Chapter 919, Tomb Container
Led by three corrupted dreadnoughts that had completed directional demolition, an entire army of Chaos Space Marines painted in black and gold charged into the church.
They came quite suddenly, and no one noticed their advance before they blasted through the wall. As a result, only the two teams of guards closest to them rushed over. They barely formed any blocking effect, and the power claws covered with corrupt slime tore open the chests of the soldiers, and the guards were quickly slaughtered.
Then, before anyone could react, they quickly broke into a closed entrance, blew it open, and went underground into the church.
At this time, Talsa arrived here with his men and was blocked by the remaining Chaos Space Marines.
On the one hand, he commanded his troops to engage these Chaos Space Marines. On the other hand, he was puzzled by the enemy's strange actions.
What are they doing here?
When he first heard about these Chaos traitors and when they broke into the church, he was quite nervous. He didn't know how many Chaos traitors there were, nor did he know what they would do next. Once the church was lost, the rear center would be lost, and the already precarious human defense line would become unstable.
Putting this aside, their core goal is to defend the church. If the church is lost, even if the other lines of defense are still there, what does it matter?
Still a failure!
However, why did these Chaos Space Marines run directly underground?
Tulsa had been guarding the church for quite some time, and he was familiar with the structure of the church. He knew that this underground passage led to a tomb.
It makes sense that there are tombs under the church. However, in this hive world, many lower-middle-class poor people normally live in coffin-sized places, so they have no chance to be buried in such places. Those who can be buried in the tombs under the church, even if they are not rich and powerful, are at least from the middle class or above.
They had previously come down to carefully examine the tombs under the church.
On the one hand, this is a defense requirement. At least we have to avoid omissions. What if there is a passage in the tomb that leads to the outside world and becomes a loophole in the defense line? Wouldn't that be troublesome? After checking, they found that there was indeed one, and they had completely sealed it in advance.
Another reason was that the order from the Command Headquarters required them to defend the church, and also told them that the Chaos enemy's goal seemed to be to find something. Seeing that they went straight to the church after landing from orbit, it was very likely that this "thing" was in the church.
For this, they also have to look for it carefully.
However, the so-called "thing" was too broad. After searching the entire church, they did not find anything that was worth the disaster fleet going to such great lengths to come to a world to search for.
Of course, this is actually normal.
If that 'thing' was so conspicuous, the Alliance wouldn't have been confused about what they were looking for after dealing with the Disaster Fleet for so long.
However, based on the current intelligence, it is basically possible to guess with a high probability that the "thing" is in the church.
This is also the significance of defending the church.
Combined with the actions of these Chaos traitors rushing directly into the catacombs, can we roughly determine that the "thing" is in the catacombs? It's just that they had no way to explore and discover it before.
With this in mind, Tulsa made a decision.
We must not let the enemy succeed.
He summoned all the Space Marines he could find, and twenty-eight banyan lizards, under his personal leadership and under the cover of a company of mortal soldiers, launched a desperate assault on the enemy.
The mortal soldiers operated heavy bolters, small plasma cannons, and direct-fire rocket launchers to launch fierce attacks on the enemy's bunker defenses.
We don't seek to cause any clear casualties, but we must at least use firepower temporarily to suppress those Chaos Space Marines who are blocking us.
The purpose was to cover the advance of the soldiers led by Tulsa.
They succeeded.
Tulsa's roar exploded with the scent of burning incense!
He was once a veteran chapter chaplain in the Banyan Lizard Regiment. After being seriously injured, he chose the latter between lying in the Dreadnought Iron Coffin and undergoing Primaris transformation to try to survive.
He luckily survived the ordeal of the Primaris transformation, and after returning to the chapter, he did not continue to be a chapter chaplain, but instead became a commander, teaching many Primaris recruits sent into the chapter.
However, although he no longer does the work of a priest, some of his fighting style is still inevitably influenced by his long career as a priest.
The scattered incense is one of them.
In daily prayers, burning incense that absorbs the power of faith will indeed have a weakening effect on traitors, while also bringing a more exciting mental bonus to one's own fighters.
The first Chaos traitor that Talsa saw, he could even see the buds of flesh growing in the cracks of his armor, which had shrunk a little because of the burning incense.
This was obviously somewhat painful, and his movements slowed down for a moment.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Tulsa swung the power scepter inlaid with atonement prayers and smashed the traitor into the load-bearing column. The fire of judgment on the top of the scepter ignited the buds growing in the gaps of the Terminator's armor, and with just one blow, it was finished.
Tulsa's combat power is still very fierce, especially after the Primaris transformation.
His proactive attack successfully attracted the attention of several Chaos Space Marines. They aimed their bolt pistols at Tulsa, while others raised their chainsaw swords and rushed towards him.
Tulsa remained unafraid and continued shooting on the spot, using his scepter to fight against the close enemy.
The Iron Cavalry Terminator armor he was wearing took a lot of damage, leaving him only slightly injured.
At this time, his fighting brothers also took advantage of his charge and joined the battlefield.
There were nine Chaos Warriors in total who were responsible for blocking the enemy here. They were extremely powerful, and were all veterans who had survived the brutal environment. However, when faced with three times their number of Banyan Warriors, all of whom were Primaris, they still had no way to turn the tables, and were eventually wiped out in a bloody close combat.
The banyan lizard suffered five casualties.
Two of them had accidents at the last moment.
When the last Chaos Space Marine felt that he could no longer stop them, he frantically opened a metal box, which gave off an unnatural reflection. Three evil mines that tracked heat signatures were ejected and exploded at close range.
While it blew itself to death, it also took the lives of two banyan lizard warriors.
After losing five fighters, Tulsa, who had only twenty-three men left, did not waver at all.
He commanded his troops firmly and continued to move forward.
However, 'determination' and 'caution' are not in conflict.
The catacombs were an unfamiliar environment. Although they had explored there before, they soon stopped paying attention to it after sealing off the other entrances to the catacombs. No defenses were deployed, and at best some wounded soldiers or supplies were temporarily stored in the catacombs.
And now, the enemy occupies that place.
The fate of the wounded soldiers and medical staff in the catacombs is self-evident. After they occupy the entire catacombs area, they will definitely deploy full defenses.
The entire underground tomb area is quite large in size, and its most notable feature is that the passages inside are relatively narrow. There are many forks, paths, and corners. In such an environment, if the attacker rushes in, he will easily be ambushed and suffer a great loss.
Tulsa had very few troops, just 23 Space Marines and a company of infantry. With such a configuration, Tulsa could not afford any failure.
If they were to be hit by a hidden mine at a certain corner and several people were killed or injured, that would be something Tulsa could not bear. Not to mention, if they were to be ambushed by a large number of troops, it would be very likely that the entire army would be annihilated and defeated.
In this case, he has to be careful enough.
Fortunately, he does have some tricks up his sleeve.
The company's technical sergeant received his order, came forward and released several very special drones.
At the same time, Tulsa fumbled to pull the data crystal from his belt and inserted it into the tactical terminal. Then, as the drone that had been released earlier began to work everywhere, the holographic projection deep in the tomb suddenly lit up.
The areas swept by the drone, at least initially, can be considered to have no major problems.
This drone is a new embodiment of Alliance technology. If we talk about which warband is particularly good at "building", then the warriors of the dragon bloodline are a very special one. As one of the dragon bloodlines, the Banyan Lizard Warband also has a similar tradition.
The 'holographic battlefield construction technology' represented by this drone is something they have also participated in researching.
In the current environment, this technology is beginning to play a special role.
The drone did not encounter any major problems on the way, and the holographic image of the catacombs on Tulsa's tactical panel became clearer and clearer.
Tulsa was a bit of a surprise.
He had not originally intended to rely on this drone to construct such a detailed and rich tactical map.
He thought that the drone would be attacked halfway through the journey, and its work would end prematurely. Tulsa was already prepared for this, and the drone would do as much as it could, at least to let them know where they were going.
However, the drone gave too much information.
He judged that this was most likely because the invading Chaos Space Marines themselves did not have sufficient troops on hand. After dividing their forces to defend the underground entrance, the remaining forces they had were not enough to set up layers of defense in the underground tombs.
If so, that’s great news!
Of course, Tulsa can’t do that.
The drone was still exploring the way forward, but this did not prevent Tulsa from commanding his troops to officially enter the underground tomb space.
Along the way, although they walked through areas that were swept by drones, in order to avoid the enemy having any special evil magic and hiding some traps that were not scanned, they walked very carefully and kept checking every corner and every path along the way.
But they had not run into any trouble until they had gone a long way.
This proves that the places scanned by drones in the past are relatively reliable.
But at this moment, Tulsa suddenly heard the technical sergeant's scream from the other side.
He promptly stopped the entire force and asked, "What's wrong?"
"Captain, look!"
The technical sergeant handed over the tactical panel.
The holographic projection showed ancient equipment that the General Staff had never mentioned before - countless bronze pillars with quantum circuits entangled around a coffin-shaped container. At this moment, dark red energy was seeping out from the cracks in the coffin.
"This...what is this?!" Tulsa asked with a frown.
"I have no idea."
Tulsa didn't get an answer, but he didn't expect to get a clear answer.
No one knows what that thing is, but based on the intelligence and clues obtained previously, the so-called "thing" is probably this, right?
Thinking of this, the holographic display suddenly turned black, and a red exclamation mark warning sign appeared.
Apparently, their drone was finally spotted and taken out with one shot.
He gritted his teeth and said, "Speed up, we have to hurry up!"
They all started to speed up and were not checking the surrounding situation as carefully as they did at the beginning.
This also brought them a punishment - when they were not far from their target, they were attacked from the side.
The enemy was not strong, not even a single Chaos Space Marine was there, just some Chaos believers. But when they charged with a crazy mentality and sacrificed their lives, and detonated the bomb, they still caused considerable damage to Tulsa's troops.
A banyan lizard warrior and an infantry squad fell.
However, Tulsa had no time to spare and could only command his troops to continue advancing.
According to the information I just saw, they probably don’t have much time left.
The Chaos Wizards surrounding the bronze coffin-like container seemed to be close to completing their work.
………………………………
Try to finish one more chapter before dawn.
(End of this chapter)
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