Chapter 226: Cooperation
"Someone's about to shed a tear~"
Karna raised a hand to wipe his face, his fingertips touching a cold tear track, yet his perfect smile remained in place. The shuttle sped on, passing through light and shadow, making his profile flicker.
"Ramesses!"
"Huh?" Hearing the exasperated reply, Ramesses, who was currently acting as a mobile comms relay for the army, tilted his head. He casually pushed aside an Aeldari comms-adept who was blocking his view, a look of confusion on his face. "What's up?"
"Who did you say was shedding a tear?" Karna's voice was laced with a dangerous edge, his ice-blue eyes narrowing.
"The old man on the Throne, of course. I've been giving him psychic phone calls every day. Remember that anthropomorphic personality Master Arthur filtered out for him back during the Crusade? You have no idea what he's like now. Wait a minute—why are you sad too?" Ramesses said, grinning as he watched a certain cold sun crack, then his expression changed. "Shouldn't you be happy? It's rare to meet a regime this advanced that hasn't been wiped out yet. I was going to ask them if they've ever played Warhammer 40k. Get ready to officially invite them to this live-action game."
"..." Karna didn't reply.
"Are you angry?" Ramesses asked. "There's a saying: what's an outsider got to be empathetic about? Look at the people next to you. Do they have any reaction?" His voice was light, but it held a subtle undercurrent of concern.
The 41st and 31st millennia were very different. Back in 30k, the Emperor had used his vision and his might to rally a huge number of people to risk their lives with him. The suffering of the present was for a better future. Once they had mastered the Webway, although they would still be troubled by Chaos, they wouldn't be shattered into a million pieces like in the Age of Strife. So people could endure. After all, without the Imperium of Man, the remnants of the Old Night could not have stood against the Orks of Ullanor or the Rangdan Xenocides. What could this Federation, which couldn't even take on a single Imperial Legion, do against those two monstrosities? So the Imperium of that time had the confidence of one with a manifest destiny.
Typical examples were Primarchs like Lion El'Jonson and Corvus Corax, who had thrown themselves into the cause without any self-interest, sacrificing their homes and their ideals. It was all for a better future. Faced with the burgeoning Imperium, everyone thought so. Endure a little, suffer a little, and soon we won't have to suffer anymore—
And then Magnus made one psychic phone call and blew up the Webway.
Now, in the 41st millennium, it was just suffering for the sake of suffering. From the High Lords who worked themselves to death for the Imperium, down to the slaves in the underhives, no one knew what they were suffering for. And the Imperium's policies, its "necessary evils," were mostly unjustifiable. A temporary, extreme strategy had become a long-term one. Anyone would be in pain. The Emperor's violent taxation was to provide resources for the Webway project. What was the point of the High Lords violently taxing the entire galaxy for ten thousand years? Just to maintain the authority of Terra. So they could only push everything onto religious fanaticism and racial hatred. The only reason they hadn't all died yet was because they had a strong foundation and a big daddy on the throne.
So if the locals weren't worried, what were these outsiders worried about? The bloodless, tearless, cold sun in the warp hadn't said anything.
Ramesses's thinking was actually very simple. He would sympathize with the weak and offer help, but this help was not unlimited. And he rarely invested emotionally in anything, especially not in anything in this universe—that was a luxury that would affect his judgment. Only his companions were important.
Seeing no reply, his gaze refocused on the other end of the comms, assisting Arthur in locating the Ork Warboss, and waited for a response.
"No. Just sad," Karna's voice was quiet, but it was like a dull knife, slowly piercing the still air. He sat on high, letting the wind lift his pale golden hair, his eyes reflecting the struggling mobile city below. On the city's edge, the steel frame still bore the marks of Ork artillery. Living metal was constantly repairing the damage, and black smoke billowed from a broken pipe.
Look, a branch of humanity, beset by disasters, had, through the longing for its homeland, picked up the rope of unity and, step by step, had progressed, planning its future according to the hopes of its ancestors. And now? This civilization was struggling on the brink of death. The Adeptus Mechanicus had discovered them and wanted to put them to the torch. The Orks had come and wanted to drown them in the fires of war. Even if an Imperial force had discovered them, the elimination of their technology and the slaughter of their population would have been inevitable.
The malice and darkness of the universe would completely swallow this small star system, and in the end, nothing would be left. No one would save them, except the 'transmigrators'.
And humanity? He looked around. His gaze swept over the silent, iron-hard Space Marines, their armour gleaming with a cold metallic sheen in the daylight, the eyes behind their faceplates as indifferent as ice. His gaze turned to the Imperial representatives. They were looking down at their data-slates, analyzing the planet's situation, their fingertips mechanically scrolling across the screens, as if the tragedy before them were just a string of numbers to be processed.
Humanity, as a whole, was indifferent. The humans of this universe had hope. It was just that that hope had been extinguished by the people of the Imperium. This was the main theme of this universe.
"I am not angry," Karna replied, his voice low, as if suppressing some unspeakable emotion. "I am just sad. Sad for their ignorance of their own ignorance. Sad for their self-righteousness. Yes, I have now lost a true human home, and can only search for a familiar sight in this strange world." He looked at the city's silhouette, backlit by the fires of war, the flames flickering in his pupils, like a distant memory. "You can just think of this sadness as me being overly sentimental."
"Karna is sad," Romulus sighed in front of the projector, having watched the whole exchange. After a long breath, he asked Arthur, "Is he alright?"
"Everyone has their own thoughts," Arthur replied quietly, swinging his sword and cutting down a super-heavy Ork Warboss, flicking the blood from his blade. He sidestepped a whistling gauss beam. This kind of weapon was a hit-scan; dodging it was purely a matter of prediction. And if you got hit, you died. No defense could stop it. That was why the Aeldari, in the old days, had completely abandoned the defensive aspect of warfare and had gone all-in on high-speed maneuverability.
But how do the Orks have this?
With this question in mind, Arthur continued to lead the Dreadwing into the center of the enemy formation. "Faced with the same thing, some people will be moved to tears, and others will be indifferent."
Around him, the squad of Blanks was moving silently, pouring out fire and, at the same time, using their black-hole-like warp-presence to drain the psychic energy of the Weirdboyz, isolating the Orks' unique WAAAGH! energy and weakening the Warboss who was heavily protected within. It was an old trick. The Imperium had used it to fight the Beast. Arthur looked at the slightly weakened Warboss. This big guy, who could have led an entire planet of Orks on any other world, was just a vanguard here.
"Yes, Karna has always been an emotional person," Romulus mused, his fingers flying across the tactical panel, assisting the various combat units in calculating the enemy's attack trajectories. "He seems indifferent to the outside world, but he has always cared a lot." Otherwise, Karna wouldn't have gone from a wealthy urban area to the mountains to do poverty alleviation. This guy was from Shanghai. While not as rich as Ramesses, he could have collected rent until the sea levels rose. The closest he had ever come to the rural poor was probably when he was scrolling on his phone and saw a video of some leader inspecting the area. They were never from the same world, but Karna had still gone.
BOOM— The roar of melta-cannons was incessant. The comms were filled with the frenzied roars of the Orks and the sound of flesh and steel being torn apart.
"And Ramesses," Romulus asked, his hands never stopping as he signed documents, waiting for Arthur to kill the Warboss, "is he just... carefree?" Ramesses was the one who, in his mind, best fit the profile of a transmigrator.
"You could call it that," Arthur replied. The roars of the routed Ork warband were incessant. He stood on the mangled corpse of the Warboss, his gaze passing over the smoke, looking at the regrouping battle line. His dark cloak whipped in the shockwave of an explosion, but it could not hide the weight in his words. "It is a disappointment that they have not lived up to their potential. Their attitude towards humanity is very different. Karna does his best to watch over and help them, and can tolerate the way the environment has changed them. But Ramesses is very direct. He looks down on certain people in the Imperium. He will try to help, but if there are problems after his attempt, he will give up and choose people who are easier to deal with. If these people didn't affect the Dawnbreakers' plans, he wouldn't even bother with them."
Aside from the three of them, Ramesses's attitude towards everyone else was strictly professional. He was a little nicer to unlucky commoners, but for certain beings, especially the Dark Angels or the Custodes, he was completely indifferent. Even when he had to deal with them, his attitude was always flat. As for daemons or xenos, it was even more so. He had a scale in his mind: either they were consumables or they were workers. At most, his interest might lead him to have a slightly different view of certain individuals, but if it involved a security issue, they were always abandoned. The only reason he hadn't done some anti-human things was because he had a high bottom line. He certainly wouldn't be moved by any sentimental emotions.
"Perhaps that's why Ramesses couldn't make it in the medical field," Romulus said, shaking his head. Clinical work is full of difficult people and high pressure. Anyone who can do it is worthy of respect. Especially a young master like Ramesses. You want him to serve people? He couldn't bear the indignity.
"Hey, you can talk about a guy behind his back, but don't do it to his face. You're making it sound like I'm not worthy of our great ideal," Ramesses's voice came over the comms. He was working too, you know.
"Talking behind your back has a different quality to it," Romulus chirped. There were only four of them. They couldn't afford to have cliques.
"Mm. Keep it up," Arthur said, after insta-killing another Warboss and pushing the Ork line back into the rainforest. He then leaned on his sword, surveying the whole scene.
With the Astra Militarum and the Astartes joining the battle, the situation had improved considerably. The militarized mobile city modules provided by the Human Federation gave the large army a mobile platform, and the Imperium's heavy combat power had pushed back the sea of Orks. It had to be said, in this world where offense was generally stronger than defense, the Imperium's military technology might seem backward compared to the Necrons and the Aeldari, but in a real fight, it was a completely different story.
Now that they had driven back the Orks attacking the edge of the mobile city, they could begin the orbital bombardment. Arthur raised his hand, a stream of data flashing across his tactical visor. He decisively opened the fleet comms. "Conduct saturation bombardment on sectors G-7 to K-12. Clear all Ork gathering points."
A deafening roar came from the sky. The first wave of orbital strike beams descended like the wrath of a god. The shockwave crumpled the Gargant's armour, which had been slowly approaching a semblance of science, like tin foil. The Rokkers' heavy metal was still blaring, but the tens-of-meters-tall steel behemoth had already been disintegrated into metal dust in the explosion. Then, the lance-arrays began to cut across the battlefield. The focused gamma rays plowed furrows a hundred meters deep in the surface, and molten silicate flowed along the scorched cuts, forming winding rivers of lava.
"Director Wade, General Chang Wei," Arthur said to the Human Federation officers he was liaising with, having taken cover from the shockwave. "This constant defense is too passive. The Orks can use the escalating intensity of the war to increase their own strength, gradually unlocking the technology engraved in their genes. We cannot continue this war of attrition. We must fight a decisive battle to break the current stalemate and conserve our combat strength to the greatest extent."
If it were just the Ork threat, Arthur wouldn't be in such a hurry. The key was that he didn't know what the Mechanicus was up to. In their previous communications, the Dawnbreakers had already confirmed that the distress signal had not been sent by the Human Federation. They did not have the means for hyperspace communication. It wasn't the Mechanicus, and it wasn't the Human Federation. It certainly wasn't the Orks. So who had sent the signal?
There was definitely something else on this planet, and it was already in a critical situation. Archmagos Cawl was currently using Fabricator-General Krik's resume to deduce what forbidden technologies he might possess. Long lifespans were good for that. After the Archmagos Prime had helped him install a bunch of memory cards, Krik's lineage and various records were gradually being dug up by Cawl, going all the way back four thousand years. When the deduction was complete, he would have to coordinate with the Dark Angels to raid the forge-city in the depths of the lava.
"Understood," Wade said, acknowledging Arthur's judgment. The intelligence director had been in charge of gathering information on the Orks and knew that the enemy's leader had been maintaining this conflict to slowly push the Orks' evolution. Unfortunately, their combat strength had always been insufficient. Even with the forces they had created using living metal, it was a drop in the ocean. They could only rely on the mobile cities as fire platforms for defense. Now, with orbital bombardment, the situation was completely different.
It had to be said, this was a civilization that had already plied the stars. A proper combat force should be like this. Comprehensive, heavy, able to handle both frontal assaults and special operations, and with perfect three-dimensional coordination.
The surrounding Dark Angels were also very used to this rhythm. During the Great Crusade, except for particularly difficult enemies, the reclamation of a single planetary system like this was usually completed within a week, and didn't even require a Primarch to lead.
Wade and Chang Wei exchanged a look of mutual understanding. "We will concentrate our elite guard units to conduct a decapitation strike with you," Chang Wei said. "Please wait three hours. We need to deploy our military modules to assist our allies' assault."
"Mm," Arthur nodded. The elite units of the Human Federation's ground forces were extremely effective. With their assistance, the decapitation strike would be much easier. Don't be fooled by the strange names like Storm Troopers or Spartan-IIs. They were essentially all living metal armour. Their performance was the same. You could just think of the familiar appearances as personal preference decorations. With the supplement of A.I. and Necron weapons, the individual combat capabilities of these squads were even stronger than that of a Primaris Space Marine.
Of course, a frontal assault was another matter. The current combat capability of the Imperium was in a league of its own in the galaxy, relying on its invincible iron fist to maintain the precarious human empire.
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