Warhammer: Empire Reboot

The piercing sound of metal twisting echoed throughout the warship's various compartments.

Even though Lawson had undergone a second-order genetic leap and his five senses were so powerful that they were inhuman, he felt a churning in his stomach.

"Damn orc craftsmanship!"

Lawson gritted his teeth and gripped the armrest of the throne: "I swear, even if I have to ride a Squirrel across the Webway next time, I will never again ride in a wrecked green-skinned ship!"

This engine, which completely disregards physical logic and relies solely on Waaagh energy—the kind that supposedly allows the ship to fly—has thrust so powerful that each burst of thrust feels like someone detonating a tactical nuclear bomb behind the warship.

These were the three most agonizing standard days Lawson had experienced since arriving in the Warhammer universe.

The situation inside the engine room was appalling.

More than 3,600 fart spirits, used as biofuel, were fed large amounts of Waaagh waste. Although they unleashed astonishing Waaagh energy, this practice of overdrawing their lives also brought devastating consequences.

Through the monitoring of the swarm intelligence, Lawson saw that at least half of the farts had collapsed on the ground with their eyes rolled back and foam at the mouth, their limbs still twitching unconsciously.

The remaining ones, though still frantically shaking the handles and pedaling, were already at their last gasp.

Just as Lawson was considering whether to siphon some more scrap from the armory to forcibly prolong their lives, the chaotic stream of light outside the observation window in front of the bridge suddenly began to collapse violently.

"Everyone prepare to withstand the impact!"

"Boom, crack!"

With a terrifying roar that seemed to tear apart the membrane of the universe, the Geller force field on the outer edge of the warship, which had been stained dark purple by subspace debris, instantly collapsed.

The immense inertia flung unsecured debris from the bridge forward like cannonballs.

The warship was like a broken plank of wood battered by a raging storm, crashing violently into an unfamiliar expanse of space.

“We’re out…” Lawson took a deep breath, suppressing the surging blood in his chest.

"Tactical harpoon array restored! Optical sensors online!"

However, before Lawson could order the swarm intelligence to perform star map comparison, a piercing tactical alarm sounded throughout the entire bridge!

"High-intensity energy reaction detected!"

"Large-scale live-fire trajectory detected!"

"Warning! We are in the center of a combat zone!"

The image from the optical sensor was instantly synchronized into Lawson's brain.

In this unfamiliar and profound starry sky, war rages on.

Less than 200,000 kilometers away in the void, an imperial planet, grayish-brown in color and covered with huge industrial scars, was burning.

A fierce space naval battle is unfolding in the high orbit of a planet!

Two green-skinned warships of vastly different sizes are lying across the starry sky.

The ship on the left is slightly smaller but has fierce lines, with a huge, menacing ram welded to its bow. The sides of the ship are densely packed with crudely made weapon arrays. It is a Fierce Attack-class assault ship, the most bloodthirsty close-combat dog in the Greenskin Fleet.

The one on the right was much larger, its hull resembling a steel mine floating in space. It had bulky external fuel tanks and ammunition magazines on both sides, and its deck was densely packed with large-caliber macro cannons and brutal plasma launchers. It was a Barbarian-class heavy cruiser, the backbone of the Greenskins' main fleet.

These two void behemoths are engaged in a fierce battle with several anti-satellite ports and orbital artillery arrays deployed in orbit by the human empire.

There is no sound in space, but Lawson could sense the destructive power through optical feedback.

The orcs' macro cannons spewed out massive, solid iron bullets as thick as buildings and crude plasma fireballs, which rained down on the Empire's orbital platform like a dense meteor shower.

The Empire's Void Shield shimmered with dazzling blue ripples under the intense bombardment, but it was clearly on the verge of collapse.

On the Empire's side, several enormous spears of light are arrayed and fighting back desperately.

The high-energy laser beam pierced through the void, leaving a huge molten hole in the orc warship's incomprehensibly thick armor. But the orc warship didn't care about the damage at all. Like two mad boars, they continued to approach despite the firepower.

It's obvious at a glance that the humans are clearly unable to hold on.

An orbital defense station on the edge of the orbit has been hit by an Orc boarding torpedo and is undergoing a violent chain explosion, with debris exploding like fireworks in near-Earth orbit.

Surrounding these two behemoths were hundreds of green-skinned assault ships and fighter-bombers, swarming towards the atmosphere. Clearly, the planet's surface defenses were crumbling.

"I just jumped out and ran into a planet-destroying war of this magnitude. Is my luck really like that of Slaanesh?" Lawson cursed under his breath.

"Swarm intelligence, activate ancient star map database comparison! Switch to the unencrypted distress frequency of that Imperial space station, and using background star parameters, immediately confirm exactly where we are in the hellhole of the Milky Way!"

[Command received. Initiate stellar spectrum analysis... Compare with residual navigation data from the 88th Assault Unit... Analyze galactic gravitational parameters...]

In less than three seconds, swarm intelligence provided a definitive answer.

A vast amount of data unfolded on Lawson's retina, eventually locking onto the edge of a red star region marked as extremely dangerous.

[Location successful. We are currently located on the edge of the Agrippina Sector in the Dark Side of the Empire.]

[Specific coordinates: A small star system on the edge of the Klein system, the Obrolus Triad. The planet ahead is designated Obrolus-III, an Imperial industrial/agricultural hybrid world.]

Upon hearing these names, Lawson's breath hitched slightly, and then he sighed helplessly.

"The dark side of the Empire... Agrippina... Damn it."

Lawson knew all too well what those words meant when put together.

The Agrippina Sector, after the fall of the Cardia Gate and the Great Rift that split the galaxy in two, became the epitome of despair in the entire Dark Side of the Imperium.

It's too close to the Eye of Fear.

This is the only way for the Chaos army to launch a full-scale attack, and it is also a favorite target for the surrounding Greenskin empires to take advantage of the chaos.

Countless worlds have been reduced to scorched earth here, and billions of Astral Army and Mechanicus soldiers have been filled into trenches. Therefore, in the Imperial Military Affairs Department's private name, this place is called "Agrippina Meat Grinder".

If a space wreck is a closed-off hellscape, then the Agrippina Sector is the largest open-air graveyard in the entire Milky Way.

Lawson quickly analyzed the current situation.

Run? That's a tempting option. While the Greenskins' attention is entirely on that planet, he can immediately order a U-turn and escape into deep space.

Lawson brought up the warship's real-time monitoring panel.

"Warning: Plasma engine overheated by 89%!"

"Warning: Biofuel (Waaagh Reactor) depletion!"

This wrecked ship could no longer support even a single, extremely short-distance subspace jump.

Even if we were to forcibly activate the conventional plasma thrusters at full capacity to escape now, the crudely welded pipes could trigger a secondary explosion at any moment, turning the entire ship into a cloud of fireworks.

They were trapped on the edge of an Imperial world orbit that was being slaughtered by the Greenskin army.

Since there's no way to escape, the only option is to carve out a bloody path through this meat grinder.

The Empire World? A foothold found within two weeks?

This is practically delivered right to our doorstep.

As long as he can shoot down those two dilapidated ships in the sky and wipe out the green-skinned people on the ground, he will not only gain a massive replenishment of war resources, but also be able to land on this imperial planet with a legitimate reason.

Lawson stroked his chin.

He now possesses a warship that cannot be warped. Most importantly, his ship, inside and out, from the metal patches on the exterior to the striking "Waaagh" smiley face paint, and even the residual energy wavelengths emitted by the engines when it jumped out of the warp...

By all accounts, it looks like a dilapidated starship belonging to the Greenskin faction.

To the orc fleet that was fiercely attacking the Imperial defenses, this small, dilapidated ship that suddenly jumped out of the warp was definitely one of their own who had arrived too late.

For the Imperial garrison, this was nothing more than the Greenskins fleet gaining another insignificant escort ship, only making them feel more desperate.

"Since God has thrown us into this meat grinder and arranged such a perfect, opportune, and convenient disguise for us..."

Lawson's lips parted into a cold smile.

He raised his right hand, and the wisp of living metal flowing between his fingers instantly solidified, transforming into an extremely sharp short blade.

"Then this is the place we've decided on."

"Silence on the entire ship! Maintain the propulsion system at minimum operating speed! Disguise yourselves as damaged orc warships and use inertia to move towards the flanks of those two orc warships."

"Let's blow up that Barbarian-class ship's rear end!"

In the cold, desolate Milky Way, the human empire's interstellar navy possesses an extremely sophisticated, even cumbersome, system for identifying friend or foe.

However, for the green-skinned orcs, the so-called friend-or-foe identification was completely pointless.

The Greenskin fleets did not have the same rigorous code or encrypted communication as the Empire.

Their minds were filled with a thirst for battle and the brutal teachings of Mao Erge, making them neither able nor willing to comprehend those complex electronic signals.

Their criteria for determining whether a ship belongs to them are extremely simple and brutal:

Do we look like this?

Is it noisy enough?

At this moment, the Sword-class frigate that Lawson was piloting, originally belonging to the Imperial Navy, had been transformed into a perfect work of art by the master modder in the space wreck.

To the other greenskin fleets that were pouring firepower into the planet's orbit.

This is a standard, utterly rudimentary starship belonging to some Bloodaxe clan or free pirates, which somehow crawled out of some warp rift and came here to grab a share of the spoils!

"Sir, 261 unencrypted broadband communication requests have been detected, all consisting of Greenskin language and crude electronic noise. They are scanning us."

The assassins responsible for monitoring communications reported through the swarm network.

The green-skinned oracles and radar system were appallingly bad; in many ways, they were more like a radio used to play heavy metal rock music.

Because their equipment was so bad, they relied heavily on broadcasting across the entire frequency band to shout and yell in the void to confirm who was around them.

"Identification of friend or foe? These fungal brains have no right to talk about tactical skills?"

Lawson's gaze fell on the engine room at the stern of the warship.

There, the farts who had just endured three standard Japanese space blind jumps were in a state of purgatory worse than death.

Three thousand six hundred fart spirits swallowed the Waaagh energy residue wrapped in warp waste. Torn between extreme excitement and extreme fear, their minds had already collapsed.

At this moment, although the warships had left the subspace and no longer needed their twisted propulsion, these creatures at the very bottom of the Greenskin society were still screaming, convulsing, biting each other, and banging their heads against the iron bars in their cages, emitting horrifying screams and vicious Greenskin curses.

It was a chaotic, irrational noise.

To Lawson, it was the most beautiful symphony in the entire galaxy, and the perfect assist he needed right now.

"Connect the ship's internal broadcast channel directly to the full-band public communications! Turn it on to maximum power! Don't filter out any noise!" Lawson gave the order.

The next second, a terrifying sound wave, enough to drive an Imperial communications soldier insane on the spot, was broadcast at the speed of light into the void in all directions through the crudely made green antenna.