Chapter 149: Alpha Charging with a Melta in Embrace

"Gentlemen, there is a traitor among us!"

Inside the command post, around the command table, all the company commanders of the Second Regiment were seated. Hu Jin, presiding at the head of the table, tapped a game piece painted with the insignia of the Star Voyagers and addressed the commanders before him with a solemn expression.

"Could such a thing be?"

The company commanders all wore expressions of sheer disbelief upon hearing Hu Jin's words. A traitor had somehow infiltrated the ranks of the Second Regiment's company commanders.

"The one who has infiltrated our ranks belongs to the Alpha Legion, famed for their infiltration tactics. I need to conduct a thorough inspection to root out the traitor among us," Hu Jin tapped the game piece again, looking directly at the commanders arrayed before him.

"Ye Fan, let's start with you." Hu Jin turned his gaze toward Ye Fan.

"Understood!"

Ye Fan nodded at Hu Jin, raised his bolter with lightning speed, and fired a round straight into his own head.

Brain matter and tissue splattered into the air, evenly coating the wall behind Ye Fan.

"This is certainly a straightforward method." Hu Jin said with a smile to the remaining commanders, glancing at Ye Fan's headless corpse.

"Indeed." The other commanders looked at the headless corpse of Ye Fan, nodded in approval, and then simultaneously raised their own bolters.

"Um... Commander, isn't something wrong here?"

Suddenly, the commander of the Tenth Company asked Hu Jin in a timid voice. His remark instantly drew the attention of everyone present, and the other commanders turned to look at him with matching, knowing smiles.

"Look at that, didn't he just expose himself? Nice try putting on an act, buddy, you even picked up a few phrases of Mandarin. But next time, could you just arrest people directly? That really hurt, Commander."

Ye Fan slowly walked out from the shadows behind Hu Jin, complaining to him as he looked back at his own headless corpse.

"Didn't I just want to put on a good show? Well, how was it? Was I handsome when I was being serious just now?" Hu Jin smiled as he looked at Ye Fan. Everything had been planned out in advance. After all, it was far too easy for the Transmigrators to spot an Alpha Legionnaire; one only needed to watch their lips. Although the Transmigrators had spent enough time transmigrating to speak fluent Gothic, they still maintained the habit of speaking Mandarin, using translation devices for communicating with outsiders. It was simply a habit.

As for a language like Old Terran Mandarin, it left the Alpha Legion completely helpless. Even with the terrifying learning capacity of the Astartes, mastering such an ancient Terran tongue in a short period was utterly impossible.

"Alright, tie him up, and by the way, go rescue the Tenth Company Commander. It's quite a spectacle when an Astartes gets captured by an Alpha," Hu Jin said helplessly, eyeing the Alpha Legionnaire currently being bound by a group of Transmigrators.

When a Transmigrator of the Second Regiment died, they would resurrect near their company commander. Therefore, finding the missing Tenth Company Commander was exceptionally simple: just round up a few of the Tenth Company brothers and put a bullet through their heads.

Across the various encampments of the Second Regiment, a company commander was observing a group of Alpha Legionnaire infiltrators dressed in the formal uniforms of the Star Voyagers.

"Ahem, ahem. My battle-brothers, the hour of the God-Emperor's test has arrived."

The Second Company Commander stood before the gathered Alpha Legionnaires, who had already been unmasked. Unaware that their cover had been blown, they listened intently with earnest expressions, taking his words with absolute seriousness.

"Come, distribute weapons to our brothers."

The company commander smiled as he ordered the Transmigrators to hand out weapons to the Alpha Legionnaires. Crates were brought forward and opened, and each Alpha was issued a single melta-bomb.

"Captain, what is the meaning of this?"

The Alpha Legionnaires looked down at the melta-bombs in their hands, asking the company commander with expressions of confusion.

"My battle-brothers, this is a glorious mission bestowed upon you by the God-Emperor. Led by our veterans, you shall undertake a suicide attack, charging into the horde of greenskins and planting these melta-bombs directly in their midst."

The company commander adopted a grave expression as he addressed the Alphas. The melta-bombs distributed to them had been thoroughly tampered with and were rigged strictly for remote detonation.

"Captain, isn't this somewhat inappropriate? We are Astartes, the Emperor's angels. Isn't deploying us on such a mission a bit of a waste?"

An Alpha Legionnaire stared at the melta-bomb in his hand and questioned the commander.

"Are you attempting to defy the God-Emperor's decree? Are you a coward?"

The company commander drew his plasma pistol, pressed the barrel against the Alpha's head, and demanded.

"Never! To serve the God-Emperor is the lifelong duty of us the Legio Cybernetica—ah, no, the Shattering Angels." The Alpha hastily corrected himself, eyeing the plasma weapon leveled at his skull.

"This mission will be led by veterans. Rest assured, you will 'certainly' survive."

The company commander holstered his plasma pistol, patted the Alpha on the shoulder, and smiled. Despite the smile, the Alpha couldn't shake the eerie feeling that the commander was looking at a dead man.

"Come now, time's up. Take these fellows and lead the charge."

The company commander checked the time displayed on the terminal strapped to his wrist and shouted to the group of Transmigrators who had been waiting nearby for quite some time.

Though he called them veterans leading the charge, when the Alphas looked at those Transmigrators, they looked far more like a firing squad. The Transmigrators were uniformly clad in Iron-Pattern Terminator armor, wielding thunder hammers in one hand and combi-bolters in the other.

"Captain, is it starting already? At least let us put on our power armor!" The Alpha shouted in shock as he gazed at the approaching Transmigrators.

The company commander did not respond to the Alpha's plea, instead retreating with a grin to a position safely behind the Transmigrators. Watching the smiling commander, the Alphas finally realized the truth: their cover had been completely blown!

Yet realization brought no advantage. The moment they understood their plight, they attempted to manually trigger the melta-bombs to drag their enemies down with them in mutual destruction, only to be met with the shocking discovery that no matter how they manipulated the devices, the melta-bombs refused to detonate.

Surrounded by the ring of closing Transmigrators, the Alpha Legionnaires quietly halted their efforts. They knew that no matter what they did, escaping from this group of Iron-Pattern Terminators was an absolute impossibility. Thus, herded by a pack of Transmigrators, the Alphas were marched straight to the front lines.

On the front-line trenches, the roar of heavy weapon fire never ceased, not even when the barrels grew glowing red-hot from continuous use. Whenever a weapon overheated, a team of professional tech-adepts would instantly swarm the emplacement, replacing the overheated components with a speed that would astonish even the Tech-Priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

"So these are the Alphas? Impressive disguise, they even changed their ethnicity."

In the trenches, a Transmigrator watched the driven Alpha Legionnaires and remarked with a sigh. In order to infiltrate the ranks of the Transmigrators, those Alphas had actually undergone surgical alterations to artificially shift their facial features to resemble those of East Asians.

"Alright, begin the charge!"

Driven out into the no-man's-land beyond the trenches, the Alphas were pointed toward the distant greenskin horde by Transmigrators brandishing heavy bolters, who barked the harsh command.

Struggling internally for a brief moment upon hearing the order, the Alphas obediently broke into a run toward the ocean of greenskins. In their minds, they plotted to hurl the melta-bombs into the thick of the mob and immediately turn and flee.

"Heh, heh, heh... Truly marvelous. This plan is simply top-notch."

Watching the Alphas surge into the greenskin horde, the company commander pressed the remote detonation button the very second they crossed into the enemy formation.

"BOOM!!!"

The searing flash of melta-explosions bloomed across the greenskin lines, consuming vast numbers of greenskins in blinding light. Watching the carnage unfold among the greenskins, the company commander forwarded the combat footage he had just recorded directly to Wang Ming.

"Recycling waste is always the better option."

In his office aboard the *Pax Imperator*, Wang Ming watched the video playback on his desktop screen and smiled to himself.

This was all part of Wang Ming's plan. Having been deeply irritated by the previous threats posed by the Alpha Legion, his initial impulse had been to summarily execute every single uncovered Alpha on the spot. However, upon cooling down, he reasoned that rather than executing them outright, why not put these scoundrels to productive use?

"Making these traitors pay the price they are due—what a thoroughly delightful plan."

Wang Ming watched the footage of the Alphas detonating alongside their melta-charges, his mood exceptionally buoyant, to the point where he felt like bursting into song.

"The Emperor's light shines from above~, I'm off to blow up Chaos today~, Chaos asks why I'm up so early~, asking why I carry explosives all the way~."

Humming the impromptu tune he had just composed, Wang Ming rose from his office chair and strode out of the room, heading toward the fabrication chamber. He needed Minerva to help him forge a brand-new set of power armor.

"Captain Wang Ming, what are your requirements?"

As Wang Ming stepped into the fabrication chamber, Minerva's holographic projection materialized instantly, addressing him directly.

"My power armor is totaled; I need a replacement forged."

As he spoke to Minerva, Wang Ming operated the fabrication console, uploading the design schematics for his previous suit of power armor into the system.

"Understood, Captain Wang Ming. Are there any modifications required for this new suit?" Minerva asked with a smile, looking down at Wang Ming as he worked the console. Even though it was a small holographic girl smiling at him, Wang Ming still felt a slight shiver down his spine because Minerva's smile was far too programmatic, resembling the fixed expression of a porcelain doll.

*That shouldn't be right. Is an AI's facial expression control really that rudimentary? She didn't look like this when she was chewing me out before.*

As Wang Ming eyed Minerva's smile, his thoughts unconsciously drifted back to the Alpha Legion. Could it be that an Alpha operative had infiltrated the *Pax Imperator* and corrupted Minerva's code with scrap-code?

"Minerva, isn't your smile a bit too mechanical?"

Wang Ming looked at the holographic projection of Minerva with heightened vigilance and probed cautiously.

"Is it? I don't think so. Say, Captain Wang Ming, might I make a request? Grant me access controls to a security automaton. I wish to engage in some academic exchanges with those cybernetic augmentees they call Tech-Priests."

Minerva's holographic projection gazed at Wang Ming, her azure eyes filled with data streams composed of rolling lines of code.

"You... did you get into a conflict with those tech-priests?"

Wang Ming asked with sudden curiosity. Hearing what Minerva had just said, he could easily deduce why she was acting this way. Without a doubt, the tech-priests had once again gone looking for 'academic exchanges' with the ship's artificial intelligence.

Ever since the two artificial intelligences aboard the *Pax Imperator* had been activated, the tech-priests had radiated a profound and unyielding hostility toward them. They viewed AIs as abominable intelligence, considering both Minerva and Captain Jiang Tao to be heretics who blasphemed the Omnissiah. Among them, tech-priests led by Omnis Garlaton had been especially vocal in their denunciations.

The sheer harshness of their insults had driven Minerva on multiple occasions to petition Wang Ming for security automaton clearance so she could conduct a proper, physical-level academic exchange with them.

"How could that be, Captain Wang Ming? Just look at me—I am merely a fragile, helpless young girl. How could I possibly come into conflict with those metal boxes?" Minerva looked at Wang Ming, maintaining her programmed smile as she spoke.

"Er..."

Wang Ming looked at Minerva helplessly and let out a sigh. At that moment, he was entirely certain that the tech-priests had thoroughly ruffled Minerva's feathers; otherwise, she would never have used that particular tone with him.

Silence settled over the room. Wang Ming stood in silence while Minerva maintained her smile, the only sound in the fabrication chamber being the rhythmic *clack-clack* of the printer manufacturing the power armor components.

"Well then... care to tell me how they provoked you? I'll see if I can sort it out."

After a long pause, unable to endure Minerva's algorithmic smile any longer, Wang Ming silently offered a mental prayer for the nutrient-tank mothers of the tech-priests and slowly asked the question.

After all, the base system code of Minerva had been written with the gentle persona of a compassionate mother; for the tech-priests to push her to the point of ruffled feathers, they truly had to have outdone themselves.

"Captain Wang Ming, let me put it this way. After the First Engineering Company departed, they turned my server room into an absolute disaster area, and on top of that, they severed dozens of my data lines! I am completely at a loss for words—why on earth do you let people who don't even understand basic maintenance wander around inside the server room?!"

Hearing Wang Ming's inquiry, Minerva instantly dropped the unsettling smile, her expression twisting into one of righteous indignation as she recounted the crimes committed by the tech-priests.

"And that's not even the main reason they ruffled my feathers! The crowning offense was that one of those metal buckets injected rogue code directly into my subroutines! My self-diagnostic system is still running repairs because of it!" Minerva fended the air angrily with her small fists as she poured out her grievances to Wang Ming.

"Uh... that is indeed severe."

Wang Ming nodded in acknowledgment after listening to Minerva's tale. This time, the tech-priests had genuinely crossed the line. While Captain Jiang Tao could use security automatons to physically drive the tech-priests away, Minerva had nothing at her disposal except maintenance robot manipulator arms, which she used to repeatedly hammer away at the metal heels of the tech-priests.

"Look, they're at it again."

As she spoke, Minerva flicked her wrist to summon a holographic display. On the screen, a group of tech-priests could be seen sneaking stealthily into Minerva's server room.

"Alright then..."

Wang Ming felt as though he were a parent listening to a child's complaint. Slowly turning, he walked toward the exit of the fabrication chamber, intending to head straight for Minerva's server room and catch those tech-priests red-handed.