40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 195 20. Night falls in Cordipo

Fortress A-3-15, a number, a number.

Perturabo himself numbered the fortresses of the Cordipians, but this was not Van Cleef's concern.He took off his helmet and took a deep breath of the twisted air that smelled of gunfire and smoke. There was a thoughtfulness on his neat face that could only be born as the years passed.

His mood has quietly changed in this breath, becoming gloomy and cruel, which just corresponds to the bleak scene around him.

It was evening now, but there was no setting sun on Keldibo, only a faint light peeking out from the thick clouds in the sky.

The corpses of the Iron Warriors have been restrained, and their pharmacists have made great efforts to ensure that every brother who still has a whole body can return to them to rest in peace, instead of staying on this broken battlefield to continue to eat. Devastated by war.

really interesting
Van Cleef put on his helmet again, blocking out the hum of the power armor.

The blades behind him remained absolutely silent, without any sound, and a cold expectation that should not have appeared quietly spread among them.They waited, full of anticipation, full of longing.

A few minutes later, a hoarse voice descended from the communication channel reached all of them.

"It's time to move, First Company," the voice said. "Fort A-3-15, the target is the most senior officer in that fort or someone with similar status. You have 25 minutes."

"That's enough," Van Cleef replied softly and slowly.

He didn't say empty words.

Seven minutes after the operation started, the existing 7 or 1000 men of the First Dalian Company entered the fortress.Under the cover of night, no one noticed their arrival.

There wasn't even much killing in this sinister fortress built on the mountain. The Night Blades relied on their superb skills to avoid most of the sentries, and the few who couldn't be avoided were used by them with the fastest and most invincible attacks. Pain means killing.

The body was restrained without any insult, and the death state could even be called peaceful. No. 15 minutes, they arrived at a military base in the fortress relying on information obtained through simple torture.

No. 18 minutes, the top officer in the base was captured by the Night Blades.There are still 7 minutes left before the time runs out, and there is no longer any resistance in this military base.

The Night Blades showed no mercy. They killed all the rebels and broadcast the cries of the dead to all the soldiers inside the base through the communication channel inside the base.Surrender came quickly, and Van Cleef was not happy about it.

Standing in a room that had been temporarily emptied except for an iron chair, he took off his helmet again. His pale face was tainted with a different kind of gloomy temperament due to the blurred light around him.

In front of him, a middle-aged man was trembling.He was wearing a slightly messy black uniform, and Van Cleef's adjutant, Morets, stood beside him, a cold hand resting on his shoulder.

The adjutant still wore his helmet and was motionless, but the armor was stained with blood and even still hot.He had just massacred a small team that came to support him in front of this officer. The method was not brutal, but you couldn't expect the blade to remain smooth after the killing.

Van Cleef raised his eyes and glanced at the middle-aged man. He made a gesture, and Morets immediately pressed the middle-aged man on the chair that fit his size.

The sudden huge force made his whole body tremble, and a cry of surprise inevitably came from his throat.The first company commander looked at him expressionlessly, staring at him wordlessly, and silently counting the time in his heart.

A few minutes later, there was a vibration from the helmet in his hand.The scarlet eyepiece began to glow, and Van Cleef put it on again. A light blue rune appeared on his retina, and a voice slowly sounded.

"How's it going, Van Cleef?"

"All you have to do is give the order."

"That's it now, let's do it."

"clear."

VanCleef turned his head and nodded to his lieutenant.The latter pulled out a combat knife from his waist and threw it to his company commander.

Van Cleef usually did not like to carry these 'spare weapons of spare weapons', so Morets usually carried two combat daggers. He also had a slightly ironic title because of this habit, but within a company , no one dared to call him that.

The first company commander walked up to the officer, bent down, and relied on the neural connection signal to adjust the breathing grille's external release mode. The next second, his hoarse and distorted breathing sounded in the room.

The middle-aged man shuddered again. He opened his mouth and tried to say something, but a short knife had already taken the lead and gently inserted into his thigh.

It wasn't deep, and it could even be said that it was only slightly inserted into the skin, but the body of the fortress chief had unconsciously changed in fear.

He may have been very tough in the past, but now, with just a little bit of pressure, he immediately screamed, as terribly as if he was about to die.

Amidst his screams and the violent struggle being held down by the adjutant, Van Cleef spoke slowly.In his still-accented Cordipo, he uttered one of the only three Cordipo words he knew.

The Iron Warriors offered help, albeit reluctantly.They don't seem to be stubborn themselves.

"surrender?"

The middle-aged man howled and struggled violently. He spoke a long list of words in succession, which were difficult to pronounce and unfamiliar.

But Van Cleef didn't catch in his voice another line of Cordebo that he wanted to hear.So he pulled out the blade, inserted it again, and began to separate the skin and muscle bit by bit along the wound itself.

He did it carefully, not quickly, but with an eerie grace and precision.The fortress chief's screams became more and more intense, but Moletz never let go, so his struggle was useless except to bleed more.

One minute and 40 seconds later, Van Cleef separated the skin, flesh and nerves with a ruthless attitude. They were steaming and lay softly on the officer's own thigh, twitching from time to time.The white thigh bones loomed in the flesh and blood, very charming.

"Surrender?" Van Cleef asked again.

The officer trembled and burst into tears, but his face still did not show the emotion that Van Cleef hoped to see.

The first company commander sighed softly, his voice full of regret.Although it turned into a long chant like longing under the distortion of the breathing grille, at this moment, Van Cleef was indeed feeling regretful.

You don't have to suffer anymore.
He stretched out his fingers and gently grasped the officer's thigh bone.The cold and sharp metal gauntlets rubbed and knocked on it, and even occasionally squeezed hard.

The officer's screams began to become more intense, and finally reached a certain critical point.He paused after a violent tremor, and there was no other expression on his face that was numbed by pain and fear.

This time, Van Cleef didn't ask, he just said what Van Cleef had always wanted to hear.

"Surrender! I surrender!"

"Very good," said Van Cleef. "Look at me and say it again."

He squeezed those two fingers.

The middle-aged man screamed, and his extremely twisted face was stained with blood at this moment.He widened his bloodshot eyes and yelled at Van Cleef with a look that was driven crazy. His voice was shrill and shrill, more like begging for mercy than surrender.

Van Cleef finally let go.

Two minutes later, the video recorded by him was transmitted to a nearby Iron Warriors position. When the commander of Fortress A-2-3 was in a coma, he was receiving suture treatment from the pharmacist of the Night Blade First Company. , this video has been parsed bit by bit and uploaded to the track.

With a certain technology developed by Perturabo himself, it began to be translated into two completely different things on the Iron Blood.

One of them is a complete recording.The other copy is a complete video.Fifteen videos and fifteen audio recordings, including the time required for video transmission, took a total of 33 minutes.

Then a few minutes later, many suppressed screams of terror were heard from the Cordibo planet shrouded in darkness.
-
"That's it?" Perturabo asked dryly.

"That's it." Khalil replied casually and calmly.

"Fifteen video and audio recordings, looping through the broadcast system to the entire planet for a whole day is enough, great Perturabo. What else do you want? Really create a brutal picture of massacre ? No, that will only arouse their will to resist on a deeper level. Some things are too much, and you need to grasp a degree."

"I can't believe I'm condoning you doing this," Perturabo said in a low voice, gripping his tool hammer. "This is no longer a war, you are simply carrying out a terrorist attack."

"I never said this wasn't a terrorist attack." Khalil raised his head and replied kindly. "The only difference is that compared to most terrorist attacks, the method we use is a clean death with minimal bloodshed." "Do you think a terrorist attack can make them surrender?"

"If not, then do it again tomorrow night." Khalil replied calmly.

"The attack on the first night may have made some of them mistakenly believe that it was the result of carelessness. Then, during the second night of heightened vigilance, they will see all the things that the Midnight Blades deliberately preserved. means. If this is not enough, we will make a final announcement."

".The final announcement? What is it?" Perturabo suddenly felt a tightness in his throat.

"It's just a sentence." Khalil nodded to him with a half-smile.

"Starting from tomorrow night, we will continue to attack for a whole year. It will be like this tonight and every night. Whether to surrender or not will be decided by themselves. As for other things, it has nothing to do with them anymore."

Perturabo stopped tapping his hand on the deduction sand table, and the tool hammer hovered in mid-air.The tightness in his throat began to change, turning into a feeling somewhere between thirst and burning.

Of course he wasn't stupid, and he didn't need to think too much to understand how terrifying Khalil Rohars' words were to the Cordibos.

A group of ghost killers come and go without a trace and can only be vaguely observed in the night.Murders are staged one after another at night, and the video recorded by the murderer himself will be played in a loop throughout the day, unable to be turned off, and there is no way to escape from the wailing of the deceased.
Then, whenever night falls again, they do it again.

Can the Cordebos hold on?
The answer is obviously no, they may have a solid fortress, but that does not mean that their spirit is as tough as the fortress, able to resist the invasion of bombing and artillery fire.

Perturabo stopped in place, and a series of numbers suddenly surged in his heart. It was a countdown, the time when he thought the Cordibo people were about to surrender.

— lost.

Totally lost.

A crushing defeat.

The torrent of steel, frontal assault, and heavy firepower are not even as trouble-free as a terrorist attack carried out by a 6000-man troop at night.

Did they sacrifice any people tonight?I'm afraid not. If the ill-prepared Cordibo people can cause a little scratch on their armor, it will be regarded as a good result.

Perturabo thought coldly, thinking about many things with his otherworldly rationality.He had always been like this. Since he left Olympia, he had abandoned many things and began to regard everything as simple data to calculate gains and losses.

His biological father, the Emperor of Mankind, did not oppose him.In fact, the Emperor even gave him a degree of approval for this display of self-sacrifice.

What was the Emperor's expression like at that time?
He began to recall, and the emperor's expression began to be outlined little by little along with the memories, changing from blurry to clear, and then from clear to as if he were right in front of his eyes.

That glorious steel face had the admiration and recognition that Perturabo needed, but there was also a sense of regret and heartache that he couldn't bear to look at anymore.He only understood the first two at that time, and he was completely puzzled by the latter two.

"."

Perturabo opened his mouth blankly, and the tool hammer in his hand fell to the ground, making a crisp but dull sound.

He immediately wanted to bend down to pick it up, but suddenly stopped in mid-air.The hand that was about to touch the tool hammer began to tremble. Starting from the little finger, the tendon itself trembled involuntarily involving the muscles.

The frustration came like a tsunami, turning his natural pride into a bitter sinking.A ridiculous smile came along with him. He lowered his head and began to laugh in a low voice unconsciously.

It turned out to be like this. So I have been doing things that make people laugh?What I pursue can be achieved so easily in the eyes of others. If this is the case, then what have become of those who died because of my tactics?

He raised his head sharply.

"No, it can't be like this." He looked at Khalil. "I can't be wrong."

The pale giant was covered with the bones of the dead and looked at him quietly, with a strange emotion in his dark eyes: "Why can't you be wrong?"

"Then what became of them?"

"Who?"

"Them." Perturabo clenched his fists. "Eltros and the others."

Khalil smiled.

"Let's let the facts speak for themselves." He held up a finger. "First, your strategic and tactical direction is not wrong, but there is a problem with your execution style. You are the culprit that caused a large number of casualties to the Iron Warriors. Do you have a problem with this, Perturabo?"

"."

"Yes? Great Perturabo?"

"No." The Primarch thought he had buried all emotion, that he could do it easily through his own excellence.But now it seems that his emotions never really left, they just accumulated in his heart and began to gradually distort him.At this moment, his mood when he said this was calm, a kind of calm brought about by extreme circumstances.Everything in the past is now coming to mind.Those cold and huge numbers rushed towards him one after another, and began to beat his heart continuously.Perturabo covered his chest and slowly slid down against the wall little by little.

"It seems I don't need to give you a second example," Khalil said. "Your reaction is really interesting. I originally thought you would suddenly get angry and yell at me again."

"."

"Stop talking? Choose silence?"

".I-" Perturabo raised his head. "——I just couldn't find anything to say. I was wrong, but what about them?"

"They are a group of people who are completely loyal to you." Khalil replied softly. "Do you really think Sergeant Elteros doesn't know what's right and what's wrong?"

Perturabo stared at him silently, waiting for Khalil's next words like a death row prisoner waiting for his sentence.

And Khalil lived up to him.

He used the most straightforward words to tear off the last fig leaf in Perturabo's heart and tore it into pieces. The wound was bloody and exposed to the air, and the blood surged and roared.

"He knew early on how to cooperate with us in a feint attack to achieve the greatest results with the smallest casualty ratio. But he refused to do so because he swore an oath. You gave them that oath, and you let them do it yourself Beating their respected commander to death.”

"In the blood of brothers, they swore an oath to be steel that you can be proud of. So, whatever they do, they are not wrong. Because the only one who is wrong is you, Perturabo."

Khalil stared at him and began to smile.

A vain smile.

"You are the one who became the laughingstock. You are the one who made the Legion an object of contempt. You are the one who made Sergeant Eltros die."

"There is nothing superior about you. Compared to Sanguinius, Robert Guilliman, or Rogal Dorn, you are the worst of them all. Have you ever seen anyone pit you against them?" Contrast? You may comfort yourself that it’s because those people are ignorant. But is that really the case?”

Perturabo slowly clenched his fists, his fingers crunched, and blood seeped between his fingers.His still-bandaged hand was now stained red, and the piece of steel finally began to let out a silent, overwhelmed wail.

"Yes." Khalil said calmly. "From beginning to end, this is just a game played by a group of people who are loyal to you, accompanying a naive child, with life as the basis and blood as the accompaniment."

He stopped talking, turned and left.Perturabo lowered his head and leaned against the cold wall, saying nothing.

　There are two more chapters.

　　The final chapter may be late, but I'll keep my word. Chapter 3 will be written before twelve o'clock.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)