplate was intact.

Leg armor, greaves, shoulder guards, and helmets were selected from 117 pieces of broken armor and assembled in a cross-sectional manner.

This process lasted nearly two hours.

The final result was twelve bodies.

Space Marine MK VII Aquila power armor with all major components in a wearable state.

The paint job is already worn and faded.

Some have gray-black left arms and dark gray right arms.

The body is covered in battle damage, and its airtightness needs to be retested.