boyutpedia Chapter 92 Welcome to the Empire
Chapter 92 Welcome to the Empire
Chapter 92 Welcome to the Empire
Buck's hands were trembling.
He pulled out his dagger and pried open the sealed lid of the box.
"hiss."
As the airtightness was compromised, an unpleasant odor wafted out.
It had a musty, stale smell and the odor of desiccant.
But to his nose, it smelled like the sweetest aroma in the world.
A full box of high-energy military rations, perfectly packaged, even the moisture-proof oil paper is brand new.
"What the hell is this?!"
Buck turned around stiffly, his single eye bloodshot, and the tactical knife he had just pried open the box lid fell to the ground with a clatter.
He drew his explosive pistol from his waist, the dark muzzle pointing directly at Bill, who had just stepped out of the command vehicle.
"Bill, you son of a bitch!"
Buck's roar shook the dust that had accumulated in the dome for years, causing it to fall in a flurry.
"The refugees outside have eaten the toilets clean."
"My brothers, for half a moldy biscuit, they have to fight with mutated rats in the mud."
"Many children starve to death right after birth!"
Buck's hand, gripping the gun, was trembling violently, and the trigger guard was squeaking loudly from his grip.
"Do you remember last winter's sacred tithe mobilization order?" That damned slogan: "Eat one less bite, for the Emperor!"
The one-eyed man's voice choked with emotion.
"My third row, four thousand fine young men. They didn't die from the teeth of plague zombies, nor from heretics."
"They starved to death!"
"In order to hold onto that damned transport line and to ensure that the quarterly targets did not slip, they went a whole month without eating a proper meal."
"When Thomas died, he was still clutching his unfired laser gun. He was so weak, too weak to even pull the trigger, and was brutally killed by a wild dog that bit his throat!"
Buck took a step forward, the muzzle of his gun almost touching Bill's greasy nose.
"We die with empty lunchboxes, while you—you have mountains of food piled up here, enough to last three years?!"
"This is what you call raw material shortage? This is what you always complain about: insufficient production capacity?!"
Buck completely lost control of his emotions.
This is a collapse based on a rudimentary logic of survival.
He couldn't understand it, nor could he accept it.
On this agricultural planet where starvation is rampant and human life is cheaper than fuel, there is a place that holds enough hope to feed half of the hive city.
Faced with the gun barrel that could spew forth fury at any moment, Bill's massive, mountain-like body actually flinched.
This "butcher," who usually kills without batting an eye and throws living people into meat grinders, had completely lost his ferocious and ruthless aura at this moment.
"No—don't shoot! Buck, calm down, this isn't my fault."
Bill waved his oil-covered hands and tried to explain himself.
"Do you think I wanted this? What good does it do me to have this batch of goods piled up here?"
"Not only do I dare not move, but every year just to maintain the temperature and humidity control system, I have to burn through tens of thousands of credits on fuel. That's all my hard-earned money!"
"Bullshit!" Buck didn't believe it at all, and the murderous intent in his eyes almost solidified.
"You have so much food, why don't you take it out? You could even secretly sell it at a higher price!"
"If you had contributed even a tenth of that last year, the tithe target might have been covered, and the Governor-General's Office wouldn't have needed to issue that damned sacred mobilization order for the tithe!"
Buck became increasingly agitated.
"My brothers wouldn't have to go hungry filling the trenches. They could have survived—but it was you who deliberately locked this door to hoard goods and speculate, to sell them when prices were higher, wasn't it?"
"People on the black market would sell their souls to you for these cans! You greedy vampire!"
Upon hearing this, Butcher Bill roared hysterically, "Sell? Are you crazy?!"
He pointed to the dusty box, his fingers trembling.
"Open your one eye wide and look at the seal on it; that's the sector's strategic reserves. Every box, every single biscuit, is registered in the Department of the Interior's general ledger!"
"If I dare to touch even a single box, even if it's just a protein bar missing, when the auditors from the Ministry of the Interior come to check the records, they will determine that I stole imperial assets."
Bill, panting heavily, said in terror, "They won't just kill me. They'll skin me alive and make a human skin lampshade to light up the courtroom corridor! That kind of death is a thousand times more terrifying than starving to death!"
That's enough.
At this moment, Luo Wei's cold voice broke in, interrupting the argument that was about to turn into a full-blown fight.
He walked up to the pried-open box and reached in to pick up a protein bar.
He slowly turned it over and carefully examined the laser anti-counterfeiting etching on the back of the packaging.
He then casually tossed the protein bar back into the box, dusted off his hands, and calmly said, "Buck, put the gun down. Bill is telling the truth. This batch of grain doesn't belong to Bill. To be more precise, from the perspective of Imperial law, this batch of grain isn't even on the Abundance II."
Buck was stunned, and so was Bill.
Luo Wei turned around, his back to the mountain of rations, and faced the crowd.
Like explaining the most basic administrative regulations to a group of newly hired junior clerks, he coldly stated, "Look closely at the number on the seal. This is a tithe-deducted supply urgently allocated three years ago to support the Armageddon war zone."
"According to Article 732, Section 4 of the Imperial Military Affairs Logistics Act: Once the output of an agricultural planet is sealed as strategic reserve and entered into the system, its ownership is instantly transferred from the Planetary Governor's Office to the Sector Military Affairs Department."
Rowe held up one finger and pointed to the huge warehouse.
"In the sacred ledgers of the Ministry of the Interior, this warehouse is empty."
"This shipment was already in storage three years ago," it was loaded onto a void transport ship called "Emperor's Wrath," transported to the front lines, and has already been consumed by the valiant Astragalus warriors.
Buck couldn't understand this logic at all.
He pointed to the boxes piled up to the ceiling in front of him, his voice trembling: "But—they're right here! I can even smell the moisture-proof paper! Am I blind?"
"Yes, physically they are here. Your eyes aren't blind." Lowe nodded, but his eyes revealed a coldness that understood the rules.
"But this is only a humble reality." Within the empire's vast and sacred bureaucratic system, ledgers are "always" more truthful and legally binding than reality.
Rowe walked up to Bill, looked at the butcher who was covered in cold sweat, and spoke for him the fear in his heart: "Perhaps it's because that transport ship got lost in the warp and arrived years, or even centuries, late."
"Perhaps it's because one of the servitudes in the star sector capital suffered a brain injury while entering data, mistakenly typing 'pending pickup' as 'shipped'."
"Or perhaps, it was simply because a delivery slip accidentally fell into the shredder—"
"This is called 'logistical delays.' It happens every day in the Empire."
Bill nodded vigorously, as if listening to a kindred spirit.
"For Bill, this shipment was a complete ghost asset."
"He dared not eat it, because it was the theft of strategic materials from the Ministry of Military Affairs," a capital offense.
"He didn't dare throw it away, because that would be 'deliberate sabotage of military supplies,' a capital offense."
"He dared not report that the goods were still in stock. Because that would mean explaining to the court why the 'shipped' records from three years ago didn't match the current 'inventory'."
Lowe spread his hands in a helpless gesture: "Once it's reported, it'll trigger an investigation. The Tribunal doesn't care about the truth; they only care about who's falsifying the accounts. Was the sector clerk wrong? Or the transport ship captain?"
"No, the big shots can't be wrong."
"The only one at fault is Bill. As the custodian, he is the sole and perfect scapegoat. The end result is still death."
"So, he could only lock the door and pretend the goods didn't exist. Every year, he had to pay out of his own pocket to run the air conditioning and dehumidify these 'non-existent' things to prevent them from rotting."
"Because once it rots, it goes from 'mismanagement' to 'desecration of resources,' and it will die even faster."
After a long while, Buck dejectedly lowered the muzzle of his gun.
He roughly understood, but he couldn't accept it.
"Just for—a few sheets of paper?" Buck muttered to himself, his throat dry. "Just for a few sheets of paper, this food is going to rot here, while the people outside are going to starve?"
"Welcome to the Empire, Buck," Rowe said calmly.
This is the truth about Warhammer 40.
In this vast and bloated interstellar empire, the greatest enemy is often not chaos or aliens, but rigidity, inefficiency, and despairing bureaucracy.
A bountiful harvest on one planet can turn into famine on another because of the loss of a single document.
Such horrific events occur every day in every corner of the Milky Way.
Rowe ignored Buck's disappointment and turned to look at Bill, his eyes sharpening.
"Manager Bill, this shipment is a hot potato for you, a ticking time bomb that could explode at any moment."
"If a meticulous auditor comes along one day and examines the original documents from three years ago, do you think you can explain it clearly?"
Bill's fat face twitched violently.
This is precisely why he has been having nightmares every night for the past three years.
He considered burning the place down, but he didn't dare.
"Brother Rowe—no, Advisor Rowe, do you have a solution?" Bill asked hurriedly.
"I have a way to help you balance the accounts."
Lo Wei took out a pen and his notebook from his pocket and turned to a new page.
"As the agricultural advisor appointed by the governor, I have the authority to assess the wartime losses of supplies within the war zone."
As Luo Wei wrote, he said, "I will issue an appraisal report proving that the No. 19 finished product storage facility suffered severe subspace contamination during the previous plague attack."
"To ensure food safety, this batch of strategic reserves" has been determined to be "inedible" and must be disposed of on-site.
Bill's eyes lit up, and his breathing quickened.
Once "scrapped," the goods completely disappear from the books.
Luo Wei abruptly changed the subject, his pen pausing on the paper.
"However, such a large quantity of waste materials needs to be disposed of through compliant channels. Direct incineration is too wasteful, it can easily pollute the environment, and it will also leave ash as evidence."
"The eastern granary is currently short of fertilizer. I'm willing to buy back this batch of 'scrap' materials at the price of 'industrial waste.' Five credits per ton, how about it?"
5 credits.
This is outright robbery.
The price of normal military rations is at least a thousand times that.
But Bill didn't hesitate at all, as if afraid Rowe would change his mind. He immediately roared, "Deal! Take it away now, all of it! Don't leave me even the outer packaging!"
For Bill, he would be willing to pay anyone, let alone 5 credits, just to get rid of this bomb.
Rowe nodded in satisfaction, signed his name in the notebook, tore out the page, and handed it to Bill.
"It's a pleasure working with you, Manager Bill."
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