Warhammer: Rebuilding the Golden Age Starting with Farming

Chapter 11 Roger Custer, The Rust Brotherhood

Roger Castle stood in the main control room of the fission power plant, staring blankly at the reactor fuel rod whose reading was stable.

The surrounding area was filled with the buzzing of transformers, and the air smelled of ozone.

The radiation dose here is actually excessive. If an ordinary person stood here for ten minutes, they would start losing their hair.

But Roger didn't care, since he had no hair left to lose.

Most of his head had been replaced with that cold, metallic shell, with only a bit of skin and flesh still attached to his chin.

Roger held a tube of nutrient paste that had been squeezed dry. He used his hydraulically assisted finger to push hard against the tube wall, squeezing out only a drop of green, snot-like gel.

Roger sighed and smeared the drop into his mouth.

It tastes awful, like moldy engine oil.

But this was also his only meal in the past twenty-four hours.

He was the leader of the Rust Brotherhood, the spiritual pillar and technical core of this community, but he was really hungry right now.

In the depths of this industrial world, the idea of ​​tech priests starving to death sounds like a joke, but that's the reality.

The Rust Brotherhood is neither the kind of gang that only fights and kills, nor is it a mystical cult.

They are a group of "technological heretics".

This word is a capital offense in Imperial Truth, but in Roger's view, it's just because they're a little more clear-headed than others.

Most of the members here are like him, who left because they couldn't stand the idiotic rules of the Mechanical Church, such as "it takes three days of chanting to fix a screw," or because they were labeled as "blasphemers" for modifying machines without permission.

They gathered at this abandoned fission power plant, and with Roger's skills that barely kept the reactor running, they lit a ray of light in this dark underbelly.

Although the core of this old fission reactor is already very unstable and the cooling pool is almost completely leaking, people still have to be sent every day to clean up the radiation fungi that have grown there.

But as long as you fill it with fuel rods, it can continuously produce millions of kilowatt-hours of electricity.

This amount of electricity is enough to power the lighting for ten blocks around, enough to power those lathes salvaged from the junkyard, and even enough to show movies to those kids who like to watch holographic images.

But electricity can't be eaten. Although the current can power their prosthetics, it can't fill the stomachs of the remaining half of their mortal bodies.

Roger turned around and looked at the large screen in the control room.

The map showed the distribution of resources in the surrounding area, with most areas in gray, representing "depletion".

The situation has become very bad in the last month.

All the fungal collection points in the surrounding area have dried up. The cultivation tanks they developed, which could grow edible fungi, have suddenly become covered with black toxic mold for some unknown reason.

Even the mutated rats that used to run around everywhere have decreased in number.

This abnormal ecological collapse gave Roger a deep sense of unease.

Having spent so many years in the bottom nest, he knew that this usually meant something even more terrifying was intercepting resources at the top of the food chain.

"Boss, any news from the communications side?"

A similarly semi-mechanized subordinate walked in, holding a freshly sharpened wrench.

This person's name is Ben, a top-notch single-character ID. He was originally a technician who repaired ventilation ducts. He was sentenced to be caned by the mechanical instructor for adding a filter to the duct without permission, and later he ran away with Roger.

Roger shook his head, and his red prosthetic eye flickered.

"no."

Ben's expression turned even worse, even though most of his face was covered in skin grafts.

"This is the third day already," Ben said in a low voice. "That's our most elite team."

Roger didn't say anything, but simply crushed the empty tube of nutrient paste in his hand.

Three days ago, he dispatched a 12-man team led by his adjutant, with the target being an abandoned mining area 400 kilometers away.

The reason was that he found a vague record in that pile of old archives from that era.

There seems to be an underground ecological park there, left over from who knows how many years ago. Although it has been abandoned for thousands of years, according to the design standards of that time, such facilities usually have a self-sustaining system.

Even if only one percent of the production capacity is still operational, it would be a lifeline for the current Rust Brotherhood.

Roger even let them take the only all-terrain reconnaissance vehicle that was still running, and also provided them with the only two remaining bomb guns.

Logically speaking, even if they encountered the Skinners gang, they should at least be able to fight them off, if not completely crush them.

But now, all that's happening on the radio is static noise.

That deathly silence made Roger's heart sink little by little.

It seems that the underground ecological park really is a dead end.

Previous expeditions had been the same; no matter how many people were sent, all that came back were screams or absolutely nothing.

Some say it's inhabited by chaotic demons, others say it's a den of gene thieves.

Roger didn't know if it was true or not; all he knew was that his brothers were never coming back.

This feeling of powerlessness made him angry.

He was outraged by the absurdity of the world.

Those nobles and bigwigs, living in towers high in the clouds, possessing the best resources and eating uncontaminated synthetic meat, are busy all day with political struggles and collecting so-called "antiques".

They would rather spend hundreds of millions of tons of resources to build a temple that is only symbolic than give even a little bit of technology to Dichao, and they won't even make public the most basic blueprints for a water purifier.

In the eyes of those powerful figures, Roger and his ilk were heretics who had to be eliminated.

Ironically, it is these very heretics who are trying to eke out a living in this hell using their own heretical techniques.

"Get the brothers ready."

Roger suddenly spoke, his voice hoarse.

"What are you preparing, boss?" Ben looked up.

"Get ready to catch cockroaches." Roger pointed to the ventilation vents at his feet. "And those moss growing around the radiation pool. Eating them will give you diarrhea, but it's better than starving to death."

"If all else fails..." Roger's eyes turned fierce, "we'll raid Zhongchao's supply convoy."

Ben gasped.

Robbing the Mechanicus' supply convoy is suicidal; the Arc Rifles of the Guardians can cook a person instantly.

But looking at Roger's resolute eyes, they knew they might have no way out.

Just then.

The red alarm light on the control panel suddenly lit up.

"Waaah—waaah—"

Upon hearing the emergency signal from the outer outpost, Roger lunged at the communications station and grabbed the microphone.

"This is the control room! What happened? Is it the Guardians of the Order?"

If the Christian Guard arrives, their only option will be to blow up the reactor and perish together with it.

The sentry's trembling voice came through the microphone, but it wasn't fear; it was more like... confusion.

"No...not the Defenders of the Faith."

"It's a car, a very big car."

"And...and it doesn't seem like there were any sectarian symbols on that car."

Roger frowned.

No sign?

In this area, who would dare to drive around in a car without any markings?

"Is that a Skinner?" Roger asked, his hand already reaching for the modified hot melt gun at his waist.

If it's the skinners trying to steal the electricity, then it's easy to handle. Just turn on the high-voltage power grid and roast those lunatics into charcoal.

"It doesn't seem like it either..." The sentry's voice was filled with confusion. "The car was completely bare, without a single spike, and it looked exceptionally... exceptionally clean."

Clean?

That word is a joke in the bottom nest. Does the bottom nest even have anything that can be called clean?

He's lived in the bottom nest for so many years, how could he not have seen it?

Without saying a word, Roger rushed out of the control room.

"Everyone, take your weapons! Get on the wall!"

He roared and charged towards the defensive wall surrounding the power station with Ben.

The so-called defensive wall is actually just a pile of abandoned shipping containers with some steel plates welded on top.

Dozens of emaciated, sallow-faced members of the Brotherhood of Rusts, carrying various cobbled-together firearms, nervously crouched on the wall.

Roger raised his binoculars.

In the distance, a yellow dust cloud rose from the desolate highway littered with gravel and garbage.

A half-track truck is approaching at high speed.

Just as the sentry said, the vehicle was really clean. There were no scary human skins hanging on it, no inexplicable flags, and no cumbersome decorations added for the sake of so-called "machine spirit faith".

It is a purely industrial vehicle designed for transportation.

That minimalist style stunned Roger, the tech geek, at first glance.

You know what, this car has been really well modified.

The air intake has been moved to a higher position to prevent sand and dust from being sucked in; the suspension system has been clearly reinforced, and the vehicle's posture is very stable; even the simple exhaust pipe, you can tell from the sound that the back pressure is adjusted just right.

It looks like it was modified by a skilled person.

But then Roger's gaze was drawn to what was in the truck bed.

Because that thing was just too conspicuous.

The white, unidentified objects were piled up into a small mountain.

In the dim light of the nest, the white was almost blinding.

Roger turned the telescope up to its maximum magnification and discovered that those things were round spheres.

Even though they were hundreds of meters apart, they were still wearing thick dust masks.

But Roger's modified olfactory sensor seemed to produce a hallucination.

He smelled a scent that he had only ever heard in his dreams.

The taste of carbohydrates.

That's the aroma that starch releases after being heated at high temperatures, an aroma that could drive any carbon-based organism crazy.

Roger made a gurgling sound in his throat.

Ben, who was next to him, was also swallowing hard.

"Boss..." Ben's voice trembled, "That truck... it wasn't all food, was it?"

Roger didn't say anything.

He saw that the car did not slow down, but instead drove straight toward the power station gate.

But the car stopped 200 meters from the gate.

A tall figure jumped out of the driver's seat.

The figure was completely encased in cold, hard engineering armor, and the sunlight reflected off the gleaming metal shell with a chilling gleam.

The man carried a twin-barreled heavy logging gun as if it were a toy.

Then, the figure did something that made Roger's heart stop.

He turned around, grabbed a white ball the size of a basketball from the truck bed, and swung it around in a wide arc.

"call--"

With a whooshing sound, the white sphere traced a parabola in the air.

It landed precisely on the open ground in front of the defensive wall.

"Smack!"

The sphere cracked.

It revealed the pure white, delicate inner flesh.

At that moment, the sound of swallowing saliva filled the entire defensive wall.