"Sigh, I really don't know if the firepower we've got now is enough to sustain this war…"
Before the observation dome.
Eden looked out at the spreading dark-red void in the distance and let out a deep sigh.
As the war drew nearer, he grew more and more anxious, restless, unable to sit still.
This fear of not having enough firepower was practically an old chronic illness by now.
The Savior's agitation made the Primarch of Ultramar, Roboute Guilliman, worry as well.
He looked at the Savior—his good brother—and frowned.
"How much more strength can the Imperium still muster? I've already sent every force I can draw from the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar."
"Old Roboute, I'm already mobilizing at full tilt.
Every region I can control has responded to the war mobilization order.
All the large-scale defensive works, reconstruction projects, and webway repair efforts have been suspended, leaving only the most basic relief actions running. The stockpiled resources are all being poured into this war."
Eden paced anxiously along the edge of the dome.
"Our taxation is being tightened across the board. Even the citizens of the Savior's own domains are tightening their belts, starting a long-term, large-scale overtime campaign to supply all the relevant materiel.
So this war is one we absolutely cannot afford to lose, or we're in real trouble."
The Savior's words made Guilliman—this Primarch famed for his benevolence—even more uneasy.
He knew exactly what an Imperial Eleven-Tithe meant, and he also understood all too well what kind of misery and blood-stained suffering large-scale, high-intensity labor would bring.
Back when he served as Lord Regent of the Imperium, he'd levied an Eleven-Tithe for the Indomitus Crusade.
Only afterward did he realize how great a price countless worlds had paid.
One industrial planet in particular had seen its population reduced by 80% under the crushing workload, hovering at the brink of annihilation.
He had not expected that in this war, even the prosperous Savior's Territory would be pushed to the point of raising taxes like this. What kind of suffering would the rest of the Imperium have to endure, then?
The Imperium had changed too much; its political structures were being rebuilt, and there was no comprehensive data yet.
Operating far from the center of power, Guilliman had no way of knowing the latest situation.
But one thing was certain: such an increase in taxation would inevitably mean grueling labor, and famine and death were hardly off the table.
"Brother, the people of the Imperium…"
Guilliman let out a long sigh. He wanted to ask, but hesitated for a moment and swallowed the words.
Knowing wouldn't change anything. It would only add to his burdens.
Eden felt a twinge of pain and guilt as well.
"Those damned Chaos gods… thirteen hours. Right now, the workers are laboring an average of thirteen hours a day, with only three rest days a month.
And they're getting by on bread and cheap, poor-quality drinks. We simply don't have the energy or resources to provide meat on a large scale anymore."
"???"
Guilliman froze at that, his expression turning into a string of question marks.
Wasn't that the kind of working schedule you only got during the Imperium's prosperous periods? Even at the height of the Great Crusade, the average Imperial citizen's working hours had been far longer than thirteen a day.
Even in the jewel of the Imperium—the prosperous Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar—the working hours were about like that.
This counts as overtime?
That was what he'd call a comfortable life. Only a long-term prosperous and wealthy world could offer such treatment!
And bread and cheap drinks—since when were those shameful rations?
Corpse-starch and synthetic nutrient-gruel were the real daily diet of the Imperium. Even the wealthiest regions of Old Terra's Imperium had never managed a full switch to non-synthetic food!
Then Guilliman suddenly remembered that in the territories the Savior controlled, all corpse-starch processing plants had already been shut down.
They didn't even want to feed the stuff to grox herds, claiming it would cause "food-safety issues."
"Brother…"
Guilliman swallowed, suddenly tempted to tell the Savior to crank the mobilization up a notch.
Given the current scale and intensity… things were a little too cushy.
But he didn't say it out loud. Judging from how long this mobilization had already been going on, it was too late to change course.
Ah well. His brother was perfect in every other way—just a little too compassionate, not quite ruthless enough.
For war, that wasn't exactly a virtue.
Even if the new Imperium was far better than the old one, how much could it really gather with mobilization at this level?
In the end, Guilliman held back any suggestions or criticisms.
Because his brother had already done more than enough—far better than he had.
Compared to the darkest days, the Imperium had already shifted from passive defense to active offense. It now possessed more armaments than ever before.
Yes, the mobilized forces still weren't enough in an ideal sense, but they weren't so weak as to guarantee disaster either. When had the Imperium not won its greatest victories through brutal, desperate wars waged in blood and tears?
Eden sensed Guilliman's anxiety and offered a bit of comfort.
"Sigh. We've both already done everything we can. The rest comes down to the army's will to fight."
There was no helping it. At this point, the Imperium was already in a state of total war-mobilization, about as optimal as it was going to get.
He could force labor intensity even higher.
But that would be counterproductive, generating negative effects and failing to actually raise productivity.
The Savior's Territory had already achieved a preliminary prosperity and shifted toward a market economy, where trade and consumption were what drove further growth.
If the people of his realms spent all their time working, with no time left for rest or consumption…
Then all that would remain was a suffocating stagnation, one that would eventually erode both the people's ability to labor and their will to fight.
With spirits and bodies so drained, how could anyone be thrown into a war of such intensity? That, too, had been one of the reasons why the Imperium's previous wars were so horrifically bloody.
They'd relied on nothing but thick blood and raw endurance—kill a thousand, lose ten thousand.
But many within the Imperium simply could not shift their thinking, unable to understand this new model of development.
"Unyielding will is humanity's only true weapon. Apart from that, we have nothing."
Guilliman nodded, agreeing with the Savior's view.
As for the weapons they could bring to bear in this war, his expectations had quietly lowered. He didn't believe that in such a short time, they could amass the power needed to completely encircle an entire sector.
In that case, the tactic they could rely on was a headlong series of boarding assaults—storming straight into the heart of Chaos, regardless of cost.
For humanity as it currently stood, every great victory had to be forged in sacrifice.
"Yes. As long as we have that will, why should we fear to claim victory?"
Hearing his brother's words, Eden's "firepower insufficiency anxiety" eased a little.
He gave Guilliman a pat on the shoulder. "Come on, old Roboute. Let's go take a look at the latest toys. They might just nudge the odds of victory a bit more in our favor."
As soon as the Savior finished speaking, the landing craft shuddered slightly as it docked with a Void-Whale-class super-heavy transport.
A cargo behemoth over ten kilometers long.
…
Inside the Void-Whale-class transport.
"The enthusiasm of these logistics crews is… astonishing."
Guilliman and the Savior boarded a hovering carrier that sped them toward the cargo holds.
He watched the ceaseless flow of logistics personnel working back and forth and sensed a tangible heat and vigor.
They showed no hesitation or dread at the coming war. On the contrary, their spirits were high, their will firm, wholly devoted to war preparations.
Some of them were even smiling.
"Do they not know that war is coming?"
Guilliman wondered. The Imperium sometimes concealed the truth from its people. But soon, the Primarch's keen senses picked up the chatter of off-duty logistics personnel in the rest area.
"Damn it, you bastard, you actually got your transfer to the warzone approved?"
"Of course I did. These enemies aren't your run-of-the-mill rabble. If I don't go, who will? None of those greenhorns have my experience.
Besides, in this convoy I'm the oldest one around. The rest are all bachelors. Wouldn't it be a waste if they died on the front?"
"Cut the nonsense. You just want to earn a spot for your kid in Loyal Scion Academy.
Everyone knows deployments to the warzone get special treatment, and afterwards you can even march in the victory parades… Just make sure you come back alive!"
"Hahahaha, even if I die it won't be in vain.
See this? The personal defense weapon and melta charges they issued us.
If things really go south, I'll just detonate the lot and take a few Chaos daemons with me. At least I'll get a Honored Warrior's medal and my soul will return to the Throne.
Don't you dare get jealous."
"By the Savior, who'd be jealous of you? For all you know, my transfer might get approved too!"
Hearing this, Guilliman's gaze toward their destination grew solemn.
He hadn't expected the Savior's logistics personnel not only to understand the situation, but to be so eager to participate—and so ready to sacrifice.
His confidence in this war rose sharply.
In that moment, the Primarch of Ultramar directly felt the explosive war-vitality the Imperium under the Savior's banner could unleash.
Neither soldiers nor logistics crews carried fear or confusion. There was only the courage to fight and an unshakable belief in victory.
This was the result of the Savior's tireless efforts. He had not failed the warriors and citizens under his command.
And those warriors and citizens would, in turn, offer up even greater loyalty and resolve in repayment.
Because they understood exactly what all of this was for.
Rumble—
The armored plates of the cargo-bay's vaulted ceiling slowly parted, starlight streaming down through specially reinforced glass.
It washed over the hundreds-of-meters-tall racks of metal constructs below, making their surfaces gleam with a cold, metallic sheen.
Just standing there, one could feel the aura of slaughter—a warning of the lethal instruments of war stored in this place.
"So these are Iron Men constructs from the Dark Age of Technology…?"
Guilliman looked up at the densely packed killing machines and rows of glinting gun-barrels atop the racks. His voice trembled ever so slightly.
"You're not wrong, but I still have to make a correction.
These are hybridized Iron Men technologies, combining the Golden Age of Humanity and the Dark Age of Technology. They're war-engines independently developed within the Savior's Territory."
Eden ran a hand along the hull of one of the Iron-Men war machines—one of the remote automatized war-robots—producing a harsh metal rasp.
The Savior's Territory had relied on Golden Age royal agri-automatons, technical contributions from the current Bio-Magos Majoris, Mos, and the Iron Men wreckage dredged from the warp.
After studying all of that for several decades, they had finally created today's result.
The main technical challenge the research teams had to overcome was cost. In the Imperium's current state, producing full-spec Iron Men was a fantasy.
Even if they gritted their teeth and built a few tens of thousands, it wouldn't change the overall situation—and losses would be catastrophic.
So they'd swapped out several outrageously expensive materials and overly complex components, eventually developing a "youth edition" Iron Man—today's remote automatized war-robot.
The cost was just one-tenth of the original, and its actual combat power was about one-third that of an Imperial castrated Iron Man—the Exterminator Automata.
That was already an excellent trade-off. Thanks to sheer numbers, they could make up for the performance gap and build fully mechanized battle formations. Most important of all, they were cheap.
Far more economical than building Imperial-pattern Exterminator Automata, and the resulting total combat potential was even more terrifying.
The core concept was simple: human-wave warfare backed by a steel tide.
If you only made a small handful of precious toys, they'd never be enough to handle a war on this scale. The more you used them, the more it would hurt.
On top of that, the Machine-Goddess' blessing ensured the safety of these semi-sentient machines, preventing Chaos from corrupting them.
That way, they wouldn't suddenly go mad and massacre their own side.
Eden gave the automatized war-robot another solid pat, making it boom dully.
"These semi-sentient units are still a bit expensive. They require quite a lot of rare metals, so we haven't produced that many.
Their main role is as combat engineers or expendable assault troops—smashing the enemy's toughest defensive lines and fortifications."
"Not many?"
Guilliman stared at the sea of automatized war-robots stretching all the way to the horizon of his vision, and swallowed.
He'd heard that Lion's forces only fielded a few thousand Exterminator Automata, and that had been enough to flatten a fortress-world's entire planetary defense line.
The units in this warehouse alone could, through sheer numbers, more than compensate for any gap in individual combat performance.
Their combined assault power, plus the Savior's armored formations and heavy artillery, was already far beyond the old Imperium's firepower.
"In reality, these aren't even our real main force."
Eden raised his hand and pointed deeper into the hold—toward another set of towering racks hundreds of meters tall. Those shelves were packed even thicker with mechanical constructs, dense enough to trigger trypophobia.
A smile touched his lips.
"These are also war machines built with Iron Men technology.
We call them servo-drones. They're far smarter than servo-skulls, pack serious firepower, and can carry vast amounts of destructive ordnance, forming a swarm-type integrated fire grid.
Best of all, they're dirt cheap. If the automatized war-robots are bread, these things are corpse-starch.
We can make as many as we like."
Each servo-drone was about a meter across, capable of mounting a variety of melta weapons and artillery pieces. They were nimble, unconstrained by terrain.
They bore a grotesque skull-like exterior; once you added the weapons, they looked even more intimidating.
Eden had suggested making them streamlined and aircraft-shaped, but every single gear-head present had shot the idea down.
They insisted such a change would rob the drones of their soul, interfere with weapon mounts and "machine-spirit circulation," and probably reduce combat effectiveness.
He'd had no choice but to concede. After all, the gear-heads were the professionals here.
"More importantly, we've installed special martyr-charges in these servo-drones. They can self-detonate to unleash massive destruction."
Eden raised a hand and projected a holo-feed: a dozen servo-drones streaking toward a Chaos Dreadnought. Golden-tinged melta-fire erupted as they detonated, reducing the war-engine to burning scrap.
Those were martyr-warheads built on the holy bone-ash warhead technology, using new materials in place of the Savior's own bones and blood.
While the blast's power and radius had been greatly diminished, the cost and difficulty of manufacture had dropped by orders of magnitude. Combined with melta and other weapons, they could still inflict far more damage than any standard munitions.
"With slaughter-engines and firepower like this, the very nature of warfare is going to change."
Guilliman's shock only grew. As a master of strategy and tactics, he could clearly picture what a remote-controlled swarm of servo-drones would mean once deployed.
And just how much devastation such a weapon would rain upon Chaos daemons.
It meant that warriors no longer had to hurl their flesh and blood against the oncoming tide of Chaos. They could first crush that tide under a storm of bombardment—and only then move in to reap what was left.
"This entire transport… it's packed with servo-drones?"
Guilliman stared into Eden's eyes, brimming with expectation.
If he had this kind of firepower, he was confident he could face any Chaos host and, with precise tactical control, wring out even more killing power.
With this much firepower… it was more than enough!
But in the next instant, the Primarch's heart sank as the Savior shook his head.
Of course. How could they possibly have produced that many machines born of Iron Men technology? Even if there were, say, a hundred thousand, that would already be incredible.
He could do a lot with those slaughter-engines.
"How could a single ship of them be enough for anyone?"
Eden shook his head and pointed toward the void beyond the overhead dome. "Those are, too. Shame we didn't have time to bring more over."
Guilliman followed the Savior's finger and immediately felt his scalp prickle.
At some point, another dozen steel leviathans had appeared in that section of space.
Void-Whale-class transports over ten kilometers long floated there in silence.
Their sheer bulk and reinforced lines radiated a sense of overwhelming power and reassuring solidity.
"All of those transports… are carrying slaughter-engines like these?"
Guilliman could hardly believe it. The number of killing machines involved had long since surpassed anything he'd imagined. His liver practically throbbed.
And the Savior wasn't done.
"That's just the first batch. There are two more waves behind them. As for the other forge-worlds, they're still manufacturing at full emergency output.
Might not make it here in time, though.
Forget it—see for yourself. These are the latest force reports from the Departmento Munitorum."
"Hss—"
The fleet, troop numbers, and firepower statistics displayed before him hit Guilliman like a thunderbolt.
He suddenly felt short of breath and drew in a deep lungful of air.
For a while, the Primarch of Ultramar was utterly speechless. When he finally looked back at the Savior, there was a faintly wounded look in his eyes.
With firepower this insane, what on Terra was his brother still worrying about? He'd had him on edge this whole time for nothing.
This kind of firepower could just about reach into the Chaos gods' home turf and start rearranging the furniture!
"Old Roboute, we're facing the four Chaos gods. We can't afford to let our guard down. We have to go all-in on this battle."
Eden spoke with great caution. "We must gather even more troops, so we can fight this war properly—so we can encircle and annihilate every last servant of Chaos."
This war wasn't just about victory. He had to make the Chaos gods hurt.
He intended to unleash a new style of warfare: using vast armies and terrifying firepower to grind the Chaos powers down in a war of attrition.
Yes, the number of Chaos daemons was incalculably vast. But crossing the veil from the warp into realspace did have a cost, and every daemon slain consumed a portion of a Chaos god's reserve of warp-power.
The creation of daemon engines and Chaos war-engines also had a cost.
His servo-drones and artillery, on the other hand, were practically limitless. The rear-lines were still churning them out in waves.
Most importantly: they were cheap. If you could trade a single servo-drone for a dozen daemons, or a small servo-swarm for one daemon engine—
That was pure profit.
This time, he was going to hammer the Chaos gods so hard they couldn't stand it, bleed them till they were broke and terrified—beat them till they were wearing their own hides as pants.
At that thought, Eden's gaze grew clouded with a new layer of concern.
The army's muster was almost complete, and they would soon depart for Vostonia.
But even with all these forces and all this firepower, there was still no guarantee of an absolute victory—because no amount of conventional force or fleet power could deal with that unknown horror.
If they couldn't deal with that entity, then no matter how many troops they threw in, it would all be for nothing—a pointless, catastrophic loss.
Only apex-level power could confront that thing. He, Lion, the Khan, and Guilliman—four Primarchs together—should just about be enough.
Their warp-borne natures should be able to counterbalance the creature's corruptive energies.
Fortunately, the special suit of armor he'd commissioned was nearly finished, currently on its way along with the forge-platform.
It would be the most powerful armor ever forged in the history of the Imperium, born from the combined efforts of countless Magi and an ocean of rare resources.
Even the Emperor's own legendary golden panoply would have to stand aside.
Just as Eden's thoughts turned in that direction, his comm-bead suddenly flashed.
An emergency transmission.
Bzz—
"Your Majesty the Savior…"
The obsequious face of the Grand Techno-Sage of Black Steel filled the holo-display, and Eden immediately had a bad feeling.
He snapped at him, "Don't you dare tell me it's still not enough. Even the Emperor can't take us plundering him like this forever!"
"Father?"
In the distance, Guilliman had been happily admiring all the slaughter-engines when he heard that and turned to look over.
He seemed… confused.
Eden waved a hand casually. "Nothing. Just asking His Majesty's opinion on a small matter."
Then he quickly switched the channel over to a private mode.
No way he could let Guilliman find out he'd snuck over to the Golden Throne and harvested a few bits of his father's sacred skeleton to forge his 'Overkill Armor'…
(End of Chapter)
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