Chapter 360 The Odyssey of the Battalion Commander and the Sergeant

Time was frozen at the moment when the stasis grenade, the dark green energy stone and the entropy field intersected. The charge of the Hruds was curbed, and almost all of them fell back in the spread of the energy wave.

Then, the energy stone began to tremble violently, and broken crystal blocks continued to fall from the boulder. The energy index fluctuated rapidly in the helmets of the two warriors, rapidly increasing towards the dangerous level of death, igniting severe pain between the internal organs and bones.

Zoran panted violently and staggered forward. His face under the helmet showed a brief and refreshing smile. "Captain, the two of us can be regarded as, ahem, living up to our father's..."

Dantioch said nothing, grabbed Zoran's arm armor, and pulled him to stumble and run wildly.

"Hey, Captain--"

"Shut up and breathe!" Dantioch roared, no longer hiding the hoarseness of his voice. He forcefully pulled Zoran to sprint towards the tunnel leading to the Hrud spaceship port that he had previously favored, trying his best to escape the disorder caused by the energy stone and the loss of time control.

"But--"

Dantioch cursed loudly, squeezed out all the air in his three damaged lungs, and roared: "We swear to live, sergeant!"

The temporary stimulant was injected into the sergeant's body through the working module of the armor. This tube of potion was provided by the Eighth Legion and was modified from the failed Heartbreaker potion during the Olympic Games. Now most of the side effects have been removed, and it can truly activate the potential, or in other words, it can extract the potential of the Astartes' body in advance.

Zoran tried to sort out his breathing rhythm and felt the vitality re-emerging in his tired limbs. He gritted his teeth and followed, and at the same time threw a few stasis grenades, intensifying the energy and time agitation in the room behind him, in order to gamble that they could escape before the turbulence swallowed everything up.

The tunnel collapsed in pursuit of their footsteps. He couldn't calculate how long or how far they had run. Every time he took a step forward, a glassy stone collapsed and solidified into nothingness a few meters behind him, turning into a split road composed of broken stones, stagnating in the dark and endless abyss, turning into a still picture.

Zoran swallowed the rusty taste in his throat, and clumps of liquid still oozed from his clenched teeth, flowing along his neck to the dark lining inside the armor. A sharp stone hit his shoulder bone from behind. He grabbed a piece of more broken stones, took a quick glance, confirmed that it was a fragment of the energy stone, and put it in his bag.

"Here!" Dantioch shouted.

"Damn it!" Zoran cursed, "Damn it!"

He followed the battalion commander into a disconnected hall, tripped over the thick wires on the ground, and was pulled up by Dantioch. The hot blood flowed out from the palm of Dantioch's hand through the cracks in the gauntlet, staining Zoran's wrist.

Dantioch's guess was right. This was the Hrud's flying port, with the sky directly above. Sensing the coming of the crisis, the Hruds were also taking boats to escape, and the boarding ramp was particularly busy.

"Go grab a boat!"

"The two of us?" Zoran asked incredulously, then strangled a nearby Hrud, snatched the opponent's weapon, and couldn't find the trigger position, so he simply used it as an iron rod, swinging it hard, and smashing any enemy he could reach into the ground.

"Damn, who else could it be!" Dantioch glanced around, picked a miniature ship whose hatch had just opened and not many Hruds had boarded, and climbed up first.

Zoran followed Dantioch to cover the rear, and threw another stasis grenade, and the Hrud screamed and was torn apart.

At the critical moment of life and death, these cave dwellers gave up trying to confront the two fearless Space Marines head-on and rushed to the remaining ships. Zoran turned and entered the ship, following the battalion commander all the way into the cabin - thanks to this being a fairly standard miniature ship, similar in structure to several ships that the Iron Warriors had captured.

Zoran quickly cooperated with Dantioch and began to turn on dozens of complex switches, and nervously checked the fuel and hatch airtightness and other life-and-death factors until the engine suddenly roared and entered stable operation.

"You are really good, battalion commander," Zoran coughed, "but why is the Hrud port underground?"

"Sit down," Dantioch ordered sternly, "Stop talking!"

Zoran held the bulkhead, slowly sat down halfway, and fell to the ground.

The sergeant forcibly disconnected the neural connection, removed part of the armor, and took out some active injections from the malfunctioning injection module, intending to inject himself. After taking out the medicine, he found that he could not lift his hands again.

"Don't look back, Captain." He said with difficulty.

"What's there to be ashamed of?" Dantioch cursed, not taking his eyes off the instrument panel for the time being. He didn't trust the alien spacecraft at all, but now he had no choice.

The view ahead began to rise, following the other Hrud ships, their ships kept approaching the sky.

Dantioch leaned on the instrument panel and took two breaths, feeling relieved. Just as he was about to look back, the spacecraft suddenly shook violently and reversed, throwing the captain and the sergeant to the side of the bulkhead.

The scream of time caught up with the Hrud port.

"Perturabo bless you," Zoran whispered hoarsely, and a white light suddenly appeared in front of his eyes. The broken reflections were distorted on the layers of thousands of time and space. The pictures squeezed and replaced each other while expanding. He was unable to resist, fell into a fault in his thinking, and was swallowed up in the vortex of time and space.

——

A dull throbbing.

At first there were some noises, from the trembling of fingers, cold as if touching a stone cooled from the embers of a volcano, and some stinging, as if the fingers were not yours.

But who are you?

Then there was the sound of the wind. The wind surrounded the closed eyes, leaving white scratches, like the afterimage of the light, but colder and harder, rolling over your sore eyeballs. The fire of pain burned under the eyes, stimulating fragments of color. This pain was everywhere, lurking in your throat and leg bones, tormenting your fragile consciousness.

After a while, you realized that the wind was your breath. The pain in your fingers came from the condensed blood. Breathe. The word jumped into your brain. Your lungs squeezed out the color of the wind, the color of the airflow, the color of iron, the gray of steel.

That is your identity, your existence, the source of your life.

You are steel.

Your insides are made of flesh and blood, and like a hollow broken steel frame, let the cold air scream and echo inside, peeling off iron filings and rust.

You can't open your eyes. There are two beeps in your ears. One is loud, which is the echo left by the alarm in the ship. The other is low, which comes from your body, your surging blood vessels, and your simultaneous heartbeat.

Your heavy body and stubborn skin awaken you, lift you up from your dull slumber, and bring your consciousness to the surface of the cold world. Listen to the real wind passing through the corridor, hissing out from the bellows of the ship's air circulation system, and returning to the ventilation port, carrying the unstable tar smell of the equipment, and the heavy breathing of your battalion commander while dismantling the machinery.

"Are you awake?" The battalion commander noticed your abnormal trembling. He asked hurriedly, almost blurting it out, and then remained silent suspiciously, shaking his head at his own illusion.

His disappointment was almost inertial, quick and without pause. It seemed that he did not really have confidence in your recovery, and he was used to his own misunderstanding. He continued to repair the machine in his hand. It was a blurry block, iron-colored, and looked shabby and a little weird, as if it should not be a product of humans.

The battalion commander suddenly pulled out his knife and cut off a wrongly entangled iron wire.

You tried hard to do something to attract his attention. Your eyelids opened slightly. There was no helmet. Your helmet was taken off and hung on the wall of the ship with your armor, shaking like dried grass. Your fingers were exerting force. With a small friction sound, your nails scraped the steel under you.

The battalion commander confirmed your action. He stared at you straight, appearing as a rough shadow in your unfocused pupils. He swept away the hair in front of his face, approached you, and observed your trembling eyelids.

"Ah, you're awake." He took a breath, pretending that it was no big deal, "I thought you were going to sleep until you starved to death, Zoran."

Zoran opened his mouth, but couldn't say a word. His tongue and throat were extremely dry, which was the result of a month of coma. Dantioch filled him with half a cup of water from the water purifier and prepared to take care of his soldiers.

"No..." Zoran let out a breath, and he tried to sit up hard, and the macro manifestation of this action was that his skin tightened briefly.

Dantioch slowly fed Zoran some water. "There is no nasogastric tube, you drink first." The battalion commander said, and his image became clearer and clearer in Zoran's blurred vision.

He was wearing a simple robe assembled with waterproof cloth, nails and copper wires. His hair was half black and half gray, his face was clearly grooved, and a circle of beard roughly trimmed and cut with a knife surrounded the classic serious expression, just like every time they won a battle, which made Zoran very familiar.

It's just that he was no longer a young general.

Dantioch stared at him for a few seconds, squatted in the middle of the narrow floor of the cabin again, and continued to repair his iron box.

"You continue to rest." The battalion commander said vaguely. As soon as the voice fell, Zoran fell into a coma again.

When Zoran woke up for the second time, the first thing he said was "You choked me."

Dantioch paused as he poured water for him.

"Look down," he said, his voice heavy, "look at your hand."

Zoran moved as he lay, but still didn't have enough strength to prop himself up. He sighed, his lungs roaring like a broken bellows.

"I know... cough, you cut off my hand, Battalion Commander," Zoran looked up at the string of shaky knotted light bulbs on the ceiling, "I didn't want to drink it myself, but could you feed me slower?"

Dantioch glared at him: "You'd better shut up now."

Zoran laughed so hard that he was out of breath, and Dantioch's threat had no follow-up. Zoran moved his eyes and scanned the surroundings. He was still inside the small Hrud spaceship, surrounded by a pile of components removed from various metal products. The energy stone he put in his bag was locked in the stasis field transformed from the stasis grenade, and hung properly next to the light bulb.

Not far away, the instrument panel was beeping, and a row of instruments were glowing red alarms. The covers of several wires were peeled off, and the metal wires inside were roughly twisted together, becoming a typical example of dangerous non-compliant line modification.

Zoran probably understood where the buzzing in his head came from these days.

Some smooth surfaces reflected his current face. For a space warrior, he had too many wrinkles, his hair was a little too white, and his eyes were not sharp enough. He was like a piece of cold butter thrown into a blender, tattered.

Zoran looked at it for a while, and then laughed to himself.

"Stop laughing," Dantioch couldn't stand it anymore and waved the wrench in his hand at him demonstratively, "If you keep making noise, you might as well sleep a little longer."

Zoran stopped laughing. "You look at least a thousand years old, or fifteen hundred, bro."

Dantioch hit Zoran hard on the head with his wrench.

Zolan grinned and took a breath, "Sit up for me, battalion commander?"

Dantioch held his armpits, carried him to a position near the bulkhead, and sat down opposite him.

"You had some serious injuries to your body," Dantioch said. "I removed your arm and one of your lungs."

Zoran looked down and saw that there was indeed a long scar running through his chest in the center of his wrinkled skin. Thinking that their daggers would be turned into powder in the entropy field, Zoran gave up thinking about what Dantioch had cut him.

"We..." he breathed, the movement was a little too big for him for a while, "where are we?"

"Hrud spaceship." Dantioch took his iron box and answered without raising his head.

"No, I mean - both of us -"

"Satrada Abyss, Ancient Gain Sector," Dantioch replied, and the hands that were fiddling with the wires on the iron box stopped, "The spaceship hasn't gone too far yet."

"Then...ahem, then let's go back and look for it..."

Zoran coughed violently, his internal organs whining in pain. He fell uncontrollably to the side, and Dantioch immediately came over to right him, silently helping him calm down.

"Father is not here," Dantioch said quietly.

"Ah...it's okay. After all, we have no reason to keep our father waiting here." Zoran optimistically put on a wrinkled smile after finishing coughing, "How long have we been floating?"

"A month."

"Then I guess we have to go to the funeral monument," Zoran said. "When you go back, help me go to the Masons' Club and ask if my brother-in-law is crying behind my back."

He moved on the spot and repositioned his leg, which was almost numb from pain. "Have you not contacted the empire yet, boss?"

"No." Dantioch looked away and looked at the dark universe outside the porthole.

"I see you have already made a signal bird with your bare hands?" Zoran asked tentatively.

Dantioch placed the iron box in his hand between the two of them.

"You're right," the battalion commander said calmly, his fingers curled into a hollow fist at his side. "It's a pity that I didn't receive any signal from the Imperial channel."

"Didn't the Empire maintain an official immigration office in the Satrada Abyss?"

Dantioch glanced at him. "I guess I kept it."

"Then...ahem, then why..."

"Because the Hrud haven't moved to the Satrada Abyss yet." Dantioch's voice echoed in the small room, hitting the surrounding metal parts and hitting Zoran's heart hard. The echo echoed loudly, echoing word after word.

He realized the meaning behind Dantioch's words, and his originally fluent language began to stutter, "You mean, time has gone backwards..."

The battalion commander looked away.

"I detected the distribution map of planets in the nearby star area, which basically matches the battlefield of Satrada Abyss where we fought previously, but I was unable to find the planetary defense system and nests built by the Hrud people, and there was no fleet battle left behind. Traces of the galaxy here...are more primitive and uncontaminated by aliens."

He paused for a moment and said slowly: "According to the empire's detection, the Hrud people moved here at least two thousand years ago in 845.M30."

Zoran felt his breathing stop temporarily, his headache rapidly intensified, and the unusual weakness hit his spirit instantly.

He reluctantly continued, and he had never felt so powerless since he joined the Iron Warriors: "So, we were bombed... into the Satrada Abyss more than two thousand years ago?"

"I think so," whispered Dantioch. "This is the old night here."

There are no clarion calls for the Great Crusade. There is no starlight. There is no guidance from the Emperor.

Apart from isolated worlds, regressive technology, troublesome aliens, technological barbarians, psychic empires and other unpleasant things... and maybe some sparks of civilization hidden in dark corners, there is nothing left of the old night.

And they have nothing. A small boat without supplies, two elderly warriors - one of whom is disabled.

There is no legion. No armor. no target. There is no road.

"Then..." Zolan said slowly, "Is there any way we can go back?"

"Yes," said Dantioch, "it's a bet that Space Marines live more than three thousand years—"

The battalion commander's self-made siren suddenly sounded harshly, and Dantioch stood up abruptly, almost missing his waist.

He grunted, rushed to the edge of the instrument panel, clicked a lot of buttons, and pulled the bars he needed one by one.

The next second, the spacecraft immediately accelerated forward and rushed out, throwing Zoran to the floor.

The sergeant remained silent, held it in for a while to regain his composure, and shouted: "What's wrong, battalion commander!"

Dantioch took a picture of the launch command, and a stream of gunfire surged out from the muzzle of the simply modified alien ship, accurately chasing the small ship that appeared under surveillance, exploding a string of broken metal scraps in the universe. .

He squinted his eyes and waited until the boat was completely torn apart. Then he breathed a sigh of relief, moved his waist, swayed back to Zoran, and helped the fallen sergeant up again. That serious face still flashed with cold anger, as if the flames of war were reflected on this aging face, burning blazingly.

"We are not the only ones who arrived two thousand years ago, Zoran." Dantioch said in a deep voice, "We are not the only group of lucky ones who escaped. However, there is no record of this group of Hrud in the known history of the empire. human existence.”

Zoran understood Dantioch's allusion, and a smile mixed with pain gradually appeared on his face. "That's because we're going to kill them all, right?"

"Our mistakes brought the Hrud back to the old night, so we have to make up for our mistakes." Dantioch said, "In this way, when we meet the Primarch again, we are still qualified to say, Pei Turabo’s warriors have never failed.”

He added: "I have killed four ships of Hrud."

"Your Majesty, Grand Battalion Commander," Zolan laughed, "Compared to your past achievements, this is so small that it's not worth being proud of, right?"

"If you continue to laugh, I won't go scavenging in that ship," Dantioch threatened.

Zoran glanced down at his belly. "I won't starve to death for a while," he said cautiously. If he still had his hands, he would choose to pat his belly.

"I mean, I'm not going to look for materials to make metal prosthetics out of."

Zolan took a breath of air: "Battlemaster, do you still know how to make prosthetic limbs?"

"I haven't learned anything," Dantioch admitted readily. "If you have any adverse reactions after receiving the prosthetic limb, you have to trust your Astartes physique. Also, don't use honorifics."

"What, I must not have woken up. Now we must be in our spacious infirmary, with pleasant sling bottles, lying in the middle of the clean hospital bed, waiting for the pharmacist to take care of our injuries..." Zuo Lan babbled and closed her eyes again.

Dantioch looked at him for a while, then patted the sergeant's broken shoulder, quietly returned to the driver's seat, and skillfully piloted the spacecraft, preparing to fly towards the wreckage that had just been destroyed.

"Hey, battalion commander." Zolan's voice suddenly sounded.

"Yeah." Dantioch responded, he knew that this boy - this old guy was not asleep.

"We will definitely see the Iron Warriors again, right?" Zoran murmured. "Can you go home?"

"Of course." Dantioch replied firmly.

Zoran made no more noise, and this time he did fall asleep.

——

"Is this an inhabited planet?" Zoran took the symbolic pair of prosthetic legs that were not connected to the nervous system and propped himself up against the porthole of the boat. "I mean, real humans?"

Looking at the star map in his memory, Danti Okobi had to speak honestly: "I don't know. But they responded to our signals."

Without the guidance of the navigator's family, this small ship drifted in the storm of the old night. After encountering several radiation rays that disrupted the magnetic field, the other Hrud small ships that fell into this time became likenesses in the sea of ​​stars. The only type of road sign - there are some systems in the Hrud fleet that can sense each other.

At first, their hunting went very smoothly. No one in Hrud suspected that in the cockpit of another ship with the same origin as theirs, there were only two enemies who were bent on hunting them down.

Relying on this surprise, Dantioch destroyed three more Hrud ships in the first year of wandering, and scavenged supplies from those ships to repair and repair his own ship. More military configurations that the Iron Warriors were accustomed to gradually transformed the boat into the appearance of the Iron Warriors.

Zoran once joked with him and asked him whether a small alien boat with all the screws replaced could still be considered the original alien boat.

Dantioch asked him to first find parts that were not from the alien ship to replace and refurbish, and then discuss the issue.

The hunting in the second year was no longer so smooth. Firstly, the number of Hruds fleeing here decreased. Secondly, the ships they modified became increasingly deviated from the original appearance made by the Hruds. This led to the suspicion of aliens.

The good news is that Zoran's condition is completely stable and everything is normal except for the lack of hands and lungs. Now he temporarily serves as an observer, helping Captain Dantioch with small things within his power. In addition, Dantioch refused to feed him with his own hands and cut out a thin tube to use as a straw for him.

As for more trivial issues of personal survival, Dantioch showed great kindness and put all the craftsman knowledge and creativity he had accumulated in the first half of his life to help the sergeant solve them one by one using scientific and technological means.

It was now their third year of wandering in the universe. In addition to missing their former comrades and the respected Perturabo, they began to miss humanity itself.

Zoran leaned against the window and stared excitedly at the approaching planet. "I think that's the spaceport, Commander."

"I think you're right, Sergeant," Dantioch said. "Perhaps the stagnation of human technology is also beneficial."

"The spaceport two thousand years ago looks almost the same as it will two thousand years later," Zoran laughed, patting the window frame clumsily with his metal hand, "I hope they don't have the same skinning hobby as the night ghosts."

"Then, it is indeed time for our names to be engraved on the memorial stone." Dantioch pretended to be serious in reply, adjusting the communication channel.

The languages ​​of the two sides were very different. The uncoded language could only display a bunch of garbled codes for both sides. The battalion commander tried for a while and simply started to draw pictures with mathematical formulas and sent them to the other side, hoping that the other side could understand mathematics and basic semiotics.

This attempt was successful, although Dantioch was not sure whether the other side released the people because they understood their meaning or out of precious humanitarianism.

Through some primitive communication methods engraved in the blood of humans, Dantioch finally barely figured out that this was a planet that traded marine products with a few nearby planets. It preserved certain space navigation skills, but the technology was roughly the same as Olympia before Perturabo came.

Humans were not very welcoming to these two tall middle-aged and elderly humans. They carefully examined the scars on their bodies, tested their danger as warriors, and placed them in a more remote ocean island.

Dantioch used their technical knowledge to help the locals repair some overly old machinery, and of course, draw house designs. At this point, the Iron Warriors were really familiar with it.

"If I were a few hundred years younger, I could fight their army alone." Zoran boasted to Dantioch with a smile, relying on the fact that the locals could not understand his language.

"Don't make us lose our food supplies." Dantioch warned his subordinates. "Besides, they sent us materials to repair the spacecraft."

After that, Dantioch used the simple language he had learned in the past two days to politely thank the boy who helped them deliver food every day recently - the language he learned was probably two greetings, some words expressing thirst and hunger, broken grammar, and the most classic local swear words.

After a conversation, the boy told them that his name was Marchen.

When Dantioch and Zoran mentioned things in the universe, he seemed to be touched by it, looking at the two star visitors with expectation, his eyes filled with the most primitive yearning of human beings for the vast world.

After a month of rest, the battalion commander decided to leave.

Considering that he had to take care of the entire ship and deal with Zoran Anderson alone, he was really overwhelmed. With careful words and restrained attitude, Dantioch politely asked if anyone in the local area was willing to go with them and serve as a crew member to do some auxiliary work.

Marshen and his dozen companions rushed out of the crowd, wanting to grab Dantioch's legs and let him take them away. These children are all orphans.

"But what is the name of your ship?" Marshen asked curiously, looking up at Dantioch's stubbled face, "You never mentioned it."

Dantioch paused slightly and turned his head to look at Zoran.

The sergeant nodded at him: "All up to you, old captain."

The old captain sighed: "Come on, crew. This ship is the 'Odyssey'."

"Then where are you going?" Marshen asked.

"I didn't tell you where to go, but you followed me. You have no discipline." Dantioch said indifferently. Their ship was really short of people, and this was the first time he had really communicated with mortal children so cordially since he joined the Great Crusade.

The people here didn't know Space Marines, and they happened to have no mission against humans. Since becoming the Astartes of the Emperor, they suddenly became themselves again.

Although he looked too old, he was actually still a young warrior in his teens. Even though he had experienced many battles, he couldn't help but feel novel when facing areas he had never set foot in.

"It's the same wherever you go, old captain." Marshen said, "Go to the stars and go far away."

Zoran squatted down. His metal arms made the little crew very curious and stared at him.

"Ahem... we are going to go two thousand years later, is it far enough?" Zoran asked.

"Enough!" Marshen grinned happily.

One hundred and fifty years later, Marshen's lifespan reached the end first. He looked at the scene outside the porthole in deep space and died in pain.

In his lifetime, he assisted two Space Marines in completing three long-distance pursuits against the Hruds, which was considered an excellent record among the Legion's auxiliary forces.

In the next twenty years, the first batch of mortal crew members of the Odyssey all died one after another.

Dantioch greeted all this in silence. When he was packing up the crew's urns, he rarely looked in the mirror.

He still looked like the strong old man at the beginning, almost unchanged.

"Old Captain," Zoran walked slowly behind the battalion commander, looked at the cabinet that Dantioch had vacated and arranged into a shelf for urns, and shook his head: "It would be nice if there were black and yellow paint."

Zoran's face aged a little faster than him. Nearly two hundred years ago - or two thousand years later, he had never received truly appropriate medical conditions for the injuries he suffered in the Hrud Battle. In his own words, he was able to live to this day, all relying on "the blessing of the Emperor's genetic technology."

Sometimes Dantioch thought Zoran would die tomorrow from the pain, and sometimes he thought Zoran could live forever.

"I'll do it next time I have a chance." Dantioch stepped back and observed the shelf he had repaired. "I'll go check the food in the eco-cycle chamber."

"I'll go too." Zoran said.

——

In the 270th year, the Odyssey mistakenly entered the territory of the aggressive aliens while chasing the Hrud ship, which led to a sudden space battle.

Dantioch used up all his sailing skills in his life and finally drove a lone boat out of the encirclement and returned to the vast star field, where he had a chance to breathe.

"How many Hrud ships are left out?" Zoran asked.

"Five left." Dantioch replied, "but they all ran very far away."

"To be honest, we should catch an Astropath."

Dantioch looked at Zoran with strange eyes: "The two of us, go and break into the entire navigator family?"

"But we don't know the way," Zoran hugged his two metal arms in front of his chest, "even if it's 1,800 years later, we can't find our father."

"Let's live until then." Dantioch replied.

Father, Perturabo, Iron Warrior... After just over 200 years, when I mention these words that are deeply buried in my heart, I feel as if I were in another world.

"We can always go home," Zoran said with a smile.

"Is your home Olympia or Terra? You Terran."

"It's the Iron Warriors Fleet, respected old captain."

Dantioch shook his head and silently memorized the location of the lair of this aggressive alien in his mind and put it on the list of hatred.

——

On a certain Terra morning in the 410th year, Zoran's mechanical arm announced the beginning of a long strike with a loud creaking sound.

The battalion commander studied the cause of the damage to the mechanical arm for the sergeant, and finally reluctantly came to the answer-the source was the necrosis of the nerves at the end of Zoran's arm stump.

"I'm not a neurologist," Dantioch said tensely, "It can't be cured. It's hopeless."

Zoran stared at his hand for a long time, then said slowly: "Okay, Captain. Is there any compensation?"

"What do you want?" Dantioch asked, "The Odyssey is this big."

Although this ship has been expanded a lot compared to the original Hrud boat, even the crew has died twice, and the urn shelves are half full, and each box is engraved with the names of these mortals in the language of their respective home planets.

Now is the time for them to search the galaxy for the third crew.

"Give me a promotion, Captain," Zoran pretended to look pitiful, but it didn't suit his old face. "I have worked diligently for five hundred years, and I am still a sergeant."

"Wrong," Dantioch said mercilessly. "You have only worked for a mere 1,500 years. You should encourage yourself, follow Perturabo's example, and keep moving forward into the future."

"Emperor, I have to live for another 1,500 years!"

"Don't tell me you can't do it, sergeant."

--

Zoran's arm problem took a turn for the better ninety years later. The two wandered around in the universe, drifting with the flow, and finally bumped into a human civilization with advanced enough technology.

Compared with most planets where technology was lost over the years, or civilization was lost in barbarism, the pocket empire civilization was amazing. Whether it was the overall technological advancement or the internal peace index, it was even better than the later empire.

"Thank you for your help, Interlex," Zoran moved his upper arm, which had just regained its sense of nerves, and the mechanical arm that was perfectly connected to the nervous system, uncomfortably. "We will remember you forever."

After some friendly negotiations, they got a full set of body repair surgery. For hundreds of years, the two had never felt so healthy and long-lived.

The two's excessive age actually earned them more trust from the Interlex people. After all, old age often represents the accumulation of wisdom and knowledge, and the decrease of combat threats.

The Interlex people accepted their thanks and expressed in musical language that they were willing to help their fellow human beings who also originated from Terra, not to mention that these were two warriors who were not contaminated by "Chaos" - the Interlex people firmly regarded that thing as an enemy.

"Excuse me, where are you from?" the Interlex people asked politely.

Dantioch stroked his beard calmly: "I wonder if you are interested in learning about a country that also yearns for peace and human unity."

"Please speak."

"Although it does not exist today, in the future of 1,500 years, the Sky Eagle will soar across the universe. That is the human empire we serve - to be more specific, we belong to the Iron Warriors Expeditionary Corps."

"We will remember the Iron Warriors from the human empire." The Interrex people said solemnly. "When we meet again tomorrow, we will welcome you with good gifts."

They have lived in the Interrex Federation for more than ten years, and their communication with the locals has become more and more harmonious.

This is one of the most unforgettable things in the long journey of the two. Even after leaving, sitting in the cabin that the Interrex people helped them to refit, Zoran and Dantioch would occasionally mention the Federation where civilization still exists.

Of course, there is also the Centaur Memorial Statue presented to them by the Federation.

The Interrex people will create a mobile combat platform shaped like a centaur, forming a Centaur warrior with extremely strong mobility. In addition, the crossbows in their hands can shoot through ceramic steel, and the secret is unknown.

——

About seven hundred years ago, their clock broke once due to long-term careless use and the damage and wear of the harsh storage environment, so the time point was not completely certain. Dantioch and Zoran chased the last escaping Hrud ship across half of the galaxy and finally caught the ship in an area that might be the Ultramarine.

After destroying the last ship of Hrud enemies, Zoran collapsed in a chair, looking exhausted, breathing the clean air slowly, and looking up at the ceiling inside the Odyssey.

"Have we completed our mission, Captain?" Zoran asked, his gray hair reflecting the cold light of the lighting.

Dantioch turned on the sun lamp and appropriately increased the concentration of ultraviolet rays in the room.

"Yes." He said, his voice hoarse, as if it was made of a thousand pieces of sandpaper, "but the oath is not over yet."

Zoran was silent for a while, looking at his pair of metal prostheses, "There are too many oaths, Captain, which one do you want to say?"

"To live." Dantioch said in a deep voice, "We swear to live, sergeant."

"Of course," Zoran put down his metal arm, his voice became firm again, "Steel inside and outside."

The next year, they debated with the locals on a planet a thousand times, they were not messengers of God.

Even if they helped the locals drive away an invading alien, they were just human warriors.

The locals smiled and agreed on the surface, then turned around and built a temple for them, sculpted stone statues, and worshiped them all day long.

The stone statue had an old face, firm eyebrows, deep eyes, white hair and beard hanging down together, and a long robe that reached the ground and fluttered slightly when it approached the surface. The posture was dignified and holy, as if it had walked through thousands of years, which just fits the long-standing stereotyped memory of the human race about prophets and enlighteners.

Dantioch tried to tell them that he came from the human empire and was just a human warrior belonging to the Iron Warriors. Soon, he became the "noble saint of the God of Iron and Craftsmen" in the temple.

The two Iron Warriors fled in panic, hoping that a thousand years would erase this wrong worship, otherwise Dantioch might have to explain to the Primarch, who was intimidating without anger, why there was a planet that respected Perturabo as the God of Iron and Craftsmen.

——

In the 890th year, the two passed by a beautiful planet with lush vegetation and greenery, and felt that the surrounding galaxy environment was familiar.

When the planet turned an angle towards the Odyssey, Dantioch was stunned.

"What's wrong, Captain?" Zoran asked while coughing, his white hair trembling. Even after the medical treatment of Interrex, he still had only two lungs.

Dantioch was silent for a long time, pointing to the snow-white protrusion in the center of the planet.

"That's Mount Telephus, Zoran." He said softly, his eyes hidden in the wrinkles slightly widened, trying to see everything there. "It's this kind of pattern, this shape..."

Zoran only felt a complex feeling running through his body, mainly sour, supplemented by sighs. He had been traveling with Dantioch for nearly a thousand years, and he had never seen the Captain express such emotions.

"That's Olympia." Zoran said, staring at the home planet of the Primarch, and his nose was sour for no reason.

"Olympia," Dantioch murmured, as if he was afraid of disturbing the silence here.

His old and wrinkled fingers pressed on the cold porthole, stroking the texture of the mother planet from a distance. When he was about to touch the eye-catching mountain, he suddenly retracted his fingers and stood still, not daring to touch it again, letting the white snow peak slowly turn to the other side of the planet.

Zoran looked at Dantioch, and felt that time suddenly reappeared at this moment, so obviously entangled with the old man, like a ruthless net, wrapping up the giant fishing net.

The past and future on the timeline, and the future and past in their long lives, are precisely intertwined on Olympia at this moment.

A thousand years later, Barabas Dantioch will be born on this green and peaceful planet. A thousand years ago, Barabas Dantioch returned home.

The long river of fate begins here and flows through here, so it loops and the water flows forever.

"Let's go down and take a look?" Zoran suggested.

Dantioch shook his head slowly, as if he had aged a lot.

"The Primarch has not yet arrived in Olympia," he said, "and I have never been connected to this place. Why should I suddenly visit this planet and disturb her remaining thousand years of peace?"

"What are you worried about, Barabas?" Zoran asked.

Dantioch smiled and left the porthole, almost tripping over the debris on the ground. "Let's go."

--

When Zoran passed by the urn shelf, his center of gravity accidentally shifted while he was walking with his hand on the wall. His leg was broken once before, and he had not found a human planet with good medical conditions. Since then, Dantioch had to help Zoran up from all corners of the Odyssey.

Ten minutes later, the two old men squatted on the ground, moving slowly, keeping their senses stable, and picked up the mortal urns that were sealed perfectly at the beginning.

"I'm thinking about something, Battalion Commander." Zoran said while holding a pile of boxes.

"Say it."

Zoran's expression hesitated, and the wrinkles on his face piled up heavily, almost like the folded mountains formed by many years of geological movement.

"I'm thinking..." He choked and heard his lungs make a sharp and empty sound again, "I'm thinking, when we go back..."

"What's wrong?"

"After we go back, what else can we do?" Zoran lowered his head and looked at his steel arms. Recently, this pair of arms has finally reached the end of their service life and has become less flexible.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean... you see, Battalion Commander, we are so old... we can't see clearly, our hearing is declining, and our legs tremble when we walk..."

"That's because you were shot in the leg."

"Yes, I know, I know everything," Zoran whispered, his words were full of hesitation, and there was a hint of painful fear, "but I'm no longer a warrior. My father deserves a better warrior, not..."

He coughed violently, a turbid gasp came out of his throat, and the only two lungs left twitched in his chest.

"I haven't done anything well, Captain. It's because you took care of me... that I can get to where I am today."

Dantioch said nothing, but put his hand on Zoran's shoulder.

"I don't want to," Zoran coughed and squeezed out his voice, "I don't want Lord Perturabo to see... a three thousand year old man with blurred eyes, broken hands and missing lungs, and half of his legs and feet are lame... Captain, I don't want this."

"How can there be an old man with a childish temper like you?" Dantioch said. "When the time comes, I'll ask the Father of Genes to get you into the Dreadnaught."

Zoran gritted his teeth, and his gums bled as a result.

"I know." He sighed in frustration. "Can I pick the most comfortable Dreadnought? Don't mind those complaints, of course I want to live. We made a vow."

"We swore to live, sergeant." said the battalion commander.

——

More than 1,300 years ago, the old men participated in a war of expelling aliens in the Silzati sector. With their military qualities and long-term combat experience, they almost completely guided the entire battle.

As expected, they were treated with great courtesy and worship, and Dantioch couldn't help but feel that the primarch could remain calm and face the endless praise from various planets again and again, worthy of being their genetic father.

The specific image of Perturabo had long been a little vague in the memory of the old warriors. The specific outline was like a sculpture of sand and stone, eroded and peeled off in the long wind of time, leaving only the most basic blocks and lines, and those unforgettable impressions.

"Not for fighting," Perturabo's voice echoed lonely in their ears. After the fifth batch of crew members all died, the two did not recruit new mortal crew members. "Not for honor."

"For the Empire," Dantioch whispered to himself, following the words of the Primarch. From these distant words, he could always hear the beating of his heartbeat, "For humanity. As in it. As outside it."

More than two hundred years later, they passed through Silzati again.

At this time, the Silzati star region was already a ruin, with endless yellow sand and strong winds. The remains of civilization crossed the planet like a scar. Under the high radiation index, the world was only dead silent.

Everything they had done for Silzati disappeared and no longer existed.

After they left, some military forces within Silzati were strengthened because of the mobilization to jointly resist the aliens. Two major forces gradually formed and became tit-for-tat.

Things became simple afterwards. Destruction is always a thousand times easier than construction.

"Fortunately, we killed a bunch of aliens at that time, so it wasn't a wasted trip." Dantioch said, "What do you think?"

Zoran stood in the middle of the wasteland, holding a piece of ruined wall, his white hair fluttering in the wind.

"Wearing strong armor, with a heart of steel." Zoran said, straightening his back, "No matter how much real steel is left in this aging armor; no matter how the world changes, how the country rises and falls, the steel will fight for you."

Dantioch continued Zoran's words. His voice was hoarse and unpleasant, they were too old to make their tone passionate.

"We are eternal steel warriors. No matter why the enemy exists, we fight until there is nothing left. If our bones fade with the years, if our achievements are defeated by the torrent of time, our armor will still exist, telling the will of the legion and the continuity of the battle."

"Everything will come to an end in the future, and time will reach its end countless thousands of years later. But before the night, there must still be dusk, noon, morning and sunrise. Steel shines in the light and reflects the sunlight."

"Steel produces strength, strength produces will, will produces faith, faith produces honor, and honor produces steel. This is an unbroken prayer."

-

Three years later, when Zoran woke up one day, he found that his legs did not allow him to stand up. His whole body seemed to be sinking to the bottom of the Odyssey, and he was extremely tired.

He was drowsy, and everything in front of him was covered with afterimages, but he seemed to be waiting for something new to come, so he didn't want to fall asleep again anyway.

For many years, he seemed to be waiting for that thing to happen. Maybe it had already happened. Maybe it was waiting at the door, watching when Zoran was willing to get out of bed and walk towards it barefoot. The wind blew in from outside the door, filling his empty chest and filling the empty lungs.

Suddenly, his fear reached a peak, and was quickly replaced by a good sense of relaxation, plucking his aging heart and tugging the strings of his weak heartbeat.

His teeth were chattering, his forehead was hot, and his arms were a little cold. The pair of metal arms seemed to have encountered something colder than cold iron, pressing heavily on him, making him unable to move. He was extremely cold, the wind rolled up his heart, and his blood vessels were floating on their own.

No... he wanted to say, no, don't. He was lying here, this was a familiar place for him, a place where he had lived for one thousand and five hundred years, but now it had become a strange house. The bed he was lying on became a strange bed, rejecting his existence. This place did not belong to him, and he did not belong here.

Who is he? Ah, he was not quite conscious, it was really hard to remember. He was lying here... His hands were intact, he was breathing smoothly, and his legs were light. He was installing some instrument for the entropy field, what was that? He couldn't remember it at all...

Some white lights, flickering, the stones escaped from under his feet... There was a green thing hanging from the ceiling... He used to wear armor, and now there was a long scar on his chest... How did he die? How did he stop breathing? Ha... It's night... All of you go out, Captain, don't look, don't look back, Captain... What's there to be afraid of? I am very old and very injured. The wind goes out of my bones. I don’t feel like a piece of steel at all…

He doesn’t know…He will lie down for a while, and he will be here, wearing armor…Captain, close the door, don’t let father in, don’t let them come over, don’t be sad, he is fine, he will jump out of bed tomorrow and run through the three loops of the Iron Won…Father, father, where are you…

See me, I beg you to see me, father…I made a vow, we swore to live, sergeant, the commander said…Steel inside and outside, the prayer of steel…Iron armor is immortal…Father, I miss you, Perturabo…I’m sorry…I was wrong…I’m sorry, I made a vow, just five hundred years short…

I’m sorry, I’m lost, see me…

It seemed that a pair of hands grabbed his shoulders, and his breathing gradually weakened. The light of the day gradually became clearer and brighter in his eyes.

The sunlight shone into his dissipated world, like the remnant of a beautiful dream.

The battle was raging, and the Hruds' cannons were exploding in the distance for self-protection. Zoran raised his eyebrows in his helmet, quickened his movements, pressed the throttle, and concentrated on adjusting the instrument used to collect entropy field parameters.

Soon, he raised his head, patted the dirt on his hands, and smiled triumphantly at the battalion commander Dantioch.

"I'm done," Zoran said, "let's retreat and return to the Iron Won."

——

It was probably more than 1,900 years ago that Dantioch finally met a psychic who could see the light of the Astronomican.

At that time, he was walking on a street, with a life support backpack on his back and a suit of armor, which was not only to cover his aging image, but also to allow the armor to support his weak body.

If he didn't need some necessary supplies, he rarely left the Odyssey, because every takeoff and landing would give him great pain.

When the psychic saw him, his eyes were shining.

As soon as he came up, he grabbed Dantioch's hand and asked with restrained excitement: "Excuse me, do you know the Great Crusade? Do you know the Glory of the Emperor? Can you see that light? No, sorry, but the armor you wear is too similar to the Emperor's angels..."

The gears of time suddenly got stuck, and the self-circling river returned to a one-way flow.

Dantioch endured the pain in his aging shell, grabbed the psychic, and turned the tables, his voice rumbling like thunder: "I am a warrior of the Emperor, how dare I offend you like this!"

The psychic almost knelt down in front of him in the street.

"What day is it now?"

"The 30th millennium, 845 seasons..."

"In the name of the Emperor, I immediately order you to show the way to those who gallop across the starry sea." He ordered.

"Yes, sir, where are you going?"

Dantioch opened his mouth slightly, was stunned for a moment, and suddenly felt that the world was in a trance.

He sighed, and the familiar words came back through time and space.

"Satralda Abyss."