Hive Reconstruction Project

The center of the conference room featured a holographic projection of Badab Primus, upon which fourteen intentionally marked locations diagonally divided the entirety of Badab Primus evenly into eight sections.

Odinson introduced to the attendees, "Based on the information we have gathered so far, the hive cities of Badab Primus were built by colonists from the Dark Age of Technology. They act like fortresses and command rooms, dividing the surface of Badab Primus into multiple combat zones."

He magnified the Palatos Hive, rendering its overall shape and internal layout apparent to the participants.

"The Palatos Hive is nearly 20 kilometers in height, with a maximum footprint of over 6 million square kilometers. It possesses a total of over 50 compartmentalized structural layers, with an average height of around 400 meters per layer. If we set aside the height, the actual usable surface area is roughly comparable to the surface area of Badab Primus."

"Counting the floor structures of every tier, under the same height, the actual usable volume even exceeds the volume obtained by utilizing the entire planet."

"Not to mention Palatos's nominal population of 26 billion, we could cram all 50-plus billion people of the entire Badab Primus inside, and the hive would still have a massive amount of space to spare."

The participants, particularly the representatives of various government departments who were ordinary humans, marveled at the grandeur of the hive city before doubt arose in their hearts.

The deputy director of the Industrial Planning Department, subordinate to the Economic Development Bureau, voiced his perplexity: "Since the hive's space is so immense, and the population of Palatos can even be considered sparse, why is it that a vast number of people still crowd into the underhive and deep hive?"

Odinson pressed a button, highlighting the blocked and disabled areas of the hive in red.

The crowd stared in silence at the vast expanse of red light occupying two-thirds of the volume.

Odinson explained, "Because of the shortsightedness and stupidity of the imperial nobles, a massive portion of the hive's areas and functions have been damaged, and less than one percent of the areas are actually usable."

Some found it difficult to understand: "Isn't the hive city the nobles'? Why would they just watch the hive city get destroyed?"

Odinson shook his head: "As I said earlier, the hive cities of Badab Primus were left behind by former colonists, and the current nobles merely picked them up and used them. Maintaining the entire hive city requires a vast amount of resources, and nobles who constantly infight could never pull together to provide those resources. Over time, apart from a tiny fraction of functions and areas concerning the entire hive, the rest slowly fell into disrepair through sheer neglect."

Huron suddenly understood: "So Odinson, what you mean is that instead of expansion, what we need right now is to repair the original functions?"

Odinson nodded: "That's right. Thanks to these nobles tossing things about for hundreds or thousands of years, the entire hive is no different from being abandoned. As a hive left over from the Dark Age of Technology, it possesses self-maintaining and self-sustaining functions. As long as we make rough repairs, the recovery progress will get faster and faster."

He added, "The whole process won't take long. In only about five years, we will see initial results, and the overall hive environment will improve dramatically. In ten years at most, the entire hive can take on a completely new look; both production capacity and living environment will achieve a qualitative leap."

Everyone discussed animatedly, while Old John harbored some doubts: "If we focus our center of gravity on the overall repair of the hive, does that mean we will reduce the manpower and material resources for restoring and developing people's livelihood?"

He was somewhat afraid that the underhive would revert to its previous anarchic, unorganized chaos—if that happened, wouldn't all his efforts have been in vain?

Odinson reassured him: "Not at all. The main force for the hive repairs will be the Chapter's Techmarine, senior engineers, and the nobles' automated robots, while the tasks of the majority of workers will remain improving the underhive environment and expanding various factories."

Old John breathed a sigh of relief and then stated he had no objections.

Seeing that the discussion among the crowd had largely concluded, Huron spoke up: "Let's start the vote."

Aside from a small minority who abstained, the majority voted in agreement.

A new project also appeared on Huron's "Construction" interface: "Palatos Hive Reconstruction Project (0/20), expected 5 years."

Perhaps due to the larger scale of this project, or perhaps because he exercised direct control over the entire Palatos Hive, compared to the previous minor project that could only accommodate 10 civilian factories, this project could absorb a full 20 civilian factories.

Unfortunately, even with direct control of Palatos, his number of civilian factories had only increased by 5, bringing the total to 18. Subtracting the civilian factories needed for producing supplies and thus unmovable, he could only commit 15.

Even so, this number was not insignificant. Huron committed all 15 civilian factories to the reconstruction project, feeling somewhat curious about the efficiency.

"Palatos Hive Reconstruction Project (15/20), expected 3 years."

Inside the conference room, with the broad direction decided, everyone began to discuss some of the details.

Old John stated, "We have now conscripted 5 billion workers, drafting almost half of Palatos's able-bodied population. Moreover, most Auxilia personnel now have to serve as government employees, leaving fewer than 10 million available to act as engineering supervisors."

"Therefore, I propose that before the new batch of Auxilia personnel graduates, we suspend the conscription of new workers, and instead refine the existing worker groups to raise their organization and efficiency."

Armenius stated, "Right now, the workers rely almost entirely on pure manpower, which is far too low in efficiency. Some of the nobles' automated engineering equipment that we can't use can be put right to work on the underhive construction. In addition, the education and training work for workers must be strengthened; right now, even our truck transport has to rely on hiring Adeptus Mechanicus servitors to complete, which is far too risky."

Old John worried, "Most of the workers are illiterates. Can they correctly use that equipment? It would be bad if large-scale engineering accidents were to occur."

"Don't worry. The Adeptus Mechanicus doesn't hold operational knowledge of ordinary equipment in high regard, and the selling prices are extremely low. Coincidentally, the noble estates hold a massive amount of exquisite but functionally useless luxury tech items, which can be bartered with the Adeptus Mechanicus to hire some Tech-Priests and Magos of relevant specialties for teaching and work."

Armenius added further, "Besides, current sapper exoskeletons are simple to operate as machines, and those workers managed to organize themselves into teams from scratch; there's no reason they couldn't use tools as simple as worker bees."

The sapper exoskeleton possessed practically zero barriers in design technology, material costs, and production difficulty. As long as one could manufacture a lasgun—or even just an autogun—one could basically manufacture a sapper exoskeleton.

As for why such simple technology went unused, the "scrutiny" of the Adeptus Mechanicus was one aspect, while the other was that people were simply worth less than supplies.

In the eyes of tax collectors, a single lasgun was worth 10 underhive residents; how could anyone specially design an exoskeleton for ordinary people? Wasn't it better to just use manpower directly?

Now that so many noble houses had been ransacked, a slight integration and retrofitting of existing production lines would allow the production of hundreds of thousands of sets of sapper exoskeletons every month.