Travel to Warhammer 40K with Grey Wind

"Marshal, let's go."

"coming."

Full of doubts, Russell boarded the Gray Goo mothership under Coronia's excited gaze and left the capital galaxy "Aishalin" of the Elinxia star sector.

The matter decompressor built by the Anti-Entropy and Correction Hosts is located in the center of the Nightmare Constellation Void, a black hole horizon named "Quiet Black Domain" by Russell. Literally, it is indeed very quiet here.

The great crunch caused by the Worm of Time tore apart the Far Eastern border and cleared out all potential threats in the surrounding areas. Even the webway passing through this space and time was broken - this was learned from some captured Dark Eldar pirates.

Russell was not very particular about this and just burned it after asking. Psychic dust was in short supply recently.

Due to the shorter longitudinal length of the northern star belt, the Tranquil Black Domain was still within the jump range of the Gray Gu mothership's jump engine. Gray Wind quickly brought Russell back to the place of the Time Worm's gift.

Entering the silent black domain, all the sensors see is a pitch-black void. The nature of a black hole that devours everything and the distortion effect of its powerful gravity on space-time make it difficult to detect by conventional means other than gravitational waves and macroscopic electromagnetic field observations.

In the vast dark astronomical range, the only detectable entity is the giant man-made structure that floats like a lone boat in the event horizon of the black hole - the matter decompressor.

Although it is called a matter decompressor, the huge platform that relies on the gravitational redirection engine to anchor itself at the critical point of the black hole's event horizon, and the series of decompressors, processors and the zero-point smelting furnace itself running around the platform, can only be regarded as peripheral supporting facilities of the giant structure.

The real core component of the giant structure called "matter decompressor" is the "gravitational drill" that sends a distorted gravity deep into the black hole singularity to continuously excavate matter.

That is the divine hand that allows humans to extract resources from the belly of the black hole, the gluttonous beast that devours the universe.

"It sounds exciting to say this, but in fact, black holes do not simply rely on their huge gravity to swallow matter to increase their mass - black holes also radiate matter and energy outward, reducing their mass. This process is not very vividly called 'black hole evaporation'."

The Gray Gu mothership, which had just completed the superluminal jump, activated its thrusters and drove towards the matter decompressor at subluminal speed. During the journey, Gray Wind continued to say to Russell:

"Generally speaking, the smaller the black hole, the higher its temperature and the more unstable its state. Correspondingly, its evaporation rate is higher, and it may even evaporate the mass equivalent to several standard suns in one Terra year. Even for a relatively stable supermassive black hole, its natural evaporation rate is far higher than the mining efficiency of the matter decompressor."

So in fact, building a matter decompressor on the event horizon of a black hole is actually equivalent to connecting a small water pipe to the side of the Three Gorges Dam that is constantly releasing floodwater to make tea. You may not get as much water for free in a whole year as the water released in one second.

"Don't say such spoiling things at a time like this." Russell gently hugged Gray Wind's neck and rubbed his cheek against its smooth face. "I know what you said, but being able to conquer black holes through technological means and obtain matter by reversing singularities is an unprecedented achievement in itself."

"That's right." Gray Wind also rubbed Russell.

The vast black hole accretion disk showed bizarre geometric colors under the hull, and the ever-changing scene passed by in the field of vision of the optical sensor. In front of the Gray Gu mothership's course, the Tranquil Black Domain Space Station equipped with a full range of heavy firepower could be seen.

The Armed Skyfort completed the identification of the Gray Gu mothership as it entered the field of vision. The weapon systems locked on Gray Wind went back into hibernation, and Anti-Entropy's greeting came over:

"The Tranquility Black Domain Space Station welcomes your visit, Ms. Grey Wind."

"You are still so programmed. I brought the Marshal back. He wants to start the first operation of the matter decompressor himself."

"It should be so." Anti-Entropy agreed readily.

The Gray Gu mothership dragged Youying's trail and approached the huge cylindrical platform that was silently at the critical equilibrium point of the black hole's event horizon. It might be a bit inappropriate to call it a cylinder. The main structure of the matter decompressor is centered on a huge gravity drill nearly the size of an asteroid, and the overall appearance is ambiguous between a disk and a cylinder.

Climbing onto the platform, Russell saw the prototype of the scholar-type power armor: the mechanical angel.

A secondary server core of Anti-Entropy was installed in the body of the mechanical angel as its regular carrier. Seeing the arrival of Russell and Grey Wind, the mechanical angel, with a height of 3.14 meters, slowly bowed in salute with the ancient etiquette from the Dark Ages of Technology, and then took them both into the interior of the super gravity drill.

"As you can see, the construction of the matter decompressor has been completed perfectly. Now you just need to start the drill yourself to start the first operation. This giant structure will be able to mine endless raw resources from the black hole singularity in the years to come."

The mechanical angel walked in front of Russell with heavy steps, and each step made a clanging sound of metal friction. "With the advantage of being close to the water, the matter decompressor can completely maintain itself by consuming the original resources it has mined and reprocessing them, thus having a nearly eternal working life - until the day when the black hole is exhausted."

"The machine may run perfectly, but there are always unexpected situations that may occur during a long period of time. Therefore, the matter decompressor still has an ecological module built in. There will be a team of human engineers stationed here to be responsible for routine maintenance and resource statistics, and they will be rotated every fifty years."

The Order of Truth is very short of manpower now, but no matter how short it is, Anti-Entropy still forcibly squeezed out the manpower needed to maintain the matter decompressor from the endless planet reconstruction work.

The reconstruction of the planets in the Far Eastern Frontier is certainly important, but the matter decompressor, as an important resource facility to support future interstellar construction, undoubtedly has a higher priority. Anti-Entropy has always been very rational in judging the importance of things.

Following the mechanical angel's introduction, the group arrived at the energy valve located on top of the super drilling rig.

Russell stood beside the mechanical angel and looked forward. In the center of the open platform that looked like a cross-section of a celestial body, there was a crystal structure the size of an adult's head. That was the core control of the matter decompressor.

"Please imprint your biometric information into the crystal brain to obtain the highest authority. From now on, whether this gravity drill is stopped or restarted, it will require your personal authorization." Anti-Entropy said, paving the way forward for Russell.

"Although the process is a bit cumbersome, sometimes, the completion of a major project requires a sense of ceremony." Russell breathed a sigh of relief and walked forward.

The mechanical angel did not comment. Facts proved that Anti-Entropy's understanding of humans was not wrong. Humans are such twisted creatures. They usually do things the easiest way possible, but will happily create trouble for themselves in special circumstances.

For example, ritualistic things like cutting the ribbon for the opening of a project or unpacking a newly purchased item for the first time will not be left to artificial intelligence.

Russell walked all the way to the crystal structure called "Crystal Brain" by Anti-Entropy, and then pressed his palm on it.

The crystal brain read and recorded the biometric information very quickly. A faint stream of light flashed by, and after Russell gave permission to "start drilling", a sharp buzzing sound beyond the hearing range of the human ear penetrated the entire structure of the matter decompressor.

The gravity drill was first activated, sending a twisted gravity beam so thin that it had no diameter deep into the black hole's horizon. The supporting facilities around the drilling platform were then awakened, the zero-point smelting furnace began to roar in the vacuum, and the nano-transformer also began to operate. The asteroid-sized man-made giant machine was like a giant star beast that opened its eyes and let out its first roar in the quiet black domain.

For a moment, Russell felt that the accretion disk and light and dust passing by his feet were sluggish for a moment, as if the expansion essence of space and time was stagnant due to the reversal of the black hole singularity. This strange stagnation returned to normal after an extremely short time that could not be detected.

“Time is horizon, gravity is desire.”

For no reason, Russell suddenly murmured such a meaningless sentence.

Under his feet, the gravity drill had begun to turn, and a steady stream of raw matter was drawn up from the black hole, boiling hotly as it was sent into the zero-point smelting furnace and nano-transformer for primary processing.

Since then, the resource problem that had been plaguing Russell has been completely solved.

Matter decompressor, fully online.

Chapter 185 Maelstrom

After the matter decompressor was fully online, the integration process of the Far East star field was accelerated, and the original matter decompressed from the black hole was continuously sent to the core galaxies of various star regions through the star gate network.

One after another, the well-fed hive cities began to fully restart production under the coordination of artificial intelligence. The long-collapsed circulatory systems of ancient urban areas were repaired by the organization, just like an aging and decaying human body was finally injected with new blood, spasming and welcoming the first round of normal metabolism in thousands of years.

However, not every colonized planet can receive such treatment. Some remote planets with sparse populations are not even eligible to be wiped out by the nano-epidemic. Large tracts of planets have been abandoned, and their populations have been merged and transferred by transport planes to planets closer to the core world where the L-gate is located for easier management. Often, the populations of several fringe worlds combined cannot fill up a hive city.

This is a choice made based on the reality. Even though the matter decompressor provides an almost unlimited supply of resources, the Order of Truth has limited manpower and a serious shortage of high-level technical personnel, making it difficult to manage the vast Far East star field.

In fact, when the reconstruction project was just on the right track, they had already begun to use methods such as memory implantation and knowledge infusion to mass-cultivate cheap skilled workers from the hive city civilians as raw materials to fill the industrial production lines that could never be fed.

——When there was a shortage of workers, the Order of Truth chose to use technological means to implant the corresponding knowledge into ordinary people's brains, rather than producing more mechanical laborers through mature industrial production lines.

This is a somewhat counterintuitive approach, but it is indeed more economical in a low-quality, highly densely populated hive. Transport planes traveling back and forth across the star region are still constantly transporting the population of the edge worlds to the core star system and its surrounding areas. There are too many people to use up.

By migrating people and merging colonies, the Order of Truth has greatly reduced its workload. To be fair, the efficiency is indeed quite high, but they do not respect the personal opinions and hometown complex of any planetary residents. Their behavior of forcibly kidnapping people and stuffing them into transport ships to travel around always reminds Russell of some bad things, such as the triangular trade.

Looking at the current behavior of the Truth Adeptus, and thinking of Joshua who had severely screwed the 13th Expeditionary Fleet in order to collect experimental data, Russell was somewhat amused. In the past, he always thought that organizations such as the Inquisition and the Mechanicus in the Human Empire were too demonic, but it turned out that his own people were also galloping on the road to demonic behavior.

"It's actually okay. It's understandable that you don't want to leave your homeland, but the planets in the Far East are too scattered, and even for us it's hard to take care of them all. Rather than staying in a remote star field and facing the risk of pirates looting, it's better to move to the core star field and live a stable life under the protection of the fleet."

Gray Wind sat on the table in front of Russell, swinging his legs lazily, and said:

"Although the hive cities used to be synonymous with chaos, crowding, and dirtiness, after a period of reconstruction, the long-dilapidated circulation systems and pollution treatment facilities on the large hive planets, including Nifol, Fafner, Aishalin, and Mirafa, have been repaired and restarted, the urban traffic has been initially sorted out, the old urban areas have been replanned, and the air quality has been purified to the point where... um... it's barely habitable?"

At least the lower layers of the hive are no longer filled with toxic gases that require iron lungs to resist. As time goes by and the pollution treatment system continues to operate, the overall ecology of the planet will only gradually improve.

"You're right. It's time for me to change my mindset." Russell stood up from his chair and stretched his body. "It's no longer the time when we lived in Faya. We have to manage a vast Far Eastern star region. Even God can't take care of everyone's emotions."

What's more, he is not God. It's time to change your mindset and start doing things from a more macro perspective.

"So, what should we do next? Complete the integration work of the Far East Star Region step by step? Or something else?" Huifeng sat on the table, pursed his lips and tilted his head.

"Let the Truth Order handle the integration work. They have proven their abilities, and I can complete the work independently even if I leave. But there is one thing that must be put on the agenda now."

Russell said, looking calmly at the beautiful silver-gray eyes of Huifeng in front of him, and said: "The matter decompressor is online, it's time to start building the 'giant dock'."

Gray Wind hummed, and after a moment of silence, he said, "You still don't trust Koroni?"

"That's just one reason." Russell didn't answer directly. "I have a feeling that the emergence of clay artists has brought unprecedented changes to the Necrons. The divided dynasty is likely to be unified in the future. This will be a powerful force that cannot be ignored."

"And now the Four Chaos Gods already know of my existence. Although they cannot kill me, our situation will only get worse in the foreseeable future."

That's why it's necessary to build a giant shipyard and prepare for war.

"I understand. Then, Marshal, where should the giant dock be located?" Gray Wind asked.

"It's right here, in the quiet black area." Russell said calmly.

There is no restriction in the physical universe that "only one giant structure can exist in a star system at the same time". The vast black hole event horizon has too much space for giant structures to anchor themselves. Building a giant dock in the quiet black domain will not conflict with the operating matter decompressor, but will save a lot of material transportation costs.

Mining in situ and exploding ships in situ is the scenario conceived by Russell.

"And the Nightmare Hollow itself was built by the Worm of Time. I can sense that He has been watching this place and has never looked away." Russell muttered to himself, "Building a giant structure here will be safer than anywhere else."

Gray Wind silently wrote down Russell's words, and the two of them left the Tranquil Black Domain Space Station together.

The Gray Goo mothership was left in the Nightmare Constellation void, and seamlessly connected with the anti-entropy mainframe that had just completed the construction of the matter decompressor to begin surveying coordinates for the construction of the giant dock site.

This time, without having to be distracted by building the Valkyrie-class battleship for the Human Empire, Grey Wind can concentrate its productivity on one project. With the resource supply of the Matter Decompressor and some industrial worlds that have resumed operation as manpower and logistical support, it is foreseeable that the giant shipyard will be completed faster than the Matter Decompressor.

The hard initial accumulation has been completed, and it's time to roll the first snowball.

At this moment, Gray Wind was in a very happy mood. Nanorobots naturally liked to devote their energy to work and construction, and enjoy the sense of achievement and satisfaction of building a home. But Russell was not as happy as Gray Wind, and was even a little sad.

"Don't be so sad, Gu Terra has a motto: Learning is the ladder of human progress!"

Gray Wind happily hugged Russell's arm to prevent him from skipping class: "Magnus has prepared the lesson for you in Faya, Marshal. Today we will learn 'How to observe the tidal patterns of the Sea of ​​Souls'."

"Do I really need to learn this? I can actually cause a small tsunami in the subspace just by sneezing..."

"Even so, you can't skip classes." Huifeng's attitude was very firm.

The transport ship carried the two people through the star gate and left the quiet black area.

In the following time, Russell devoted most of his energy to learning magic and witchcraft as well as knowledge about the warp from Teacher Ma - Magnus called the warp the vast ocean.

As for the 13th Expeditionary Fleet that had clashed with the clay artists, Russell had neither the mood nor the energy to take care of it. They could only wish for the best.

The 13 expedition fleets are scattered across the starry sea like beans, and each fleet will encounter its own situation. It is impossible for the Star Missile to be concerned about everything and everyone, and even the Emperor cannot do it.

If we really have to talk about concern, from Russell's point of view, he should be more concerned about the 6th Expeditionary Fleet, which is mainly composed of members of the Order of Truth.

Theoretically, the 6th Expeditionary Fleet launched via the quantum slingshot should have reached its destination earlier than the 13th Expeditionary Fleet, which was traveling at warp speed throughout the entire journey. However, due to the random nature of the quantum slingshot, which is known as the interstellar shotgun, the overall organization of the 6th Expeditionary Fleet was completely broken up during the superluminal process and randomly scattered around the target galaxy. It took quite some time to complete the assembly. After all, the destination they arrived at was indeed somewhat dangerous.

The coordinates where the 6th Expeditionary Fleet was catapulted to were near the Eye of Terror, a strange star field where the warp and the real world overlapped.

Here, the laws of physics cease to apply, and the huge warp storms that sweep forever obscure the light of the star, so that even the most experienced navigators cannot navigate the warp normally here. This is a lawless place that the Terran government cannot control, and it is a good refuge for pirates, exiles, and Chaos believers.

The Maelstrom, a hell dimension filled with demons and mutants.

The real target of the 6th Expeditionary Fleet was the deepest part of the Maelstrom, the center of the Hell Dimension. But before the formal march into the Maelstrom, Plumeria, the head of the Psychic Department of the Order of Truth and the commander-in-chief of the 6th Expeditionary Fleet, ordered the Valkyrie-class battleship "The Evil-mouthed Woman" to send out a wide-area radiation signal, gathering the scattered ships in the Badab system, an area of ​​​​real control of the Empire outside the Maelstrom.

The Badab system is an outpost system established by the Human Empire outside the Great Vortex. Several Astartes Chapters, including the Astral Claws, are stationed here. They are responsible for watching over the heretics, pirates and other forces in the Great Vortex, and promptly striking them down when they go out to plunder.

"We are going to go deep into the Great Vortex and find an item that the leader needs in the center of the Hell Dimension."

In the control room of the main battleship, the Vicious Woman, the Order's psychic director and fleet commander, Plumeria, sat in front of the astrolabe round table and said in a calm tone to the Imperial Navy admirals, the Tech-sages of the Mechanicus, and the senior inquisitors standing in front of her: "I understand your urgent desire to go to Terra as soon as possible, but unfortunately, my first priority is to implement the leader's will."

"We used the slingshot to jump directly from the Far Eastern Frontier to the Great Vortex in the center of the galaxy, shortening the expedition by 2/3. We need to use this saved time to go deeper into the Great Vortex and find the thing the leader needs."

Plumeria looked up at the three people in front of her and asked, "If you have any objections, you can leave for Terra on your own, but we and the Vicious Woman will continue to complete this mission - or you can stay in Badab for the time being and wait for us to complete the mission and leave the Maelstrom before continuing the expedition together."

Among the three senior officials, the Inquisitor shook his head first: "I have no objection."