Warhammer: Empire Reboot

Priorities were strictly ordered.

Those lacking food were given priority for rations. A transport convoy arrived with tens of thousands of tons of Spark rations, enough to last six months. Survival was the top priority.

If the area is invaded, dispatch combat units to assist in the defense.

Small elite squads of White Tigers, Crimson Dragons, and Luan Birds traversed various war zones in the shadows of the Empire, beheading Chaos Lords, wiping out Orc warlords, and helping local garrisons stabilize their defenses.

For areas that already have a basic order, maintain the status quo; let things continue as they should, and let taxes be paid as they should be paid.

Lawson will not forcibly intervene in a planet that is still self-sustaining for the time being. He will take over the planet gradually according to priority once the production capacity of the foundation sequence has become surplus.

Lawson closed the log and looked at the star map again.

Ten thousand golden points of light are scattered across the starry sea in the dark side of the empire.

An unusual emotion welled up inside him.

Ten thousand planets.

On another scale, ten thousand villages and ten thousand cities would be spectacular enough.

Moreover, this is a vast civilization consisting of 10,000 independently operating entities.

Each planet has a population of at least tens of billions.

If all 10,000 are added together, the total population under their jurisdiction exceeds 30 trillion.

The entire system of food, clothing, housing, transportation, birth, aging, illness, death, production, consumption, and security of 30 trillion people operates through the swarm system he built.

This size, in the context of the Empire before the Great Rift, was equivalent to the jurisdiction of an entire Grand Sector Governor.

The Grand Star District Governor is second only to the Terra High Lords Council in the Imperial administrative hierarchy, and there are only five of them in the entire Empire.

Lawson worked his way up to this position in four years.

Acquiring ten thousand planets also made him realize one thing: the empire has never lacked resources.

Hundreds of thousands of planets, each possessing enormous industrial capacity, mineral reserves, human resources, and agricultural foundations.

The empire's size speaks for itself; it controls half of the Milky Way, and its accumulated wealth over millennia is unfathomable.

What the empire lacked was the blood vessels that allowed resources to flow.

For ten thousand years, the Empire has relied on warp travel and Astrologer communications to keep this massive body running.

Although subspace storms frequently engulf transport fleets, the mortality rate for navigators is alarmingly high, and communication delays for the Star Speakers are measured in months or even years.

But with the arrival of the Great Rift, this lifeline was severed, and hundreds of thousands of planets on the dark side of the Empire were turned into scattered islands overnight, each fighting its own battle and waiting for its own demise.

Lawson spent four years reconnecting the blood vessels to 10,000 of the islands.

Swarm communication replaces the Star Speaker, delivering information instantly and executing commands immediately.

Communication delays between 10,000 planets have been reduced to zero.

The cornerstone sequence replaced the imperial bureaucracy.

The administrative system has transformed from corrupt and inefficient to precise and efficient, with each planet resembling a calibrated precision instrument.

With the gradual activation of the network routes, the Eldar compensation route map, after four years of surveying, clearing, and verification, has confirmed the safety and usability of 37 main routes and more than 200 branch routes. The interstellar transportation of the Empire's dark side is undergoing an unprecedented transformation.

In his first year, Lawson issued an ironclad rule:

All transport ships of the Imperial Dark Side must be equipped with two Cornerstone Sequence members, one responsible for navigation and the other for communications.

This regulation was initially met with resistance from some independent ship captains and cargo ship owners.

The Empire's interstellar shipping has its own deep-rooted traditions: navigation relies on navigators, and communication relies on star speakers.

These two types of people are precious, rare, and have bad tempers, but they are indispensable.

After the cornerstone units were on board, the captains noticed the differences.

The navigator's route has a deviation rate of 3% to 5%, and the deviation can soar to over 20% when encountering a subspace storm.

The Cornerstone Death Squad reported a zero deviation rate for the flight path.

Star Speakers' communications are delayed, usually by days, and may be delayed by weeks during stormy seasons.

The communication between the Cornerstone Death Squad is instantaneous; the captain can say a word on the ship and Agrippina's control center can receive it in the same second.

More importantly, the third function is to call for support.

It is commonplace for a transport ship to be attacked by pirates or Chaos while at sea.

In the past, when this happened, it was basically a matter of good luck. The Star Speaker would send out a distress signal, which would be received by a planet a few days later. A few days after that, a patrol fleet would be dispatched. By the time the patrol fleet arrived, the transport ship would have already been completely hijacked.

Now, the Cornerstone Death Squad synchronizes information to the swarm network in the first second of an attack.

Swarm intelligence can complete threat assessment and resource allocation in a fraction of a second.

Within minutes, the nearest squadron of combat suicide soldiers descended upon the transport ship's coordinates via the stasis field.

The pirate captain had just given the order to fire when he turned around and saw thirty Astartes in dark iron power armor jumping onto his bridge.

After this happened dozens of times, an unwritten rule spread among the pirate circles in the shadows of the Empire: if you see a gray-clad man standing on the bridge of a transport ship, turn tail and run.

If you're running too slowly, then stop running.

For a time, interstellar shipping on the dark side of the Empire entered a period of greater prosperity than before the Great Rift.

With safer shipping routes, more accurate navigation, more timely communication, and ample supplies, independent cargo ship owners have found that doing business is ten times easier than before.

Transporting a ship of promethium from the mining world to the foundry world used to involve a three-month journey fraught with the dual risks of being hijacked by pirates and swallowed by the warp. Now, following the secure routes planned by the cornerstone sequence, it takes only two weeks to reach the port, with the entire journey monitored and escorted by a swarm network.

With increased profits and reduced risks, transportation capacity naturally flowed in.

Hundreds and thousands of transport ships, barges, and merchant ships shuttle between ten thousand golden planets, carrying ores, food, ammunition, building materials, machine parts, refined fuel, and the lifeblood of the imperial industry.

They formed a vast and well-organized logistics network, enabling the resources of ten thousand planets to truly flow.

Every planet supplies life to other planets while also receiving nourishment from them.

For the first time in ten thousand years, these ten thousand planets on the dark side of the empire have formed a true economic cycle.

Lawson stood up and walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Dominion.

Agrippina’s skyline has changed again in four years.

The outline of the cluster of cities is higher now, with newly built industrial zones stretching from the horizon to the far end of the field of vision.

The ship formations on orbit are three times denser than they were four years ago, with a large number of newly built Sword-class frigates and Cobra destroyers being launched from modular docks to join the ever-expanding Imperial Dark Side Combined Fleet.

In the distance, a silver dot of light is slowly moving across the sky.

Ten thousand.

There are still hundreds of thousands waiting.

Not urgent.

Each one will light up.

…………

Some are happy, some are sad.

Because of Lawson's existence, civilians on more than 10,000 planets in the dark side of the Empire were given a new lease on life.

These planets have regained their vitality.

However, some families face unemployment and bankruptcy, such as the Star Speaker and Navigator families.

Valentine Solaris's hand trembled slightly as he adjusted his collar in front of the mirror.

He lowered his hand, clenched his fist, and waited for the trembling to stop before going to button up the gold collar again.

The collar button is engraved with the Solaris family crest, a third eye that is open, with an eight-pointed star in the center of the pupil.

This emblem once signified absolute credibility and irreplaceable value in the darker interstellar shipping circles of the Empire.

The Solaris family, one of the top twenty navigator families in the Dark Side of the Empire.

The family history can be traced back to the end of the Great Expedition.

With a bloodline spanning seven thousand years, each generation produces at least three to five qualified navigators.

At its peak, the Solaris family simultaneously provided navigation services for 120 warships and transport ships of the Empire's dark side.

The family owns an entire orbital palace in the Calisto system, with over four hundred family members living under a dome inlaid with gold and adamantite, and more than twenty thousand servants and vassals.

The Empire's interstellar travel is inseparable from navigators.

This is an ironclad rule etched into the very bones of human civilization.

The warp is a chaotic sea of ​​madness and destruction, its mysteries beyond the comprehension of mortals.

Only navigators—mutated humans with a third eye on their foreheads that can sense the light of starlight—can orient themselves in the subspace and guide warships through wormhole-like channels to their destination.

The Navigator family thus became one of the most respected families in the empire.

Their status is second only to planetary nobles and Space Marine chapters, and in many star systems they even surpass local governors.

A governor of a galaxy can be replaced, but if the local navigator family is offended, shipping throughout the entire galaxy will be paralyzed.

For seven thousand years, the Solaris family never imagined that this inherent privilege would one day disappear.

Until four years ago.

Valentine buttoned his collar and walked out of the bedroom.

The corridors of the Palace of Orbit were much quieter than in previous years.

One-third of the gold wall lamps are off, saving energy.

The carpets were replaced with cheap synthetic fibers, and the number of servants was reduced from 20,000 to less than 3,000.

Four years ago, the family was still vying with competitors for a lucrative long-haul contract.

The turning point came very quickly.

While reclaiming the Empire's world, Lord Lawson, the Seal Bearer, promulgated a new regulation covering all routes of the Empire's dark side.

At first, the navigator family didn't take it seriously.

They've seen far too many attempts to challenge the navigator's monopoly.

Throughout the history of the Empire, there have been numerous instances of great sages who forged worlds believing they had created mechanical devices that could replace navigators, only to send their warships into a subspace storm on their first test, reducing the entire ship to ashes.