At this point, Zhang Ge could not voice any objections. He simply bent over and stepped through the hatch, then took the nearest seat available.
As soon as he touched the interior wall of the Chimera, the previously dim lighting inside suddenly brightened, and the once frenzied engine roar became somewhat... pleasant? It was akin to the sound of a sports car revving, something a car enthusiast would appreciate.
This unexpected change slightly calmed the previously agitated Ogryn.
Following Zhang Ge, the Commissar also stepped into the vehicle and closed the hatch behind him, leaving only the white light from the wall lamps illuminating the interior.
Once seated, the Commissar pulled out a map and showed it to everyone inside, saying:
"Although we don't have detailed information on the enemy cultists' troop deployments, based on the intensity of the attacks our forces have encountered, we've roughly estimated the distribution of their numbers."
His chainsword left a shallow scratch on the thin leather map.
"The PDF is about to launch an assault on one of their densely concentrated positions to draw their forces further into that area. Meanwhile, we'll break through from a weaker point, with two Sentinel walkers and a squad of Astra Militarum providing cover."
After finishing his brief, the Commissar glanced around the cabin and noticed that only one and a half people were actually paying attention—Zhang Ge counted as one, and the Ogryn, who was pretending to listen, barely counted as half.
The Sister of Battle and the Priest were silently praying, while the Psyker seemed to be in a trance, looking as if he were in a state of rigor mortis.
The Commissar shook his head but said nothing.
Soon after, a whistle sounded, and the distant rumble of explosions could be heard again. The explosions sounded like mortar shells and... some indiscernible locally produced artillery shells.
At that moment, the Chimera's engine roared to life, as if it had received some signal. Like a sprinter, the vehicle's tracks accelerated from a standstill to an extremely high speed, kicking up a cloud of dirt and dust.
The red Chimera shot out of the defensive position like an arrow, leaving the two Sentinels and the Astra Militarum squad, which were supposed to provide support, far behind. Even though the Sentinel pilots quickly realized something was wrong and sped up to their maximum, they couldn't catch up to the rapidly disappearing red vehicle.
Meanwhile, inside the sealed cabin, the six occupants were completely unaware of this. Only Zhang Ge, holding onto his seat, asked with some confusion:
"Isn't the bumpiness and the G-force a bit too strong?"
The first to respond was the Psyker, who seemed to have suddenly woken up:
"Hahaha, do you really want us to slow down and get torn apart by the cultists? Ah, being torn apart might not be such a bad fate. Death! What a beautiful word. Let us embrace it together... hahaha..."
As he spoke, he began to laugh, his dry, hoarse laughter echoing through the cabin.
He showed no signs of stopping, and the Ogryn, after shaking his head and glancing at the Commissar for approval, leaned over.
The Ogryn's massive hand came down with a hammer-like blow, silencing the Psyker and returning him to the pale, trance-like state Zhang Ge had first seen.
However, the two drivers and the gunner, who were just a wall away from Zhang Ge and the others, were not so calm. They were horrified to find that none of their controls worked on the armored vehicle, and all the hatches were locked, making escape impossible.
Even the usual methods of appeasing the machine spirit yielded no response. The Chimera was now racing on its own toward some unknown destination, their cries for help and struggles drowned out by the roar of the engine.
Crushing the corpses left behind by the cultists after their failed assault, the Chimera sped forward, and soon the cultists' offensive position appeared in the distance.
The haphazardly constructed trenches, barely recognizable as such, were set up in a relatively flat area. The cultists were gathered in small groups, performing various blasphemous rituals and ceremonies, with only a minimal defensive force on the outskirts.
It wasn't that the cultist leaders didn't want to organize a defense, but they simply lacked the organizational structure to build long-term fortifications or maintain a disciplined defense.
Cult organizations that developed around a religious core could quickly gather large numbers of people, but cultivating capable lower-level officers or officials took time. This lack of organization was a common trait among most Chaos cults.
Elite cultists, like those in the Blood Pact, were usually organized along military lines.
The lower-ranking cultists had little in their minds beyond a fanatical desire to please their dark gods. Keeping them from rushing to their deaths was already a challenge, let alone preventing them from leaving their positions to perform rituals.
To suggest otherwise would be to question their loyalty to the dark gods.
However, even with this lack of organization, the sheer number of cultists made a large-scale counterattack impractical. If the assault were to stall, losing the advantage of fortified positions and pre-set defenses, even a fully equipped Astra Militarum regiment would struggle against the overwhelming numbers of cultists and daemons.
And the current main force was just a PDF unit... But then again, if the goal was simply to bypass them, that was a different story.
When the unmistakable sound of an approaching vehicle reached the cultists, most of them could hear the roar but didn't immediately grasp what was happening—after all, just hearing the engine was already a conservative estimate.
It wasn't until a crimson beam of light pierced through the crowd, precisely melting the upper body of a cultist leader whose lower half had already mutated, that the word "attack" entered their simple minds. The red vehicle, shrouded in dust, crashed through the outermost anti-tank barriers made of cheap plasteel, bullets ricocheting off its hull.
The rapid-fire laser became the brush of death, accurately disabling the lightly camouflaged heavy weapons by hitting their barrels. Cultists attempting to fire heavy meltaguns or rocket launchers often exploded into a shower of blood before they could pull the trigger.
The few projectiles that were successfully launched, due to lack of training and the vehicle's unnaturally fast speed and maneuverability, only left useless craters in their own positions.
If there had been daemons on the battlefield, they might have been able to offer some resistance. But the few blasphemous constructs that had been present had already been moved to another location under heavy attack. What remained on the battlefield were merely fragile bodies, just waking from their debauchery.
The unstoppable Chimera, its hull a mix of crimson and scarlet, plowed through the cultists' lines, lubricated by blood and marrow, adorned with fragments of flesh and bone. Amid the continuous roar of lasers and the sparks of bullets, it tore through the fragile defenses like a ferocious beast, driving deep into the heart of the enemy position.