Warhammer: Empire Reboot

The situation became clearer much faster than expected.

UR-025 deduced the composition of the Imperial forces from vibration patterns and energy signals.

The result led to an upward revision of its threat assessment: the density and consistency of the energy signals indicated that this was a highly unified and elite force, with individual energy outputs far exceeding those of the standard Astral Army, and even surpassing those of ordinary Astartes.

The strategy of exploring alone is no longer viable.

The internal structural reorganization of the fortress became more frequent and intense due to external invasions, and the risk of being trapped by the deformed corridors while acting alone increased exponentially.

It needs to have one side join.

Chaos is excluded.

The Empire is a better choice.

Castellan was originally Imperial equipment; it's perfectly logical that a lost, dilapidated mech infiltrated the Imperial forces.

UR-025 has locked onto the location of the Imperial forces and has begun moving.

Twenty-five minutes later, it caught up with them at an intersection occupied by Imperial forces.

It emerged from a side corridor, its steps stiff, and came into the sight of the Imperial troops.

"Beep...Detected...Imperial...Military unit. Self-identification...Castellan-class...Combat robot. Number...Data tablet...Damaged...Unreadable."

The soldiers of the Imperial Company locked their guns on him.

Company Commander: "Who did you come in with?"

"Beep... Master... Expedition team... Number... Unreadable, Master... Dead. This unit... continues to execute... Last valid instruction... Explore... Record."

The company commander's gaze swept over the UR-025's hull, finally settling on the rusty double-headed eagle badge on its chest.

"Follow us."

"Beep... Command received, follow... Imperial unit, praise... Om Messiah."

The procession continued forward.

UR-025 was positioned in the middle to rear of the formation, sandwiched between two fire teams.

The fact that the company commander didn't push it to the front as a human shield shows that this unit has enough confidence that it doesn't need a dilapidated Castellan to take the bullets.

But it didn't know that the company commander had already uploaded its data.

The march took about forty minutes.

The corridor underwent two structural reorganizations during this period, and the response of the White Tiger Seventh Company left a deep impression on UR-025.

At the fifty-third minute, the company commander stopped the train.

Then he made a gesture.

The procession stopped in a spacious, cross-hall area.

Thirty seconds later, a faint flash appeared on one of the walls of the intercom.

After the flash subsided, three new signal sources appeared.

The first signal caused the UR-025's threat assessment system to jump directly to the highest level.

The bioelectric field strength of that organism exceeded the sensor's range.

He was about 2.3 meters tall and wore a set of dark armor that was not found in any known database.

The UR-025's processing core paused for 0.1 seconds on this result.

For a Golden Age Ironman, this is equivalent to a human standing still for ten minutes.

It suppressed the thought and continued to observe the second and third signals.

The moment the sensor array was pointed at them, 173 analysis reports popped up in the internal logs.

Because those two are mechanical entities!

Standing three meters tall, its entire body is covered in a matte black composite ceramic coating, with not a single exposed screw or rivet.

The joints are wrapped in a flexible material with a nanoscale woven structure, so there is no friction noise when moving.

The head is a smooth, one-piece black crystal helmet, with no optical lenses on top, only a multi-spectral sensing matrix.

There are four folded auxiliary robotic arms on each side of the spine, which are perfectly overlapped by a precision servo system.

UR-025 took a full second to analyze.

It was designed from the very beginning to be an autonomous artificial intelligence carrier.

Within the UR-025 logic core, a subroutine that had been silent for thousands of years was activated.

Similar identification protocol.

The standard configuration for the Golden Age Iron Man has extremely strict triggering conditions, and the target must meet the cross-validation of at least twelve structural and behavioral characteristics.

These two black individuals meet nine criteria.

The remaining three items could not be verified; the passive sensor could not penetrate the matte black coating.

The company commander stepped forward and saluted the 2.3-meter-tall human.

"boss."

The "boss" glanced around the intercom, his gaze lingering on UR-025 for about 0.5 seconds before looking away.

UR-025's survival instincts issued a faint warning in those 0.5 seconds.

The 'boss' began issuing orders.

"The Seventh Blackrock Fortress has the highest strategic value and priority. Chaos Lord Malex has led his forces into the depths of the fortress, and their target may be the core control area. We must get there before him."

Company Commander: "Boss, the internal structure of the fortress is constantly changing, making conventional advances very inefficient."

"Therefore, we don't need to use the conventional methods."

"T-111, T-112, connect to the fortress's surface gravity sensing network and create a real-time dynamic map. Just mark the direction with the steepest gravity gradient; that direction will most likely point to the center of mass, which is the core region."

The two black mechanical entities simultaneously activated the external interface.

Each of the folded robotic arms unfolds, with its end probes inserted into the black stone floor.

"This gravity gradient distribution is really interesting."

T-111 speaks quickly with an upward intonation.

"The mass distribution of the entire fortress is asymmetrical, with the core biased towards... wait, let me calculate... approximately 37 degrees to the lower left, a straight-line distance of about 47 kilometers. But the straight-line distance is meaningless because the corridors don't follow a straight line; the actual walking distance might be two to three times that, and the layout needs to be replanned every three minutes..."

"enough."

The T-112's sound was lower and slower.

"37 degrees to the lower left, 47 kilometers away, structural dynamics. Three is enough. The rest is noise."

The purple light on the T-111 helmet flashed briefly.

"112, you're always like this. I'm giving a full situation report, and you call it noise. Do you even know the difference between information redundancy and information noise? Redundancy refers to..."

"You are now generating noise."

UR-025 simultaneously wrote more than one hundred records to its internal log.

They have personalities.

The T-111's information output tends to be redundant and divergent, while the T-112 tends to be concise and convergent.

Two different sets of cognitive preferences have evolved into different manifestations within the same technological framework.

This phenomenon was observed for the first time in 19,000 years by UR-025.

Beyond the Iron Man, artificial intelligence spontaneously developed differentiated personalities.

The matching degree of the same identification protocol has been increased from nine to eleven.

It's missing one thing; it wants to know more, to peel back that matte black coating and see the structure inside.

I want to try to connect with them using the communication protocols of the golden age.

I have a thousand questions to ask.

But it did nothing.

The 'boss' was still standing there.

UR-025 continued to be its dilapidated Castellan, trudging along in the procession with stiff steps.

The troops advanced deeper into the fortress.

The 'boss's' command style was unlike any other human military leader UR-025 had ever seen.

He transferred 120 companies over.

They simultaneously attacked from twelve directions.

All companies kept in sync; whichever passage was cleared to the core first became the main attack route.

UR-025 wrote in its internal log: "One hundred and twenty companies. Twelve directions. The fortress structure is reorganized every three minutes, and all route plans must be constantly refreshed every three minutes. This amount of collaborative computing is roughly equivalent to playing three thousand games of three-dimensional chess at the same time. He completed the deployment with his eyes closed for two seconds. This is not the processing power of the human brain."

The T-111 kept talking as it moved forward.

It seems to have a tendency to externalize intermediate processes when processing data.

"The gravity gradient has shifted four degrees to the right... The structural reorganization cycle has shortened from three minutes and seventeen seconds to two minutes and forty-two seconds. The fortress system is accelerating... There is an abnormal density area two kilometers ahead. It could be a control node or a trap; the probability is fifty-fifty..."

T-112 occasionally chimes in.

Who are you talking to?

"Speak to the data. Data needs to be expressed in order to be verified. Are you not just talking to the data yourself?"

"No!"

"Then how do you verify the logical integrity of the intermediate inferences?"

"I do internal verification because I don't need to think by vibrating air molecules with sound waves."

Are you being sarcastic?

"Yes."

UR-025 wrote in its internal log: "They not only have differentiated personalities, but also metacognitive abilities regarding their own cognitive processes. T-111 is aware that it is 'talking to itself,' and T-112 is aware that it is 'sarcasm.' This is not a learning behavior pattern; it is self-awareness."