40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 771 59. Regaining Hope (XVI)
Orikan was not actually familiar with war - his race had indeed fought two extremely horrific wars, but what did that have to do with him?
At that time, he was just a powerless astronomer. Although he was born into a family full of soldiers and warriors, his weak body could not support him to join the army, so he had to turn to other fields.

Orikan still remembers his father's expression when the doctors told him that he was not fit to join the army. Even after so long, it still makes him feel a pang in his heart and a lump in his throat.
He had argued with his father about this many times, and had yelled at him a few times, but more often than not they just had a conversation, with neither of them losing their composure. They just sat at opposite ends of a table and talked calmly to each other.

On one occasion, my father said, I hope you join the army, even if it means you will die on the training ground, but at least our family's honor and tradition can be maintained.

From then on, Orikan never spoke to his father again, until everything became irreversible.

It's like a previous life, the astrologer thought dazedly.

Hot blood spurted from the ape's shattered body, staining his ribs red. The living metal was still trying to repair itself, but even with such a heavy loss as the loss of half of his body, even they were unable to do anything, and at best they could only restore his hands, which had been broken by the attacker's capture.
But, for now, this is enough.

Orikan pulled his hands out of the mud and sand and grabbed an ape that happened to run past him.

The huge power of his high-level undead body made his ten fingers dig deep into the flesh of the thing like knives, and also lifted him up. It screamed and turned around, with a ferocious face, trying to flip Orikan to the ground.

This thing is truly hideous. It doesn't look like a human, but the savagery and cruelty in the depths of its eyes are similar to those of humans, or even worse.

Fortunately, Orikan was prepared. He took the initiative to pierce its body with his right hand, and forced it to fall to the ground with severe pain.

The surroundings were extremely noisy, with roars and the muffled sound of gunfire echoing around the entire coast. The ground was shaking and even the mud and sand became boiling hot, but Orikan was concentrating on controlling the beast.

The properties of living metal gave his body an extremely high hardness. Although they could not compete with power weapons, compared with flesh and blood, they were no different from swords.

After a minute and a half, Orikan succeeded in temporarily taming it.

He used violence and inescapable pain to force it to learn to obey, and then he briefly had two legs, although these legs were smelly and bleeding, but at least he could move without slowly sinking in the mud and sand and being trampled deeper by the passing animals.

He controlled the half-dead ape and forced it to move him to the edge of the battlefield, where he found the Mechanical Sage who was protecting a group of human civilians.

The latter showed no surprise at his strange movement. The tentacles on his back stood up to help him overlook the entire battlefield and provide some intelligence support to the adjutants of the Star Claw. A team of auxiliary soldiers in military uniforms spread out and surrounded him and the civilians, shooting continuously.
They were not as calm as the sage about Orikan's arrival. Fortunately, the sage seemed to say something to them, preventing them from shooting at Orikan's mount.

Of course, even if they opened fire, it would only advance what Orikan had to do by a dozen seconds.

He forced the monkey to rush in front of the sage, then immediately pulled out his left hand and stabbed its brain stem from the back of its neck, destroying its ability to move. He then pulled out his right hand, pinched the cervical vertebrae with both hands and twisted it gently, ending its life.

To be fair, Orikan rarely kills, and it can even be said that he has hardly killed anything directly, but he did not feel the slightest bit strange when doing this, as if he was born to do this.
The Astrologer looked at his bloody metal fingers in confusion, then looked up from the still warm ape corpse at the Mechanical Sage, sorted out his thoughts, and then spoke.

"Listen to me, we have to leave quickly."

"I agree with you, Astrologer, but I'm afraid I can't change Adjutant Huron's mind. He's a very stubborn man, as you probably already know."

Sage Kaplan answered, his synthesized voice was emotionless, even more like a soulless machine than Orikan. In contrast, there was a bulge under his red robe on his back, and a lot of white high-temperature steam was emanating from it.

Orikan could tell at a glance that he was in an 'overload' state.

The astrologer looked back at the chaotic battlefield, then looked up at the upside-down snow-capped mountains, and couldn't help but sigh like a living person.

"Are all of you humans so stubborn?" he complained. "Can't you sacrifice some of yourself in exchange for the survival of others?"

"Cold calculation, but also reasonable and logical - but, unfortunately, astrologer."

The sage lowered his head from mid-air. On his fleshless face, two mechanical eyes emitting a ruthless red light were staring coldly at Orikan.

"Sacrifice is the cornerstone of the empire." He said slowly. "However, there is a prerequisite. The sacrifice must be voluntary, otherwise it is not a sacrifice."

Orikan was almost amused. There could be thousands of reasons why he didn't laugh, including surprise, admiration, and disgust, but he didn't want to care about any of them. He just wanted to continue asking questions.

"Don't you think this view is too stupid?"

"I think," Kaplan said. "Unfortunately, I'm human—and you obviously can't understand that."

"Your technological level is so advanced that you can see everything in this world from a detached perspective. Extreme arrogance and egoism, even you cannot escape this influence. But we are different. Since leaving our home planet, the fate of mankind has never been smooth sailing. There may have been a few peaks, but most of the time, we were just rolling in the mud, beaten with sticks and covered in blood."

The Sage returned to the air and threw out his last words.

".One of my colleagues once suggested that the ancestors of mankind were foolish enough to choose to stand up once and for all. Is this interesting enough for you, astrologer?"

Orikan looked at him, countless words popped into his mind, but he couldn't say a single one.

Six minutes and forty-two seconds later, snowy mountains and glaciers descended from the sky, taking over the responsibility of the monkey group that arrived first, and submerged everything.
-
Cato Sicarius stood up slowly but powerfully.

He forced himself to do this, for no other reason than that he was slightly injured.
Well, maybe more than 'a little', as a Necron warrior had nearly paralyzed him in hand-to-hand combat.

The creature was dead now, its head and body torn apart, its reactor shut down, but Sicarius would never forget the terrifying power it had demonstrated in that brief encounter.

Unlike the undead that appeared in the simulation, the alien that had just died at his hands possessed two completely contradictory qualities during the fight - brutality and nobility.

It tried its best to kill Sicarius, but did not resort to sneak attacks. Instead, it proactively reminded Sicarius of its presence before pouncing on him.

Sicarius took a complicated look at its corpse, and finally chose to admit that it was a worthy opponent.

But why does it do this? Or, why do they do this?
One hour, seventeen minutes, and forty-two seconds had passed since the start of the war, and the timer suspended at the edge of Sicarius's vision was still ticking steadily.

And in this hour or so, every undead that Sicarius met was an enemy that would make people unconsciously admire him - there is no room for lies at the moment of life and death, and a person's character will be revealed thoroughly at such a time.

He raised his hand and touched his broken breastplate. The low hum of the armor told him apologetically: I'm sorry that you were hurt.

No problem, no problem, Sicarius thought.

It fought well. It planned several rounds of confrontation in advance for that final elbow strike. I won because I had you. If it weren't for you, I would be dead now.

The armor responded with a surge of warmth.

Behind the helmet, Sicarius smiled unconsciously, but still said nothing, even though his sternum was still in terrible pain.

If someone asks him, he will admit that the feeling of being hurt is actually not bad.

After becoming an Astartes, every time I wake up from sleep, I feel like I have become a god. The contrast between my former mortal body and my current transformed body is too strong. After putting on power armor, I will be pushed to an unimaginable height.
He needed a little external force to knock him down so that he could understand that he was still just a human being.

And as a human being, he needs companions.

Sicarius groaned, clutching his chest, and crouched down to retrieve his weapon, a combat dagger.

His power sword had been damaged in the recent battle, reduced to useless dust by the Necrons' weapons, and his bolter had long since emptied its magazines, quivering in frustration and silence on the magnetic link at his waist.

So, in theory, Sicarius now only has two weapons: himself, and this combat dagger.

He stared at its blade for a few seconds, then gripped it tightly and leaned forward.

At first, the battlefield was desolate with nothing but rolling hills and dust covering the ground, but the situation soon changed.

After the gunboats and aircraft were shot down; after the tanks and armored vehicles were blown up; after the ground was bombed into a huge sunken crater filled with smoke and dust, everything changed.

Sicarius moved forward cautiously. He and his team were separated, or more precisely, they were dispersed.

A group of undeads who had been waiting for a long time used a strict but ancient foot-fighting method to force them to flee in all directions - spearmen were in front, advancing slowly with shields, and archers were behind, but they did not throw arrows, but fired deadly decomposition waves.

Although this battle method was too ancient, it was not something he and his team could deal with without a vehicle. They had no choice but to disperse and then reunite.

However, the enemy had probably anticipated this situation, and as soon as they dispersed, their armor began to sound an alarm.

First the scanner failed, then the radar failed, and finally a continuous war cry came from the communication channel - not a human war cry, but a roar of the undead in their own language, which sounded strange, but was no less powerful than that of humans.

In fact, the roar continued until now. As long as Sicarius chose not to close the communication channel, he would have to keep listening to it.

Do you want to turn off the communication channel? Armor asked.

No. Not relevant, Sicarius thought. Keep it, I want to hear it.

The armor agreed meekly, but also expressed apprehension in a subtle way - with a burst of uneasiness that went straight to his nerves.

Sicarius chose to ignore it. He climbed over a troop carrier that had been blown into scrap metal and continued forward, making almost no sound.

This is not something the Ultramarines are supposed to learn in their training, in fact, it originated from a physician of the Jairzinho Guzmán Medical Association named Serral, a Raven Guard.

Not long ago, he finished his exchange study and returned to his brothers, officially becoming a pharmacist. Sicarius sincerely wished him a smooth future, but he also longed to see him again.
To him, Serral was not only his savior who had saved his life many times, but also a rare friend with whom he could talk openly without caring about his identity.

I hope I did a good job and didn't disappoint you, Sicarius thought, and then he became more careful with his steps. For the next eleven minutes, he moved completely silently and at a very fast speed, almost a trot.

With this speed, he reached the assembly point designated when they separated without much effort - the place where several Thunderhawks crashed.

The ground here has become very strange because of their crash, but because of this strangeness, it has become a good place to hide.

Sicarius crouched down and dove into the deepest part of the debris and rubble, and then had a gun pressed against his back.

“I’m going to kill you,” Sicarius whispered.

He got a weak chuckle and turned to see Uriel Ventress with a bloody face.

He was very proud of this bad joke, but it could not hide the fact that he was injured. Unlike Sicarius, his injury was more obvious and more severe.

The bright blue of his armor had turned dark black, and his belt had melted away, leaving traces of melted armor all over his body, as if he had been struck by lightning.
At one glance, Sicarius knew that he had been hit by the lightning weapon of the undead.

"How are you?"

Sicarius held him with concern, supported him, and followed his guidance to a place where they could hide - a Thunderhawk cabin that was half embedded in the ground.

"Not very good," Uriel Ventress said. "You don't know what it feels like to get hit by that. I felt like I was being roasted."

Sicarius looked down at the melted marks on his body, nodded, agreed to this, and then put him down so that he could sit against the wall of the cabin.

"How long have you been waiting here?"

"Twenty-six minutes."

"What about the others? Any news?"

“Nothing—you’re the first living person I’ve seen,” Ventress said. “Given our mission, I think we can wait no longer than fourteen minutes.”

Sicarius said nothing.

"Captain," Ventress drawled. "Are you considering my opinion?"

"No."

"Then you'd better think about it right away."

"Do not."

Ventress frowned, raised her head, looked at Sicarius carefully, then tutted and shook her head.

"Since when did you become so stubborn?"

“Perhaps I have been since the beginning,” Sicarius said calmly. “Twenty minutes, wait another twenty minutes.”

"Waiting six more minutes would multiply the risk of exposure - have you noticed their numbers are increasing? That means they're getting closer. These Necrons aren't as stupid as the ones we encountered in the simulation, and they fight."

Ventsit paused, and uttered the second half of the sentence amid the bloody smell overflowing from his mouth and nose: ".Extraordinarily brave."

Sicarius chose to remain silent again, so Ventress stopped talking and took out her only three magazines and gave two to Sicarius.

He looked like he was dead as he leaned against the cabin. His face was frighteningly pale, and his eyes, which were always bright in the past, were now dim. However, his hands were still steady and his words were still clear.

"What should we do after we gather? How do we break out?"

"East," Sicarius said. He had already observed the surrounding terrain on the way to the meeting point. "That place has been bombed by them, and it is devastated. The Necrons are absolutely clear about the lethality of their weapons. Since they choose to use that kind of firepower, they are very unlikely to conduct a detailed search afterwards. Let's go there and then take a detour back to the outpost."

Ventress nodded, and her breathing became more pronounced. This change immediately caught Sicarius's attention, and he moved closer to him, forcing a brief medical examination despite the latter's struggles. As expected, Ventress injected herself with one of the combat potions.

This incident immediately aroused Sicarius's great anger, but he suppressed it and said nothing.

Eighteen minutes later, Pasanius Lesani arrived at the assembly point dragging an injured leg.

He was dirty all over, his blond hair was full of ashes, pale ashes, and he looked extremely depressed.
"them--"

The young battle-brother opened his mouth in agony, but could not continue, and Sicarius and Ventress bowed their heads in mourning.

Two minutes later, the three were on their way again. This time, the journey was smooth and unimpeded. They took an extra thirty-three minutes to return to the outpost. Through the restored communications, they handed over all the intelligence they had obtained to the Fourth Captain Idaeos, who then came to his Primarch's temporary command table and informed him of the intelligence.

Roboute Guilliman nodded slowly.

"Sure enough," he said. "The old guy also noticed that we didn't deploy too many troops on the flanks and he was testing us."

"Let me go." Another Primarch at the command table spoke immediately, with wings slightly raised behind him.

"No," said Guilliman. "Let the Black Templars go, you go to the front, brother, I want you to teach his main force a lesson."

Sanguinius narrowed his eyes, saluted solemnly, and took off on the spot. The deafening sound echoed around him, which seemed very unreal. Guilliman looked up until his brother's figure completely disappeared in the sky, and then he turned his eyes back to his command table.

After three minutes of thinking, he put forward a tactical hypothesis to Idaeos.

"How about we use air force to drop a small number of Galaxy Guards and their automatic bunker-building machines to the far end of the front line?" he said suddenly.

(End of this chapter)