Somewhere in the near-infinite sea that is the warp, something flickered. This was, in itself, not at all an uncommon occurrence. However this was not a flicker in one of any of the brief-lived energy fields that appered more or less randomly in the Warp, but in the Gellar Field protecting the Imperial Frigate Glory of His Wrath.
On its own, this flicker was not enough to pose a serious concern to the mighty two-kilometer-long human vessel. However, the flicker in the Gellar Field cause a small trickle of power that would have been expended by the Field to instead be returned to the main reactor of the craft.
This caused the plasma storm raging in the magnetogravitic containment fields of the power plant to, just for a moment, become more intense in a single small region, a cube just one inch on a side. This sent a ripple outward from this portion of reactor, disrupting the power feeds sent to the main engine of the craft.
The engine sputtered. The strange arcane energies it exerted holding the ship in the Warp failed, and the Glory of His Wrath dropped into realspace on the outskirts of an uncharted system.
"Report," Captain Octavius said smoothly. "What's going on out there?" The stern, older Commanding Officer of the starship placed one cybernetic hand on the table.
"First of all," The Chief Engineseer said, "The Warp Drive is out of commission."
"Dammit." Octavius said, "How long until that's back online?"
"Unclear." The Chief Engineseer said. "The power surge that disabled the Drive was six hours ago, and my entire department has been working full-time to restore it to functionality. However, there were a number of unforeseeable secondary failures in the drive system that caused further damage, so repairs are likely to take a matter of weeks."
"Well that's just wonderful." Colonel Richardson said, folding his arms on the table, which doubled as a cognitor plot readout. "There is another matter I would like to discuss. Namely, the planet, third from the system primary, that registers as potentially habitable."
"It is not listed on any of the major charts of human settled worlds." The Navigation officer said. "However, that hardly rules out even a significant human presence here."
"Have we attempted contact?" Richardson asked.
"Yes." Communications said. "We attempted to hail them via Astropathic communications only a brief time after arrival. However, there was no response. We have resorted to using more primitive methods of communications. We have sent hails in every major dialect of Low Gothic in the databanks. Given the lightspeed delay, the hails should have reached this world some time ago." The man checked his watch. "Assuming a prompt reaction, a response would be expected in about five minutes."
"Sensors, what can you tell me about this planet." Richardson asked, cupping his chin in his hand.
"Standard world, much like Holy Terra would have been several dozen millennia ago." The Sensors Officer replied, pressing a series of runes on his control panel for the cognitor plot. "Much of the surface appears to be in a feral state. This, however," he waved an arm over the plot. "Is the major exception."
Richardson, Octavius and the other attending officers leaned in with interest. What the saw were several colossal structures, of considerable size, if not sophistication, even by Imperial standards. They appered to be three concentric, massive walls. The innermost wall was helpfully labeled as being one hundred kilometers in diameter, with the others space out with another hundred kilometers between each of the walls.
The officers inspected the plot readout for several minutes. Filially, the Captain asked the one question that was on the mind of every man present.
"So, is this the only enclave of human settlement on this planet?" Octavius asked, already partially knowing the answer.
"That is correct, sir." Sensors said.
"Now why in the name of Terra might that be?"
"So," Lieutenant Mephisto said, looking over his equipment one last time. "What do you think we'll find down there?"
"What do I think we'll find down there?" Sergeant Patanella said, rolling her eyes. "That's all anyone's been talking about ever since they woke us up. You damn well know what I think we'll find down there."
"A whole lot of nothing." Mephisto responded, making air quotes. "Those things down there, they've got to be walls, right?"
"I don't see what else they'd be."
"Right."
The lander began to shake around the two troopers, jostling them violently as it entered the upper atmosphere of the unidentified planet.
"They looked like they were in pretty good shape from the scans." Mephisto continued, unperturbed. "I don't see how they would look like that without some pretty heavy upkeep being done on a regular basis."
Patanella narrowed her eyes at her commanding officer. And how exactly did you get to look at the orbital scans?"
"I have my ways."
Patanella rolled her eyes again as the shaking of the lander intensified.
The lander came down like a comet, streaking across the abandoned outer wall Maria. It continued west over Wall Rose, fire trailing from the ablative plating lining the exterior of the craft and plasma flaring from the retrorockets slowing its inevitable descent toward the surface.
The craft crossed the farmland enfolded by wall rose, peasants, nobles, and merchants alike turning and looking at its flaming descent.
As the lander crossed over the devastated Trost District, the flames trailing off its hull began to disappear as its flight slowed noticeably. It did not go entirely unnoticed, however, and several scholarly men continued to trace its descent from places atop the walls.
Human beings, however, we not the only things that noticed the (relatively) small craft descending, and as it dropped, they turned and began to slowly plod toward it.
"Eren! Levi!"
The leader of the Special Operations Squad put down his feather duster and turned toward the excited brown-haired scientist currently running unto the room of the massive, mostly abandoned castle he was cleaning.
"What is it?" Levi asked.
"Guess what!" Hanji panted
"You were finally transferred out?" Levi said, not a trace of sarcasm evident in his admittedly plain voice.
"No!" She said, "You know the shooting star! The one from this morning? Well, I talked to the higher-ups, and they approved my idea to sortie from the walls to investigate it!"
"Wonderful." Levi said. "And how exactly is this supposed to advance the objectives of the scouting legion?"
"The objective of the Recon Corps is to explore the world, not just kill titans." Eren said.
"Besides, the titans seem to be reacting to the object somehow." Hanji interjected, holding up a finger. "If this shooting star is some form of titan beacon, imagine how helpful that could be on missions!"
"It does have potential." Levi mused. "When are we setting out?"
"As soon as we can rally the legion!" Hanji said. "We'll be setting out in a manner of hours."
The lander, on a combat trajectory, came down hard. The moment the craft had settled, Lieutenant Mephisto was rallying his platoon, and making his way to the megar vehicle bay on the lander.
"So," he said, as his command squad formed up around him, "What do you bet that we'll find out there?"
"I don't know," Patanella responded, signaling her squad into formation around her. "I don't think it'll be anything."
"You wanna bet on that?" Mephisto asked.
"Sure. Fifty thrones says its nothing."
"Big spender. I suppose if you're willing to put your money where your mouth is... Well, anyway here we are."
Mephisto reached out and grasped the large wheel attached to the front of the pressure door leading to the vehicle bay. With a grunt, he shifted it, and it began to turn. Within seconds, the lock was disabled. He pushed on the door, feeling the slight resistance of a pressure differential, then opened it. There was a hissing sound as the pressures equalized, then a brief, mild rush of wind blew back down the corridor.
"Higher pressure." Mephisto said, "and, if I had to guess," He flexed his legs a few times, "lower surface gravity. Interesting.
"Congratulations on stating the obvious." Patanella said.
The pair walked into the vehicle bay. It was a large, wide open, space, with a several Chimera APCs, a pair of Leman Russ Main Battle Tanks, and a single Basiilik artillery piece. The floors and walls were dull metal, flat with the exception of the massive clamps holding the vehicles in place, with a massive banner bearing the Imperial Aquila on the rear wall. They appered to be the first of the non-scout units to have arrived.
The front ramp of the lander had been dropped, allowing natural sunlight, natural sunlight, to stream into the bay.
"Looks like the scouts already rolled out." Patanella said, gesturing to the empty clamps which would have held a Taros Scout Vehicle.
"Now who's stating the obvious?"
Mephisto and Patanella walked into the bay. Mephisto made his way to his Command Chimera, a fully-upgraded vehicle with a turret-mounted multilaser, hull-mounted heavy flamer, and a pair of deadly hunter-killer missiles mounted on the flanks of the vehicle. Regs said only one per Chimera, but Mephisto had always said that two was twice the fun.
He usually found cause to deploy them, too.
Mephisto was climbing into the command cupola of his vehicle and Patanella was rallying her squad when Mephisto heard the unmistakable sound of an engine approaching the main bay.
Abruptly, the scout Taros returned, coming careening into the main bay. It executed a perfect skew turn, and barely braked before it hit the far wall.
"They're eating her! And then they're going to eat me! Dear Emperor!"
Mephisto barely had time to turn towards the front ramp of the vehicle bay before something came running into the chamber. It looked like a naked man, except it was twice as tall, appered to lack any form of visable genatiliia, and it had an oversized, grossly enlarged mouth, from which an arm wearing the customary red of the 33rd Grenadiers.
Mephisto was only stunned for a moment by the bizarre sight. Then he raised his arm and pointed at the creature.
"BURN THAT MOTHERFRAKER DOWN!" He shouted, diving deeper into the guts of the Chimera.
Patanella's squad of veteran soldiers reacted instantly, lowering their lasguns, drawing beads on the creature, and firing. Ten beams of ruby-red light appered, lancing outwards in an instant and striking the creature, destroying and igniting flesh.
The thing turned, somehow surviving the orgy of destruction being wrecked upon its body. It took a single step towards the squad of guardsmen.
Then the heavy multilaser came online and began spewing energy bolts at the creature. It tettered for a moment, then fell, head utterly vaporized and flesh smouldering.
In the gunner's seat of the Chimmeria, Mephisto sat, fingers on the butterfly triggers of the multilaser.
"What the warp was that thing?"
The door to the 'bridge' of the lander, more of a cockpit really, cycled open, admitting a frantic messenger to the space.
"Sir... sir." He panted, bowing low out of exhaustion as much of exhaustion as audience, "We're under attack!"
The Commander of the lander turned to face the messenger, his chair squeaking as it rotated. "Report."
"There are things attacking the lander!"
"What do you mean?" The Commander demanded. This was a special mission well out of the ordinary, something that could make his career if he handled it well. Or, of course, get him executed if it went poorly. He made the sign of the Aquila. "Are they Daemons?"
"No... At least, I don't think so." The messenger said. "Creatures of flesh but... strange flesh. They seem mindless, but they seek to devour the crew."
"What happened?" The Commander demanded. This was great. It looked like they had landed on some kind of death world.
"We sent out a scouting party." The messenger said, still breathless. "Only half of them returned."
"Put the outside cameras onscreen." The Commander ordered, pointing at the large viewscreen normally used for providing an exterior view of the lander during flight.
The screen crackled to life. What it showed was horrifying. Several of the creatures, some of them taller than the ten-meter-tall lander, had collected on one side of the spacecraft and appeared to be pushing on it mindlessly.
"What do we do?" The messenger whispered, making the sign of the Aquila. He was not a rookie; he had seen combat before, against renegades on his homeworld. However, this, these giant creatures, were like nothing he had ever seen before. "Emperor protect us, they're like Warp-damned titans."
"Send word to the passenger bays." The Commander said. "Tell the squadleaders to begin rallying the troops."
"Yes, sir. Where should I tell them to deploy, sir?"
"Focus on the Starboard sally ports, where these things are gathering, and in the forward vehicle bay." He paused, then turned to look at the helmsman. "How long until you can get us airborne?"
"Not soon, sir." The man responded with a grimace. "The settlement was in retrograde relative to us when we landed, so we burned up a lot of fuel on the way down. I could get us off the ground, but I can't guarantee we have enough juice to clear the atmosphere, let alone get into a stable orbit.
The commander swore. "Wonderful. That means we get to fight them on the ground." His head swiveled toward the sensors man. "You! Sensors! How long until the Frigate gets here?"
"Over a day, sir." The sensors man said. "The launched us ahead, and in any case we can accelerate harder than a full warship. If they launched another lander to relieve us, it would still take hours to get here."
"More news on that front." The communications man said. "The planet it between us and the Frigate. Unless they go radically off course, we can't broadcast a signal to them without some kind of orbital relay, which, of course, this planet doesn't have."
'
"What the hell was that thing?" Mephisto shouted, as he waved the crew of his Chimera to their stations. He jumped out of the APC and ran across the floor of the vehicle bay to where the returned scout was cowering next to his Taros.
"What was that thing?" he demanded, grabbing the man's shoulder and shaking him.
"I... I don't know. They were... They were like Titans!' The man babbled, not meeting Mephisto's gaze.
"That one was a lot of things, but it wasn't like a Battle Titan." He said, forcing the man to look into his eyes. "Are there more of them?"
"Yes, huge ones! Things like men the size of buildings!" The scout said, shifting frantically, as if he was trying to escape.
"Great." Mephisto stood up and turned around, leaving the panicked scout where he was sprawled. "We're going to have more of those things incoming." He said, waving a hand and pointing a squad of Grenadiers entering the bay.
"You, go to the arms locker and bring back heavy weapons." He said, looking at the sergeant of the squad. "Ignore the normal limits; bring back as many heavy bolters, autocannons, and lasguns as you can."
"But sir!" One of the men said. "Will those do us any good on these things?"
"They're made of flesh, just like us." Mephisto said, looking over the squad, trying his hardest to project an aura of confidence and authority, the antithesis of what he was currently feeling. That was what these men needed right now, an officer and a leader. "Weaker than us, if what our lasguns did to that one was any indication.
"However, they're huge, so that means they have huge guts. That means we need bigger guns to put holes in them. In fact, tell the first squad you see on the way back to go to the armory with you and help you bring heavy weapons."
"Sir," Another of the soldiers said, stepping forward. "Do you have the authority to authorize the release of so many materials?"
Mephisto looked at her for a moment. "Do you think I have the moral authority to stand here and do nothing while things out there are trying to eat my men?"
"I... I see, sir." The soldier said, and stepped back into line.
"Now go!' He roared.
A few hours after Hanji had come to tell Eren and Levi of the Recon Corps new mission, Eren sat on his horse with the rest of the Legion before the great gate of the Karanese District. Petra and Oluo of the Special Operations Squad sat on their horses next to him. Given the sudden nature of the mission, the Central Command had demanded that the rest of the Special Operations Squad remain behind on defense in case the Titans attack while the Scouting Legion was away.
Personally, Eren wasn't really sure exactly how wise splitting up the Special Operations Squad was, but High command made a lot of decisions that didn't make a whole lot of sense. Take his Titan Shifting ability, for example. Why didn't they want to make more aggressive usage of it? With his power, he could radically redefine the equations for the recapture of Wall Maria.
Still, maybe they had good reasons for wanting to contain him, or even destroy him. Eren looked down at his left thumb, the one he usually bit when activating his Titan Shifting abilities. Was he really a threat to humanity?
"Eren!" He turned. It was Mikasa. She was approaching on horseback, notably out of her position in the complex Recon Corps formation.
"What is it, Mikasa?"
"I haven't been able to see you, Eren." She said quietly, her words barely audible over the bustle of the Scouting Legion soldiers preparing for departure.
"I've missed you too, Mikasa." Eren said. "Listen, if something happens on this mission-"
"No. You need to be careful, Eren." Mikasa said. "But nothing will happen. I won't let anything happen."
"Hey, you two! What are you doing?" Oluo turned around in his saddle to face Eren and Mikasa. "You're out of formation, soldier! You should-"
At that moment, his horse took a step. Oluo bit his tongue, sending up a small shower of blood.
"Don't mind him." Petra said, also turning to face Eren. "But Mikasa, you really should get back in position.
"We're moving out!" Someone shouted from the form of the formation. At the base of the walls, the massive gates separating man from beast began to slowly rumble open.
"Goodbye, Eren." Mikasa said, turning her horse around and weaving it through the thicket of soldiers to her position.
Ahead of them, the massive gate reached its fully raised position. Slowly, the Scouting Legion began to file out of the gate and into the territory of the enemies of mankind.
The second titan appeared a few minutes after the first had been dispatched. In the intervening period, the corpse of the first titan, or what was left of it after it went through the wringer, had disintegrated in a cloud of steam, leaving behind the mutilated body of a man in the uniform of a scout of the 33rd Alkanian Grenadiers.
Even once the body was fully dissolved, no one dared approach the corpse of the scout.
The men, in whispered conversations among themselves, had begun to refer to the strange, massive foes the scouts promised awaited just outside the lander.
Mephisto wasn't really sure why the commander didn't simply roll up the front ramp of the vehicle bay and be done with it. Perhaps he was concerned that the titans would be able to tip the vehicle if they didn't have somewhere to attack, doing damage that would be, given their present situation, irreparable.
When the second titan leaned its head around the edge of the vehicle bay, Mephisto was running around like a petrasquirl with its head cut off, trying desperately to get the makeshift gathering of soldiers into a shape where they could fight off the soon-to-be attacking foes.
The men stared at the titan for a moment. The titan gazed back, its blank eyes seemingly empty yet filled with hunger.
"FIRE!" Mephisto shouted, pointing a finger at the head of the titan, "Lasguns only, volley fire!"
The troopers raised their weapons and complied. The barrels of nearly fifty lasguns fired beams of ruby light, which lanced across the bay to strike the head of the creature.
One after another, the beams appeared on target, gouging out chunks of flesh and igniting tissue. Wet material trailing steam fountained off the disintegrating body of the titan. The creature screamed, then slowly began to fall over.
It hit the ground with a massive thud. Mephisto looked in awe at the size of the creature. It had to be fifteen meters tall, nearly half again as large as the lone Knight attached to the regiment. He took a brief step forward as steam poured into the vehicle bay. Somewhere overhead, sensors recognized the abnormally high temperature and fans began to whir, sucking the steam upwards and away.
The body of the titan twitched. It was a small motion, only a slight shift in the position of the arms and legs.
By bye the Emperor the thing was moving.
"That isn't fair." Mephisto muttered. "You take off a 'nid's head and it stays down. You don't get to be different.
Then the flesh around the severed, burned stump of the creature's neck began to shift, and flow like water. It pushed through the charred sections as a spur of bone began to extend from the fallen creature's spine.
Mephisto swore. "Start moving people! Before that thing gets back up! Move the Earthshaker into position for direct fire on my word."
He looked back at the steadily regenerating titan. "I want it ready in thirty seconds!"
As the crew readied the gun, loading a massive round into the breach of the weapon, the titan began to climb to its feet as its head swiftly reformed. It was a race. Would the gun crew get ready first, or would the titan finish regenerating. For the Imperials, it was a race they had to win, but victory gave no hope of survival. If losing its head didn't bother this creature, what good would an Earthshaker shell do? If-
The titan won.
The creature, now in a kneeling position, reached out with both hands towards the desperate Guardsmen. As one massive hand swung toward him, Mephisto leapt to the side in a roll, narrowly avoiding being snatched up by the hand of the creature.
As he recovered from his roll, he drew his laspistol from his hip and began to empty the charge pack into the mountain of titan-flesh before him. His shots burned flesh and chipped bone, and the creature began to pull the hand back.
Others weren't as lucky. The titan reached in to one of the blocks of Guardsmen firing at it and, heedless of their lasfire directed at its head and upper body, grabbed two men out of the group and raised them towards its mouth.
Then, in a seemingly slow, deliberate motion, it ate them.
A second later, with a massive roar, the Earthshaker gun fired. The shell cracked as it shot across the bay, and struck the titan in the sternum and penetrated.
An instant later, the shell detonated with an incredible roar that made the sound of firing seem tame in comparison. The titan held itself in place for a moment, then slowly crashed to the ground once more.
"DON'T LET UP! CHECK FOR A PULSE!" Mephisto shouted, pointing his laspistol at the titan.
Slowly, its body vanished under a hail of laser fire as it disintegrated.
Then the third titan appeared.
Colonel Richardson looked at the wall of Battle Honors collected by the 33rd Alkanian Grenadiers that stood in front of his commander's desk. It was distressingly bare. Most of the 'awards' present were little more than consolation prizes for the successful completion of campaigns. Three awards, out of a total of four present, were for that type of service were present: one for the participation in a campaign to eliminate Orks from a minor Agri world, and two for Campaigns for the suppression of Renegades, once on their homeworld of Alkania and once on another small planet.
The fourth was an award for best parade dress and standards at the end of the Ork campaign.
That was before his time. Richardson had only taken command of the regiment a short time ago, just before they left on their mission to travel to the Hive World of Janarius Secundus to participate in a defense against a major Chaos incursion.
In all its previous campaigns, the 33rd had performed, to say the least, disappointingly. In one campaign against rebels, the first after the unit was raised; the 33rd had performed acceptably as a rear-area garrison unit, but saw very little action beyond minor partisan actions, which inflicted grossly disproportionate losses on the unit.
However, in the second campaign, it was deployed on the front lines, and that was where things started to go downhill. The 33rd had been deployed late in what turned out to be the climactic battle of the war, with orders to relieve a badly stressed veteran unit on the Imperial Guard's left flank.
They fought acceptably for a few days, but then when the overstressed flank received orders to fall back, they failed to execute the maneuver properly, and several thousand soldiers had been cut off and destroyed by the enemy.
After that, the Grenadiers, to put it politely, fell back rather faster than ordered, nearly causing the flank to collapse and badly disrupting the oblique flanking attack that the Imperial General had planned. Fortunately, the Salamanders arrived just in time to launch a massive drop pod assault and crush the enemy center, saving the battle.
Then, when in battle against Orks, they had finally been furnished with the vehicles need to keep up with an armored drive and allow them to be properly employed as grenadiers. Unfortunately, due to a variety of factors, including bad weather, difficult terrain, and underskilled drivers, they failed to keep pace with an armored thrust, leaving the flank of the Imperial advance dangerously exposed. When they arrived in time to participate in the resulting battle, which severely disrupted the human timetables, several elements of the Regiment broke in the face of the enemy.
The casualties that resulted, and the purges that followed, left the regiment significantly under strength. By random chance, they happened to be close to their regimental homeworld at the time, so the unit had been refurbished with new vehicles, and a large number of women, draw directly from Alkania attached to the Glory of His Wrath, and sent off to battle the heretics.
On paper, there was no reason for the Regiment's disappointing performance. It was well-equipped, unusually so, in fact, and the men and women of the regiment performed well above average on the Standard Ability and Aptitude Test, which the Administratum had for some reason gotten around to issuing to the members of the regiment.
That however, stood in stark contrast to their past and present performance. Sending a lander out to an unknown, possibly hostile world with only a standard assault loadout of fuel, not enough to return to the mothership? Failing to use exterior sensors and all available scouts to properly establish the circumstances in which battle was being done?
What was wrong with this unit?
So if the equipment and the quality of the men weren't the problem, maybe the leadership was. The previous Commanding Officer of the Regiment, on Colonel Oscar, was the first suspect, and, after Richardson looked through his files, it became immediately clear what the problem was.
The man was a fracking lunatic. He had a focus on discipline and dress standards far beyond what was reasonable, even for a military unit. Reports from the previous campaign indicated that the men were spending far more time on their uniforms and parade formations than on battlefield doctrine training and practical combat skills.
Richardson began looking through the accumulated papers and dataslates on his desk, looking for a training schedule. Something part of him at the back of his mind had been whispering to him that there was something wrong, but he had dismissed its objections as being simply due to differences between how this unit and his previous one operated. He had simply been too busy with all of the various tasks involved in taking command of a new regiment to be able to examine the problem areas too closely.
Now, however, he saw the trouble for what it was. After several minutes of searching, he managed to find a sample schedule for a basic mechanized infantryman under his command. Richardson looked at the schedule for a moment, simply staring. This was insane. The man this was taken from was spending nearly six hours per day on drill training, polish, and other such thing. This was disregarding any sort of combat training or maintenance duty. As Richardson took a closer look, her saw that many of the standard drills and recommended practices for a unit of this size had been eliminated in favor of these absurd 'discipline and drill' activities. None of these men were new recruits, were they?
Richardson had inherited a unit that could polish it buttons and shine their lasguns, but could hardly do anything else.
By the Emperor! He thought, a sudden realization dawning on him. Will I be responsible for the men that expedition loses? Is his my fault for not looking into this matter sooner?
He sat down and opened up a feed from the battle on the surface on one of his dataslates. It was still running on a significant time delay, given the distance between the ship and the planet, and it was of poor quality, merely a compilation of sensor readouts and feeds from the security cameras onboard the lander stitched together by a team in the sensor department. However, it was all he had, so Richardson took his only opportunity to watch as his men died.
Melissa Highstorm was new to the Scouting Legion. Prior to joining, she had never actually seen a titan, something that was quickly rectified on her first expedition beyond the walls. She rode in formation, having already watched three of her comrades be devoured by titans.
The Scouting Legion had been riding hard for hours, and according to the 'whispered' communications between the men, was now drawing closer to its destination. Odd bangs and cracks had been heard in the distance, and they had only grown in volume as they approached the mission target. The strange sounds were making everyone nervous, but Melissa was at the same time glad to finally have a real mission from the scouting legion, and the idea of mission had her intrigued, to say the very least.
At present, Melissa was riding downhill through a forest, and she could see a column of smoke rising on from just ahead. She steered her horse around a fallen tree as the recon man in her element, the lead one in the formation, withdrew a pair of binoculars from his pouch and raised them to his eyes.
"Titans ahead." He shouted, as he deftly and rapidly switched between scouting ahead and searching near himself for hazardous terrain. "Prepare to switch to Maneuver Gear!"
Melissa undid the straps holding her gear in place on her horse and readied herself to switch to her Maneuver Gear. As she broke out of the forest and into the clearing where the mission objective had been determined to be, she froze.
There were titans in the mission clearing. Dozens of them, surrounding an object like nothing she had ever seen. It looked a bit like a brick, and a bit like a building, but it was at a slight incline, possibly due to all the titans that appeared to be pushing on it. It was dozens of yards long, several times the height of the tallest titans. The object had windows on it, but they were small, and many of them were obscured by the titans.
As she kicked her horse back into motion, the formation element containing the Special Operations Squad burst into the clearing. Levi, the leader of the team, stood up in his stirrups and fired his grapples, scoring a direct hit on the back of one of the fifteen-meter titan's heads.
He activated his winches in the blink of an eye, and began pulling himself toward the titan.
As he flew through the air, one of the titans toward what Melissa had mentally designated the 'Front' of the object fell, accompanied by a loud roar. As the titan dropped to the ground, Melissa looked at it in horror.
The entire front of the beast was one massive, bloody mess, with steam gushing from the wound. The front of the titan's head had been vaporized, and the nine-meter monster's weak point was, if she was any judge, truly destroyed.
What kind of weapon could do that? She thought, freezing as she marveled at the destructive power of the weapon.
As the titan dropped to the ground, Levi reached the nape of the neck of the titan he had targeted, the twelve-meter beast standing next to the one that had just dropped. He spun as he shot toward its neck, and then fired his grapples to the side just as he approached. It pulled him away from the titan, but he still came close enough to slice out the neck, nearly decapitating the monster as he killed it.
Mephisto waved his arm, clearing some of the steam away from his eyes. The fans were working, but the fallen titans in the hangar were putting off an insane amount of steam, and it was hurting visibility. He clung to the back of the buttoned-up Leman Russ Main Battle Tank and waved his arm forward.
The main Battle Cannon of the tank fired with a crushing roar, sending its massive shell flying into the upper body of an approaching titan. It struck and exploded, sending a blast wave of pressure washing over the assembled guardsmen. The explosion ripped open the upper body of the titan in a cloud of steam, and the beast fell to the deck, unmoving.
How many of these things are out there? Mephisto thought, firing his laspistol at a short, for a titan, figure moving in the steam outside the vehicle bay. His firing brought the attention of a nearby squad of guardsmen on his target, and they raised their lasguns and laid down a hail of fire on it.
The battle was going poorly. In one corner of the vehicle bay, a deformed Chimera APC lay smoking where it had ventured too far forward and been stomped to death by a massive titan. Nearly half of the guardsmen who had started the battle were dead now, having been devoured by the beasts or trampled beneath their feet.
As another titan began to walk into the bay, a hail of plasma fire started up. Jets of white-hot energy reached out across the space and struck the seven-meter-tall beast, vaporizing chunks of flesh and leaving burning holes in its unnatural body. The beast toppled and eventually fell, but not before its body was reduced to nearly a skeleton by the attacks.
The ammunition situation was another problem. The advanced force holding the bay had destroyed countless titans in the commander's gambit to empty the surrounding area, but each had absorbed a considerable volume of munitions before finally dying. Soon, the Guardsmen would be down to just their lasguns.
And then they would die.
But we'll die standing, I suppose, Mephisto thought, watching grimly as a titan, one a full fifteen meters tall, approached the entrance to the vehicle bay, just as He asks us to. What did it matter, now or later? These titans were going to kill them all anyway.
As the titan leaned down to enter the battle, something phenomenal happened. A pair of wires, with what appeared to be spikes mounted on the ends, shot through the air and impacted on the back of the titan's neck. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the wires went taught.
The, what appeared to be a man, attached at the hip to the wires, came flying into the bay, pulled at an insane speed toward the nape of the massive titan's neck. He spun in the air, with two archaic swords in his hands. The man landed on the titan's neck in a standing position, not caring that he was presently parallel to the ground. He slashed, and with a fountaining burst of blood, a chunk of flesh came loose from the titan's neck. It fell, and the man rode it to the ground.
Before it crashed to the deck plate, he fired another pair of wire and flew away.
The nape of their necks! Mephisto thought, his courage restored. We can still win this!
He began to shout orders.