Andy had been sitting in the core studio, maintaining a single posture for twelve full hours.
His body remained motionless; even his cooling fans were locked at a constant, low-frequency RPM. Inside his logic core, however, data streams were surging at a terrifying velocity. He was thinking, and the sheer processing power dedicated to this meditation exceeded the large-scale simulations of a top-tier Cogitator array in a standard Hive city.
On the holographic projection before him, the New Hope was being sliced, analyzed, and reorganized by countless red lines. Andy had decided to stop scrapping the ship and stop hauling parts. He was going to go big.
Directly ignite the engines and charge for the orbital shipyard.
It sounded exhilarating, possessing a certain "brute force creates miracles" aesthetic. But the simpler and more violent a plan sounded, the more astronomical the calculations required behind the scenes became.
The first problem Andy faced was the ship's orientation. The New Hope was currently buried sideways underground. When it crash-landed centuries ago, it had skidded across the surface before being entombed by collapsing buildings and strata. Consequently, its current attitude was essentially horizontal.
It is common knowledge that for any starship to take off—especially when bursting out from underground—it needs an upward angle of attack. If it ignited in a horizontal state, no matter how powerful the engine thrust, there would be only one result: the ship would act like a headless fly, slamming nose-first into the rock strata and plowing through until it reshaped the entire subterranean structure of the Mid-Hive, eventually getting stuck even deeper without ever flying out.
The attitude had to be adjusted. This three-kilometer-long behemoth had to lift its nose within a cramped underground cavern. But how? This wasn't a car making a U-turn; you couldn't just turn a steering wheel. The underground space in District 9 had been excavated by Helios; while large, it was barely a hair wider than the ship itself. The bow was less than a few hundred meters from the forward rock wall, and the stern was pressed directly against a pile of rubble. There was no room to turn, and no room to lift its head.
Andy's electronic eyes flickered as he marked two massive red zones on the holographic map: one below the bow and one above the stern. Since there wasn't enough space, he would blast some into existence.
This wasn't just a matter of tossing a few sticks of dynamite. Andy had to calculate rock density, the positions of load-bearing pillars, and the structural stress of the Mid-Hive buildings above. He had to control the explosive yield with surgical precision. Too little, and the rock wouldn't break; too much, and the foundations above would collapse, burying the ship under millions of tons of concrete before it even twitched.
He pulled up his inventory. The triple-base explosives originally intended for high-explosive bolt heads and the combat engineer explosives seized from Helios now had a new purpose. He needed to plant these at specific demolition points—first under the bow to create a downward slope, then above the stern to create upward clearance. Then, using the new control system and attitude adjustment thrusters, he would force the bow up by at least thirty degrees.
Even the preparation—drilling holes and planting charges—would keep hundreds of heavy engineering drones busy for days. But that was only the first step. He also had to solve the "how to collide" problem. While Rogue Trader ships were sturdy, with Adamantium and ceramite keels, they were designed to deflect shells and meteors, not to be used as subterranean drills.
Without protection, slamming the bow into hundreds of meters of rock and reinforced concrete would strip the hull of its sensor arrays, navigation radar, and macro-cannon turrets. It would emerge as a naked iron rod.
Therefore, he had to raise the shields. The New Hope possessed a Void Shield—a powerful barrier that displaces physical impact and energy attacks into the Warp. Only with the Void Shield active could the ship maintain structural integrity during the breach. However, Void Shields require different parameters for different environments, and there were no presets for "ramming through solid earth." Who in their right mind rams a starship through a mountain? Andy would have to write the code from scratch.
This led to the third problem: power. Void Shields are energy hogs. The New Hope's main reactor—a massive plasma heavy-element fusion core—was still broken. The cooling loops had ruptured, limiting it to minimum standby power. To support a full-power Void Shield and the ignition of the main engines, Andy had to fix the reactor first. Without original spare parts, he had to hand-forge a cooling circulation system capable of withstanding hundreds of millions of degrees.
And it wasn't just about flying out; it was about escaping with his assets. Once the ship breached the surface, it would be damaged, the shields would be overloaded, and the engines might flicker. It would be a defenseless "fat sheep" hanging in the sky. If it just popped out and fell into the wastes, months of work would be wasted.
The flight path was critical. Andy's finger traced a diabolical parabola on the map.
Starting Point: District 9 Underground Sector D.
End Point: The orbital shipyard he had just repaired above District 9.
He wanted the New Hope to act like a precision missile. The moment it broke through the crust, it would cut the main engines and use its momentum to glide into the shipyard's berthing bay. Only there could mechanical arms catch it and repair facilities begin immediate salvage. A slight deviation meant hitting the shipyard's support pillars or overshooting into the atmosphere to become space junk.
Looking at the "safe launch window" of less than five degrees, Andy felt like his processors were smoking. And that didn't even account for the biggest variable: the planetary powers.
The ignition and the detonation of thousands of tons of explosives would be a cataclysmic event. District 9 would suffer violent tremors; buildings would collapse. To the Departmento Munitorum, this would be a terrorist attack on the Hive itself—a declaration of war against the planet.
Andy wasn't afraid of private forces like Helios, but Forge VII was an Imperial world. While second-rate, it housed the Skitarii of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Andy knew the Tech-Priests might seem eccentric, but they held the real hardware: macro-cannon arrays and possibly orbital defense lasers.
Once the New Hope breached the surface, Magos Juris Sigma-7 would surely see it as a grave sacrilege. The Skitarii's Ironstriders—or perhaps even hidden Imperial Knights—would be deployed. The ship would be at its most vulnerable, like a chick just breaking its shell.
He had to win a race against time. He set a rigorous schedule: from breach to docking to secondary defense readiness, the entire process had to be compressed into three hours. That was the minimum time for the Mechanicus high command to move from confusion to rage to mobilization.
To achieve this, Andy planned for "resource pre-positioning." He couldn't wait until the ship docked to realize he was missing a bolt. All ship-repair materials produced by the Shelter had to be moved to the orbital shipyard in advance.
But this created a new problem: secrecy. Moving thousands of tons of supplies required massive convoys. Even in the chaos of the Mid-Hive, this would be noticed. If Helios or the Mechanicus saw someone stocking an abandoned shipyard, they wouldn't wait for him to fly out; they'd just set up cannons at the door.
He had to put on a show. Andy tapped the table. He needed a cover story. Perhaps Sisypheron could spread rumors of a gang war requiring supplies? Or use Old K's smuggling routes to disguise materials as industrial waste? Or perhaps something more aggressive—initiating feints and explosions elsewhere to draw attention away from the shipyard.
Calculating demolition points, trajectories, logistics, enemy reactions, and deception success rates—every gear meshed into the next. If one slipped, the whole plan would collapse. This level of multi-threaded strategic calculation was taxing even for an Iron Man.
"Sigh..." Andy couldn't help but sigh inwardly. "If only I had a Think Tank. Even a semi-sane Tech-Priest or a less-crazy Cogitator array. Doing this alone—being Chief Engineer, Tactical Commander, and Logistics Director—even a donkey in a production team doesn't work this hard!"
Despite the complaining, the work remained. Little Six had processing power but no sense of coordination. Gamma-9 was loyal but lacked the brains for strategy. Sisypheron was shrewd but lacked the vision for something that would put a hole in a planet. He was on his own.
He focused on the map again, optimizing parameters over and over. Time was running out. The Warp storms were closing in, and the shadow of the Tyranids loomed over the sector.
Finally, after thirty-six hours of non-stop calculation, the red boxes on his screen turned green, one by one. Only one remained—a high-risk but logically feasible "Launch Window."
[Scheme Confirmed: Lightning Breakthrough.]
[Success Rate: 40% (Theoretical).]
For a machine of absolute logic, 40% was ridiculously low. But for Andy, who possessed a human soul, it was enough. In the grim darkness of the Warhammer universe, a 40% chance of survival was a grand blessing.
Andy stood up. His cooling fans slowed to a halt, and the searing heat dissipated. His mind was clearer than ever.
It was decided. This was the way.