"Ugh..."
A stifled groan squeezed out from deep in his throat.
Pei Min felt as though he had been stuffed into a high-speed centrifuge, then slammed onto an anvil.
His vision swam with spinning spots of light and overlapping images. His ears buzzed as though countless insects were beating their wings inside his skull.
Every breath sent a sharp, needlelike pain through the left side of his chest. At least two ribs were broken, and others might have been cracked.
The biomonitor inside his Power Armour flashed yellow warning symbols in one corner of his Helmet display, but soon stabilized, shifting to a pale green that indicated "tolerable damage."
He had fallen from several thousand meters up. Even with his Power Armour cushioning the impact and his superhuman constitution protecting him, the force had been tremendous.
Struggling, he braced his still-functional right hand against the ground. His left instinctively pressed against his agonizing ribs as he swayed and tried to stand.
His ceramite boots crunched against shattered metal and chunks of concrete.
"Whew..."
He slowly let out a long, stale breath that tasted of rust and forced himself to steady his footing.
For a Space Marine, this was hardly a fatal injury. It did not even compromise his basic combat capabilities, but the pain and discomfort were real.
"Are... are you... a Space Marine, my lord?"
A voice came from beside him, fearful and hesitant, yet threaded with the hope of someone who had glimpsed salvation in the depths of despair.
Pei Min turned toward it, the faint glow of his Helmet Visor lenses sweeping across his surroundings.
Around a dozen Imperialis Militia soldiers in ragged Imperial Army uniforms, their faces covered in soot, grime, and exhaustion, had cautiously gathered behind a collapsed section of pipe nearby. They clutched their