They needed to hurry.
Neither Yang nor Blake could accurately predict exactly how long the defending army would hold -the battle was far too chaotic for that, but both were fairly certain it couldn't be more than hours. The beasts' numbers were simply too overwhelming.
Fortunately, their decision to travel via the high-rises was a wise one. Even here, directly above the outskirts of the horde, the beasts they encountered were few and far in between, and in bands small enough to avoid or, if needed, quietly eliminated without much difficulty.
However, that began to change as they moved further into the heart of the horde's territory. Stragglers and small bands became large groups and loosely organized parties. Increasingly they had to divert to avoid sections of the buildings converted into makeshift workshops and repair stations. Yet, the first truly significant compromise they had to make was resolving to avoid any windowed areas that overlooked the battlefield. So close to the frontline, the beasts had converted literally every single one to artillery posts.
Yang questioned the intelligence of placing dozens of massive cannons in buildings that already looked like they were on their last legs, but she supposed intelligence wasn't a particularly strong suit of the beasts.
It didn't make the buildings shaking every time they fired any less nerve-racking though.
As they advanced, the question of how would they actually find the alpha became increasingly relevant. They couldn't just pop into every random building the horde occupied and hope they'd stumble on the alpha by chance, nor would their stealth last forever. Fortunately, as they exited the latest skyscraper they'd snuck through and started moving along the catwalks to the next, it became instantly clear they needn't have worried.
"What… in the fuck is that?"
Blake could only mutely shake her head in response, ears flat against her head.
After a moment of stunned silence, Yang let out a contemptuous chuckle, "Welp, so much for not sharing in their fate."
The other Huntress, though ears still flat, gave the abomination before them a closer look, "It's not fully operational. Not yet."
"I hope not; otherwise this mission just went from extremely difficult to downright impossible," she replied, glaring at the offending sight like it was a personal insult, "Goddamnit! Alright, let's get in there."
Giving the behemoth one last wary look, they both continued onwards, their destination now transparently clear.
Before them, the colossal abomination that had once been a skyscraper shuddered as a building-sized cannon slammed into its side, hundreds of {orks} with crude welders immediately beginning the process of fully attaching the god-killing armament.
Their {Gargant} was almost ready.
Despite the totality of the horde's presence, sneaking on board was surprisingly easy. It didn't seem that way at first, as the outside of the mech/building was crawling with beasts, but the vast majority of said beasts weren't the big, brutish kind they were first acquainted with, but rather tiny childlike runts that seemed to act as some sort of labor force. 'Or more like a slave race,' Blake thought. Regardless, they were small, easily distracted, and even more scared of their owners than a rabbit was of a wolf… which, unfortunately translated to them being constantly alert and ever watchful. And there were a lot of them.
However, once they (just barely) slipped through the outer layers, the interior of the enormous building/mech was unexpectedly devoid of opposition -instead, piles of guns, tools, and other mechanical debris filled every inch of the inner spaces. Pipes twisted randomly through walls, steam billowed from arbitrarily placed vents, and a viscous black liquid coated the floor.
But aside from the occasional scampering runtling, they encountered little resistance. And as they proceeded deeper into the labyrinthine interior, and the sounds and roars of the battle outside muffled, then faded, they gradually relaxed their previously extreme caution, trading it for speed in their quest to find a means further up the machine.
Right as they did so was, of course, when the gunfire started.
Instinctively, they both threw themselves to the side, Blake throwing up a clone to distract while Yang pumped a shell into her gauntlets.
But nothing happened. No shots whizzed past their heads, no sparks as metal struck metal, and no painful pinpricks as bullets dug into their Auras. Weapons at the ready, the two Huntresses peeked out from their cover, but no beasts, either runts or brutes, greeted them. Yet gunfire still echoed down the hallway, intermixed with angry roars.
"It's got to be close," Yang said, eyes boring into the doorways around them, "Through one of them?"
Blake cocked her head, ears flicked back and forth, twitching every time a particularly loud gunshot sounded out. Finally, her eyes turned downwards, staring at the grating beneath their feet.
"Below us," she asserted, "right below us."
Yang glanced down, tilting her head, "Another infiltration team?"
The cat faunus paused, gaze unfocused as she listened. After a minute, she nodded.
"Yes. I can hear energy weapons of some kind."
"Of some kind?"
"They're different than the ones all those soldiers were wielding. More rapid and… harsher? Don't know how else to explain it." she considered for a moment, "Special forces maybe."
Yang shrugged, "Would make sense. Whatever, we'll find out in a sec."
Blake nodded. If it was a special force insertion, it was more than likely they had the same objective.
"Ready when you are."
Smirking, Yang reached down and gripped the grate, and with a dreadful screech of metal, tore it from its mountings, revealing the network of pipes beneath. Dropping the sheet of casting behind her, she crouched and slid her hands between two of the pipes.
"You good?"
Blake gave her blade a twirl and inclined her head.
"After you."
With a mighty yank Yang wrenched the pipes apart, revealing a massive green beast on the floor below, illuminated by flashes of light as its weapon spit fury at an unseen target. Thanks to the roaring of that hand-held cannon it called a gun the brute didn't hear the hole being torn open above it, but it did notice the shadow that suddenly fell over its eyes. Unfortunately for it, that was too little too late. The beast glanced up with a confused "wrggg?" only to be met with a fist driving down into its skull and an explosive shell burrowing beneath.
Its head burst in a spray of flames, green blood, and shattered bone, the force of the blow driving the beast to its knees. Yang completed her drop, swinging herself off the creature as it smashed to the floor, her arms up and ready for further brawling, but quickly relaxed as no more threats revealed themselves. Beside her, she felt more than saw or heard Blake drop down as well, ears flicking at the sudden silence.
"Only the one?" Blake asked, unconvinced.
"Nope, but someone else got his buddy for us," Yang answered, gesturing at the corpse of a second beast. Blake glanced at it and couldn't resist a small shudder at the sight. It was just as big as the one Yang had killed, both significantly larger than any they had seen before, but whoever dispatched this one had done so far more gruesomely. Its entire head and a good portion of its upper chest were simply gone, the edges of the gaping wound blackened and scorched, the rest of the body looking like it was half incinerated. Even the ground around the beast was smoldering, flakes of charred flesh scattered like snow. The heat required to inflict such damage... she grimaced. It was telling that she could still feel the ambient heat emanating from the carcass despite being several feet away.
Wrinkling her nose, she endeavored to forget the scene and twisted back towards Yang, only to find she was staring down at the other end of the corridor, where the beast had been firing.
"Hey! Anyone alive over there?"
The silence held for a brief moment, before the barrel of a gun poked around the corner, its tip glowing an ominous purple-white. The two Huntresses shifted to a combat stance, but otherwise didn't react. A moment more, and a helmeted head popped up behind the barrel, easily spotting the Huntresses, but taking a second more to verify the lack of bestial threats before gesturing behind him. Immediately about a dozen more armored humans emerged from the corridor, weapons hot but unaimed at Yang or Blake.
Yang gave a little wave as they approached, the only response of which was an amused snort from one of the soldiers.
"Fine evening fellas, out for a stroll?"
The two lead soldiers exchanged glances at each other, before one replied,
{What in the Emperor's name are you two doing here?}
Yang cocked her head, squinting at them.
"Umm… what?"
{Are...really? You don't speak Low Gothic?}
The two Huntresses peered at the troopers intently for a second before Yang leaned back and shrugged.
"Nope. No idea what you're saying."
Another voice shouted from the back of the corridor, voice angry but still the same gibberish of the other soldiers.
{Terpiz, Ryker! What's the holdup? We have a throne-damned job to do!}
Turning, one of the troopers called back, seemingly exasperated.
{Two civies sarg! Don't know how to speak Kolernian Low Gothic for some reason.}
{Are you shitting me?}
Pushing ahead, a mean-looking trooper (the only one not wearing a face-covering helmet, revealing a dour-looking fellow with a nasty scar across his nose) impatiently shoved his way to the front, glaring at the two Huntresses like he just watched them piss in his cereal.
{You two, what's this nonsense about not speaking Low Gothic? You going to tell me you grew up under a rock?}
Yang shrugged again, eyeing the angry soldier with an indifferent expression. Judging by the bright red arrow symbol on his shoulder, this guy was probably the man in charge of the squad. Which was great... if they could handle this translation issue.
"Still can't understand ya pal."
His mouth open (presumably to continue shouting), the soldier paused at the sound of her voice, stepping back and giving her a second, closer look.
Sounding like a speech-impaired toddler, Yang and Blake's eyes rose as he ground out a butchered-sounding Vytalian, "Can you know… er, know this?"
"We can," Blake affirmed, but the soldier didn't so much as glance at her, continuing to stare at Yang instead, "Can you know this?" he repeated.
Exchanging a glance with Blake, Yang gave a hesitant nod.
"Umm… yeah, we" she emphasized, gesturing between Blake and her "… mostly get what you're saying. Can you understand us?"
"Good enough. What variant you speak?"
Yang frowned, "Variant? You mean language?"
"Variant!"
"Umm... Vytalian."
The soldier grunted, turning towards one of his men.
{She speaks a different variant. Not local. Vitlan or something.}
{Not local? Must be visitors then. Think they're nobles?}
{Can't be. All those cowards were on the first transports off-planet. Besides, one of them is a mutant. These two are probably just some left-behind servant girls.}
He glanced back at the Huntresses.
{Or prostitutes.}
The soldiers were silent at that, digesting that, before one spoke up, sounding determined.
{I say we burn the mutant and send the other on her way.}
The sergeant frowned, considering.
{You think she could make her way out of this thing?}
The soldier shrugged.
{She made her way in, didn't she?}
A second soldier jutted in.
{If she's fond of that mutant, she might not like us killing it.}
{So?}
{So they killed a nob. We can use them in the fight. Worse case is they die after drawing a bit of fire away from us.}
Suddenly Yang stuck a hand between the two, waving to gain their attention.
"Uh, yoo-hoo? Fellas? Still here!"
The soldier eyed her distastefully, but glanced meaningfully over at the dead ork beside her. Another soldier made to speak, but he held up his hand, silencing them. After a moment of thought, he nodded and turned back to her.
"You fight orks? Help kill warboss?"
Yang raised an eyebrow at the word, but nevertheless winked at Blake (which received an eye-roll in return), and smirked at the armored soldier,
"Yes," she confirmed, "we fight orks and kill warboss."
They moved quickly.
The sergeant had informed them that the warboss was likely at the very top of the 'gargant', and the orks had replaced much of the floor right beneath the gargant's 'head' with the joints for the arms, leaving only the central staircase for travel. Which meant that the humans couldn't just bust their way through ceilings until they arrived at the top, but had to travel via that staircase. He also informed them that while they may have been stealthy, his team had not been (not for lack of trying, but unfortunately energy weapons aren't exactly quiet), and yet they had only encountered sporadic resistance, which meant that the bulk of the orks within the machine were unaccounted for.
Tons of missing orks, plus a single central chokepoint.
It was the most obvious trap the humans had been confronted with. Unfortunately, it was also one they had no choice but to spring.
But that didn't mean they couldn't have a plan of their own.
The first sign the orks got that they were under attack would, under any other circumstance, have been a shocking and disorienting one.
The door to the primary corridor branching off from the stair's base (a grand auditorium) detonated in a fiery conflagration, spewing flames and metal shards dozens of feet outwards, perforating about a dozen of the waiting orks.
But these were orks, and they had been ready for this.
With a roar the greenskins struck shrugged off their pain and charged into the breach, eyes alight and choppas swinging. Unfortunately, instead of scared humans to sink their blades into there was nothing there. Nothing except a clump of ticking grenades.
The lead ork was the first to spot it.
{Oh zog it.}
The building shook as the explosion tore through the greenskins' ranks, vaporizing almost two scores of them. The dozen or so who survived barely had time to realize their existence's miraculous continuation before they were torn apart by crisscrossing beams of purple-white luminance. The stormtroopers advanced unhindered, hellguns scything through the panicking xenos with cold efficiency, the sheer volume of fire making their numbers seem far more than they truly were.
Now, it is said orks are fearless. That these creatures born and bred for war would only be enticed by the bloodiest of meatgrinders, the harshest of flames, and the most devastating of weapons, rather than intimidated.
This is a lie. Or more accurately, an exaggeration. War itself is not something they fear, but an absence of fear of war does not mean they are absent of fear entirely.
Show them death in totality, and they will know fear.
And fear makes for easy prey.
The orks panicked.
Two minutes and thirty-two seconds after the last ork charged through the breach, the scream of hellguns fell silent. The remainder of the orks guarding the stairway, nobs all, snarled and growled as they waited for their enemy to emerge from the carnage.
And emerge they did, just not in the direction the nobs expected. Rather than the already blown door, or any other door for that matter, five points in the walls exploded outwards, the scream of hellguns rising from each, joined by the occasional thrum of a plasma gun.
The orks buckled, a few of their number falling to beams of light, and entire groups to the blue discharge of pure plasma, but the rest held their line, and moreover turned to rage for aid. Roaring with fury, they returned fire with all the discipline of a Carnifex in a grox herd. Bullets the size of soda cans cracked ceramite where they hit, and shredded pulp wood like it wasn't there.
Then the Huntresses joined the battle.
Two blurs, one black, one yellow, shot across the battlefield, slamming into the orks' defensive positions in an instant. Yang was most obvious, ducking and weaving among the oversized beasts with focused ease, delivering haymakers, breaking bones, and pulping heads with each blow. Blake was less apparent, but no less effective, crippling limbs, slicing throats, and sowing confusion wherever her clones formed.
The orks roared in confusion, pain, and rage, completely unable to land a blow on the infuriating humans, and often dispatching their own through their efforts. All the while the stormtroopers eliminated ork after ork with coordinated fire, their distracted foes proving easy targets.
It wasn't all good tidings however. Increasingly, Blake found herself dodging the blows of her 'allies' almost as much as those of the orks, beams of searing light coming perilously close to her skin again and again, at times even grazing her Aura, the ambient heat washing over her like the world's most dangerous blanket. Snarling, she decided to test a small theory. Spotting Yang in the melee, she maneuvered her way next to her partner, aiding her in dispatching a particularly large ork. Immediately the volume of fire coming towards herself lessened by an order of magnitude. Infuriated, her ears were glued flat to her head as she danced around Yang, turning off her Aura for a split second to allow a beam to sear through a small lock of hair. The unnecessary moves caught the brawler's attention, enlisting a raised eyebrow. Mutely and without breaking her maneuvers she twisted to show her burnt hair, and jerked her head back towards their allies. Yang's face hardened, a bit of crimson leaking into her eyes.
After that, Yang stuck to her like glue for the rest of the fight, tanking any 'accidental' shots directed at Blake. The stormtroopers were smart enough to stop after it became clear that Yang was purposely protecting Blake, but even then, the Huntresses made sure to keep an ork or two between them and the stormtroopers when they could. Just in case.
Finally however, the last ork toppled over, its head a smoking hole. Immediately Yang began purposely marching towards the troopers, fists clenched and eyes red, only to stop as Blake grabbed her hand. Yang turned to her, visibly confused.
Blake shook her head, gaze resigned.
"Warboss first," she whispered, "then we can ditch them."
Yang made to reply, but the sergeant jutted in, striding purposely past them with his troopers right behind them.
"Psykers come, enough talk. Can check nails after warboss dead."
He paused, sparing them a glance.
"Next time, don't hide you are psykers. Bad for morale."
"We weren't hiding jack buddy." Yang snapped back, "We're not your soldiers, and if you thought two random civilians had made it this far without being Aura-capable, that's your own idiotic assumption."
"Lies of omission still lies. Lies have consquenses. And I think you not sanctioned," The sergeant countered, give the two of them a one-over.
"The fuck does that mean?" Yang questioned, glaring at him. But he merely grunted in response, moving on without a further word.
The two eyed him distastefully for a moment, before they were forced to step aside as the rest of the squad shoved past them.
{Witch} one of them spat as he walked by, the word still gibberish, but tone unmistakable. Yang's eyes, already leaking red, turned full crimson, but, fist clenched and teeth grinding, she held back. Sharing a hard glance, the two followed the troopers slowly, both far more cautious than before.
Swiftly catching up with them at the base of the stairs, Yang resisted the urge to grin when she noticed there were only seven of the original ten present. The orks hadn't left them totally without casualties.
The troopers, or at least the sergeant, didn't seem to care about the losses though, focused as he was glaring at their way up the unfinished gargant.
"Orks removed stairs," he stated, addressing the Huntresses, "Is now primitive elevator."
"So?"
"So I doubt orks let us use elevator. Not problem for us, have jump-packs. But you..."
Yang eyed the massive contraption, full of ropes, levers, and pulleys, eventually focusing on the three central cables.
"Think those things lead to the top?" she asked, pointing at them.
The sergeant considered them for a moment, before eventually nodding.
"Most possible, yes."
"Then we'll be fine."
"If you say s-" he was interrupted by a massive grinding sound echoing down, causing the troopers to snap their guns towards noise high above. The cause was easy to spot. Dozens of meters overhead, the platform that served as the orks' elevator cranked and squealed as it began slowly moving down.
"I guess we do get to use it after all," Yang quipped.
"We not call it!" the sergeant said, expression alarmed, {Squad, defensive positions! Now!}
The troopers were only just backing away when Blake exclaimed an alarm, "Wha- Look out!"
Even when they couldn't understand the words she said, her tone was very clear indeed, and all seven troopers immediately dove back, the two Huntresses already blurring away. Seconds later, five massive figures smashed down where they had been standing, dust and debris obscuring their forms only for them to come charging out within moments, roaring their challenge to the intruding humans.
Four massive orks, each the size of a Beringel and absolutely covered in armor, with the only green showing being their enraged expressions, charged headlong towards them. The fifth and last figure was even larger, a bipedal war machine that towered over the armored orks it accompanied, four limbs bristling with weapons attached to a body crudely welded to resemble the visage of a madly grinning ork.
The sergeant cursed up a storm, hellgun screaming as it released a platoon's worth of searing light at the closest ironclad behemoth, the armored ork laughing off the attack with little effect.
"Psykers!" he screamed at Yang and Blake, pointing at the massive walker, "Kill Deff Dread!"
"Got it!" Yang yelled back, the two already charging towards the cranking war machine.
{The rest of you!} he continued, {Focus fire on those meganobz! For the Emperor!}
{For the Emperor!} They roared back, weapons blazing white-hot.