Warhammer: Empire Reboot

A few minutes later, a slight ripple appeared in the space of the middle platform of the factory; UR-025 had arrived.

The UR-025's vision sensor scans the factory.

"BOSS".

"You summoned me from the Seventh Blackrock Fortress just so I could admire the agricultural-era handicrafts of blue-skinned monkeys?"

The blue face of the technical director at Tu's company is starting to turn green.

Lawson commanded, "Scan the underlying data."

Without further ado, UR-025 opened a crack in its chest armor, and dozens of extremely fine data probes popped out, directly piercing the console interface.

The next second, all the lights in the factory flickered.

The chief technical officer of Titanium Group exclaimed, "It bypassed security permissions!"

An Agrippina engineering assassin glanced at him: "This is Lord Lawson's authorization."

"But it didn't even follow the handshake agreement!"

"It doesn't need to."

UR-025 has read all the structural drawings.

The holographic projection unfolded in mid-air.

The XV88's skeleton, armor, power system, shield drone interface, and heavy railgun base are laid out layer by layer.

The XV104's reactor, thrusters, shield core, weapon circuitry, and cockpit neural interface were also disassembled into countless data modules.

UR-025 paused for a second and then started ranting.

"Rough and rudimentary."

"The alloy ratio is extremely wasteful."

"The energy lines are like a bunch of snakes whose brains have been kicked by orcs, all knotted up inside the armor."

"The joint structure is outrageously conservative. Why would you equip a combat mech with this kind of reaction speed? Are you afraid it will scare the pilot to tears if it runs too fast?"

The technical director of Tushi couldn't help but say, "The XV104 Torrent is a very mature heavy armor platform with excellent long-range firepower and shield system."

The UR-025's red vision sensor turned toward him.

"If a design doesn't understand what a heavy mech is from the day it's born, then it can certainly continue to make mistakes."

The technical director of the company opened his mouth.

Lawson raised his hand, signaling him to shut up.

"Let's get down to business."

Lawson said, “My needs are clear. The modified XV88 and XV104 need to have combat capabilities that are close to or even exceed those of the Imperial Knight Titans. Can you handle that? If you can, I’ll give you two weeks of leave and I can also arrange for you to go fishing on a water-based planet.”

UR-025 did not answer immediately, seemingly deep in thought.

The factory fell silent for a moment.

Lawson frowned slightly: "What, is it difficult?"

He looked at the disassembled XV104.

“That’s true. No matter how large the XV104 is, its size and armor thickness are indeed several orders of magnitude smaller than a true Knight Titan. In terms of physical size, perhaps I can lower my requirements…”

"BOSS".

UR-025 spoke up, seemingly somewhat angry: "You have insulted my core logic library."

Lawson was a little surprised: "What do you mean?"

The UR-025's voice module seemed to have some hidden gate opened, resulting in somewhat excited expressions.

"The difficulty lies not in how to reach that standard, but in the fact that your benchmark is too low-level!"

"What are Knight Titans anyway?"

As soon as these words were spoken, all the engineers in the factory who had a mechanical engineering background looked up.

The technical director of the Titanium Group was also stunned.

In this era, the Knight Titans are seen as war icons in the eyes of many worlds.

The massive steel knight possesses an ion shield, a molten cannon, a battle blade, and a weight sufficient to crush city blocks.

Even if it's not a true divine machine like the Titan Legion, the Knight Mechs are enough to make most mortal armies collapse when they see its outline from a distance.

But in UR-025's mouth, that thing was a joke.

It walked directly to the control panel, and the robotic arm roughly pushed aside the Tushi technical director who was still trying to protect the interface.

"Get out of the way, you blue-skinned monkeys, your blueprints are polluting my cache."

The technical director of the company was almost pushed and hit the railing.

Agrippina's engineering marshals silently helped him up.

UR-025 forcibly inserts its own data stream into the holographic projector.

The next second, silhouettes of numerous old-fashioned war machines flashed through the air.

Heavy colony mechs, wasteland clearing platforms, automated pioneering behemoths, high-gravity planetary logging machines, and small crustal drilling combat variants.

There are also some Golden Age military mechs that were blurred out; they only appeared for a moment before UR-025 deliberately obscured their core details.

"In your time, knight mechs are regarded as sacred vehicles of nobles, and those flesh-and-blood bags in the cockpit that can pronounce the names of their ancestors are called knights."

UR-025 begins with popular science.

"But in the golden age of mankind, bipedal machines of that size and structure were initially just a branch of heavy agricultural machinery used in all-weather colonies."

"Clear the land, clear away alien giant trees, drive away large native beasts, drag ore platforms, and participate in low-intensity colonial conflicts when necessary."

"Later you fitted it with more cannons, hung family crests on it, connected it to a nerve throne, and then used religion and aristocratic lineage to preserve a tool that should have been constantly upgraded into an ancestral relic."

UR-025 continued, "Only apes whose nervous systems have degenerated to the point of being unable to even achieve basic synchronization would consider such slow-moving farm tools as the end of a war."

"I'll say it again, this thing is called agricultural machinery, not knight mechs!"

Lawson did not stop it.

That's why he called UR-025 over.

Engineers of this era will seek answers within the empire's existing technology tree.

The Tau will find the answer within their own combat suit system.

The Mechanical Church knelt before the STC fragments, praying for an answer.

UR-025 is different.

It comes from the era in which the answer itself once existed.

It knows what humans have been able to do.

It also knows the extent to which humanity has degenerated.

Lawson said, "Just tell me if it can be changed?"

UR-025 corrected: "Boss, I'm redefining it."

The XV88 and XV104 structural diagrams in the holographic projection were instantly shattered.

Countless blue, red, and silver data streams converged again.

UR-025 reconstructed the structure while coldly stating:

"The blue skin's design concept is wrong. They treat heavy combat suits as weapon mounting platforms, only knowing how to pile cannons on the fuselage, and then use thrusters to make up for a pitiful amount of mobility, using the legs as stabilizing supports."

“A true heavy combat mech is never a mobile turret. It should be a powerful beast.”

In the projection, the first machine body begins to take shape.

It retains the heavy firepower positioning of the XV88, but completely abandons the slow posture of the original broadsword.

The basic framework was raised to nine meters!

The leg structure is no longer as bulky and clumsy as the original, but has been transformed into a forward-leaning assault frame. The knee and ankle joints are surrounded by anti-gravity fine-tuning rings, and the back is not a single thruster, but six short-range burst nozzles and two sets of attitude correction wings.

The heavy railgun is retained on the shoulder, but the gun mount can be folded, turned, and locked during combat, no longer restricting the melee combat movements of the machine.

The arms were reconstructed.

The right arm is a composite structure of a foldable heavy railgun and a high-energy plasma cutting blade.

The left arm is a thick repulsive field shield with high-frequency cutting teeth embedded in the edge, which can directly smash through the armor at close range.

The chest armor protrudes forward, like the skull pressed down by a wild beast charging with its head down.

UR-025 pointed at it: "In my eyes, the XV88 prototype is just an artilleryman in a wheelchair. Now, I'm bringing it to the standard nine-meter assault height."

"Remove the redundant suspension stabilization components and replace them with the anti-gravity fine-tuning engine that meets the standards of the Golden Age. Note that it is fine-tuning, not letting it float around in the sky like Blue Skin."

"Its mode of movement should be a ground-skimming charge."

"Low altitude, short burst of speed, forced change of landing point, using leg hydraulics and anti-gravity rings to distribute the impact. It won't take a clumsy step like the Knight Titan, nor will it jump around like the XV8."

"It will be like a steel wolf, rushing into the enemy's flank through the gaps in the artillery fire."

The projector begins its demonstration; input the Knight Mech data.

The nine-meter-tall machine lowered its center of gravity on the gray-white simulated battlefield.

The shoulder-mounted heavy railgun fired, the first shot penetrating the ion shield of a distant Knight-class target.

The next instant, the jets on the back of the aircraft ignited.

Rushing forward close to the ground.

Its feet shattered the ground, and its anti-gravity fine-tuning ring allowed it to perform an almost impossible lateral turn during its high-speed charge, avoiding the knight's target's molten cannon. Its left arm's repulsive shield held off a close-range explosive bomb, while its right arm's plasma cutting blade popped out.

The entire machine resembled an axe with a cannon, crashing into the side of the knight's target's knee joint.

The high-frequency cutting blades ripped open the armor, while the repulsive field shield shattered the supporting structure.

The heavy railgun in the shoulder fired another shot close to the wound.

The knight's target leg was severed, and the massive machine tilted to one side.