Warhammer: Empire Reboot

The large screen lights up.

Huo's strategic drones began reporting on the progress of the Fifth Expedition.

"The operation went smoothly, Supreme Ether."

The high-ranking diplomat from the Shui family rose respectfully. "The resistance from the three outer worlds has ceased. The main star's air defense network has only 17 percent remaining. O'Shovar himself is currently surrounded in the eastern district of Talosh City."

"The network coordinates provided by Comoros are indeed effective, bypassing all the peripheral sensor arrays deployed by the traitors, as well as all human outposts in this sector. What we launched this time was a beam blade that pierced directly into the enemy's guts."

"The Dark Eldar are a bunch of untrustworthy space raiders," the diplomat added, "but they weren't lying this time."

Anwa nodded slightly, offering his comments on the human empire in a very gentle manner.

"The Guera were once a behemoth. I've read their history. Ten thousand years ago, they colonized a million worlds, and their fleets could traverse half the galaxy in two months. They were a truly great civilization."

"And now, it's just a rotting corpse."

"The Great Rift tore their territory in two. The Holy Front is preoccupied with its own problems, and the remaining battle lines are only kept alive by a dead man who has been lying on his throne for ten thousand years. As for the so-called Dark Side of the Empire, they are nothing more than a group of warlords scrambling for scraps in the ruins."

Fire's supreme commander, Osham, stood up and brought up Lawson's data model.

"The highest ether is the witness."

"The supercomputing center has conducted a complete tactical logic analysis of the human leader, the Dark Side of the Empire. His expansion speed is indeed remarkable, with more than 100,000 worlds recovered in four years, a number that is an outlier in any military doctrine."

"But we also noticed another set of data."

The model is rotated and unfolded into a relationship graph.

At the center of the map is Lawson, with more than a dozen lines radiating outwards, each ending with a hostile force.

"All four Chaos Gods are at war with him, his relationship with the Dark Eldar is so bad that he needs to station a fleet on the border, he is hunting down the pirates of the Maelstrom, and both the orcs and the Tyranids consider him an enemy. In addition, Lawson seems to be hunting down the undead forces in space."

"If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it would be that he declared war on all sides and made countless enemies."

"This expansion pattern has a standard description in military science: overstretching. Like an overblown energy shield, the wider the coverage area, the lower the strength per unit area. It looks huge, but it is actually fragile."

"The more critical issue is the distribution of troops."

He pulled up the star map of the Far Vision Enclave. "Losen took 111 worlds from Oshova. These worlds must be garrisoned. Even if each of the 111 worlds is only garrisoned with the minimum number of troops, it will result in extremely severe dispersion. And the mobility distance between these troops is as short as three light-years and as long as forty-seven light-years."

"Therefore, no matter which planet we attack, Lawson will not have time to defend it."

Whispers of approval rippled through the hall; the analysis was spot on.

This analysis is based on three premises: troops must be stationed where they are to protect, and it takes time for troops to travel from point A to point B, with the time depending on the distance.

These three premises have remained unchanged from the time of the ancient sages to the present day, and no civilization has ever overturned them.

Lawson clearly made this mistake.

The Tau supercomputing center has dissected every one of Lawson's publicly available battle reports and modeled the mobility data of every unit under his command.

The only thing they didn't take into account was the speed of Lawson's troop deployment, because they had no idea it existed.

Perhaps the Tau Empire was too arrogant, and they overlooked this intelligence that even the Chaos forces knew about.

The atmosphere in the council hall became lively, and the high-ranking officials of the Tau Empire were also somewhat excited.

From the perspective of the top leadership of the four factions, taking over the Vision Enclave was no longer a question; it was just a matter of time.

Reclaiming these 120 inhabited planets would be a great victory for the Tau Empire.

What truly deserves our attention is how to transform this military victory into political repression of humanity.

“Once we have fully taken over Oshowa’s territory,”

One of the Fire Clan leaders stood up. "The Fire Clan's heavy artillery can be positioned directly at the doorstep of those 111 worlds. From Assamolo to humanity's frontier star system, the shortest distance is less than four light-years. Within this distance, our strikes can reach them within six hours. At that time, we can continue to expand."

The diplomat from the Shui family had already prepared a draft of the diplomatic note.

He projected the holographic text into the hall with a hint of excitement: "Under that kind of military pressure, the terms of negotiation can be significantly improved. My suggestions are threefold."

"In addition to demanding that Lawson unconditionally return all the stolen Tau technology, we also demand the cession of ten resource star systems bordering the Tau Empire as compensation for the desecration of the highest good; finally, we demand that the Tau Empire provide one trillion human civilians free of charge and incorporate them into the labor caste."

The many high-ranking officials of the Titanium Empire in the hall unanimously agreed, deeply agreeing with the assessment.

This is only fair, and it's just some negligible war reparations.

"Human civilization is indeed lagging behind."

The diplomat arrogantly stated, "Their social organization is built on fear and superstition; their civilians have short lifespans, low levels of education, and rapid reproduction rates. But as consumables for miners and infrastructure, this trillion human laborers are important to us; they are cheaper than drones."

"More importantly, this is a liberation for them as well, and the common people of the human empire should thank us."

"Under the rule of the human empire, these people would live their entire lives at the bottom of the hive, eating corpse starch and being arbitrarily executed by their own nobles. In the Tau Empire, they would have clean water, rationed nutrition, medical care, and shelter. They would become part of the highest good."

“We brought salvation; they should kneel down and thank the Supreme Goodness.”

Anwa gave a satisfied final summary.

“One day, we will bathe Ancient Terra in the light of the highest good. Even as slaves, it will be a blessing for a backward civilization.”

A chorus of responses rang out in the hall.

At this moment, those sitting under the highest dome are sincere.

They didn't see themselves as discussing a form of enslavement; in fact, they were somewhat proud and self-satisfied.

In their cognitive framework, the highest good is an objectively superior system, and incorporating more beings into this system is itself a good deed.

Whether inclusion is voluntary or mandatory is simply a matter of efficiency.

At the same time, in some unknown places on Titan.

Lawson's stealth mech began to enter.

The Tau Empire knew that there was a Webway entrance on their planet.

They discovered the first one 2,100 years ago, and in the long years that followed, they found six more.

Each one is classified as a top-level concealment facility, equipped with a Level 7 photoelectric scanner, a full-band thermal imaging array, a gravitational wave radar, a subspace fluctuation detector, and a dedicated identification system for Eldar psionic characteristics.

Feng's technical team conducts a comprehensive upgrade every three months, and the most recent assessment concluded that any biological, mechanical, or subspace entity passing through these seven entrances will be identified within 0.3 seconds.

This conclusion is correct.

The problem is that there aren't seven web portals on Tau.

On the complete roadmap submitted by the Eldar of the Galactic Ark, the number of entrances marked on the planet Tau was forty-three.

Seventeen of them are located deep within the Earth's crust in rock cavities, with no titanium-related facilities within a 300-kilometer radius.

Nine are located beneath the polar ice cap, pressed down by a two-kilometer-thick layer of permafrost; six are located on the edge of a submarine fault zone.

Four are located behind the two satellites. Three more are located in abandoned mines directly below the capital region.

Lawson's troops entered through thirty-six of the entrances.

The first mech slid out of the shadows, its armor surface covered with a dark gray optical camouflage coating. It was the seventh iteration made by Agrippina's laboratory based on the original design, with reflectivity reduced to three orders of magnitude below the recognition threshold of the Titanium Group photoelectric scanner.

The XV25 stealth combat suit, the Tau's most prized infiltration unit, has now been upgraded into a new mech by Iron Man from the Golden Age.

Thirty-six entrances simultaneously began ejecting mechs, like thirty-six blood vessels slowly being injected with blood.

Twelve hours later, the number of XV25s that entered the planet from deep within the crust of Titan surpassed one million.

The existing technology of the Tau Empire is simply unable to detect them.

These stealth mechs communicated via swarm intelligence, without a single word of radio communication, an encrypted handshake, or a single signal that could be intercepted.

All seven closely monitored entrances maintained a green light throughout, and the readings remained stable.

The other thirty-six of the forty-three entrances never appeared in any of the Tau Clan's records.

One million mechs spread across the subsurface rock layers, abandoned mines, geothermal networks, and urban infrastructure of the planet Titan.

They ascend along the ventilation ducts, spread laterally along the maintenance passages of the maglev train, climb upwards along the maintenance tracks on the facades of high-rise buildings, and drill into the ground floor of every residential area along the main pipes of the water circulation system.

The ground base of the rail lift, thirty-seven fusion power plants, and all the communication relay stations in the capital region.

The municipal centers, energy hubs, and transportation hubs of every major city on this planet were silently covered within thirty hours.

Inside the Grand Council chamber, Anwa's voice echoed throughout the hall:

"The meaning of the highest good is never about conquest."

"It is to help every civilization still in darkness find its way home."

…………

Deep within the Comoros, the Obsidian Hall of Power.

On the holographic screen, the main star of the Visionary Enclave is burning.

Groups of Tau Empire's Manta transport planes swept over the city of Talosh, their plasma flames pressing the entire residential area into a layer of ground-hugging white light.

The scene shifts to the ground, where a squad of Fire Clan warriors advances, heavy railgun projectiles piercing through eleven load-bearing walls of a nine-story public housing building. The building breaks in half, and dozens of small, still-moving specks emerge from the dust cloud of the collapse.

A burst of cheerful laughter filled the hall.

"Well done."

Blood Gate Master Thorion held up a glass filled with the essence of fear, the color of the liquid slowly deepening as the death count on the screen increased. "These blue-skinned idiots are pathetic, but their firepower is barely passable."

Another high lord scoffed, “Thorain, when was the last time you witnessed a proper massacre? Oh—I remember now, it was when your grandfather was skinned alive by his own lieutenant and hung on a flagpole. I heard he hung there for eleven days before he died, and you watched the whole thing from below. That was certainly a good show, but unfortunately, the main characters were your own people.”

Thorion turned his head, his smile unwavering: "My grandfather at least died at the hands of his own people. Unlike your Kaba, whose last conquest of an entire planet was four thousand years ago, since then you've only been scavenging for scraps along the Empire's shipping lanes. The last time your warships were stained with the blood of living people, wasn't it when your mother sold her own batch of slaves to you?"

“She got a good price,” the other person said, raising their glass. “At least more than your grandfather’s skin.”

The laughter in the hall grew louder.

This kind of clash happens at every meeting in Comoros; it's part of the meeting itself.

Sorian put down the cup and pouted regretfully.

"However, to be honest, the souls of the Tau are too bland."

“I selected twenty prisoners of war from the Vision Enclave and used seven different methods. Even the best one yielded only about the equivalent of three human slaves. Their projections in the warp were as faint as candles in the wind. In the end, after all the torture, not even a trace of despair could be squeezed out. It was like eating synthetic starch.”

"What's the rush?"

Victor's voice came from the far end of the hall.

"There are plenty of human souls."

“Losen will not stand idly by and watch the Vision Enclave be wiped out. Those hundreds of millions of Tau have already sworn to be his vassals. If he can’t even protect the people he just took in, his prestige will plummet. He has no choice but to save them.”