In the early morning, accompanied by a whistle from outside the window, Paul climbed out of his narrow, hard bunk.
The chill of the morning air made him shiver; the thin blanket was no match for the dry cold of Rostov II's mornings, but it did wake him up.
He habitually reached for the prosthetic limb by his bedside, and after some effort, managed to attach it with one hand before finally standing up to wash.
In the mirror above the washbasin, the man's face was weathered, and the scar above his left eye, extending to his forehead, was particularly striking—a memento from an explosion during the war that had almost blinded him.
He turned on the rusty faucet, cupped icy water with his remaining right hand, and splashed it on his face, trying to wash away the persistent battlefield memories in his mind.
Paul was fortunate; as a retired veteran of the Defense Force, he had worked as a spy for the Governors Office, and his time undercover with the Blood Oath Society was even more suffocating than the battlefield.
He remembered the tension of exchanging intelligence in dark alleyways late at night, the crazed eyes of those cultists, and even more vividly, the blood that splattered on his uniform when he personally executed traitors.
Later, he served as a militia instructor, leading passionate young people into battle when the Necrons invaded Rostov II.
Most of those young faces had since become names on a memorial, while he, with his incomplete body, had survived.
When Alex began large-scale conscription, fate gave him a second chance.
After being fitted with a new prosthetic limb, he once again became a glorious member of the Expeditionary Force.
The new hydraulic prosthetic was much more flexible than the old model, allowing him to fight like an able-bodied person on the battlefield.
Over ten years of bloodshed, he earned the rank of Astra Militarum NCO for his combat merits.
This bronze-gleaming rank insignia was earned through countless desperate struggles—from the surface defense of Rostov II to the orbital assault on Helson III, Paul proved his worth in dozens of campaigns.
For most people, this was almost impossible.
In the Astra Militarum's rigorous promotion system, ordinary soldiers often needed to prove their abilities in countless battles and survive to be promoted to NCO.
Paul not only achieved this leap but also survived, which was nothing short of a miracle within the entire Expeditionary Force.
It should be known that the Rostov Expedition, which lasted nearly ten years, had seen the Imperial Army's total troop deployment exceed ten million, with a casualty rate already over forty percent.
Transport ships delivered tens of thousands of new recruits to the front lines daily, while only empty vessels often returned.
Soldiers on the front lines often said that stepping onto a transport ship was like having one foot in the grave.
Those new recruits, fighting for the first time, often became another nameless corpse on the battlefield before they even had a chance to remember their comrades' names.
Almost one in two people would die, and this was still under the premise that the Imperial Army had deployed a large number of Astra Militarum.
If one counts the wounded, this ratio reached seventy percent—only three out of ten soldiers could leave the battlefield unscathed.
Even these battle-hardened elite units suffered such heavy losses; the casualty figures for the hastily conscripted Defense Force and militia units were even more shocking.
Paul's survival and promotion in this meat-grinder war, besides his excellent military qualities, required unimaginable luck.
For the initial batch of Defense Force soldiers conscripted on Rostov II, only a handful survived.
Out of 100,000 people, fewer than a thousand left the battlefield alive, a survival rate of less than 1%.
Of his comrades who enlisted at the same time, only a yellowed group photo on his bedside table remained to prove their past existence.
But Paul was fortunate; he survived, and due to his meritorious service and disability, he was able to retire with the rank of Astra Militarum NCO and also received a medal.
This bronze Imperial Aquila medal now hung on his faded uniform; although Paul's medal was not a particularly high-ranking one, just a medal and not the personal shield generators worn by officers.
However, this medal could secure him a public service job with an income sufficient to support a family in any world under Imperial rule.
In a Hive World, this medal could even allow him to live a decent life in the mid-Hive.
He wouldn't have to squeeze into the foul-smelling Hive City slums like the lower-level Hive City residents but would be allocated an apartment with a private bathroom; his children would also have the opportunity to attend Imperial military academies and potentially join the Astra Militarum.
Although this meant a new career on the battlefield, for commoners' children, this was a rare path to upward mobility.
It could be said that if Paul's children were capable, an Astra Militarum family could even be on the rise.
Imperial history is not lacking in examples of military families founded by individuals who started as low-ranking NCOs.
Of course, that's assuming Cawl has children.
Having only recently retired, he was still a single middle-aged man, not yet married.
War had consumed his prime years for starting a family; while his peers already had children around their knees, he was still fighting Necrons on Rostov's battlefields.
However, Cawl didn't have many thoughts about marriage; having just returned from ten years of war, when he closed his eyes, he felt as if he was back on the battlefield, with the thunderous roar of artillery and the firing of Lasguns in his ears, occasionally mixed with the angry shouts of officers and the screams and wails of fallen comrades.
Although Cawl knew that being hit by the Necrons' green Gauss rays would not result in screams.
Those terrifying weapons would directly molecularize flesh and blood; those hit would simply disintegrate into a pile of ashes, making even retrieving their bodies impossible.
But memory always arbitrarily alters details, turning silent deaths into piercing wails.
Paul couldn't remember how many comrades he had seen off in those ten years; he only knew that his unit's designation had changed seven times, each change occurring after the original unit was wiped out and re-integrated into a new one.
The changing designations were like a death countdown, reminding him that he could be next.
In short, after his unit was wiped out for the eighth time, he received his demobilization notice at a hospital in the rear.
His body full of scars became proof that he had survived the war, and that medal was the Empire's cold compensation for his decade of bloody fighting.
Normally, an Astra Militarum soldier is required to serve for fifteen years, especially an NCO.
These veterans, forged in blood and fire, are the most crucial gears in the Imperial military machine; their experience and will often determine the survival of an entire unit.
No Regimental Colonel would let go of an experienced junior NCO, because often the Regimental Colonel is just a figurehead, and soldiers primarily obey the orders of the junior NCOs in combat.
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