Chapter 72: Convergence, under the torrential rain of iron and fire
"What is the minimum number of people you can accept?"
The silence regarding the discussion of the war was first broken by Calvin, and the underlying meaning of his words naturally does not need to be mentioned.
"5 people in normal mode, 6 people in raid mode, but raid..."
Shar also fell into silence.
"Are there 9 people?"
Calvin looked at the details of the power armor of the surrounding warriors who were injured, and understood their poor state.
"Yes." Shar replied, and then he seemed to have thought of something and rejected the plan just now.
"Eight people are also fine. We can draw a soldier from the sniper team to serve as your guide."
After speaking, he looked around. But unusually, no one said anything among these soldiers, willing to take on this task.
"The price is that the retreat plan is no longer flexible and fault-tolerant, right?"
After all, having been a soldier for two lifetimes, Calvin instantly found out what tactical purpose this squeezed out person had to make a forced compromise.
"That's right..." Shar looked at the soldiers around him, and for the rare moment he didn't blame them for their cowardice.
"But this time, we have no way out. You see, this is why I don't want you to join us. This battle is inherently dangerous..."
Calvin also fell silent. He understood why these warriors fell into sudden silence.
They are not afraid of death, but simply do not want to go alone on a journey destined to sacrifice.
"But that's no reason for you to hold me back."
Calvin stopped the other party's excuse, then looked into the distance and said to them thoughtfully:
"What's more, things are far less pessimistic than you imagined..."
Follow Calvin's gaze and extend upward for another 40 kilometers through the heavy steel barriers.
In the atmosphere of the industrial planet Malus, there is a Storm Eagle named "Night Dire" running away madly against the Chaos fleet that has just arrived.
"Hurry up! Hurry up!"
Arnold's gauntlet gripped the backs of the two seats in the cockpit, and his nervous eyes never left the top panel of the gunship.
"Don't rush me! I've already reached my limit!"
Talos also firmly held the throttle lever and stepped on the accelerator to the extreme.
"1-minute countdown! The fleet is about to reach gravitational balance, and there are still 50 seconds left for the routine auspicious detection!"
Valcke's voice sounded last from the passenger seat, but his words had the most weight.
"Where to go? Who can give me the coordinates?"
Seeing the ground becoming clearer and clearer, Talos shouted nervously.
However, neither of them could give an effective response, and all three of them were equally confused about the current situation of the earth's surface.
Seeing the increasingly clear landscape and Valk who was doomed to be unable to answer questions around him, Talos couldn't help but start complaining:
"Arnold, speak up! I'm most annoyed by my teammates who don't drive and don't follow the rules!"
Well, ignore this rant, this question really stumped these three soldiers who have been away from the main battlefield for ten years.
The three people now looked at the silent battlefield debris on the ground, and they didn't even know the situation between the enemy and ourselves.
If this gunboat that was so easily stolen is returned to someone else's hands, the Emperor is my Lord, then the three of them will have a lot of fun...
Just as the three of them were nervous about the threat of the fleet above their heads and the upcoming trip, Calvin's voice sounded in their minds for a long time:
"Come closer to me! Coordinates ***.***, 50 kilometers north of the main road to the north of hive city No. 9, speed!"
The eyes of the three people opened wide instantly, and Talos was the first to ask in a tone of disbelief:
"Emperor...well, you are still alive!"
But Calvin apparently also heard the previous conversation between the three of them.
"Stop talking nonsense! Hurry up! You have 25 seconds left. Shut down and make an emergency landing as soon as the time is up! I will give you the communication channel and key now. See you on the ground!"
"See you on the ground!" The three of them only had time to reply before they lost Calvin's perception again.
The chaos fleet in space is entering orbit at this time to compete with the planet's gravity. In order to stabilize the equipment during non-war times, the auspicious array's ground array has been temporarily shut down.
This is a tactical blank period that lasts for about 15 minutes. From a purely military perspective, it is an absolutely fatal illegal operation.
This kind of low-level mistake should not have appeared in the hands of these veterans from the Great Crusade era.
But the military discipline of these Space Marines who joined Chaos has long been different, and considering the logistics of Chaos, it has always been a mystery.
If the fragile auspicious array is frequently operated in a strong magnetic field environment, its lifespan will be drastically shortened.
If there is a problem with the original high-precision equipment on these battleships, they will have no place to repair it now.
With the current style of the masters of these Night Lords, the most likely possibility is to capture a Tzeentchian demon and hang it on the bow of the ship to serve as a "human flesh detection" instrument...
Therefore, now that we know that the ground no longer has the ability to project orbit, this small slack is naturally ignored or acquiesced.
The Dire had already broken through the stratosphere and ozone layer, approaching the troposphere less than 15 kilometers from the surface.
While Arnold's nervous 10-second countdown began, Talos and Valk made final adjustments to the Dire's attitude.
Then, after confirming the status of the three-person jetpack for the final time, they severely cut off the gunship's energy.
At the moment when the three people were ejected from the gunship, the sight of the Chaos Battleship, which had reached balance with the gravity of the planet, swept over their heads by just a hair.
"Is there a problem?" Kelson asked Father Norris, who was monitoring the entire battleship, as a routine.
It's not that he was specifically eyeing this traitor from Mars.
It's that the battleship has been floating in the subspace for an unknown number of years. It has not yet become one with the battleship, and there are not many active crew members left.
Those crew members have now either become ghosts wandering the corridors of the battleship, or they have become one with the equipment at their workstations.
Even the Chaos Space Marines would not want to look at such a distorted painting style.
Because this kind of thing itself reminds them that as slaves who surrendered to the power of destruction, they themselves are living like neither humans nor ghosts.
"No sustainable power source has been found yet, but considering the fragments of Pale Wings captured by gravity, the probability of survivors still exists in the atmosphere..."
Father Norris still guarded the data board in front of him unchanged for thousands of years, and answered without raising his head.
But the existence of these survivors obviously cannot arouse Kelson's interest.
As a tradition of the Eighth Legion, mutual strife is the cultural foundation of the Legion.
For those brothers who may survive, it is the greatest kindness that he, who is also the son of Curze, will no longer step on them.
In the distance, slightly below the track, the disintegration of Pale Wings continues.
The one after another explosions occasionally caused fire to appear on the huge carcass of the battleship, which was instantly extinguished due to lack of oxygen against the backdrop of artificial atmospheric failure.
Debris, large and small, are still breaking away from the ship body in batches, and then are captured by gravity as they escape outwards, and finally fall to the ground.
Against the backdrop of this apocalyptic "rainfall" of iron and fire, from the perspective of space, three inconspicuous dots are falling straight towards Hive City No. 9...