Talos knelt down to check for himself, and sure enough, the two trajectory lines ended at the same time, although the road inexplicably continued through the jungle.
He retraced his steps, past the other five recruits, their weapons now trained more intently on the green underworld light.
Talos was still bent over, running his hands over the hollows in the ground as he walked.
"The trajectory doesn't go any deeper."
He said, looking up at his company.
"But it doesn't look like it's slowing down."
Sabourin spoke, then glanced at the surrounding environment.
"And there was no sign of weapons being released."
"There were no traces of explosives either."
Li Lin then added that each of them was eager to impress Talos. Although they had overcome the test and proved that they were qualified to enter the ranks of the Astral Knights, they still had to pass the scout assessment.
"It just kind of...disappeared."
Bahram looked at the marks on the ground with slight confusion.
"But dozens of tons of armored personnel carriers will not just disappear without a trace."
Talos turned his attention back to the track and stared out into the dense jungle.
"Don't be so sure. First of all, you must understand that we are now on a planet filled with the power of subspace. The rules of physics have long been distorted here. You have never seen the truly crazy side of subspace... I have seen things stretched to the limits of one's understanding, fought against creatures and entities that manifested man's greatest fears, I have seen massive starships, powered by the warp, burning in the vacuum of the void, I have witnessed in I have seen soldiers transformed into mad beasts before my eyes, an infectious disease that killed everyone in the space of a breath, a mass of flesh the size of a planet, and the greatest achievements of the Mechanicum that made it look like the invention of the wheel. The same alien technology."
Talos stood up and walked towards the leafy trees.
"Can a Chimera disappear out of thin air? It sounds incredible, but of course it can. What I will teach you in this lesson is that nothing is 'impossible' when facing the power of subspace. Before all other options, maybe it's somewhere in the jungle, now spread out and search within a two hundred meter radius."
Several hours later, just as the sun that was destroying the planet reached its peak, Sabourin's team located the missing Chimera.
It didn't disappear, or even disappear within the initial search area, but their discovery revealed more questions than it answered.
"It must have been here for decades, maybe even centuries."
Nias said, running a hand along the corrosion layer covering the vehicle shell.
"Parts of the fuselage are almost rusted away."
"Maybe it's the chemical composition of the rain in this world that causes it to rust so quickly?"
Li Lin looked at Chimera and said softly:
"But how did it get so far off the trail, and what tipped it over?"
Soldiers surrounded the damaged personnel carrier, its original serial number barely visible beneath the dense layer of oxidized metal.
There is no sign of how it came to rest more than half a kilometer away from where it disappeared, no sign that it was thrown into the air, or that it rolled across the ground and dug up dirt.
It was as if the chimera had been pulled from one place and placed upside down somewhere else.
Talos knelt and dug his fingers into the jungle floor, stretching his arms through the putrid dirt until it nearly touched his elbows, then tearing the dry mud apart until he finally found what he was looking for.
He took out his hand and held the dirty black water he had just dug out, with a few squirming mudworms between his fingers.
"The corrosion here is not deep, and there is not much smell of oxidized metal, and the humidity here does not accelerate the oxidation process to this extent."
Talos then paced back and forth in the overturned personnel carrier, his uneasiness not lessened by the sight of it.
The transport appears to have been abandoned in the jungle for many years, with no evidence of how it came to be that way.
There seems to be another hidden reason for the disappearance of this team.
"Sablin, Nias, help me open the hatch."
Talos said, tearing off a bunch of vines wrapped around the back of the Chimera.
Despite the combined efforts of three Space Marines, the rusty door refused to budge.
Eventually, the hinges holding it up broke and the corroded metal plates were tossed aside.
Everyone took a step back as the damp, foul-smelling air surged inside.
But Talos did not flinch and approached the open hatch.
The other members had their weapons trained on the holes, ready to await their commanders for whatever might happen within those dank spaces.
Green jungle light streamed into the troop compartment, casting an ethereal glow over the wreckage inside, where guns and ammunition lay scattered among the carapace-clad corpses that littered their burial site. channel.
The Seer's vision worked just as well as in daylight, and he counted eight corpses, all uniformly clad in Astra Militarum uniforms.
While the armor retained its integrity, the thing it was designed to protect did not, the skull staring blankly in the visorless helmet, all remnants of flesh long since rotting away.
As the tomb reopened to the jungle outside, flies and other insects buzzed into the Chimera, attracted by the smell of the place and the promise of a new breeding ground.
Talos lifted the body nearest its comrade and dragged it toward him.
The internal organs, protected by the carapace, have been liquefied but not completely decomposed.
Talos opened the collar of his armor, revealing his bony neck, showing what he expected.
Two vertebrae were completely severed, almost certainly broken during the Chimera's mysterious flight and violent landing.
In the 41st Millennium, it is an undeniable fact that service to the God-Emperor of Mankind will almost certainly end in death, and for a Space Marine this outcome is usually glorious, a heroic sacrifice made in the face of insurmountable odds. .
For those followers of the Throne who have not inherited the genetic legacy of the Primarch, such deaths will also occur on the battlefield. They clutch their weapons and defend a world that is not their own against a seemingly endless horde of aliens or demons. .
But, more likely, death will be in vain, a waste of human life whose potential will never be realized.
For example, being wiped out by collateral damage along with the remaining regiments and troop transports in a void battle, being blown up to nothing by orbital strikes or artillery fire without even having time to foresee, being poisoned or infected by invisible enemies who use trickery and destruction as their modus operandi. Sick of disease, or slaughtered inside their vehicles as they rode into battle or on supply or reconnaissance missions, the weapons never even fired in response.
