Warhammer: Hail to the Void Lords!.

Chapter 1082 09.1081: 'The Sleeping Steel Veteran'

"Hawk-1, this is 'Fontainebleau,' reporting your location." Yadviga, wearing a tactical headset, began coded communication with the advance reconnaissance team. She, along with Valina, were using new call signs for this operation.

"Eagle Eye-1, communication is working." Valina's unique, deep voice rang out from the sound array.

Although the Shield of Orm helmet effectively prevents the wearer's voice from leaking out, Valina has become accustomed to the technique of communicating in a lower voice in the Katachon jungle:
"Target train coordinates: 337.804. The action team has already attached a positioning transmitter to the outer shell to guide the coordinates."

No armed personnel from the conflicting parties or any suspicious armed personnel were found in the vicinity.

Some civilians remained in their homes, and it is suspected that scavengers entered the station to search for supplies. End of report.

"Fontainebleau received."

Next, she entered the coordinates into the tactical processor.

This set of coordinates is also the encryption password for their transmitter, but having agreed on the rules in advance, they would never reveal this in their communications.

Everything is top secret.

No one knew that Horatio had left the training base. Apart from his own people, no one could find him or know where he had gone. This effectively prevented Horatio from being swayed by his identity as a "Saint of the State Church" and forced to join the conflict he was still observing before he was fully prepared.

"'Fontainebleau,' this is the 'home port,'" Louise's voice came through the communicator.

"Fontainebleau received. Please speak from the home port."

"The 'Pilgrimage Group' (the code name for the Jihad) has sent people over. They want to pay homage to the 'Skyhawk Banner' (Horaceshaw's code name)."

"Eagle Flag (Horaceshaw) is not at the base. Tell them to go back."

The conversation between Jadvig and Louise sounded like an ordinary one—the Church wanted to see the battle flag used by this commander who had participated in many large-scale military operations.

For the Drususian Order, which worships warrior saints, there was nothing wrong with this; using a battle-hardened banner that had fought against the enemies of the God Emperor to boost morale was perfectly normal.

Horatio listened quietly to their conversation, and when he heard that the Order of Saint Drusus had come to visit him, he raised an eyebrow.

Sure enough, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Although he was a military officer, it did not mean that he was ignorant of politics.

He knew very well that the Drusus Order had ulterior motives for generously acknowledging his sainthood.

It's not that helping the state religion is bad; political groups are just mutually exploitative, each getting what they need.

Horatio, however, could not allow himself to be in a passive position as a "pawn," as this would disrupt all his plans and contingency plans, leaving him helpless when things spiraled out of control, like a derailed train.

Jadvig and Louise, of course, knew Horatio was not there; their conversation was deliberately meant for "someone else" to hear.

At the distant Sintira Colonial Defense Intelligence Center, intelligence units that had "volunteered" from the Sintira Flintlock Regiment to join the Colonial Defense Force were nervously eavesdropping on this communication.

Ahead of the monitoring officer were a dozen or so Lieutenant Cintira and her attendants, who were trying to crack the frequency band and decipher the code.

The treacherous court politics of Cintira have cultivated the galaxy's second-best elite agents and espionage experts, second only to Holy Terra.

They had long ago deciphered the Jihad Army's fragile military communications, which were so weak that they were almost entirely switched between multiple civilian channels.

Therefore, after conquering the enemy's communications, they devoted most of their energy to eavesdropping, infiltrating, or launching virus attacks on the Imperial Navy training bases, whose attitudes and movements were not yet clear.

But the latter's efforts were easily crushed. Several precious Thinker arrays were even burned on the spot after triggering the opponent's strong countermeasures, and the poor operators who were unaware of what had happened were blown into the air by the overloaded energy.

This network of outsiders, these thinkers, was protected by an extremely powerful "firewall." The program was not something an ordinary person could compile, leaving all colonial defense intelligence agencies helpless.

Its creator must have been a genius!
Its creator was indeed a genius.

Lati-EB2A1, the priest of the Martian Order, completely ignored the conflicts on the ground and the turbulent situation in the void.

Now, she is completely absorbed in her research and inventions located in the deep core area of ​​the warship.

She was engrossed in studying the two "precious treasures" that Horatio had helped her obtain from the Martian sage named Pascal Hanuman at the port of call, using profit points.

She had locked herself in her laboratory—a dark, steel-framed chamber—and had been cut off from the outside world for almost months.

His only recent outing was to quietly upgrade and maintain the firewalls of all the communication networks under Horatio's control.

No one knows how much research enthusiast it takes to endure such solitude.

But Latti did it.

Horatio also discovered that Latti was almost "out of contact".

But he had grown accustomed to the mechanic priest's eccentricities. He eagerly awaited his next meeting with Latti, wondering what kind of "goodies" he could offer him. On the Thinker array screen before Yadvig, the light representing "Hawk-1" was about to overlap with the light representing them.

"Stop the car, we'll walk there," Horatio ordered.

He didn't want the engine noise to reveal his whereabouts.

Even if he doesn't encounter an enemy, but is simply seen by a civilian who then tells the monks of Saint Drusus, it will bring him considerable trouble.

Then all his efforts tonight in "crossing the river in secret" will have been in vain, and he will have to "choose sides".

One after another, wheeled armored vehicles came to a silent stop in the shadows outside the station.

With a soft hydraulic creak at the rear footplate hatch, soldiers clad in void-blue armor and white uniforms filed off the vehicle.

The colors of his outfit blended naturally and harmoniously with the ground illuminated by the hazy moonlight.

Every soldier was issued tactical goggles, but under Horatio's "Command Hand" psionic projection, this equipment, which was only issued to elite troops, seemed slightly redundant on the battlefield where Horatio was stationed.

Guided by his beacon, the soldiers' tactical intentions were highly unified.

They walked silently toward the center of town, like a group of ghosts.

The pale moonlight illuminated the ancient cobblestone streets. The dragon riders split into two groups, hugging the shadows of the eaves on both sides of the street, and quickly approached the beacon placed by the Hell Vanguard, untouched by any light.

The streets were littered with trash and debris left behind during the hasty evacuation, indicating that the area had recently experienced chaos.

The town was as silent as a ghost town, but behind the tightly closed doors and windows, a dozen or so households still had a faint yellow candlelight shining through.

As large numbers of civilians evacuated the war zone, most public services were also disrupted, including electricity and drinking water.

No one knows why some people would insist on staying in the lockdown area and continuing to live without electricity or water.

Perhaps they are elderly people with mobility issues who no longer want to be homeless in their twilight years; perhaps they are stubborn people who do not believe that the flames of war will reach their homes; or perhaps they are audacious and arrogant scavengers who, once everyone has left, can take as much of the town as they want, indulging in a "kingly" experience they could never have in a structured society.

Of course, a more realistic scenario is that those unfortunate people who failed to board the evacuation train will be forced to remain in this locked-down area—15 days is still too short, and with too many people to evacuate, not everyone will have the opportunity to successfully evacuate within these 15 days.

The dragon riders didn't want to disturb these people; everyone just wanted to silently complete their mission.

Without anyone stopping them or causing any panic, Horatio and Jadwiga's selected troops swiftly and efficiently crossed the town and arrived at the station on the east side.

This is a very large and very old station. On the stone wall of the platform, there is even a huge rusty quartz clock with its hands long since stopped. Behind the broken glass of the clock, there are bullet holes that seem to be from the bullets fired by the Greens during the first Great Tooth Disaster.

The abandoned trains mentioned in the investigation report are parked in a metal graveyard.

There's a reason they were abandoned here; these old trains are covered in rust, the red rust looking like it's been drenched in blood under the moonlight.

They were in a state of disrepair, with many cabins corroded and leaking air, emitting a strange "whooshing" sound in the night wind, which was somewhat eerie.

"Send engineers to inspect each train and see which ones are ready to use and which ones can be easily repaired and moved," Horatio ordered in a low voice.

“Commander, Commander! Look at that.” Yadviga suddenly tugged at Horatio’s sleeve.

She pointed to a train car buried deep in the metal graveyard, its outline slightly higher than the other carriages, with a round "head".

Horatio immediately switched his goggles to magnified night vision mode and observed the location that Jadvig was pointing to.

“This is…” He paused, then turned sharply to Yadwiga, his voice tinged with surprise: “A combat armored train?”

He couldn't be mistaken; that rounded top, slightly higher than the other carriages, was a genuine hemispherical rotating turret covered in rivets.

Even though he was a time traveler, he had seen similar, no, exactly the same war artifacts on his former Earth. He'd seen pigs run even if he hadn't eaten pork, so he wouldn't mistake them. But he was surprised because he hadn't expected that in humanity's 41st millennium, there would still be equipment like this, the kind of equipment seen only during World War I.

“That’s right! I thought this old thing was extinct.” Yadviga was very excited. She walked forward quickly and stroked the cold, rough armor plate.

“During the first Great Tooth Disaster,” she said with deep emotion, “the Knights’ Squires rode these armored combat trains to form ‘fortresses,’ fighting alongside the knights.”

She turned back to Horatio excitedly: "When the Sintira people turned Polaberia into a colony, they confiscated and sealed up all the remaining armored combat trains."

Most of them were melted down and made into metal products and transported away... I never expected that a section of them would still remain here. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed that I could still see war relics from the first Great Tooth Catastrophe.

A light gleamed in Jadwiga's eyes.

"This is a good omen, Commander!" she encouraged him firmly. "It must be a sign that our journey will be a success!"

(End of this chapter)