83: Chapter 83 The Chaos Patrol Approaches, First Contact Battle

"It's blown—!"

It wasn't a tripwire. It was the dull thud of Yang Shitou slamming his transcription headset onto the console.

The headset's casing was military-grade polymer and wouldn't shatter, but the force with which he slammed it down had long since surpassed the physical boundaries of simply "setting it down."

The teacup on the console was knocked over by the vibration, and the tea spilled across the spectrum monitor, spreading a brown stain over the purple-black waveforms, like blood diffusing in the darkness.

He replayed the audio. Less than five seconds.

That wasn't language—it was the resonant frequency of a Chaos Psyker conducting a sacrificial ritual, the low-frequency band pressing against the very edge of human hearing, like a rusted nail driven through the eardrum, piercing all the way to the back of the skull.

He had heard it once before when he ambushed a Chaos patrol.

The wounded soldiers who were lucky enough to survive had howled in the field hospital for three full days, and it wasn't from the pain—it was because that sound had burrowed into the crevices of their bones, lingering far longer than it had in their eardrums.

The howling pierced through three layers of field tents, and the sentry standing guard outside had gripped his laser rifle all night, his knuckles cracking, never loosening his hold even as the anti-slip texture of the rifle butt became soaked in his sweat.

"Yang Shitou! What are you slamming—!" The communication assistant on night duty jolted awake, springing from his chair, his hand already on the pistol grip at his waist.

"Listen for yourself." Yang Shitou handed him the headset.

The assistant took it off after just three seconds, his face paler than the moonlight falling on the console. "What the hell is that—!"

"Chaos Hunting Squad." Yang Shitou's voice was as rough as sandpaper. "The resonant band is two semitones lower than a standard patrol; they're scanning for Psyker traces. They aren't just passing through—they're coming for us."

"I'll go get Lord Lin Mo—"

"No need." Yang Shitou was already rushing toward the door. "I'll go myself. You stay here—if the signal frequency rises by another half-semitone, call me on the emergency channel immediately. Don't use the regular channel; there's a delay. A half-semitone difference is enough for the Hunting Squad to advance another kilometer."

"A half-semitone—how am I supposed to judge that?"

"Your ears will hurt first, then your teeth will ache. Remember the order: ear pain first, toothache later. By the time your teeth ache, they'll already be right on top of us. Don't wait for the toothache to report it; hit the emergency channel the moment your ears hurt."

The assistant swallowed hard. "Understood."

Yang Shitou rushed out of the signal relay station's iron door. The door slammed against the wall and bounced back, leaving a shallow dent in the iron sheet—an honest man who had worked the night shift at the signal station for two years without ever causing a stir had, at this early hour, bent a thirty-pound iron door out of shape.

The lights in the Intelligence Center were still on; Lin Mo hadn't slept.

Spread out on the table was that map, which was becoming increasingly dense—crash sites, swamp terrain, and southern hemisphere reef markers were layered four deep, each layer marked in a different colored charcoal pencil.

The rim of his cup was stained with a ring of charcoal dust from him rubbing the pencil tips; the rings overlapped, looking like an irregular star map.

Yang Shitou pushed the door open and entered without a word, immediately playing the recorded audio.

Lin Mo listened to the entire recording of less than five seconds, pushed his herbal tea aside, spread out the map, and drew a circle on the azimuth of the signal source. The charcoal pencil snapped with a "click."

"Chaos patrol."

"It's a Hunting Squad," Yang Shitou corrected. "Standard patrols don't use this band. I heard it the day I set the ambush—the Hunting Squad's frequency is two semitones lower, with stronger penetration, specifically for scanning Psyker residue."

"At least forty-eight hours earlier than expected." Lin Mo swapped for a new charcoal pencil and marked a timeline next to the circle. "They aren't chasing the crash signal; they're chasing the Psyker traces."

"Whose Psyker traces?"

Lin Mo looked up and out the window—toward the Medical Station.

When Alice performed purification after the crash, she had released Psyker fluctuations; in the Warp, that disturbance was like striking a match in a pitch-black room.

The temperature change that flashed across the mirror of the emperor when he picked up the Deputy Medical Officer in the swamp; the faint golden glimmer in her unconscious state when his fingertips brushed her hair while stopping her bleeding—he should have connected this glimmer to the Chaos pursuers long ago.

"My mistake," he said.

"Hardly," Yang Shitou said, wrapping the headset cord around his fingers twice, his knuckles turning white—his only habit when nervous, a quirk developed from two years of night shifts. "Psyker traces aren't something a person can control. I didn't come here to listen to you admit fault; I came to tell you how much time we have left."

"One hour before dawn." Lin Mo had already calculated it. A product manager's instinct had completed the information triage for him: signal source azimuth 112 degrees, resonance characteristics matching the Hunting Squad band over 90 percent, and calculating for upwind propagation speed, the earliest point of arrival at the edge of the minefield—less than four hours.

Yang Shitou nodded. "Is that enough?"

"It's enough. You go back to the signal station and keep the communication continuous—even if it cuts out for just one second, that's enough for Chaos to advance another fifty steps."

"Understood." Yang Shitou turned and ran, pausing for a step at the door to reach out and pull the bent iron door back into its frame. The sound of the iron door closing was much softer than usual.

It wasn't that he wasn't anxious. It was that the moment he stepped out, he locked his anxiety into the palm of his hand as he pulled the door—all his remaining energy had to be saved for the spectrum analyzer.

Lin Mo stood up, walked to the door of the Intelligence Center, and called out a name toward the square.

"Locke!"

Locke arrived in three seconds. He didn't walk out of a building; he vaulted directly down from the sentry tower. The six-foot-three bearded man landed with his knees slightly bent, already carrying that modified laser axe—the blade still bore the old scars from cleaving an Ork last month; he never wiped them off, saying they were his "medals."

"How many?" Locke asked.

"A Hunting Squad, numbers unknown. The unit size is probably two to three times that of a standard patrol, equipped with a Chaos Sorcerer and a Psyker tracker."

"Fuck." Locke swore only one word, then hoisted the laser axe onto his shoulder. "You deploy, I'll run."

Lin Mo began the deployment. It was less of an order and more of a checklist—a product manager's instinct under time pressure: breaking a complex system into parallel execution tasks, each with a person in charge, a deadline, and acceptance criteria.

"Locke—emergency assembly for everyone; anyone who can hold a weapon is to be assigned to the defensive sequence. Prioritize notifying the south and west sentry towers; that part of the swamp has the worst visibility."

"Understood."

"Old Tom—the Arsenal is to suspend regular production and focus entirely on rushing the manufacture of tripwire triggers. Precision can be lowered—"

"Production cannot be lowered." Old Tom's voice came from the doorway. He was already standing there, his work overalls rolled up to his elbows, holding two fuse casings he had just removed from the lathe. The workshop was only a square away from the Intelligence Center; in the dead of night, sounds traveled further than during the day. "I heard you. Leave the tripwires to me; just tell me where the minefield boundaries are drawn."

"The edge of the swamp, from the east drainage ditch to the west reed bed, five hundred paces deep." Lin Mo turned the map toward him.

Old Tom didn't walk closer. He didn't need to—having worked as a blacksmith on this planet for three years, every inch of the swamp's terrain was etched into the trenches he had dug to lay drainage pipes. But he frowned after glancing at the map. Frowning was the precursor to his opposition; no matter whose plan didn't suit him, he would always frown first, then speak.

"The silt in the east drainage ditch is two feet deeper than the west side; the tripwires buried over there need an extra layer of waterproof sealing. Otherwise, the fuses will get damp and be duds."

"How long to add the sealing?"

"Two hours."

"Can you make it in time?"

"Are you asking a man who's spent his whole life as a blacksmith if he can make it in time?" Old Tom's tone carried a bit of offended stubbornness—not anger, but because in his dictionary, the words "is it enough" were only ever used to ask others. "It has to be enough. But I'll make this clear: two hundred tripwires, the one hundred on the east side get extra sealing, the one hundred on the west side get standard assembly. I won't re-inspect them after I'm done—not because there isn't enough time, but because if I re-inspect, I'll install at least thirty fewer. For the things I don't check, find someone else to spot-check."

Lin Mo made a note in the ledger: East side tripwires add sealing—Old Tom supervising—no re-inspection—arrange for an assistant to spot-check.

Old Tom saw him write the words "no re-inspection," and the corners of his mouth twitched imperceptibly. Lin Mo understood what he meant: a lifelong blacksmith not re-inspecting his own work wasn't because he didn't trust himself, but because checking it one more time meant installing thirty fewer mines. Thirty mines in the swamp could stop another wave of charges. This logic didn't need to be spelled out.

"One more thing." Old Tom stopped at the door. "That reed bed in the southwest corner, the mud is thinner than you think—I went there last month to dig a drainage ditch. The tripwires need to be moved twenty paces north."

"Move twenty paces north." Lin Mo changed the map on the spot. "Mud thin—Old Tom's assessment—one hundred percent credibility."

Old Tom nodded, turned, and left without a word of nonsense. As he left, the two fuse casings in his hand knocked together, making a crisp metallic sound, like a rehearsal of the fuse trigger in the silence of the early morning—click. Click. Every sound was deadly accurate.

After receiving the deployment checklist, Locke woke up all the squad Commanders within seven minutes. Lin Mo could hear the commotion in the square from the Intelligence Center—it wasn't an inspirational speech-style mobilization, but Locke's unique method: he didn't say "assemble," he called out names. He called them one by one, and those called would always rush out the door with the exact same rhythm: first open eyes, then reach for weapons, finally feet hit the ground. Eyes, hands, feet—the sequence never faltered.

"Aunt Zhang—" Locke's voice carried across most of the square. "The kitchen squad is to retreat behind the Medical Station! Don't move the pots, just bring enough water—the wounded consume more water than bullets!"

"Understood!" Aunt Zhang's voice came back from the kitchen direction, mixed with the friction of the iron stove plates being pushed. "Xiao Liuzi—push the flour vat over! Don't lift it, push it! Your back that you threw out last month isn't fully healed yet!"

"Mom—my back is fine—"

"Whether it's fine or not is for me to say! Push! If you keep nagging, I'll have you go to the ammunition depot to move artillery shells—those things are twice as heavy as the flour vat!"

"I'm pushing! Can't I just push it—"

"That's more like it! Old Li—the water vat! I didn't tell you to carry the whole vat—can you even lift it! Use buckets! Three buckets are enough for the Medical Station for four hours, prepare an extra one—in case Lieutenant Alice needs to boil hot water to sterilize instruments, if you don't have hot water, what is she supposed to use to sterilize? Your spit?"

"Yang Shitou—" Locke continued shouting. "Get back to your signal station! Don't let the signal cut out, even for one second—"

"That one second is enough for Chaos to advance another fifty steps; Lord Lin Mo already said that." Yang Shitou's voice was already distant—he was already on his way back to the relay station.

"Old Tom—"

"Stop shouting! I'm at the lathe!" Old Tom's voice pierced through the workshop walls, mixed in with the sound of the steam winch, as if chewed up and spat out by metal. "The mud in the southwest reed bed is thin! Tell Lin Mo to change the map!"

"He already has!" Locke shouted back. "Move twenty paces north!"

"As long as he knows!"

Fifteen minutes later, the mortars on all the sentry towers in Blackstone Town were loaded. A layer of reinforced bunkers made of scrap steel plates was added behind the sandbags on the west wall—the steel plates had been salvaged from the crash wreckage last month; Old Tom said they were too thin to make parts, but stacking them three layers thick was just right to block shrapnel.

The open space in the center of the square was cleared. Aunt Zhang led the kitchen squad to move the stove and flour vat to the side of the backup tent behind the Medical Station; no one spoke—not out of fear, but because everyone knew exactly where they should be standing. Moving things didn't require idle chatter.

The Medical Station tent swayed gently in the early morning wind.

Lieutenant Alice Vian, by the light of an oil lamp, checked the sterilization seals of the surgical instruments one by one—each sterilization package was labeled with a date, the handwriting that of Deputy Medical Officer Vian from two days ago. After returning from the edge of the swamp, the first rule she set for herself was this: surgical instrument sterilization seals must be checked at every shift change, without relying on anyone's verbal confirmation.

Deputy Medical Officer Vian walked out of the tent, holding two rehabilitation assessment reports. Her rib calluses were still growing, yet she had already donned her surgical gown. The instructor at the Astral Knights field hospital had said: there are no wounded on the battlefield, only those who can move temporarily and those who cannot. She chose the former.

"Your position for tonight." The Deputy Medical Officer handed her the surgical gown—to the woman who shared her name.

"I know." Alice of Blackstone Town took the surgical gown and put it on.

"I've checked all the sterilization seals, according to your standards—not the Imperial Munitorum Manual's standards. Your standards have two more procedures than the manual." She paused. "But I'm not sure about the spring tension of the number three hemostatic forceps; it feels a bit looser than the standard. Do you think I'm being picky?"

"I think you're doing what needs to be done." Alice tightened the belt of her surgical gown, her fingertips tying the Astral Knights standard field knot at her waist—not the square knot from the Imperial Munitorum Manual. This knot could be untied with one hand; it was something the instructor had taught them extra during training and had never been written into official textbooks. "The number three hemostatic forceps are in the second compartment on the left; I've noted the spring tension, and the deviation is within the safe range. But you were right to bring it up; check it every shift change from now on."

"Did you require this when you were in the Legion?"

"Not in the Legion." Alice looked outside the tent—Locke was leading the militia squad toward the west defensive line. "In the Legion, sterilization is handled by a dedicated medical logistics team; there's always someone to double-check. Here, this system didn't exist to begin with."

"You built it in two days."

"Not me." Alice's gaze fell on the square—a silver-haired woman carrying a laser rifle was walking by, the rifle butt pressed against her shoulder, fine-tuning the angle of the fit. "It's that the people here don't need to be urged to move—they just need to know what the standard is. The longer you stay, the more you'll realize: the people of Blackstone Town aren't unafraid of death; they know that fear is useless. So they save the energy they'd spend on fear and focus on doing the work in their hands."

"The way you talk is sounding more and more like Lin Mo."

"Not at all." Alice's tone returned to its usual coldness—but the Deputy Medical Officer could already distinguish the temperature of this coldness; it wasn't detachment, but the low-power state she automatically entered when thinking. "He talks like a product manager; I still talk like myself."

The Deputy Medical Officer followed her gaze. The woman carrying the gun—her colleague, sharing the same name, from the same legion—was adjusting the angle of her rifle stock behind the sandbags on the west side. It wasn't the awkwardness of a novice testing a weapon: she pressed the stock into her shoulder pocket by less than a centimeter, then nodded. Perfect.

"How is her marksmanship?" the Deputy Medical Officer asked.

"Ten points higher than everyone else in our cohort." Alice's tone was completely calm—not boasting, just stating a fact she had verified with her own eyes at the firing range. "When she was entangled by Chaos corruption in the swamp, the last thing she did before losing consciousness wasn't to panic; it was to reapply the tourniquet on her wounded comrade. Only after she finished did she let her Psyker powers spiral out of control."

The Deputy Medical Officer paused for a moment, then said softly, "You've spent less time in Blackstone Town than I have, yet you understood how the people here live sooner than I did."

"Not sooner." Alice placed the torn-open tourniquet packaging on the left side of the operating table, then pulled a lighter from her surgical gown pocket, glanced at it, and put it back. "It's that you haven't gotten used to it yet—what it feels like to be responsible for every one of your own decisions in a place where you don't have to report to superiors."

The Deputy Medical Officer didn't respond. She set the rehabilitation assessment report on the operating table, picked up another tourniquet, and, following Alice's standard—not the standard of the Imperial Military Manual—pre-tore a corner.

Two tourniquets, spaced an arm's length apart. This distance was something Alice had calculated: the shortest movement distance from the left side of the operating table to the tourniquet point on a wounded person's leg. The Astral Knights field manual stated three, but she only laid out two. Because after observing for the past few days, in the battles at Blackstone Town, the average number of critically wounded needing tourniquets at the same time was 1.7, far less than the three to five people the manual anticipated.

"Your standard has one less than the manual." The Deputy Medical Officer looked at the two tourniquets on the table.

"Because I understand this battlefield," Alice said. "And you?"

The Deputy Medical Officer was silent for a beat, then placed the tourniquet in her hand on the table, lining it up with the other two. Three.

"It's not that I don't trust your judgment," she explained. "It's just—having one more won't make things any slower."

Alice glanced at her. That look wasn't disapproval; it was validation—a kind of battlefield validation that wouldn't be found in any Astral Knights promotion assessment, yet was more effective than any test.

During her first week of training, her shooting instructor had said: "Practice once more at the range, save yourself one less trouble on the battlefield." The Deputy Medical Officer had just translated this into another version: "Prepare one more tourniquet, panic one second less." Both versions spoke of the same principle.

Lin Mo sat back in his chair and mentally reviewed the possible composition of a Chaos patrol. Three years ago, while chatting at an outpost, Rock had mentioned the standard configuration of a Chaos patrol—something he had pried out of a captured Chaos cultist back when he was still in the Imperial local garrison.

Standard patrol: three Chaos Space Marines, plus ten to fifteen Chaos cultists, equipped with one reconnaissance mech.

And a Hunter Squad—an elite unit specifically for tracking Psykers, with a force twice the size of a patrol, plus one Chaos Sorcerer and a set of Psyker tracking instruments.

He told Rock, who had just walked in, about this assessment.

Rock wasn't surprised; he had already calculated a similar conclusion in his own mind. He only asked two words: "Bottom line."

"What bottom line?"

"How much we can withstand." Rock planted his laser axe on the ground, the handle making a dull thud against the stone slab—not to act tough, but it was his habit before calculating numbers; he used the axe handle to beat out a rhythm on the ground, keeping track of the numbers along with the beat. "Standard patrol."

"No problem."

"Hunter Squad."

Lin Mo spread out the map and pointed to the three defensive lines in the southern swamp. "We can hold, but there will be heavy casualties."

"How many?"

"Enough to keep both Alices at the Medical Station working around the clock for twenty-four hours."

"What if it's more than one squad?"

Lin Mo didn't speak.

Rock didn't press for an answer either. He glanced at the map, reached out to turn it, and added two more defensive lines on the southeast side. He drew the lines with immense force, and the charcoal pencil snapped twice on the parchment—not because the pencil was poor quality, but because of the force he used to write, exactly the same force he used when cleaving his laser axe into an Ork's skull.

"Then I'll just draw two more." He placed the broken charcoal pencil on the table. "That memorandum in your drawer—is it finished?"

This wasn't a question. It was Rock's version of "I know what you're doing, and I know why you're doing it."

Lin Mo didn't respond. When Rock walked out of the Intelligence Center, he closed the door with just the right amount of force—not heavy enough to make the doorframe rattle, not light enough to leave it unlatched. It was a completely different logic from the force he used to clear enemies on the battlefield.

Lin Mo suddenly thought: every move this brute made outside of combat was as precise as a calibrated precision instrument. How many years had it taken him to learn to rein in the strength that could cleave an Ork's skull, softening it into the gentleness required to close a door without startling an oil lamp?

He returned to the table and finished the memorandum just before the faint light of dawn was about to shine through the oiled paper of the window panes.

Sixteen characters on the cover: "If communication is interrupted for more than forty-eight hours."

Below was the chain of command: first priority Rock, second priority Lieutenant Alice Vian (Astral Knights), third priority Old Tom (Arsenal defense).

He finished writing the last item—"Initiate emergency communication protocol with the Astral Knights, Lieutenant Lieutenant Alice Vian is responsible for communication, use the internal encrypted channel of the Astral Knights, frequency code see Appendix I"—folded it, and placed it into a waterproof bag. The waterproof bag was made from the waterproof layer of a crashed ship's sealed cabin, and the opening was twisted three times with copper wire. The toughness of this copper wire was called "ductility" on Earth, but in the mouth of Old Tom on Hope Star, it was called "this thing won't break when twisted, use it with confidence."

He locked the memorandum into the bottom-most drawer of the filing cabinet. Inside the drawer was also a silver-veined crystal—the first crystal the mirror of the emperor spat out after the first Ork Waaagh! was defeated, something he still hadn't fully figured out—as well as a copy of a secret letter and a copper lock key. He placed the memorandum on top of the crystal and the secret letter, with the key on the very top. Like a man confirming: important things were all where they were supposed to be.

He blew out the oil lamp and closed his eyes.

The mirror of the emperor flashed at the edge of his vision. It wasn't a tactical display—it was a feeling he couldn't describe to anyone. It was like someone, somewhere far away, at a point in time he hadn't reached yet, had performed some action towards him. He still couldn't distinguish whether it was a warning or an encouragement, but every time he closed his eyes, he waited for that warmth to appear—when it appeared, it meant he hadn't strayed from this timeline.

This time it came. The temperature was a bit lower than last time—perhaps because he himself was very cold.

He opened his eyes. The light of dawn pierced through the oiled paper window panes.

At the edge of the eastern swamp—the fuse of the first tripwire mine was triggered. It wasn't the directional warning of a signal mine, but a real, solid trigger mine. The explosion radius covered the entire reed bed, and the sound wave was compressed in the swamp mist into a dull, thunderous boom, penetrating four layers of sandbags and a steel plate bunker. The window trembled slightly, and dust fell in flurries from the mortise and tenon joints of the window frame, landing on the map Lin Mo had spread out, covering exactly the southeast defensive line markings he had drawn four times.

He stood up. The ring of charcoal ash on the rim of his cup cracked slightly from the vibration—an incomplete circle.

In the square, Rock was already shouting. He wasn't shouting tactical terms, but names.

"Aunt Zhang—the mess hall squad, retreat behind the Medical Station!"

"Already retreating!"

"Yang Shitou—keep the signal continuous!"

"Signal online! Three targets—one on the left flank, one in front, and another in the reeds on the right flank—the one on the right flank is the biggest!"

"Old Tom—southwest corner reed bed, mortar, first round, fire! Don't make me say it a second time!"

"Do you think I want to hear you say it a second time?" Old Tom's voice boomed down from the roof of the Arsenal, mixed with the sound of metal friction from the mortar calibration handle. "The first round is already loaded! I've been staring at that patch of reeds all night—just waiting for the first mine to go off so I'd know where the Chaos scouts entered the minefield! Get out of the Intelligence Center quickly, that window of yours faces the swamp! If it gets shot through, don't expect me to patch it, I don't have the time!"

Lin Mo stepped down the iron ladder and walked out of the Intelligence Center. Passing by the Medical Station tent, he saw inside through the half-lifted curtain—Alice had already put on her first pair of surgical gloves, and the sweat on her forehead hadn't dripped down yet, but had already gathered at her temples. Two Alices stood on either side of the same operating table, one arranging tourniquets on the left side, the other lining up anti-infection medication on the right. They didn't speak—last night they had already mentally rehearsed every step into the same sequence.

"The first mine outside—" the Deputy Medical Officer spoke first.

"I heard it. The scout in front is left to Lin Mo." Alice of Blackstone Town didn't look up; her voice was as steady as when she answered the instructor's questions during her Astral Knights promotion assessment—not cold, but with total focus. "The left flank belongs to Rock. The biggest one on the right flank—"

"I have my rifle set up upstairs." Behind the sandbags on the west side, the other silver-haired woman had already set up her long-barreled lasgun. She had spent the entire early morning adjusting the angle of the stock against her shoulder pocket—not out of nervousness, but out of old habit. The Astral Knights shooting instructor had said: if the stock presses against the shoulder by a centimeter difference, the point of impact at five hundred paces will be off by ten paces. She never let the margin of error exceed half a centimeter.

Lin Mo paused for a second in the square and looked up at the purple-black rift in the sky that hadn't completely closed yet.

Last night, in the fourth item of the memorandum, he had written a passage in Low Gothic grammar—not for the Empire, but for Rock, for himself, and for everyone he wasn't sure would see tomorrow's sunset. That passage was now pressed under the waterproof bag in the deepest part of the drawer, held down by the weight of a copper lock key:

"If a Hunter Squad comes, the Blackstone Town defense system can withstand sixty hours of continuous pressure. After sixty hours, we will need external rescue. If two Hunter Squads come—or one Hunter Squad plus one Chaos Sorcerer—this defensive line will be torn open within forty-two hours. Where the breach opens, the last line of defense is the Medical Station. Not the sentry tower, not the Arsenal, but the Medical Station. Because Chaos will prioritize destroying places that can treat the wounded.

I have placed twenty extra lasgun power packs behind the main gate sandbags, eight more than standard. These eight are for myself. Not for the Archon. They are for the man who once picked up a silver-haired woman in the swamp, and in that moment, finally understood why the mirror of the emperor had chosen him."

He withdrew his gaze. Those people running past him—Rock, Old Tom, Aunt Zhang, Yang Shitou, the two Alices—he had written every single one of their names. Not on a memorandum, but on something more durable than paper.

He walked toward the southern defensive line.

Behind the sandbags, three veterans from Riverbend Town had already set up their lasgun barrels. The leader had an old scar on his index finger—over a decade ago, a Chaos cultist had sliced open his palm with a dagger; he had snatched the knife back and stabbed the man to death with it. At this moment, that index finger was hovering outside the trigger guard, perfectly still. Not out of nervousness, but waiting for the forty-pace range—the optimal kill window for the lasgun; too close and it wouldn't penetrate Chaos armor, too far and it would waste energy.

"The one in front belongs to me." Lin Mo crouched beside him and spread the map on the sandbags between them.

"The left flank—"

"The left flank belongs to Rock." The veteran took over, his index finger still hovering, perfectly still. "The biggest one on the right flank, your silver-haired girl has already set up her gun upstairs. The Deputy Medical Officer said her marksmanship is ten points higher than everyone else in the Astral Knights cohort. I don't fully believe that, but I've been watching her posture setting up the gun all early morning; she's an old hand."

"Her name is Lieutenant Alice Vian," Lin Mo said.

"I know." The veteran's mouth twitched, not a smile—it was the validation of a man who had been shooting his whole life for another shooter; it had nothing to do with expression, only with the steadiness of the gun barrel. "She adjusted her stock against her shoulder four times, each time within a margin of half a centimeter. You know what that means—only those who are going to the battlefield understand. This isn't a shooting habit; it's because she knows better than any regulation: miss one shot, and you pay with someone else's life."

The mist in the eastern swamp was dissipating. The dawn light cast clear outlines on every fallen reed stalk. The purple-black shadows were no longer hiding in the mist—they had charged out of the minefield.

The first scout leaped out of the reeds, its chainaxe carving a cold arc in the morning light, the metallic screech of the rotating teeth sounding like fingernails scraping across an iron plate.

Lin Mo raised his lasgun. The veteran's index finger twitched slightly. Rock cursed in the mist on the left flank with an obscenity that couldn't be written into any memorandum. Old Tom lowered the mortar barrel by 0.5 degrees on the roof.

The Battle of Blackstone Town officially began at the dawn of the seventh day.

That rift had not yet closed.

But he didn't need to look up anymore.

When he looked down at the map,

In the names of every person standing behind every deployment decision,

He saw a light more enduring than the rift, brighter than the purple-black of the Warp.

—When he opened his eyes, the third tripwire mine detonated in the deep mist of the swamp.

This time, the distance was two hundred paces closer than the previous two.

And from behind the sandbags two hundred paces away, he had already clearly seen it on the scout's armor—the exact same spot as in the tactical display of the mirror of the emperor—the joint seam at the left armpit.