Warhammer: Empire Reboot

The navigator's abilities stem from genetic mutations and the guidance of starlight, something that mechanics and technology can never replicate.

Therefore, Augustus, the patriarch of the Solaris family and Valentine's father, merely sneered when he heard about the new regulations.

“Let those grey-clad men sit on the ship,” Augustus said to his nephews and nieces in the family council chamber. “Once they’ve sailed the ship into the wormhole rift, the captains will naturally come back to beg us.”

In the first month, three transport ships equipped with the Keystone Sequence completed their interstellar voyages without any deviations. They arrived four days earlier than other transport ships of the same type guided by navigators.

Augustus said it was luck.

In the first quarter, 170 transport ships completed various navigation missions using the Cornerstone Sequence Navigation system, with a deviation rate of zero, an accident rate of zero, and a 100% success rate in avoiding subspace storms.

Augustus said the sample size was too small to be conclusive.

By the end of the first year, over two thousand transport ships and merchant vessels of the Imperial Dark Side had switched to Cornerstone Sequence navigation. Captains found that these grey-clad beings provided more accurate, safer, and faster routes than human navigators. They did not suffer mental breakdowns due to warp fluctuations, nor did they demand exorbitant prices at crucial moments.

Moreover, they can communicate instantly and call for support, which navigators cannot do.

Contracts started to slip away.

First, there was the Imperial Navy. Dante had already issued an order in the name of the Regent to gradually replace all the Imperial Navy's warships with the Cornerstone Sequence Navigation System.

Next to leave were the small, independent cargo ship owners. Their ships were small, their profits were low, and they couldn't afford top-notch navigators. Previously, they could only make do with second- or even third-rate navigators, resulting in high deviation rates and frequent accidents. Cornerstone Sequence was a godsend for them—zero deviation, plus communication and security. This group was the fastest to leave, without even a second's hesitation.

Then there are medium to large-sized chambers of commerce, whose fleets range from ten to fifty ships. They previously had long-term annual contracts with navigator families. However, when they discovered that the Cornerstone Sequence's navigation capabilities completely outclassed their contracted navigators, contract renewal negotiations turned into unilateral termination notices.

This is tantamount to a death sentence for the navigation industry.

By the end of the second year, the Solaris family had reduced their contracts from 120 to 11.

These eleven clients are all long-term customers on remote routes, maintaining cooperation based on personal relationships, but their prices have been pushed down to below cost.

The family's income plummeted by 90 percent.

Maintenance fees for the Orbital Palace began to fall behind, and a large number of servants were dismissed.

The family members' standard of living plummeted from the upper echelons of the empire to the middle class. The younger generation of navigator apprentices, those teenagers who had spent over a decade training and were beginning to try to open their third eye, suddenly found that the skills they were about to master were worthless in the market.

Fear spread within the family.

Not only Solaris, but all the navigator families and star-speaker guilds on the dark side of the Empire face the same predicament.

The situation is even worse for the Star Speakers. The instant communication of the Foundation Sequence completely overwhelms the Star Speakers' psionic long-range communication, with zero latency, no reliance on psionic energy, and no risk of being intercepted by warp entities.

The Star Speakers Guild's business shrank by more than 95 percent within two years.

Several smaller Star Speakers guilds have disbanded, and their members have scattered to the lower levels of various hives to fend for themselves.

But large families don't easily accept their fate.

Seven thousand years of accumulation, the glory of several generations, and the sense of superiority etched into our bones—these are things that cannot be easily let go of.

Especially when they saw those men in gray standing in their former places, completing the work they had been so proud of their entire lives with expressionless faces, and doing it even better.

Anger began to replace fear.

At the beginning of the third year, several of the largest navigator families on the dark side of the Empire made secret contact with the Star Speakers Guild.

They held a closed-door meeting at an orbital station on a neutral planet.

Attendees included Augustus, patriarch of the Solaris family; Herman Bernardo, grand mentor of the Bernardo Star Speakers Guild; and representatives from four other second-tier navigator families.

The meeting had only one theme: how to turn the tide.

Augustus spoke first, and his proposal was straightforward: to jointly petition Dante, based on "Imperial tradition" and the "Navigators' Guild Law," demanding that the Regent revoke the order mandating the allocation of cornerstones.

Bernardo rejected the proposal, and the old Star Speaker said with a wry smile, "Dante's order was Lawson's will, and we can't even see Lawson."

A representative of a second-tier family proposed a collective strike: "If all navigators simultaneously refuse service, the Empire's dark side shipping..."

“It won’t have any impact.” Bernardo interrupted him. “This tactic might have worked three years ago. Now? You could strike for a year, and those grey-clad men wouldn’t even blink. Shipping would continue, trade would continue, and warships would continue to operate. Your only loss would be losing even those last few contracts.”

The meeting room remained silent for a long time.

Finally, a young Solaris branch member broke the silence.

His name is Dario Solaris, Augustus's nephew. He is thirty-two years old and just completed his navigator training three years ago. His third eye has matured, and he was supposed to take on the family's first independent contract this year and begin proving himself in the stars.

But Xinghai no longer needs him.

"We can't confront them head-on, but we can make those gray-clad men get into trouble, and let the captains see for themselves that the Cornerstone Sequence's navigation is unreliable."

The specific plan will take shape in the next two hours.

After hearing his nephew's proposal, Augustus remained silent for a long time.

He knew what this meant: betraying the Imperial transport fleet to pirates was treason, and if exposed, his entire family would be wiped out.

But when he looked at the glaring deficit figure in the ledger, thought about how the Orbital Palace had been in arrears on energy bills for eight months, and thought about the increasingly gloomy eyes of the young navigator apprentices in his family, he realized that the deficit was enormous.

He nodded.

The plan is to launch in the seventh month of the third year.

The rumors spread very smoothly.

The navigator family has been operating in the spaceport for millennia, their connections deep and extensive. Rumors spread like wildfire through the shipping industry—from casual chatter in bars and whispers on the docks to offhand remarks at business meetings. Some old-school captains, already instinctively wary of the Greys, began to waver.

The intelligence sale went smoothly. Dalio sold the route information of the two transport fleets to the Redbeak Pirates through three layers of intermediaries. This gang was active on the edge of the Gorgas star system. Although small in size, they were ruthless and specialized in plundering lone transport ships.

Two weeks later, the Redbeak Pirates attacked the first transport fleet.

Three transport ships, fully loaded with refined promethium, sailed from the mining world to the foundry world. Their route passed through an asteroid belt in the Gorgas star system, precisely the optimal ambush point marked in Dalio's leaked information.

The pirate crew's six armed fast ships emerged from the asteroid belt, cutting off the transport fleet's retreat.

Then things developed in a way that exceeded Dario's expectations.

The cornerstone sequence on the transport ship was identified and reported the moment the pirate speedboat appeared.

The swarm network completed its threat assessment within 0.3 seconds. Four seconds later, the nearest combat squadron received the order.

Seven minutes.

From the moment the pirates fired their first shot to the end of the battle, it lasted a total of seven minutes.

Three hundred combat warriors boarded the pirate ships, and the Redbeak Gang's six ships were emptied one by one within seven minutes. The pirate leader was captured alive, and all the crew members were either killed or subdued.

The transport fleet was unharmed and continued its voyage.

The captain of the transport ship later said to his colleagues in a tavern at the spaceport: "Seven minutes. Before I even had time to fasten my seatbelt, the pirates were all gone. Those who say the gray-clad men are unreliable, I advise you to see it for yourself before you spout nonsense."

This statement spread even faster than Dario's rumors.

But that's not the worst of it.

Worst of all, when the leader of the Redbeak Pirates was interrogated by the Bi'an Warband, he handed over Dario's middleman chain.

The Bi'an Warband is extremely efficient at interrogating intermediaries.

Within thirty-six hours, the complete chain of intelligence selling was reconstructed, from Dario Solaris to the three layers of middlemen to the Redbeak Pirates, every link was brought to light.

In the eighth month of the third year, the commander of the Bi'an Battle Group, Duan Yu, personally signed the arrest warrant.

The Foundation Sequence and the Bi'an Warband simultaneously descended upon the Solaris Orbital Palace in the Calisto system.

Augustus attempted to destroy the communication records, but the swarm intelligence had already infiltrated the palace's underlying network forty-eight hours earlier, and all the data had been completely backed up.

Dario attempted to escape, climbing into a family-owned private shuttle, starting the engine, and speeding out of the palace dock.

The shuttle's engine was destroyed by precise fire from a Red Dragon Legion escort ship on track three seconds after it accelerated.

The shuttle lost power and was towed back to the dock by the foundation sequence.

Herman, the Grand Master of the Bernardo Star Speakers Guild, was more pragmatic.

When the Bixie Warband appeared at the entrance of the guild headquarters, he took the initiative to open the door, raised his hands above his head, and walked out.

The trial was held publicly in the main hive city square of the Calisto system.

Chapter 44: The Judge personally reads out the charges.

The list of charges is long: Treason, selling information about the Imperial transport fleet's routes and escorts to hostile forces; Attempted murder, a pirate attack that, while not resulting in death, posed a direct threat to the lives of Imperial citizens; Spreading disinformation, the organized and premeditated creation and dissemination of false rumors about the Imperial Dark Side's official navigation system in an attempt to disrupt interstellar shipping.

Dario Solaris, mastermind, beheaded.

Augustus Solaris, who knew of and approved the treason, was beheaded.

Herman Bernardo, who participated in the conspiracy but did not directly commit treason, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The other four second-tier family representatives involved in the conspiracy were sentenced to beheading or imprisonment, depending on the severity of their involvement.

House Solaris was raided. The Orbital Palace was confiscated, and family assets were frozen. Family members not involved in the conspiracy were relocated to various hives, receiving standard civilian rations and forced to fend for themselves.

A family of navigators with a history of seven thousand years collapsed in a foolish gamble.

On the day of the execution, the square of Callisto's Nest City was packed with civilians who came to watch.

The Cornerstone Warrior, wielding a power sword, cleanly and decisively severed six heads.

Among the onlookers, some applauded, some remained silent, and some turned and walked away.

But everyone remembered one thing: betraying the Empire's shipping intelligence to pirates would not be met with mercy from the Lord of the Seal.

The fall of Solaris sent shockwaves through the Navigator families and the Star Speakers Guild on the dark side of the Empire.

Those families who were secretly plotting similar schemes burned all their conspiracy documents to ashes overnight.

Those guild leaders who were still hesitant about "doing something" immediately canceled all their secret meetings.

Fear replaced anger.

But the merciful Lawson gave them a choice.

The day after the trial of the Solaris case concluded, a notice issued in the name of the "Holder of the Dark Side of the Empire" was sent to the communication channels of all known navigator families and the Star Speakers Guild of the Dark Side of the Empire.

The announcement was short and the wording was very direct.

"From this day forward, the interstellar navigation and long-range communication functions of the Dark Side of the Empire will be uniformly undertaken by the Foundation Lineage directly under the Marker. The licenses of the Navigator Families and the Star Speakers Guild will not be revoked, but no new navigation/communication contracts will be issued within the Dark Side of the Empire."

Existing practitioners have two options:

1. Continue practicing at the Imperial Holy Land. The Seal Bearer's Office will coordinate safe routes and transport ships to assist families and guilds intending to migrate to safely reach the other side of the Great Rift.

Second, remain in the shadows of the empire, subject to unified command by the cornerstone sequence, and serve as redundant backups or auxiliary functions in designated positions, with compensation paid according to the standards for mid-level administrative staff.

Option 1: Go. Option 2: Stay and play a supporting role.

After the news spread, the Navigator Families and the Star Speakers Guild on the dark side of the Empire experienced a violent internal split.