The once-beautiful sky of Loander has turned gray-green, and the poisonous and greasy rain will invade this world for thousands of years, mixed with suffocating demonic filth, and the world is hopeless, at least any Empire person will feel like this.

The glow of the stars crept out of the back of the planet along the endless metal mountains, and the place that once functioned and housed tens of billions of people was now lifeless and eeriely silent.

The thick tracks of the Chimera and the boots of the infantry carried the mud and flesh across the Gothic bridges made of alloy, and the ground that was stronger than concrete would have been used for tens of thousands of years in Mechinac, was now smashed like a hole in cheese by the craters that flowed thick juice.

The thin, emaciated, pale Imperial Guard soldier breathed heavily and uncomfortably with simple, fully enclosed gas masks, commonly known as "pig's nose" equipment, and a few pieces of blessed filter cotton and charcoal.

The light of the stars had just been sprinkled on the ground, and it was only about four o'clock in the morning according to Terra time, and now, the sun of Loande had come very early, with a poisonous mist, biochemical weapons and psionic toxins used by the heretics, ticking down on the people.

Captain Teske looked out of the window of the command vehicle, and the mighty legion moved forward like lifeless corpses wrapped in the Imperial Faith, and the Space Marines did not show up to them, but only approached the enemy with more mobile methods, such as several Thunderhawk gunboats or better methods.

Thinking of this, the Captain realized that the giants were, were, and would ever do more efficient and great things than they were, and use this as the cornerstone of their loyalty to the Empire.

Can he do it, and if it were him, would he be able to "love" the world so selflessly? The Captain's mind was complicated, but he did not realize how great their deeds were, because their belief in the emperor was deeply rooted in their bones, and to do it was not a thing or a job for them, but an obligation to be born as an imperial person, which was a reality that was difficult to resonate with other people in the world, and it was also the cruelest reality for them.

The sky is now in a daze, Captain Tesk only hopes that the enemy has not yet woken up, they are prepared, but there is not much time, tiredness, sickness, one after another erupts in the body, and he just asked the soldiers to pick it up, before the battle to receive the elixir that can temporarily suppress the pain.

Those medicines are the blessing of the suppression psionic virus, and it is also the tonic that the Imperial Guard has, but it is far from being as great and powerful as people think, just using stimulants to increase metabolism and suppressing the virus with blessings, and the commanders look healthy, just because they are usually far away from the battlefield and the defense equipment is relatively perfect.

Now that the virus was accumulating, the Captain felt soreness and pain in his body, so their time was running out.

The stimulants were getting worse and worse, and he even felt that his blood was filled with those white bitter drugs, and the military doctor recommended that he switch to injections, but it didn't matter anymore, the captain watched the long and wide road in front of him begin to become narrow, so that the armored vehicles could not cross in parallel, and the viaduct obviously could not move forward.

The captain exhaled a puff of smoke rings, then pressed the cigarette against the sturdy steel of the car and extinguished it, and then carefully tied the half with a rubber band and put it in his pocket, as he had learned as a scout, shouted. "All of you, let's get off the bridge from the fork in the road, and then go to the fort through the road close to the ground."

In the next hour they marched smoothly, and they naturally walked through the city, watching the once familiar place turn into a mess in no man's land, and if it was a kind of psychological warfare, then this war was both successful and unsuccessful, because after the depression and pain, only anger was ignited, not fear.

The sight of soldiers stepping on toxin-laden dirt, rotting ground with strange plants, collapsed shops, or twisted by flies that seldom spew maggots into the moist places of their mouths and mouths, but nothing compares to the mortar-bombarded twenty-meter-high statue of the emperor in the city's central square, which is now only halfway on the ground.

His flaming sword, the Emperor's sword, could no longer be found, his broad arms could no longer protect the believers, and those fierce eyes could not look at the people here, and those soldiers let out an inexplicable anger.

They were quicker and stronger-willed, and the restless emotions drove the Emperor's children to burst into anger like enemies, and the engines of the vehicles roared, and they took out all kinds of potions and began to march forcibly, and stuffed their mouths with shriveled and unpalatable green-brown starch lumps as if they were filling the carts with gasoline, and went down with unclean drinking water.

The city area quickly passed, and the Imperial Guard came to an end comfortably, and it was turned into a war zone, and the enemy had been waiting for them for a long time, and the captain looked at the war zone from his car with a telescope.

Intricate trenches and fortresses replaced steely forests of reinforced concrete, and the enemy's infantry spaced five meters by one person, fifty meters by a squad, that is to say, a hundred meters away from a felling gun!

Those trenches were stacked with damn barbed wire and sandbags, and the Loanders weren't very good at attacking, so they found it tricky, and the captain didn't see the anti-vehicle weapons, but he didn't let up, to be precise, the enemy definitely didn't lack those things, and he knew exactly where to place them.

The bunkers, made of pure gold, stabilized the battle in alternating positions in the trenches, and the whole trench was a small large X-shape, from left to right, with 15 pillboxes, pitch black and deadly.

He returned to the car, said his adjutant. "From here, we can shell the enemy."

The captain picked up the communicator and asked the Space Marines for communication, but there was no response, and a strange look flashed across his face, but he still answered without hesitation. "No, think about it, if we advance step by step, this trench about 5 kilometers deep will delay us for a long time, we only have less than three days, and the artillery must be in place in one step!" He refuted this security solution, the Imperial Guard needed not victory but time, and if they could not break through here, they would not be able to threaten the interior of the fortress at all, let alone attract the enemy's core forces.

The trenches in his eyes became tricky and painful, but his battle plan was clear from the beginning, he needed a breakthrough, and although the depth of the three interlaced trenches was terrifying, it lacked heavy firepower, and the important pillboxes were destroyed, and things would be easy.

"Three forts, I need three of those things to disappear to occupy favorable terrain, and now a charge is needed, the Riemanus and Chimera armored vehicles cannot be on, they must be disarmed by the soldiers, and we have no self-propelled artillery, no missile vehicles, and air power..."

"Forward in two echelons, the first echelon has most of the infantry, suppress forward, the second echelon detours outward, bypassing the enemy's reconnaissance, it doesn't matter what route you take, I need the main guns of the Riemanus intact."

"Sir, should we wait for the Space Marines?" An officer asked.

"Space marines, space marines, if we rely on angels for everything, then we will have nothing, I admit, faith alone cannot conquer the enemy, but the emperor will not like children who can only rely on other people..."Although the captain said this, he also knew that the fact that the space marines did not contact them, which meant that they did not expect to cooperate in battle, in order to hide themselves tactically, or had other plans, anyway, he could only believe...

The decision was brutal, but sacrifice was inevitable, and the assault began when the roar of the engines was mixed with the screeching sound of the tracks running over the concrete road.

Bang! Bang! Bang! It began with smoke grenadiers firing dozens of smoke grenades into the trenches, and suddenly smoke filled the field, opening a lifeline for the soldiers on the battlefield, followed by sporadic shouts and a few empty gunshots from the defenders.

"Rush Rush!" The staff officers shouted so, and the infantry of Loande charged without hesitation until they completely entered the smoke, and then the half-track armored vehicles Chimera and the grenadier infantry followed closely until they completely attracted the fire of the entire front.

When the roundabout troops smashed a howitzer belonging to Levalus into the fortress ten minutes later, it made an explosion-like muffled sound, a violent tremble, and a brief wail of steel when the 35-centimeter-thick rolled adamantite armor was torn, and the soldiers inside were instantly cooked, just the high temperature generated by the explosion, it was so powerful, and of course, it was indispensable for the accurate shooting of the crew.

Her turret was then lifted high by a huge fireball from the sputtering detonator of an armor-piercing fragmentation missile fired from a distant enemy fortress, and then smashed to the ground by gravity.

The parts of the tank were scattered in all directions with the burst, and the communicator, which had been open, could now only hear the "crackling" of fragments of its surface armor, until a flat hatch pierced the armor of the side turrets, silencing the communicator completely, and a Riemanus died.

At the same time, the first fortress was completely destroyed in the heat of the Imperial howitzers, and such an exchange can hardly be said to be the same price, but as an attacker, the Imperial Guard had no choice.

Sadly, the Space Marines had already arrived, they just didn't want to be discovered by the enemy so soon, and they were like eagles lying in ambush on the nearby metal mountains, that is, on a huge pedestal raised from the nest capital with thousands of servants.

They have been operating this area for a long time, starting with the raids of the four company commanders, where the Space Marines have attacked the enemy, but positional warfare has made it difficult for those super soldiers to move an inch, so soldiers who have experienced landing battles have a wary view of the trenches here.

But with their joining, it would not be difficult to attack the fortress, but as planned, there would be no losses in the Imperial Guard, but there would still be some deaths of brothers.

But a young sergeant from the Master Chief faction suddenly asked the veteran of the current highest rank with doubt. "Aren't we supposed to help the Imperial Guard? Brothers! ”

But the current commander of the Destruction Eagle, to be precise, does not trust mortals, he asked. "If they take the area in front of them, we can move forward without any losses, and a brother is worth as much as their entire regiment of infantry, and as long as they are not stupid enough to wipe out the Levmanus and the Earth-Shaking Cannon, then their loss of any enemy bullet will be a help to our attack."

His words chilled the sergeant's heart, and he was not the only one here, in fact, the person who should be in command in this battle was the dreadnought, but the mental state problems caused by dreadnought made those living ancestors unable to make decisions, but they were not without rights...

The sergeant looked at the two huge mechs next to him, those warriors who were full of honor in their bodies, just acquiescing in such tyrannical behavior!

And he scolded. "What are you talking about, Ancestors, what are you doing? Master Chief didn't let us do this! ”

"Me?" The current conductor asked. "Do you think those mortals are worthy? It's not Ghost Peak, it's not Skadi, and they're just crazy people who believe in the Emperor, and it's their life's hope to sacrifice their lives for the Golden Throne, and I'm just making things happy for everyone! ”

He didn't trust the soldiers, especially their already mutilated bodies, and a few smoke bursts, the charge down the hill has begun, and as Space Marines they can see clearly even without binoculars, the flesh and blood of the soldiers exploded on the battlefield, and even a Riemanus was soon pierced by a flying armor-piercing missile, turning into a chaotic tongue of fire, and fortunately, the loyal crew destroyed a fortress.

But the smoke was also dissipating, and the situation was becoming more and more unfavorable, and the crossfire and high intensity of the depth of the trenches formed a wall of death made of war machines, and many sacrifices under the endless meat grinder were enough to exchange for a single bombardment of Riemanus, and in the case of missing the observation hole, it was not enough to destroy the pillbox.

Even though the powerful howitzers stopped the attack inside, the bewildered cultists of the inside of the bunker turned their weapons, and the armor-piercing missile group locked onto another tank on the side.

The Space Marine sergeant scolded. "I can't stand it anymore! If this is your life to death, then I will duel you! ”

This sentence made a difference in the atmosphere here, and while the Destruction Eagle's cultural style was similar to that of the Space Wolf, duels were not tolerated at such an important moment of command where there was a clear disparity in status.

They are Kiliman's children in their bones, and they still worship unity and order, tactical cooperation, and the officer obviously will not accept it. "I refuse."

"You are dishonored," replied the sergeant.

"Honor? This time we cannot chase honor, death and war, I am responsible for the sake of my brothers! The commanding officer scolded.

"Even if I accept it, you get the red helmet, and if you take another ten thousand steps back, the brothers will not accept the task of supporting mortals!"

The sergeant looked helplessly at his brothers, but they saw the dodging gaze, they were timid, they were killed again and again by rune warriors, by psionic wizards...

He asked helplessly. "That's why I joined the warband? Brothers? Are we here to join the warband? ”

"It turns out that there are no company commanders, non-commissioned officers, and adjutants, we are cowards?"

His words ignited the honor and anger of the Space Marines in an instant, but they could not refute it, they had gone through too much, and they had left the ethereal faith of the warband, but those rules and regulations had planted the seeds of honor in their bones, and now the sergeant had torn the wound open...

"Enough!" The dreadnought mecha, which had already wavered, suddenly walked out, and the veteran of the two veterans strode and scolded. "You said that, it would be too much for us not to attack, and, boy, you did a good job, if it weren't for you, I would have been a coward!"

The other replied. "Yes, you remind me of my youthful days, born to die... Destroy the eagle, natural disaster has become! ”

The sergeant nodded and bowed. "Born to die, fearless ancestors!"

And the opening of the two of them represents a change in the hearts of the Legion.

They said to the commander. "Brother, we're sorry, your tactics were rejected because they didn't fit the Warband's values!"

The commander could only nod his head and compromise on such a situation, so the Space Marines' Thunderhawk gunboats had already begun to buzz and roar, just like their slogan, natural disaster has come!

It's not a matter of good or bad, it's just values, whether you let the Empire spend tens of millions of dollars to forge a star-soldier and your own combat brothers to fight to the death for a few mortals, or risk covering for mortals, and use Riemanus and Earthshaker Cannon and other things that mortal servants can do.

The essence of this thing is very contradictory, in order to reduce the sacrifice and produce greater sacrifice, but in fact, some people just forget that the value of life does not exist, because whether it is a Space Soldier or the Imperial Guard, it is not for the people's army, which is also the most black irony of Warhammer, and it is also its terrible militaristic romance.

(End of chapter)