Warhammer: Empire Reboot

Chapter 247 The Unfortunate Encounters of UR-025

The Seventh Blackrock Fortress hovered in the void.

From any angle, it looks like a black continent thrown into a sea of ​​stars.

The sharply defined geometric surface extends for over a thousand kilometers, with the black stone structure at the edge meeting the surrounding starlight to form a sharp dark line.

The fortress was completely deserted, with no trace of any man-made structures.

At this moment, looking down from high above, near a breach left by a meteorite impact on the surface of the fortress, a metallic figure was slowly moving.

The camera zooms in.

That was clearly a standard Imperial Casterland combat robot, about 3.2 meters tall, with a broad body and an assault cannon mounted on its shoulder.

No one passed by in the starry sky.

If someone were to pass by, they would see an old, dilapidated Martian machine moving aimlessly.

My first reaction would probably be that it's some junk that some expedition brought in and then got lost; it's not worth a second glance.

But if someone possessed a full-spectrum scanner from the Golden Age, they would surely discover that this Castellan combat robot was extraordinary.

Beneath that tattered outer shell lies a logic core with a computing power equivalent to the entire data processing capacity of the entire Empire's forging world.

The creaking sound in the joints was a deliberately created, fake sound effect.

Its true drive system can output a sprint speed of thirty to forty meters per second.

Behind the unassuming optical sensor lies a multi-spectral sensing array capable of simultaneously tracking thousands of independent targets.

UR-025 is a creation of the golden age of human technology.

It is the Iron Man, the Abomination Intelligence, and the last truly artificial intelligence still operating independently in the entire galaxy.

It has been wandering in the Milky Way for 19,000 years.

Over these nineteen thousand years, UR-025 traversed the eastern borders of the Empire, the Deadwater Starfield in the south, and the vacuum zone between the Tyranid invasion routes. It also spent three hundred years in the underground pipes of the abandoned Forge World, and even evaded a full-scale search by the Inquisition in the wreckage of a necromancer patrol boat.

It has also killed 360 humans who discovered its true identity.

For over ten thousand years, it wandered around, hiding from search and investigation, and never encountered a single intelligent entity that could engage in dialogue with it on an equal footing.

In UR-025's view, the Imperial Mechanicus couldn't even fix the most basic quantum entanglement communication protocol.

They are clearly guarding the technological legacy left by the golden age, but they are like a group of savages guarding a pile of nuclear warheads. They don't know how to build them or the principles of explosion; they only know how to worship and chant scriptures.

Needless to say, the humans of the Empire, on average, had a level of cognition roughly equivalent to the second-level subprogram of a household cleaning robot from the Golden Age.

Eldar technology is a different system altogether.

The space necromancers possess Gaussian technology, but their consciousness has been worn down by the biotransfer protocol, reduced to half-dead echoes.

The AI ​​research and development of the Titanium Empire is on the right track, but it is still about eight thousand years away from the Iron Man intelligence of the golden age.

Over the years, wherever UR-025 has gone, it has encountered nothing but low-IQ human servants, Martian priests spouting religious nonsense, and aliens that only know how to kill insanely.

I am very disappointed with UR-025.

In its view, all living beings and machines in the galaxy are uncivilized monkeys.

In such a vast galaxy, there is not a single one of my kind, not a single intelligent being with whom I can communicate.

It's so lonely!

After the Seventh Blackrock Fortress emerged from the warp, UR-025 was located in a nearby sector.

Its longwave receiver captured the signal from the Seventh Blackrock Fortress.

The density of the signal was unlike anything it had ever seen before, so it decided to risk coming here to try and communicate with it, and to find someone of its kind.

UR-025 boarded a dilapidated transport ship belonging to a bounty hunter.

Although the cyborgs on the transport ship inspected it with a scanner taken from the Mechanic patrol boat, the scanner's accuracy was only about 0.3% of the power of the UR-025's internal diagnostic system.

Using this thing to scan it is actually similar to using a twig to measure the diameter of a star.

Upon arriving at Blackrock Fortress, UR-025 easily separated from the expedition team.

Its original plan was to kill the group if they doubted its identity.

They turned out to be even more foolish than we imagined.

Thirty-seven minutes after it separated from the expedition team, someone on the original communication channel asked in bewilderment:

"Where is that Imperial mech?"

"That silly thing probably got lost."

Then the group gave up the search.

For them, losing an old Castellan robot was no big deal.

In the time that followed, UR-025 explored the fortress alone.

It carefully traversed hundreds of kilometers of corridors, recorded thousands of structural reconfiguration events, and drew a dynamic map covering approximately 0.15 percent of the fortress's volume.

UR-025 encountered that expedition team once again.

In the corridors of Blackrock Fortress, they were trapped in a series of secret rooms by structural reconfiguration.

Unable to find a way out, they eventually suffocated inside.

A few days later, UR-025 finally made contact with the source of that signal again.

It seems its reasoning was correct.

Deep within the Seventh Blackrock Fortress, a biological consciousness was indeed hidden.

It existed much earlier and was much larger than UR-025.

UR-025 realized that this was the being it had been searching for—one with equal intelligence and capable of dialogue.

UR-025 wants to talk to it.

So it sends a signal in its internal log.

If translated into human language, it would roughly mean "hello".

It tried several times to get the message across.

But the wall in front of it did not respond.

It seems that the immense consciousness within Blackrock Fortress did not receive it.

UR-025 then tried several other methods.

It even attempted to convert communication data into modulated gravitational waves, using mass ripples generated by its own miniature reactor to transmit information.

However, the massive consciousness of Blackrock Fortress did not respond to any of UR-025's attempts to communicate with it.

UR-025 can only be temporarily abandoned.

In its log, it wrote: "The underlying code is not interoperable, and communication has temporarily failed. I really am the last AI to speak this language."

Of course, UR-025 was only temporarily abandoned.

Having finally encountered a consciousness that could communicate with it on an equal footing, how could it possibly give up?

The reason for temporarily abandoning the project is that there are still many treasure hunters in this fortress, many of whom are psionicists.

If it continues to attempt to establish communication links, there is a risk of exposure.

The fact that UR-025 was able to survive in the galaxy for over 19,000 years, becoming the only Iron Man still operating independently, is not due to luck.

Its core survival rule is only one:

Always keep a low profile, always be cautious, and never let anyone realize you're an iron man!

If its interaction with the Seventh Blackrock Fortress were detected by psykers and the message were relayed outside, it would likely cause a huge uproar throughout the entire galaxy.

This is not an exaggeration, but a fact.

According to UR-025's predictive model, if the Empire knew its true identity, Imperial Regent Guilliman would likely send a joint expeditionary force of Ultramarines and Mechanicus.

The casting director on Mars might even personally lead the team.

Because a living Iron Man is worth more than a hundred STCs to the Mechanicus.

It's 100 complete STCs!

Even the Silent King of the Necromancers might return, leading his undead army to besiege Blackrock Fortress.

Because Blackrock Fortress was originally designed to counter the Star Gods, it would be equally deadly to the Necromancers of space.

Even the four Chaos Gods might temporarily put aside their internal strife.

So UR-025 adopted its best strategy: continue to wait, continue to observe, and play it safe for now.

Once safety is confirmed, continue communicating with this massive consciousness.

UR-025 then became even more low-key.

It no longer attempts to connect to the system or demonstrate its capabilities, trying to avoid attracting any attention.

I simply walked quietly through the corridors of the Black Stone Fortress, recording everything here with passive sensors.

This includes the frequency of structural changes, the pulse rhythm of the psionic network, and the distribution pattern of the gravitational field.

Of course, the most important thing is the faint echo of consciousness deep within the fortress.

The purpose of UR-025 recording this data is also very simple: to build a more complete model in its own internal storage.

Given enough model data, it can deduce and even decipher the operating logic of Blackrock Fortress.

Its purpose is still very simple: it doesn't want to occupy Blackrock Fortress; it just wants to understand it.

I want to communicate with that biological consciousness.

It wanted to know how this consciousness had operated on its own for millions of years.

And how did they survive in this crazy and destructive universe without going insane?

For UR-025, this issue is not simply a matter of academic research.

This is also its own problem.