Warhammer: Striving to Be a Grinding Man

Chapter 159 The Shadow of Mars

When Lor stepped down from the welding station of the adamantite truss, hot air was still billowing from the cooling vents of his power armor. He was wearing a Craftsman power armor, an improved version of the Forgeworld standard model, with almost twice the power and a higher level of intelligence—issued by Garros, it could be considered a product of Forgeworld technology being decentralized. But in this environment, better equipment meant more data traces, and also more risks.

The welding torch dangled from its clip at his waist. He walked through the passageway of the ninth slipway, and as he passed the porthole, Wang Shu's massive silhouette stretched out against the armored glass. He didn't pause, only glancing at the outline of the colossus out of the corner of his eye. The military dock where he had been five months ago was now being transferred to the spaceport's civilian dock. The reason given was that a high-ranking technical priest was centrally responsible for allocating technical positions, and his abilities were insufficient to support the duties at the military dock.

He didn't think that was the reason. But he didn't argue. To argue would be an exposure in itself.

There were also noteworthy signs in the civilian shipyards. The Galaxy-class ships in those large slipways were completed in just over seven months, from keel laying to hull assembly. This speed would be noteworthy in any other forging world of the Empire, but here it was considered normal.

The living quarters were on the fifth floor of the civilian dock dormitory area in the spaceport. His cabin was at the end of the corridor, with a number and the words "Level Two Technical Craftsman" in low Gothic and binary symbols printed on the door. It was a single cabin, and the space was very small. He paused at the door, checking for any signs of intrusion into his terminal and whether the physical markings he had set had been tampered with.

He took off his engineer's power armor, hung the welding torch on the hook by the door, sat down on the edge of the bed, and closed his eyes.

I went through the observations from the past week in my mind one by one.

Wangshu's carrying capacity. He observed it fifty-eight times, confirming the cargo throughput of that metallic planet. Its frequent attitude adjustments indicated ongoing large-scale structural construction inside, clearly classifying it as a fortress. The dock was merely a byproduct.

The Spark. The Ark remains moored at the outer berth. Operational data for the casting bay is not directly available, but can be inferred from the activity frequency of the external loading platforms. Large-scale casting operations require frequent material throughput—raw material input, casting output,

Precision component transfer. Over the past seven days, the heavy-duty crane platform at the outer berth has only been activated three times for routine resupply, each lasting less than half a standard shift. There has also been no multi-servant coordinated operation on the loading platform, typical of large casting transfers. He had noted the external activity characteristics of the Fireseed in "standby" status several weeks ago: resupply frequency, crane platform usage records, and servant traffic flow in the berth passage—current observations are almost identical to his memory. This indicates that no large-scale casting is taking place. The assembly of Titan components only requires the internal hangar's lifting system, leaving no trace on the external loading platform.

He wrote a line in the night mode of the data panel: FS—Energy Baseline—Titan Assembly—High Probability.

Then he paused for a moment.

The actual production capacity of the Garros shipyard is the most crucial factor, and he has already been transferred away from the core area. He currently has no access to the data from the Wangshu military shipyard, and can only indirectly estimate it through the output of the civilian shipyard—the fact that a Galaxy-class ship was launched in just over seven months is already an outlier.

His finger hovered over the submit button for a moment. Then he closed the data panel. The encryption signal window hadn't appeared yet.

He didn't know where those reports would end up. The dispatch order had only a serial number, no name—meaning even Strabo couldn't directly verify the dispatcher's identity.

The twilight is closing in on Dome One.

Sister Valeria stood by the window on the top floor of the convent attached to the cathedral. This convent was built along with the cathedral and officially opened after its completion. After the arrival of the Silver Shroud Sisters, it naturally became their residence.

Outside the window was the forecourt square. The square was paved with light gray terracotta panels, edged with lawn. A few streetlights had just been turned on, their glow tinged with a warm, cool white in the twilight. A kilometer away, the arcades of the Casting Temple cast neat shadows in the twilight, the gear and skull reliefs on the exterior walls gleaming a dark gold in the afterglow. Meanwhile, at this end, the spire of the cathedral pierced the darkening dome of the sky, the lights in the bell tower were already on, and warm light shone through the round windows—the dark golden outline of the Emperor's image emerging from the stained-glass armored glass.

She looked for a moment, straightened up, hung the chainsaw sword back on her waist, and turned to leave the room. The corridor led to the cathedral's cloister, and the meeting hall was less than a two-minute walk away.

The evening's routine meeting was held in the conference hall of the Cathedral of the Church of the State. The Church's special representative—an inspector from the Lucis diocese—was briefing the local parish priests of Galloes on the personnel deployment plan following the cathedral's opening. Valeria attended as a military advisor. When she entered, nearly thirty people were already seated on either side of the long table. She sat down at the end of the table, her chainsaw sword resting securely beside her chair.

"Diocesan affairs will be carried out in batches according to the domes," the inspector said, flipping through the data panel. "The first batch of priests and deacons will be stationed in Dome One. The second batch will extend to Domes Two and Three. The staffing of the inspectors will be arranged separately." He closed the data panel and turned to Valeria. "Sister, the Church of England wishes to clarify the area within the Silver Shroud Sisters' garrison in Garros."

Valeria sat across the long table, her hands folded on the surface.

"The Silver Robe Sisters have a small detachment stationed in Garros, at the monastery attached to the cathedral. We do not intervene in parish affairs, but only conduct faith security observations within the Casting Temple and its surrounding area. If heresy, corruption, or systematic doctrinal deviations occur, I will determine whether to intervene when signs appear."

The inspector looked at her. "Where are the boundaries of observation?"

"Within the First Dome, the Temple complex and its surrounding area. Matters beyond this area are to be handled by the State Church. If the Director of Foundry leaves Garros, my squad and I will request to accompany him. That is a requirement of the Inquisition, not a matter of the diocese."

The inspector's gaze lingered on her face for a moment. He didn't press further, asking, "Who decides whether the boundary has been crossed?"

He knew the elder sister's background, knew she was the eyes and ears of the Inquisition. He changed his perspective: "Can the State Church access the recorded information?"

"Can."

The inspector's gaze shifted slightly, landing on the view outside the window—from this angle, one could see the forecourt and the outline of the Casting Temple across the square. He paused for a moment, then spoke: "The believers of Garros draw a composite symbol of a gear and the imperial emblem during their prayers. What does the Superintendent think of this?"

"The Emperor that the Gallos see is the Emperor standing on a gear. The fusion of symbols is a product of faith. As long as believers can distinguish that the Emperor's status is higher than that of the mechanical god, rather than equating the two, the symbols themselves are not a carrier of heresy."

The inspector didn't press further. He made a few notes on the data panel, then closed it and nodded slightly. "I understand."

He turned to the other pastors and continued with the rest of the meeting's agenda. Valeria sat quietly at the end of the table, listening as the remaining items were reviewed one by one—personnel rotation, relic custody, congregation registration. Her part was finished, but she did not leave early. Only after the last page of the data board was turned and the inspector announced the adjournment did she stand up, straighten the chainsaw sword's clasp, push open the meeting hall door, and walk back to the monastery along the corridor.

As she pushed open the monastery doors, the faint sound of chanting drifted from the direction of the prayer room. She walked down the corridor, passing two battle nuns whose shoulders relaxed slightly as she went. She returned to her top-floor room, her chainsaw sword hanging on the hook by her bed, and sat down by the window. Warm light still shone from the round window of the cathedral's nave outside.

At 2 PM Standard Time, the outer berth of Wangshu received an encrypted communication. The signal format was ancient, the encryption level was extremely high, and decoding took nearly three minutes. The berth controller's report quickly rose to the desk of the casting director: a Mars inspection team had entered the galactic range and was expected to arrive in fourteen hours.

Twenty minutes later, a second signal came from the same direction. This time, the identification code was in the standard format of the Lucis Forging World. A cruiser followed approximately 150,000 kilometers behind the Martian cruiser, maintaining precise formation spacing.

Ten hours later, the two cruisers came into view almost simultaneously from the direction of Mandeville point in the Garros system.

The first thing to come into view was a massive steel warship nearly eight kilometers long. Its dark red armor plates gleamed with a somber metallic sheen in the starlight, their surfaces covered with binary prayer runes etched during the Great Crusade—runes etched over millennia, their edges smoothed by countless warp voyages, yet each word remained legible. The adamantite ram at the bow retained its ancient wedge shape, inlaid with a gear and skull emblem. Martian, older than any foundry in any other world. The arrangement of the broadside cannons was entirely different from Imperial Navy standards—the barrels were thicker, the spacing denser, each embedded in an independent adamantite base, the edges of which were etched with gunner's blessing inscriptions. Dozens of communication arrays stood atop the bridge, like a mobile thinker's spire, the psionic focusing crystals at their ends gleaming a dark purple in the starlight.

Not far behind was another cruiser, painted in the signature dark gray of the Lucis Forged World, with the Lucis gear and skull insignia etched on its sides. Its hull lines were closer to the Imperial Navy's standard design, but its armor thickness and turret layout were clearly modified. The two ships maintained a precise distance, slowly turning along the guide beam, heading side-by-side towards the outer berth of Wangshu.

The Mars cruiser berthed first. The Lucis ships were moored in the adjacent berth, the two giant ships separated by a standard distance.

Before the airtight door slid open, a low-frequency binary pulse surged from inside the ship, spreading along the metal grille of the jet bridge towards the berth platform. This was a standard ritual performed by a Martian sage before entering any casting world: clearing the air of noise with a blessed chain of logic to confirm that the berth platform's mechanical spirit was calm and undisturbed. The pulse lasted for about seven seconds, its frequency gradually decreasing until it finally subsided. The lights on the berth platform flickered briefly as the pulse passed before returning to normal.

The Sage of Judgment descended the gangway. Over ninety percent of his body had been replaced with machinery; his face was a sophisticated array of optical sensors, each lens individually consecrated. His vocal apparatus was embedded in a resonant chamber in his chest, each vibration carrying a tremor of a transcendent voice, compressed by a fine gold filter.

As his foot landed on the berth platform, the sensor array scanned from near to far—from the faces of the welcoming crowd to the metal framework of the dock dome, from the slipway under construction to the arrangement of lights at the end of the jetty—before he took his second step forward. That pause lasted for about three seconds, a length that the welcoming crowd could feel.

Behind him, hundreds of Tech Priests marched out in formation. Crimson and dark gray robes spread out in the dimly lit passage, their optical lenses forming a slowly flowing speckle of light. Then came the Machine Guards—their dark red power armor nearly twice as thick as that of the regular Guardians, their breastplates etched with the consecration runes of the Martian to the High Court, their electric rifles and power swords neatly hung at their waists.

At the adjacent berth, the gangway of the Lucis also descended. Helios Vitellius led the way, followed by his attendant Valentius and a team of about thirty Lucis technical priests. The deep red of the Lucis robes contrasted subtly with the dark red of Mars under the lights of the adjacent berth. As Helios descended the gangway, the light paused for a moment at the rear of the Mars column—among the accompanying technical priests of the Sage of Inquiry, he recognized three senior monks specifically responsible for auditing the Servant Agreement.

After departing from Mars, the ship made a stopover and refit in Lucis. The Lucis Forge World dispatched a team under the guise of "accompanying the inspection"—in reality, given the affiliation between Gallos and Lucis, the overlord Forge World was required to be present when the Mars inspection team arrived. This was procedure.

Before boarding Lucis, Helios received a message: the Imperial Naval Logistics Bureau had sent the assessment results and a copy of the contract to the Martian Central Archives in the form of an official filing document after the contract was signed in Garros.

While the inspection team rested in Lucis, the Sage of Inspection had apparently received this news as well.

As the Sage of Inquiry descended the gangway of the Martian cruiser, Ellis and Vera were already waiting on the berth platform. Ellis wore a dark gray civilian sage's robe, while Vera stood beside him in a crimson robe. Several high-ranking civilian staff and mechanical monks stood behind them.

The Sage's sensor array lingered on Ellis for less than a second before scanning the welcoming crowd on the berth platform and the silhouettes of ships under construction beneath the distant dock dome.

Behind him, a recording servo skull silently floated forward. The skull hovered in the air above the berth platform, its optical lenses in the eye sockets aimed at the direction of the welcoming crowd. The data transmission array at the base of the skull, triggered by a program, began broadcasting a precisely compressed binary pulse that spread along the metal grille of the jet bridge, covering the entire berth platform.

The pulse was decoded into a complete identity declaration within the universal logic protocol of the Mechanicus. The format was standardized, the wording precise, and each set of codes underwent independent consecration by the Mars-to-University Tribunal Consortium.

"In the name of the Great Sage Ruler of Mars, by the decree of the Holy Mars, I have been dispatched to Galos to forge the world, exercising full authority over technical auditing and legitimacy review. Witness Logosian, the Sage of Review, the Sixth Auditor of the Martian-University Tribunal Consortium."

The announcement concluded with a brief identification code. The skull hovered for approximately two seconds after the announcement, its optical lenses scanning the faces of the welcoming crowd. Then, the holy oil dripping device at the base of the skull left three drops of oil on the berth platform, marking the "Beginning of Witnessing" mark in the Martian orbit. The skull retracted, drifting back behind the sage's shoulder.

The Sage of Examination remained silent throughout. His sensor array swept one last time over the distant dock dome, then he nodded slightly and stepped forward.

As the Lucis procession walked onto the jetty from the adjacent berth, passing the side of the Galloes welcoming party, Helios walked in the middle of the procession, the rhythm of the hem of his crimson robe maintaining a subtle distance from the Martian procession—following behind, but not too close.

His right hand held the data tablet, his posture as usual.

The dock observation platform hung several stories above. Cohen stood at the edge of the platform, his sage's robes fluttering slightly in the circulating wind. He simply stood there, facing the entrance to the corridor, waiting.

The airtight door slid open. The Sage of Inquiry stepped into the observation platform first, followed by hundreds of Martian technical priests, their crimson robes spreading out in the dimly lit passageway, the points of light from the optical lenses forming a slowly flowing, dark pulse. Lucis's team followed shortly after.

Cohen stood a few steps away from the Sage of Examinations. The Sage of Examinations' sensor array lingered on Cohen longer than it had on the berth platform, zooming in and then slowly zooming out, as if disassembling the body before him into barely readable parameter segments and then archiving them one by one. The recording servo skull behind him emitted a short binary pulse, so low that it was almost swallowed up by the background noise of the dock.

Cohen raised his right hand, performing a full gear salute. "Your Excellency, Sage of Inquiry. Welcome to the world of Garros Forging."

The sensor array of the Sage of Examination lingered on Cohen for longer than ever before—enough time, according to the rituals of high-ranking monks of the Cult of Mechanics, to complete three logical checks. Then his sensor array slowly shifted to the operational shipyards below the platform. Twelve large shipyards were operating simultaneously, the arcs of welding torches flickering in the darkness, rhythmic and uninterrupted.

"Gallos's shipyards are highly efficient." The first words came through the Sage of Inquiry's voice, dry and devoid of any emotion. He paused. "Efficiency itself is not the issue. But the supporting structure for that efficiency should be examined."

Cohen understood the implication of that statement. The reviewer didn't mention production capacity, but rather asked, "What is the structure supporting this speed?" This meant the review's focus had shifted from whether Garros' production capacity was genuine to whether Garros' operations were compliant. The Navy's filings had already removed the issue of "production capacity" from the review table.

"Gallos's servant management system has been optimized by the Great Sage Enpu, resulting in seamless workflows. The reviewing sage can examine all relevant protocol logs and authorization records."

The Sage's sensor array subtly adjusted its focus. "I need to examine the underlying protocols for optimizations to the Servant Management System. Is the Thinker array in Garros authorized for autonomous scheduling?"

This was the first substantive inquiry. Cohen's fingers paused for a moment on the side seam of the Sage's robe before falling back to his side. "Autonomous scheduling" is not a matter of "production capacity," but a matter of "the boundaries of the Crimson Protocol"—a realm beyond the reach of naval records. The Sage of Inquiry had indeed chosen this angle.

"The scheduling scope of the Thinker Array in Garros has clear boundaries, and each executable node has an independent oversight protocol. The oversight sage can access the complete logs and authorization records during the oversight period."

The sage's sensor array lingered on Cohen for a moment, then glanced down. There, the steel behemoth of Garros silently operated under his gaze. The Martian giants rested in their outer berths, the arcs of welding torches deep within the dock unwavering in their rhythm despite the arrival of anyone.

He turned and walked along the corridor of the observation platform toward the exit. The line behind him followed in silence, but he paused at the doorway, and the loudspeaker sounded again, this time in a slightly lower voice. "Naval assessment report filing—Gallos is obligated to provide copies of all relevant third-party assessment documents during the verification process."

Cohen nodded slightly. "The Naval Liaison Office in Garros has prepared all the attachments to the assessment report, which the reviewing sage can access at any time during the review process."

The sage of examination and the line of technical priests behind him filed out, the hems of their crimson robes disappearing one by one at the edge of the doorway. The recording servo skull floated at the end of the line, deflecting its optical lens as it passed the doorway, giving one last sweep of the observation platform's interior before following.

The airtight door closed after the last technical priest passed through. Cohen stood on the platform, watching the dark red figure disappear at the end of the corridor. He had already realized from the first question the examiner asked—"The supporting structure should be witnessed"—that the examiner hadn't questioned production capacity, but had jumped directly to "How was it done?" This meant that a document he couldn't see had changed the premise of this examination. The inspection had already become an examination before it even began.

Beyond the shadow of the Martian cruiser, Lucis's convoy was moving toward the temporary encampment at the flank berths. Helios led the way, with Valentius close behind. Helios's stride was even, and he didn't look back, as if nothing had happened.

Cohen remained on the platform. He reviewed the situation—this was a game between Mars and the Navy, and Mars needed to regain the initiative. For Garros, nothing was unsolvable with a price; if it wasn't, then the price wasn't high enough.