136: Chapter 137 Can I get a discount?

The Orbital Dockyard construction site on the base's outskirts was now as silent as a graveyard.

Half an hour ago, all the Servitors who were still climbing up and down welding energy conduits had stopped working.

The low-level logic overwrite in the main control room triggered a physical-level forced power cut, causing all automated equipment connected to the Tech-Priest's internal network to crash immediately.

The low-ranking Tech-Priest supervisor stood before the holographic projection in the temporary meeting room, his mechanical tentacles hanging at the edge of his red robes, not daring to move.

Li Cang dragged the high-grade metal ingot bearing a triple-layered gear sigil to the center of the holographic projection.

The metal ingot slowly rotated in the air.

The supervisor's massive red optical sensor stared intently at it, the aperture shrinking to the size of a pinhead.

"Backdoor pulled, code shredded," Li Cang said, taking a sip of water from his cup. "The screen that Archmagos in the maze is looking at right now should be nothing but Cyber Federation error pop-ups."

A burst of violent static noise erupted from the metallic vocalizer, and the muscles on the human half of the supervisor's face twitched violently.

"This is heresy... the Archmagos will format us all, even our ashes will be stuffed into the reactor..."

"They'd have to crawl out from the depths of Mars alive first," Li Cang interrupted the shrill noise.

"If those people could take the field themselves, would they need to give the Sun Warriors monkey-model blueprints? They don't even dare to leave the atmosphere right now; they can only rely on these low-life backdoors to peek."

Li Cang swiped his finger across the control console.

The metal ingot on the holographic screen vanished, replaced by a structural diagram of the dockyard's keel.

"The math in front of you is quite simple now."

"Either I have the Thunder Warriors outside dismantle you into spare parts right now."

"Or you'll be judged by the Archmagos as useless trash who lost the backdoor, and you'll be number one on their liquidation list."

Li Cang looked at the supervisor, whose neck gears were clicking and grinding.

"The third path: your engineering team breaks away from that bankrupt chain starting now and works for me using the blueprints in your heads. I guarantee that as long as my base stands, your logic cores won't be formatted by outsiders."

This was an extremely crude form of gang-style kidnapping.

Pushing an ally to the edge of a cliff and then handing them a blood-stained rope.

A cloud of white smoke billowed from the cooling pipes behind the Priest supervisor.

This was the only solution the core logic matrix reached after billions of exhaustive simulations.

Even a cyborg with only half a brain still possessed the will to survive.

"Praise the Omnissiah..." The static in the synthesized voice vanished, becoming exceptionally steady. "We need to re-sign the alliance agreement."

"No agreement."

Li Cang pulled up the resource panel on the screen.

"Let's talk price."

The supervisor's optical sensor flickered twice, seemingly not understanding the term.

"The main body of the dockyard is finished, but I looked at the thruster interfaces you left. That amount of thrust wouldn't even send a tin can into low-Earth orbit."

Li Cang pointed at several red circles on the structural diagram.

"You're definitely hiding blueprints for advanced Gravity Engines, thinking we couldn't afford the material costs before, so you didn't bring them out."

The supervisor's mechanical tentacles stirred uneasily beneath his robes.

"Advanced Gravity Engines require refined Promethium, and also..."

"I don't care what they require," Li Cang cut him off. "I'm the one protecting your lives now; consider the technology your hush money. The blueprints are a free gift, labor is free, I'll go pillage the materials, and you'll be responsible for assembly."

The meeting room was silent for over ten seconds.

The cooling pipes puffed out white smoke again.

"Fine," the supervisor accepted the bad deal. "But with the base's current material reserves, even if we smelted all twelve mecha wrecks, we wouldn't have enough for the hull of a Frigate-class engine."

Li Cang smiled.

This was exactly the sentence he was waiting for.

"Materials don't need to be found on the ground."

He switched the interface to the thermal scan report sent by the Adeptus Mechanicus.

"When that Macro-cannon array under the ice cap was charging, the Archmagos definitely wasn't just watching for fun. They need to collect data and monitor the survival of those Sun Warrior guinea pigs."

Li Cang's finger traced Earth's low-Earth orbit on the star map.

"There's definitely a stealth satellite or monitor floating up there to receive data and act as a relay station. Give me its coordinates."

The aperture of the supervisor's mechanical eye suddenly dilated.

"That is a Reconnaissance Node of a high-level Data Monastery..."

"Coordinates."

"Low-Earth orbit, three hundred kilometers, orbital inclination forty-five degrees, optical stealth, radar cross-section less than 0.1 square meters, passes over the base once every thirty minutes."

By handing over these coordinates, the supervisor had essentially blown up his last bridge back.

Li Cang was very satisfied.

He turned off the meeting room projection.

His gaze shifted to the base's low-level armory.

That steel coffin, rebuilt from a cybernetic mecha, sat quietly in the shadows.

On the thick front armor plate of the dreadnought mech, a crooked serial number was painted in white: Corvin.

Li Cang connected to the dreadnought mech's internal frequency.

"Can you move?"

"Right arm Power Claw output normal, Plasma Cannon preheat time three seconds," the cold, hard metallic voice came from inside the steel coffin. "Ready to purge heretics at any time."

"No purging today. I'm taking you to the sky."

Li Cang pulled up the blueprints for the Sub-orbital Drop Pod.

"The hull of this drop pod is too fragile. I'll have someone weld a layer of anti-radiation armor plating onto it. In a few days, I'll pack you into this iron shell and launch you into low-Earth orbit with rocket boosters."

Li Cang looked at the four-meter-tall war machine.

"Smash that stealth node, tear off any usable engines and reactors, and throw them back down to the surface."

"Received."

Corvin didn't ask how he would return.

The Sub-orbital Drop Pod had no return function.

Launching it into space was like firing an arrow with no way back.

Li Cang didn't mention it either.

Because in the logic of Warhammer, some weapons are thrown out with no intention of being recovered.