Standard Terran Calendar 41
Maelstrom area, bloody skeleton galaxy, blood diamond star, 19th mining area
"Grenade!"
When the screams of his comrades rang out, Hayes immediately turned around instinctively and wanted to lie down, but he tripped over the corpse on the ground and fell directly to the ground.
Then an improvised grenade explosion ripped through the air behind him, and he felt a sudden pressure in his ears.
Then everything went black.
He didn't know how long it took before he realized that his ears were ringing and his face was pressed against the cold, hard soil underground.
In the haze of regaining consciousness, he heard the screams and shouts of men, the sound of laser guns being fired, and the yells and roars of others.
"Hayes!"
Hearing what seemed like someone calling him, he raised his head from the mud and looked around, trying to figure out his bearings.
This is a mine tunnel about five meters wide and three meters high. The only illumination is the flares thrown on the ground in the distance and the fire of laser guns. He lies face down on the ground, and the pain in his shoulders has been reduced to only slight in pain, while people he knew and unknown around him were engaged in brutal battles.
A week ago, they all thought this was an easy "sweep", but the intricate mine tunnels underground in Happy City became everyone's nightmare.
Those resisters have primitive weapons and backward equipment, but they are familiar with the terrain, they are elusive, they are tenacious, and they would rather die than surrender——
Over the years as a soldier, Hayes has developed a certain inherent concept, that is, as long as it is well-equipped and has many weapons, the army will definitely be strong. In fact, he also feels that the "mob" who only have light weapons, and even many of them are homemade weapons, will not What ability to resist, even if they are huddled in the tunnel.
But reality slapped him and everyone in the face.
The tactics of these people are very flexible and cunning. Most of the time, they do not confront them head-on. When they advance in groups from a wide area, they hide. Once the team disperses into those narrow mine tunnels, they move around. They attacked, constantly harassing the tired imperial army in small groups, and when the imperial army was about to retreat, they followed in pursuit.
And as a mineral world, the most indispensable thing here is explosives. The Red Pirates left behind hundreds of millions of tons of explosives. These explosives can be easily made into simple grenades and landmines. After suffering several losses in a row, They don't even dare move without metal detectors clearing the way.
But what is even more frightening is the spirit of these people. Hayes has been in a tense and dark environment for a long time, and he feels like he is going crazy, but those people are like supermen.
He has seen enemies who took off all their clothes and hid in the mud with only a gun in order to avoid being detected by thermal scanners.
I have also seen enemies hang themselves on the shaft with ropes for several days and nights.
There are even enemies who have sealed themselves in underground bunkers that cannot be opened again——
Everything they did seemed to be just to take away one or two imperial soldiers. Although it seemed that these blackmailers could not cause many casualties, as time went by, the number of casualties far exceeded their imagination.
After capturing an underground rail transit hub, after counting, their group lost more than 400 people in less than a week, and this was only 50 meters deep underground. There were still more than 200 meters deep below them. Mine tunnel.
Almost every step needs to be watered with blood.
In the long-term darkness and fear, the soldiers became highly nervous and suspicious, as if an enemy might jump out of the shadows at any time, making accidental injuries and violence more and more frequent. At the same time, some people continued to suffer mental breakdowns. Therefore, Soldiers also called this kind of fighting a rat war.
Soon after the battle began, some people questioned why they wanted to fight in a place where such large forces and heavy firepower could not be deployed. They could just seal the mine tunnel and leave it alone.
However, Hayes heard some inside information from Hashet, which probably meant that the superiors wanted to quickly restore production here, so they could only use the flesh and blood of soldiers to clean up the mines full of thugs.
Some people have also proposed using poison gas to kill traitors in the mines. However, some troops have tried this method for a long time, but it has basically no effect. As a mining world led by the Forge World, most of the underground in Blood Diamond Planet Mine tunnels have built extremely complete ventilation and filtration systems, and in order to allow underground workers and mining people to work with maximum efficiency, underground mine tunnels are often equipped with deep wells, medical facilities, warehouses, geothermal power generation and other equipment, and even There are fungus plantations and the planning is extremely complete.
Wanting to trap or poison the people inside is basically a dream, and after years of excavation by the Red Pirates, the underground mine network of the planet has become very different from the original. Even the sages of the Mechanicum cannot say anything about it. Come.
Then, the only way is to let the soldiers go down to this cold, narrow and dark hell, and fight face to face with those who are forced to the dead end.
Hayes once picked up a small, bright rose-red crystal in the ground, as big as the nail of his little finger.
Hashet said, that thing is called Lantai blood crystal rock salt, also called blood diamond——
It is also something that the above people must obtain even if they consume countless lives.
The superiors seemed to still be dissatisfied with their progress. After they occupied the key nodes, they urged them to continue downwards and clear out all the traitors in the area. However, the mine tunnels below were more scattered and narrower. Hayes even accidentally and his own The squad was separated, and they could only follow the rest of the company to fight in the dark and closed mine tunnels.
Then they encountered an ambush. There were many vents and hidden maintenance passages in the deep mine tunnels. They still suffered the disadvantage of being unfamiliar with the environment. Not long after leaving, they were attacked from both sides.
Hayes struggled to stand. He had seen the enemies, dressed in miners' uniforms and rags.
One of the guys wielding a mining pick was shot directly in the face, and his facial features were burned off by the full blast of the laser gun in the blink of an eye, but then the guard screamed and was attacked by another traitor from the side. Knocked down from behind with a homemade shotgun.
Men fought in the darkness and flash, their feet slipping and stumbling over the bodies of their fallen comrades beneath them, the details of who won and who lost blurred in the muzzlefire and haze.
Hays saw the blood, he saw the carnage, he saw the same brutality and despair on both sides, as if this was the reality of war after all the noble slogans had been stripped away.
Then, as the horrifying sight continued to unfold around him, Hayes' heart began to pound in his chest, and a terrifying thought suddenly appeared in his mind.
Where is his laser gun?
He looked around in horror and realized that he had lost his gun when he fell, but it should be nearby, but the dim light prevented him from finding it.
