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I finished this chapter a week ago and am working on the next, but next update in a month is really uncertain. So, hopefully, I'll be back on the first of January with another chapter.
Till then, and enjoy!
Chapter 13: There will only be Waaagh!
The longlas wasn't a particularly powerful weapon by the standards of the Federation. In the eyes of the Forerunners it was a pathetic weapon, nothing at all like the disintegration beams they liked to shoot all over the place in their wars against Ancient Humanity and the Flood. Still, it was more than strong enough that the laser shot at the Ork Boy made his head explode, killing the walking fungus in one shot. The body fell with a thump, his choppa clattering to the floor next to him.
Unfortunately, I quickly learned what all races in this galaxy learned: Orks were never alone. "Waaagh!" The infamous call echoed, feeling like it got to me all the way through the checkpoints, meters of armour, kill zones and pre-sighted turrets instead of just through the single screen in front of my face.
More Orks poured out of the passageway, choppa's raised and guns firing wildly. My Mantises returned fire, bright bolts unerringly hitting their targets. The lascarbines fired consistently while the longlas turret zapped those Orks that stood taller than their fellows. I'd already added that to my bots' priority list; the bigger the Ork, the sooner the brute needed to die. In twenty seconds an equal amount of Greenskins dropped dead, but more continued to stream in. The first Mantis fell as its weak shield was overwhelmed by massed fire and a lucky bullet smashed into just the wrong spot. Halfway through the bullet exploded, causing irreversibly damage to my bot. A safeguard programmed into all Forerunner smartmatter made the Mantis self-destruct, disintegrating into nothing but dust. The small battle ended when another Mantis squad teleported in. The four bots appeared out of their small slipspace portals and within seconds poured laserbolts into the murderous crossfire they'd set up.
A small group of Orks decided to use their melee weapons and charged. Only two out of five Greenskins got close enough, the others learned how well the Mantis' plasma weapon worked. At such short range the gibbets of the three cooked Orks would be enough deterrent for any sane species, but these were not sane. Orks lived only for the fight, and it gave them a dangerous conviction to fight on beyond all reason. The fourth Ork was the first to learn that my Mantis had blades of their own. His choppa was parried with one blade while the other stabbed him in the neck. The last got his arm cut off but hacked the axe held in his remaining hand down with such force that the poor robot opposing him was bisected. He got blown up by a double plasma shot for his troubles.
As more Mantis squads showed up and the last Ork finally fell, it became very clear that my time in this spacehulk was running out. This group of Greenskins was merely annoying, but there had been only the most basic of Ork Boyz with choppa's and slugga's taking part. The hunched over, nearly two meter tall brutes were far less dangerous than some of the other Orks I knew were out there. If this had been a group of well-armed Ork Nobz or clanking Killakanz that had charged my defences, they'd have been overrun. With no knowledge about the rest of the hulk I'm in there could be thousands -millions potentially- more Orks coming for me right now, and I'd never know until I heard them screaming. I needed to secure the three ships I had annexed and get out, pronto.
The next group of Orks came soon after and from the same direction, only several hallways over. Shifting Mantis squads around was easy with their short range slipspace teleporter, so by the time I could see them and not just hear their bellowing there were twenty Mantises waiting in quickly constructed foxholes. The local Constructor had also shielded the entrance deeper into my base with an ion shield and a turret toting a terrible trio of twin-linked laser cannons, mated with an intimidating plasma cannon for added spice.
"Waaagh!" The Orks bellowed when they turned the last corner and saw my bots. "We'ze gonna scrap ya!" One of them shouted, raising a patched up rocket launcher to his shoulder and firing. With a whoosh and a blast of flame it discharged, sending the rocket spiralling towards my bots' positions. Despite attempts to shoot it down, its utterly erratic course and the short distance it had to travel saw it explode between two Mantises. To my ire the explosion took out both and broke the shields of the rest of that squad. That one Ork had just done more damage than the twenty of the first group. A clear sign that I was not prepared for a full on fight with Orks. For now, that is.
Still, that particular Greenskin didn't have long to enjoy the carnage he'd caused. A deep purple beam of energy reached out and hit him in the head, atomising it, after passing through the neck of the brute in front of him and going on to leave massive holes in the bodies of two more Orks behind where he stood, killing them on the spot. I nodded appreciatively, the first live fire test of a neutron laser was a clear success. Two could play at the game of getting better over time, and I was going to show those green-skinned mistakes that I was better at it than them.
The one to fire the neutron laser was my newest unit; the Scorpiad. Based on a scorpion like the Drone, this bot in contrast was about three meters long. Where the bike-sized Mantis was a light infantry unit, the car-sized Scorpiad took the position of heavy infantry. Like the Mantis the new bot had four legs and two arms. Those arms ended in large claws sheathed in a power field. A heavy gun was installed in the palm of the pincers. In this case it was volkite rifles. With a thrum they fired, blue beams racing forward and melting any Orks in their way as well as setting fire to any Orks close to the beam. Volkite weapons were the standard set up, but I could easily swap them out for a taser, plasma or laser weapon. For now I was more than content with the volkites' performance.
The neutron laser may be the bot's heaviest gun, but even the trio of tail and claw ordnance was by far not the only armament the Scorpiad sported. A Mantis-style turret with a longlas and plasma gun sat on each shoulder and rounded out its major weapons. These gave some excellent anti-personnel options as well as added to the Scorpiad's traverse range. In comparison the three heavy weapons were pointed mostly forward, with a limited ability to aim independently.
In this fight the turrets were very handy in picking off single targets. Any Ork that decided to charge my Scorpiad got a blast of plasma for its troubles. My new bot being larger and more dangerous, a lot of Orks decided that it made for a better target. They quickly learned that AI coordination and teleporting robots made setting up crossfires ridiculously easy. Bigger and more aggressive Orks got taken out first, as soon as they came within range. As more Greenskins kept flooding in, they soon learned that numbers didn't work either. Well, again, a sane species would've learned. Orks just kept coming. Even the Gretchen racing forwards were mercilessly cut down, these by the next level of weapons.
Staying with the Mantis style, each leg had a duo of laspistols grafted on the knee. Only the small hemispheres hiding the focusing lenses that could direct the laser in any direction were visible, handily completely skipping the normal barrel that would show a laser weapon was present. There were an additional two sets; the first was halfway up the tail while the last set was split; one on the head (about were a biological scorpion's eyes were), and one on the shin to cover the belly and right in front of the bot. Those holdout weapons were coming in very useful against Ork Grots and Gretchen. In the future they'd be effective against Tyranid Rippers and Necron Scarabs, too. I hoped. Basically, in any type of swarming attack. Lasers coming from everywhere to their faces would stop that right quick.
The reason I could stuff so many weapons on a single bot was that Forerunner energy technology eclipsed what the Federation could do, let alone the standards the Imperials set. The energy density the Forerunners took for granted in their designs was a magnitude higher. At the least. Thus, on top of all the weapons, this new bot had enough power for layered shields. I had binned my own attempt for now; the Mantis' shield was only good for around six laser shots. The Forerunners simply didn't care to keep anything so small shielded. Once things went above 500 meters, then I could build fantastic shields. Not before. Whatever type of shields they used for personal armour, I don't know, and I haven't found anything about it in my databanks either.
The Scorpiad thus used shields copied from the Federation power armour I'd recovered. In my simulations the outer bubble shield tanked three dozen laser shots before bleedthrough became a problem. And that was only the first layer! Adding to its strength was that this repulsor shield deflected anything shot at it, like there was an invisible Jedi who liked returning blasterfire back to hapless droid or stormtroopers hovering around every Scorpiad ever. I really loved that piece of tech. Unfortunately the Orks' random fire showed that a shot had to come in at just the right angle to return to sender. Still, when fired upon by a mob, 'in the general direction' worked quite well. I didn't much care whether a reflected shot hit the shooter or the Ork next to them. Under the repulsor was sectional ion shielding. One for each leg and the tail, shields below and on top and one in front. They could take about a third as much damage, enough for the robot to 'port away.
Or that was the plan. An Ork tank rolled up, smoke billowing from numerous smokestacks. It was painted in at least three different colour schemes and at least one of those was a pattern of dried blood artfully splattered across most of one side. The machine had been patched up with sections of irregular sheet metal in so many places that it had to be Ork psy-bullshit that kept it running. It was most likely a looted tank. That it still worked was easily proven when with a massive bang the main gun fired. The shell hit my Scorpiad straight on, the repulsor shield screeching as it tried to deflect the oversized warhead. The shield broke but not before shifting the shell's course enough to hit the tail, instead of the head, of the bot - where it ripped through the ion shield without any problems. So, when the Ork shell finally exploded, it only crippled the neutron laser instead of scrapping the whole bot.
The looted tank didn't get the chance to finish my poor robot. The Scorpiad's two volkite cannons as well as the turret protecting the door fired as one. Unlike my bot, the Ork construction did not have a shield. The two blue volkite beams, two red lasers and bright orange ball of plasma made the whole thing explode in a spectacular fireball, taking out the dozen Orks closest to it as well as setting fire to at least as many more.
The remaining Greenskins tried to rush forwards. They clearly smelled weakness with the most dangerous weapon of my defenders destroyed. It wasn't to be, though. Two more Scorpiads teleported in, their short range slipspace translocator hopping the distance from my assembly vats to the front in a few jumps. The reinforcements merely added their firepower to the lethal hail of energy bolts already scything down any Ork that came within range. The few Ork bullets that hit my crippled Scorpiad only scuffed the armour.
Again using what I'd learned from the Federation and Man of Iron scraps I had collected, the Scorpiad had proper armour to protect itself. An outer layer of smartmatter filled in any divots caused by enemy fire. It could also shift colour, acting as camouflage. Under the smartmatter a carapace of Forerunner armour strengthened by RFNs, Reinforcement Field Nodes, worked as the true barrier to stop the bot from being destroyed by all the varied forces out there that most certainly wanted me dead.
My new favourite material hadn't been left out either. I had been very busy upgrading all my assembly vats and Constructor bots to include the gellar shield projectors needed to produce phase-iron. I had updated the smartmatter Forerunners used for everything to now contain the substance, hopefully making all my creations fully invisible to any Warp shenanigans. This also gave me the confidence to, at last, step out of the cocoon made by the Federation and MoI ships.
I wasn't going to rush hordes of bots out there, yet, though. It was time for the swarm to get to work.