Warhammer 40K in a box

Chapter 436 Murmansk

After a short and smooth journey, Chen Xi, along with Olivia and Sidja, arrived at his destination – Murmansk.

As the spaceship slowly landed at the spaceport on the planet's surface, the unique landscape of this world, which had once served as a cemetery for the undead, could be seen through the porthole.

Murmansk has a short history; it is just one of the Necropolis worlds in space that was conquered by the Empire during an expedition a few years ago.

After the Imperial Expeditionary Force conquered this world of the Necropolis, the Mechanicus and the State Church jointly carried out a thorough cleanup and transformation of the place.

Under the arrangement of the expeditionary force command at the time, some expeditionary soldiers retired on the spot and became the first settlers on this planet.

With the tenacity of soldiers, they took root in this land that was once filled with the aura of death.

As time went on, Chen Xi sent another batch of immigrants here, and together with the holy war army and its entourage sent by the state religion, the planet gradually regained its vitality.

The colony building in Murmansk adopted a development path that was quite different from the common imperial model.

Unlike traditional settlements that dismantle and rebuild colonial ships, this city is deeply rooted in the military outposts left by the expeditionary force.

Those sturdy fortresses and underground bunkers that were once used to fight against space zombies have now become the most solid foundation of the new city.

The military facilities built during the expedition form the unique framework of this city: the command center deep underground has been transformed into an administrative hub, the former armored vehicle repair factory has become the core of the industrial area, and the scattered air defense positions have evolved into the current residential areas.

This unique evolution process has left the entire city with a distinct military imprint.

The 30-meter-high composite armored city wall embraces the city like the arms of a giant, its surface covered with bullet holes and repair marks left by war.

The street layout also follows standard military grid planning, with each road precisely maintaining the wartime standard width to ensure that heavy armored vehicles can pass quickly.

Most striking are the military facilities that remain in a state of combat readiness: every 500 meters an automatic watchtower stands silently, its sensor array constantly scanning the sky; the gun emplacements hidden in the buildings are ready to fire, the imperial eagle emblem on the gun barrels gleaming in the sunlight; even the underground square in the city center conceals an anti-aircraft missile array that can be activated at any time.

These military installations are not only part of the urban landscape, but also serve as a constant reminder to residents that Murmansk is essentially still a giant fortress disguised as a city.

Murmansk, once a world of space necropolis, is scattered with numerous relics both on and beneath its surface.

Although this tomb world did not occupy a central position in the Necropolis and was relatively small in scale, the Tech-Priests of the Mechanicus still unearthed a large number of precious technological relics from it after the expeditionary force conquered it.

From shattered fragments of phase weapons to nearly complete remains of necromancer constructs, and even several living metal samples engraved with alien runes.

Even after years of systematic looting, ancient artifacts of the undead buried in space can still be found from time to time on the planet's surface and in underground tunnels.

These metallic remnants, emitting an eerie green glow, are scattered across the wasteland and ruins, serving as a silent warning and recounting the extraordinary past of this planet being dominated by aliens.

These relics became the main economic pillar of Murmansk.

Most of the local residents are "scavengers," forming exploration teams to delve into the ruins of the Necromancer's Relics, excavating and collecting valuable fragments of Necromancer technology, which they then resell to the Martian Mechanicus Survey Team stationed there. This survey team is directly under the Martian Mechanicus headquarters, well-equipped, and has priority mining rights.

Other forge worlds—such as Riza, Lucius, or Gera—are not unwilling to get involved, but the Martian Mechanicus, with its political influence and first-mover advantage, firmly controls the flow of resources here.

Furthermore, Murmansk's location on the edge of the Rostov sub-sector, far from the spheres of influence of other forging worlds, ultimately led to Mars' near-monopoly on the trade of necromantic artifacts in the region.

Of course, Chen Xi could not allow Mars to monopolize the market and arbitrarily lower the acquisition price.

Although most of the unearthed necromancer artifacts were officially acquired by the Martian Mechanicus under the guise of "research needs," a considerable number still flowed into the black market through various clandestine channels.

These rare items, labeled "dangerous alien technology," can fetch three to five times the official purchase price on the black market, attracting a large number of speculators and collectors.

Although the Mars investigation team had clues about these underground transactions, due to certain considerations that were not easy to say openly—perhaps the covert involvement of insiders, or perhaps the need for certain experiments to bypass dogmatic restrictions—they were neither able nor necessarily genuinely interested in completely eradicating this gray market.

The black market network in the Rostov sub-sector initially developed to facilitate the resale of holy consecration wine.

After the State Religion and the Inquisition completely monopolized the production of the Blessed Wine, various families, merchant groups, and even some Space Marine chapters still longed to obtain this precious resource, and thus this underground trading system came into being.

Over the years, influenced by the smuggling network in the neighboring Mariupol Star District and with the tacit approval of various forces, this black market has developed into a large-scale and well-organized underground economic system.

Now, with the addition of the incredibly profitable new source of space necromancy, the black market's power has expanded to the point where no single organization can completely control or eliminate it.

When Chen Xi landed the shuttle with Xi Dejia and Olivia at Murmansk Airport, a city full of contradictory beauty came into view.

Towering military fortresses stand side by side with bustling commercial districts, heavily armed patrols brush past elegantly dressed merchants, and the strict military control and lively urban life are strangely intertwined.

This peculiar combination of a military fortress and a trade hub certainly gives one a strange feeling, but for Chen Xi, the prosperity of the city is exactly what he wants to see.

Although this planet has developed into an independently operating colony, fully meeting the definition of an "imperial world" in imperial law, it has never established a formal position of planetary governor.

Although Murmansk already possesses all the elements of an independent administrative world in practice, Chen Xi is well aware that with his status and authority as a Lord Inquisitor, he can only replace the existing planetary governor, but has no right to directly establish a new governorate—there is a fundamental difference between the two.

The former means formally delineating a new political entity within the vast administrative territory of the empire, while the latter is merely a personnel adjustment to the existing management system.

Therefore, Murmansk's current top administrative official only holds the relatively low-profile title of "mayor".

This mayor actually assumes all the responsibilities of the planetary governor and enjoys the same level of treatment and power, but in official documents, he can only ever be called "mayor." Behind this subtle difference in title lies the strict hierarchical system of the imperial bureaucracy.

When Chen Xi's shuttle cabin door opened, the mayor was already leading his honor guard in a line on the tarmac, waiting for him.

(End of this chapter)