~Siege of San Leor~
~804. M30~
~Segmentum Ultima~
~San Leor~
~Arik Taranis, Thunder Warrior, Star Slayer Commander, Bearer of the Lightning Banner~
These 'lascannons' took some getting used to. His finger pulled down on the trigger. The weapon in his hand didn't move, didn't bark with recoil, didn't do much of anything really.
A bright flash of light, a line traced its way to the ramshackle armored vehicle of alien design, appearing and disappearing in an instant. A deep crack of thunder sounded out as the air ionized from the beam, echoing a few hundred of its fellows along the ridge. The front of the vehicle turned red-hot in an instant, before creating a panicked sounding whine and exploding in an appreciable bloom of fire and dust.
A dozen green-skinned aliens, almost but not quite as tall as any of he or his men, lept from the wrecked vehicle calling in slurring roars and charging forwards at their open position. Wearing black-painted armor, with white-painted faces, and moving with a lumbering gallop.
The internal cogitator of his armor told him it would take ten seconds before the lascannon was ready to fire again, recharged from the 'induction chargers' mounted in his powered gauntlets and connected to the microfusion reactor on his back. The weight of the new armor and weapons combined was right around three hundred pounds, accounting for the fact that he and all his men were eight feet tall and things needed to be sized for them. Half of that was just in this reinforced gun Malum gave them, and a third of it was in the powered components of their new armor.
This scene was repeated across a few hundred meters, his men spread out across a hill and taking shots at any of the ramshackle vehicles as they approached, positions rushed by screaming aliens with crude blades and barking guns. Most of the guns were only vaguely aimed at them, many of the bullets that normally would reach them deflected by a projected field of energy, and the few that did land often just bounced off plates of bronze-colored bone.
The actual plates felt like they weighed nothing. Thirty pounds, maybe, about a tenth of the overall weight of their wargear.
Back on Terra, everything was heavy, sturdy plates of steel and ceramite and bolters with enough recoil to break a normal man's arm. There was a certainty to that weight, that they alone could bear the burden of the arms and armor needed to purge all the bastards coming out of their wasteland holes and deciding to be a nuisance to the rest of reality. The Emperor's eyes were upon them, and the weight of that gaze matched the weight of their weapons.
Some of the greenskins, Orks they were apparently named, fired off missiles once they got close enough. Bulky things that swirled through the air drunkenly as they rocketed forwards, vaguely aimed in the direction of one of his men. Once they got close enough, the anti-missile lasers mounted on their shoulders locked on automatically and began to beam still-recoilless rays of light. Most of the rockets exploded in the air long before they reached any of them.
Fighting in the stars, under the command of his son? It felt effortless. Weapons without recoil, armor without weight, direction clear, and enemies obvious. To be frank, it still felt too good to be true. And yet, here he was. In a body that didn't tear itself apart every time he moved too quick or punched too hard.
His lascannon was ready for another shot, leisurely he took aim at the nearest target and pulled the trigger again.
A flash of light, the crack-boom of thunder, and a weapon that purred with heat instead of barking with recoil. The nearest ork collapsed into a pile of melted armor and vaporized meat. There was a scent of burned vegetables in the air, smelling like cave fungus that ma used to make. Idly he wondered if these aliens made for good eating, can't be any worse than godbeast flesh.
"WAAAGH!" The group of orks roared as they practically jumped over eachother to get to him on the ridge. It was piss-easy to lure them in, one shot vaguely near the line of sight for the vehicles would pull one towards their firing line, followed by every vehicle that could see that first vehicle, followed by everything else they could bring to bear in vague proximity until an entire group was dead. The truly impressive thing was just how many of them there were.
His lascannon was ready again. He fired. Another ork died in light and thunder. Across a hundred meters or so, a bit over five-hundred of his men fired their own bolts of crack-booming beams.
They were soon to be upon him. A faster-firing secondary weapon might be handy for situations like this, but if Arik was being honest?
The alien leapt at him, thickly-muscled arms swinging slabs of sharpened metal crudely bolted to a handle of thick bone. "KRUMP YA GOOD!" It roared as it approached.
His grip shifted, his right hand twisted, his left hand let go of the immense gun in his hand. He thrusted it forwards and slashed up to the side.
The blade mounted along the bottom of the barrel tore through crude plate and alien flesh with contemptuous ease, backed by his immense strength, spraying viscera and red in an arc outwards and staining the other aliens behind it. The alien continued forwards with momentum, two halves flying past on either side of Arik.
He honestly preferred it this way. These lascannons still felt strange to fire. A sword was a sword, no matter how much like a gun it was shaped.
He twisted his arm again, and brought the lascannon down. Another charging ork was bisected in a burst of hot gore. He stomped forwards and twisted into a vicious elbow strike that collapsed another orks skull through the armored helmet it was wearing.
A thunder warrior like him could toss tanks around if they had the leverage for it, a few decent-sized aliens weren't about to survive more than a glazing blow. Least they shouldn't, he grunted in curiosity as the ork he had just beaten the faceplate in still swung at him, its head still a concave shape and throat gurgling blood. These orks were tough ones, that was for certain.
The cleaver crashed against his pauldron and bounced off, angled armor taking away much of the bite of the weapon. They might get through if he gave them a straight cut.
He grunted and stomped forwards. Five orks swung their cleavers at him. His arm flexed in phantom pain.
His blade turned five orks into ten half-orks.
The last ork screamed as it jumped at him, his weapon well out of the way.
Ah, what a terrible predicament, whatever shall he do?
Arik's left fist rocketed forwards, a scream of twisting metal and squelch of torn flesh followed as his hand closed around the spine of the alien through the armor plate, thickly-muscled torso, and unnaturally sturdy ribcage.
The ork, unbothered by having a fist in its chest, replied with a polite roar and swung its cleaver down to bounce off his angled pauldron. He grunted, slamming the fist down and bringing his armored boot to stomp down on the ork's head. Then, with good leverage, he tore the chunk of bone and flesh out to toss away.
Shaking off his fist and looking for the next thing to kill, a voice called out to him. "Thank you for that." He glanced over to Kytan, a splatter and line of alien blood on his helmet and dragging down across his visor.
Arik rumbled with laughter as he turned back to the firing lines, idly lining up a shot and turning an ork some dozens of meters away and approaching an already busy thunder warrior into a pile of charred vegetable-meat and blackened metal. "Your voice sounds dishonest, Stuffy. Do you not appreciate the gift?"
"You're right, I apologize for being misleading. Don't throw xeno gore at me, Legion Commander." Kytan demonstrated his spine by grunting out a command towards what was theoretically his superior. "Catch." He then called out.
Without looking, Arik caught the bottle and stabbed his lascannon-sword into the ground. Raising his faceplate and unscrewing the bottle, he took a swig of the alcohol and savored the taste.
That bastard. This was the good stuff. He asked for shitty beer, not this sweet caramel-groxshit.
Raising and aiming the lascannon with one hand, he fired at yet another ork bothering one of his boys, turning it into char and slag. The numbers of this horde were thinning out, it would be time to move again soon. Frowning and swiging again, Arik gave a quick command. "Oi, Kytan, tell the bigears to start looking for another big group, we're just about done here."
Kytan hummed in confirmation, and Arik busied himself with shooting the too-gentle weapon at the scattered aliens roaring and dragging themselves forwards on their hands whenever one of his boys got sloppy and hit their legs instead of the body.
Frowning he looked to the horizon and the plumes of black smoke rising, only increasing with thickness and coverage with time instead of thinning out as he had been expecting. He raised a hand and tapped the side of his helmet.
"Oi, Brutus, give me a visual directly southwards." He commanded in a grumble. Brutus, one of their rookies currently using a wimpy 'Long-Las' to draw in the ramshackle vehicles with potshots and set up on the highest point in their local region, replied after a moment.
"On it commander." A few moments passed as Arik brought down his visor again and mentally commanded the optic-screens to change to the right channel. Lots of nifty features on these new sets of armor like that.
The screen flickered, before his left eye's view changed to a high point, through a scope, and viewing a distant horizon.
Great, squat, fat, black things stomped forwards. Their faces were painted white, their arms replaced with big guns, and power-packs on their backs belching smoke into the sky above. There were two sizes to the forms, one about half the size of the other, and far more numerous. For a moment he thought he was looking at some of these orks in ramshackle power armor, before noticing the tiny figures crawling around on the great forms and the miniscule tanks at their feet.
Then, in the distance even further away, he thought he spied tiny skull-like faces slowly emerging over the horizon's edge. The Orks had war-walkers it seemed, and they were great big fuckers with great big guns.
"Oi, tell the bigears to pull us back a half-mile. We need to send word up the line." He growled out at Kytan.
Kytan nodded, and a moment later a few dozen portals crashed into existence behind their ridge. "Fall back." He commanded over the open channel. His boys started to move backwards, firing and killing the last of this bunch of orks as they moved until they stepped onto a new shade of grass and reality closed in front of them once more.
"Sound off, injuries?" Arik called out to his boys. A couple called out in confirmation, most of them the rookies. He figured it would be something like that. So far, he wasn't too impressed with these xenos. Maybe their war-walkers would put up more of a fight.
—
~Hachen, Albion Man-At-Arms~
His real arrogance, as he had come to find out, was not trying harder to become a cripple or fatass. As it turned out, being a reasonably fit male in early adulthood in the current year was a horrible mistake, because that meant he was a perfect candidate to be drafted into a giant space-king's armies and sent off to conquer worlds that he really couldn't give a shit about.
Sure, technically he was eligible for a draft at any point, but being a relatively well insulated colony of the rather powerful Pyric system-empire (they called it something else, but an empire was an empire no matter how you named it), he had grown up with all the basic needs met and parents that worked decent jobs in local company paperwork.
He had ambitions of being some rich lady's boytoy, that way he wouldn't have to actually find a job. He had spent a lot of hard work in being suitable for that kind of role.
Unfortunately, rich ladies like young men who had lithe muscles and sharp looks in their eyes, the exact same type of young men that nefarious military recruiters looked for and offered generous paychecks to their families for. Bought and sold like an exotic product, he now knew what cute women in his sister's trashy novels felt like. He didn't blame his parents for taking the cash, his ambitious little sister was worth quite a bit more than a son with dreams of being a layabout, she actually wanted to be successful on her own merit.
Unfortunately for him, that left him in the rather awkward position of holding a laser rifle and waiting for orders to shoot at the giant green screaming monsters with massive scrap-metal guns and axes. Covered head to toe in cream-white armor plates and tan coveralls that were apparently void-capable, Hachen decided that this was all bullshit and that he was probably going to die on this world, and when he reached whoever was in charge of the afterlife he was going to forward a strongly-worded letter to whoever was in charge of fate, specifically his fate.
He would then get on his hands and knees and shamelessly beg to be reincarnated as a spoiled princeling with a huge harem of exotic women who pretended to love him, please and thank you.
How grand it was that his home-empire decided to join up with an even bigger empire for what he could only assume was yet further imperial ambitions in space, as if that was a good idea the last few thousand times humanity had tried something like that. The screaming orks approaching in the distance looked a lot more terrifying in real life than they did in state-sponsored military propaganda films. The weapon in his hand seemed much too small and his armor seemed much too light to help him here.
"Now." The command boomed out over his internal vox, coming from the nearby superhuman clad in much heavier armor and overlooking their side of the battlefield. He pulled the trigger and the toy in his hands traced a line towards the rushing orks with a crack of ionizing air. This crack accompanied by about a thousand more as everyone he was with fired at the screaming monsters.
Hachen was glad he had spent the last few hours digging trenches with everyone else, because the front of his mound of earth exploded right after. He was also glad that he was wearing a helmet, because something bounced off it and felt like someone elbowed his skull. Grunting in pain as a headache bloomed to life on his temples, he decided the best move to make was to hold down the trigger and keep his aim in roughly the right direction, his lasgun cracking with shots on 'high power' mode and being kind enough to not jump in his hands like normal guns do.
Now please kill the scary aliens, mister gun, he could still hear their furious roars over the crackling air.
His vision cleared up, and much to his dismay, many of the orks were still rushing up the hill towards them. Each one took a quick burst of laser-line to some part of their armor and practically walked through it, only barely staggering as their armor slagged and flesh beneath exploded in red gore. Quickly changing his strategies, he decided the most effective thing to do was to shoot at one someone else was already shooting at.
Focusing team effort on one target was a winning strategy to get rid of at least some of your problems.
Picking the lead ork and deciding to keep the trigger held down against it, Hachen watched in no small amount of dread as the giant thing walked through a good ten or so shots from angles before finally falling forwards as a smoking corpse.
The thing had made it entirely too many meters in the time it took to take down.
Sweating and hands shaking, he turned his aim towards the next closest ork. Another ten or more shots before it went down, roaring and screaming in ways that were comical in films but quite effective in person.
There were simply too many to take down. They'd be upon them long before.
"Keep firing!" A harsh command came over the vox, this time from the local brute in power-armor that acted as their squad commander. She herself carried a much more powerful looking gun connected to a large power-pack on her back and annihilating an ork with every shot. Hachen decided that she was quite presumptuous to assume that he had stopped at any point.
The lasguns fired again and again, waves of green-skinned murder monsters got ever and ever closer. A few of them rocketed forwards on crude-looking jetpacks, but each of these were targeted by yet more men in fancy power armor behind them, carrying much bigger laserguns that turned orks into corpses with each shot.
The man next to him staggered as half a massive corpse landed on him from the sky above.
One less lasgun firing. He was in danger.
Quickly turning from the task of firing and shoving the corpse off his fellow man, he turned back just in time to see a terrifying black boot stomp in front of his field of vision.
He threw himself back. The ork screamed. "GOTCHA GIT!"
He mentally began to record that strongly worded letter.
A bone-white sword crashed into the crude cleaver and forced it to the side. His squad-leader stomping forwards and stabbing at the ork.
The ork threw its head forwards in a massive headbutt, sending his squad leader staggering before she could complete her thrust. It roared "ORKS IZ MADE FOR WINNIN'!" as it reared back to swing again.
The lasgun in the hands of his neighbor crackled as it cut the less armored legs of the ork out from underneath it, sending the ork tumbling before it could properly finish said swing. Coming back to himself, he aimed his own lasgun and held down the trigger on the very large head with very big teeth only a few feet from him.
He kept firing until the lasgun beeped to alert him that it was out of ammo. That signal being his salvation, he scrambled backwards until the man behind him was in front of him and firing on the frontline instead of Hachen.
Hachen busied himself with replacing the power-pack of the gun, and settled on two things. First was that his ambitions to be a lazy trophy husband had been his real downfall, and second that he would be seeking promotion into whatever got him in power armor and carrying decent-sized guns as soon as possible.
As it turned out, it only took his life being on the line for him to find his sense of ambition, who would've thought?