Scar

Inside the personal rest cabin, in the washroom.

Fu Qinghai used a sharp little knife, dipped it into the black, viscous liquid in a bowl, and gestured against his face in the mirror.

Where would be a good place to cut?

Fu Qinghai looked at his own handsome face in the mirror and found it hard to bring himself to do it.

He carefully recalled all the handsome guys with scars he knew.

Ribery the Scarface, a cut from the corner of his eye to his mouth? That was an accidental injury, and he wasn't exactly handsome to begin with.

Kakashi Hatake, a cut across the entire eye socket? With eyelids so thin, what if he blinded his own eyeball?

Harry Potter, a Z-shaped cut on his forehead? What if he went to the J.K. Rowling universe later and got accidentally killed by the minions of a bald, noseless man?

After much deliberation, Fu Qinghai finally made a shallow, diagonal cut right in the middle of his high-bridged nose.

The moment the black slime on the blade touched his skin, it emitted a faint hissing sound, and white smoke rose from the wound.

Facing the pain of flesh being corroded, Fu Qinghai, who had long been mentally prepared, merely frowned.

The hand holding the knife remained steady and precise, completely unaffected.

With the scar finished, Fu Qinghai looked at himself in the mirror and nodded with satisfaction.

The next day, Ogedei frowned, looking at the shallow little scar on Fu Qinghai's nose with a look of displeasure, and said:

"What, are you afraid of pain?"

Fu Qinghai chuckled and scratched his head without explaining; he knew Ogedei wouldn't dwell on such a trivial matter.

Ogedei said irritably:

"Follow me to the operations room."

The two arrived at the small operations room, which was empty.

Ogedei sat down casually and gestured for Fu Qinghai to find a seat as well.

"Qinghai, you are now an official member of ours. I know you have many questions in your heart. Regarding the target of our operation and the events that transpired before, I can reveal some things to you now."

Fu Qinghai nodded.

Ogedei leaned back in his chair and said slowly: "This starts from when we broke away from the Death Guard warship in the Kondax system..."

As it turned out, Ogedei and his company, the Falcon Brotherhood, had many Terra-born members who were loyal to the Warmaster. During the White Scars civil war that erupted in the outer orbit of Prospero, they had suffered heavy casualties and were no longer a full-strength company. The Primarch Jaghatai Khan had therefore assigned them a secret mission—

To detach from the main fleet, travel alone on a frigate, and escort the Apothecary and Biologis Master Kunto to Mars.

This was why there were no other White Scars fleets in the outer orbit of the planet Chesilatan.

After the Ullanor Crusade in the 544.M32 era, large-scale warfare between humanity and the Orks had become rare, replaced mostly by purification campaigns against local planets. The White Scars, dispatched by the Warmaster to the remote Kondax system, were the last legion to have the opportunity for large-scale combat against the Orks.

The Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars placed great importance on the Orks, an xenos race that had once posed a major threat to the Imperium, and had been researching ways to curb Ork reproduction. Kunto Anastasio was the xenos expert specifically sent by the Mechanicus to the Kondax system to study the Orks.

And all of this was thrown into chaos with the arrival of the Horus Heresy.

Rebellion and suppression became the top priority for all legions, and that naturally included Mars, which had also fallen into civil war.

As for why Master Kunto had to be escorted to Mars, Ogedei did not know.

Fu Qinghai recalled the academic cliques and scholarly factions from his past life on Earth. He guessed that Master Kunto was not isolated on Mars; he must have had his own students and old acquaintances within the Mechanicus. Since he was a loyalist supporting The Emperor, perhaps Jaghatai Khan wanted to use his influence on Mars to tip the scales of victory slightly toward the loyalists.

Whatever, being a royalist isn't my job as a new recruit, Fu Qinghai thought.

"And then?" Fu Qinghai asked, more interested in what happened next.

Ogedei took a deep breath and said: "When we were sailing to this system, the auspex array suddenly detected a signal from the Sons of Horus. A lone Firestorm-class frigate was heading toward an agricultural planet marked 17-974 on the star map..."

And then, Ogedei lost his cool.

The brothers lost in the White Scars civil war had broken this man's heart. A full two-thirds of his force had been lost—a number that hadn't even been reached when facing ten times their number of Orks in the Kondax system.

Not to mention, these warriors hadn't died on a glorious battlefield, but in a rebellion that brought shame to the legion.

Ogedei blamed it all on the rebellion of the Sons of Horus.

Talal had repeatedly urged him to prioritize the mission, but Ogedei was determined to give the traitors a taste of their own medicine.

As frigates, the Firestorm-class possessed size and firepower configurations far exceeding the Falchion-class (the Dagger was a Falchion-class). Everyone on the Dagger knew at a glance that they couldn't win a space naval battle.

Not to mention that they had an important figure like Master Kunto on board; even without considering Kunto, if they compared lance batteries and macro-cannon arrays, the Dagger would likely lose to the Sons of Horus's Firestorm-class frigate in a space battle.

So, the stubborn Ogedei made a bold decision: he handed command of the Dagger to Talal and personally led a tactical squad for a torpedo boarding action!

This was a choice many Space Marine legions made to fight above their weight class in space battles.

But it was also extremely dangerous. The danger level of a torpedo boarding far exceeded tactics like orbital drops, and it could be called the combat operation with the highest casualty rate.

A torpedo without a warhead could carry two Space Marines. After launch, it had to cross the blockade of heavy laser arrays and macro-cannon batteries to precisely insert itself into the enemy ship. The boarding Space Marine squad then had to fight their way out of the encirclement of enemy anti-boarding forces and destroy the enemy ship's power core.

The process sounded fraught with difficulties.

One more thing to add: boarding torpedoes had no recovery mechanism.

Therefore, unless they could completely capture the enemy ship, a torpedo boarding was essentially a suicide mission with no way back.

Yet Ogedei succeeded, though the cost was the total loss of his tactical squad and his own legs.

At the time, the frigate Dagger utilized its advantage of early detection to hide within the asteroid belt outside the planet Chesilatan, quietly approaching the Sons of Horus frigate. Just as the enemy prepared to deploy their landing craft, the Dagger struck, catching them completely off guard.

It fired a few shots and launched its torpedoes before slipping away, retreating back into the asteroid belt to wait for the results of the boarding action led by Ogedei and his tactical squad.

The warships of the White Scars Legion were specially modified by the Adeptus Mechanicus according to the requirements of the Primarch Jaghatai Khan; by reducing some ammunition and firepower configurations to increase engine output, the White Scars' ships were faster than those of other legions, making them well-suited for surprise attacks.

After Ogedei and his men fought to destroy the power core of the Firestorm-class frigate, the ship began to plummet into the atmosphere, pulled by the planet's gravity.

Located in the space directly above the colonial outpost, it crashed not far from the Chesilatan colonial settlement.

That was how the subsequent events came to pass.

Fu Qinghai finally understood.

It had truly been a series of twists and turns.

As they were speaking, the other Space Marines began to file in one after another.

Once everyone had taken their seats, Ogedei, seated in his wheelchair, said in a deep voice:

"Gentlemen, according to the news just received from Malco Vanriel, the Warp storm covering this sector has weakened, and we expect to be able to perform a Warp Jump within the next two weeks."

Hearing this, the White Scars warriors were stunned for a moment before breaking into cheers.

After drifting through the vast, empty void of space for two years, they could finally pick up the pace.

Ogedei smiled along with them, then continued:

"Compared to the Warp storm shrouding the entire sector, this is merely a gap, but by seizing this brief window, we can move rapidly toward our destination. We are getting closer and closer to the areas where the traitors are most active, so everyone, be prepared."

The men responded in unison.

"Let's go." Ogedei patted Fu Qinghai on the shoulder and led the way out of the command room.