desert.
Three Sentinel Walkers rolled over gravel ravines in a triangular formation, with their articulated all-terrain legs walking swiftly on the rugged sandy ground, reaching a speed of 90 kilometers per hour.
The leading reconnaissance type is equipped with the Auspex array. The biological scanning mode covers a radius of three kilometers. No moving heat source can escape its sensors.
Pilot Hartmann sat in the sealed cockpit, tapping his fingers lazily on the joystick.
He fought against Orks in Ullanor, and suppressed heretics in Gothic Sector. Not only a thousand but also eight hundred heretics died in his hands.
In his eyes, these Hive City rebels wearing slippers were no different from the ants they crushed to death before.
"Unit No. 3, two o'clock direction, three pickup trucks, the heat source signal is stable." Hartmann yawned, "Hurry to the rocky beach, don't let them escape."
Three modified pickup trucks were running wildly on the dry riverbed, with the stolen Heavy Bolter in the truck bed.
The gunner leading the pick-up truck had just aimed at the sentinel at the front when a suppressive sentry suddenly cut out from behind the sand dune on the flank. The cluster Laser swept across it instantly, and the pick-up truck exploded into a fireball like a car accident.
The remaining two vehicles turned fiercely and fled separately. The anti-armor sentry Las-cannon accurately named them and took one away with one shot.
In fact, in order to pursue extreme speed, these pickup trucks have no armor at all, not even doors.
Hartmann didn't even leave the cockpit. He only relied on Auspex to lock the target and pull the trigger a few times.
"It's done, let's move on."
Half an hour later, deep in the rocky beach.
Next to an overturned pickup truck, five members of the Genestealers Guerrilla Unit team relied on the vehicle body and piles of rubble to resist.
They are loyal servants of Four-Armed Emperor, and death is just the only way to return to Hallownest.
But they don't want to die in vain.
Next to the overturned pickup truck, there were dozens of boxes of ammunition and medical supplies, which were the last stocks of the desert supply point.
Hartmann's three sentries surrounded him from three directions.
On the Auspex screen, five red light spots huddled in the pile of rocks, like five Rat that were forced into a corner.
"Surround the area for reinforcements." Hartmann raised a sneer at the corner of his mouth, "Don't rush to kill. Wait for those accomplices hiding in the dark to show up and catch them all in one fell swoop."
Three sentries stopped outside the rubble beach, and focused Laser and Las-cannon on the rubble pile, but they were not in a hurry to open fire.
Hartmann leaned on the seat and looked at the five red dots.
He has used this tactic countless times, and it never works.
In the pile of rubble, Guerrilla Unit elder Jack took out a palm-sized infrared Laser indicator from his arms.
He turned on the safety, aimed at the seam of the chest armor of the reconnaissance sentry at the front, and pressed the switch firmly.
An infrared beam invisible to the human eye seemed to be welded to armor, motionless.
"Sergeant Hartmann, Unit 3 captured the Laser radiation signal!" The pilot's voice came from the communication channel, "The source is a pile of rubble, and the other party is using the Laser pen to take pictures of us!"
Hartmann sneered.
This is a desert thousands of miles away. The rebel fighter planes dare not penetrate the defenses at low altitudes, and it is impossible for their heavy artillery to be deployed in such a ghostly place.
"It's just a dying struggle." Hartmann pushed the joystick, and the reconnaissance sentry stepped on its articulated all-terrain legs and walked towards the pile of rocks. "Don't rush to kill, wait for those friends hiding in the dark to show up, and catch them all in one fell swoop."
The mechanical foot ran over the gravel, making a tooth-aching friction sound.
He wants to use these tens of tons of steel soles to trample to death those rebels who are still taking pictures of him with Laser pens, and force out all the hidden accomplices.
At this moment, a low buzzing sound came from the sky, like the flapping wings of a summer gadfly or the roar of a lawnmower in the distance, so thin it was almost drowned out by the sound of wind and sand.
Hartmann raised his head, looking for the source of the sound.
After a while, a black spot emerged from the clouds, growing larger and clearer.
That's a triangular flying machine!
"What's that?" the Suppression Sentinel pilot asked.
"I don't know, it's not a missile, the missile is not that slow."
"It's not a howitzer, it flies too straight." Hartmann called up the optical sight, zoomed in on the screen, and saw clearly the details of the aircraft: fiberboard fuselage, wooden propeller.
There are no complicated parts on the surface, neither rivets nor thick steel plates.
It looks extremely crude.
Hartmann almost laughed.
"The lowest apprentice in the empire would not be able to make such rags."
The drone followed the positioning of Laser and was about to pass over the rocky beach. The camera on the nose of the drone captured the picture below.
The photoelectric sight with a small aperture under the belly of the aircraft is exactly the Wetware bomb sight.
The sealed Wetware brain instantly completes feature matching to Sentinel Walker in the template library, with a matching degree of 97%.
The next second, the drone suddenly turned around.
The buzzing sound of the wooden propeller suddenly increased, and it plunged down at an extremely steep angle. The cruising speed of 180 kilometers per hour suddenly surged to a dive of 220 kilometers per hour, and the fiberboard fuselage made a sharp roar in the atmospheric friction.
Hartmann's smile instantly solidified on his face.
He pushed the control stick hard, causing the Scout Sentry to turn sharply sideways.
But the Wetware brain of the drone continued to correct its trajectory during the dive. If the infrared spot moved one step, it would follow suit, locking tightly onto his mecha.
Boom!
The passivated Promethium explosive in the gas tank warhead detonated instantly, and the shaped charge compressed the explosion energy into a hot metal jet, which was injected accurately through the seams of the armor.
Sentinel Walker's Plasteel was torn apart like paper in front of the shaped energy jet. The fragments were wrapped in flames and exploded from the inside of the cockpit. The entire upper body was bombarded into pieces.
Hartmann was thrown out of the shattered cockpit by the shock wave and fell hard on the gravel ground. Half of his goggles were broken, his forehead was cut open by armor fragments, and blood flowed down his eyebrow bone.
He struggled to get up, his ears were filled with a harsh buzzing, and the world in front of him was shaking.
The reconnaissance Sentinel he had been driving for three years burned into a ball of fire behind him.
"Retreat! All retreat!" he roared, and then realized that the communicator had been blown up.
The suppression sentry and anti-armor sentry changed direction at the same time and retreated behind the dune at full speed.
The pilots of the two mechas watched with their own eyes as the tattered fiberboard crashed through the Sentinels, and now there was only one thought left in their minds: run.
But as soon as they ran less than a hundred meters, a familiar buzzing sound came from the sky again.
Not one, but four.
Surrounded from all four directions at the same time, the buzzing sound of wooden propellers merged into one over the rocky beach, like a swarm of wasps eyeing their prey.
Hartmann ran with all his strength towards the sand dune.
The wind rushed into his ears and the gravel hit his face. He couldn't care about anything.
He has participated in four counter-insurgency campaigns. He has seen Las-cannon and Plasma Cannon, but he has never seen this kind of weapon.
It's not a missile or a cannonball, it's a piece of junk made of motorcycle engines, fiberboards, and scrapped cell phone cameras.
But this rag can bite through the armor of the sentry, hanging above his head like the scythe of death.
The buzz is getting closer.
He ran and climbed over one piece of gravel after another. His knees hit the rocks and he bled, and he was panting so hard that his lungs almost exploded.
But the buzzing sound was still chasing him, getting closer and closer. He fell into a dry ditch, his back pressed against the ditch wall.
In the sky, a drone made a turn and locked his position again.
He couldn't run anymore.
He leaned against the wall of the gully, watching the aircraft getting closer and closer, and took a silent sip of water.
The last sound he heard was the hum of the wooden propeller mixed with the loud noise of the gas tank warhead detonating.
Then everything disappeared.
In less than ten seconds, continuous explosions shook the entire rocky beach.
The two Sentinel Walkers, along with the drivers inside, were all blown into burning scrap metal.
In the pile of rubble, old Jack crawled out from the cracks in the rubble, still holding the Laser pen tightly in his hand.
He looked at the three piles of burning mecha wreckage in the distance, and then looked at the plastic box in his hand. He suddenly fell to his knees and kowtowed deeply in the direction of Hive City. His forehead hit the gravel and bleeded. He kept chanting the prayer of Four-Armed Emperor, and his eyes were filled with unquenchable fanaticism.
Oath of Courage bridge.
Octavius Looking at the ten-second delayed image sent back from the rocky beach, blood rushed to the top of his head.
His most elite veteran, Hartmann, and the three full complement of Sentinel Walker, were all destroyed.
And this is just the beginning.
In less than a day, Sentinel Walker team disappeared one after another!
He didn't die under the fire of enemy fighter planes, he didn't die under the Anti-Aircraft Missile of the fortress, but he died in the hands of a suicide aircraft!
"What the hell is this?!" He slammed Data Pad on the console, and the screen instantly shattered.
He used to scold Cole on the encrypted channel every day as a shrunken waste, but now his elite infantry regiment and sentry squadron were wiped out one after another, which was like a slap in the face to himself.
The combat staff officer lowered his head, looked at the pitiful information in his hand, and said with great confusion, "Sir, the rebels have invested in a new type of suicide drone."
"Judging from the information we have so far, this kind of drone seems to be extremely cheap to make, and the shell it uses is not even Plastisteel. Tech-Priest believes that its technical content is extremely low----"
"Extremely low?" Octavius laughed angrily, "You mean the rebels used technology that you disdain to destroy hundreds of our Sentinel Walkers in just one day!"
"And we can't even fart?!"
The staff officer in front of him shrank his neck, and he just repeated Tech-Priest's original words.
Octavius stared at the picture of the broken drone on the screen, his chest heaving violently.
He finally understood that it was not unreasonable for that loser Cole to stay in hiding for three months. What he was facing was not a Hive City rebel at all, but a Lower Hive guy who seemed to have ancient technology in his hands and did not follow the rules of imperial war at all!
Suddenly, his subordinate reported, "Sir, Rogue Trader Reck·Vance is requesting a call."
"Why did he come to me? Take it over."
The holographic projection lights up.
A middle-aged man wearing a gorgeous silk robe appeared on the screen. He wore a mechanical monocle in his left eye and wore a Rogue Trader-specific, always calculating professional smile at the corner of his mouth.
Behind him were containers filled with exotic goods, and several Xenos Technology creations half covered by canvas could be vaguely seen. The light blue halo of the starship's jump flashed past the portholes.
Reck·Vance took the initiative to connect the encrypted communication of Octavius.
"Octavius Earl, I'm sorry to bother you." Reck·Vance bowed slightly, with just the right amount of respect in his tone, "I know you are on the front line Alpha Hive City and are being entangled in a difficult problem."
"Oh?" Octavius leaned on the command chair and glanced at him coldly, "Rogue Trader's intelligence network is better informed than my frontline scouts."
"Rogue Trader relies on news, Lord Earl. Otherwise, how can we help the imperial nobles solve their problems and earn some hard-earned money?" Reck·Vance smiled, raised his hand and called up a high-definition scanned image, which was projected on the main screen of the bridge.
It was a dismantling diagram of the wreckage of a small Moped Drone that crashed. The Wetware core cabin on the nose of the plane was individually enlarged. Every detail of the brain soaked in nutrient solution, neural interfaces, and scrapped mobile phone camera modules were clearly marked.
"Sir Earl, your frontline sentry squadrons have been damaged one after another, and the root cause lies in this thing." Reck·Vance pushed up his single-eye lenses, and a glimmer of light flashed in his eyes.
"Fu Haoran's drone has no logic engine or Auspex array. The guidance core is Wetware, which is a neural processor made by stripping away consciousness from the brain. It is reported that the price is extremely low."
Octavius's eyes suddenly tightened, staring intently at the brain scan on the screen.
He finally understood why those cheap rags could accurately target his Sentinel Walker, and why the other party's drone production could skyrocket like locusts.
"He fights with dead people's brains?" Octavius's voice was as cold as ice.
"That's right, Lord Earl." Reck·Vance smiled even deeper, "His entire war chain is tied to the brains of these dead people."
"UAVs need brains, Servo-Skull needs brains, infrastructure Servitor needs brains, and even teaching Lower Hive people to farm requires brains."
"As long as the supply to his brain is cut off, the junk flying in the sky will instantly turn into a pile of motionless scrap metal."
Octavius sat up straight suddenly, with a fierce look in his eyes. "Do you have any idea?"
"Not only do I have a way, but I also made a complete strategy for Master Earl." Reck·Vance leaned forward slightly and threw out his plan.
"My plan is very simple. I will contact Fu Haoran as Rogue Trader, offer him a price that he can never refuse, and buy out all of his Hive City's corpse production capacity and all his usable brains."
"Sign a long-term contract for at least one year and tie all his corpse production capacity to supplying me."
"If he wants to fulfill his contract, he must give me priority for every brain he collects."
"During this period, you should stay put for now. When he starts delivering in large quantities, you can then launch an onslaught. Fu Haoran will definitely not be able to be supplied and will eventually shut down."
Reck·Vance paused, his tone full of businessman shrewdness. "If he dares to attack a living person, tens of millions of Lower Hive guys will turn against him in an instant."
"When the time comes, he will step down from the position of Hive City Governor without you having to send troops at all."
Octavius leaned back on the command chair and tapped his fingers lightly on the armrest.
He had to admit that this Rogue Trader plan was very feasible.
"Price." He said coldly, "How much do you plan to offer so that the poor guy can't refuse?"
"Sir Earl, what Fu Haoran needs most now is money." Reck·Vance has already settled the accounts and said firmly, "He just took possession of Hive City. He needs to raise an army, open a production line, and fill Lower Hive's belly. His finances have long been at the bottom."
"As long as we double the purchase price, he will definitely rush to sign the contract like crazy."
He paused and quoted the price that he had already calculated and left enough room for the price difference. "I will talk to Fu Haoran and give him one Servitor 10 Throne Coin and one Servo-Skull 12 Throne Coin. At this price, there is no second buyer in the entire Little Manting Star System. There is no way he can refuse."
What Reck·Vance didn't say was that he turned around and gave Fu Haoran his quotation, which was one Servitor 5 Throne Coin and one Servo-Skull 6 Throne Coin.
As soon as you enter and exit, double the price difference will fall steadily into your pocket.
Even if Octavius loses in the end, he can still take the Servitor he received from Fu Haoran and sell it to other imperial nobles, taking advantage of both sides and never losing money.
Octavius doesn't care about the price difference at all.
He is Little Manting Star System the most powerful imperial noble, and some are Throne Coin.
What he cares about is how to crush that Lower Hive guy who dared to challenge the authority of the empire to death in Hive City.
"The price is no problem." Octavius said in a cold tone, "The key is the contract, which must be signed. It has a one-year term and is delivered on a monthly basis. All his corpse production capacity will be tied up to me."
"I want him not to have an extra brain during the war."
"Don't worry, Lord Earl, I know this better than you." Reck·Vance smiled even deeper, "I will add a strict breach of contract clause to the contract. If he dares to intercept the brain and use it for the drone, he will be compensated twice the deposit.
He is a nouveau riche who has just started to make money, and he cannot afford to pay for it."
He changed the subject and added, "But Mr. Earl, the price alone is not enough."
"I need you to give me an authorization to open up Little Manting Star System's trading rights in your name. For a governor who has just taken possession of Hive City, the empire's official trade access is more attractive than money."
"Yes." Octavius agreed without hesitation, "I will issue you an authorization document. As long as you can get him to sign the contract, you can use my name to give him any empty promise he wants."
"Understood, Lord Earl." Reck·Vance bowed deeply, "I will personally make a trip to Alpha Hive City. Within three days, I will deliver the signed contract to your bridge.
The holographic projection goes out.
Reck·Vance was sitting in the captain's room of his starship, tapping his fingertips on the table, and the smile on his lips could no longer be hidden.
The commission of Octavius must be earned, and the price difference of Fu Haoran must also be earned.
On one side is the empire Earl who holds military power, and on the other side is the governor Hive City who holds unknown dark technology.
Bet on both ends and make money on both ends. This is the survival rule for Rogue Trader to live in the sea of stars for hundreds of years.
He picked up the communicator and told his deputy, "Prepare the ship and go to Alpha Hive City."