Chapter 408, Ashes of the Dead Warband

Chapter 408, Ashes of the Dead Warband

"It's nice here."

Needles, or Sidney Blevins, looked with satisfaction at a sand cave the battle brothers had found.

"This is it."

"It's still important to note that sentries must be set up and we will take turns to rest."

"I want to meet with Martins, but not in a way where he surprises me. We have been here for more than thirty years. The original decision was made by us together, and I have not let down any of you." Anybody, we’ve only lost one battle brother so far, and I hope this time, no one among us will die.”

The other seven people surrounding him did not reply immediately.

Everyone seemed to fall into some kind of silence.

One of them broke the atmosphere and said: "Now I have some doubts about whether we should really be like this. Maybe it would be good to be like the way we have been for the past thirty years, at least..."

At this point, he himself couldn't speak anymore.

After a while, another person answered: "If we don't want anything just to survive, then why don't we go to the traitor Zhong Jihua? He will definitely accept us. How can we come to Martins like this? We have to try our best to attract them out, and we have to worry about whether he will kill us all."

In fact, there were not many similar arguments in the past. Their situation is special. They have been confused and confused for more than thirty years. Even space warriors will feel helpless and even unable to cope with themselves.

It's a journey of despair and resentment against the Empire.

Another person said: "Indeed, if I go to Zhong Jihua's place, I would rather die."

Yes, they had rebelled. During the battle that year, they could have returned to the team, but they thought that the Atonement Crusade had no end and no one could survive until the end.

They will carefully assess the danger level of the battle.

However, most of the brothers thought that it would be better to just die.

This is a problem that Blevins, as the leader of the team, has always tried to avoid.

They no longer have the mission to fight desperately for any goal, so they will not lose their lives for these actions that are without honor and are just for survival.

"Okay, why do you act like loyal ministers of the empire? If we were really that loyal, we would have died thirty-seven years ago, or at least we would have died together with Fan Haozhe nine years ago."

Every time when there were signs of such a thing, he would speak forcefully and kill any possible arguments directly.

Of course, he also understood that it was just treating the symptoms, not the root cause.

……

Apparently, the Empire felt it wasn't enough. They are not willing to just die and perish. Therefore, during the counter-insurgency war more than thirty years ago, they had the opportunity to join up with Martins and others, but they finally chose to leave quietly and wander around anonymously.

This is a very dangerous signal. Don't think that venting something will make it better. On the contrary, as long as the situation cannot be changed, venting will only make the connection between them fragile and make the seemingly solid relationship... Cracks will appear, and one day in the future, there will be a complete thunderstorm.

However, they did not intend to harm their parent group, or even truly become enemies of the Emperor.

No matter what his battle brothers are thinking, whether they regret their past decisions, or whether they have any new ideas for the future, I will keep them in my heart and not reveal them.

Brothers who live and die together have the intention of quarreling.

Sometimes they would disguise themselves as normal Space Marines, receive some subsidies, and save some people by the way; but more often than not, they would erase their signs and wander among some gray groups. Sometimes they are plunderers, pirates, sometimes mercenaries...

But if there is any permanent solution... they have thought about finding Zhong Jihua.

Why? Isn't the glory accumulated by the Chapter over thousands of years of history, as well as the sacrifices made in the decades of the Atonement Crusade, not enough to pay for a sin?

At the same time, for some reason that they themselves did not explain clearly, they always paid attention to the Phoenix Mother Group. Sometimes they will move directly to the area where the battle group is fighting and observe from a distance. There were even several experiences where he took action at critical moments to save some battle brothers, but left without meeting them.

About twenty-five years ago, after they completed a supply robbery, they heard news again from the parent group that they were engaged in a war against the Chaos evildoers. The traitors who had nothing to do rushed over with the mentality of "just go and have a look".

In this battle, the battle group suffered heavy losses.

Of the battle group that originally only had more than two hundred people left, half of them were stuck in the quagmire.

This is something they can't save.

There are only eight of them, and there is nothing they can do about the battle situation where more than a hundred battle brothers cannot escape.

They could only watch sadly from a distance.

In fact, this was most of the scenes they saw when they followed the parent group in the past. Scenarios in which they had the chance to save their battle brothers and retreat quietly were the rare ones.

However, this time something completely different happened.

When these more than a hundred people faced a desperate situation, they made an astonishing move: their leader, a Phoenix company commander, went out to negotiate with those cult traitors.

That company commander was also familiar to Blevins, his name was Zhong Jihua.

Of course, Blevins and others who were watching from a distance did not know the specific content of the communication.

But they can see the results. The group of fighting brothers led by Zhong Jihua stopped fighting and even let go of their defenses, allowing the cult traitors to pass through their defense zones. As for them, they stayed in their own camp, not firing a single shot, no longer resisting, and no longer having any contact with the outside world.

Next, there were sporadic fighting sounds in their camp.

Of course, it was not an invasion by foreign enemies, but an internal purge that occurred among the Space Marines.

Obviously, not everyone is willing to accept Zhong Jihua's behavior. Among the group of Space Marines, there are the largest number of people who are willing to die for honor, faith, and the Empire.

In the end, after the cleaning was completed, only sixty or seventy people of Phoenix walked out of the camp.

Next, Zhong Jihua took the still living people deep into the area occupied by the cult traitors and disappeared there.

In the end, the problem of the cult rebellion on that planet was solved, but no one in the empire, whether it was the planet defenders or the Phoenix Chapter, knew that Zhong Jihua and his group had betrayed the empire. They thought from beginning to end that Zhong Jihua's company was sacrificed in the war.

And until the cult rebellion problem was solved, Zhong Jihua and his gang never showed up again.

The Phoenix lost a company, and in the sea of ​​​​stars, there was an additional warband called the "Ashes of the Dead". They believe in tyrants, their bodies have mutated, most members have grown horns, and the overall paint of their power armor is dark red with gray stripes.

Although the Ashes of the Dead are not large in number and have been established for a short time, they have done a lot in the past twenty years.

They plundered the imperial ships and massacred entire ships. Among the ruins that were found afterwards, blood was smeared in every aisle, every room, and every wall; on the bridge, in the assembly square, in In places like ship churches, there are bloody eight-pointed stars and skulls piled up into hills. This is a typical sacrifice to Khorne;

They have also assisted cultists in massacring the human empire world. In the past twenty-five years, they have appeared in at least four incidents where the human world was destroyed or the hive city was massacred;

They even united with several other warbands to attack an Imperial fleet containing the gene-seed taxes handed over by the Space Marine Chapter, and robbed a batch of gene-seeds to use to pollute and strengthen themselves.

They even merged with another warband and took control...

Blevins and others once met their 'old comrade' Zhong Jihua in a Pirate Alliance base. Zhong Jihua once "kindly" invited them to join, but they refused with great difficulty.

The only one among them who lost their first battle brother was during the breakout.

They did rebel, and even became deserters in disgrace, and did not live and die with their battle group. However, they may be able to bear the title of 'traitor', but they are never willing to join the same trap as Zhong Jihua.

To surrender to Chaos, to believe in the tyrant Khorne, to purge their own battle brothers... Blevins and his gang really can't do such a thing, and they are ashamed to associate with them.

But sometimes they also think that after the mother group is destroyed in the Atonement Crusade, they may be the only ones left in this universe, along with the Ashes of the Dead.

No.

Zhong Jihua and his gang have all changed their names/beliefs/paints/logos, so how can they still be called Phoenix? The phoenix is ​​a symbol of unyieldingness, a phoenix reborn from the ashes. The new name that the gang took was named after 'Ashes' and 'The Dead', which obviously completely abandoned the tradition of the war group.

Phoenix has finally come to an end.

However, just when they were wandering in the universe in confusion, not knowing where to go, or even what the meaning of life in the future was, they heard that the parent group had ended the Atonement Expedition!

But with only seven battle brothers left, what's the point? The number of people in the mother group now is even smaller than that of their group of traitors!

However, when they heard the news about the Phoenix, they had already become deeply integrated with a multi-star political entity called the Alliance.

The current parent group seems to be fighting for a star sector leader named 'Gu Hang'.

They didn't know what happened in the middle, but judging from the latest intelligence, the situation of the battle group seemed to be unexpectedly good.

The entire battle group, not only did not look like it was dying, but actually recovered quite vigorously. Especially when the news of the Battle of Koroga came out, under the leadership of Governor Gu, a big demon was eliminated, ending an invasion war directed by him personally!

Although, in that war, it was the man named Gu Hang who gained the greatest degree of fame. People who knew about that war all admired the wisdom and martial prowess of this commander-in-chief and the composite identity of the governor, as well as the powerful psychic power he possessed.

However, with Gu Hang's reputation, those who are interested can still see Phoenix's contribution. This group of interstellar warriors who should have perished helped Gu Hang to a great extent, and showed a strength of at least a hundred people during the battle.

People who don’t know much about phoenixes and don’t pay attention to them may not think it’s a big deal. But to someone like Blevins, who has been following the parent group for decades, this is a miracle.

They knew that the war group had lost its entire arsenal and gene seed bank in the last battle that ended the Atonement Crusade. Under such circumstances, how could it be possible to grow from seven people to more than a hundred people in less than ten years?

Needless to say, the success rate of gene seed implantation surgery is just that there are not that many seeds!

Could it be that Holy Terra or the Order of Mars allocated the gene-seed taxes previously paid by the Phoenix to support the war group?

This is really a strange thing!

Space Marine Chapters also have to pay taxes, but they do not pay imperial taxes, they do not provide physical taxes, and they can even ask the empire or some forge worlds for equipment. However, they still have to hand over one-tenth of all the gene seeds produced by the war group within a certain period.

Nominally, this is so that the empire can check and monitor whether the genetic seeds of the Chapter are still pure and not contaminated; in addition, it is also 'saving' for the Chapter so that when the Chapter suffers losses in the future, it can use the previous ones The gene seeds are provided to the war group to help the war group recover.

But in fact... the former may be a serious reason, but the latter is almost just farting. There is no danger of annihilation of a regiment, so what gene seeds do you want? If there is a crisis of group destruction, then why don't I use gene seeds to create a new, obedient group, but support you old groups with countless rich histories and may not be obedient?

It would be a fool's errand to ask the empire to feed back the genetic seeds it had eaten. Perhaps, it may happen in some battle groups with very special identities and backgrounds, but the Phoenix obviously does not belong to this category.

In the end, did this really happen to the Phoenix?

No matter how unbelievable this thing is, after thinking about it, this is the only possibility.

Could that kid Martins be able to conjure gene seeds out of thin air?

It was precisely because the mother group showed signs of recovery that these eight "lonely ghosts" came up with the idea of ​​coming to find the mother group.

He said this to warn the mother group of the existence of the 'Ashes of the Dead'.

As for reality, do they have some unrealistic expectations?

Only they themselves know that.

(End of this chapter)