40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 736 28. Insurmountable (I)

Kius Solani used his tactical dagger to lift up a piece of bent and rusted metal plate, revealing a pipe running across the hole under the deck like a huge silver python.

It divided the hole into three spaces of different sizes. A black shoulder bag and a glass jar filled with banknotes were stuffed into two of them by some unknown means, and a stack of photos was taped to the smaller one.

Kius stood up and looked back at a man who was standing behind him with his head down and his legs trembling. He suddenly stretched out his knife-holding hand and pointed to the center of the pipe, where there was a conspicuous dark red stain.

He asked: "What is this?"

The man murmured a few trembling sounds and buried his head even lower. The pipe made a loud noise at the right time, which startled him all over, and then he collapsed to the ground, shaking his head unconsciously. After a long while, he covered his face and finally gave an answer.

“Blood.”

Inside the cabin, a woman screamed. If a pair of large hands had not suddenly reached out and supported her, the poor mother would have fallen to the ground, her life or death would not be known.

The hands that supported her were wrapped in purple armor, broad and strong. The owner was not wearing a helmet, revealing a young and even immature face. He was looking at the woman with concern, and only let go of her hand when she stood up on her own initiative.

"You monster!"

The mother started yelling at the man, tears streaming down her face and her voice so deafening that one wondered if she was screaming with her life.

Kius raised his hand to hold her shoulder, took a step back, and stood between her and the man, then asked again, his voice calm but somewhat emotionless.

"You can choose to tell the truth now, or we will hand you over to the captain and let the sailors judge you - you are an old sailor, Labis Hughes, I believe you know what is important."

The man called Rabbi Hughes suddenly stopped trembling, and after a few seconds, he made a thin sound from his palms.

".Okay, sir, I admit that I killed the child."

"How to kill?"

The man lowered his hands, and the pair of eyes revealed from beneath his sweaty hair were filled with a mixture of wild animal-like cowering and ferocity - the former coming from his fear of Astartes, and the latter coming from his memories.

Suddenly, he calmed down.

"Inertia." He said lightly, uttering a word, but his eyes wanted to look past Kius and find the mother's face. "I picked her up, held her upside down, held one of her legs and smashed the pipe hard until she died."

He spoke with a slurred voice, and muddy saliva came out from between his almost atrophied front teeth, and then he actually smiled. This smile made the young warrior standing behind his mother clench his fists immediately, but Kius remained calm.

Through the eyepiece, he recorded the man's crimes truthfully and appeared quite patient.

"What's the reason, Rabbi Hughes?" he asked. "What made you do this?"

The man looked up at him and became a little impatient.

"Why else? It's too noisy, sir. How could I know that a child of a few months old wouldn't even sleep well? She disturbed me, that's it - I'm done, you can kill her or chop her up as you please. Oh, by the way, I threw her into the garbage duct outside when I was done."

After saying this, he spat on the ground. The fear he had before completely disappeared, leaving only extreme indifference.
From that look, Kius knew that this man was beyond help. He didn't care whether his future fate was death or slavery, he just wanted to end this conversation quickly.

The corporal shook his head.

He knew that he could do nothing to him - unless he tortured him, this man would no longer show any fear. An old sailor like him who had served on the Imperial Navy warship for more than ten years had already lost most of his humanity due to the war.

But the mother didn't.

He raised his foot, broke Rabbi Hughes' knee, then rolled it twice. Amid his screams and curses, he turned around and handed the dagger in his hand to the mother.

The latter grabbed the weapon that she needed to hold with both hands, and without even looking at him, rushed straight towards the old sailor. Blood splattered, and Kius led the new members of his team out of the room, closed the door, dispersed the crowd, and then began to wait.

After a few short yet long minutes, the woman, whose body was soaked in blood, woodenly opened the door and walked out. She glanced at Kius, threw the knife at his feet, and walked to the other end of the corridor without looking back.

The garbage pipe inlet was rumbling and the wind was whistling.

The darkness swallowed her completely.

"Let's go," the corporal said. "Our mission is over. We need to inform the captain."

"That's it?" the young battle-brother asked in disbelief.

"That's it," said the corporal.

He turned around and walked away without looking back. The young brother quickly followed him, still asking questions.

"But, but—what about her?"

"We have done everything we can for her, Sarron. You have to understand that the patrol is not over yet, and handling such a murder case is actually not within our authority. If she hadn't stopped us suddenly, her revenge would have been taken." Sarron fell silent and his pace slowed down. Without turning around, Kius could guess what his expression was. He was not surprised by this, but just a little emotional - I actually have this kind of leisure time?
The past slowly emerged before my eyes.

Today, his service time has reached an awkward number of twenty-three, and will soon be twenty-four. There were some open-minded people among the Emperor's children who joked about this, saying that the service period from twenty to fifty was the easiest for an Astartes to die in battle, and that the period from twenty to fifty was the most dangerous.

This statement is absurd, but if you think about it carefully, it is true.

Twenty years of training and wars were enough for the Astartes to reach the first small peak in their lives. Twenty years of fighting, how much honor could be created? No matter who it was, looking back on the past would definitely be a little proud.

There is nothing wrong with that, but it depends on how long it takes them to realize that their twenty years of service actually meant nothing. Only those who can realize this can live longer.

He walked into the elevator leading directly to the bridge, and Sarron followed closely behind him, and they ascended all the way to the bridge.

It didn't take Kius long to narrate this little episode to his patrol partner, who was slightly shocked at first, but soon his expression turned gloomy.

For any captain, encountering such a vicious incident of deliberate infanticide on their ship would probably make them as furious as she was. This incident might not shake their path to promotion, but if it was not handled properly, it would definitely cause a big mess on the ship.

If they do not enter the subspace, the sailing time of the Imperial ships will easily start from half a year, so there must be bottom lines and rules to restrain those who stray from the law.

Ordinary merchant ships and cargo ships may be a little bit unrestrained, allowing the bottom line to be relaxed, drinking every day, taking turns, and the more unscrupulous ones may even set up some places at the bottom of the cabin specifically for "relaxation". But warships are different, and military discipline is not just talk.

For the old sailor Labbie Hughes, whose behavior was almost a deliberate provocation to the law and conscience, he died so cleanly, which was probably a kind of luck for him. If the mother hadn't done it, I'm afraid the captain would have ordered someone to tie him up and broadcast a radio to the whole ship to hold a trial.
"Thank you for helping me solve this problem."

Reva Black, the captain of the Moon-class cruiser the Conspiracy Defeater, thanked Kius with a grim face, and just by looking at the expression of the female captain, the corporal knew that she would inevitably cause trouble for the sailors who were responsible for handling the garbage.

He nodded, saluted with the Skyhawk, and left the bridge directly, returning to the small area of ​​the battleship reserved for them to train and live.

It was located in the middle of the cabin. Unlike other places in the ship, the thermostat here was turned off at the request of Kius, so the temperature was very cold. The mechanical heat that should have seeped out of the wall had already been frozen into a thin layer of ice, not to mention the ground.
Stopping in front of a door, Kius put his hand on its verification valve and then pushed the door open. Inside, Bastarar and the one-eyed Ramitz, who had been on a patrol mission with him, were lying on their beds with their eyes closed in deep thought.

This was strange, because the patrol squads of the Emperor's Sons were usually three people, and they would never select those battle brothers who had served for less than five years to join the team. But Sarron was a special case. He not only broke many training records, but also showed strong combat capabilities in the most difficult simulated battles.

For this reason, Sol Tarvitz personally spoke up and made an exception to allow him to participate in this patrol. However, even so, there were many voices of disapproval from top to bottom in the legion.

Some people think that he is only sixteen years old at most. Even if he is fully mature physically and even performs much better than they did when they were recruits, he should not be allowed to step into the battlefield now. Others think that as the first successful case of the Primaris Astartes, he should stay in the Legion to provide more valuable research data.
These never-ending arguments ceased until Fulgrim expressed his opinion.

Kius walked into the room, to the corner, and came to a seemingly ordinary workbench.

Without seeing him move, several mechanical tentacles stretched out from the suddenly cracked table top and began to dismantle his power armor and reassemble it on the armor rack beside him.

He was not used to this. In the past, when he was out on patrol, he would only take off his armor when he needed maintenance. After all, it was very troublesome to put on and take off the power armor without help. But the great sage Belisarius Cawl generously gave him many of his personal research before he left, and this synthetic machine for taking off armor was one of them.

Thanks to him, the emperor's sons can now take off their armor quickly and easily within a dozen seconds. If nothing else, at least they can read books normally.

Of course, Kius had another reason for doing this - they had completed a year-long patrol and would land in Chemos in a day and a half.

Moreover, this patrol was also fruitful. First, they struck some elusive Eldar pirates, and then they quelled a rebellion. On the way back, they even encountered a cargo ship that was smuggling a large amount of Macragge wine without a license.

The person behind this matter is not only quite capable, being able to get thousands of bottles of authentic red wine in less than ten years after the Five Hundred Worlds returned, but he is also very bold and careful.

He used a cargo ship as a cover, made arrangements along the way, constantly exchanged cargo for short voyages, and actually managed to transport the wine to the point where it was almost close to the solar system in the most low-key and lengthy way without an escort.
Unfortunately, he calculated too much and overlooked the possibility that people might steal from the company. The captain of the cargo ship was also unlucky. He had just landed at a transit dock in the Chemos system and sold less than 200 bottles of Macragge red wine when he was hit by the Conspiracy Defeater, which was moored along the way for maintenance.

The name of the ship really lives up to its name.

Closing his eyes, Kius lay on his back, feeling the tranquility of his bed, and thinking back to what he had witnessed from Sarron along the way.

As the leader of this patrol, he was given a special mission by Saul Tarvitz, who wanted him to observe the performance of their first Primaris, not just in combat, but also in daily training.

Kius had no objection to this, and he carried out the legion commander's orders meticulously, but Sarron's performance left him impeccable. Once the young boy entered the battle, he showed no mercy and learned very quickly.

When he first fought the Eldar, he hesitated for half a second because of their speed. However, after just two rounds, he adapted to the speed of the aliens and used his combat experience that was totally inconsistent with his years of service to easily kill the Eldar one after another with a nearly predictable defensive counterattack.
Moreover, he did not relax at all during his daily training. Even now, when the three seniors had closed their eyes and rested to wait for the ship to land and the patrol was over, he was still wearing his armor, wielding his sword deep in this vast training ground and dormitory, fighting against imaginary enemies.

Listening to the sharp sound of the sword, Kius revealed a barely perceptible smile.

He was already a little impatient, wishing he could tell the Legion and the Primarch right now that their 'First Cast' was a son of the Emperor who should make him proud - until a violent collision almost shook him off the bed.

The corporal quickly stood up, looked at the two old team members with a gloomy face, and then strode towards the workbench.

He would never say it, but he would admit to himself that he had just suspected that his act of removing his armor during the voyage had brought bad luck.
Half a minute later, they rushed out of the room fully armed, and at the same time, the voice of Captain Reva Black was heard in the communication channel.

"It's the Eldar pirates again, guys! They're boarding us!"

The corporal narrowed his eyes - good, he just had something to get angry about.

(End of this chapter)