40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 837. 8. NEWVERMORE (Part Two)

It waited silently in the darkness.

There was no breathing, no heartbeat, no sound of life, only deathly silence. It was familiar with this quiet, almost enjoying it, but it had lost this privilege of life.

It just waits.

How much time has passed? It doesn't know. Where is this place? It doesn't know.

The only thing that could be considered a memory in its empty and hollow mind was a barren, pitch-black planet.

The mere thought of it evokes a strong longing within it.

Go back. It thought. It had to go back.

Darkness agreed.
-
The miners' foreman, Nadal, bent down, picked up a pile of unremarkable black ore, and carefully moved it into the back of the hovercraft behind him.

The driver leaned against the door, a cigarette dangling from his lips. The sweat from the sweltering heat and his impatience was ravaging his already ugly face, leaving it with only a trace of human appearance.

He took the crumpled cigarette with his deformed left hand, limped over to Nadal, glanced at the back of the table, and asked, "Your haul today doesn't seem too good, does it?"

“I haven’t been able to travel even once this month,” Nadal replied with a slightly somber tone. “This vein has basically been exhausted.”

The driver reached out and gripped the edge of the truck bed, carefully examining the dark stones before letting out a sigh.

He turned his head and said, "Once all the mines are mined, we'll have to invite the Red Robes again."

Nadal angrily removed his heavy helmet, tucked it under his arm, and replied in a rather displeased tone, "I'd rather they hadn't come at all."

"Why?" the driver asked, staring at him in confusion.

“I hate them, and those machines,” Nadal said, spitting on the ground. “When I was a kid, I could hear those monstrous things howling every day. I would cry whenever they howled, and when I cried, my mom would hit me and burn the soles of my feet with a red-hot spatula. I never want to see them again in my life.”

"But the person who hit you was your mother, right? And isn't your mother dead? Why do you hate them?" The driver became even more confused.

Nadal's expression became somewhat indescribable. He didn't say anything more, but simply gestured for the driver to get in the car.

He turned around and quickly counted the number of his companions who were collecting tools and preparing to evacuate in a large hovercraft not far away.

They've been working for him for twenty-four years. This line of work is tough, it's always been so. People die almost every day. There's generous compensation, but once someone's dead, they're dead, and there's no room for negotiation.

Even a god as holy as the emperor was beaten by the great rebel Horus and remained seated on his throne for ten thousand years.

Nadal counted the number of people twice more, then took a pack of cigarettes out of the inside pocket of his work clothes and tossed it to his deputy.

The latter smiled and accepted it, making a gesture, thus completing the silent exchange.

Watching him walk into the crowd and smoke, Nadal took out his last two cigarettes, slowly walked to the front of the car, and sat in the passenger seat.

He tossed one of the cigarettes to the driver, who grinned and extinguished the one he was smoking, then took out a makeshift lighter and handed it to Nadal.

Amidst the flickering flames, the old hover truck let out a strange cry and began to move forward in the darkness.

Thanks to the height of their hovercars off the ground, they didn't have to endure the bumps and jolts of the uneven terrain, but the barren plain still found another way to torment them—the ubiquitous, massive monuments.

Most of them are made of stone, with a few made of synthetic materials. They wait silently in their path, slowly revealing themselves, covered with dense engravings that extend from the bottom to the towering top.

Every monument is a list.

Ten thousand years ago, the people of Salvation lived in an excellent and responsive political system. They were each other's providers, and any problems they encountered could be resolved quickly. But ten thousand years later, the miracles they had built with their own hands are gone, everything they owned has vanished, and even their own names have not been preserved.

Only these monuments, covered with irregular scratches, can prove they were once here. Each mark represents a life.

Nadal had some schooling, and he knew that these monuments were built by the Red Robes.

He disliked them, finding them cold and inhuman, but he also understood that this was merely due to his own prejudice—if they were truly as he imagined them, these monuments would not have risen from the ground and stood here.

"How much longer?" Nadal asked, extinguishing his cigarette and putting it back in his pocket.

The driver looked up at a device hanging above his head, found what he was looking for among a long string of rapidly scrolling readings, and then answered.

"If you're tired, you can take a nap, buddy. We've got to take a longer route. The old shortcut is closed today; a huge herd of mutant beasts is migrating there."

"Again?" Nadal asked, slightly surprised.

The driver jerked the steering wheel sharply to the left, his tone tinged with emotion.

"They migrated sixteen times in two weeks. Who can figure out what's wrong with these pathetic little bastards with their tiny brains?"

I doubt anyone can figure it out. Nadal thought.

The term "mutant beast" is actually a broad and general term. Any animal that looks strange, has a short lifespan, or a bad temper can be given this name in the eyes of the saviors, and the attempt to classify them has been proven futile hundreds of centuries ago.

The reason is simple: their genes are just too unstable.

In just a few months, these creatures can completely renew their populations from the inside out at a speed that defies the laws of biology. This is largely due to their origins and the environments in which they live.

The mutants originated from the radiation left behind by the weapons of mass destruction that the Raven Guardians dropped on the surface of the planet Salvation, but what truly made them look the way they do today are the vast areas of land that are now uninhabited.

To this day, 62 percent of the surface of the planet Salvation remains beyond repair and reconstruction. Humans cannot adapt to the environment, while mutant beasts can, but at an astonishing cost.
However, they are not pests; in most cases, they live away from people.

Nadal turned his helmet upside down over his head, pressed the adjustment knob on the seat, and lay down, intending to take a nap. He quickly closed his eyes and began to wander through his past memories with a clear mind.

He recalled his terrible childhood, his deceased father, and his perpetually grieving mother—who had always been impatient with him and spoke to him terribly, as if they were enemies rather than mother and son.
But her mother never left.

She raised him with her father's pension, sent him to school, and taught him how to survive in this terrible world.

Three years after he became a miner, she died quietly at home, dressed neatly, clutching their family's only family photo: him as an infant, his beautiful and gentle mother in her youth, and his father in his dirty work clothes.

Nadal is not the only one who has experienced such a painful situation.

Take the driver, for example. He suffers from multiple congenital genetic mutations that cause him to be lame, have atrophied muscles in his left hand with only two fingers, and make him look rather frightening.

Worst of all, they will continue to develop, and if he doesn't take a dozen of these special drugs every month, they will slowly turn him into a mindless lump of flesh lying paralyzed in bed.

According to statistics from last year, about 14% of the entire Salvation Society suffers from a genetic disease like him, requiring medication to survive. And orphans like Nadal, without parents? There are probably many more.

The driver drove in silence, and Nadal's consciousness gradually faded.

He was indeed exhausted. The miners on the planet Salvation are a bit different from those in other worlds; they spend most of the year on vacation, during which time they can do whatever they want, including taking on a second job.
The red-robed men arrive by boat after July each year.

They will act in accordance with the transaction contract that has been in effect for nearly 10,000 years.

Many years ago, they issued a public statement that included this sentence.

"The Earth's crust in your homeland has been very active in recent years. These ubiquitous anomalies will cause mineral veins that were originally buried deep underground to gradually surface over the next few centuries. Therefore, mining is bound to become a popular profession in the future. We have already begun training on the use of relevant equipment. Those interested are welcome to register at the foot of Raven Tower."

Nadal didn't understand why this was the case, but he knew that new veins had to be thoroughly inspected and cleared by the Red Robes before mining permits could be issued. This meant that after July each year, the miners would have very little rest time.

"Hey, buddy," the driver suddenly called out, his voice sounding somewhat nervous for some reason.

Nadal took off the helmet from his face, glanced at him sleepily, and the latter stiffly raised his disabled left hand, pointing to the small point of light that streaked across the clouds directly above the driver's cab window.

Nadal glanced at it, initially unimpressed, even a little annoyed that the driver had woken him up for such a trivial matter—it was just an aircraft, after all; who hadn't seen one before? The Raven Guards frequently rode in them.
But he soon realized something was wrong.

That thing flew too fast.

To be precise, it was so fast it was almost unbelievable. And the shape of that thing didn't even look like an aircraft.
Long hours working in dim lighting had already damaged his eyesight, but the driver's cab windows had a built-in zoom function. Although old, the technology used was from the Mechanical Engineering Department, which allowed him, like the driver, to see the thing clearly.

He sat up in terror, wide awake, the chair back jolting him awake and causing a burning pain in his back.

The two watched in silence as it pierced through the clouds and glided behind them, only to disappear completely in the blink of an eye, as if it were just an illusion.

The driver and he stared at each other blankly, both able to see the bewilderment on each other's faces, as if they were in a dream.

After a while, the driver spoke first.

"What is that?" he asked slowly.

"I don't know," Nadal replied in a dreamlike tone, but then he shuddered and suddenly came to his senses.

Whatever that thing was, it was falling behind them, which meant that the miners who walked behind were likely to run into it!
Nadal grabbed the communicator from his waist and began calling his deputy, but there was no response on the other end of the channel, only an empty beeping sound.

He looked up, slightly bewildered, and glanced at the driver, who silently turned the car around and drove back.
However, after walking only a few hundred meters, Nadal called a halt.

"No, no." In his extreme panic, even his speech became slurred. "If something really happens, there's no use going back. We have to report it to our superiors."

"To whom should I report this?" the driver asked.

Nadal turned the communicator's channel knob to a setting he had never used since he received the machine, and in less than half a second, a calm voice came from the other end.

"This is Raven Tower. Who is calling?"
-
The Raven Guards' iconic black and white shuttle arrived at the location where Nadal had made the call in less than ten minutes. The foreman and driver waited by the vehicle, with cigarette butts scattered at their feet—the driver's own stash.

His selfless sharing kept them barely calm; although their fingers were trembling, they were still able to stand.

Five Raven Guards disembarked from the shuttle, a number that reassured Nadal, who had only met them a few times.

"Miner Nadal?" the leader asked him.

"Yes Yes."

Nadal quickly responded, and then immediately repeated what he had already said into the communicator. The lead Raven Guard did not interrupt him, but instead calmly removed his white helmet with a bird-beak-like structure, revealing a mutilated face.

He may have been attacked by some terrifying beast, so much so that the flesh on the lower half of his face had completely disappeared and been replaced by black steel.

Nevertheless, his calmness still infected the two of them, and before they knew it, their fear had completely vanished.

Nadal finished his presentation when his throat was dry.

“You’ve done a good job, but the veracity of your findings remains to be verified,” Ravenguard said. “After all, neither Raven Tower nor the space station issued any warnings. Therefore, gentlemen, if your discovery is true, we may have to deal with something not so good.”

Nadal froze, feeling dizzy, and stammered out the word: "Evil-demon?"

“Possibly.” Raven Guard put his helmet back on. “But it could also be worse.”

Nadal heard the driver secretly swallowing.

(End of this chapter)