Warhammer: In the Name of Nirvana

Chapter 493 The Art of War of the Iron Warriors

"No."

"Absolutely not."

"There's nothing here."

"..."

"I regret it, Dantioch: I should never have listened to you."

Kyle Valen, the new war blacksmith of the 77th Battalion of the Iron Warrior Legion, tore through words of complaint. He moved his eyes away from the gray-white augur instrument, and his rough hands couldn't help but rub his dry eyelids.

Thirteen days ago, at the beginning of the Kraken Expedition, Kyle was promoted to the top officer of the 77th Battalion. This made this one-eyed warrior rise to great heights. Not merit in battle, not favor from the Primarch, just a bit of pathetic luck.

From Perturabo's luck.

From the beginning, the Kraken expedition was not as smooth as the Lord of Steel expected. Although the opponent of the two legions was just a mere pocket empire that was willing to merge with the aliens, the latter could still win in the era of strife. The power to survive the madness has a few trump cards to play.

The operation to recover the fallen imperial world and remove the outermost plundering strongholds went smoothly. However, when the front lines of the expeditionary force reached the outer defense line of the pocket empire, setbacks occurred as promised: the two leading battalions They failed to complete the task of establishing a beachhead as scheduled. Instead, the armor used for the assault was wasted. Even the two war blacksmiths themselves died on the spot.

But Kyle knew very well that even if these two war blacksmiths did not die in battle, their end would not be very good: he had heard that although these two were also Olympian warriors, their combat experience was not very good. Rich, rather than being promoted based on military merit, it is better to say that their immediate superiors were defeated or acted unfavorably, and either died or were beaten to the end by the Primarch, which made them the leaders of the camp. Just a commander.

It is said that these two war blacksmiths were thrown into this war by the Gene Father without even having time to recognize their lower-level commanders: What desperate news.

This situation was absolutely impossible to occur in the early days of the Great Crusade, but when the Fourth Legion, under the command of Perturabo, fought fiercely in the galaxy for sixty or seventy years, along with those familiar things The officers are gradually withering away, and more and more young people like this are climbing into the positions of commanders, and their rotation speed is also astonishingly fast. Often a failure can leave them dead without a burial place.

Just like these two war blacksmiths who died on the battlefield, they carried out the orders of the Primarch numbly and dullly, using pure iron and blood to gnaw down one fortress after another until every company under them was like this. They collapsed in the high-intensity battle, and they themselves died on the road leading the charge.

During this process, the [Iron-Blooded] stayed in the low-Earth orbit of this fortress world. Perturabo witnessed the whole process of failure with a gloomy face. The Spider Queen stood beside him, and another circle away. It was the tridents who stood silently.

Perhaps unable to bear the depressing atmosphere, the Lord of Avalon once made a tentative suggestion to let the Dawnbreaker Legion and the Avalon Auxiliary Army, which had never fought in the expedition, come to support her, but this was only in exchange for the Steel The Lord slowly but firmly refused: Morgan then shut up impatiently and never said a word about it again.

And what happened next was a matter of course: in front of his blood relatives and his most trusted heirs, Perturabo swore that he would capture the city they had originally expected to take within ten Terra Standard Hours. A fortress world that took three weeks to lay siege to.

The Lord of Steel selected five battalions in his legion sequence and personally led them to the front line. They charged forward, with uninterrupted artillery fire covering the Astartes charging like a sea of people under the command of the Olympian tyrant. , intertwined and harmonious like a pianist's hands, allowing the battle line to advance at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Perturabo deliberately chose the ancient, cruel and effective [Xu Jin Barrage] tactic: first, let the rain-like shells advance steadily like a wall, and the Iron Warriors need to follow this wall closely. Behind the walls, capture the lands ravaged by iron and fire before the defenders could react from the bombardment.

This tactic requires precise coordination and an unimaginable amount of calculations, both of which the tyrant of Olympia obviously possesses. He wants to use this bloody grand performance to save face in front of his blood relatives.

In low-Earth orbit, the Lord of Avalon witnessed with almost amazement how Perturabo used this crazy tactic to destroy the fortress world under his feet and his five camps in ten hours. : The Lord of Steel even frantically let the cannonballs fall thirty meters in front of his infantry array. As long as the Iron Warriors companies walking in the front made a slight mistake in executing the order, they would fall to him in rows. Under human fire.

But this tactic with extremely high error costs is indeed very effective: the defenders in the fortress were hit by endless steel barrages and could not lift their heads. However, after the shelling stopped, the defenders launched a charge thirty meters away. The Iron Warriors, these poor people couldn't react at all. In the face of the soaring casualties of the Iron Warriors, the permanent fortress complexes planted the flag of the empire one after another.

Seeing this, even the Lord of Avalon had to sigh in his heart: In this cruel strangulation battle, the Fourth Legion was indeed one of the few strong soldiers in the entire empire. Perturabo and his heirs Its importance in certain fields is irreplaceable.

The Spider Queen knows very well that if she does not go into battle herself, even if she recruits her Dawnbreaker Legion and the most elite Queen's Guards Legion, she will not be able to conquer the world in nine hours: not that the Dawnbreaker Legion This Xu Jin barrage tactic cannot be used, but Morgan cannot tolerate the terrible casualties under such a strong attack anyway.

After all, in less than nine hours, Perturabo showed no emotion in front of her, squandering the strength equivalent to one-tenth of the Dawnbreaker Legion. If Morgan wanted to make up for these soldiers, If so, it will take at least more than ten years.

You know, in the more than ten years since the Nuceria incident, the strength of the Dawnbreaker Legion has only increased from more than 46,000 to more than 52,000. On the contrary, the strength of the Queen's personal guards The number of people has increased a lot, and all of them are the unfortunate ones who unfortunately lost the election.

But despite this, Morgan still strictly demanded the quality of Dawnbreaker recruits, and continued to strengthen her absolute control over this legion like a pathological process, until even the most senior Terran veterans gradually stopped discussing The story of the Emperor and Terra, until the entire Dawnbreaker Legion has gradually begun to merge with the Far Eastern Frontier: the Dawnbreaker is the Far Eastern Frontier, and the Far Eastern Frontier is the Dawnbreaker. Such remarks, fueled by the Spider Queen, Yuas Tate and Mortals are gradually occupying the mainstream position.

According to Morgan's estimation, by the second hundred years of the Great Crusade, her legion will probably have about 120,000 to 150,000 troops, which is a medium-to-large legion: for now, this strength is enough. .

only……

The Spider Queen glanced at the piles of corpses on the planet's surface.

No matter how many troops the Second Legion will eventually reach under Morgan's hamster-like accumulation, the Dawnbreaker Legion is still imaginary in its bones. It only takes a real defeat, even if it is a scale of hundreds of thousands of people. Will be knocked back to his original shape, Morgan doesn't think there will be another hundred years for him to continue to [violate troops] like now.

After all, in a sense, the Spider Queen can be said to be the first person in the entire empire to start preparing for the inevitable [super war] in the future: whether it is a civil war initiated by careerists or initiated by the emperor. Great Purge, they can all be reasons for Morgan to quietly expand his troops.

At the same time, they are always reminding Morgan to never squander his troops like Perturabo is doing now: thinking of this, the Lord of Avalon once again swept his sight across the gloomy clouds on the surface.

She wasn't sure how many bodies the Fourth Legion had left here. Was it four thousand? Or five thousand? Respect for these victims prevented the Spider Queen from prying into their souls.

But there is one thing that Morgan is very sure of: that is, the seven battalions that the Iron Warriors invested in this critical battle must not be able to exert their original combat effectiveness in a short period of time.

Soldiers can be replenished at any time, but experienced non-commissioned officers and officers take a long time to train. Without these grassroots backbones, no matter how sophisticated the tactics are, it will be impossible to execute them, and the overall combat effectiveness of the army will have a sad result. Decline: Even for the Astartes, this is an unbreakable truth in war.

But there is no doubt that this tactic, which few commanders and armies can achieve, is very effective: it took the Fourth Legion less than nine hours to massacre all the resistance forces in the fortress world. After all, what followed was the collapse of the five participating camps.

Unfortunately, the 77th Battalion where Kyle Wallen is located is among these five camps, even the camp closest to the steel barrage.

Fortunately, Kyle successfully survived this battle. His 77th Battalion also suffered the lowest casualty rate in this battle: it only lost its original war blacksmith, except for Kyle. Except for all company commanders, they suffered a casualty rate of 47%.

As for the two battalions with the most serious losses, it may take several years for their establishment to be reestablished again, but the war blacksmiths and company commanders who all died in battle obviously do not need to worry about these things.

And Perturabo is even less likely to care about these trivial matters. What the Lord of Steel cares about is that he has successfully restored some dignity in front of his blood relatives, and the fall of this fortress world has also paved the way for the imperial army to march towards Kra Ken Abyss smoothed the road.

As for the loss of thousands of people, this was not enough to make the Lord of Steel feel heartbroken. Instead, he was complacent that the five battalions he personally led maintained a fight-to-death attitude in the face of high casualty rates: in Petula In Beau's opinion, this is where the Iron Warriors' tenacity lies.

The Primarch agreed to Kael's promotion in the most casual manner, without even a formal written document: for when the surviving one-eyed warrior came to report the damage of the battle to his genetic father, the Olympian The tyrant was happily explaining to his blood relatives the superiority of Xu Jin's barrage tactics.

Perturabo came up with countless data deduction results, and everyone present had to be convinced: Although the losses within nine hours were heartbreaking, if we really follow the regular tactics of the Iron Warriors, we can lay siege to this city. If the fortress lasts for several weeks, the number of casualties will only be higher, and the negative impact on the battle situation will be even more unpredictable.

In a word.

Perturabo, you're right!

Morgan, of course, did not refute this.

The Lord of Avalon absentmindedly glanced at Kyle Valen's iconic one-eyed face. Taking advantage of the Lord of Steel's joy, Morgan casually suggested that Kyle lead his 77th Battalion. , combined with the 14th Battalion led by Dantioch, and then led some Avalon auxiliary troops to perform tasks together, using this unique method to enhance the tacit understanding between the Far Eastern Frontier and the Iron Warriors.

The Lord of Steel naturally had no reason to reject this kind offer. He even gave priority to replenishing the 77th Battalion with full strength. All this made Kyle standing next to him understand: No wonder Dantioch would be in front of him. He patted his chest and said that as long as Kyle nodded, he would have a way for Kyle to fight alongside him.

The path mentioned by co-author Dantioch is another Primarch, right?

When did this guy become so capable?

But no matter how much the new war blacksmith of the 77th Battalion complained in his heart about the hands and eyes of his battle brothers, the Lord of Steel's order was something he could not refute: In this way, Dantioch's troops and Kelvaren The troops completed the merger, and Morgan sent her second regiment of the Queen's Guards, nicknamed "Pale Riders", to assist. This task force was sandwiched between the Dawnbreakers and the Iron Warriors.

On their left, the Olympian tyrant led his descendants and blasted feverishly into the core of the Kraken Abyss, embracing all the vast battlefields and advancing through countless iron and blood: there are enemies Blood, and of course their own blood.

To their right, Morgan led her Dawnbreakers, absentmindedly sweeping the edges of the expedition, aiming to return the crumbling small human colonies to the embrace of the two-headed eagle.

The rear of the Dawnbreaker fleet is even followed by a large number of civilian transport ships, because most of the colonies will choose to abandon their barren and dangerous homes, board the ships of the Dawnbreakers, and become immigrants pouring into the Far Eastern Frontier: Ava The empty lands under Long's rule were always in need of this new labor force, and these immigrants were all promised private land and security.

In this way, Kelvaren was caught between the two legions. While he was witnessing the size of the fleet of the Fourth legion gradually decreasing with the brutal naval battles and fortification operations, and the depressive atmosphere in the fleet was also increasing day by day, he was also witnessing The Dawnbreaker fleet on the other side was gradually crowded with countless immigrants, and all they heard was the joyful laughter of the survivors.

The Iron Warrior only felt that a certain stubborn stone in his heart seemed to be being pried inadvertently. He once went to Dantioch and asked him directly why he wanted to pull him to this position, and his battle The brother just smiled and patted him on the shoulder, asking him to continue to see, listen, and feel.

But Kyle was keenly aware that perhaps Dantioch didn't know the answer to the question either.

Otherwise, this guy is not a vague figure: Dantioch has always been straightforward, and he can even give Perturabo blunt advice: On the premise that he can win again and again, this is also the Lord of Steel's last Appreciate that about him.

And since he can't explain it...

So……

Kyle fell into deep thought. He only felt that he seemed to have caught some clues and was aware of the existence of certain problems, but he still could not figure out what they were: and the galaxy they were fighting for did not seem to be the same. Plan to give them more time.

…

The Lord of Steel's order was issued when no one expected it, and it was obviously with a hint of anger: The progress of the Primarch's fleet in siege of the core area of Kraken Abyss was far from smooth. It is said that they are making difficult progress little by little, and the news that the enemy is recruiting more alien allies has already spread all over the sky.

In this case, a company of Iron Warriors suddenly lost contact with the sentry world where they were stationed, which became very sensitive: the task force of Dantioch and Kelvaren was ordered to solve the problem. incident and investigate the reasons for the company's negligence.

Is he dead or something?

The Primarch didn't care, only that his plans were being disrupted.

In this way, the Iron Warriors' fleet stayed on this primitive, barren world where only moss and fungi grew. They could see the fortresses their battle brothers had built on this world from low-Earth orbit, but they Countless communication calls were made, but no response was received.

"Something doesn't look right."

Dantioch frowned as he observed the captured surface pictures.

"Look at these places, Kyle. These steel and stone walls have obvious signs of decay. According to the time the previous company arrived in this world, it was not long enough for these things to show signs of decay."

"And they don't write back."

Kyle-Valen nodded, he also realized something was wrong.

"What do you think we should do?"

"..."

Dantioch was silent for a moment, and finally just sighed.

"I have a bad feeling about this, Kyle."

"Then no matter what, we must go down and take a look and find out the cause of the situation: if we just go back like this, we will face bigger troubles than this world."

"So, do we need to call those mortals of Avalon?"

"certainly."

Dantioch nodded.

"They are the Queen's personal guards."

"Trust me, Kyle: you'll be shocked."

"So, who do you plan to keep in low-Earth orbit to command the fleet, Dantioch?"

"...Gilbert, that's him."

"……he?"

Kyle chuckled.

"How long has it been since he officially became an Iron Warrior? Twenty years? Or thirty years?"

"In between."

Dantioch snorted, with a hint of bitterness evident in his voice.