40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 763 52. Regaining Hope (IX)

The first battle.

Rafen of Bashar II held his gun tightly and jumped off a Rhino troop carrier painted red and gold. He couldn't help but be a little unbelievable about what he saw - was everything around him really just a simulated world made up of data?

He squatted down, scooped up a handful of dust with his right hand, and watched it being blown away by the wind bit by bit.
But the battlefield only gave him a short time. The gunboats of the 6th Company of the Ultramarines roared overhead, casting one destruction after another on the undulating "hills" in the distance. Hundreds of messages flashed across the upper right side of the tactical eyepiece in a few seconds, and a map automatically popped up, marking three attack targets that he and his team needed to deal with.

Rafen immediately suppressed his emotions, turned around and accurately found his team members in the crowd, without even observing with his naked eyes - his eyepiece had prepared everything thoughtfully, and he didn't need to perform any manual operation at all.

You are a truly remarkable piece of armor, Rafen thought, and walked over to his squad. They boarded three Tornado Land Speeders and set off immediately.

The first target was located 26 kilometers north of the landing site. For an anti-gravity vehicle like the Land Speeder, it only took a short time of four minutes and eleven seconds.
Flying low in the sky, Rafen turned on the scanner in manual mode. It turned out that he needed to wait another twenty seconds, so he looked down at the ground and saw a flash of green from the dark and rough ground.

Instantly, his hair stood on end, and he pulled down the joystick with his right hand, allowing the speeder to rise and avoid the direct hit of the green light, but it still grazed the anti-gravity plate at the bottom of the cockpit.

The composite ceramic steel used as the outer shell held on tenaciously for two seconds before it turned into nothingness under the effect of this terrifying light beam, and the speedboat's anti-gravity system collapsed immediately.

With a sharp warning, they inevitably began to fall, but the reliable mechanical combustion ramjet engine remained operational, giving Rafen and his gunner three precious seconds before they fell completely to the ground.

The heavy flamethrower located at the bottom of the cockpit took this opportunity to quickly start up, and the flames began to ravage the ground, completely melting the darkness and revealing the glittering -

Rafen's face suddenly twitched behind his helmet.

Without hesitation, he unbuckled the gunner's safety belt and kicked him out of the cockpit. At the same time, he exerted force on the joystick to the right, trying his best to control the speeder to make a slight turn while falling.

This saved him from a direct hit, but also caused the speeder to completely capsize after the fall.

Rafen himself had no problems. The new power armor he was wearing perfectly protected him during the crash, and was even able to provide him with more battlefield information. With just a glance to the upper left corner, Rafen would immediately know all the information he needed at the moment.

First, his gunner was fine and his vital signs were stable. Second, the No. 2 and No. 3 speeders were warming up their weapons. As long as he got away, the two heavy bombers would open fire immediately and smash any undead that emerged from the ground into sieves. Finally, and most importantly.
The speeder was about to explode, so he had to find a way to survive first.

There was a loud bang in Rafen's ears, and the heat wave caused by the disintegration of the speeder immediately enveloped him, but the propulsion force brought by the explosion made him fly out heavily.

The feeling of free falling in the air without control was not pleasant. Even the Blood Angels who were used to using flying backpacks found it difficult to endure this feeling. However, Rafen's extraordinary perception allowed him to clearly see a green beam of light chasing him during this process.

He almost laughed bitterly, the intensity of this was completely different from the two previous simulations.
The beam hit his chest armor accurately, and a sharp whistle sounded in his ears, almost deafening Rafen.

He landed heavily on the ground as fast as a thrown stone, a fishy and sweet taste surged in his throat, and the two potions built into the power armor were immediately pushed into his blood vessels, allowing him to climb up as if nothing had happened.

He looked down at his breastplate and found that a huge hole had been created there. The lining underneath had long since disappeared, but his skin and flesh were completely intact.
After thinking about it carefully, Rafen discovered that the biggest reason for his vomiting blood was actually the explosion of the speeder, not the hit this time.

The new armor is indeed extraordinary, he thought in awe, but his hands did not slow down at all, and he immediately raised his gun to be on guard.

Two speeders flew over his head, heavy bombs whizzing towards the flaming crash site, smashing some Necrons that had crawled out of some underground facility into pieces - seeing this scene, Rafen had mixed emotions.

On the one hand, he was happy to see these terrifying aliens being destroyed, but on the other hand, he instinctively thought that this was unlikely to happen in actual combat.
Could heavy bombs really destroy the material that made up their bodies so easily?

Recalling what he had read in the pre-war meeting, Rafen couldn't help but frown, but he pulled the trigger.

Four seconds later, he met up with the gunner who was running towards him, and the two began to advance on the ground in tacit cooperation, while the speeder boat provided suppressive fire overhead.

Soon, this group of Undeads that lost their ambush advantage were completely destroyed by the powerful firepower of the two speed attack boats. The first goal was achieved, but what next?

Without a speeder, Rafen and his gunner were doomed to be separated from the squad. They stood at the entrance of the destroyed tomb, watching the two speeders leave and waiting for the arrival of the main force.

The three companies of the Blood Angels and the Eighth Company of the Ultramarines will arrive in the vicinity in a few minutes and set up simple fortifications.

According to the main tasks at the pre-war meeting, Rafen could roughly guess Robert Guilliman's idea. He probably wanted to use this simulated battle to test the actual advancement combat capabilities of the Ultramarines and the Blood Angels. For this reason, even the support and supplies of this simulation were restricted.

Maybe it's not enough.
Rafen thought, but suddenly there was a buzzing sound in his ears. It was the warning function of the power armor. It combined with his intuition to become a force far more powerful than the scanner or simple danger perception.

Coincidentally, the gunner standing on Rafen's right also heard the sound, but his reaction was not fast enough, or rather, he was more irritable - when Rafen fell forward to avoid it, he turned around reflexively and raised the grenade launcher in his hand.

Then, his head was destroyed by a beam of deep green light.

Rafen quickly stood up and turned around, firing repeatedly based on instinct. However, it was not until the fifth bomb flew out of the muzzle that he could see clearly what the enemies who crawled out from under the destroyed tomb were.

They were not Necrons, but real flesh and blood, but they all had some weirdness, such as the obviously elongated hands and feet and the large number of suture marks on the skin, and the extremely painful faces and screams.
Explosive shells rained down upon one of them, and it fell over with a sigh of relief.

Rafen stared at its corpse unconsciously, and saw fragments of the uniforms of the Imperial Auxiliary Army in a pool of broken flesh and blood.

He knew at once what these things were, or what they had been.

Rage came over him, engulfing him like more of the deep green light.

Rafen woke up in the intense feeling of weightlessness, but he couldn't move. He was carried out of the simulation cabin by the pharmacist and placed on the medical platform for diagnosis. The glaring white light made him dizzy, but the anger never disappeared. Until Sanguinius' voice sounded from the headphones he was wearing.

"You all read the information given by General Belisarius Cawl during the pre-war meeting. He clearly wrote about what the Necrons might do to our people, but you were still blinded by anger. Besides, if you chose to hide, you might be able to hold out longer, Rafen."

".I apologize, Primarch."

"No need to apologize," Sanguinius said calmly. "This was just a mock battle, designed to find out what is missing. But the low intensity of the first two battles seems to have made you a little overconfident, thinking that the Undead are not a problem for such a large army."

Rafen fell silent in shame, but Sanguinius' voice softened.

"Have a good rest, my son. When the simulation is over, I will point out your problems one by one, especially your behavior of letting the speeder hover over the target point at a low altitude."

Rafen closed his eyes and swallowed more words. On the other end of the communication, Sanguinius also left the channel with a frown on his face.

He was facing a huge wall made up of many monitors, the images on which were constantly changing and switching, cutting the entire simulated battlefield into hundreds of separate perspectives for him to watch and review.

The one in the lower right corner belongs to Rafen, but he has fallen into darkness, which means he has died in the simulation. In a few seconds, a new signal will be connected, giving Sanguinius another Blood Angel's perspective.
This is another benefit of simulated warfare. Anyone can become a window, allowing Sanguinius to observe everything from a new perspective.

Of course, he was not in a good mood at the moment. The war had only just begun for a short eleven minutes and forty-two seconds, and the number of casualties of the Blood Angels had reached sixty-nine.

Thirty-two of them died in ambushes, seventeen died in crossfire, and the remaining twenty died in various ways.

Some, like Rafen and his gunner, chose not to stay away from the tomb and were annihilated by the enemy. Some were surrounded and killed in battle during their missions. There were even two recruits who thought they could use chainswords to fight head-on with the phase blades of the Necromancers.
There are just too many problems.

Sanguinius raised his hand and rubbed his brow, having lost the desire to continue watching. Such damage had just occurred at the beginning of the war, and he didn't even need to think about how it would develop in the future.

He turned around and walked towards another huge wall, his eyes also fixed on a figure as tall as him.

"Robert," he called. "How's it going over there?"

The Lord of Five Hundred Worlds did not look back, but raised his right hand, motioning him to come over and take a look.

Sanguinius couldn't help but sigh after watching for only a few minutes - he was right, the Ultramarines had the same problem as the Blood Angels, but their reaction speed was obviously faster.
Their data analytics capabilities are working.

"How many more theoretical models will be born from the minds of your descendants?" Sanguinius asked humorously.

"No matter how many there are, they will not be defeated." Guilliman replied in a low voice. "Just by increasing the strength from three to seven, they made so many mistakes."

He paused for a moment, and there was suddenly a hint of anger in his voice.

"I have stressed this many times before the battle, but it seems not enough. We must use a real defeat to make them wake up completely. Even with new armor, new weapons, and such a large fleet, their strength is still immature in front of the undead."

Sanguinius had wanted to express similar views as he did, but after hearing what Robert Guilliman said, the Archangel was unable to speak.

After a brief silence, he even began to defend them.

"Plans can never keep up with changes, Robert. You know that anything can happen on the battlefield. Moreover, we have imposed many restrictions on them. Not to mention the significant reduction in firepower, if we had not turned off the Faith Shield function of the new power armor, many people would not have died at all."

"There's no need to make up for them, brother. According to what you said, we might as well go into battle ourselves and beat these data hard on the simulated battlefield to vent our anger. Don't forget our purpose. We raised the simulation intensity to level seven in order to review their combat capabilities under extreme circumstances. Otherwise, why not advance steadily?"

After saying this, Guilliman shook his head in disappointment, staring at the countless images in front of him, and fell silent. However, strangely enough, the flickering light from the walls on both sides illuminated the space as bright as day, but there was always darkness not far behind the two Primarchs.
After several minutes, Roboute Guilliman turned and walked towards the darkness.

"Okay." He said with a frown. "I agree with your battle plan."

A man walked out of the darkness, his face was pale and his smile was warm. He was not wearing a coat, and his thin shirt and rolled-up sleeves made him look like he should not be in this serious place, especially since he had five rusty and damaged short blades hanging around his waist like a joke.
However, whether it was the Lord of the Five Hundred Worlds or the Archangel of Baal, they were all staring at him, waiting for his answer.

"Um"

Smiling, Caryl Rohals uttered a groan.

"Actually, I don't really want to call the plan I proposed a plan, Robert. I don't have a plan. I just ask you to throw me into the middle of the battlefield."

His words were perfectly executed, despite Robert Guillimando's reluctance.

Two natural months later, the combined fleet that jumped out from Mandeville Point arrived at a desolate star field, but did not move.

A few minutes later, a shuttle flew out from the side of one of the warships and headed straight for a covered world.

On that world, a meeting of the Necrons was being held.

(End of this chapter)