52 Reclaiming Hope (IX)

The first battle.

Lafen of Baal Secundus gripped his weapon and jumped down from a Rhino painted red and gold. What lay before him was almost unbelievable—was everything around him truly just a simulated world built from data?

He crouched down, scooped up a handful of dirt with his right hand, and watched it gradually scatter in the wind.

But the battlefield gave him only that brief moment. Gunships from the Ultramarines' Sixth Company roared overhead, raining destruction upon the undulating "hills" in the distance. Within seconds, more than a hundred messages flashed across the upper right corner of his tactical visor. A map automatically unfolded before his eyes, marking three targets that he and his squad needed to deal with.

Lafen immediately reined in his emotions. He turned and precisely located his squadmates amid the sea of people without even needing to look with his own eyes—his visor had thoughtfully prepared everything for him, leaving no need for any manual operation.

You really are an extraordinary suit of armor, Lafen thought as he walked toward his squad. They boarded three Land Speeder Tornados and set off at once.

The first target lay twenty-six kilometers north of the landing site. For an anti-gravity vehicle like the Land Speeder, it was merely a brief journey of four minutes and eleven seconds.

Hovering at low altitude, Lafen activated the scanner in manual mode. The results would take another twenty seconds, so he lowered his gaze toward the ground—and happened to catch a flickering green gleam upon that pitch-black, rugged earth.

In an instant, the hairs on his body stood on end. He yanked the control lever down with his right hand, sending the Speeder upward and dodging the direct strike of the green beam. Yet it still grazed the anti-gravity plate beneath