The Klaras satellite was a frozen world. The blizzards that raged there year-round made it difficult for Abaddon’s men to track Archmagos Cawl’s evacuation column.
But the Great Despoiler did not give up. He ordered the fleet to blockade the entire planet, then dispatched every ship capable of taking part in the search.
The flying craft of Chaos howled across the furious heavens, conducting a carpet search.
The last three Imperial fighters still capable of combat broke away from the formation, deliberately exposing their positions to draw the enemy off and buy the evacuation force more time.
Hanna’s Kite was one of them,
She was one of the few pilots who had evacuated from the surface of Cadia,
And now, she was flying toward her own death.
As for why her fighter was called the Kite,
It was because, when she was little, her parents had once taken her out to fly a kite,
And after she married and had children of her own, she and her husband had also taken the children out to fly kites.
Kites carried the most beautiful memories in her heart.
Inside the cockpit, Hanna wiped away the gushing nosebleed with a gloved finger,
Because her body had endured extremely high gravitational acceleration for too long, and her nosebleed had never stopped.
When those hideous creations of corrupted iron—the Heldrakes—appeared in her field of vision, the two sides erupted into a fierce battle.
The two friendly aircraft were badly outnumbered and were soon destroyed, exploding into fragments in midair.
After Hanna’s Kite exhausted its ammunition, its tail was hit, and then its nose was torn open by a drake.
In the end, her fighter tumbled toward the ground like a light fallen leaf, like a kite with its string cut.
Perhaps because the airflow cushioned it, the fighter that fell to the ground did not explode on the spot,
But a palm-sized piece of aircraft wreckage had pierced Hanna’s chest, and crimson blood dyed the cockpit red.
As life ebbed away, Hanna’s eyelids became unbearably heavy,
And fragments of old memories flashed rapidly through her mind.
She remembered that when she was only five or six, Cadia’s sky had still been blue, and the land had not yet become scorched earth.
Her mother, who had rarely gotten leave, had taken her to wander through a temporary market set up by Rogue Traders.
To the young Hanna, Rogue Traders were mysterious beings.
They would venture into dangerous worlds, collect all sorts of bizarre goods, then set up temporary markets in different places to sell their wares and earn money.
The young Hanna, and even many other Cadian children, loved such markets.
Because there, they could see strange plants and animals from all over the galaxy,
And listen to those slovenly crewmen boast about the adventures they had experienced.
“If only I could grow up sooner. Then I could join the army, go to every corner of the galaxy, strike down the Emperor’s enemies, and see different worlds.”
There would always be children making such naive remarks, drawing laughter from the adults.
Hanna had once thought the same.
She imagined herself putting on Kasrkin armor and defeating the evil villains from those stories in the Emperor’s name.
For example, those green-skinned monsters who carried crude weapons and grew out of the ground.
The endless swarms of insects that blotted out the sky.
And the silver skeletons sleeping in ancient tombs, as well as the traitors who had forsaken the Emperor.
Hanna also remembered that in the market, there had been a woman who told fortunes with tarot cards.
According to those nearby, the woman was the Navigator aboard the Rogue Trader’s ship,
And beneath the black silk scarf wrapped around her forehead was a third eye that could see through the tides of the warp, and the fate of the future.
Hanna’s mother spent a little money and asked the woman to look at her daughter’s future fate.
The woman studied Hanna for a long time before finally closing her eyes and, while stroking a crystal, said:
“Her future will be very happy. She will possess beauty, wisdom, and the Emperor’s favor. She will complete her studies smoothly, fulfill her dream, and meet a boy she likes.”
“Mm, that boy will be very handsome, and very gentle. The two of them will be together and have two lovely children.”
“But her ending will also be very bleak. Her husband will leave her, going far away to the battlefields of another world, and in the end he will die in battle in the Emperor’s name. When darkness descends, her children will return to the Emperor’s embrace, and she will die in a cold place, with no one to collect her corpse.”
Hanna’s mother thanked the woman.
Those words did not count as a curse. To die for the Emperor was the honor of every Cadian.
A Heldrake landed on the glacier, its enormous metal wings stirring up a terrifying vortex.
Those dragon eyes filled with evil locked instantly onto Hanna, who was on the verge of death inside the cockpit.
No...
Realizing what the other side wanted to do, Hanna endured the terrible pain and fumbled for her pistol to kill herself.
If she fell into their hands, evil sorcery would surely draw out all of her memories.
The next second, a massive figure descended from the sky,
And the great club in his hand smashed down hard against the Heldrake’s metal neck, knocking it off course.
Immediately afterward, the shotgun in his other hand fired wildly into its abdomen,
And after seven or eight consecutive shots, the fetal sphere hidden in the core region, formed from the corrupted pilot, was blown apart by a single blast.
The enormous Heldrake then crashed to the ground.
The dying Hanna watched this scene, and reassurance appeared in her unfocused pupils.
The one who had slain the Heldrake was that nameless angel of the Emperor.
He had once fought the Chaos army alone, buying other forces the chance to withdraw.
Hanna saw that there was a strange little propeller on his helmet,
Which must have been the key to his ability to fly.
How strange. How could such a tiny propeller make something so heavy fly?
Perhaps this was the Emperor’s mighty power.
Daqi landed beside Hanna.
He had seen a question mark appear on the mini-map over here, so he flew over.
“Is there anything you need me to do?”
Hanna coughed up several mouthfuls of blood before saying weakly, “Angel of the Emperor, can you bless us? Bless every Cadian?”
[Mission: Grant a Blessing to the Dying.
To cover the evacuation force, brave Cadian pilots chose to lure the enemy away. They fought to the final moment amid despair. And now, a warrior is about to die on a frozen world far from home. Grant them your blessing, and may their souls return to the Golden Throne.
Mission Reward: 150 EXP, 150 points, Reputation +10]
“A small side quest?”
Daqi accepted the mission, knelt on one knee, and gently placed his hand on her shoulder.
“May you return to the Golden Throne. May the Emperor’s light guide your path after death. May you be spared harm from daemons and evil gods.”
“Tha...”
Before Hanna could finish, her head tilted to one side, and all life left her completely.
A gust of wind blew over, making the identity tags on her chest jingle.
Daqi saw the information on the tags.
Hanna Keizel, attached to the 339th Squadron, age 35.
“Even though she’s an NPC controlled by AI, she feels incredibly real.”
“Once I clear this, I have to recommend it on the forums.”
“This game is seriously freaking awesome.”
“Even if I die and get buried in a grave, I’ll still use my rotten vocal cords to shout those words.”
As Daqi muttered to himself, he gave the slowly frosting corpse the sign of the aquila, then activated the bamboo-copter again and flew toward Archmagos Cawl’s location.
………………
The transport aircraft that had exhausted its fuel landed on the boundless glacier.
The evacuation column had to cross the ice field that had not melted in ten thousand years before they could reach the place the Living Saint Celestine had spoken of.
They guarded Archmagos Cawl’s armored transport vehicle.
The Knight mechs of House Taranis were on the outermost perimeter, scattered around the column.
Celestine walked at the very front of the column, and the Battle Sisters of the Order of Our Martyred Lady followed behind her, each of them unwavering in faith.
The surviving Tempestus Scions and the remnants of Cadia led by Creed were mixed among them.
Inquisitor Greyfax and Marshal Amalrich of the Black Templars walked at the rear.
During the first few hours of marching across the surface, fortune remained with this column.
Because of the interference from the blizzard and the electromagnetic field, Heldrakes passed overhead several times without discovering them.
Only when the blizzard ceased and the view became clear and open
Were Archmagos Cawl and the others discovered by the Heldrakes circling in the sky.
A brutal, bloody battle thus erupted.