That night, Ross Vance returned to his room early.
Lying back on his bed with his legs crossed, he scrolled through his phone for a while.
To be honest, he didn’t take tonight’s operation too seriously.
Plainly speaking, the Hellhounds Motorcycle Club was just a gang of street thugs riding Harleys.
Ross’s current deployment consisted of twenty Cadian Astra Militarum veterans plus three Battle Sisters from the Order of the Ebony Chalice.
Put on a 40K battlefield, a force like that could hold out for five minutes against Chaos Space Marines and Tyranids.
Now they were being sent to take down a crew of Harley-riding street brawlers.
It was the equivalent of bringing a plasma cannon to a knife fight.
His only real concern was whether Griffin and the others would let themselves go too far and kill everyone, leaving no one left to interrogate.
On second thought, it didn’t matter much—Cecilia would package up all the Hellhounds’ assets and bring them back anyway.
Lost in these thoughts, Ross drifted off to sleep.
He slept soundly, without dreaming a single dream.
When he opened his eyes again, his phone screen displayed 00:45.
Downstairs, things were already stirring.
Ross sat up in bed and stretched, his joints popping several times.
He washed his face, changed into clean clothes, pushed open his bedroom door, and walked over to the window at the end of the hallway.
Hell’s Kitchen at night was far from quiet; distant police sirens and the roar of motorcycle engines drifted over from time to time.
Griffin came up from the stairwell carrying a cup of hot tea and handed it to Ross.
“Your tea, my Lord.”
“Thanks.”
Ross took the cup and took a sip.
Holding his tea, he leaned against the window frame and looked down.
Cecilia was leading two Battle Sisters in pre-battle prayers.
Ross couldn’t hear what they were chanting, but he could feel the devout power behind it.
For Battle Sisters, faith wasn’t mere lip service; it was etched into their very bones.
On the other side of the warehouse, the Astra Militarum veterans were inspecting their gear.
Since Ross had instructed that exposing lasguns wasn’t advisable at this stage, they had brought local firearms this time.
Glocks, M4 carbines, shotguns—all acquired by Griffin and his men from various local gangs earlier.
While lacking the punch of a lasgun, the Cadian veterans’ combat experience was no joke; give them any firearm, and they would deliver professional-grade lethal efficiency.
No one spoke, no one looked around aimlessly; everyone went about their tasks in silent, methodical order.
These were the warriors of Cadia.
Ross set his teacup on the window sill, thrust his hands into his pockets, and watched them in silence.
He had no intention of going down to deliver a pre-battle speech.
This wasn’t a movie where morale required a passionate, rousing speech.
These troops needed no encouragement; their conviction was rock-solid, fiercer than anything else.
Ten minutes later, Griffin came upstairs.
He stepped beside Ross, snapped to attention, and thumped his right fist against his chest.
“My Lord, everything is ready.”
Ross picked up his tea, took another sip, and casually said, “Good.
Execute according to plan.
Stay safe.”
Griffin nodded, turned, and headed out.
There were six vehicles in total: three black SUVs and three box vans, without any distinct markings, keeping a low profile.
The sound of doors slamming echoed one after another, engines fired up, and headlights lit the dark.
The convoy slowly rolled out of the base gates, turned into the street, and quickly vanished into the night.
Ross turned and walked back to his office, set the teacup on his desk, slumped into his swivel chair, and casually flipped open his laptop.
The screen lit up, displaying the real-time surveillance feed of Stewart Avenue.
This security system had originally been installed at great expense by the Hellhounds’ second-in-command, Razor Dennis Hogan.
Cameras covered every corner of the entire street; ostensibly for gang security, it was actually Razor’s tool to spy on everyone.
A million-dollar security setup—firewalls, encrypted transmissions, intrusion detection—quite proper on the surface.
Cecilia had cracked it all yesterday in less than ten minutes.
It wasn’t that the cybersecurity firm Razor hired was incompetent.
It was simply that the infiltrative capabilities of the Order of the Ebony Chalice gave even the Adeptus Mechanicus headaches, let alone a street gang’s surveillance network.
Leaning back against his chair, Ross switched the surveillance feed to multi-view mode.
Ten camera grids arranged in two rows covered every key position on Stewart Avenue from the intersection to the end of the block.
Dim yellow light radiated from the streetlamps lining both sides, with the occasional moth fluttering past the camera lenses.
The street was quiet.
No pedestrians, no vehicles—only a few guards standing at the intersection and outside the Mad Dog’s Den bar, smoking and chatting.
The timestamp in the corner of the surveillance feed flipped to 01:12.
Ten minutes later, the convoy appeared in the camera feed at the intersection.
Their headlights looked blindingly harsh under night-vision mode.
Ross leaned forward, enlarging the feed.
The convoy didn’t charge straight in; instead, it pulled up smoothly at the mouth of the street.
The two guards at the intersection clearly noticed the incoming fleet.
Seeing six vehicles driving down Stewart Avenue in single file past 1:00 AM was strange enough in itself.
The two guards exchanged a look, tossed their half-smoked cigarettes to the pavement, crushed them underfoot, and rested a hand on their holsters as they approached the lead vehicle from left and right.
The guard on the right raised his flashlight, its beam sweeping across the windshield as he tried to see who was sitting inside.
Just then, the rear side windows on both sides of the lead vehicle rolled down almost simultaneously.
The two guards reflexively turned their heads to look.
In the next instant, two flashes of silver flickered out from the windows.
So fast that even the flashlight beam couldn’t catch them.
Throwing knives from Griffin’s men—the Cadian Astra Militarum never relied solely on ranged firearms; close-quarters steel was equally their forte.
Veterans who had spent a lifetime defending Cadia threw knives with precision far more absurd than an average man’s marksmanship.
The two blades bit into the guards’ eye sockets almost at the exact same second.
Entering through the eyeballs, the steel bored straight through optic nerves into their brains, severing the brainstems instantly.
The entire process took fractions of a second.
Before the two guards even registered pain, their bodies were completely beyond control.
The flashlight slipped from a right hand, bounced twice off the ground, spun wildly, and ended up pointing straight into the sky.
The two bodies collapsed like boneless rags, the backs of their heads striking the asphalt with dull thuds.
Blood leaked from their eye sockets and nostrils, though the handles remained protruding outside.
The convoy restarted, crawling smoothly onto Stewart Avenue as the windows rolled back up.
From the intersection to the Mad Dog’s Den was roughly four hundred meters.
Occasional stray cats darted across the hood, arching their backs as they slipped into dark alleyways.
Ross stared at the surveillance screen and took another sip of tea.
As the fleet drew to within fifty meters of the Mad Dog’s Den, the guards outside the entrance finally reacted.
Two burly men in leather vests stepped out from the shadows at the door.
One had a cigarette dangling from his lips, its glowing tip standing out vividly in the gloom.
The other clutched a half-empty beer bottle, squinting sleepily in the direction of the vehicles.
They mistook Ross’s fleet for friendly arrivals.
Having received no alert from the street-corner lookout or word from the security control room, they figured these were guests summoned by the boss.
They didn’t overthink it; the guard with the cigarette even waved at the lead SUV, motioning for the convoy to park in the curbside spots.
The fleet slowed to a stop along the curb outside the bar and killed their engines.
The sound of car doors opening was faint as Cecilia stepped out from the rear of the first SUV.
Today she wore tactical gear provided by Griffin.
Black combat fatigues, a ballistic vest, holsters and sheaths strapped to her outer thighs, her hair pulled back in a neat, crisp ponytail.
The guard smoking the cigarette froze briefly when he saw a woman get out, then his lips twisted into a greasy grin.
With the cigarette dangling from his lips, he tilted his head, scanning Cecilia up and down—his eyes trailing from her face to her waist, and down to her legs.
Then he turned his head and muttered something to his beer-clutching companion.
The drunken guard gave a raspy chuckle, sounding like phlegm caught in his throat.
Cecilia’s expression remained entirely flat.
She knew what those two men were saying.
And she knew even better that very soon, neither man would ever say another word.
She strode toward the entrance, her heavy military boots striking the asphalt in a rhythmic cadence.
The guard with the cigarette was still sneering, even taking two steps toward her, slurring lewd catcalls.
“Hey, gorgeous, out here all alone this late—”
His words cut short.
Cecilia’s right hand drew a combat knife from her thigh sheath.
The motion was so lightning-fast it looked as though the blade materialized out of thin air.
A flick of her wrist, and steel glinted beneath the streetlights.
In the next split second, the knife slammed dead-center into the forehead of the drunk guard holding the beer bottle.
The blade sank in at least three centimeters; before the guard could even react, his body pitched straight backward and crashed.