Warhammer: Empire Reboot

The initial push prioritized the armor-piercing melee combat system.

However, a significant portion of Valentine's twelve thousand years of combat experience consisted of techniques used without armor.

Throughout his long career, he did not wear power armor in every battle.

The skills in hand-to-hand combat, light close-quarters fighting, and environmental utilization accumulated in reconnaissance operations, infiltration missions, and emergency operations after armor damage are equally valuable to ordinary suicide soldiers without power armor.

The swarm intelligence team extracted this data separately and shared it with all the "suicide squads" in a second round of push notifications.

The effect is immediate.

The physical hardware was upgraded, and the software was instilled by a veteran.

Lawson's troops underwent a complete transformation.

Lawson organized the forty-five powered armored vehicles into nine five-person teams, using the forge stronghold as the center, and launched reconnaissance missions in all directions outwards from the wrecked ship.

There was only one goal: to find something that could fly.

The addition of forty-six power armor suits has dramatically increased the team's operational range.

As the five powered armored vehicles advanced through the abandoned ship tunnels, the small groups of orc patrols they encountered along the way were not a reason to slow down; they were simply crushed and continued on.

Norber was unlucky to encounter the power armor; he had no chance of escaping, nor did he intend to.

The swarm intelligence system aggregates the reconnaissance data from the nine groups in real time.

The search has entered its fourth day.

Team A5 transmitted a top-priority intelligence message from an area about 60 kilometers away from the controlled area, in a region they had never been to before.

The moment Lawson saw it from the perspective of the scout assassin, he stood up from the command platform.

Chapter 76 The Warship Has Been Found (Third Update)

An Imperial-standard Sword-class frigate.

It was parked in a huge shed made of scrap iron plates and animal hides.

The machine was in a terrible state.

Layer upon layer of scrap metal armor plates were welded on, and the cockpit control panel was dismantled into a mess and then reassembled in a green-skinned manner.

Lawson examined the panoramic images of the Sword-class frigate transmitted back by the reconnaissance assassins.

The Imperial Sword-class corvette is approximately 1.6 kilometers long.

The design is intended to accommodate 25,000 to 30,000 people.

It is equipped with a macroscopic cannon array, laser gun group and torpedo tubes.

This was the smallest regular warship in the Imperial Navy's fleet.

But for Lawson, this smallest regular warship was his only hope of escaping the space wreckage.

The premise is that it can fly.

To confirm this, Lawson needs far more detailed information than remote observation: engine status, the integrity of the Geller force field, the availability of the subspace engine, and the operation of the life support system.

These crucial data can only be obtained by entering the ship's interior.

This orc tribe is quite large.

Reconnaissance data shows that approximately six to seven thousand orcs, one leader, and at least two skilled youngsters are the ones modifying that sword-class frigate.

For Lawson at present, a direct assault on a tribe of this size is not a problem.

Before launching a full-scale attack, we need to understand the situation of the warships.

But his subordinates are human.

Let them infiltrate a tribal camp with seven or eight thousand orcs.

Let alone infiltrating, in orc territory, the scent of a human can be detected by any adult orc from fifty meters away.

Lawson's gaze shifted to the workshop area in the corner of the stronghold.

A small wrench was crouching next to the ammunition feeding mechanism of a multi-barrel rapid-fire cannon, its six fingers moving rapidly to remove a stuck large-caliber bullet from the chain.

It was slightly larger than when it was subdued, and when it stood up, it barely reached Lawson's thigh.

However, the change is not in body shape.

With continuous Waaagh energy feeding, the little wrench underwent subtle changes.

Smarter and more agile than other scoundrels.

More importantly, the little wrench has developed an irreversible physiological dependence on Waaagh energy.

Once it leaves Lawson, it will never receive any more pure Waaagh energy replenishment and will regress within a few weeks to its original cowardly, sluggish state as a lowly slave, constantly at risk of being trampled to death by a larger greenskin.

Lawson distrusts the loyalty of any sycophant.

But he trusted the greed of the farting bastard.

"Little wrench."

The little wrench instantly dropped the bullet in his hand, and his body turned towards Lawson with an almost instinctive speed.

"Boss! Little Wrench's here!"

Lawson did not directly explain the mission.

"Little wrench, how many bosses did you have when you were on this wrecked ship?"

The little wrench paused for a moment.

"It's changed hands... a few times... Little Wrench can't quite remember... It used to be in a small tribe, but then that tribe was eaten by a larger tribe, and Little Wrench followed the big tribe's master craftsman. Later, that master craftsman was killed by another master craftsman, and Little Wrench followed a new one. After that, it was tied up in the workshop..."

"How did you survive every time the leader changed?"

"Runs fast."

The little wrench answered without hesitation: "And the little wrench can fix things."

Lawson asked, "If I asked you to go to an orc tribe, sneak in, see what's in their camp, and then come back and tell me, could you do it?"

The little wrench froze completely.

"Go...go to the orc tribe? There are orc boys there, Norber...and the Great Techies...Little Wrench will get trampled to death if he goes in, or be captured and forced into slave labor. Little Wrench finally managed to escape from the last workshop..."

"Haven't you already switched tribes several times?"

Lawson smiled and reassured it, "You said it yourself, it runs fast and can fix things."

"That's different! Before, Little Wrench infiltrated because he had no other choice! Because the previous boss died! If Little Wrench didn't infiltrate, he would starve to death! But now Little Wrench has a boss! The boss feeds Little Wrench! Gives Little Wrench good food!"

It says that "delicious" refers to Waaagh energy waste.

Lawson retrieved a lump of Waaagh energy waste from the armory space, three times larger than the small wrench he usually rewarded.

A dark green fluorescence surged in Lawson's palm.

The moment Little Wrench saw that ball of energy, he involuntarily took a step forward, then abruptly stopped.

“This is for you,” Lawson said, “if you come back.”

"Once you're inside, you only need to do one thing: sneak into that big ship and see if the most important parts are still there, then sneak out."

"If you don't go."

The little wrench's eyes completed the entire deduction from Lawson's unfinished sentence.

I'll die if I don't go, I'll die right now!

"Go get the little wrench."

Lawson dispatched a ten-man squad to escort Little Wrench to the target tribe.

Upon reaching the outskirts of the orc camp, Little Wrench jumped off the assassin's shoulder and cowered in the darkness for about ten seconds.

Then it swaggered toward the orc camp.

Lawson was initially worried, but he soon realized he was overthinking it.

In the Greenskins' social structure, farts are at the very bottom, and most orcs do not treat them as independent individuals.

To an orc, a fart spirit is roughly equivalent to a rat. You wouldn't think about whether the rat came from next door, and you wouldn't even notice its existence.

Unless it happens to be blocking your way, then step on it.

The movement of farts between tribes is the most common yet least noticed phenomenon in Greenskin society. They might run away because they are being bullied, get lost while chasing a shiny object, or unwittingly infiltrate another tribe because "there seems to be something delicious here."

With his extensive experience traveling between multiple tribes, Little Wrench blended perfectly into the background noise of the camp.

With his head down and back hunched, he moved between the orc boy's legs in the most humble posture, occasionally picking up a piece of scrap metal from the ground and pretending to fiddle with it, or squatting in a corner and pretending to gnaw on something.

It eventually found the entrance to the Sword-class frigate.

The little wrench slipped inside.

About three and a half hours later.

Little Wrench emerged from the darkness outside the orc camp, covered in sweat, its short legs moving incredibly fast.

"Hurry up, hurry up, we were almost done for."

The assassin picked up the small wrench and retreated back to the base.

After it calmed down, Lawson began to ask questions.

Engine status.

The little wrench switched to its unreliable but occasionally accurate technical mode.

"The plasma engine has been modified. The Great Techies removed the original thrusters and replaced them with two large iron cylinders made by the Greenskins. But the core plasma injection chamber is still Imperial; only the outer shell and nozzles have been replaced. The Great Techies also completely dismantled the Imperial engine's precision control system and replaced it with a set of large switches made by the Greenskins, which are three huge iron levers: one to turn it on, one to turn it off, and one to make it go faster."

Chapter 77 Scratching the Fart Demon, Slaying the Orcs

Lawson continued to ask Little Wrench.

"A subspace engine?"

"It's been changed too. The original Imperial warp engine shell is still there, but it's been stuffed with a bunch of green parts that even a small wrench can't understand. Those parts are buzzing."