Though they had dug in and fired Icarus lascannons and Hydra flak rounds into the skies, shooting down ork fighters and transports, the single Rokk that had landed was too massive to be felled by scores of las and anti-air rounds. Its surface, scarred by both friction from atmospheric entry and powerful weapons, was a pockmarked mess. One side blew out, and guffawing greenskins poured out in vehicles, whooping and cheering as they pushed their yellow buggies to the extreme.
Accompanying the various buggies, ranging from megatrakk scrapjets to kustom boosta-blastas to shokkjump dragstas, were warbikes, a trukk and a battlewagon. Warboss Blitzog bellowed in delight as he clung to the railing of his battlewagon, his boyz laughing in sheer joy from the sheer violence of the journey. The warbikes, led by a defkilla wartrike, zoomed ahead of the other Speed Freeks, letting loose inaccurate volleys of dakka at the distant tanks of the humies.
"Let's giv' them a good krumpin'!" Blitzog roared, much to the approval of his boyz. He smacked the driver with his good hand, careful not to decapitate the moron with his power klaw. "Faster, ya git! Those humies won't be hangin' around fer too long!"
Such was the speed and ferocity of their speedwaaagh! that the orks caught the humans by surprise. Shoota rounds and rokkits detonated in the midst of the infantry, blowing both Argent soldiers and Krieg guardsmen to bloody pieces. Ahead, the Baneblade, Red Herring, loomed, its cannon traversing to fire upon the approaching orks.
A mekboy cackled as he activated the esoteric weapon of his boosta-blasta, and though the exotic beam failed to penetrate the adamantine armor of the Baneblade, it scrambled Red Herring's targeting auspexes. Colonel Adrian Mueller cursed when he saw that his hololith had been fouled.
"Someone get me vision on those greenskin bastards!" He yelled, swinging open the cupola to have a good look. Below, the infantry were being butchered, and one Armored Sentinel was a smoking wreck. The other fought against the warbikers and defkilla wartrike that had slain his comrade, using the chainsaw of his bipedal steed to hack apart the bikers. Plasma erupted from the underslung cannon of the aging walker, bathing one of the warbikers in superheated matter.
The two Leman Russ tanks fired, and one of the Vanquisher rounds punched through the battlewagon. The ramshackle contraption continued to roll forward for another hundred meters or so before it finally halted, its blown structure literally falling apart around its passengers.
"Wat are ya waitin' for, ya gitz? Gorkmas? Get yer arses out! We iz gonna charge those humies on foot!" Blitzog bellowed, smacking one of his bewildered boyz out of the ruined battlewagon. Heavy bolters chattered, reducing the boy next to him to a bloody mess, but the warboss simply wiped the red fluids off his face and hopped off. "Gitz of Yellow Sunz! Do ya wanna live fer'ever or sumtink? Move, ya bloody gitz!"
More of them obeyed, rushing out, even as streams of plasma sang over them to engulf the warbikers. A shell from Red Herring landed right next to a speeding buggy, but the dragstas was able to veer to the side. Shrapnel slammed into its crumbling frame, pelting the grunting ork rider, but the greenskins were a resilient breed, and their machines worked more on their belief than logic. With a whoop, he plunged straight into a reeling squad of Argents, slaughtering the infantry before they knew what hit them.
The tanks pulled back, with the two Hellhounds spitting out armor melting lances from their melta cannons. Another buggy was reduced to smoke, its rider getting too overeager to fire his big shoota at pointblank range. Red Herring bellowed its rage even as Colonel Mueller desperately barked orders, but the targeting auspexes had been scrambled. Mass reactives went wide, striking only a couple of unfortunate boyz too stupid to dodge. The ruby las from its lascannon sponsons grazed the swerving trukk, failing to punch through to its core and obliterate it.
A Leman Russ main battle tank shuddered as it fired its ordnance, but the shells went wide, almost flipping over a buggy that roared past. Its heavy bolters had more success, detonating in one of the warbikers' spluttering vehicles and hurling the rider off. The ork landed face first in the dirt, but picked himself back up a few seconds later. Spitting out broken teeth and cursing, the greenskin straightened his head and continued charging forward on foot, his hardy physiology more annoyed than damaged from the fall.
"Fall back!" Mueller had enough. His infantry had been butchered, and though the durable tanks of the Imperium were withstanding whatever bolts and rokkits the orks were firing at them, the hardy xenos were about to overrun their lines. Wishing to preserve the precious and rare tanks of the Argent Armor, he ordered a retreat. "Argents! Men of Krieg! We are leaving!"
The tanks roared as they reversed, their drivers pushing full throttle as they struggled to escape the desperate melee. The two Hellhounds covered the retreat of Red Herring and its Leman Russ escorts, spitting out thermal lances into the pursuing bikes and buggies. The sole surviving Sentinel hacked another ork apart before whirling around and taking flight, its loping strides allowing it to outpace even the speedy ramshackle vehicles.
With the Imperial Guard retreating in disarray, the orks ran rampant over the surface, overrunning the garrison and gathering whatever scrap they could to construct more bikes and buggies. Before the Imperials knew it, they had already captured three mining outposts and destroyed them, melting most of the ore and metal to slag for their own use.
Tetsu was in danger of falling to the orks...
*
"The loathsome greenskins have already captured and destroyed three mining stations, and are about to capture and overrun the remaining three ones," Lord Takeda said gravely. "If we don't drive them out, the resources and supplies of metals and ore to the Adeptus Mechanicus will be disrupted, and we will be starved of machines, vehicles, weapons and ammunition. As such, it is our utmost priority to defending the last mining outposts and exterminate the vermin."
Easier said than done. I had heard horror stories of how the Astra Militarum forces garrisoned in Tetsu had been routed. Though they had salvaged much of their armor and saved their tanks, their infantry had been massacred. The situation was looking bleak.
"They are coming!" Suzuki warned, his Armiger Warglaive, Hebi, advancing toward a trukk and a couple of buggies that I didn't recognize. Imperial intelligence had identified one of them as a kustom boosta-blasta or something, firing gretchin at the foes for some reason.
I wasn't given time to ponder. The boosta-blasta fired at my Dominus Knight Castellan for some reason. I wasn't worried, trusting in Kazan's venerable armor to withstand it, but my auspexes went haywire the moment the gretchin made contact with my steed, the pathetic little creatures shrieking before they splattered across the adamantine hull and left nothing but bloody smears.
"What the?!"
"Advancing forward to meet them in combat!" Kanda growled, piloting Engetsu forward. The Questoris Knight Errant raised its thermal cannon and reduced a waddling deffdread into molten slag, while the hull mounted meltagun vaporized a charging warbiker. Revving up his reaper chainsword, Kanda scythed through the warbikers, but many of them whooped and circled him, using their speed to evade the deadly weapon. Their warboss, mounted atop the defkilla wartrike, swung his power klaw, which glanced harmlessly off the venerable armor of Engetsu.
"I'll deal with the battlewagon!" Sato offered, already moving Kaen to intercept. The Armiger Warglaive fired its melta weapons, scoring molten holes in the massive vehicle, but the battlewagon continued barreling forward, not at all slowed. Watanabe provided support, Tsurugi following up with another volley of incandescent beams from his thermal spear. This time, he succeeded in blowing up the battlewagon, which careened straight toward Kaen and Lord Takeda's Naginata. A colossal fireball engulfed both Knight suits, the driver eager to drag them to the underworld as well.
Unfortunately for the stricken vehicle and its lamentable driver, the explosion did little more than scorch the hulls of the Armiger Warglaive and Cerastus Knight Lancer. A deffkopta above was winged, but didn't suffer much damage and continued hovering with its two squadron mates. The buggy hurtling forward wasn't as lucky, though, the diver yelping as he was singed by the blast. His machine made ominous noises, but it held.
For now.
"I see the warboss. Blitzog, was it?" Takeda growled, lowering the spear of his Knight Lancer. "He's mine."
"He's all yours, lord," I agreed, but I was firing the twin meltaguns at the Trukk and blowing some parts off. Suzuki had failed to destroy it, and the transport was too far away for Kazan to bring the full power of the twin meltaguns to bear. I had more important things to worry about, though. Turning around, I missed completely with the volcano lance, which sucked. On the other hand, the plasma decimator erupted with superheated fury, decimating half of the warbikers that plagued Engetsu. Above, the siegebreaker cannons boomed, hurling ordnance at the boyz surrounding Blitzog and pulverizing them. Not to be outdone, Sato charged the boyz, clearing the chaff around Blitzog with his whirring reaper chain-cleaver so that our lord would have a clear shot at the warboss, who was gradually being isolated as his minions were cut down around him.
Even the notorious resilience of the greenskins was no match for the formidable firepower that Imperial Knights could bring to bear.
"You're dead," Takeda hissed, Naginata trampling over the broken bodies of the boyz and challenging the warboss. Blitzog looked up, raising his power klaw in a challenge, before he was impaled upon the cerastus shock lance. His body was hurled aside from a tremendous crack, smoking and hissing.
With their leader's death, the mob began to fall apart, but the surviving greenskins began attacking in a frenzy. Disorganized and disunited, their attacks lacked coordination, but they were making near suicidal charges now.
"Damn it!"
Sato was struggling to pull back, Kaen being bombarded by an ork warplane from above. Rokkits and bolts hammered into his flickering ion shield. Already weakened by the onslaught from the hovering deffkoptas, whose pilots recklessly and gleefully swooped in to pummel the Armiger Warglaive with rokkits and experimental weaponry that shouldn't work, yet somehow did, Kaen buckled. The deathblow came when a buggy crashed into him, the rider laughing manically as he brought Kaen down with his power klaw.
"You filthy bastards!" Takeda roared, turning his attention from the limp body of a most likely still alive Blitzog to avenge the fallen Kaen. He heroically intervened, though his assistance was too late. The cerastus shock lance punched through the buggy, obliterating the manically cackling ork rider, which blew up and buffeted the still lurking deffkoptas, sending one spiraling down to its death. Not wasting any time, I fired my plasma decimator at the low flying machines, disintegrating the remaining two in sun-hot fury.
This time, my volcano lance struck true, destroying the Trukk. Dazed greenskins spilled out of the wreckage and began squabbling, only to be smacked around by the big mek with a shokkgun. Watanabe took care of a charging buggy, his melta weapons slicing through the misshapen vehicle and incinerating the rider. To the side, Suzuki had carved apart the boosta-blasta and proceeded to cleave the buggy next to it into two, wrecking it. Kanda's Engetsu was still trying to finish off the last few bikers, which he finally stomped to oblivion, but the defkilla wartrike was a harder opponent. Its existence was ended when Kanda finally put his reaper chainsword through the warboss's head and brought it down to shred the spinning vehicle to pieces.
Naginata slew another buggy, while Suzuki turned Hebi toward the boyz. I joined in, bombarding their position with siegebreaker cannons and twin meltaguns, and Suzuki eventually killed the orks and the accompanying big mek with his reaper chaincleaver. Above, the ork plane continued to fire at Naginata, bringing it down. For some reason, the ion gauntlet shield was failing, and the rokkits and shells were detonating ferociously against Naginata and nearly toppling the venerable Cerastus Knight Lancer.
Takeda was far from being laid low, though. Braving through a fusillade of bolt rounds from a speeding buggy, he waited until it was within range before he thrust his spear. A burst of energy erupted from the esoteric weapon, impaling the buggy and erasing its rider from existence.
Emboldened by our lord's success, I fired the volcano lance once more and destroyed the last buggy on the field. Not even a smoldering wreck remained. With my task done, I turned to face the circling ork jet, whose pilot was determined to at least bring down Naginata. Hefting up the plasma decimator, I triggered the volatile weapon. Heat warnings wailed in my Throne Mechanicum, and I felt the temperature go up. Outside, Kazan stumbled, couplings blowing up as boiling steam burst from ruined cablings. The weapon had gotten hot, proving hazardous to its wielder, and Kazan was paying the price for it.
Nonetheless, I succeeded in directing the superheated stream upward, catching the swooping plane. The midriff softened and melted before the aircraft dipped and crashed into a nearby hab-block, demolishing the structure.
"Excellent work." Even though Naginata was swaying from all the damage it had sustained from the orks' salvos, Takeda sounded pleased. "We've managed to wrest Tetsu back from the vile orks. Let's hunt down any remaining xenos so that the miners can resume operations."
"Yes, lord."
As we piloted our knights about to follow him back toward the rokk where the greenskins had came from, I couldn't help but glance once more at the carnage we had wrought. For a moment, I felt a chill, but I didn't know what went awry until I studied the ruins where Lord Takeda had been fighting in mere moments ago. It took a while, but the nagging feeling finally clicked.
I realized that Blitzog's body was gone.
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