The Astartes Family's Notebook

The ship that was pursuing them from the Mechanicus also behaved strangely, neither making contact nor communicating, just hanging there mysteriously from a distance.

So Katz simply docked at the local planet's orbital elevator tower, did a quick secondhand transaction, and without bothering the mechanics, simply set sail again.

Hey, I've accidentally ended up doing the work of a wandering merchant.

There was no other way; the place Ysera was going to was an unknown area on the Empire's star map. Since Kaz had agreed to go, he had to take the job seriously.

Exploring unknown star systems is indeed the essential work of traveling merchants and wandering warriors. Even though the Ishimura had evolved from a destroyer into a cruiser, the Empire's ships, while having ample redundancy and high specialization, were too rigid in their functionality.

Katz had to do a lot of preparation before embarking on this journey.

Purchasing specialized equipment is a matter of luck; the Empire's industrial world may not have it readily available.

The need to replenish the crew and sailors is a long-standing and difficult problem that requires significant effort to address.

After boarding the ship, Trois led a group to purge a group of corrupt and chaotic lower deck crew.

Later, after the sailors from the Eye of Fear were crammed into the cruiser, a deck war broke out between the old and new sailors that lasted for several years.

Katz's attitude on this matter was very clear: as long as the crew and sailors did not make any mistakes in their duties, the Astartes should not do anything unnecessary.

A normal Imperial cruiser would have between 30,000 and 50,000 crew members, but how many ordinary crew members are on the Ishimura?

Even including the five hundred axemen, the total is less than eight thousand.

In this situation, even during the civil war, the crew was still able to perform the minimum necessary maintenance on the ships. The Empire's triple redundancy principle has some merit.

When you first encounter it, you might want to criticize it, but after using it more, you'll find that it's not so bad after all.

When things really happen, you'll understand that the empire's current state isn't due to my own thoughts at all; it's entirely the result of the active selection process of the jungle law of the purgatory galaxy.

This number of people is barely enough to operate the established Imperial routes.

However, when it comes to exploring unknown star systems, this number of sailors and shipwrights is really not enough.

We need to add at least another 8,000 people.

Unfortunately, the Ishimura ship has so many demon hosts, making it a huge source of chaotic pollution. Kaz doesn't want to harm the loyal people of the Empire.

So what should we do?

Since graduates of the interstellar flight school can't use Boss Zhipin (a job recruitment platform), the pirates will have to make do.

The people of the Misty Starfield are so honest and simple. Although the pirates and raiders in the Pacific Starfield are also a big problem, apart from the franchise-style pirate alliances that Black Sprouts has brought together, very few of the human pirate groups that are actually on the wanted list are wild. They are all backed by powerful figures.

Pirate groups with official backing in the Taiping Starfield generally wouldn't bother with ships they shouldn't rob. They know exactly what's going on; robbery is just a job, life is about living well.

However, the Hazy Starfield is different. It's like TM has entered the second half of the Grand Line, and it's full of vitality and everything is thriving.

The Ishimura, an Imperial standard cruiser, the Astartes...

I won't listen, I won't listen, Holy New Star.

No, no, I don't want to, the tiger claps its hands.

Don't try to pull any Space Marine or Imperial Navy stuff on me. Even if the oracle is oozing milk, we're going to pull off something big!

How dear you!

Kaz truly couldn't understand why so many fools would dare to plot against the Ishimura.

Are Imperial cruisers really that lacking in prestige?

Hehe, you'd have to ask the Heavenly Venerable for that.

The name Ishimura has been engraved by the Celestial Venerable on the ceaseless soul tides of the subspace. If you want to become the Pirate King, do you even deserve to be the Pirate King if you don't conquer Ishimura?

I'm a flying Henan native!

Although it's unclear, the reverse raiding of the pirate ship did solve part of the shortage of slave shipwrights on Kaz's side.

However, getting the specialized equipment is still quite difficult.

Still suffering from the disadvantages of being unfamiliar with the area, Kaz could only take it one step at a time, running trade routes while asking prices, buying whatever was available and whatever he could find.

In just one year, the Blood Duck Battle Gang's assets tripled.

They've already toned it down quite a bit; after all, running a logistics business in the Empire is really profitable.

The only minor problem is that you might earn the money but not live to spend it.

Since Katz was indeed fulfilling his promises properly, and the Ishimura had made preparations for this ocean voyage in secret, Shiro had no complaints.

So even after all nineteen genetic modification surgeries of the new blood members were completed, Kaz's preparations were still not finished.

After all, true loyalist factions of the Empire, if they wanted to engage in this kind of deep space exploration, should go directly to the sector capital and let the Empire's vast bureaucratic system take effect.

But would Katz dare to sail the Ishimura to the star sector capital?

He certainly had extensive experience dealing with imperial bureaucrats, but the chaotic brats of the Blood Duck Gang...

Forget it, it's pretty close to the truth, let's just get to the point.

Thirty-three new recruits, but only eleven sets of power armor in stock.

From the moment Katz emerged from the Frankish III, he never had to worry about power armor again.

This is the first time ever, a groundbreaking first!

However, this situation is quite common in the Chaos Warband. It is quite common for someone to have been an Astartes for fifty years without having their own dedicated power armor.

Want power armor? Go rob, assassinate, cheat, or swindle!

This is how we, the Chaos Astartes, do things.

Kaz's moral bottom line is also quite flexible. Since most of the new recruits in the gang are not qualified to wear power armor after completing the long training course, it seems that there is no big problem for us Blood Ducks to follow the trend.

It's about readily accepting good advice.

Despite following the Mechanicus for so long without any contact, Kars got tired of playing these "flirting games" anymore.

Plain text communication. Talk if you want, otherwise get lost. I'm not putting up with this anymore.

Although there is still a great lack of supplies and equipment, the preparations are never-ending.

Kaz is no longer going to play along with MechTeach.

Chapter 451 Black Shark

If the gods close your door, then they will open it again.

Because this is a door, and this is how doors are used.

If the gods close all your doors and windows, then you can lie down and relax.

Because the gods want to turn on the air conditioning.

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Internal strife is a human tradition. Humans form empires, and the Mechanicus is an important part of an empire. Therefore, internal strife is a tradition of the Mechanicus, an important part of humanity since ancient times, and an inevitable characteristic of empires.

Kaz had considered that the Empire was a makeshift organization and that the Mechanicus was severely disorganized, but he never imagined that the Mechanicus ship that had been with him for over a year would be constantly embroiled in civil war.

It's not internal strife, it's civil war.

Even though the mechanical dog has been reduced to AlphaGo, it's still carrying out its mission and tracking the Ishimura.

Holy crap, Omni the Saiyan, loyal!

Unfortunately, the fragile internal balance was disrupted by Astartes' intervention.

Kaz heard a short story when he was Cloud Hammer in his previous life.

Well... to be precise, one and a half.

The plots are all similar: the Imperial Navy's warships are boarded by the enemy.

However, the Navy refused the assistance of the Star Guardians and Astartes, insisting that the Navy's honor did not need to be defended by others.

Then, Katz's memory became distorted.

It was as if the navy and the enemy had been fighting fiercely for two and a half years, each guarding their own section, and it was also as if they had participated in a void naval battle while facing internal rebellion and chaos.

The details don't matter, the result doesn't matter, what matters is the story itself.

When war breaks out inside a starship, it can easily escalate into urban warfare if a quick victory cannot be achieved.

After all, the empire's ships were themselves human city-states floating in the void.

To reiterate, even destroyers weigh several million tons; the Empire's warships are enormous.

Because the ships of the Mechanicus did not adopt the standard design of the Imperial Navy, Kaz couldn't identify the ship chasing him. It was larger than a frigate but smaller than a cruiser, and he estimated it to be around 12 to 13 million tons.

It's not a small boat.

Kars doesn't know why the various factions within the Mechanicus started fighting, but by now, it has devolved into a standoff where each faction occupies a section of the ship, a veritable meat grinder.

Unfortunately, what would take the Navy's armed sailors a full year to accomplish, Astartes could do in half an afternoon.

In a confined space, in a complex and claustrophobic environment, as long as Astartes enters the field, how can we lose? Kars wants to ask, how can we lose!

Lyman's Ear, eternally divine, just that ability to pinpoint sounds from inside the cabin... what can mortals do against Astartes?

I could hear your footsteps three corners away. You even dared to ambush me! You didn't even have the heart to pretend to be Tang and fool me. You've really shown off your Jade-Faced Grenade King skills.

On paper, the Mechanic has plenty of powerful bombs and blasts that could kill Astartes, but in actual combat, Astartes, especially in large groups, have no difficulty dealing with the Oilers.

One Casteran Automaton thinks it can block the road?

"Trois, lead your men to flank from behind. Choun, get the wire-cutting tool ready. I want this thing."

With perfect coordination and a pincer attack, the Casteran automaton was slightly misled by Kaz, and its round of ineffective shots all missed.

When it spotted Trois charging at full speed behind it, it was already slow to turn around, and its magazine was almost empty. It had no chance of taking the initiative and could only try to fight the enemy in close combat with its bionic claws.

If this can be killed, then it only proves that the fallen angels are nothing special, and that old ice pop Caliban deserves to die.

In fact, the problem would have been solved by firing a burst of explosives at the Casteran mech's control panel.

However, since his own leader wanted this thing, Trois couldn't just destroy it by force, so he created an opening to lure the Casterlan mechs into swinging their weapons at the wall.

Naturally, the bionic claw got stuck in the wall.

The Casterland mech's intelligent control program was written by the machine enthusiasts almost on the edge of the Crimson Protocol's red line. Its intelligence level is quite good. It even managed to use a melee weapon to get stuck in a wall by stepping on the other side of the wall with one foot, leaving the other leg free to kick.

Show-off, so impressive!

Unfortunately, Qiong En had already reached the back of the thing, and directly pulled a cable from the side of his power backpack and connected it to the rear interface of the Casterland mech, using a strong current to overload and paralyze the automatic mech.

Huh, is this indiscriminate attack that doesn't distinguish between loyalty and treachery?

Hey, what need is there for morality and ethics among us guys? Brothers in the gang, let's fight side by side, this is a rare opportunity!

Both are religious orders with military ties, but the Mechanicus Order does one thing better than the Astartes.

That means keeping family scandals private.

The conflicts between factions in Astartes are quite frequent, but for most of them, dragging out the top members of the faction, like the company champions, to have a cricket fight would resolve the issue.

However, unusual conflicts can escalate into major incidents.

Therefore, the civil war within the Astartes Chapter is always a topic of great interest among the powerful figures of the Empire.

However, our Astartes Hall's opening ceremony is nowhere near as effective as the academic exchanges between mechanical teaching valves.

When tech enthusiasts debate, they're always playing background music on a Titan machine.

But the oil enthusiasts were good at covering things up. They did things that caused internal strife in Astartes, and they even did things that Astartes didn't do, like killing sects. Not only did they do it, but they also managed to avoid widespread bad reputation.

Katz couldn't help but reflect and introspect; he had to learn from the advanced experiences of his neighboring units.

Having finally seized the opportunity of the Mechanicus's internal strife, it would be a dereliction of duty for Kaz, as the commander of the Blood Duck Eighth Company, not to thoroughly expose the Confucian scholars.

I just don't know if the mastermind behind this is still on the ship.

Despite the Mechanicus's long internal strife, once Kaz and his crew boarded the ship and turned their guns against a common enemy, Blood Duck would have had to retreat.

However, it was a general consensus among the ship's oilmen that they would rather give to outsiders than to their own crew, and almost all of them sent requests for assistance to Astartes.

Lords of Astartes, if you help us quell the rebellion, the benefits will be immense!

"You're all idiots. If I control you, aren't you all mine?"

He dared not send his men out at all. How could Kaz, the leader of the Blood Duck War Gang, not know what kind of Chaos Astartes these guys looked like?

The bad habits ingrained by the Eye of Fear for decades or even centuries cannot be corrected in a short time. While you are watching them, they may appear respectable, but once they are out of your sight, it becomes unclear whether they are human or ghost.