40k: Midnight Blade

Chapter 310 30. Blood of Calth (2, 6k)

004.M31, the ground of Calth, the plain outside the city of Nared.

Orr - or according to Loader Servant Graft, Soldier Persson, or to unify, Orr Persson - no matter what, in short, he is being washed away by the rapids.

The only thing keeping him from being swept away by the never-ending tide was a broken fence he was clutching tightly in his hand. He was almost suffocating, the water levels still rising, they were up to his chin, making everything wet and wet.

To make matters worse, the water was scalding hot, the kind that would burn your skin off.

What, you want to know why?

it's actually really easy.

About five minutes ago, Orr Persson was working in his fields. He is a farmer, at least for now.

He was a former imperial soldier, and spent eighteen years of service in exchange for a piece of fertile land in Calth. He did a good job, growing flowers in the summer for the ladies of high society to enjoy, and flax in the seasons to provide raw materials for Cowes' textile industry.

His neighbors half-jokingly called him 'Pious Orr' because of his Catholic faith, and Graft, the reloader servitor who retired with him, always called him Soldier Persson.

He lived a good, quiet life with friends, neighbors, and a group of people who went to church with him on Sundays. Orr Persson was content with his life, until five minutes ago.

At that time, he straightened up from the ground and looked at the sky. He saw many ships flying by, and they almost filled the sky where he was. He recognized the troop transport and supply ship. He actually recognized some other big guys, but he didn't say anything.

It wasn't a cop-out, after all, he knew he was still an Imperial soldier, as evidenced by the old laser rifle he hung over his fireplace at home.

Orpeson stood in his field and looked at the boats. Then, suddenly, things changed.

The first thing that came was a burst of light that was so intense that it seemed to blind people, followed closely by the flames that spread out and scattered throughout the sky. Things like clouds and blue sky suddenly disappeared, and the fire almost turned the sky into a hell.

Orpeson subconsciously wanted to find a bunker - he already realized what it was, it was an explosion of a ship in orbit, but he had never seen one of this scale.

He spent half a minute looking for cover, but failed. There was flax all around. Where was he going to hide? Then the strong wind swept in, as hot as hell fire, without any mercy.

Then there was a meteor falling from the sky. To my shame, Orperson didn't realize what it was until it was about to fall to the ground, and by then it was too late to do anything.

It fell to the ground, it was bigger than the house, it was a fragment of a track, and it fell into the plain next to the land of Orpeson. The ground trembled, and the manic shock wave knocked down everyone who tried to stand.

Orpeson lay on the ground holding his head, and from the corner of his eye he saw his linen being torn into embers in the wind by the surging air waves. Then came raindrops of shaken earth, rocks, and the like, and finally rain.

To be more precise, it was the impact of orbital debris on the ground that caused the water of the Nared River next to the plain to fly into the sky.

A whole river.

A whole fucking river.

Orpeson knew at that moment that his land was probably no longer available. He was hit so badly that he was almost washed away. If it weren't for the fence, he would probably be lying in another place now. .

But now is not the time to relax. He can clearly feel that the fence in his hand is deforming.

The devout Orr began to pray to his God constantly at this moment, hoping that the damn fence would bend according to the exquisite workmanship produced by Cowes - but he failed, the fence still bent, and he was rushed out.

Either God didn't hear, or the fence is not native to Cowes. he thinks.

He choked on the water and began to be carried by the water wherever it wanted to go. He thought this was the end, and even began to pray that he would not be swept too far later, but suddenly, the earth shook again.

One blow, two blows, three blows, more blows - Orpeson seized an opportunity, coughed and poked his head out of the river, and saw dense rain of fire falling from the sky, each piece was a piece of debris, and each piece was deadly. The force is greater than that of missiles.

This scene was even more horrifying than the Astartes drop pods that began to rain from the sky. There were not so many drop pods, and they would not land towards the cities and farmlands of loyal residents. A few minutes later, or ten minutes later, Orpeson was washed to the ground by the river.

The two people worked together to bring him to a shallower place. He was unconscious, opened his eyes with a bloody head, and sat up instinctively.

Then he saw the body.

At least ten million - he didn't know if he was crazy, but there were really many corpses, eight million if not ten million. Floating in the river, lying on the shore, buried in debris and ruins.

As he watched all this, his hearing suddenly returned, and then there were continuous screams and cries. The two men pushed him to the ground, and one of them tore a soaked piece of cloth from his own body and tied Orperson's still bleeding left hand.

They were shouting something, but he didn't want to listen.

"Merciful God." Orr Persson lay on the ground and heard himself murmuring. "Have mercy and save us."

God didn't respond, he responded with another piece of debris. It fell in the city of Nared not far away, hitting something like a power plant or a reactor, and the earth trembled again, this time accompanied by a burst of fire.

Hell, I was in a hell. Orr Persson thought.

The question is, who created hell?

——

004.M31, Calth, weapons array control center.

Servo Urkharhurst fell to the ground, along with his colleagues. He wasn't dead yet, but he was about to die. The huge data impact caused by the destruction of the weapon array was beyond the limit that he and his colleagues could handle.

His brain was scorched, not overheated, but scorched - the reason why he was not dead was just because he happened to temporarily leave the thinking space at the moment when the data impact arrived, and was not directly hit.

His colleagues were different. Their brains and mechanical structures had turned into boiling plasma and molten iron.

But he's dying, there's no way he's not going to die, he's just a servo, and his devotion to the Ohm Messiah isn't deep enough to survive such a blow.

But why? Why does this happen? Faced with this question, servo engineer Urquha Hurst came up with a binary coding conjecture.

attack.

Robert Guilliman must be told.

But how could he tell the Primarch?

Five seconds later, under the influence of soaring adrenaline, Ulkelhurst decided to re-enter the thinking space to achieve his goal.

He failed because the mind space had been destroyed. The main body of its servers has probably been completely destroyed in orbit, and no backup servers remain. He had no way of entering the mind space, no way of informing Roboute Guilliman of this.

A third of a second later, servo Urkharhurst thought he might be crying.

But this is not the end, because the data waste code is coming. It shone with an ominous amber light in Ulkharhurst's binary data vision, and it floated towards the servomaster.

The thinking space had been completely destroyed, which was impossible to happen. Ulkelhurst thought he might be crazy-until he heard the sound of the useless code.

No, it's not the sound, it's the chant.

"The Eightfold Way," it sang.

Servomaster Ulkharhurst let out a scream.

——

004.M31, Calth orbit, Macragge's Glory.

"I just want results." Robert Guilliman said to the crew in front of him. "Do whatever you can, try to restart power, shields, restore communications to the surface. Don't tell me there's a problem here or there, I don't care. Zedov!"

He yelled across the bridge, calling the name of the Captain of Macragge's Glory. The latter immediately responded to him from the chaotic crowd.

"What order, Primarch?" he asked.

"Give up reconnecting the weapon array, give up restoring communications to the star port, enable ship communications, and issue orders to all ships that still have the power to fight."

"Understood, Primarch."

"Tell them we're in a war, and it's not a war I wanted to start, but it's already started, so there's only one thing we have to do. Get them off the track, regroup, and be ready to fight back. All from Mann Every Word Bearer ship that rushes out of Devir Point must be destroyed without fail. Blood for blood, tooth for tooth."

"Understood, Primarch."

"Gage! Marius Gage!" Guilliman shouted towards the other side again.

Some people have never seen him like this, but they have no fear or fear. Everyone knew the reason for his anger, and could also see the disintegrating Calth star port and weapons array, as well as the burning ships not far away.

They lose their power source, and they fall for that, but they're still within orbit. So most people on the ship simply don't have the courage to think about what will happen once they fall.

But Robert Guilliman has it. He has never lacked courage.

At this moment, he was so brave that it was almost terrifying.

"Here I come, Primarch!" Marius Gage rushed from the other end of the bridge. The expression of the First Chapter Commander was a blank that was waiting to burn.

"You-" Guilliman's words were interrupted by a sudden noise, and he quickly turned to look at the screen of the Thinker Array.

The data on it showed that something was firing at the Macragge's Glory. Immediately afterwards, there was a shock on the ship's hull, and there was a burst of chaos in the crowd - those unfortunate speculations have now completely come true.

The Word Bearers' attack was well planned, and they even dared to fire on the Macragge's Flare. People stayed in place in shock. They were silent for a moment, just staring at the data stream in front of them in silence.

"Yes, this is an attack," Guilliman said. His voice began to echo throughout the bridge, carrying an echo. "It's just what you think, it's an attack."

"So throw away those hidden luck, they want to kill us, and they want to kill Calth. Therefore, there is no retreat option in this war, we win, or we die, do you understand?"

The next second, the bridge started to be noisy again.

Guilliman turned around and grabbed his First Chapter Master: "Take the men down to regroup, Gage."

"But you-"

"—I am not important," Guilliman said. "Just bring people down, a thousand people will be enough. Once you reach the ground, you must reestablish the communication system as soon as possible. I want to see the disaster report in the shortest possible time, but I can put aside the matter of organizing manpower for rescue operations."

"I have deployed thirty battle groups on the ground in Calth. Their situation is still unknown. The most terrible thing is that they know nothing about the current situation. The Word Bearers will not give up so easily. They will definitely pass some kind of Way to Cowes Ground."

"So you're going to go down and tell them what's going on, tell them what I didn't tell them ahead of time for all the damn reasons, and tell them who the enemy is, Gage."

He raised his hand and put it on Gage's shoulder.

"You will be the shield of Calth," he said, looking into Gage's eyes. "You, you, we - we will all be Calth's shield, and we will kill every one of these bastards."

"As you command, Primarch."

"Gage."

"Primarch?"

Guilliman looked at him, his short pale blond hair mixed with white turning completely gray in the afterglow of the explosion in the Calth dockyard. He suddenly smiled. This smile was neither gentle nor kind, nor could it even be called a smile.

"You know we're going to win, right? Huh? Just like last time, we're going to win, right?"

"Yes, we will win, Primarch." Marius Gage said without fear, in a tone that sounded more like a declaration than an answer.

——

004.M31, Ground level at Cowes, Imperial Army assembly point in Roude province.

"Assemble, assemble!" Sergeant Herok of the 61st Company of Numinas roared out this order.

The sky was raining fire and the ground was shaking. His scouts had told him two minutes ago that a battleship might fall from the sky and hit them not far away - all was bad news, and the only good news was that he was not dead yet.

He didn't die.

The bastards tried to sneak up on him, kill him and turn him into a pile of corpses with seven other poor guys, but they failed because Sergeant Hurlock had a plasma pistol.

Plasma, which he once swore drunkenly by the fire that he would marry. Now it seems that, yes, he really should marry it.

"Fire!" he shouted again, but with little effect.

Chaos ensued twenty minutes ago, and even the most well-trained soldiers could not quickly find their commanders and assemble their formation during this confusing period of time. At this moment, there were less than eighty people around him.

But it didn't matter, they were still fighting, and that was enough.

The red energy beam of the light gun flew out, piercing through all the pale barbarians. They fell, and their companions came running over their corpses, singing wildly.

It was so ridiculous that Herlock himself had to laugh - singing? At this time, you still want to sing?

Cursing, he charged towards them with a gun in his left hand and a saber in his right.

The first man tried to stab him in the stomach with a spear, but when he failed, Horok backhanded him and chopped off his head.

The second man stabbed him from the side with a short knife, but he backhand melted his upper body with plasma. The third man was shot through by his soldiers with light guns, then the fourth, and the fifth

What ended this impromptu close combat was a shock, and a piece of debris or something larger fell from the sky and landed near them. Hulock fell to the ground and saw a pair of fanatical eyes.

One of those primitives fell on him - or flew over and fell on him, it didn't make any difference, his ribs and back hurt like hell anyway.

The tremors continued, and the huge explosion made everyone's ears ring, but this guy actually wanted to kill him. He seemed not to be human and was not affected in any way. The enthusiasm in his eyes looked so disgusting. Staring into those eyes, Hurlock smiled.

Okay, okay, great, you fucking mutt.

The sergeant reached out his hand decisively, grabbed the man's neck, crossed his thumbs together, and crushed the man's Adam's apple. He rolled over to the other side with a grunt, which Hurlock was very sorry for, as he would have liked to see him die.

He wondered if the bastards would still be so fanatical when death came, but he quickly forgot about regret as the shaking stopped.

The sergeant forced himself to get up and shouted the assembly order again.

This time it was even worse. There were only sixteen people around him who answered the call, and at least half of them didn't have guns in their hands. So did Hurlock himself, his plasma and saber gone, his uniform stained red with blood.

He could barely tell which ones were his and which ones were the enemy's. It doesn’t matter, it’s fine anyway.

He began to search for weapons, gather his troops, and kill the enemy. Half an hour later, the number of Numinas' 61st Company reached 542. More than half of them had guns, and the other half also had knives.

They began to clear the battlefield and prepare to retake the army assembly area in Roude. As long as they go to the garage or underground arsenal and drive a tank or armored vehicle, these primitive people have no chance of winning.

Really?

Hurlock realized something was wrong after six minutes, and the primitive people disappeared. Except for the corpses left behind, almost no living people could be seen.

This violated all common sense. The bloodthirstiness they showed in the battle meant that this group of people could not retreat so easily. Five minutes later, his scouts came to tell him that they found the group of primitive people making sacrifices in the office building of the Army Assembly Center.

"What?!" Helock roared. "What did you say?!"

"Sacrifice! They are making sacrifices! They moved some stones and wood to block the breach on the first floor. I saw them dismembering our wounded through the gap! The ground was full of blood-painted patterns, and they were even singing!" His scouts also roared in response.

This is how hearing-impaired people talk. In the sky of Cowes dyed red by the flames, the way they stood on the ruins and talked was so absurd and funny that it was almost hilarious.

But Helock didn't smile at all.

He issued orders and shouted at the soldiers on the ruins to follow him and kill all these bastards. Three minutes later, they rushed to the door of the first floor of the office building of the Army Assembly Center of Rude Province.

It was lucky and unfortunate. It lost all the floors above the first floor, but the first floor still stubbornly remained. The armored doors stood ridiculously on both sides of the ceilingless wall. There was a gap in one wall, and the primitive people brought stones to block it from the inside.

Helock moved forward and saw the scene described by the scout through the gap. Blood was dripping, skin and muscles were separated, and the heart was taken out and placed on the ground. The eight-pointed star marks were everywhere, drawn with blood, and the primitive people knelt in them.

He could even vaguely hear their singing.

Sergeant Helock was furious, and he ordered the soldiers to blow up the wall with grenades. The soldiers of the 61st Company did so, and the wall was blown up. They rushed in and killed all the primitive people, but none of them resisted, and even laughed when they died.

The sergeant was extremely angry about this, but also confused. He didn't understand why they did this-until those huge eight-pointed star marks began to shine and the blood began to boil.

A group of Astartes came out, definitely Astartes, there was no mistake. They were wearing scarlet armor and their eyepieces were cold.

Helock ordered to fire, but to no avail, his troops were slaughtered. He himself was the last to die, and an Astartes captured him and took off his helmet so that he could see his face.

Herlock, a sergeant of the 61st Company of Numinas, roared and cursed with all his life's skills.

"You are so brave," the man praised. "I will reward you for this."

What reward?

A minute later, the man walked out of the shattered first floor. With his hands and feet cut off and his face peeled off, Helock, a sergeant of the 61st Company of Numinas, roared and roared at the top of the eight-pointed star they erected, and received his reward.

He would scream in pain, but more often he roared.

"You all die, traitors!"

He kept shouting like this until he died. He was not brave, he was just fearless.

——

004.M31, Calth, Night Spirit.

"We turn to Calth Night Face," VanCleef said. "We must stay away from the front battlefield. Our firepower and escort fleet will not be of any use in such a war."

"Then what?" asked Fel Zharost.

"Land and kill - what else?" Karl Drassok laughed sarcastically. "Killing in the dark, isn't that what we are best at?"

"No, you didn't understand his question, Karl." Second Captain Dar Vanolarus said.

"Fel is asking what to do with Lord Robert Guilliman. We must let him know about this. This level of ship melee and the electromagnetic storm caused by the explosion of the Calth dock will make communication between the ground and orbit a luxury."

"I was just laughing at him. Do you think I'm stupid, Dar?" Karl Drassok asked unhappily.

"Not just now."

Van Cleef ignored their mutual ridicule. He just looked at Fel and nodded to him.

"I understand." Fel Zharost nodded slightly in response. "I will try to use psychic communication."

They don't know what is waiting for them on the ground of Calth yet.

I'll update one chapter first, and then write the rest after I wake up.