Warhammer: Striving to Be a Grinding Man

Chapter 147 Binary Hymn

By the third week of the subspace mission, Cohen had finished reading the casualty report.

The lighting in the Black Pearl's private workshop was turned down to its lowest setting, casting a cool white light that spread a thin layer of silver-gray across the adamantite walls. A data panel rested on the table, its screen displaying neatly arranged tables, each row labeled with unit number and casualty rate. He turned the last page, pushed the panel back to the center of the table, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes for a moment.

730,000. This is the figure for the First Expeditionary Group of the Lucis Guardian Army. Nearly a million troops were deployed to the Armageddon theater, but less than 300,000 withdrew, most of them suffering varying degrees of damage; some units were reduced to mere shells. The million-strong Astral Army that marched with the Combined Fleet—a strategic reserve drawn from several star sectors surrounding Lucis—suffered the heaviest casualties. They were deployed towards Archeron, where they held off the Orcs for weeks with a human shield before the Salamanders and Blood Angels arrived. Less than 100,000 returned, mostly wounded, disappearing in entire units from the battle reports' footnotes, leaving only their unit numbers.

The Lucis Field Fleet's First Task Force lost one Dominator-class capital cruiser, three Unyielding-class light cruisers, and eight Cobra-class destroyers. The Ironwall is still alive—Eisenhorn's ship withstood a broadside salvo from a space wreck in Archeron orbit, its port Void Shield overloaded three times, but the ship remains intact.

Cohen opened his eyes and flipped the data panel to the Garros Legion page. The Invernus Allied Forces' losses were listed on a separate page: dead, seriously wounded and incapacitated, and missing, totaling approximately twenty million. This force had been repeatedly dispersed, replenished, and dispersed again during the campaign; the initial recruits and reorganizations from Invernus had undergone several rounds of replacements. The approximately five million who were still able to board ships at the time of evacuation were the survivors of the last round of replenishment. The civilian militias of Invernus—the ordinary people who received laser guns from internment camps and took up positions on the front lines—were not counted in the Allied Forces' numbers; their numbers were in the hundreds of millions, and the battle reports did not provide precise statistics, nor would they. The Garros Legion's own losses: the Planetary Defense Force suffered over 80,000 dead, with the wounded recovering or recovering after stabilization in life support pods and the implantation of prosthetic bodies; the Phoenix Battle Group suffered over 2,000 dead, and the Storm Assault Team suffered over 200 dead. The number of ship personnel lost during the battle due to various reasons such as shelling, fire, depressurization, and boarding attacks was marked separately, with a note next to it: "Including losses from two boarding attacks by the Black Pearl."

Data on anti-boarding operations by the Cobra-class destroyers was presented on a separate page. At the start of the campaign, each Cobra was equipped with a squadron of approximately one hundred anti-boarding personnel, totaling nearly one thousand across all ten ships. During the campaign, the destroyers, due to their small size and high maneuverability, were not primary targets for Orc boarding attempts, and the anti-boarding squads were hardly deployed in actual combat. As the ground fighting intensified, these personnel were gradually redeployed to replenish losses in ground forces. By the end of the campaign, four of the ten Cobras had been lost, and the remaining six ships had fewer than three hundred anti-boarding personnel, reduced to a platoon per ship. Marcus wrote a tactical summary in the report's footnotes: "Destroyers are not the primary targets for Orc boarding attempts. It is recommended that subsequent independent formations be cancelled, and the remaining personnel reassigned to close-in weapon systems on capital ships."

Cohen turned the page. The destroyer anti-boarding squadrons were disbanded during the next fleet reorganization, and the remaining personnel were reassigned to the close-in weapon systems of capital ships.

He put down the data panel, stood up, and walked out of the private workshop.

The mess hall was more lively than he had expected. During the Black Pearl's subspace voyages, the mess hall was usually the most crowded place on the entire ship. With the portholes covered by armored panels, the purple chaos outside was invisible, and people who had been in an enclosed space for a long time always wanted to find a place with lights and hot food to sit down. The long tables were full of people, veterans in training uniforms and officers in dark gray civilian clothes mixed together, and the Grox steaks on the plates were steaming under the cold white lights.

Rellano sat by the window—the window was sealed off with armor plating, but he always sat there. He was wearing a dark gray combat uniform and holding a glass of water. Several veteran company commanders from the Phoenix Combat Group sat nearby; some were whispering, and Rellano nodded occasionally, but mostly just listened. When Cohen passed by, he glanced up, then continued drinking his water.

Kara sat in the middle of the long table, her plate empty, a cup of synthetic coffee in front of her. She wasn't wearing power armor, only a gray combat jacket, her prosthetic left arm exposed. Seeing Cohen enter, she nodded slightly in greeting.

Marcus sat diagonally opposite her, a data panel spread out in front of him. He was looking at the reorganization plan for the destroyer fleet, the blue halo of his right mechanical eye expanding and contracting on the screen. Maggie sat at the end of the long table, also with a data panel in front of her—the logistical supplies consumption statistics weren't finished yet; she'd been catching up on the accounts throughout the voyage from Invernus to Lucis.

Liz sat in a folding chair in the corner, a cup of tea in her hand. She didn't participate in the discussion, but simply listened. She had just come out of the Black Pearl's medical bay, changed into civilian clothes, and her hair still smelled of disinfectant. She raised her hand to brush a strand of hair that was loose beside her face, and the faint scent wafted out, mingling with the aroma of hot food in the mess hall, only to be quickly swept away by the circulating air.

Cohen took a plate and sat down at the head of the long table. After he sat down, the atmosphere in the canteen didn't change—the relaxed feeling that comes with a long war. There was no need to deliberately maintain order or liven things up. Some people continued eating, some continued chatting, and some just sat there doing nothing.

Kara, holding her coffee cup, turned around and asked, "Have you finished reading the casualty report?"

"I've finished watching." Cohen cut a piece of steak without looking up.

"The casualties were heavy."

"These casualties are already far below the average in the Empire."

"Our combat strength comes from superior equipment; our personnel are barely passable." Kara put down her cup, her tone flat, as if stating a fact she already knew. "Look at the Black Pearl. Any ordinary Gothic-class ship would have sunk by the time it broke through the storm. The four Odysseus-class ships were able to retreat intact under the fire of the wrecked ship because of their thick armor and superior maneuverability."

Cohen didn't reply. He swallowed his steak, took a sip of his coffee, and then turned to Marcus: "Your suggestion regarding the composition of the destroyer anti-fighting squad?"

Marcus looked up from the data panel: "I need to reflect on this. I'm just a mid-level officer in the Imperial Navy. My vision is insufficient, and my experience is lacking. Cancel it. I suggest transferring the remaining personnel to the capital ship combat squadron."

"Alright. Then we'll adjust the organization when we get back. We need to continue expanding the army; more wars await us." He paused slightly, then added, "You're already excellent enough."

Maggie chimed in, her voice low but serious: "Captain, if we expand, the current Allied Forces have nearly five million men, and the Garros Legion itself also has a large number of personnel to accommodate. Does Garros currently have the capacity to expand again?"

Cohen put down his coffee cup: "We'll discuss this further at a meeting of all middle and senior management after we arrive in Garros. I'm saying this now so you all have a general idea."

He didn't continue the topic, but he didn't leave it hanging either. His gaze swept over the faces on both sides of the long table—Marcus, Kara, Rellano, Maggie, Liss, and several veteran company commanders from the Phoenix Fighter Group—and then settled on something further away, as if confirming something.

The conversation in the mess hall continued. The veteran company commander next to Relano was talking about the final counterattack on the northern front of Invernus. Someone interjected, "If the Phoenix battle group were at full strength, according to the plan, it would need its own ships, its own armored regiment, and its own air power." Relano simply took a sip of water and didn't reply. Kara and several sergeant majors were discussing the training priorities after the next reorganization, while Maggie and several members of the logistics team were checking the supply lists.

Cohen sat in the head seat, not participating in the discussion. He simply listened.

Several weeks later, the fleet arrived at the edge of the Lucis system. The Black Pearl was the first to launch from Mandeville Point, followed closely by the Fireseed, with over a hundred Astronaut transport ships spreading out behind them. The Lucis field fleet followed closely behind, and the Garros fleet came in second, the entire convoy stretching out majestically across the starry sky. On the sensor screens, Lucis's star burned as a dark yellow sphere in the distance, and the dockyard complex and the cooling grids of the artificial solar confinement ring in orbit formed a bright arc across the sky.

Sera reported the coordinates from inside the navigation module, her voice steady: "Jump out confirmed. Current location: outer edge of the Lucis system. Mandeville point coordinates passed. The formation is proceeding towards its orbit according to the planned route."

Cohen stood at the porthole.

The combined fleet's condition was clear even without data panels—it was a fleet that had crawled out of a meat grinder. The Fireseed's hull bore several dark purple burn marks, remnants of the alternating impacts of warp turbulence and orcish artillery fire; some had been repaired by welding, the weld lines still clearly visible under starlight. The Black Pearl's port side bore a patch of molten metal that had re-solidified after being melted by an energy weapon; the surface of its adamantite armor plating was uneven, indicating that the Fireseed had already undergone emergency repairs, and this was the only condition it could maintain until a major overhaul. The three Moon-class cruisers were riddled with shell craters and melt marks; the cooling grates on the Void Shield generators showed discoloration in several places—remnants of overload. They had cooled during the voyage, but the metallic lattice structure had left a permanent mark on them through the discoloration.

Four Odysseus-class ships followed in the middle of the formation, their armor plates riddled with holes, some areas where a layer of armor had been peeled off, exposing the underlying lining skeleton, but all the ships were sailing normally. To their flanks and rear, the remaining ships of the Lucis Field Fleet maintained their formation position. One Dominator-class ship still bore molten dents on its side armor from being hit by a macro cannon, and three Unyielding-class ships had varying degrees of damage to their hulls, some with the outer shell of the Void Shield base still intact on their port side, revealing the temporary internal reinforcement support structure, but all the ships were sailing normally.

On the sensor screen, the shipping lanes within the Lucis system were making way to the sides. Merchant ships, transport vessels, and patrol ships automatically changed course upon detecting the signal characteristics of the formation, clearing space for the main shipping lanes. A Lucis Sword-class frigate patrolling near Mandeville Point was the first to spot them.

The Combined Fleet's identification code began broadcasting the instant the ship landed at Mandeville point. On the bridge of the patrol vessel, the sensor officer spotted the slow, sequential entry of the Combined Fleet's identification markers from the front of the formation on the edge of the screen. He gave a low announcement of the formation identification information and then stopped. The others on the bridge saw it too.

Those scars on the hull don't need interpretation. They're not numbers from battle reports. They're real, hard-to-find marks from the front lines, each one representing a hit, an overload, and damage control personnel rushing into flames to repair them.

The signalman's finger hovered over the communications panel. At first, it was just a few scattered syllables, like someone sending a short acknowledgment pulse at the lowest possible power—the prelude to a binary hymn, brief and almost indistinguishable from the background noise. Then the prelude was replayed, this time longer and with higher power. Nearby merchant ships received the broadcast, identified its code, and automatically relayed it on their respective channels. A transport ship relayed it to the nearest orbital station, whose main communications array, upon receiving the signal, loaded it into the omnidirectional broadcast system.

The binary hymn exploded simultaneously across all channels of the Lucis system. The oldest, most primitive triumphant broadcast format of the Mechanicus, a tradition dating back to the Great Crusades—a low-frequency pulse, slow and heavy in rhythm, each beat like the heart of a behemoth pounding in the void.

The merchant fleet's main communication array joined the signal relay, the transport fleet's channel was amplified synchronously, and the spaceport's broadcast array began full-power output after receiving the first pulse. The main channels of the ships stationed in the Lucis field fleet switched to the same frequency band at the same moment. All the main communication arrays of the Mechanicus fleet in near-Earth orbit, the orbital defense platform, the dock area, and the Forging Temple—all transmitter arrays capable of broadcasting within the system—switched to the same encoding.

At that moment, the entire Lucis system lost all linguistic communication. Imperial Standard, High Gothic, Low Gothic,

All the dialects of each hive were compressed into the bottom layer of the same binary hymn. All channels were left with only that one pulse looping, superimposing, and resonating.

Cohen stood at the porthole on the bridge, watching the approaching transport ships and patrol vessels on the sensor screens. Their identification signals merged one after another into the rear of the formation, automatically yielding their course and accompanied by the continuous stream of binary hymns emanating from the depths of the galaxy.

Marcus walked over from behind the tactical console and stood beside him. He didn't speak; the blue halo of his right mechanical eye expanded and contracted slightly in the reflection of the porthole, then stopped. He stood a step behind Cohen—a position a veteran would only take to confirm he was still standing and the ship was still moving. He said nothing.

Kara had somehow wandered to the bridge entrance, leaned against it, arms crossed, gazing at the starlight through the porthole without saying a word. Liz stood half a step behind her, clutching a half-cold cup of tea.

In the reception room, the sacred cauldron beneath the imperial shrine had been relit by the servants at some point. Smoke from frankincense rose slowly beneath the dome, and the adamantine imperial statue gleamed with a dim, cold light in the incense mist.

The ceremonial ship of the Lucis Forged World Temple—a Mars-class battlecruiser—departed from its orbital berth, maneuvered outwards along the main channel, and hovered ahead of the Combined Fleet. Its broadside cannons were not fired, its Void Shields remained in standby mode, and its bow faced the approaching formation like a silent iron monument.

The binary chant did not stop. The broadcast array deep within the Lucis system switched to synchronous broadcast mode as the combined fleet approached its orbital range, re-encoding, amplifying, and relaying the pulse that had been running for tens of minutes back into the depths of the system.

It's sending a confirmation signal: You've arrived, we've seen you.

Cohen stood at the porthole.

He remained silent throughout that time. He watched the dark yellow star gradually magnify on the sensor screen, watched the outline of the Lucis dockyards unfold in the starry sky, and watched the combined fleet's path spread out in a slowly advancing arc on the main channel. His right hand rested on the armrest, but he didn't grip it tightly.