novelden Chapter 1031 You and I go into battle together...
Chapter 1031 You and I go into battle together...
The golden-red sunset saturated the entire wheat field. Irene walked barefoot on the ridges, and lavender cornflowers were entangled in her flaxen braids.
Calvin deliberately lagged behind by half a step, watching his fiancée bend over to pick up a bunch of ripe berries, the hem of her dark green military uniform brushing against the unhealed sunburn on her calves.
That was the mark left when they went to inspect the irrigation pipe three days ago.
"This time tomorrow..."
Irene suddenly turned around and tapped the copper double-headed eagle badge on Calvin's chest with her muddy fingers. "Next to this cold metal lump, my ring should be hung."
Her smile was brighter than the sunset on the tips of wheat ears, and Calvin could even see the dandelion fluff on her eyelashes.
Calvin was kneeling by the stream helping Irene wash the mud off her feet when the bronze bell of the camp church suddenly rang for the sixth time.
He deliberately used the cold stream water to hit the soles of his fiancée's feet until they both fell into the knee-deep alfalfa bushes while laughing.
“When we have kids…”
Erin gasped and held Calvin's hand as he unbuttoned her shirt. "I'm going to paint stars all over the top of the barn, just like..."
Her whispers were interrupted by Calvin's wheat-scented kiss, and the creaking sound of the windmill in the distance drowned out the roar of the approaching engine.
As the glaring searchlight split the wooden windows of the farmhouse, Irene was curled up against Calvin's chest, counting his heartbeats.
The defense force uniform hanging on the bedside suddenly began to vibrate, and the communication crystal embedded in the shoulder armor burst out with a dazzling red light.
"All combat personnel return to the team immediately!" The commander-in-chief's holographic image appeared under the thatched roof with static noise.
Irene held Calvin's hand tightly as he put on his boots. She jumped out of bed wrapped in a blanket like a flying lark: "You said this is the safest agricultural world! You said orcs only appear in tavern stories!"
The hovercraft outside the window was honking its horn wildly, but Calvin smiled and pressed his fiancée's finger on the old scar on his Adam's apple, which was scratched by a beer mug the last time he boasted about fighting an orc alone.
"At most three months..."
Calvin pressed the tactical dagger into Irene's trembling palm. The newly engraved "A&C" on the handle still had the scent of sawdust.
"I'll bring you the biggest orc tusk and hang it on our wedding bed..."
His joke was crushed between his lips and teeth by Irene's sudden deep kiss. The girl stuffed something hard into his chest pocket - it was an engagement ring she had secretly made by melting her mother's relics. The ring face was engraved with a broken gun surrounded by wheat ears.
When the searchlights cut through the night sky of the agricultural planet, the base had already turned into boiling molten steel.
The temporarily requisitioned barn was filled with laser gun energy boxes, and the sweaty logistics soldiers were converting sacks printed with wheat ears into sandbags.
Calvin walked on the muddy tarmac towards the transport planes, the cornflower petals stuck to the soles of his boots leaving lavender bloodstains on the steel plates.
"dad!"
A seven-year-old boy suddenly came in through a gap in the barbed wire, and the mechanical dog toy in his arms hit the fence, making a clanging sound.
The bearded soldier who was checking the flamethrower was shocked, and when he turned around, his goggles were covered with mist.
He knelt on one knee and stuffed an energy biscuit into the child's pocket. He wiped the mud off the little face with his rough thumb: "When the moon turns blue..."
Before he could finish his words, he was interrupted by the political commissar's roar. The man pushed his son back into the arms of his crying wife and slammed his helmet against the door of the transport plane.
Calvin paused at the gangway.
The purple light of the biological disinfection lamp suddenly lit up in the medical tent three hundred meters away. He saw Irene wearing an ill-fitting medical coat and standing on tiptoe to feed water to the wounded on the stretcher. It was clearly the pajamas he had just mended the buttons of this morning.
The commissar's chainsaw hilt stabbed him hard in the back of his waist: "What are you waiting for? Are you waiting to be a flower girl for the greenskins?"
The cabin was filled with the pungent smell of promethium fuel. The new recruit sitting on Calvin's left kept stroking the wedding ring hanging around his neck, the metal surface still stained with burnt ash from the bakery oven; the veteran on his right, who was missing three fingers, was stuffing a family photo frame into the gap of his power armor. In the photo, a girl in a wedding dress was standing in front of the ruins of a church holding a laser gun.
All conversation came to an abrupt end when the hatch hydraulic lock let out a death sigh.
Twelve hours later, Calvin blew out white mist at the porthole of the transport ship, his fingertips unconsciously stroking the silver ring in his pocket that was warm from his body temperature.
The roar of the transport planes taking off shattered the last tranquility of the base.
A half-torn wedding dress was hanging on the landing gear of a Thunderhawk gunship, and the lace curling in the tail flame was quickly torn into stardust by the high-altitude air currents.
In the shadow of the medical tent, Irene bit her pen and wrote on the report: "To Calvin Ulysses, medical soldier, volunteered to accompany the third wave..."
He didn't know that Irene was wearing a stolen medic uniform and mixed in with the third batch of reinforcements, and he didn't know that in the first aid kit she sewed around her waist, in addition to hemostatic gel, there was also a half wedding candle broken off the church altar.
Of course, they didn't know that they were about to go to real hell.
The transport cabin was shaking like a dying beast. Calvin leaned his head against the cold wall, his right leg shaking nervously, the rhythm of his military boots hitting the deck just out of step with the hum of the priest's chanting machine on the cabin roof.
The sound of the political commissar's studded leather boots pacing came from three rows of seats away, mixed with the hissing sound of the Anglican priest spraying holy water, like some kind of soporific requiem.
"You are the Emperor's Blade..."
The priest's electronic laryngoscope sparked, and the prayer suddenly changed into a funny shrill voice.
A soldier from the Forge World in the front row chuckled, but the chuckle turned into a cough under the death gaze of the political commissar.
Calvin counted the flashes of the star torches passing by the porthole, his fingertips unconsciously stroking his breast pocket - the edges of the silver ring rubbed through the fabric and left tiny red marks on his skin.
The piercing beeping alarm suddenly tore through the chaos. As the red light filled the cabin like a bloody waterfall, Calvin was awakened by the elbow of the veteran beside him, and he found that he had bitten the corner of his mouth without knowing when.
The commissar's chainsaw sword clanged into the ceiling loudspeaker, and the flying sparks illuminated his twisted jaw: "Newbies! You are honored to become the Emperor's sword! The hammer of the Empire! Now, your target is... Vigilance Star!!"
"Prepare yourself for a desperate fight! Coins of the Empire!"
"For the Emperor!"
There were gasps in the cabin.
The red-haired girl on Calvin's left began to frantically carve prayers into the magazine, while the veteran on his right stuffed a family photo frame into the interlayer of his bulletproof armor.
Only the freckled boy across from me was still laughing: "I told you it was just a small event, otherwise we potato growers wouldn't have had a chance..."
He suddenly choked. The holographic image was showing the densely packed greenskin fleet in the orbit of the Vigilant Star. On the ramming horn of one of the scrap warships were the wreckage of three Imperial fighter planes.
And deep in the stars, groups of Space Marine battle barges are heading here.