Warhammer: Striving to Be a Grinding Man

Chapter 161 Steel and Order

943.M41, the reorganization order was issued four months ago. Garros' timeline has never stopped for anything.

Marcus walked through the maintenance tunnel in the berth area. His boots clattered on the terrazzo grating, each step creating a short echo that was swallowed by the low-frequency hum of the dock's cavities. As he passed slipway number three, he glanced sideways at the meticulously crafted armor plating of the Moon-class ship, now closed, with mechanics etching identification codes, the arc of the welding torches flashing orange-red in the dim dock. He didn't stop, but his peripheral vision swept over the number: GCF-021. Garros Casting World Fleet, Ship No. 21.

He walked up the gangway into the Black Pearl and stood before the tactical console on the bridge. His right mechanical eye remained steadily lit, and the overall organizational chart scrolled across the screen. The suffixes of all ships in the Garros fleet had been gradually replaced—GFS had become GCF, the standard Mechanicus format, with the technical serial number below the prefix. The conversion covered all capital ships, frigates, destroyers, logistics ships, and combat transport ships. The captain's position was now held by a technical priest, and all previous personnel had completed basic Mechanicus doctrine and fleet etiquette training. All first officers had reached the level of Mechanicus brethren.

He turned to the second page; the progress was correct, but a note was stuck there and hadn't been cleared.

"Where is Duterte's ship?"

'

The communications officer's voice came through the channel, tinged with hesitation: "Captain Dutt—he didn't sign the conversion documents. He said he wouldn't be a technical priest. He said he'd spent his whole life on ships and wasn't willing to change his identity for a title."

Marcus's mechanical eyes narrowed slightly. "Where is he?"

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"The Kokang is at berth. He said he's not leaving."

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Marcus didn't stop, turning and walking off the bridge. As he crossed the jetty, the berth lights cast a fast-moving shadow beside him. Two sailors standing at the gangway of the Guogan saw him approach and stepped aside to make way.

Dutt sat in the first officer's chair on the bridge of the Kokang. He wasn't wearing power armor or a uniform, but a faded old jacket. In front of him was a data panel, the screen displaying the signature pages of the conversion documents, the signature field blank. He was fifty-eight years old, with gray hair, and his left arm below the elbow was a finely crafted prosthetic issued by Garros.

Marcus stood before him, not sitting down. "Tell me your reasons."

.

Dutt looked up. "I've served in the Navy for twenty-three years, and then spent ten years on merchant ships. All those years, I've been a captain. I'm not a technical priest, and I don't want to be. Once I sign, I'm no longer myself."

Marcus looked at him. "You don't rely on skill when you're sailing? What do you rely on?"

'

"intuition."

"What is intuition? It's experience, but even more so, it's skill. You're just wearing that title; haven't you ever seen Lucis's field fleet?"

Dutt was silent for a moment. "I just don't want to lose my humanity. I'm a captain, not a cog welded into a system."

Marcus sat down opposite him. "I served in the Navy for twenty-three years. When I retired, my left leg was ruined. The Navy said they could replace it with a new one, but it would require a re-evaluation. I refused. Later, on the Black Pearl, the superintendent had someone replace it with a Voss-type prosthesis. That was the best leg I've ever used in my life." He paused. "Dutter, your left arm is also a Voss-type military prosthesis. The GCF prefix won't slow down your ship. You just need to learn to sign your name after that code."

The ship is still your ship, and the machine spirit is still your machine spirit.

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Marcus looked at him for a moment. "Do you know why the Black Pearl is more stable than others in the warp? It's not because the hull is thicker, it's because the machine spirit recognizes this ship. If you sign this document, the machine spirit of the Guts will enter the machine spirit network of Garros. If you don't sign, it will remain in the old files and the connection will be lost."

Dutt's finger paused on the edge of the data panel. He neither answered nor refuted.

After a long silence, he picked up the data pen, wrote his name in the signature column, and made heavy strokes, pausing at the end.

"I'll sign," he said, "but I won't wear the red robe."

"The Garros fleet is still the same fleet, unchanged. Our commander is a realist, not like those mechanical charlatans you remember. He knows exactly what works and what doesn't, and he won't abandon us old buddies."

Dutt did not respond. He shoved the data pad back onto the table, the metal edge making a short, dull thud as it hit the surface.

He stood up and walked to the porthole. The lights in the berth area outside flickered, and he stood there for a moment.

Marcus didn't say anything more, turned around and walked out of the bridge. Behind him, the data on the Guogan had been updated in the organization chart.

Meanwhile, in the sealed, makeshift dry dock at the outer berth of Wangshu, the visual transformation was underway on the last ship. The Black Pearl's paint job was also completed during this phase. The servitor's robotic arms slowly moved along the hull, peeling away the old paint—scorch marks, craters, and subspace deposits left from the Armageddon War were being removed layer by layer from the armor plates. The dark gray underlying metal was exposed, gleaming coldly under the spotlights.

An old sailor stood at the edge of the berth, watching as the Black Pearl's side armor plates were being covered with a new deep red coating. He watched for a moment, then turned and walked back up the gangway into the ship, never looking back.

A new paint job was applied. A deep red base coat, dark gold etched lines, and a gear and skull emblem took shape on either side of the bow. Following the mech servants, the technical priests, branding themselves with consecration irons, pressed a binary rune into the edge of each armor seam. Holy oil hissed and evaporated on the scorching metal, blue smoke rising in the dim pillars of light in the dock. With each rune pressed in, the technical priests would whisper a short binary prayer, informing the mech spirit that its armor was being renewed.

The first navigation log issued by the Black Pearl under the GCF designation was signed two months prior.

The final stages of the Fireseed's scramble were the quietest. Edric stood before the bridge command, watching the technical priests confirm the markings were in place on the last batch of decks, compartments, and hangars. Tens of thousands of binary runes had already been etched onto the bulkheads and pipe connections. At each completed section, the lead technical priest would trace a binary pulse along the edge of the rune with his finger—reporting to the ship's spirit: the markings are in place, the identity confirmed.

The Fireseed's machine spirit did not respond. But Edric knew it didn't need to. Its silence was confirmation in itself.

As the expeditionary ark of the Garros world, the Fireseed has always been at the top of the roster and has always been outside the regular scheduling—its mechanical soul is older and more silent than any other warship.

The fleet's supreme command was established around the same time, permanently stationed on the bridge of the Wangshu Ship. Marcus, as captain of the flagship, served as the fleet's supreme commander, responsible for tactical deployment and operational command; Vera, as captain of the HMS Truth, also served as the chairperson of the Foundry Temple Council, responsible for the fleet's administrative and political coordination. The two were in charge of military and political affairs respectively, reporting directly to the Director of Foundry. The fleet command was composed of the captains of all capital ships, operating through wartime command links and regular joint meetings, and did not interfere with the daily management of individual ships. A large staff of officers was incorporated to support the daily operations of the command.

In Dome Thirtieth, Rellano stood behind the podium in the tactical classroom. His grey combat uniform, with its titanium alloy forehead plate gleaming a dull silver-grey in the cold white light, contrasted with his grey uniform. Before him was an embedded holographic tactical projector, currently projecting a classic cross-section of the hive city assault during the Battle of Invernus—a multi-story building structure, the underground pipe network, and the distribution of orc defensive strongpoints. A curved seating area stretched out in front of him, occupied by over sixty people. The regimental commanders, deputy commanders, chiefs of staff, and operations staff, all wore dark grey uniforms, with the gear and skull insignia of the Garros Faith pinned to their chests. Data boards and tactical manuals lay on the tables; some were reviewing previous terrain briefings, others were adjusting their chairs for better visibility, and still others were plugging data board cables into the desktop panel to synchronize the real-time data from the tactical projector to their terminals. All movements were quiet.

Rellano glanced around at them. He didn't need to introduce himself—this was the third session of the Senior Commander Tactical Training, and the first two sessions had already made it unnecessary for him to repeat "who I am."

"You've mostly experienced the urban warfare tactics of Invernus." He drew a line on the holographic projection with his finger, cutting a cross-section of the battle zone. "Multi-layered structure: surface, underground pipe network, high-rise passageways. During the Orc occupation, their command chain connected the various defensive nodes through underground passages, not on the surface. How many methods did you use to cut off these passageways?"

After a moment of silence, someone in the second row spoke. That person had commanded a regiment as an officer of the Invernus Allied Army during the Battle of Amigidoton, and after arriving in Garros, he transferred to the Garros Papal Army, where he was responsible for infantry training.

"Airburst bombs and directional blasts. Seven main nodes were destroyed, cutting off their movement paths."

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Rellano looked at him for two seconds. "It's cut off. And then?"

"Then"

"Then you made them re-establish new connections. You blew up the main trunk, and they reconnected with branches. How long did you fight in Invernus? How did you solve this problem? Did the war end because you blew up the roads? It ended because you took down the nodes."

The officers in the second row stopped talking and just stared at the projector.

Rellano didn't wait for a response. He drew a new line on the projection table, pointing to a marker in the middle of the underground network. It was an orc heavy firepower stronghold, marked late in the battle, located at the intersection of the main road and secondary passages, occupying two levels and covering attack routes in three directions. This node was assessed as a "core obstacle to the advance" during the post-battle cleanup.

"When you bombed the main road, their reserves were rebuilding the tunnels. When you attacked the ground, their reserves were moving heavy weapons. You were fighting on two fronts, while they were fighting on three fronts: the ground, underground, and viaducts. The war ended because the ground was cleared, not because you bombed enough roads."

Quiet. Someone was writing something on a data board. Someone leaned back in their chair, their gaze still fixed on the projector.

Relano turned off Invernus's projection. The map switched to an unfamiliar terrain and the outline of an unfamiliar city.

An unfamiliar street grid, an unknown defense system. The terrain data holographic projection rapidly unfolds, revealing a medium-sized settlement. After modeling and simulation by the Garros reconnaissance department, a series of potential defensive nodes and red zone locations are marked. No date is indicated, nor is the planet's name.

"Next round. Your task: determine the enemy's likely defensive focus and assess the best entry point. You have fifteen minutes."

He pulled out a chair from the side of the podium and sat down, no longer looking at them. Inside the tactical training room, the soft rustling of data tablets turning and low conversations filled the air.

Fifteen minutes later. Rellano stood up and glanced around.

"Your judgment contains three errors. First, you focused your defense on the ground, ignoring the mobility value of the underground tunnels. Second, you chose the frontal point, which is the most densely defended area. Third, you failed to consider the redundant configuration of fire support points."

He paused for a moment.

"In the next game, if you make one less mistake, that's progress."

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He sat down again, waiting for the next set of simulations.

The remaining elite personnel on the four capital ships were also reorganized during the same refit. They were originally the core combatants of the HMS Truth, HMS Dreadnought, HMS Glory, and HMS Black Pearl, totaling over 20,000 men, all equipped with CMC-300 power armor. They were reorganized into two elite infantry regiments of the Guardians of the Order of the Holy See—the First and Second Regiments—directly under the Guardians of the Holy See, no longer retaining their shipboard roles. The Storm Assault Team remained unchanged as the Forge Director's Guard, also under the Guardians of the Holy See, but at a higher rank.

They completed their assembly and reporting for duty at the training center on the Third Qian Dome, and spent a month and a half refining their company and platoon organization and rebuilding command links. The collaborative training framework led by Reilano covered both regiments.

Preparations for the logistics academy are progressing simultaneously. Maggie is leading the technical logistics academy, which will train personnel for specialized positions such as ship damage control, battlefield maintenance, aircraft maintenance, and material allocation. The first batch of 200 students has been confirmed, and the academy's framework and curriculum are being finalized. In a memo one late night, Maggie wrote: "The logistics line doesn't show its face. But without it, the people trained in the first two academies won't be able to fight tough battles."

In the expansion area of ​​the Third Qian Dome Medical Center, Liz's operating room was lit by cold, white operating lights.

Lying on the platform was a new recruit from the training grounds, his left leg severed below the knee by shrapnel from a simulated explosive device used in training. The wound was exposed, a tourniquet was tightened, and his vital signs on the monitor were stable but weak.

She stood before the operating table. Eight robotic limbs unfolded from the back of her deep red gown; two of them had their end interfaces already switched to surgical instruments, and the third was connected to the life support terminal beside the bed. Her optical sensor array steadily locked onto the cross-section of the wound and the waveform of the monitoring data, processing the information flow from both channels simultaneously.

The assistant beside him—an apprentice in his early twenties, who had just completed four months of apprenticeship—was preparing the neural interface docking port according to standard procedure. His hands were trembling. His fingertips turned white as he gripped the medical forceps, and he failed to accurately grasp the silver microfilament on his first attempt.

Liz didn't look up. "Stop."

The apprentice's hand stopped.

"Your hands are shaking. I can see the focus shifting between in focus and out of focus in your pupils. In your current state, you cannot touch any cables. Take three steps back. Before you pick up the tweezers again, mentally go through the entire docking process."

The apprentice took three steps back. His eyes were closed, and his lips moved silently as if he were reciting a standard sequence of operations.

"Remember," Liz said without looking up, "the procedure comes before the execution. Your muscles have memorized how to do it, but your brain hasn't memorized the sequence yet. On the operating table, if the sequence is wrong, the whole system will collapse."

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About a minute later, the apprentice returned to the operating table and gripped the forceps again. This time, his fingers did not tremble.

The surgery was completed thirty-seven minutes later. At the window at the end of the corridor, the apprentice stood with his back against the window frame, clutching an expired data pad in his hand.

Liz didn't stop, but slowed her pace beside him. "I've looked at your training data. You made the same mistake in the thirty-seventh surgical simulation—grabbing the instruments prematurely in a moment of tension without completing the mental rehearsal. You repeated this mistake in your first real surgery."

E

She paused. "The assessment period has been extended by three weeks. Nine stress test training modules will be loaded onto the simulator—you'll need to pass three consecutive tests with different misconfiguration scenarios before you can return to clinical surgery. You'll need to recalibrate."

She continued walking forward without looking back.

The medical training system in Garros has been finalized over the past few months. The core consists of the original medical personnel from the Black Pearl who have served Lis for many years; the middle tier comprises physicians recruited from Amegiddon and the various domes of Garros; and the outer tier consists of biomedical apprentices selected from the training center and trainee technical priests exchanged from Lucis. The total number of personnel in these three tiers exceeds ten thousand, distributed across the medical facilities of the various domes and the medical bays of the capital ships. The implantation time for neural interfaces and mental barrier surgeries has been reduced from nearly an hour to less than forty minutes, and the post-operative recovery period from several weeks to several days. Mental barrier modules are still not ready for mass production and can only be distributed to a small number of nursing corps teams.

Cohen sat in his office on the top floor of the side chapel of the temple, with six documents spread out in front of him.

The report included a fleet reorganization progress report, a summary of technical exchange intentions, a summary of the first wartime dispatch plan, a progress report from the Military Academy, a draft framework for the Technical Logistics Academy, and a summary of a liaison log left by the Mars review team upon their departure. The liaison log was thin, only three pages long, and mainly contained routine confirmations of territorial operations. But Cohen's attention fell on a note at the bottom of the third page—"The Mars liaison officer in Garros is in position. Communication links are documented. Territorial operation data will be transmitted back periodically." Below that line were planetary beacon parameters, pointing to the standard relay channel of the Mars Central Archives.

He flipped to that page twice. He knew what the data transmission meant—Mars's gaze had never truly left. But he also knew that as long as the Black Pearl's engines were still running and the Garros docks were still producing, that data could only be a reference, not a command. He put the page back in the pile of documents without making any annotations.

Six documents lay side by side on the table, each marked with either "Progressing as planned" or "Completed" at the end. He pressed the communication button, instructing his servant to retrieve them for filing.

The twilight outside the window was receding. The residential lights in Dome One gradually transitioned from a warm yellow to a cool white. Starlight began to seep out from the edge of the dome, falling on the dark metal tabletops and condensing into several blurry spots of light.

He stood up and walked to the window.

Gallo is rising from the ashes of a war. Just a year after the Battle of Invernus, the reorganization of the fleet and the Papacy is progressing smoothly, the framework of the Academy is in place, and the medical system has multiplied several times over. Those who have gathered from all directions are becoming part of this machine.

He stood by the window for a while. Garros wouldn't stop moving forward. The winds of change were shifting in Choglius, and the black bean sprouts in the gutter were waiting for him to teach them a lesson.

He turned and walked back to his desk, opening the next document. At the top of the stack was a flight path assessment report. The name of the star system marked on the report's cover matched the planned coordinates of the Chogris expedition. The distance awaited.