War Preparations

Drip, drip...

In the dim cell, crimson blood dripped from tangled hair into a copper basin, the rusty scent unique to human blood permeating the cramped space.

A man hung upside down from a rack was gasping, taking in far less air than he let out.

"Boss, we got it out of them. It basically matches the information obtained from interrogating the others separately." Nekser compiled all the interrogation records and handed them to Sandman.

Sandman took the records and began leafing through them.

Judging from the different confessions, this Detective Group had been hired by Agamemnon of the Tower. Their main tasks were twofold: one was to search the mining camps for the two stolen sets of Precision Power Armor belonging to Akalin, Lord of the High Tower; the other was to investigate the families behind Sandman and Korax, providing Agamemnon with reference intelligence for his next steps.

As for intelligence from Kiavahr, there was little worth mentioning. It was still the usual information on Forge Factory production efficiency. Of course, it was also possible that this Detective Group operated at too low a level to access higher-level intelligence.

"When it came to interrogations, Inquisitors or Mechanicus priests were still more reliable. They didn't have to make such a bloody mess of it." As Sandman read through the reports, the flecks of blood on them showed that Shadow Kill had still used the traditional Great Memory Restoration Technique to extract the information.

He was somewhat curious about the methods used by those deranged Inquisitors of later generations, as well as the Mechanicus types who casually turned people into Servitors themselves.

Come to think of it, after all this time, he had yet to see a Servitor, one of the hallmarks of the cruel universe of Warhammer.

The Adeptus Mechanicus turned clones or criminals into Servitors by removing parts of their brains and attaching various mechanical prosthetics to their bodies. Tech-priests then wiped their minds, reprogrammed them, and enhanced their cognitive control so they could serve specific, basic functions.

Servitors had no consciousness, only the most basic instincts. Their brains had been programmed to carry out only the tasks they were designed for.

There were many types of Servitors, each designed for a particular task. Typical examples included Tech-Servitors that operated and maintained machines, Holo-Servitors that served as holographic recorders, and Calculus Servitors, human computers with immense computational power.

This was artificial intelligence in the truest sense.

Lycaeus was a Mining World. Grueling manual labor like mining naturally had no use for high-end things like Servitors. The cost of modifying even a single Servitor was more than a miner could earn in a lifetime of digging.

What Sandman remembered most clearly was the old man from the story. His granddaughter had been turned into a Servitor, and after an accident, she was slated for disposal. The old man then went to the administration department and asked to donate his own organs to save her.

It was completely fucked up.

As for Cherubim? Sandman would rather never see one. They were creepy as hell.

"If we can keep those things from appearing, then we should. There's already enough suffering now. We'll do what we can." Sandman thought of humanity's tragic fate in the distant fortieth millennium.

Humanity was now scattered across the Milky Way, facing threats from all kinds of Xenos. But at least the Emperor still led twenty Primarchs and countless Imperium armies to reclaim lost territory, bringing new hope to humanity.

As for the Imperium of Man in 40K, Sandman's assessment was simple: it was beyond saving. Just wait to die.

Putting aside those tangled thoughts, Sandman once again reviewed the changes on Lycaeus.

The biggest change was that the Tower's newly opened Second Dome city was nearing completion. Before long, many more unlucky souls from Kiavahr would become new miners.

The Tower had adopted an entirely different management method for the miners of the Second Dome. All miners were thrown into prison cells together, rather than being allowed to establish their own camps as they had in the current dome.

Sandman estimated that once the new dome entered operation and achieved stable output, the Tower would begin its purge.

Although the massive strike had not reached the ears of the Lord of the High Tower that day, there was no way the matter could be concealed. The difference was simply whether it remained controllable.

The Lord of the High Tower did not care about that insignificant adjustment to the resource exchange rate, but he would not tolerate any challenge to his authority.

"Inform Korax. The day the Second Dome enters operation will be the day of the uprising!" Sandman calculated the date when the Second Dome could be put into use and had Shadow Kill deliver the message to Korax.

The opening of an entirely new dome city was bound to be an extremely important event for the Tower. Many of its key figures would attend.

Once they left the Tower's layered internal defenses, Shadow Kill's chances of success would rise dramatically. Sandman naturally would not miss such a fine opportunity.

"When the time comes, have Sharojin lead the team and slaughter them all." Sharojin's figure naturally surfaced in Sandman's mind.

He and Korax would still lead the main force in attacking the Tower, especially the Mining Nukes stored in the Tower's arsenal.

In the original history, after the Raven King unified Lycaeus, he fell into a dilemma. If he chose to face Kiavahr's counterattack, the brothers and sisters on Lycaeus would never be able to withstand Kiavahr's forces.

But if he directly dropped nuclear bombs on Kiavahr, many innocent people living there would also die in the nuclear blasts.

Korax had limited time. Once Kiavahr reacted, the advantage Korax had gained through the sudden uprising would gradually slip away.

Between his brothers and sisters and countless innocent people, Korax made a cruel choice. Using the Gravity Well, he bombarded Kiavahr with Mining Nukes and forced it to surrender.

It was after Korax bombarded Kiavahr that the Emperor appeared. Korax took command of his Legion and set out with the brothers and sisters of Lycaeus on the journey to conquer the Milky Way, while Kiavahr was handed over to the Adeptus Mechanicus for reconstruction.

No one knew what the Emperor discussed with Korax. Some speculated that the Emperor told the Raven King about the origins of the Primarchs and also informed Korax that the rebellion would occur. Otherwise, the Raven King would not have made so many targeted preparations afterward.

Yet human effort could never overcome divine power. Even the Emperor had not expected the betrayal to come so violently, nor that the leader of the traitors would be Horus, the Warmaster he trusted most. He had also never expected fully half the Legions to take part in the betrayal.

There were too many things the Emperor had not anticipated. Or perhaps he firmly believed that as long as he stood before the rebel armies, the bewitched ordinary soldiers would voluntarily drag the rebellious Primarchs before him.

And in truth, that was more or less correct. Even if all eighteen Primarchs attacked together, they still would not be enough for the Emperor alone.

Unfortunately, the Emperor's most important contingency had been targeted by Tzeentch from the very beginning.

Tzeentch had predicted the Emperor's prediction.