Ardgit Redaxe stomped on the ground, bellowing at his Boyz in exasperation. The Orks had crash-landed on the humies' world that they named "Hamlicar" or "Ham licker" or whatever, but there was way too much green for the Warboss's liking. He was sick of seeing his own fellow greenskins, after all. Nonetheless, he had targeted the feudal planet as his staging base for his ever-growing Waaagh! Clad in his vaunted mega-armor that deducted one from enemies' wound rolls against him, Redaxe was confident that his Waaagh! would claim this humie world before long.
And then he could proceed to conquer the rest of the galaxy, and prove to the other mobs that he was da bestest of da bestest. The kunnin' of Mork, combined with the brutal of Gork!
If only his Boyz weren't so dimwitted...he wished he had brought along Beastsnagga Boyz instead. Those primitive gitz might stubbornly cling to their squigs and reject his favored forms of dakka, but they were tougher and meaner than the Boyz he was saddled with.
"Look, boss!" The Nob leading the Boyz pointed. "Green beakies!"
"GAH! Green again!" Redaxe swore and smacked the poor Nob in the head. "That's it, Boyz! We gonna go krump some beakies and paint their armor red! WAAAGH!"
"WAAAGH!"
His unruly mob followed him as he recklessly charged toward the Salamanders detachment that had been sent down to investigate strange signals on the surface of Hamlicar. A squad of Incursors immediately took cover when a volley of dakka blasted in their direction. The Kommandoes disappeared, but Redaxe wasn't too worried. They were always sneaky, those Kommando bastards. He didn't trust them, and they didn't trust him, but they got the job done.
"Yer up, Dred!" He snapped at the clunking contraption behind him. The Deff Dread lumbered forward clumsily, its pistons hissing nosily. Its skorcha lit up, a wailing gas slowly igniting.
Then Dred's machine exploded.
Redaxe blinked stupidly, not sure what had just happened. Then another ruby beam lanced in their direction, smashing apart the wrecked Deff Dread. A humie tank - painted in the same color as those absurd green beakies - was hovering over the rocky terrain, bristling with anti-vehicle weapons.
"Get that, Boyz!" He shouted, leading his Boyz in a charge. The Incursors opened fire at something, probably the Kommandoes, but when Redaxe didn't hear any shots being fired back, he turned to snarl at his reserves. "What iz ya waitin' for? An invitation? Get 'em, ya gitz!"
The warbikers roared forward, the three crazy Orks yelling in exultation. Firing haphazardly at the Incursors, who dove into cover, they swung their choppas and power klaw at the scattering infantry. Redaxe was pleased to see them bisect at least one of the beakies who was too slow to escape.
However, his joy turned into dismay when the surviving Incursors swung about, a couple of them hopping onto the smoking bikes. The bikers snarled and tried to turn around, but the Incursors slit their throats from behind like the cowardly, sneaky bastards they were.
Fortunately, the Kommandoes matched them in their cowardice and sneakiness, the kunnin' fools dropping on the Incursors from above. Having climbed a broken hab-block, they waited for their dying comrades' warbikes to shoot toward their position before springing their ambush.
Then the Gladiator Valiant fired, its superheated weaponry disintegrating a bunch of his Boyz. Redaxe roared and tried to blink the blinding lights out of his beady eyes, staggering and swinging about wildly. As his vision cleared, he saw that only he and his nob had survived. With a sneer, he charged the tank, only for a beakie in red armor to intercept him.
"Finally something that's not green!" He spat, swinging his axe. The beakie, for some reason, also wielded an axe and sported a mechanical arm hanging above. Redaxe wondered if his mekboyz would love that weird metal arm. Perhaps he could salvage one for them after he was done with the beakie. Without much effort, he cleaved the Techmarine into two with his massive axe, the latter's meticulously crafted armor no match for his brutal strength.
The Gladiator Valiant hammered him with its lethal array of anti-tank weapons. Multimeltas, las-talons, whatever. Redaxe staggered, but his kustom forcefield held sturdy, protecting him from the deadly beams. He grinned.
"Hey, whaddaya know...these beakies aren't so tough, after all!"
With a laugh, he charged the tank, cleaving its front armor off. The driver calmly pulled his Gladiator into reverse, despite it listing to the side and thick, black smoke arising from its front. He snap-shot another blast from the twin multimeltas, only for Redaxe's kustom forcefield to flare up again, deflecting the superheated ray. The warboss's green skin reddened for a moment, blistering from the extreme temperatures, but he wasn't cooked. Yet.
"Ya can shoot all ya like, but ya ain't killin' me! For I iz Ardgit Redaxe! The bestest Ork there is!"
Those were his last words before a las-talon shot finally shorted out his kustom forcefield. Unaware that the invisible field of protective energy around him had collapsed, Redaxe continued hurtling forward, his axe raised for a killin' blow.
"I gonna turn ya into scrap! And use ya for my Waaagh! Ya will make the bestest battlewagon!"
The tank driver was not amused and simply squeezed the trigger. A multimelta shot caught Redaxe and all but vaporized him.
The last thing the Warboss saw was his sole surviving Nob cut down by a spray of mass-reactives. As his head fell to the ground, he caught sight of two battered Incursors hunkering down, the corpses of their brethren mingled with the dead Kommandoes.
"Ya had one job," Redaxe cursed the supposedly kunnin' bastards. "One job."
Then everything went dark.
*
"Apparently, I'm supposed to swear to a quest or something?"
Tanaka wasn't very pleased with what he was hearing, but since he was participating in an Imperial Knight Crusade, he had to follow the rules.
"Well, I've received an Imperial Petition, so I might as well help them out."
The agri-world of Hamlicar had come under attack from the Orks, and so the governor had put out an astropathic call for aid. As a feudal world, it had some ties to Knight Houses, and as such, House Yato of Draconis III had answered the call for aid.
Or the Imperial Petition, as it was called. Tanaka would rather call it an Agenda, and since he was getting experience points from it, he couldn't complain.
"Let's go save some Imperial citizens and kick some xenos' asses," he told his fellow Lance mates. Kazan loped across the grassy plains, the Armiger Warglaive's machine spirit in search of enemies. Tanaka swept Kazan's thermal spear across the open space, consulting the auspex for any sign of intruders.
"Over there!" Suzuki suddenly shouted, guiding Hebi forward. He frowned. "But they're not Orks. They are...Traitor Astartes!"
Apparently, a renegade warband had also landed on Hamlicar. Tanaka didn't know what they were scheming, or if they had anything to do with the Orks, but he couldn't let the Traitors run free. Whatever they were up to, it couldn't be good.
He had no way of knowing that the Edgelords - the Renegade Warband led by the famed War Warrior - had just fled to Hamlicar after a spanking by the Necrons that had awoken in Barca. What the Edgelords were doing in Barca, Tanaka didn't know and wouldn't want to even if he had heard about their desperate flight.
He was just here to kick heretics' asses and chew bubble gum. Not that there was bubble gum in the Imperium, but you know what he meant.
The Edgelords had seen the Knights as well and were advancing. A squad of legionnaires swiftly took cover in a hab-block and began laying down suppressive fire, but their bolter shells were turned away by the ion shields. Taking the lead, Suzuki's Hebi came under fire, but he turned away their shells with his ion shield. He wasn't as lucky when a lascannon smashed through the protective field and tore away a chunk of adamantium.
"Ouch! Hey!" Suzuki complained.
"Hang in there! I'm coming to back you up!" Tanaka assured him. Behind Kazan, Kanda's Armiger Knight Moirax followed, though Kanda had his knight suit hang back in a distance to lay suppressive fire.
Then the Possessed came.
Howling in berserk rage, the swollen forms of Traitor Space Marines hit Suzuki's Hebi like a truck, tearing the Armiger Warglaive apart. Suzuki retaliated with one of his meltaguns, turning one of them into slag, but the rest came on in a frenzy, smashing and slashing at his buckling suit. Suzuki yelled in fear and ejected before Hebi blew up, the explosion buffeting one of the Possessed and knocking it over.
Not letting the opportunity that Suzuki created go to waste, Kanda immediately opened fire, the silvery arcs leaping from his paired lightning locks to incinerate one of the Possessed. Their armor held strong, the Possessed displaying contempt for the weapons crafted by servants of the Omnissiah, but even the resilient heretics couldn't withstand such lethal energies for long. One of them went down, its body charred beyond recognition.
Then Tanaka barreled into them, Kazan's reaper chain-cleaver cleaving them apart. The carapace meltagun and thermal spear spat superheated beams, disintegrating one of them before the whirring chain-cleaver finished the rest of them.
"Ugh!"
Just after combat, Tanaka reeled when a lascannon shot slammed into the flickering ion shields of Kazan. That was enough to collapse his ion shield, and a volley of bolter rounds followed to dent his armor, causing Kazan to sway from the explosive impacts. To make matters worse, the Master of Possession, who was left behind by his Possessed, charged at him, breaking a couple of rivets with his force stave.
"Watch it!"
Annoyed, Tanaka lashed out with the reaper chain-cleaver. While he was preoccupied with the skillful Master of Possession, who deftly avoided his first few blows, Kanda fired at the legionnaires, who ducked under cover. Despite seeking refuge behind ferrocrete walls, one of them was caught and his convulsing body toppled over, hissing with acrid smoke.
While the survivors went to ground, Kazan finally beheaded the Master of Possession, who had tripped up when backing away from Tanaka's maneuver. The panting Bushi reared up just in time to spot a fully buffed up War Warrior charging straight at him.
"Uh oh...that doesn't look good."
Tanaka didn't know what was up with the edgy Chaos Lord, but the dude just looked...wrong somehow. Juiced up with the powers of the warp, wings sprouting out from his back, being possessed by a daemonic entity to further augment his already incredible strength, the possessed War Warrior would hit like a truck. Capable of bringing down even a venerable Knight, such a foe couldn't be underestimated.
Swallowing, Tanaka fired overwatch.
It was just a single melta shot. The other two shots missed, but the first hit home. For some reason, the Dark Gods that War Warrior worshipped had chosen to forsake him. The Chaos Lord shrieked as the superheated ray disintegrated his warp-fuelled body and obliterated him from existence.
"...huh?"
Tanaka stared in disbelief at the blackened smear that used to be such a formidable foe. Shaking his head and reminding himself that there were still Legionnaires hiding in the ruins - particularly the one handling a lascannon - he and Kanda proceeded to finish them off, with Kazan charging vengefully into them and finishing them off in time-honored combat.
With that, Hamlicar was currently safe from the dark designs of the Chaos Gods. For now, anyway.
That still left the Orks to deal with, unfortunately. Right after hasty repairs where the Sacristans of House Yato restored what remained of Suzuki's wrecked knight suit, they set out again upon hearing rumors of a Waaagh! massing in the grasslands.
Ardgit Redaxe was back, fuming over the defeat handed to him by the green beakies, and he was looking for more scrap. Tanaka was determined to stop him, especially since the Salamanders had already left. The commander of the Salamanders detachment, Captain Faye, had traveled to Carthage instead.
"I'm not sure about this," Suzuki complained as he dragged his Armiger Warglaive across the agri-field. "Hebi isn't fully restored. In a standup fight, he'll probably fall apart. The Sacristans did their best, but there's only so much they can do."
"Don't worry, I'll take point this time," Tanaka assured him. "I'll lead from the front."
"Isn't that what you've been doing all this time?" Kanda muttered, but both Tanaka and Suzuki ignored him. This time, Hebi hung back with the Armiger Knight Moirax, allowing Kazan to forge ahead by his own. Tanaka paused when he caught sight of the approaching mob.
"A Deff Dread," he murmured, and leveled his thermal spear. A couple of volcanic beams lanced out and melted the haphazardly constructed walker in seconds. Smoke billowed as it felt apart, the softening and melting metal giving in and the Ork machine seeming to implode.
"Not again!" Redaxe complained, turning on the Mek who piloted it. "Dred, why is it every time that ya get blown up right at the start!? Ya never get ze chance to show off what that thing can do!"
"Not my fault, boss. All the humies always shoot me first."
That was actually very true. However, the "humies" weren't done with their shooting. They were going to out-dakka the Orks.
Kanda opened fire on the sprinting Kommandoes, almost wiping out the entire squad in a single volley. For now, Suzuki ignored the reeling Kommandoes and focused fire on the warboss, his thermal beams piercing through Redaxe's kustom forcefield and gouging out a huge chunk of his mega-armor.
"HEY! That hurt, ya git!" Redaxe bellowed and swung his axe about. "Fight me like a humie! Not like a coward! Face to face, mano a orko! Capisce?!"
Tanaka ignored the warboss for now and met the warbikers in a charge, kicking one over and stomping him into oblivion. Spinning Kazan about, he then cleaved the other two with a couple of swift, decisive strokes of the reaper chain-cleaver. On the other side, Suzuki charged into the stunned Kommandoes and finished them off, annihilating the whole squad.
"HEY! Iz ya ignorin' me?!"
With a roar, Redaxe charged, along with his Boyz. Despite not being Beastsnagga Boyz, the mob did well to carve open parts of Kazan.
"Ugh!" Tanaka fought to control his knight suit as he did his best to fend off the sheer volume of choppa attacks that were peeling layers of armor away from Kazan's legs. Determined not to fall ignobly, he launched a counteroffensive, his reaper chain-cleaver puncturing through mega-armor and stabbing through Redaxe's chest.
For a moment, the Warboss stared at the mortal wound in disbelief. Then he roared furiously, refusing to accept that he was going to die without fighting back.
"Frakkin' humie! I iz the bestest! I'm gonna fight on death!"
"What the?!"
Taken completely by surprise, Tanaka tried to retreat, but Redaxe's axe scythed through his Armiger Warglaive, punching through the carapace armor and sinking deeply into his Throne Mechanicum. Tanaka reacted quickly, moving to the side and avoiding getting chopped in half by the growling weapon, but Kazan was evidently out of the fight for now.
"Um...some help, you guys?"
"Trying my best," Kanda said, frying half of the Boyz mob with his lightning locks. Suzuki snickered as Hebi crashed into them, cutting the remnants of the routed mob apart with his snarling reaper chain-cleaver.
"How does it feel to be a casualty now? It's your turn to get blown up!"
 |
| Because I rolled a 6 for my Out of Action test... |
"Well, actually..." Climbing out of his damaged Knight suit and standing proudly on the fallen Kazan, Tanaka raised a hand to display a thumb's up. "...I feel like I've just been marked for greatness."
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