War Preparation

Drip, drip...

In the dim prison cell, scarlet blood dripped from disheveled hair into a copper basin, the unique metallic tang of human blood filling the small space.

A man, hanging upside down from a rack, was struggling to breathe, his breaths shallow.

"Boss, we've gotten the information. It's consistent with what we got from interrogating the others separately," Nekser said, handing Sandman a compilation of all the interrogation records.

Sandman took the interrogation records and began to read.

From the various testimonies, this detective agency was hired by Agamemnon of the High Tower. Their main mission was twofold: to search the miner camps for two sets of Precision Power Armor stolen from Akalin, the Lord of the High Tower, and to investigate the families behind Sandman and Korax, providing Agamemnon with intelligence for future reference.

As for information regarding Giava, it was meager, consisting of the usual reports on manufacturing efficiency. Of course, it was possible that this detective agency's intelligence level was too low to obtain higher-level information.

"Interrogation is best left to Inquisitors or Tech-Priests. No need for all this bloodshed," Sandman mused, flipping through the reports. The drops of blood on them indicated that Shadow Kill had used traditional memory retrieval techniques to extract the information.

He was curious to learn about the methods of those fanatical Inquisitors in later ages, or the mechanics who directly modified people into servitors.

He hadn't seen a servitor, a hallmark of the brutal Warhammer universe, in all this time.

The Adeptus Mechanicus would take clones or criminals, remove their frontal lobes, and attach various mechanical prosthetics. Tech-Priests would then purge their minds, reprogram them, and enhance their control systems to serve specific, basic functions. This was the servitor.

Servitors had no consciousness, only basic instincts. Their brains were programmed to execute only the tasks they were designed for.

There were many types of servitors, each designed for a specific task. Typical servitors included Tech-Servitors for operating and maintaining machinery, Holo-Servitors that acted as holographic archivists, and Data-Servitors that functioned like human computers with immense processing power.

This was "artificial intelligence" in its truest sense.

Lycaeus was a mining world. Such strenuous labor as mining naturally wouldn't require high-level tools like servitors. The cost of modifying a single servitor would be more than a miner could earn in a lifetime.

Sandman's most vivid memory of this was from a story, where a grandfather went to the administrative department to offer his organs to save his granddaughter, who had been made into a servitor and was to be decommissioned due to an accident.

That was utterly outrageous.

As for the Saints? Sandman felt it was better not to see them; they were too creepy!

"If we can avoid it, let's not have them appear. We have enough suffering already. Let's do our best," Sandman thought, recalling the tragic fate of humanity in the distant 40th millennium.

Humanity was now scattered across the galaxy, facing threats from various Xenos. But at least the Emperor, leading 20 Primarchs and countless Imperial forces, was reclaiming lost territory, bringing new hope to the human race.

As for the Imperium of Man in 40K, Sandman's assessment was: it's hopeless, just wait for death.

Putting aside his complex thoughts, Sandman turned his attention back to the changes on Lycaeus.

The biggest change was that the High Tower's second dome city, which they had reopened, was nearing completion. Soon, many unfortunate souls on Giava would become new miners.

For the miners in the second dome, the High Tower had adopted a completely different management approach. All miners were unified and confined to cells, unlike the current dome where miners formed their own camps.

Sandman estimated that once the new dome was operational and producing steadily, the High Tower would begin its reckoning.

Although the large-scale strike that day hadn't reached the ears of the Lord of the High Tower, the incident couldn't be hidden. The difference was between controllable and uncontrollable.

The Lord of the High Tower didn't care about minor adjustments to the exchange rate of trivial goods, but he would not tolerate his authority being challenged.

"Notify Korax. The day the second dome becomes operational will be the day of the uprising!" Sandman calculated the date the second dome would be operational and had Shadow Kill send a message to Korax.

The activation of a brand-new dome city would undoubtedly be a significant event for the High Tower, and many influential figures would be present.

Away from the layers of defense within the High Tower, Shadow Kill's success rate would significantly increase. Sandman would naturally not miss such a golden opportunity.

"Then have Sharojin lead the team to slaughter them all," Sandman's mind conjured Sharojin's image.

He and Korax, leading the main forces, would still attack the High Tower, especially the mining nukes stored in their armory.

In the original timeline, after the Raven King unified Lycaeus, he fell into a predicament. He could either face the counterattack from Giava, and with the brothers and sisters on Lycaeus, they would be absolutely unable to resist Giava's army.

But if they directly deployed nuclear weapons on Giava, many innocent people living there would also die in the nuclear blasts.

Korax's time was limited. Once Giava reacted, the advantage gained by Korax's surprise uprising would gradually diminish.

Between his brothers and sisters and countless innocent people, Korax made a cruel choice. He used the mining nukes to bombard Giava via the gravity well, forcing them to surrender.

It was only after Korax bombed Giava that the Emperor appeared. Korax took over his Legion and embarked on the journey to conquer the galaxy with his brothers and sisters from Lycaeus, handing Giava over to the Adeptus Mechanicus for reconstruction.

No one knew what the Emperor and Korax discussed. Some speculated that the Emperor told the Raven King about the origins of the Primarchs and warned him about the impending rebellion, otherwise, the Raven King wouldn't have made so many targeted preparations afterward.

However, human effort was ultimately no match for divine power. Even the Emperor didn't expect the betrayal to come so fiercely, nor that the leader of the traitors would be his most trusted Warmaster, Horus. He also didn't expect that as many as half the Legions would participate in the betrayal.

The Emperor had too many expectations, or perhaps he firmly believed that as long as he stood on the front lines against the rebels, the deluded common soldiers would spontaneously bring the rebellious Primarchs to him.

Yet, the reality was not far off. Even if all 18 Primarchs attacked together, they wouldn't be enough for the Emperor alone.

Unfortunately, the Emperor's most crucial contingency plan was targeted from the very beginning by Tzeentch.

Tzeentch had predicted the Emperor's prediction.