As the sun set, the perpetually toxic cloud sea of the Hive City plunged the night into an impenetrable darkness where one could not see their own hand before their face.
Friend and foe were interlocked like dog's teeth. Apart from heavily fortified positions, no one dared light any campfires out in the open.
Only at dawn the next day, when flames would no longer be glaringly conspicuous, would warming fires be lit in some corners.
In the remote wilderness far from the warzone.
A sheltered corner of a leeward earthen slope was crowded with soldiers carrying rifles. They huddled together, squatting or standing, trying to keep warm.
There was no fire, no hot food. Each soldier held only a cold, rock-hard block of compressed starch, likely older than their own grandfathers.
Yet, unlike their previous youthful panic, they now sat on the ground with faces full of vigilance, calmly melting the food in their mouths.
The crowd was quiet until a series of 'clacks' echoed from the distance—the crisp sound of hard-soled military boots striking solid ice.
"Regiment Commander!"
"Hail the Regiment Commander!"
The veterans rose one after another, saluting Sith. Sith returned the salutes swiftly as he walked, his eyes taking in the pitifully scant food in the soldiers' hands.
"Supply lines are cut. The limited supplies were prioritized for the Astra Militarum. We only received a few blocks of compressed starch," explained the logistics officer, noticing Sith's gaze.
Sith withdrew his gaze and looked toward the corner of the slope ahead, where an orderly Astra Militarum messenger stood.
Seeing Sith approach, especially the enemy bloodstains still caked and dried on Sith's uniform from the previous slaughter, the messenger lost his earlier cold arrogance toward the PDF. Instead, he saluted early, before Sith even got close.
"Regiment Commander, sir! Orders from headquarters!"
Presenting a parchment scroll, Sith gave a casual salute in return, took it, and scanned it quickly, his brow furrowing slightly.
A moment later, Sith put away the orders:
"Understood. My unit will proceed to the objective immediately."
The messenger, seeing Sith accept, heaved a sigh of relief, then cautiously glanced at the surrounding crowd.
For some reason, even being caught in the peripheral vision of these soldiers made him feel uneasy, his hairs standing on end.
Let alone the thick scent of blood emanating from Sith before him.
The messenger saluted and fled as if escaping, leaving the soldiers looking at Sith, awaiting their commander's orders.
"How long can the starch last?"
Sith asked. An officer hurriedly replied:
"If we ration it carefully, it might barely last two days."
Hearing this, Sith looked toward the Hive City in the distance, which pierced through the cloud sea like a colossal mountain. After a moment, he exhaled slightly:
"Then we must pick up the pace."
They couldn't go back. They couldn't starve to death. And they absolutely could not be disloyal! To survive, Sith had only one path: follow the orders and head for the supply depot.
Over ten minutes later, from the shadows of the slope's corner, the surviving thousand-plus battle-hardened veterans, traveling light with rifles shouldered, began running toward the Hive City.
The sky brightened and darkened. As another day's sunlight filtered through the cloud sea, the 101st Regiment, after a continuous forced march of a day and a night, finally neared their objective.
The soldiers gasped for breath, taking cover in the shadow of a wall corner of an abandoned structure outside the Hive City. A massive Conveying pipeline Conveying pipeline ran straight overhead, extending toward the front.
Sith stood in the shadow of the pipeline, surveying the distance with binoculars.
Lasfire, roars, explosions. Before a large gate, several hundred mixed soldiers of the Astra Militarum and PDF were desperately holding off rebel assaults around a set of temporary fortifications.
"Good. It seems the supply depot hasn't fallen yet."
Sith breathed a sigh of relief, turned, and looked at the soldiers behind him whose breathing was gradually steadying. Their eyes met, and Sith nodded:
"Eat all the starch. We attack in ten minutes!"
The veterans moved as one, immediately placing the last bits of starch in their mouths. Their hands weren't idle either, promptly checking their firearms and loading the last of their ammunition into magazines.
Sith counted the time until a violent explosion suddenly erupted in the distance. Watching a defender embrace a rebel who had breached their lines, detonating a satchel charge for a mutual kill, a flicker of helplessness passed through Sith's eyes. He ignored the remaining countdown.
Drawing his sidearm, he raised the already chipped and blunted combat knife in his right hand.
The veterans below, who had been watching Sith intently, immediately fixed bayonets to their rifles.
Then, without any rallying cry, Sith simply turned and charged toward the gate.
The sudden appearance of reinforcements gave the rebels pause. But upon seeing it was only a little over a thousand men, they erupted in furious counterattacks.
The defenders, whose morale had surged at the sight of reinforcements, also plummeted to rock bottom once they saw the numbers.
After all, the rebels had also set up numerous defensive lines on the periphery. While these firing points weren't as formidable as permanent fortifications, what difference was there between mowing down a thousand PDF troops without armor and outright slaughter?
However, the curses from both sides were abruptly cut short as crimson lasbeams streaked across the sky.
The rebels were physically silenced. The defenders were simply stunned.
The battle held almost no suspense. The marksmanship of the hundred-battle veterans was terrifyingly precise, let alone Sith, whose attributes were enhanced a hundredfold.
The rebel firing points almost became their death warrants. Anyone daring to man a heavy stubber would find their head exploding the very next second.
So much so that by the time Sith led his men into the rebel ranks, these firing points hadn't managed to fire a single round.
Then, the rebels, thinking close combat would prevent them from being crushed and preparing to overwhelm Sith with numbers, were swiftly brought back to reality under the 'education' of combat knives and bayonets.
The battle ended quickly. Under the Frenzied Bombardment Frenzied Bombardment of the thousand battle-hardened veterans, the rebels immediately broke and fled in disarray.
Only after the fighting ceased did a group of reinforcements, grumbling and cursing, emerge from deeper within the gate area, having witnessed the entire process.
"By the Emperor, who the hell said those bastards had broken through?!"
A large man hurried over, carrying a heavy stubber, accompanied by a dozen or so soldiers who appeared noticeably more elite.
Hearing his voice, the defenders finally tore their attention away from Sith's group of grim reapers, hastily making way to let the big man through.
The previously cursing big man, upon seeing the suddenly appearing group drenched in blood, was so startled he leveled his heavy stubber.
Sith frowned, immediately aiming his sidearm at the man.
The big man froze. Looking at Sith's gun muzzle, though he said nothing, he knew that if his finger so much as twitched toward the trigger, his head would be parting company with his shoulders the next second.
The big man's Adam's apple bobbed. A defender quickly came to his side and explained the situation.
Only then did the big man lower his weapon. Though the tension in his eyes faded, his face still showed clear displeasure:
"Those sons of bitches said it was a whole Astra Militarum Legion! How come it's just you lot... people?"
He wanted to say 'cannon fodder' or some other derogatory term, but looking at the thousand men before him and hearing the recent account of the battle, he forcibly swallowed the curse.
Sith ignored the foul-mouthed big man and instead looked toward the large gate ahead. An Adeptus Mechanicus tech-priestess was bustling around an instrument aimed at the gate.
Seeing this, the big man's displeasure deepened:
"That damn half-baked Adeptus Mechanicus tech-priest. If she hadn't spent half the day failing to blast the gate open, we wouldn't have been stuck outside this long."
Hearing this, Sith gave the man, who couldn't open his mouth without a curse, a speechless glance. After a quick look at the man's rank insignia, Sith headed straight for the gate. As he passed the big man, he said naturally:
"I hold the highest rank here. You're all under my command now."
Big Man: "???"
He instinctively opened his mouth, ready to unleash a tirade with a high 'mother' content, but as soon as he looked up, Sith was already glaring at him.
Looking at Sith's uniform, stained with both fresh and old blood, and the more numerous, even more terrifying 101st Regiment, the big man could only feel that his long-lost sense of propriety had suddenly returned.
The veterans, survivors of 'two hundred battles,' automatically began setting up defensive positions. Sith approached the large gate, watching the tech-priestess, her face full of confusion, anxiously circling the instrument:
"How can this be? Why is the output so low?"
"Could it be the machine spirit is displeased?"
The tech-priestess muttered to herself, not even noticing Sith, who, upon hearing her words, directly placed both hands on the instrument.
It wasn't until the instrument's energy readings, as Sith gripped the controls, began to blare frantic alarms.
That the tech-priestess snapped her attention back, staring dumbfounded at the energy index soaring wildly, far exceeding its design specifications.
"The ma... machine spirit."
"Is ecstatic?!!!"