Skadi, Skadi, this word has become synonymous with ruins and the haze of death. Even if the atmosphere has been discovered, people cannot completely feel at ease.
The once familiar place has now changed. The huge hive city has been turned into ruins. Use hot melt to cut in from the outside and drill into the not too big building cavity that was also established after the collapse. Under the promethium light. , this place, which is still the size of a football field, is beginning to take shape.
Debris and ruins are crowded with the former ground. Because of the heavy cover of the hive, the dead people leave indifferent traces on the relatively intact walls like a haze, like a black haze, but they are actually human-shaped. thing.
After revisiting the old place, many people recognized where it was. There was not much communication between the hives, and the veterans who were at the same time as Alan Bair, as well as him, subconsciously saw only half of the emperor's statue in the middle of the ruins. , and the broken signboard next to it listed several restaurants that Alan Beyer remembered as frequented by his workers.
Because of the thing about saving food for wine, he hasn't tasted it yet. In fact, the first time he ate normal food was on the transport plane on the first day of joining the army. He had to complain about the registration of the Imperial Guard.
You don't even need to sign (most people can't write their names) to receive a set of military uniforms and body armor, and a set of field food.
Seeing the once familiar place become like this, the former storefront disappeared, leaving only the tattered signboard, but this news is not bad. On the contrary, the Imperial Guard can rely on this to locate their location and know their next move.
However, there are still many people who have become demoralized because of this incident. Unlike the Sun Lords, they each have family and friends, lovers or colleagues, and they live in this world in a real way.
But reality is always reality. The material world cannot be changed, and what happened will not be reversed. They are all veterans, and life and death are just things they picked up.
Unknowingly, a terrifying dead silence enveloped the entire team. Alan Bair just pointed out the location where the Imperial Guard needed to go again like a leader. He planned to return to his factory to check the situation.
This has nothing to do with missing anything. The current situation inside the hive city is full of waste. If that kind of large factory can still operate, it can provide a lot of convenience to the Imperial Guard.
It's just that many people showed quite hesitant expressions when the order came out. The memories of working inside the hive city for many years may have caused a lot of blows to their hearts, and the environment of the black-hearted factory that barely maintained the heat budget was like a nightmare. The Skadi gained a foundation of discipline.
The cold weather and heavy labor gave the Skadi people a strong endurance. As the bottom of society, the opportunity to use war to climb up provided morale, and the person who really brought those things into play was the Sun Lord himself.
There is no victory, only foolish sacrifices, wars of attrition, and perseverance. Alan Bair suffered so much from the Imperial Guard's conservative tactics when he enlisted that his strategic style became further and further away from the Imperial Guard's regulations.
It was also his tactical style that brought out the real fighting power of the people in the Imperial Hive. But now, times have changed, and they are now walking in the ruins of their narrow hometown. The void suits that obstruct their vision are dissatisfying. They can raise their guns anytime and anywhere, even if it is not possible here. There are enemies.
Home is no longer home, there is nowhere to go, no matter how big the void is, there is no Skadi or Skadi people, just a disgusting ruin of death.
Now a rather crazy idea came into the minds of the soldiers, that is, the emergence of green-skinned commanders, that is, the emergence of heretic commanders, and then tell them that the world still has value, there is still value in fighting for it, and there are many things to face.
But the deathly silence and the actions of the engineering team to install and open the road to the square told them that there was nothing here, only death and silence.
Like a suffocation by the throat, it appeared on the people who once lived here. The flickering promethium light, even the light reflected by the crystallized tissue, would make the soldiers restless regardless of discipline. Alan Bayer could not help but Not to the chief of staff.
"Look after them..."
He didn't want to disturb those who were homesick, but he couldn't let this exploration run the risk of internal reasons. The team of thousands of people was extremely large, and the hive was complex. He didn't want anyone to be agitated because of feelings, or attrition due to emotions.
The shouts of the staff officers, the management of the company members, and the shouting of the emperor's name made the soldiers in this place honest.
The team kept moving forward, crossing the ruins and rubble. Alan Bair glanced at the black room where he had exchanged things. At this moment, the metal door made of fine gold in that place was missing. It didn't look like it had been melted. It was taken away...
But his thoughts were quickly interrupted by the ensign's shouting as he passed through the melting wall.
"Boss, we're here!"
Alan Bayer could only walk over quickly and look at the not-so-pretty place. The explosion and high temperature made the whole facility full of holes. When he opened the door, the interior was still well preserved. Even the promethium lamp could light up. Fortunately, The industrial area seems to have been deliberately protected.
Those walls and tools are still intact, the heavy machinery representing civilization is even connected to the circuit, and the emergency internal promethium engine is still singing and humming. This huge and metal hell-like place seems to welcome living people anytime and anywhere, like a A huge instrument of torture.
Alan Beyer heard someone in the team curse. "Why is it still good here?"
But although he doesn't like it, he must thank the Emperor for blessing this place. Due to the occupation of Skadi, the difficulty of rebuilding Skadi has become much easier. The atmosphere and the powerful heat of the extinction order have caused the world's originally complex industrial pollution to be destroyed by high temperatures. After a cleanup, in addition to the lack of supplies, Skadi's current strategic location is very suitable for hindering the Red Pirates and serving as a strategic relay point.
This world was originally a hive and fortress world, but the satellite that once served as a fortress was destroyed by civil strife and suffered serious losses. Now it can only build a new fortress to maintain regional rule.
"Very good, that's good..." Alan Bayer was thinking a lot but had to move forward, but when he saw a rodent running from the corner to the other side, that weird feeling of incongruity filled the air. onto his mind.
After a short sound of footsteps, Alan Bayer suddenly pulled out his weapon and shot at those machines. Bang bang, flames burned, metal melted, and even many Skadi people were shocked. It was obviously a good thing, why? Want to shoot?
A moment later, a ball of burning flesh and blood fell down. It was a cultist wearing thick cold-proof clothing. The flesh and blood melted by the heat ray revealed a severely mutated skull with horns.
"Beastmen!" (the Empire's name for animal-like mutants)
The second lieutenant shouted that this factory was an arms line. The fierce laser gun fire penetrated the void suit and then hit the carapace of the Imperial Guard. Many people immediately looked for bunkers and started shooting at each other. Alan Bair looked at the laser Brushing against the shoulder armor of his void suit, the heat almost ignited his hair, although it only burned away the hairs.
He touched his stinging cheek and said to the chief of staff who was hiding with him. "The people in the bottom nest, did they survive?"
the chief of staff replied. "No, this is not a cyclone torpedo. The weapons encountered in this world are not the weapons often used by the Extermination Order. Someone has manipulated this matter. They bribed the Tribunal, or..."
Alan Bayer watched as the heavy industrial machine in front of him was dented by the laser. "Or they deceived the Inquisition, using psychic powers or subcontracting equipment. In any case, they only slaughtered Skadi's Imperial citizens, and the maggots were left behind!" He was a little disgusted, with anger and disgust in focus.
He turned on the radio. "Using roundabout tactics, the positions of the cultists were empty and scattered, the shooting intensity was not high, and there was no one to direct them."
"Those cultist workers should be unarmed. We only face a small number of guards. Take this place quickly!"
Having said that, Kid Letling and Master Chief Catachan are now leading two special forces in a roundabout way, and their firepower is approaching victory one-sidedly under the crushing equipment of the Imperial Guard.
There is no comparison between the experienced veterans of the empire and the chaotic gangs at the bottom of the hive. Even though they have experienced many battles, there is a big gap in the quality of individual soldiers, group command, and equipment levels.
Alan Bayer led the troops to press forward. The second lieutenant and the chief of staff covered each other with him. The strong smell of gunpowder continued to fill the air, and the number of troops here was unexpectedly large, because a large number of slave workers maintained the production line of the entire factory. They also It takes a lot of firepower to suppress the insurgency.
When Alan Bair approached those heavy production lines for the first time, he realized that those malnourished, skinny poor people were citizens of the Empire. In other words, there were probably thousands of Skadi citizens here who were enslaved as laborers. .
Those cultists used heavy pressure and high-intensity management to drive the citizens of the empire to produce things that were against the empire. But even so, this battle was not difficult, not even a battle. It was just a one-sided massacre. After the troops surrounding the rear opened fire, , those cultists dispersed in a hurry, and their chaotic management and low morale could not save them.
When he shot and killed the last cultist, the monster with scales and horns was still shouting vague words to his companions crazily. Alan Bayer subconsciously turned on the translation function to analyze this sentence while walking towards the production room. place for items.
The Imperial Guard began to bring out relief supplies to calm their emotions. Soon many people realized that the people working here were their relatives, friends, and family members. They inquired about each other and exchanged experiences with each other. The previous despair and pain were swept away.
But when they asked many other people they knew, those survivors would stop chattering and biting their food.
The bombing has really been carried out, and the massacre is also a reality. Regardless of whether the Skadi team agrees or not, the population of this world has dropped by eight-tenths. Even if they find people they know here, there are still more Skadis. There are no relatives to be found.
Alan Bayer, who walked into the product production area, even lamented that the place where he had to do it even if he was hungry turned out to be so narrow. The huge factory that he once thought was impossible to transform was actually so small.
Nowadays, he can no longer look down on monitors, workshop directors, and those places that were once beyond his reach, such as high-end offices, he can easily enter, but so what...
Unexpectedly, unpleasant emotions swelled in his mind. He looked at the Catachan Guards following him and wanted to ask them, but when the matter came to his lips, Alan Bair, who had always been able to speak, actually got stuck.
They just moved forward silently and arrived at the warehouse. This huge place was stacked with heavy boxes and very heavy large containers. Usually this place was filled with laser guns, but now they didn't know what they were.
What are those cultists producing? Is it dynamite or blasphemy, or are they copying the Word of Tzeentch?
Alan Bayer turned on the headlight of the warehouse. Under the bright light of the lumen ball, his doubts became even greater, because it was not a weapon, poison, or blasphemy, but a piece of pitch-black fine gold raw material, to be precise. It is said that it is something removed from many heavy cores in the hive city, and it is strong enough to shape a battleship.
This factory seems to have spent a lot of time on this matter, dismantling the fine gold inside the city and re-smelting it, but in fact this world does not have the ability to build chariot engines, and they certainly do not recycle materials to cast vehicles.
This world star port has been completely paralyzed. Without the port as a transportation point for large traffic, it is impossible for a large fleet to transport things.
They had a massive and metal-intensive project underway that required recycled materials to complete.
Alan Bayer's sensitive thoughts grasped the core point, but in this world where resources are exhausted and the population has disappeared, what else is so valuable?
He walked out of the warehouse, his own system completing the translation. The vague language had meaning, no doubt, not a modal particle, but he said it immediately after hearing its translation in Low Gothic.
"Evacuate civilians, strengthen defenses, and prepare for war, something big is coming!"
He commanded this unit to send a large number of civilians to the interior of the warehouse, and his worries came true as expected. The buzzing sound of vehicle engines filled the outside. The Sun Lord had to lament his carelessness and wasted time.
He led the soldiers to hide in the darkness of the factory, and the second lieutenant asked the boss urgently. "Boss, what's wrong?"
Alan Bayer just looked at the huge metal monster that slowly entered the factory, that human-shaped and twisted thing, an individual called a Space Marine, and smiled bitterly.
"Here they come, the core troops of the traitors, the Chaos Space Marines."
He looked at the real bytes in the auxiliary light curtain in front of him. Before dying, that disgusting thing did not call to his companions, but shouted to his own radio, saying the word giant and emphasizing the bytes of master and support. It was so indifferent. No doubt.
This world is taken by the red pirates!
(End of chapter)
