"It's a good place."

Nieders, or Sidney Brevins, looked at a sand hole that the Battle Brothers had found, expressing satisfaction.

"That's it."

"It is still necessary to pay attention to the fact that sentry posts must be set up, and we will take turns to rest."

"I wanted to meet Martins, but not in the way he raided him. It's been more than thirty years since we've come now, and the decision we made was made together, and I haven't failed any of you, and now we've only lost one fighting brother, and I hope that this time, none of us will die. ”

The other seven people around him did not reply immediately.

It was as if there was some kind of silence.

One of them broke the mood and said, "I'm a little skeptical now that we're really supposed to be like this." Perhaps, like the last thirty years or so, wouldn't it be nice, at least ......"

Speaking of which, he couldn't even say it himself.

After a while, another person answered: "If we just want nothing to survive, then why don't we go to that traitor of Seed Kihua?" He's going to accept us, and he's going to try to get them out like he's coming to Martins, and he's going to worry if he's going to kill us all. ”

Someone else said, "Indeed, if I go to Seed Kihua, I would rather die." ”

"Okay, why do you all look like loyal servants of the Empire? If we really had to be that loyal, we would have died thirty-seven years ago, or at least nine years ago with Fan Haozhe. ”

……

Brothers who live and die together have the intention of quarreling.

In fact, similar controversies have not been uncommon in the past. Their situation is special, confused and confused for more than 30 years, even Space Marines will feel helpless, and even unable to be self-consistent.

This is a very dangerous signal, don't think that something will be good to vent, on the contrary, as long as there is no way to change the situation, then wanton venting will only make the connection between them fragile, so that the seemingly strong relationship, cracks, and one day without knowing the future, completely thunder.

This is a problem that Brevins has always tried to avoid as the leader of the team.

Every time there are signs of such a thing, he will speak up forcefully and directly extinguish the possible arguments.

No matter what his fighting brothers think in their hearts, whether they regret their past decisions, or have any new ideas for the future, in short, they are honestly held in my heart and not allowed to be revealed.

Of course, he also understands that treating the symptoms is not the root cause.

But what is the cure...... They wanted to go over and look for a seed kihua.

However, the vast majority of the brothers thought that it was better to die.

They had betrayed the battle, and they could have returned to the army during the battle, but they thought that the Atonement Crusade had no end and that no one would survive to the end.

It was a desperate journey, and it also contained resentment towards the Empire.

Why? Isn't the glory accumulated over thousands of years of warband's history, and the sacrifices made during the decades of the Atonement Expedition, enough to pay for a sin?

Obviously, the empire felt that it was not enough. And they are not willing to die and perish. So, in the counterinsurgency war more than 30 years ago, they had the opportunity to join Martins and others, but they finally chose to leave quietly, and since then they have been incognito and wandering around.

They sometimes disguise themselves as normal Space Marines to get some subsidies and save some people by the way; But more often than not, they erase the signs and wander among the gray groups. Sometimes it's a raider, it's a pirate, sometimes it's a mercenary......

They will closely assess the danger of the battle.

They no longer have the mission to fight to the death for any goal, and they will not lose their lives for these honorless actions just to survive.

However, they didn't want to endanger their mother's group, and they didn't even want to really become the emperor's enemies.

At the same time, for some reason that they did not explicitly state among themselves, they also kept an eye on the Immortal Bird Mother Regiment. Sometimes, they will move directly to the area where the warband is fighting, and observe from a distance. There have even been a few times when he shot at a critical moment and saved some fighting brothers, but he didn't meet and left directly.

Nearly twenty-five years ago, after completing a raiding supply, they heard from the Mother Order that they were engaged in a war against the Chaos Cults. The renegades, who had nothing to do, rushed over with the mentality of 'just go and see'.

And in this battle, the warband suffered heavy losses.

In the battle group, which originally had only more than 200 people left, half of the manpower was mired in the quagmire.

This is something they can't save.

There were only eight of them, and there was nothing they could do about the battle situation that more than a hundred fighting brothers couldn't get out of.

They could only watch sadly from afar.

In fact, this is the vast majority of the scenes they saw when they followed the mother group in the past. The kind of scene where they have a chance to save their fighting brothers and can quietly retreat is an absolute minority.

This time, however, something completely different.

These more than 100 people, faced with a desperate situation, made an astonishing move: their leader, an immortal bird company commander, went out to negotiate with those cult traitors.

The company commander, who was also familiar to Bravins, was named Chong Jihua.

The specific content of the communication, of course, Blevins and those who were watching from a distance, did not know.

But they were able to see the results.

The group of fighting brothers led by Chong Jihua no longer fought, and even let go of their own defense lines, allowing those cult traitors to pass through their defense areas. They, on the other hand, remained in their camps, not firing a single shot, no longer resisting, and no longer having any contact with the outside world.

Then, in their camp, there were sporadic sounds of fighting.

It wasn't an invasion, of course, but an internal purge among the Space Marines.

Obviously, not everyone is willing to accept the behavior of Chong Jihua. Among the group of Space Marines, the number of people who are willing to die for honor, for faith, and for the empire is the largest.

Eventually, after the cleansing was completed, only sixty or seventy of the undead birds who came out of that camp remained.

Then, with the people still alive, he headed deep into the area occupied by the cult traitors and disappeared there.

In the end, the cult rebellion problem on that planet was resolved, but on the Imperial side, whether it was the planet defenders or the Undead Bird Warband, no one knew that the group of people in Chong Jihua had betrayed the Empire. From beginning to end, they thought that the company of Chong Jihua was sacrificed in the war.

And until the cult rebellion problem was resolved, the gang had never reappeared.

The Immortal Bird has lost a company, and in the sea of stars, there is an additional warband called the 'Ember Dead'. They believe in tyrants, their bodies have mutated, most of their members have grown horns, and the overall livery of the power armor is a dark red with gray streaks.

Although the number of the ashes dead is small and the establishment time is short, a lot has been done in the past twenty years.

They plundered the ships of the Empire, slaughtered entire ships, and found the ruined ships afterwards, with blood smeared in every aisle, every room, every wall; On the bridge, in the assembly square, in the chapel of the ships, and in places like that, there are blood-colored eight-pointed stars, and skulls piled up on hills. This is a typical sacrifice to the horror of abuse;

They have also assisted cultists in slaughtering the human empire world, and in the past twenty-five years, they have appeared in at least four incidents where the human world has been destroyed or the nest has been slaughtered;

They have even teamed up with several other warbands to raid an Imperial fleet loaded with genetic seed taxes handed over by the Space Marine Warband, snatching a batch of genetic seeds to be used to pollute and strengthen themselves.

They even merged with another warband and took the lead......

Bevens and the others once met with their 'old comrade-in-arms' Chong Jihua in a pirate alliance base. Chong Jihua once 'graciously' invited them to join, but they refused very hard.

The only one of them who lost their first combat brother died during the breakout.

They did defect, and even became deserters in disgrace, not living and dying with their warband. However, they may be able to afford to be called 'traitors', but they are by no means willing to go along with the seeds.

Throw yourself into chaos, believe in a tyrant of terror, and purge your own fighting brothers...... Bravins and the others really can't do such a thing, and they are ashamed to be with them.

But sometimes they also think that when the Mother Regiment's demise is in the Atonement Crusade, this universe may be left with only themselves and the ashes of the dead.

No.

The names/beliefs/liveries/logos of the people who planted Jihua have all changed, so how can they still be called immortal birds? The immortal bird, that is a symbol of indomitability, is a phoenix reborn from the ashes. The new names given by the gang were 'Ashes' and 'Dead', which was a clear abandonment of the Warband's traditions.

The immortal bird has finally come to an end.

However, just when they were wandering through the universe in a daze, not knowing where to go, or even what the meaning of their future lives was, they heard that the Mother Regiment had ended the Atonement Expedition!

But with only seven fighting brothers left, what's the point? Now the number of the mother group is even smaller than that of their gang of renegades!

However, by the time they heard the news of the Immortals, they had already been deeply integrated with a multi-star political entity called the Alliance.

The current mother group seems to be fighting for a star sector leader named 'Gu Hang'.

They didn't know what was going on in between, but judging from the latest information, the situation of the warband seemed to be unexpectedly good.

The entire battle group, not only did not look dying, but recovered quite majestic. Especially when the news of the first battle of Koroga came out, under the leadership of that Governor Gu, he actually eliminated a great demon and ended an invasion war directed by him!

Although, in that war, it was the man named Gu Hang who grabbed the greatest fame. Those who knew about the war were admiring the wisdom of the commander, the combined identity of the governor, and the great spiritual power he possessed.

However, under Gu Hang's reputation, those who have a heart can still see the contribution of the immortal bird. This group of space marines, who were supposed to perish, helped Gu Hang to a great extent, and showed a scale of at least a hundred or so people in the battle.

People who don't know about the immortal birds and don't pay attention to them may not feel that there is anything about it. But in the eyes of someone like Mr. Bravins, who has been following the situation of the parent group for decades, it is a miracle.

They knew that the warband had lost their entire arsenal, the Gene Seed Vault, in the final battle that ended the Atonement Crusade. Under such circumstances, how is it possible to grow from a scale of seven people to more than 100 people in less than ten years?

Not to mention the success rate of gene seed implantation surgery, it is impossible to have so many seeds alone!

Could it be that it was the Holy Terra, or the Martian Order, that distributed the genetic seed taxes handed over by the previous immortal birds to support the warband?

What a strange thing!

Space Marine warbands also have to pay taxes, but they don't pay imperial taxes, they don't provide taxes in kind, and they can even find empires or some casting worlds to equip. However, they still have to turn in one-tenth of all the genetic seeds produced by the warband in a certain period.

Nominally, this is so that the empire can check and monitor whether the genetic seeds of the warband are still pure and uncontaminated; In addition, it is also to 'save' the warband, so that when the warband suffers losses in the future, it can provide the previous genetic seeds to the warband to help the warband recover.

But actually...... The former may be the reason for the seriousness, but the latter is almost a fart. A regiment has not been destroyed, so what genetic seeds do you want? If there is a crisis of annihilation, then why don't I use the genetic seeds to create a new, obedient war group, but support you old groups with countless rich histories and not necessarily obedient?

It would be a fool's dream to let the empire feed back the genetic seeds it had eaten. Perhaps, it may happen on some warbands with very special identity backgrounds, but the immortal birds obviously do not belong to this category.

As a result, this really happened to the immortal bird?

No matter how unbelievable this is, but on second thought, this is the only possibility.

Martins, that kid, can you still conjure up genetic seeds out of thin air?

It is precisely because of the signs of recovery of the mother group that they, the eight 'lonely souls and wild ghosts', have the idea of coming to the mother group.

Saying this, it is to warn the mother group of the existence of the 'Ash Dead'.

As for the reality, do they have some unrealistic expectations?

That's something that only they know.

(End of chapter)