Warhammer: Hail to the Void Lords!.

Chapter 967, 08.966: 'Contract Labor Soldiers'

"There are signs of life below."

Upon hearing this, the soldiers who were trying to clear the rubble all looked up.

"Could it be the enemy? We only found the traitor's vehicle nearby," Battalion Commander Poniatovsky asked cautiously. He had seen too much of the aliens' cunning and deception, and had paid the price with his blood.

“No, the location here perfectly matches the coordinates of the servo skull scan, so it’s more likely that one of our people is down there!” Horatio’s voice was firm and resolute. “Besides, even if they are the enemy, they might know something. It wouldn’t hurt to dig them out and interrogate them.”

Without asking any further questions, Battalion Commander Poniatovsky immediately ordered his dragoons, "Give me a hand and move these stones! If there are any survivors below, we must rescue them!"

Then, he looked at the silent Tengyue soldiers to the side and said nothing.

Perhaps due to the aftermath of the previous conflict, he harbored a natural hostility towards these troops belonging to the Sintira conservatives, and therefore was unwilling to take the initiative to ask them for help, or even to communicate with them.

Meanwhile, the opposing battalion commander, a petite girl carrying a tall, precision laser rifle, simply stared expressionlessly at the dragon riders, the towering naval officers, and the battle nuns.

No one could tell from her face, weathered and somewhat blurred by the wind and sand, whether she wanted to help or was prepared to stand idly by.

In the brief and strange silence, the short female battalion commander spoke first.

“We’ll help you,” she said. This was the first time Horatio had heard her speak; her voice was clear and melodious, quite unlike her usual taciturn appearance.

"Thank you," Horatio said, looking at the other person, but the timing and occasion were clearly not suitable for a deeper exchange between them.

In this silence, the three parties began their intense collaborative work.

These dragoons with horse ears not only had keen hearing, but were also incredibly strong.

They took turns carrying heavy concrete blocks to create space for the rescue below. The short-statured leaping soldiers, especially the Lightling ratmen, utilized their unique advantages.

They can easily squeeze into narrow gaps that are inaccessible to ordinary people, and use portable hydraulic rods and wooden stakes to create support points inside, in order to prevent the already extremely unstable ruins from collapsing again during subsequent cleanup work.

Although some misunderstandings and grudges still existed between the soldiers on both sides, the tense atmosphere gradually eased after a period of joint operations.

During a break.

"Hey buddy, got a cigarette?" A short, scruffy corporal, barely reaching the dragoon's shoulder, whose appearance seemed somewhat incongruous with his fine uniform, asked a newland dragoon who had sat down to rest and was about to light a cigarette.

"..." The dragon rider, with an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, glanced at the other person without saying a word, but simply pried one out of his own cigarette case with his index finger and tossed it over.

"Thanks, I just ran out of cigarettes. It's so hard to borrow cigarettes from those old geezers." The corporal smiled, took out a windproof match, and lit it.

Click! Click!
The dragon rider pressed the lighter a few times but it didn't work. He fiddled with it for a bit and found that the sand and gravel in the wind were clogging the kerosene nozzle.

Seeing that the other man couldn't light his cigarette, the soldier stepped forward, lit his own windproof match, and helped him light it.

call--

The two men simultaneously took a deep, weary breath, exhaling slowly through puffs of smoke. The others who had come off duty to rest watched them silently.

Their actions can be considered a starting point.

The soldiers from both sides, who were taking turns to rest, started asking each other for cigarettes, while others asked to borrow water.

Although the party being requested may hesitate at first, they will eventually share their supplies silently.

This often sparks a conversation. They start by unanimously criticizing the conservative Cintira officers and mocking the spoiled brats of the flintlock musketeers, then cautiously begin to learn about each other's lives. "Hey, bro, how's the pay in your unit?" asked a corporal borrowing a cigarette.

"It's alright," the dragon rider replied. "The military reform faction is relatively poor, but the salary promised during recruitment is enough to support at least a few mouths in the family."

It wasn't exactly a life of luxury, but being able to eat my fill was enough to make me content. It was far better than being discriminated against back home, forced to do menial tasks like washing leather or carrying manure, or having to grovel and be a slave to those noblemen.

"Oh? Do you have this number?" Teng Yuebing spread out the four fingers of his upper palm.

The dragoon glanced at it: "A little more than this."

"Wow! Dude, you guys get paid more than us!" the Tengyue Corporal exclaimed dramatically as he stood up. "We only get three thousand copper coins a month, barely enough to support ourselves."

And so, we still have to pay for our own meals and accommodation, and these two expenses alone take up almost half of our monthly salary.

So many of us had to do odd jobs for those pampered soldiers in the army, doing dirty work, washing their clothes, offering them water and cigarettes while they played cards, and taking away their chamber pots that reeked of urine every morning.

The dragoon looked at the corporal with disbelief, his long ears twitching: "Really? Aren't you from the flintlock regiment? The Sintira flintlock regiment is rich, and the 17th 'Elite' Regiment is even richer. Everyone knows that."

"Having money doesn't mean you'll get a share, right? Does that make sense? The big bank in Sintira has money, but what does that have to do with the dispatched workers who run errands?" Teng Yuebing shrugged and slowly exhaled a smoke ring. "We don't get paid like regular soldiers. We were recruited from Pola Bellia by Newland Human Resources Company."

"Then why don't you continue hunting?" the dragoon asked curiously.

"The land has all been taken over. Now the forests in the mountains are all contracted out to those big contractors from Sintila."

They warned us that if we dared to go hunting again, they would all hang us. Their guns were far more powerful than our hunting rifles.

But we still need to eat, right? So we had no choice but to use the skills we had for hunting four-legged prey to hunt these two-legged or even more-legged 'prey'.”

"Looks like you guys are having a pretty rough time too."

"Of course, bro, at least you guys are soldiers, we're just beasts of burden. See our battalion commander? Even though he's a battalion commander, his salary and benefits are nowhere near those of the battalion commanders in the flintlock battalion."

Her entire set of equipment was a family heirloom; she even bought her own uniform. She even took out a loan to serve in the military!
Sometimes when we don't get paid, she has to pay us out of her own pocket.

"If I pay too much, I won't have any money left. I'm already a fallen aristocrat, so I have no choice but to take out loans. Now, half of my monthly salary goes to paying off loans..." Teng Yuebing flicked away his cigarette butt with his finger and said jokingly.

“We’re better off than you. At least our salaries are usually paid on time every month.”

"Found it!!! Here!!!"

From beneath the ruins, a Leytelin scream suddenly rang out, sharp and thin.

All the soldiers who were resting immediately got up and rushed toward the excavated ruins.

Horatio hurriedly squeezed into the crowd and saw several armored figures emerging from beneath layers of piled rocks.

The armor was a deep, almost black, void blue.

No mistake, those are the standard colors of the Imperial Navy.

The person at the very top had his power backpack severely dented and twisted, clearly having withstood an immense weight. It was hard to believe he was still alive.

"Make way!" Sister Arabella led the medical nuns through the crowd. They activated the small chainsaws on their arms, sawing through the tangled steel bars and quick-setting concrete structure, and carefully carried out the buried bodies one by one from below.

(End of this chapter)