Chapter 436 Black and Red, the Plan in the Shadows (Twenty-One) Seed

boom! boom! boom! boom!

On the imperial defense line under the Fermara Mountains, on the permanent defense fortifications built based on the granite structure of the mountains, the Space Wolves and the local defense forces once again faced heavy artillery strikes from the Demon Engine.

At this point in time, it was already a full week after the Word Bearers Legion appeared and launched the landing operation.

The dense rain of bullets howled in patches in the sky, causing the soldiers who heard them to frown and restrain their instinctive impulse to escape.

The hood of the cannonball cast with poor craftsmanship tore through the air, revealing a black-red iron light in the fierce friction of the atmosphere. The half-man-high cannonball emitted terrifying kinetic energy, with a dark green tail flame hanging all the way, and an increasingly sharp whistle. Pieces fell from high in the sky.

The iron quilt shattered the moment it came into contact with the resistance, and the hard warhead followed the inertia and smashed through the surface metal armor of the fortification.

The thick projectile continued to advance for more than ten meters with the potential energy, and then, stimulated by the firing pin in the warhead, it used the final explosion of the warhead to send a faint thunder to the surface.

Dust and concrete debris fell, and the lights in the guard post flickered on and off. Under the dim light, the dust on the communicator and map was jumping, and the half-full military kettle broke away from the shackles of gravity and fell to the ground.

And when the impact point of the cannonball began to extend backwards and the roar that made people instinctively frightened gradually fade away, a hand also covered with dust caught the kettle in mid-air, then opened the kettle and used the remaining A lot of fresh water washes the chapped lips.

"Bah!" Sergeant Crumb spat out the dust and metallic-tasting water in his mouth on the ground, and then pushed the sentry in front of the artillery mirror away.

Under the infrared vision, the plains still had burn marks left by the sun during the day, and at the end of the battlefield he was responsible for, a dense crowd of people appeared again.

"Report!" the sergeant ordered without looking back.

Communications Corpsman Yassen tacitly pressed the switch on the microphone, and while initiating contact with the superior command post, he simultaneously repeated the content of the sergeant's report.

"Calling the team, this is post 0225, please provide artillery support, coordinate number - scheduled observation Zhuyuan 9.

Repeat 9..."

"Received." After the transfer, in the mountains dozens of kilometers away, the major at the artillery command post tilted his head and held the communication headset while nodding to the adjutant.

He used the data board to record the information from the outpost to the higher-level command post, while the adjutant picked up another communicator. After carefully observing the atmospheric meter in front of him, he launched a standby for 16 guns from hidden gun emplacements. The artillery position ordered:

"Coordinate 9, no correction, three rounds of anti-personnel bombs, ready for rapid fire!"

"Coordinate 9, no correction, anti-personnel shells, three rounds, rapid fire ready!" The gunners of each gun position repeatedly confirmed the instructions received, and the gunners of the team made a ready gesture to the gunner after the loading was completed.

"Let go!" The adjutant looked at the time on his wrist and gave the order the moment the fire channel received permission from his superiors.

"Let go!" The gunners waved down the command flags in their hands, and then tightly covered the noise-cancelling headphones on their heads to prevent them from being blown away by the hot gun flames.

The gunner at the firing position of the ground-shaking cannon stepped on the trigger, and the barrel of the locomotive-sized ground-shaking cannon retreated heavily.

The scorching air flow in the huge roar raised smoke and dust all over the sky. The sweat on the bare upper body of the loaders was quickly evaporated. The chain of the fortress's built-in hoist was rattling. In less than 20 seconds, the next heavy artillery shell was fired. Already loaded.

"Let go!" the adjutant once again confirmed that the calculated parameters of the various elements were correct, and ordered after delegating them to each gun position.

"Let go!" the gunner waved the command flag down, then hid in the bunker and took off his coat. The temperature in the small hidden fortification rose rapidly within a few minutes, and the coat that was supposed to keep out the cold became a high-temperature steamer.

But the bulletproof vest cannot be taken off, because when the shock wave from the earth-shaking cannon's muzzle surges in the small bunker, any tiny fragments will become a fatal threat.

At that time, some recruits did not believe in this evil, but the facts soon taught him.

The fact that a 200-gram nut was embedded in the skull of this unfortunate man told the former that his survival was entirely dependent on the mercy of the Emperor.

Well, it would be better if the unfortunate guy wasn't the gunner himself.

The gunners and settlers on the gun mount did not have this treatment. They could only throw their coats beside them and pour salty fresh water into their mouths from the kettle.

Sixteen artillery lines, slightly lower than before, extended towards the sky amidst the roar of the earth-shaking cannon. After the observer completed the inspection of the cannon body's reset, the servo of the heavy artillery began to follow the instructions amidst the prayers of the mechanical priest. The established parameters were slightly lowered again...

Boom boom boom!

Forty-eight special anti-personnel bombs prepared for unarmored units flew dozens of kilometers under three precisely calculated parabolas, and finally arrived at the same time and covered a five-kilometer horizontal battlefield.

Nearly a hundred kilograms of explosives and prefabricated fragments, supported by the laws of physics, cut off the dense array of rebels. The high-temperature impact fragments and metal jets crushed and tore into pieces all the affected flesh and machinery, creating a stir. Under the mushroom cloud is a battlefield where the whole earth is shaking.

This is undoubtedly a successful artillery support, especially when the enemy's counter-battery strikes are powerless against the positions hidden behind the mountains due to the parabola.

But what the enemy lacks most is troops, and an attack of this level is nothing more than a small exploration of each other's reality before the real decisive battle begins between two behemoths with the Astartes Chapter as the core.

The counterattack came soon, the signal of the sentry post was captured by the warship in orbit, and the red meteors fell from the sky.

The meteorite-like airdrop pod smashed through the sentry post and the top of the defense corps. The Word Bearers who appeared on the flames dyed the two fortifications of different sizes into the same blood color as their armor in just over ten minutes.

The Space Wolves could only passively counterattack.

The control of the universe is the control of the air, and the control of the air means the right to maneuver in the atmosphere.

The loss of it makes the loyal Astartes lose the ability to transfer on a large scale. The consequence of forcibly riding a fighter plane is often a more painful loss.

Therefore, the hunting group of the wild wolves can only give up the convenient marching method. After half an hour of forced march, they harvested an abandoned position stained with blood.

And this is just a corner of the countless battlefields in the Otto galaxy. Before the two fleets have not yet decided the winner, similar scenes will be repeated countless times.

A week after the war began, the fierce battle between the Empire and Chaos in space and on the ground at the same time has completely destroyed the satellite systems of all planets in this galaxy.

Under the condition that the space naval battle failed to determine the winner, the air supremacy in the atmosphere has not yet fallen into the hands of either side, and both sides have no time to wait, so the war has developed to the present, and the way both sides observe the battlefield has degenerated to the era of naked eye observation.

The war in front is still going on, and the sound of devastating artillery fire is just thunder in the sky when it reaches the rear.

Under the dark dome of the tunnel, the workers have become accustomed to this different kind of noise. They don’t know and have no way of knowing that a group of living compatriots have quietly fallen on the battlefield dozens of kilometers away from them.

The order in the huge underground transfer station remains, and the crowd has not caused any chaos due to the shelling.

The workers wiped the sweat from their foreheads silently and carried the supplies transported from the rear according to the fluorescent marks under their feet.

Weapons and ammunition, cold-proof military uniforms and eyepieces, gloves and boots, bedding and kettles. A large amount of supplies were placed in various tunnels leading to the battlefield by the command according to different marching routes.

As the next rail train roared, soldiers of the supplementary corps walked down from the carriages in batches and lined up.

Then, under the commander's order, they passed by the material distribution point in a row, picked up their weapons that were not even wiped clean with gun oil and rushed to the battlefield ahead.

The passing of people seemed so numb here that no one was interested in making eye contact with others. Because death is so cheap here that any small emotional investment seems so luxurious.

Dong... Dong...

In the dark dome of the underground station, two giants on the high platform were leaving from the railing. This was the first time that the head wolf Ragnar had arrived here since the war began, and he was accompanied by Barneg, the leader of the three hunting groups temporarily assigned by the Sea Wolf Company.

"You shouldn't be here." Barneg couldn't help but say.

This inspection of the ground battlefield was a unilateral action of Ragnar, and as the supreme commander who was supposed to be in charge of the fleet flagship Hrafinkel, Ragnar's adventure was opposed by all the wild wolves.

"Then where should I be?" The giant in the dark stopped and looked back, with sharp canine teeth in his slightly grinning mouth flashing a faint light.

"Watching you fight in those steel coffins, and then helplessly waiting for death?"

"No, I don't mean that..." Balneg lowered his head to defend, while Ragnar continued.

"Then where should I be, my friend. You see, you are bleeding and dying here, while I can only watch the boring battles between those warships in space.

If we win, I will not have any sense of honor, and if I lose..."

Ragnar said, putting his hand on Balneg's shoulder, and said meaningfully:

"Then would you like to see a Fenris Supreme King who died on the throne instead of on the battlefield?"

"This..." Balneg wanted to refute but couldn't. The wolf leader had said this, and he really couldn't find more words to refute.

He wanted to deny Ragnar's pessimism, but he couldn't deny the cruelty of the war. In the end, he could only express his will with a sentence "We will win!".

"Yes... We will win." The gate in front of Ragnar slowly opened, and the cold air on the tarmac under the moonlight blew his silver hair.

He turned his head to look at the old sea wolf, and said before returning to the Hrafinkel:

"But the alternation of life is also part of fate. So, keep an eye on those cubs for me.

We will die, and they are the future of the wolf pack."

Update.