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~~~
Clack.
Clack.
The Chimera’s heavy hydraulic rear hatch slowly opened.
The rain outside had weakened considerably, but the air was still filled with a lingering burnt stench and the smell of rust.
Rod followed behind Platoon Leader Karl, lowering his head as he stepped out of the compartment.
The two of them looked like walking corpses as they made their way back through the communication trench toward company command.
The guards they passed along the way saw these two figures covered in blood, barely recognizable as human, and instinctively moved aside.
They returned to the living quarters behind company command.
This place had once been the basement of an agricultural processing plant, but it had now been converted into a temporary barracks.
Thanks to this world’s originally rather developed agricultural irrigation system, there was actually still usable water here.
“Go on.
Wash up.”
Platoon Leader Karl pointed at the simple cubicle marked Decontamination Area.
“Don’t make yourself look like you just crawled out of Nurgle’s cauldron.”
Rod wasted no words.
He took off the ill-fitting flak armor, followed by the uniform soaked through with sweat, blood, and mud.
When those heavy restraints finally left his body, he felt so light that he almost seemed to float.
Splash…
From the thick pipe overhead, which had originally been used to wash crops, cold groundwater sprayed out.
Rod shivered, but he did not move away.
The cold water washed over his body.
Black-red filth flowed down his lean back, gathering at his feet into a winding little river before finally swirling into the drain.
The wounds that had gone numb earlier…
The bullet graze on his scalp, the cut across his forehead from shrapnel, and the gash opened on his arm by a blade all began burning again under the stimulation of the cold water.
Hiss…
The feeling of being alive.
He closed his eyes and let the water wash the grime from his face.
Twenty minutes later.
Wearing a clean new uniform, Rod sat on a hard cot in the medical tent.
A medic was treating the wound on his arm.
No anesthetic.
The guy washed the wound with disinfectant like he was rinsing pork, then picked up a skin stapler that looked like an office stapler and closed the wound with a series of clacks.
Finally, he wrapped it in a bandage that reeked strongly of disinfectant.
On the shared cot in the medical tent, Rod slept deeply.
This was his first sleep in this world.
By the next morning, even the piercing whistle failed to wake him.
In the end, a messenger had to shake him awake directly.
“D-9982!
The platoon leader is looking for you!
Captain Reno has urgent business!”
…
When he arrived at the familiar bunker command post again, the atmosphere was clearly heavier than last time.
The heavy blast door was half-open.
Rod had just followed Platoon Leader Karl inside when he felt a chill shoot straight to the top of his skull.
It was not merely because of the cold temperature inside the bunker.
It was because of the man standing in the shadows.
Commissar Warren.
That red-and-black figure stood beside the tactical table with his hands behind his back.
His iconic peaked cap was pulled low, but those hawk-like eyes still caught the two of them as they entered.
He said nothing, only gave a slight nod.
Then he turned his head and looked toward Captain Reno, who sat in the main seat.
“You’re here.”
Captain Reno looked terrible today.
His eyes were bloodshot, clearly from not sleeping all night.
He was still wearing that heavy carapace armor.
He stood and gestured to Karl and Warren, signaling them to move into the small rest room inside.
Rod instinctively followed Karl’s steps.
But a large hand blocked him.
“Private.”
Captain Reno’s arm stopped Rod in front of him.
“We need to discuss some military secrets.
Stand at ease outside.”
Seeing that Rod seemed about to say something, he frowned and added,
“If you can’t stay idle, go to the shooting range or the fighting pit to burn off your energy.
Ammunition is unlimited today.”
Rod shrugged, stood at attention, and saluted.
“Yes, sir.”
Rod stopped at the doorway and watched the three figures enter the dim little room.
Clang.
The heavy iron door slammed shut before his eyes.
The sealing strip made a faint sound, completely cutting off everything inside.
Behind the door.
Platoon Leader Karl did not sit down at all.
He leaned against the cold iron table, took a lho-stick from his pocket, lit it, and took a deep drag.
“Heh.”
He exhaled a mouthful of blue smoke.
“Old Reno, at least you still have a conscience.
You know to leave Third Platoon a seed.”
“You sent that recruit away…
Looks like this is going to be a big job.”
“Say it.
When?
And how are we supposed to die?”
Captain Reno did not get angry.
He only sighed.
After a brief silence, he gestured for Commissar Warren, who had been standing like a lighthouse, to sit down.
“Sit down, Karl.”
Reno tossed the data-slate in his hand onto the iron table and slid it toward Karl.
“Look at this.”
On the data-slate was a hololithic video playing.
The image shook badly, filled with obvious electromagnetic interference lines.
The angle was from high above.
Karl recognized it at a glance.
It was the perspective of a Valkyrie gunship’s onboard camera.
In the corner of the video, part of the Valkyrie’s wing could still be seen.
Behind it, one could vaguely make out a long tube-shaped aircraft cobbled together from scrap metal, belching black smoke as it chased after the Valkyrie relentlessly.
But that was not the point.
The point was the colossal thing in the center of the video.
It was a mountain.
A real mountain, piled together from garbage, scrap metal, and wreckage.
Its surface was densely covered in a nauseating green “fungal colony.”
Those were countless Orks.
They wriggled across that mountain of steel and trash like maggots in a cesspit.
Inside the mountain, enormous smokestacks spewed black fumes.
Through the shaking image, one could also see battle trucks with exaggerated oversized tires, and swaying Killa Kans, rolling out from various holes in the trash mountain like products on an assembly line, all with loud dakka-dakka noises.
“This is the core crash site of that Ork junk fleet.”
Reno stretched out one rough finger, enlarged the video image on the screen, and pointed at a huge glowing red fissure in the belly of the scrap mountain.
“It is also their main base.”
His finger tapped heavily against it, making dull thuds.
“This is their war factory.”
Reno raised his head, his bloodshot eyes fixed firmly on Karl.
“If we can destroy this place and blow their garbage production line into the sky…
their production capacity will suffer a devastating blow.
Those Greenskins won’t be able to keep producing troops endlessly like they are now.”
The room fell into a brief dead silence.
Only the blurred sounds of explosions from the video continued echoing.
Karl stared at that red dot for a full half minute.
His lho-stick burned down to his fingers before he suddenly snapped awake and threw the butt to the floor, crushing it hard under his boot.
As a veteran, he instantly understood what this meant.
“So…”
“You need an assault team?”
He reached out and drew a fierce circle with his finger around the dense green light points on the hololithic map of the scrap mountain.
“To punch through the line?”
Reno nodded.
“This is the decision of the staff office.”
His voice carried a hint of helplessness.
“You saw it yesterday too.
Those five Chimeras arriving early were not to let us catch our breath.
They were here so we could contract the defensive line.”
“In half a day, another five Chimeras will arrive.
Ten in total.”
Reno held up ten fingers.
“Together with elite veterans and non-commissioned officers drawn from each company, plus priority supply of weapons and ammunition.”
“We will form a reinforced assault group.”
Reno’s hand suddenly clenched into a fist and struck the table.
“And drive straight into the enemy’s belly.”
“If we succeed, we can greatly weaken the Orks’ combat power and buy a large amount of time for the entire war zone’s defense while we wait for orbital support from the main Astra Militarum force.”
At this point, his voice paused, and his tone became even lower.
“If we fail…
then by dying there, we can still become a thorn stuck in their throat.
We will delay them a little, force them to redeploy, and buy this nearly collapsed defense line its last chance to reorganize.”
Reno stood up and straightened his carapace armor.
His gaze swept over Karl before finally landing on Commissar Warren, who had remained silent the entire time.
“You.
Me.”
He pointed at himself, then at the red-and-black figure.
“The three of us are all going.”
…
Of course, Rod heard none of the conversation inside the rest room.
At that moment, he had already arrived at the shooting range behind company command.
Calling it a shooting range was generous.
It was really just a cleared patch of open ground, with the wrecks of several scrapped Chimeras piled at the far end as a backstop.
Thanks to the supplies bought with Rod’s “blood money” yesterday, this place was now relatively “rich.”
Rows of unopened ammunition crates were piled casually nearby.
Lasgun power cells, solid-round magazines, even several crates of precious grenades.
However, because the front line was under pressure and most men were feeding their lives into the trenches, the place seemed empty.
Only a few short figures in camouflage cloaks lay behind cover in the distance, holding absurdly long sniper rifles and firing at targets with sharp cracks.
They were Ratling snipers from the scout squad.
Rod did not disturb those strange-tempered little men.
He walked to the weapon administrator, an old sergeant missing one ear.
“One standard lasrifle.
And give me three…
no, five high-energy power cells.”
Rod slapped his dog tag onto the table, his tone perfectly justified.
Since the captain said ammunition was unlimited, it would be a waste not to grind.
The old sergeant looked up at him and said nothing.
He simply took a brand-new lasgun from the rack behind him and tossed Rod a large bag of power cells.
Rod carried the pile of equipment and found the most remote firing position.
This was the quietest corner in all of company command.
Just as he set everything down and prepared to shoot…
A series of extremely light footsteps suddenly came from the gravel behind him.
Rod tilted his head slightly and caught sight of a shadow from the corner of his eye.
It was a figure so thin it barely looked human, even somewhat like the legendary Necrons.
That person was sneaking along the base of the wall, step by step, moving toward Rod like a thief.