Company Commander Vulkan's dragon-like eyes.
Stared fixedly into the pitch-black starry sky.
No one knew what he was thinking. He kept his gaze fixed in the direction they were traveling, as if suppressing some emotion.
Even Talon, wiping down his gun nearby, shook his head.
He felt sorry for Vulkan.
Actually, every Chapter had secrets unknown to outsiders.
Like the Dark Angels Chapter.
For every Chapter, the greatest stain on the honor of its loyalists, and the disgrace they most wanted to wash away, was the existence of traitors and Space Marines who had joined Chaos.
And of the two, the most unforgivable of all was joining Chaos.
Talon understood, too.
In Chapter culture, the bonds between brothers meant more than anything.
The brothers of a Chapter forged deep friendships through one desperate war after another. So when a brother stabbed you in the back—or when the betrayal came from a figure like a "Gene-Father"—it could deal a devastating blow to the Chapter.
Just like with the Blood Raven Chapter: if Talon suddenly learned that the captain he had always trusted, Cyrus, had sided with Chaos, he would probably go mad on the spot. How could he accept that?
Of course, that was impossible.
Join Chaos?
It was an unlikely occurrence. After all, every Chapter had Chaplains. Joining Chaos was an act of cowardice by someone who had never stood the test.
But even if ordinary Space Marines like them turned traitor, it was still unacceptable to their Chapter.
"Captain."
"Forget it. Don't disturb the captain. Let him be for a while. What is it?"
"I lost my gun. Chaplain Catoen gave it to me when I joined the company. They say the Gene-Father once used it."
"..."
Talon silently walked over to the control panel.
Speaking of Chaplains, he had heard that the Salamanders had a Librarian (a Psyker, a member of the Chapter's think tank) who had joined Chaos, as well as a renegade Chaplain (a soul utterly pure by the Chapter's standards) who seemed to have done the same. He had learned this from them when he and the captain were on a mission on Nocturne.
Sigh.
Poor, honest people.
The Salamanders were renowned across all the Chapters for their kindness. If there was any Chapter that could never join Chaos, most would pick the Salamanders. And yet traitors had emerged from that very Chapter—and one of them was a Librarian, a role fraught with danger.
It really was hard to accept.
Talon's gaze followed Captain Vulkan's toward Ozrax, and he felt a little sympathy for him.
Still, there was one thing he agreed with: no matter the reason for joining Chaos, it was unforgivable.
Those who betrayed their brothers might still have a chance to return.
But those who joined Chaos...
As far as Talon knew, there wasn't a single case of anyone who had willingly joined Chaos ever coming back. The moment they joined Chaos, they were already dead. And whoever rose from their body would no longer be the person they had been.
"Go faster."
"We've already reached our top speed."
"Then... go even faster."
The Milky Way was simply too vast.
Even the distance between two star systems was immense.
Yet by the scale of the universe, even that distance was nothing.
But for the Imperium of Man and the span of a human life, it was an insurmountable gulf.
Gamma World had only two paths to breaking through: phase-jump technology and faster-than-light technology. But either was difficult for Gamma World at present. They needed vast quantities of supplies and a huge population.
Speed was the only measure of how much territory one could claim in the universe.
Vulkan kept gazing into the depths of space, saying nothing.
His anger had cooled into reason, and now he was beginning to feel pain.
He wanted to ask the other man why he had betrayed them.
He could hardly believe that one of the Salamanders' own brothers would betray them and join Chaos.
He was even beginning to think that perhaps the other man had some reason for it.
Why had he betrayed them?
"..."
The merciful Salamanders always kept the pain to themselves. Inheriting the kindness of the Lord of Fire Dragons, they were more sensitive in their emotions than any other Chapter.
In space.
A streak of light flashed past.
It vanished swiftly into the asteroid belt.
In the pitch-black universe, only a trail of scalding plasma remained, a rippling scorch mark that the silent darkness slowly smoothed away until not a trace remained.
Ozrax.
The battlefield's "bells" rang without cease.
Death became the only blaring, piercing horn across the battlefield.
A terrifying shadow fell from the sky.
The bombardment began.
Countless shells fell from the sky. Even the Brown Force Field Shield couldn't stop them.
Humans died. Chaos forces died.
Corpses covered the ground like a "continent."
The thick stench of blood stained the "sky."
The defensive lines.
At first, there had been one line, then two.
Now, they had raised a ring of defenses around the flag.
They had gone from actively resisting the enemy
to passively defending against them.
Gamma World's defensive lines were repeatedly breached and steadily compressed.
The Chaos Space Marines grew even angrier.
The servants they had brought with them had been all but slaughtered by this "backwater garden" world.
And the Space Marines they had brought had suffered heavy losses.
This war filled them with deep humiliation.
Space Marines claimed that ten of them could conquer the civilization of an entire planet.
Yet now, they had lost so many warriors on this tiny battlefield.
Chaos forces wearing Salamanders Chapter Power Armor, with two horns sprouting from their heads, descended!
The flamers in their hands spewed flames hot enough to melt steel, venting their boundless fury on the humans.
Normally, when a Space Marine died on the battlefield, they could still recover his Gene-seed.
But now, the enemy's strange energy weapons destroyed their Chaos Space Marines outright, leaving no corpses behind. Where were they supposed to get any Gene-seed?
Their Chaos Space Marines had become expendable, and they couldn't replace their losses. They were all the more determined to wipe out these people who had occupied their garden—and make them suffer the most painful, despairing torment imaginable.
The Research Station hung high in the sky.
Because it was small, especially compared to the smoking industrial zone and the vast rest area, people almost always overlooked it.
So it remained safe, suspended in the sky.
Some Astra Militarum recruits brought up from the surface watched the scenes from the battlefield below, their faces deathly pale.
Countless shells rained down from the sky.
They were carrying out a merciless bombardment of the ground. The entire area was almost about to be leveled by a sea of artillery fire.
Smoke covered everything.
"The defensive line has pulled back again."
"How many times has it pulled back?"
"This is the third time."
"..."
From a frontal confrontation, to having the battlefield divided by the enemy, and then to Chaos invading the rest area.
No matter how you looked at it,
the human defenses were rapidly crumbling.
"Are we going to lose?"
"No, we haven't lost yet. Because our reinforcements have arrived."
Loyalty requires no reward, because loyalty itself is the greatest reward.
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