Warhammer: Rebuilding the Golden Age Starting with Farming

Chapter 44 Material Freedom

The underground core workshop of the shelter is now so quiet that only a faint electrical hum can be heard.

Four oddly shaped maintenance drones, resembling large metal frisbees, are hovering in mid-air.

The multi-functional robotic arms beneath them are performing self-checks, and the nozzles of the plasma cutters occasionally flash with a blue electric arc.

Andy stood among them, his eyes flashing with data.

He's doing something extremely violent: rewriting the underlying protocols of these little guys.

These drones were originally accessories to the "Matter Molecular Reconstruction Instrument." Their control logic was attached to a subsystem of the black box, which was not only slow to react, but also had to go through the black box for each use.

Andy found it too troublesome to go back and forth like that.

Andy directly severed their connection to the black box and burned his highest-level code into their logic core.

[Agreement reset.]

[Direct connection to Andy (DAOT-7734 Autonomous Engineering Unit) Main Control Unit.]

A few seconds later, the yellow standby lights on the four drones, which had been flashing, suddenly turned into a dark blue, just like Andy's electronic eye.

Their movements have become extremely agile, and they can even make predictive shifts in response to Andy's slightest thought.

This is not just about having a few more helpers; it also represents an extension of Andy's computing power at the physical level.

In the future, Andy will no longer need to bend down to do welding, cutting, and assembly work that requires micron-level precision. He only needs to generate a blueprint in his mind, and the four drones will perfectly replicate his operation with a microsecond-level delay.

With the "tools" sorted out, the main event is about to begin.

The material molecule reconstruction instrument, the black box that Andy just salvaged.

At this point, it had been reinstalled in a specially opened constant-temperature workshop and connected to a high-voltage dedicated line obtained from the Brotherhood of Rusts.

Andy stood in front of the control panel, watching the feed chute swallow up a pile of rusty scrap iron and rotten steel plates.

A few minutes later, pieces of silvery-white metal ingots were ejected from the discharge port.

Ultra-high strength chromium-molybdenum steel with a hardness of HRC60 and an impurity content of less than one part per 100,000.

What does this mean in the industrial system of the Warhammer universe?

In today's Mechanicus world, achieving a purity of one ten-thousandth is considered extremely rare, and such materials are specifically used to repair the skeletons of Titans and to create sophisticated power armor for Space Marines.

One in 100,000 means that the physical properties of the material have been pushed to the theoretical limit, and it can even be said that it has reached the ceiling of conventional physical laws.

Of course, while this reconfiguration device is impressive, it's not the kind of god-like creation integrated into a complete STC terminal.

A complete STC terminal can directly arrange itself at the subatomic level, ignoring the law of entropy increase, turning rocks into antimatter.

As for the actual performance of this machine...

Many unsophisticated natives, or those who misunderstand the technology of the Golden Age, would regard this thing as an all-powerful wish-granting machine.

They believe that as long as you throw some trash in and make a wish, you can spit out antimatter or adamantite.

That's pure nonsense.

This reconfiguration device is part of STC's mid-range industrial machine tool kit product line.

Its working principle is based on molecular rearrangement according to conventional physical laws, and its upper limit is naturally limited to the category of "ordinary matter".

You can throw in a bunch of electronic waste mixed with copper, iron, and tin, and it can separate out pure copper, pure iron, and pure tin for you, and even synthesize special alloys directly according to the proportions.

But if you throw in a bunch of stones, it will only spit out high-purity silicon or special glass; it will never turn into vibranium.

But there is no doubt that this machine has achieved the ultimate in physical reconstruction at its level.

Beyond that, it's beyond the scope of this mid-range device.

This is the performance limit of the machine, and also the limit that Andy can currently utilize.

Even so, in any conventional industrial sector, it can already be described as "material freedom"!

With this understanding, Andy's farming strategy became very clear.

The first thing he tackled was the rocket launcher project that had been giving him a headache for a long time.

XPG-200 individual rocket launcher.

Even setting aside the issue of the fuze's yield rate, it still has many problems.

During previous test firings, the barrel would often explode, or the missile would veer off course halfway through its flight.

The reason is that the nozzle material is not good.

The previous casting process for the shelter was too poor, and the nozzles produced could not withstand the high temperature and pressure of thousands of degrees in a rocket engine, resulting in severe ablation and uneven thrust.

it's good now.

Andy directly used the reconstruction instrument to synthesize a batch of high-melting-point tungsten-titanium alloys.

This material used to be a luxury item that only the aerospace industry could afford.

Now, Andy is using it directly as a rocket launcher nozzle.

When Bauer received this batch of new nozzles, his hands were shaking, and he exclaimed that it was a waste of money.

"You beast! You beast!"

Andy: "Who's the beast?"

"I mean, I dreamt last night that I was eating the tenderloin of a Grookere beast; that creature tasted so delicious!"

It may be wasteful, but the results are immediate.

A new batch of rockets were test-fired, their trajectories as straight as lasers, hitting any target within 200 meters.

The warhead has also been upgraded.

With the availability of high-strength alloy steel, the warhead wall can be made thinner, allowing for a larger propellant charge.

As for the fuse?

For Andy now, what problem is the fuse?

In addition, Andy has developed a new type of explosive...

Three-base explosives are normally used as propellants for large-caliber artillery, and have extremely high energy density.

Andy, having nothing better to do, made a small modification to the STC blueprints, making it more docile and suitable for inclusion in a personal weapon.

The most outrageous thing is that the chemical structure of this thing is actually reversible!

If Andy ever builds a large-caliber, lethal thermal weapon, this pile of explosives can be recycled and turned back into standard military explosives.

If that were to happen, not only would an armored vehicle be in danger, but even a Space Marine's power armor would have to think twice before taking a direct hit.

Mass production! Mass production is a must!

This kind of heavy firepower, capable of detonating the enemy from hundreds of meters away, is truth, is justice.

Then, Andy turned his attention to another weapon.

High explosive crossbow.

The single-soldier assault weapon of the Golden Age, codenamed "CBS-12 Silent Arrow".

Although it sounds like some kind of primitive cold weapon, it has advantages that firearms cannot match.

Silent, lightless, and without heat source reaction.

Andy used a reconfiguration device to produce highly elastic carbon fiber composite material to create the crossbow arm.

This thing has an astonishing tension; ordinary people simply can't pull it open. They have to use a winch or exoskeleton to help wind it up.

Although it works on the same principle as a crossbow, when combined with a special trigger fuse and high-explosive arrow, theoretically, this thing could blow up a fully armored Leman Russ main battle tank with a single shot.

The reason we haven't done that yet is simply because Andy hasn't put the fusion charge into the arrow yet.

But that's enough to give any enemy a run for their money.

A single arrow can blast a concrete wall two hundred meters away to smithereens, leaving the other side completely unaware of where the shot was fired.

Cheap, easy to use, and insidious.

This is the essence of war!

As for the bolter that Andy had been longing for...

Hey, he did indeed hand-craft a few standard explosive bullet samples.

The principle behind this thing is actually quite simple; it's just a miniature version of a rocket-assisted armor-piercing high-explosive shell.

The primer first ejects the bullet from the chamber, then the rocket engine ignites and accelerates it, finally causing it to explode inside the target.

With current material quality and processing precision, Andy is fully capable of manufacturing it.

But after doing the math, he decisively abandoned the mass production plan.

The resources consumed by one standard explosive projectile are enough to make ten rockets or fifty high-explosive crossbow bolts.

Moreover, the recoil of the bolter is extremely strong, making it unusable for ordinary people; it must be used in conjunction with power armor or mechanical prosthetics.

At this stage, equipping a group of refugees who have just had enough to eat with bolt guns is an extremely serious waste of resources and a strategic mistake.

This thing can only be used as a technical reserve for now. We'll bring it out to make a difference when we have more resources or when we encounter monsters that conventional firepower can't destroy.

In addition to military industry, the infrastructure of the shelter has also undergone a qualitative leap.

Andy directed the four drones to use the high-purity monocrystalline silicon and copper wire produced by the reconfiguration device to create the first batch of electronic servo terminals.

This thing looks a bit like an old-fashioned ATM, with a green monochrome display and a few physical buttons.

"Oops, that's not very elegant..."

But it doesn't matter anyway.

This is undoubtedly a landmark event for the shelter.

Previously, controlling the temperature of the reactor relied entirely on workers manually turning the valves, which was not only prone to errors but also labor-intensive.

Now, all the critical equipment is connected to the servo terminal.

Temperature, pressure, rotation speed—all data are displayed on the screen in real time.

Andy also wrote a simple automation control program.

When Gamma-9 first saw the automatically fluctuating data on the screen and the valves that automatically adjusted due to excessive temperature, it immediately knelt down.

He wept bitterly, believing it to be the manifestation of the machine spirit, the God of Machines speaking to mortals through the screen.

Andy remained speechless, unable to offer any further comment.

However, this is precisely the charm of automation: it liberates people from heavy, repetitive labor so they can do more valuable things.

For example... collecting more trash to feed the black box, isn't that valuable enough?

Yes, very valuable!