Faith and Fire
The tanks of the 55th roar down the Great Northern Road at maximum speed. Treads churning the smooth rockcrete to dust and engines spewing black exhaust into the air behind them. Every crew member wills their tank to greater speed, every reduction in speed greeted with a wince. Ahead of them they can see the muzzle flares of scores of guns and the bright flares of exploding hulls. Sergeant Young remains silent within the turret basket of Blood and Steel while listening intently to the calm vox communications flowing between the knights as they slow the xenos warbands.
Their voices are calm, cool, and collected one moment. The next they are fiery and savage as any Guardsman in the midst of a life-or-death struggle. The four walkers have been engaged in a running gun battle for the last forty minutes and have claimed no small number of kills. But for all that success they have suffered wounds in return. If his ears don't deceive him, then two of the light walkers have suffered severe damage to multiple armor plates and a loss in performance in their mobility mechanisms.
The third of the lighter Armiger-class walkers is running low on ammunition, being optimized for light skirmishing, and facing a target rich environment even conservative bursts have eaten through his reserves at an alarming rate. Perhaps most disturbing of all was the word that the Knight-Atrapos has sustained minor damage to the right leg after a nearly disastrous fluctuation in its Ion shield allowed a few bolts from the Stompa through.
The knights are even now retreating slowly towards the Cadians. Keeping their shields orientated towards the Orks and firing everything they've got in reply. The flashes of light grow ever greater and closer together, the sounds of the guns lost under the roaring of the engine. He wills his tank to greater speed, urging her on with his whole being and wishing that the governors were just a little bit less restrictive. The restriction to just thirty kilometers an hour is…a liability at times. Costly in lives and hulls when speed is imperative yet unattainable.
The crackle of the vox breaks Young's train of thought. "All tanks deploy in wedge by squadron. Steady the advance and no heroics. We're here to save those knights, not die in a blaze of glory," Colonel Bollard growls.
"Bring us into formation right-quick Hilton. We've got a second date with the old foe."
"Roger. The old girl is giving me a little grief on the right stick, might want to have the cog-boys take a look at it when we're done here," the driver informs. His eyes are locked to the viewing blocks. His face a mask of concentration.
"I'll ask them to take a look, just tell me if you feel anything else. Who knows how old the transmission is?"
The sounds of cannon fire grows louder until its low rumble can be heard over the roaring of the engine. And then, looming out of the darkness like furious gods, come the Knights. The Armigers are hunched and crab-like in appearance with lean legs meant for speed and maneuverability rather than raw power like those of the heavier walkers. Their chainswords and thermal cannons smolder with the heat of use and their armored hides are scuffed and scorched. Behind them comes the ancient walker Cerastus. Its heraldry is soot streaked and peeling in places but still proud and bright.
The head set between hunched shoulders is fearsome with glowing red eyes. The sergeant is torn from his observation of the knights by the flash of gunfire in the distance.
"All tanks halt! On my word we give these savages a taste of their own medicine. Priority targets will remain heavy vehicles. Let's give our friends some breathing room," the colonel orders.
"Rig cannon for firing. Switching to prey-sense." Young flicks a cover up and presses down on the small stud mounted to the side of the periscope mount. The imager flickers for a moment before resolving in a green filter. The Knights are blazing white figures against the cold background and in the distance, just a few kilometers away are the hordes of the orks. Several hundred light vehicles and a few battlewagons surrounding a trio of battle fortresses that are covered in guns and armored battlements.
"Throne of Terra that's a lot of orks…Gunner traverse twelve degrees left, target ork vehicle with bow cannon. Range two-clicks and closing."
"On target."
"Relays open!"
Young waits, letting the range close and keeping his ear pinned to the vox. The Knights fall in among the smaller tanks and turn to bring their ranged weapons to bear.
"All tanks keep close together and watch for flankers. Fire at will!"
The entirety of the 55th fires in one thundering volley. High-explosive and armor piercing shells zip through the air and smash into the lead elements of the ork warband.
"Gun is lit, flows open, firing!" The Plasma Destructor cracks sending the ball of superheated gas on its way. The plasma smacks into the armored nose of the ork vehicle and rips through it like wet paper before the entire machine flips over on its nose, tumbling and shredding itself apart with its own momentum.
"Good hit! Next target, battlewagon three degrees right! It's got a bunch of flamers on the sides," Young directs as the turret adjusts slightly.
Beyond the walls of his tank's hull F-company on the right and C-company on the left swing out like an expanding broadhead to widen the regiment's frontage. It forces the lighter and faster bikes and skimmers to swing wide or risk simply smashing themselves apart on the heavy frontal armor of the Leman Russ tanks. The wall of fire smashes the xenos machines apart and breaks their formation, such as it is. Thermal plumes from the Armigers adds to the destruction being wrought on the ork light machines.
But far behind the initial swarm of tanks and buggies looms the massive heat-plume that could only be the enemy Stompa. Young forces himself to ignore it and focuses on directing his tank's fire against the small-fry.
"Next target!"
((-))
Mathilda feels a thrum of satisfaction as her Atrapos Lascutter carves a neat line right through the center of the closest ork battle fortress causing the machine to fall in two halves and then detonate with enough force to send shrapnel through the open-topped buggy beside it. Dead orks fall from the buggy like limp leaves.
"My Lady the enemy walker approaches!" Krixtus warns between controlled bursts from his walker's autocannons. The smaller walker is forced to pick his targets to support his Lady's larger form and to keep the enemy from getting within range of her vulnerable leg joints. Still, his eagle-eyed awareness of the battlefield has always been of immense value to her.
"I see him. Colonel Bollard! The enemy walker approaches. I need time to charge my heavy weapon in order to deal with it properly," Mathilda voxes to the Cadian commander while her right foot slams down on a buggy. The immense weight of the super-heavy walker smashing it flat and killing all aboard.
"Confirmed. My tankers will give you the breathing room you need."
"My thanks Colonel."
The Cadians charge forward, rushing to meet the heavier units at the rear of the horde and leaving a single company behind to deal with the remaining light vehicles. The Knights watch the Cadians smash through the remaining screen and come into weapons range of the battle fortresses. Three Leman Russ tanks detonate from direct hits. The massive shells fired by the xenos guns more than powerful enough to crack through even the thick frontal armor of battle tanks.
Mathilda tears her eyes away from the battle and focuses on her left arm. The plasma reactor at the heart of her walker flares and strains to supply the arcane Graviton Singularity Cannon. Her flesh warms and reddens in sympathy with the straining power lines running through the armored limb of the walker. The Graviton Singularity Cannon is a hazardous piece of hardware.
It fires a graviton singularity that rips apart the fabric of space-time with its immense gravitational forces. Capacitors begin to glow with the amount of power being packed into their surprisingly small bodies and temperature regulators whine to maintain the stability of the complicated machinery within. Flecks of iron are torn from the ground and magnetically attach to the frame of the weapon.
Targeting software not unlike that of the ships of the Holy Fleet zeroes in on the Stompa's chest plate where a blast from the Lascutter tore into the armor plating. Hate flows through the walker's core as hot as a lava flow and as swift as a river. Warnings blaze through Mathilda's straining mind as the tankers wander into the yellow sphere of danger. Not enough to be in danger but close enough that their weapons would be useless until the singularity is collapsed.
"Be warned all ye loyal Servants of the Throne! The Singularity Cannon is unleashed!"
The forces of nature do not like to be violated as a matter of preference. The weapons created by humanity and the forces they contend with are crimes against the very nature of reality. Nowhere is this more accurate than in the arena of gravity weapons. The cannon forming Mathilda's left arm whine and vibrates before firing. A beam of hyper-agitated gravity particles bursts from the flared muzzle of the cannon and crosses the intervening distance in less than an instant.
Immediately reality screams. The singularity is calculated to burst into being forty-centimeters from the surface of the Stompa's chest and it does so in spectacular fashion. The gravitational distortion is so strong that light itself is bent around the temporary blackhole. The crude armor and shielding of the Stompa doesn't stand a chance. Metal buckles and twists in on itself crushing the orks and Gretchin within to little more than stains against the rapidly deforming metal.
The singularity rips the Stompa apart from where the waist would be upwards reducing the mountain of scrap to a ball no bigger than a Chimera APC. And then the singularity collapses with an explosion of compressed air that flips over everything within seven-hundred meters.
((-))
Young spews curses like a ruptured fuel line to Promethium and clenches his fists around the rim of the command cupola as the shaking intensifies then finally stops.
"What the frak was that!?" Tybalt shouts while rubbing a swiftly darkening bruise on his forehead. Young presses his eyes to the periscope and flicks off prey-sense. Dust and smoke obscures his view for a few seconds before it settles enough to make out the small mountain of metal. His jaw drops open in shock before he shakes it off and relays it to the crew. It would have taken a company of tanks a good bit of time and luck to do what the knight did with one shot.
"That was Knight Sanguine laying down the law on some frakking orks! Ha!" Young crows and beats his fist against the turret wall. "Get our gun cooled and charged, we've got some clean-up to do."
((-))
"Well I'll be. That's some serious firepower these Knights have isn't?" Colonel Bollard mutters to himself as his regiment rumbles past the now very dead Stompa. Several parts of the heap of twisted iron and steel are still smoldering from the immense friction involved with being twisted out of existence by a gravitational singularity.
The rest of the orks were mopped up in under an hour with a few packs of bikers sprinting back to the Red Hills and their camp there. After a thorough sweep and corpse burning operation the 55th and the Knights under Madam Kessel are heading to the crossroads where they will begin to establish a base of operations and start their hunt for the rest of the renegade ork bands. The trip from the end of the running gun battle to the beginning of it is one spent with only the rumble of engines and the quiet, clipped vox chatter of an armored formation on the move.
Here and there are shattered wrecks of ork vehicles. Places where the thermal cannons of the Armigers missed and turned the ground to glass or where Knight Sanguine missed with its Lascutter and scorched a trench in the ground flecked with freshly smelted silicone crystals. Greenskins lay in silent heaps around their burnt-out vehicles, the same flames that consumed their rides doing them in.
The veteran officer takes a small pleasure in knowing that the savage aliens screamed as they died. He's fought the orks for most of his career and in every engagement without fail they have managed to do something that stokes his hate even higher. Orks are a twisted mirror to humanity; all the evil and dirt and none of the shine.
The regiment settles in at the crossroads in a quick and efficient manner as befits Cadian warriors. The support crews arrive in their cargo haulers and half-tracks and immediately begin repairs and refueling of the tanks. Those not involved in maintenance begin unloading supplies and constructing rudimentary defensive positions. The Knights loom over all awaiting their own support vehicles to arrive from their distant keep, silent statues towering over all.
The Cadians park their tanks in a layered box across all four corners of the crossroads with the fuel and ammunition stores protected behind a wall of parked vehicles and watched over by armed support crews while the tankers come down from the adrenaline high of battle. The Enginseers descend on the battle tanks like red-winged bats seeking a corpse to bleed. Incense battles with the smell of fuel and fyceline for dominion.
The colonel takes the opportunity to walk the stiffness from his legs. Decades spent in tanks have taken their toll on the once young and spry officer. Too long spent sat on the cushioned, though still hard, command seat tends to make him stiff and achy. Bollard scans the tankers lounging either on cots set up beside their tanks or draped along the track guards where the Tech-Priests don't have to bother them.
Except for Blood and Steel.
The now battle-scarred and proven Executioner-variant is sitting above a small pit that was dug by the now thoroughly exhausted crew for the purposes of the Enginseer to fit beneath the tank. A constant drone of techno-lingua prayers and benedictions comes from the shadow of the tank while Sergeant Young paces back and forth like an anxious father.
The colonel considers the crew and their crate for a moment. The Executioner tanks have a reputation for killing green crews, but Sergeant Young is a veteran tank commander with a good head on his shoulders. Keeping that crate in the fight could mean the difference between victory and defeat in the future. But it will need…upgrades to be able to survive the situations it's going to be put through. There's not much that can be done to the typical piece of Imperial hardware that is sanctioned but a few extra armor plates, a reinforced suspension…extra storage space for coolant lines.
His decision made he steps out of the shadow of the Demolisher Old Painless and stalks towards Blood and Steel.
"What's the damage magos?" he calls by way of greeting. He quickly salutes the troopers who scramble to attention. Enginseer Theas pokes his cowled head from under the tank with a burst of static.
"The right tread-transaxle has significant wear and tear that would have eventually led to failure. It would appear that replacement is required. "
"And how long would this require?"
"Approximately three-hours and fifty-two minutes for a replacement, another fifteen for reconsecration. There are no other machines with pressing issues such as this, this machine is my priority."
"Very good," Bollard nods and looks at the sergeant. "How does the old girl perform in combat then Sergeant? I see a few new kill markers by the mantlet."
"Like a dream sir!" the sergeant replies with a grin that wouldn't be out of place on a love-struck buck taking his best girl to the regimental ball. An older trooper pats the tank on its side skirt fondly and nods in agreement with his sergeant.
"Good. I hear your main gun didn't miss a shot in either fight. That right?"
"Best gunner in the company sir." Bollard chuckles and nods to the proud trooper standing behind his sergeant. It's easy to forget with all the trappings of command that the average trooper just needs a bit of acknowledgement from the brass to love them and fight hard for them. The 55th lost seven crews in one day of fighting. Not catastrophic losses, but still too many for the aging colonel to feel good about.
Any losses are still worth his grief. They're his troopers after the Emperor gets his due.
"Good, keep it up and we'll get through this shit-show in one piece. Magos, meet me in my tent tonight after evening prayers if you would."
"Yes colonel."