Warhammer: In the Name of Ashes.

Chapter 620 Delay

"General?" The man who came was extremely strong and occupied all the exits of the bunker by himself.

11-25 Squinting his eyes and looking up slightly, he found a familiar red among the gray of national defense in the backlight.

"Lieutenant Colonel, what should I call you?" 11-25 asked.

The visitor looked up when he heard the voice, and looked confused when he saw the unfamiliar face.

"Lieutenant Colonel!" 11-25 emphasized again, and the star on his shoulder also made the other party wake up.

"Checkmate!" He subconsciously stamped his chest, but this made 11-25 look even worse.

"807th Armored Grenadier Regiment?" 11-25 asked, looking at the crossed grenades on the opponent's collar badge.

"Yes! May the Emperor bless you! Konev, the political commissar of the 807th Armored Grenadiers Regiment, salutes you!" Konev answered loudly, his nervousness evident in his voice.

"Konev? Or should we follow your custom and call you by your full name?" 11-25 asked with a frown, standing still.

"No need for that. You can just call me by my title." Konev, the Political Commissar of the Astra Militarum, replied.

He hesitated because the two of them were too close to each other. But he heard footsteps coming from behind him. They were Konev's guards.

"You just arrived?"

"Why has your regiment not arrived at the designated position yet?"

"Where is your chief officer? Why are you reporting to the headquarters?"

11-25's tone became more and more impatient, and his eyes looked more and more unfriendly. If the person in front of him could not give him a satisfactory answer, it would not be uncommon to use his head to enforce discipline.

"Dead." Konev replied, and 11-25's hand that was reaching for his waist paused.

"Our armored forces encountered a track attack during transfer at the station. All members of the regiment command including the regiment commander and combat staff were killed. Only one company of the heavy armored forces was saved because they were unloaded from the car in advance. Together with the infantry company and the regiment's direct troops, there are only four companies now. I am the highest-ranking military officer now and the current commander." Konev explained.

"…How's the station doing now?" 11-25 asked through gritted teeth. He thought that the problem with the logistics supply had been solved, but to be honest he would rather not know the news.

Because the troops of the Astra Militarum come from different places, the training and equipment levels they receive vary greatly, ranging from medieval cavalry regiments to heavy armored regiments from World War II.

A troop similarly organized as the Guards Cavalry Regiment could be a torrent of steel equipped with hundreds of Leman Russ chariots, or it could be a group of Krieg beasts wearing grey fur and riding large horses.

  Therefore, when the Military Affairs Department dispatches troops to a war zone, it will try to concentrate troops of the same nature. But this is always an ideal situation and cannot be achieved on every battlefield. (In fact, most of them cannot be achieved.)

Therefore, considering the complexity of logistical supply and in accordance with the experience summed up by the Astra Militarum, the campaign command would usually set up material transfer centers of different sizes in the order of army group - corps - corps, from hundreds to tens of kilometers behind the legion cluster in the absence of airdrops of supplies by the Imperial Navy.

The problem this time was precisely the material transfer center of the 11-25 Corps Group - the only place with railway transportation that could realize the large-scale transfer of armored units and heavy artillery.

Well, if 11-25 had to choose, he would rather choose the latter between the Armored Corps and the Krieg beasts at this moment.

The former lost their combat effectiveness after losing their heavy equipment, while the latter could still serve as qualified filling-in soldiers in this vast frozen tundra even if most of their horses died.

Well, elite armored units are good, but cannon fodder legions are equally important. At least at this stage, the goal of the campaign given to him by the Primarch is to blockade the subcontinent to prevent the spread of disease and chaos there.

He could not count on the Emperor's angels to have time to support him, and was thankful that there was no sign of an equal force on the other side. The war here still belonged to mortals, so he had to do everything he could to complete his mission before the Emperor recalled him. He would not refuse any additional troops, even a single soldier. But the news brought by Konev forced him to give up hope of support from the rear.

"It was a mess. The railroad tracks were blown up, and the material storage center at the station was also on fire. We couldn't wait for orders, so we could only move forward with the people and equipment we could move on. At least after we left for dozens of kilometers, we could still see the smoke and dust rising from there."

The look on Konev's face indicated that it was an absolute disaster, but 11-25 knew that what was even worse was that the entire legion's follow-up supplies were gone.

The only thing he could count on was the armored grenadier regiment in front of him, but even this remaining force had just experienced a long-distance raid, and the condition of its heavy equipment was probably worrying, and it urgently needed maintenance and comfort from the mechanical priests.

Fortunately, there were not many tanks in front of the front line, and both the priests and the legion had a lot of spare parts in stock. He had read the records of previous battles and knew that these priests were now idle and could only bar their teeth at the rats in the trenches on the ice field.

"Notify the legion's mechanical priests and ask them to cooperate with the engineers to repair... no, appease the machine spirits of those Leman Russ." 11-25 turned around and gave the order, then looked back at Konev, who looked dusty.

"You have a day and a night to rest." 11-25 recalled quickly and found the whereabouts of this armored corps in his mind.

"There is a farm at the junction of the 21st Motorized Infantry Regiment stationed in Corison and the 22nd Regiment in the grassland direction. According to the intelligence provided by the nearest orbital detection array, that is likely the direction of attack of the enemy's heavy armored forces."

11-25 looked at Konev, sighed helplessly and said, "Your mission is to get there before the enemy and use your remaining tanks to strengthen the defense there."

"Understood!" Konev saluted, while 11-25 was still reminding: "Three days and nights, you must hold on for at least three days and nights to create time for the two corps to shrink their defense. No matter what, that junction cannot be torn apart by the enemy. If you fail..."

"The enemy will surely pass through my dead body!" Konev replied. In the distance, a number of Leman Russ rumbled past, their sturdy gun muzzles pointing forward, as firm as his will at the moment.

"May the Emperor bless you!" said 11-25.

"May the Emperor bless you!" Konev replied in the same way.

Both of them knew that this was a mission that would almost certainly lead to their death, but neither of them complained, and they did not show the sentimentality that ordinary people have.

The falling snow was silent; the laughter of soldiers in the distant trenches and the occasional whistling of cold artillery in the sky could be vaguely heard.

Konev took a long breath and looked at the strange officer: "Do you have anything else to say? I'm leaving now."

"Oh, no." 11-25 answered seriously, his upright body standing still.

"Then please go back, it's not safe here," Konev said.

“Oh, you first.” 11-25 replied.

"Why?" Konev asked in confusion.

"..., you stepped on my foot." 11-25 replied.

　……

　　(End of this chapter)