Chapter 150 The Last Alpha's Plan

"Ahem, ahem, Tech-Priests ahead, what are you doing?"

Wang Ming looked at the Tech-Priests inside the server room and asked.

Upon seeing Wang Ming, the Tech-Priests hurriedly lowered the various tools in their hands and bowed respectfully to him.

"My Lord Primarch, we are maintaining the server room of the Abominable Intelligence."

The Enginseers looked at Wang Ming and said respectfully, knowing full well that all the technological products of the Twenty-First Legion were procured by Wang Ming himself.

Some of the embedded Enginseers even believed that Wang Ming was an avatar of the Omnissiah walking among mortals, for there was no other way to explain how he managed to acquire such sacred technological creations.

"You... this... out, go outside. This is not work for you."

Wang Ming looked at the chaotic mess of cables that the Enginseers had made in the server room and said helplessly.

Such tasks were originally meant for the First Engineering Company; the Enginseers were completely unsuited for this kind of work. They probably could not even figure out which cable connected to what, let alone perform maintenance on a server room.

"My Lord Primarch, we believe we are fully capable of handling the server room maintenance. Although this Abominable Intelligence is a heresy that blasphemes the Omnissiah, we are doing our utmost to transform it into a manifestation of the Omnissiah's power."

The Enginseers looked at Wang Ming, stubbornly explaining their purpose for maintaining the server room—they intended to make the Abominable Intelligence a reflection of the Omnissiah's might.

"That is no excuse for you to inject corrupted code into the Minerva program in an attempt to lower her intelligence."

Wang Ming stared at the Enginseers before him, suddenly seized by the urge to throw them all out of the *Imperial Truth*. But he dismissed the thought as quickly as it came; after all, these individuals had been squeezed in by Cawl, and they remained vital for certifying the legitimacy of those legionary industrial worlds.

Wang Ming had no desire to pick a fight with the Machine God's adherents of the Mechanicus. Even if a conflict were to break out, Wang Ming did not fear the Mechanicus in the slightest, but there was simply no need for it.

"This is the work of the First Engineering Company."

Wang Ming said sternly to the Enginseers, a majesty in his tone that made the metal buttocks of the Enginseers instantly clench in panic. Anyone could hear the simmering anger in Wang Ming's words.

The Enginseers bowed respectfully to Wang Ming and then quickly shuffled out of the server room.

"Wait, take this book and study it. The moment you master the contents of this book is the moment you will comprehend the true essence of the Omnissiah."

As the Enginseers headed toward the door of the server room, Wang Ming thought for a moment, reached into his system store, pulled out an electronic book, and handed it to them. It was a copy of *Advanced Mechanical Technics: Three Years of Practice, Two Years of Theory (M23)*, essential reading for senior mechanical technicians of humanity's Golden Age.

Though the title claimed three to five years, that timeframe applied to Golden Age humans. If the Enginseers were to study it, it would likely take them an extremely long time. While Golden Age humans possessed terrifying learning capabilities, the Enginseers lacked such extraordinary faculties. This book should keep the Enginseers quietly occupied for quite a while.

"Thank you, Lord Primarch. We shall diligently study the true essence of the Omnissiah."

The Enginseers accepted the electronic tome, glanced at it, and said to Wang Ming with trembling excitement. They could not understand a single scrap of the mechanical knowledge within the electronic pages, but as Tech-Priests, they knew that everything inside contained extraordinarily exquisite technological lore.

One Enginseer was so excited that he ruptured an oil line, spraying fluid everywhere with a gurgling sound. Embarrassed, he glanced at Wang Ming, produced a wrench from somewhere unknown, and tightly wrenched his oil line shut.

Having dismissed the Enginseers, Wang Ming began, under Minerva's guidance, to untangle and sort out the mess of cables the Enginseers had left behind. That was all Wang Ming could do; the programmatic issues within Minerva herself would have to wait for the programmer brothers of the First Engineering Company to resolve.

"Thank you, Captain Wang Ming. Your power armor will finish printing in twenty-four hours, and I will notify you then."

Minerva's holographic projection looked at Wang Ming and said with a smile.

"Very well. I'm going to get some rest. Notify me when it's ready, and make sure Captain Jiang Tao has a transport ready by then. I'm heading down to the surface."

Wang Ming nodded, walking out of the server room while speaking to Minerva. He intended to deliver a small "gift" from the battlefields of Ancient Terra to the Orks—a gift capable of burning the greenskins down to absolute cinders.

Accompanied by Minerva's vocal reminder, Wang Ming slowly awoke from his slumber. Opening his slightly dazed eyes to look at the ceiling light tubes, he wondered how long it had been since he had slept like this.

"Uh... is the power armor ready?"

Wang Ming looked at Minerva's holographic projection, shook his head, and asked.

"It is ready. You may proceed to the print room at any time to equip it. Captain Jiang Tao has also prepared the transport, ready for departure to the planetary surface at a moment's notice. I have already plotted the route; you will be flown directly to the frontline of the war in 'Snowwind' City."

Minerva told Wang Ming that everything had been prepared. This was the great advantage of artificial intelligence: it could process work without needing twenty-four hours of rest. Looking at Minerva before him, Wang Ming finally understood why humanity of the Golden Age had grown so dependent on artificial intelligence—it was simply too convenient.

"Alright."

Wang Ming grunted in acknowledgment, sat up from the bed, donned his service uniform, and slowly made his way to the print room.

Arriving in the print room, Wang Ming, aided by the mechanical arms operated by Minerva, successfully donned his power armor and proceeded straight to the hangar.

Inside the hangar, a massive transport aircraft was already prepped, and the pilot was running through pre-flight checks on its various systems.

"My Lord."

Seeing Wang Ming step into the transport bay, the pilot offered a respectful greeting. Wang Ming nodded and strapped himself securely into the jump seat.

"My Lord Primarch, we will be heading to 'Snowwind' City. We expect to arrive within the hour."

The pilot slowly initiated the transport's startup sequence while speaking to Wang Ming. Upon receiving the assignment to deliver a gene-primarch to the planetary surface, the pilot had been ecstatic. He had waited in the transport far ahead of time, meticulously running diagnostics over and over to ensure no accidents occurred in the presence of the gene-primarch.

"Mm, thank you for your hard work."

Wang Ming looked at the slowly activating control panel of the transport and spoke gently to the pilot.

"It is no hardship at all, for the Emperor and for my Lord Primarch!"

The pilot replied with palpable excitement. He had never expected the gene-primarch to acknowledge his hard work; in six years of service with the Astra Militarum, he had never once heard those words from any superior officer, yet today he heard them directly from a gene-primarch. It filled him with overwhelming emotion.

The vacuum isolation bulkhead of the hangar slowly slid open, and under the pilot's skilled handling, the transport detached from the *Imperial Truth* and soared swiftly toward the planetary surface below.

At that very same moment, in a small city not far from "Snowwind" City, deep within a gloomy underground shelter, a group of men and women dressed in local PDF uniforms were rapidly assembling various weapons.

"Brothers and sisters, the rulers of Castor IV are utterly incompetent. Our brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and children have all perished in vain solely because of their chaotic commands! Today, under the guidance of our noble Astartes lord, we shall overthrow the planetary government!!"

Standing upon a raised platform, a man wearing the uniform of a PDF colonel raised an autogun high and shouted passionately to the men and women assembling gear below the stage.

By his side, an Astartes clad in "Astral Voyager" power armor stood in silent vigilance.

When the man finished speaking, the Astartes in "Astral Voyager" armor looked down at the mortals whose attention had been captured by the colonel, produced a piece of parchment, and displayed a signature belonging to Wang Ming upon it.

"By special decree of the Lord Primarch, the ruling class of Castor IV is incompetent. We are commanded to launch an uprising and execute all incompetent rulers!"

Holding the parchment document aloft, the Astartes read "Wang Ming's orders" in a booming voice. If even a single "Astral Liberator" had been present in that room, they would have instantly recognized the document as an obvious forgery, for Wang Ming never used parchment of that kind. All documents originating from the "Astral Voyagers" were printed on standard paper; parchment was never employed.

Yet these mortals, ignorant of such details, gazed at the Primarch's order held by the Astartes lord and dropped reverently to their knees.

"For the Primarch, for the Emperor, execute the incompetent!"

The mortals roared, waving their various weapons aloft with feverish emotion. Their parents and kin were all members of the local PDF, having perished entirely at the hands of the Orks two months prior due to the sheer, blundering incompetence of those noble parasites.

Initially, these grieving mortals had accepted the deaths of their loved ones amidst the prolonged war. But just a day prior, an Astartes lord had approached them bearing an order from the Lord Primarch, revealing the true cause of their families' deaths.

Their relatives had not died in honorable combat against the Orks; rather, they had died from the backstabbing and chaotic orders of those damned rulers. Upon learning the truth, they were consumed by white-hot fury. They could accept their kin dying in battle for the Emperor, but they could never tolerate their families perishing at the hands of wretched worms. Their loved ones should never have died—it was entirely the fault of those vermin's commands.

The Astartes lord had also brought the Primarch's command: the Lord Primarch demanded that they purge the entire ruling class and present the planetary governor's head to the glorious gene-primarch so that Castor IV might return to the path mapped out for it by the Emperor.

Standing before the fanatical crowd, the Astartes let out a long, internal sigh. He was an Alpha Legionnaire, one who had managed to escape the purge conducted by the Voyagers by sheer luck.

When the purge first began, watching his brothers hunted down one by one by the Voyagers had filled him with the instinct to flee. Events proved him right; he had escaped in time, watching from the shadows as his former comrades were dragged to the frontlines and forced, at gunpoint, into the midst of greenskin hordes clutching melta-bombs, leaving not even bones behind.

Though he was now the sole surviving Alpha Legionnaire on this world, he still had to complete his mission. He had to cause trouble for the Twenty-First Legion. After a full day of deep deliberation, he had forged a document and sought out the families of the deceased PDF soldiers.

These families represented what the Alpha Legionnaire judged to be the largest destabilizing factor on the entire planet. He had even considered inciting chaos using the Orks.

However, after witnessing the vast, burning mounds of piled-up greenskin corpses on the battlefront every single day, he abandoned that notion. If he tried to stir up trouble with Orks, the greenskins would likely be eradicated by the Voyagers alongside him before they could even reach a scale capable of causing real disruption.

Ultimately, he chose these enraged mortals. He spent some time acquiring weapons and equipment to ensure they could execute their plan successfully.

The Alpha Legionnaire's plan was simple: have the mortals infiltrate the governor's mansion, execute a standard assassination operation, and decapitate the entire command structure. Of course, he did not expect these mortals to kill Astartes commanders; it was enough for them to eliminate the mortal bureaucrats. As long as the world was thrown into turmoil, his objective would be achieved.

The mortals rapidly readied their armaments. Led by the colonel and the Alpha Legionnaire, they made their way to the spaceport, boarding a transport bound for "Snowwind" City under the cover of another forged deployment order.

The spaceport's PDF personnel had initially felt a trace of suspicion regarding the forged transfer order, but upon catching sight of the "Astral Voyager" disguise worn by the Alpha Legionnaire, they immediately waved them through. Everyone on Castor IV knew that military movements across the planet were currently directed by these Astartes lords.

"Why does it feel like there are suddenly so many more staff members here? Did they change shifts?"

Walking through the governor's mansion, Wang Ming looked at the unfamiliar faces of the mortals around him and wondered inwardly. He clearly remembered that there hadn't been this many people inside the governor's mansion previously.

"My Lord Primarch, we shall complete the mission."

The "staff members" looked at Wang Ming and muttered softly, though their words were easily picked up by Wang Ming's preternatural gene-primarch hearing.

Hearing those strange utterances, Wang Ming felt a sense of surreal confusion. Why on earth were these "staff members" looking at him and talking about completing a mission?

"Perhaps it's just Ecclesiarchy zealots whispering to themselves upon laying eyes on the Emperor's divine son?"

Plagued by lingering doubts, Wang Ming pressed on toward the governor's office. He had two items on his agenda today: first, to discuss industrial output matters with the planetary governor's child, and second, to deliver some Ancient Terra weaponry to the frontline trenches to help deal with the Orks.

"My Lord Primarch, I have prepared the map. Here is the factory construction layout planned by the lords of the First Engineering Company. Please examine it to see if any errors exist."

Having learned that Wang Ming was coming to the governor's mansion, Jehuel Gordon had prepared everything well in advance. As Wang Ming stepped into the governor's office, Gordon snapped into an Aquila salute and addressed him respectfully.