Warhammer: Rebuilding the Golden Age Starting with Farming

Chapter 106 Underground Alien Society

Chapter 106 Underground Alien Society

Andy's finger hovered over the control panel, his movement frozen.

The red light was not strong, or even faint, but in the pitch-black depths of the space silo, it was particularly dazzling.

The light source is moving.

It's not fast, very stable, and has obvious cruising characteristics.

Without any hesitation, Andy immediately issued a silence command to the "Firefly" drone.

The palm-sized black disc immediately stopped rotating its rotors and used the miniature suction cups under its belly to stick itself firmly to the cold, dusty alloy well wall.

All active detection radars were turned off, leaving only a passive optical camera.

A few seconds later, the luminous object approached.

Using the faint red light, Andy could make out the outline of the thing.

That was an aircraft.

More accurately, it is a creature that has been modified into a flying vehicle.

Its wingspan is about five meters, and it has a flat triangular structure with a pale, bone-like hard shell covering its surface.

Without propellers or jet nozzles, it relies on some kind of bio-electromagnetic organ beneath the wing membranes on both sides to glide silently in this vertical shaft filled with various forms of radiation and magnetic field interference.

The red light we just saw came from a single, enormous eye located beneath its head.

The bio-plane drifted slowly past the drone.

It didn't notice the little thing stuck to the wall; its single red eye simply scanned the darkness below mechanically.

Once it had flown far away, the red light completely disappeared into that huge circular gap.

Andy then restarted the drone.

"Follow them."

The drone released its suction cups and, like a falling leaf, silently glided down to the "mid-section maintenance base" occupied by the Reiss.

After passing through that huge circular gate, the view suddenly opened up before my eyes.

Andy had already prepared himself mentally.

In his imagination, the lair of the aliens, especially the lair of the biotech-savvy aliens, would be covered in slime, with purple fungal carpets crawling on the walls, still-pulsating blood vessels on the ground, and the air filled with the stench of decay.

After all, that's just how the Terran are.

But when the camera transmitted the footage back, Andy paused for a moment.

He even suspected that the sensor's white balance might be faulty.

There was no slime, no fleshy blanket, and no nauseating smell of blood.

What unfolded before Andy was a white world.

Pale white, cold, and full of hard lines.

"That's interesting."

Andy adjusted the focus.

The Reiss's bioengineering is clearly not on the same path as the Tyranids.

The Tyranids rely on their massive hive will and irrational psionic energy to forcibly build up their functions with flesh and blood, turning living beings into cannons and tanks, focusing on large quantities to satisfy hunger, and brimming with savage vitality.

But the Reiss are different.

Andy believes they are following the "skeletal machinery" route.

Because in this huge circular space, all the buildings, facilities, and even the pipelines hanging from the ceiling are made of some kind of high-strength bone material.

This bone material has a smooth surface and a hard texture, and looks like polished ivory.

On a purely sensory level, it is not disgusting at all; rather, it carries a strange sense of order that belongs to industrial civilization.

Andy saw a huge crane.

Its arm is reinforced with a single, massive vertebra, with black horny bearings embedded in the joints. It is not driven by a hydraulic pump, but by bundles of exposed, dark red, powerful muscle fibers.

The muscles contract, and the boom lifts up.

The movements were precise, powerful, and without the slightest tremor.

Look at that conveyor belt over there.

Countless tiny finger bones are linked together to form a chain, which rotates on several thick leg bone rollers, making a crisp clicking sound.

"That's interesting."

The Reis people use biological enzymes to control bone growth, allowing bones to grow into gears, levers, and pistons according to predetermined industrial blueprints.

If humans are the ones who build machines, then these animals are the ones who cultivate them.

Compared to Tyron's soft, flabby body, this skeletal machine obviously has greater strength and stability, and is more in line with common sense regarding the aesthetics of the word "industrial".

The drone continued its ascent.

Andy observed the social structure of the Reiss people.

The entire underground world presents a very crazy layout.

No partitions.

In human settlements, industrial zones are industrial zones and residential zones are residential zones. Although the environment is terrible, at least there is a boundary.

But here, production and life are completely integrated.

A skeletal conveyor belt carrying ore passed directly through a dense cluster of habitable nests.

Many Reissians slept beneath the conveyor belt, some even hanging from the skeletons nearby.

When you wake up, reach out and do some work; when you're tired, lie down on the spot.

Andy witnessed a Reissian sitting next to a running bioreactor and eating.

While stuffing some kind of black paste into its mouth, it used its extra arm to adjust the valves on the reactor.

There were even a few juveniles playing around next to the rapidly spinning gears, completely oblivious to the possibility of being pulled in.

For the people of Reis, work is life, and life is work.

This kind of factory-wide staffing and extremely intensive management makes the traditional human model of having dormitories and canteens seem somewhat "outdated".

"This is way too curly."

Andy couldn't help but sigh.

If this system were implemented in the Empire, those servants who still need to sleep two hours a day would be ashamed to death (referring to the servants' low-power state).

"Zor, come and take a look too."

Andy suddenly remembered the cyborg priest beside him.

As a professional oil expert, Zor should have unique insights into this kind of unusual mechanical structure.

Andy shared the drone footage onto Zor's data board.

Zor leaned closer for a look.

Just one glance.

"vomit--!!"

He suddenly leaned back and let out a dry heave with an electric-like sound.

Father Zor looked as if he had seen something extremely filthy and blasphemous, and threw the data panel away.

"Heretical! This is heresy!!"

Zor clutched his microphone, his voice trembling, "They—how dare they?!"

"They actually used filthy bones to imitate sacred mechanical structures?!"

"This is the most vicious mockery of Om Messiah! An insult to gears and levers!"

"That's blasphemy! It's imprisoning a sacred soul in a filthy corpse!"

Zor's reaction was terrifying; his eyes were filled with horror and anger.

In the doctrines of Mechanics, machines are sacred and possess a soul.

In Zor's view, the Reiss's practice of using biological tissue to simulate mechanical structures was like using excrement to carve an emperor's statue—not only disgusting but also utterly heinous!

"Alright, alright."

Andy cut off the signal to Zor, lest the old man really short-circuit from anger.

"If you won't look, I will."

Andy controlled the drone, bypassing the busy production area and flying deeper into the region.

He wanted to see where the core area of ​​the base was, and also to see how many aliens there were.

A massive bone archway appeared ahead.

The archway is carved with intricate biological patterns, and it appears to be a gateway to the next area.

The drone carefully skimmed along the ceiling, trying to drift past.

Just as the drone passed over the archway.

"6

A very faint whooshing sound rang out.

A small patch of snowflakes suddenly appeared in Andy's field of vision.

Immediately afterwards, the screen spun violently, presumably showing the drone spinning out of control after being struck by some force.

In the last 0.1 seconds before the image completely disappeared.

Andy spotted the attacker, a biological sentry gun embedded in the wall.

It looked like a giant flower bud, its petals open to reveal the pale white bone-like cannon barrel inside.

The cannon barrel was still emitting wisps of white smoke.

"Smack."

[Signal lost.]

Andy cut off the signal and rubbed his temples.

Was discovered.

It appears to be some kind of automatic defense mechanism that automatically fires whenever a non-Reisi biosignal passes through.

The bone turret reacts extremely quickly and appears to be quite powerful.

Although one drone was lost, a significant amount of intelligence has been obtained.

Andy quickly reconstructed the scene he had just witnessed in his mind, creating a data model.

The mid-section maintenance base is very large, accommodating a large number of production facilities and residential nests.

In that fleeting glimpse, Andy saw at least several hundred Reis craftsmen and dozens of much stronger warriors on patrol.

And this is only one level of the space well.

If we extrapolate from this density—

"Beneath the space shaft, there are at least three to five thousand Reissians."

Andy gave a conservative estimate.

Three to five thousand.

This is a considerable force.

Moreover, these Reissians are not the kind of mindless beasts that charge blindly.

They are organized, disciplined, have a division of labor, and possess a unique and quite mature industrial system.

In contrast, Deep Space Industries currently has fewer than 700 employees, of whom only about 200 are truly capable.

Even including fighter jets and drones, they are still at a significant disadvantage in terms of numbers.

Andy did feel some pressure.

But it was only a little bit.

So what if there are a lot of them?

This is the space station well, and the sun is shining brightly overhead.

All I can say is that this advantage is on my side.

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