The Emperor’s Angel of Death

After returning to the flagship, Sosiun made some simple preparations and went to the Martian General's palace to discuss cooperation matters with him in detail.

The closed-door meeting with the Martian General lasted for 3 hours. In Sosiun's opinion, this Forge General was far inferior to the Forge Director of Ryza in terms of vision and magnanimity. Perhaps the constant infighting in the High Lords Council had poisoned him. In short, Sosiun felt that this person was the typical type who would forget his life for petty gains, even not as good as Bangula.

However, this kind of person is indeed easy to deal with in a way. The temptation of the STC easily made him secretly transfer the parts of the gene-seed vault belonging to the Star Claws and Tiger Claws. After all, no one supervised these things at all. No one would notice if there were a little more or a little less, not to mention the former traitor legions. Even some ancient gene-seeds were left to expire without being cleaned out. Sosiun felt that the Forge General should not have any psychological pressure doing this.

But this also made Sosiun feel very sad about the current situation of the Empire. So many gene-seeds were "rotting" in the warehouse. They should have created many warriors to defend the Empire's territory and people, but many chapters could not get the supplement of their original tithe even if they fought to the last man. The High Lords formed a new chapter like a miser, limiting the number very low, as if one more chapter would cost them their heads.

The gene-seed tithe should have been a life-saving straw for the chapter in the most critical moment, but it became a scythe to limit the size of the Astartes. Like the Astral Knights, they would rather rebuild a new chapter than replenish the gene-seed to the old chapter, so it is not difficult to understand the resentment and hatred of many chapters.

After talking about these, Sosiun simply discussed new cooperation with the Forge General in one go.

Mainly warships.

This time, the Astral Knights still suffered some losses in the expedition. Although they captured the Silver Redemption, they lost a total of 5 capital ships, including the heavy cruiser Redemption, the strike cruiser Endeavour, the Intrepid, the Lunar-class cruiser Absolute Power, and the Golden Wind. The chapter had only 14 capital ships at the beginning of the expedition, which means it lost one-third of its fleet strength, and 20 small warships were also lost, accounting for half of the total.

As Mars is the main shipbuilding and repair base of the Empire, and also the main place for sealing ships, Sosiun planned to "淘换(tao huan)" some sealed ships from Mars.

Perhaps this sounds a bit strange. Obviously, the Empire needs fleets everywhere, so why are there still ships being sealed?

In fact, even the Navy cannot arbitrarily increase the size and number of fleets. The number of fleets and ships that a naval base can support is limited. Every huge warship means a huge investment, not only in construction, but also in the cost of maintaining and using it. This makes the Navy, if it wants to replace new warships (the Navy is generally relatively counter-intuitive in Warhammer, and it is not that the older the stronger), often needs to retire a certain number of old warships to free up budget and resources for new warships and fleets. However, in the Empire facing long-term war, it is more wasteful to directly dismantle the warships, and the Adeptus Mechanicus will also protest. The best way is to seal them up, let the machine spirit sleep, and put the ship into the warship graveyard to wait for reawakening.

There are not many spaceports that can store a large number of warships in the entire Empire. Most of them are naval sector bases or forge world spaceports. As the largest forge world in the Sol System and the center of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Mars has naturally become the largest dock sealing place in the entire star field.

However, new problems will soon arise after the warships are sealed for a long time. Since the maintenance costs during the sealing stage come from the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Adeptus Mechanicus "rightfully" believes that these sleeping warships are similar to soldiers who have "retired", and their ownership has been returned to the Adeptus Mechanicus during the sealing stage. Therefore, they have the right to dispose of these warships, which immediately caused a rebound from the Navy and other High Lords. After a long period of game, the sealing agreement was formulated. The agreement stipulates a time limit. The ownership of warships with a sealing period of more than 3,000 years belongs to the Adeptus Mechanicus, but if the Navy needs it and the warship is still in the storage place, it can still be proposed.

So over the years, Mars has a lot of inventory, but Sosiun has to complain that the Adeptus Mechanicus are all squirrels. They would rather let things rot in the warehouse than take them out to support those in need. The same is true for these ships. Many ships have been sealed for six or seven thousand years, and the Adeptus Mechanicus still let them lie there, as delicate as if they were their wives!

But complaints aside, there is no doubt that this is a very huge treasure house for the Astral Knights, which currently has less than ten capital ships. After all, there are so many enemies now. Even if there are no major battles to fight in the short term, they must prepare for a rainy day. Although Ryza and Ulan Hudda, and even Zhao-Akadana, still have ships under construction, they still have to wait. And Mars here are ready-made ships, which can be taken away directly.

After provoking Fulgrim, Sosiun now has a strong sense of crisis. He must not let go of the power that can be strengthened immediately. After all, preparedness averts peril. If something happens to the ships still under construction in the shipyard, there will be no regret medicine to take.

In the Mars warship graveyard, the main ones are Emperor-class battleships, Retribution-class battleships, Mars-class battlecruisers, Gothic-class cruisers, Avenger-class grand cruisers, and Exorcist-class grand cruisers.

They all have one characteristic, that is, their history is relatively old. For example, the Retribution-class, Avenger-class, and Exorcist-class are all relatively outdated ship types in design.

It is not to say that they are not powerful, but that their design does not match the current main tactics and mission requirements of the Imperial fleet.

But no matter what, they are valuable capital ships, and they are golden bumps in the eyes of the Adeptus Mechanicus, perhaps second only to Titans.

Although Sosiun is still relatively wealthy and has additional STC templates to trade, it is not enough for him to purchase too many ships.

After carefully browsing the condition of each ship and thinking about the future needs of the chapter, Sosiun decided to use all the STC templates he carried this time and some of the "mysterious instruments" seized from the Red Corsairs to exchange for 2 Mars-class battlecruisers and 1 Oberon-class battleship from the Forge General.

The reason for this choice is that these two types of warships have very prominent independent combat capabilities. Sosiun had close contact with the Mars-class battlecruiser during the Maelstrom expedition. The coordination of speed and firepower of this type of warship left a deep impression on him.

Although the Retribution-class battleship or the Avenger-class grand cruiser are indeed very powerful in firepower and very strong, they are too slow and too bulky, and the lack of maneuverability leads to their poor independent combat capabilities. They must be accompanied by a large fleet to attack. They are thorough main battle ships. The design concept of the Mars-class battlecruiser is to build a true all-rounder, hiding it not only has excellent speed and maneuverability, but also is very good at orbital bombardment, ship-to-ship close combat, and performing cover attack missions as an aircraft carrier. It is equivalent to a fully enhanced Astartes strike cruiser, and the cost performance is very high. It is also very in line with the Astartes chapter's tactical thinking and combat habits of quick strikes and independence.