Chapter 16Forge
On the planet Broadmeadow the Freundschaftsbeziehungen 9845th Volksgrenadiers armoured regiment of 158 Ferrous Prime Pattern Leman Russ Demolisher tanks rumbled forwards, flanked by 8 other similar sized armoured regiments with Leman Russ Demolisher tanks, forming an armoured spearhead of over a thousand mighty tanks.
Behind this armoured spearhead towered the warlord titan god engine "Gaussian Elimination" of Legio Mathematicus, its titanic plasma destructor cannons spitting blindingly bright bolts of white hot plasma overhead to vaporise entire ork squads down to their component atoms.
Thousands of basilisk artillery pieces fired ahead of the advancing spearhead, obliterating any ork positions the titan plasma destructor missed, the very ground ahead was nothing but fire and sprays of dirt kicked up by explosions.
The Imperium had had enough of these orks and was attempting to recapture some ground from them by sheer brute force.
The miserable workers of Ferrous Prime had been working punishing overtime shifts and massively increased production quotas to manufacture tens of thousands of additional armoured vehicles, artillery and tanks, and trillions of shells of ammunition. Literally billions of tons of additional iron ore had been dugout and smelted from all the mandatory overtime, and it had gone to amassing a truly impressive tank force.
The current armoured spearhead of over a thousand tanks was just the tip of the spear, with an additional ten thousand Leman Russ tanks of various types following behind to push deep behind enemy lines as soon as the breach was made. These ten thousand tanks were supported by twenty thousand chimera armoured transports all filled with squads of battle hardened Volksgrenadier veterans in heavy carapace armour, equipped with thousands of plasma guns to make them especially effective at killing orks.
The Demolisher tanks of the tip of the spear rolled forward into the obliterated scorched earth of the breach point, scanning their thermal sights for any trace of ork survivors. Huge plasma cannons mounted on the tank side sponsons belched out high energy death at every living ork that was found, the orks not so much burning in the plasma as completely evaporating without so much as ashes remaining, the ground under them glowing red hot and molten down to a glassy consistency.
The orks simply "were not" in the face of this advance, they simply didn't exist anymore, not so much as a finger remained in one piece as plasma and explosions rearranged orks on such an atomic scale that they simply ceased to be. Nothing could stand before this level of firepower.
The tanks continued forward uncontested, the artillery and titan plasma fire creeping ahead of the advance to ensure they faced nothing but cinders. The tank gunners were almost bored with so little to shoot at.
The ork reserves behind the front lines were rushing in to attack the tanks, but they evaporated under the plasma fire of the "Gaussian Elimination" before they even got close enough to fire a shot, their bodies and even their metal weapons evaporating into white hot vapour without a trace.
Then the ground all around the tanks simply exploded in a storm of smoky black explosions and rusty shrapnel!
Every ork artillery piece within range was firing nonstop into the armoured spearhead!
The ground was pure fire and explosions and screaming gretchin who had accidentally been fired out the cannons instead of the shells!
Tanks blew apart as appallingly large ork shells hit the roofs of the tanks and blasted in the crew hatches, detonating the onboard ammunition.
The Imperial artillery gave counter battery fire, silencing the ork guns one by one, but not before almost every tank had had at least one crew member shit themselves in terror.
Burning hulks of blown up demolisher tanks littered the battlefield, but the hundreds of surviving tanks of the tip of the spearhead kept pushing forward, still meeting little but ashes and cinders to contest their advance.
The spearhead pushed deep into the ork line, going several kilometres past the initial front trench line, they kept moving forward.
The ork resistance vanished after twenty kilometres of line penetration, they were through now and behind the lines.
The tens of thousands of armoured vehicles behind the tip of the spearhead sped forward and branched out to wreak havoc behind the lines, cutting ork supply lines of communication and blowing up ammunition supplies. This was a major success!
The ork air forces then arrived…
Tank crews and infantry screamed as berserk fighter bombers and koptors and stranger sorts of aircraft bombed and strafed the entire force!
Imperial air support was quick to provide fighter cover, lightning fighters tearing through ork aircraft in savage attacks. The entire sky was a sea of fire as aircraft on both sides attacked each other, burning chunks of aircraft falling down from the sky trailing plumes of black smoke.
Suddenly a blinding flash, then a mushroom cloud, then a deafening roar of noise!
More mushroom clouds throughout the imperial attacking force!
The ork bombers were NUKING the armoured vehicles with atomic bombs!
Tanks tumbled and rolled across the ground like toys from the force of the nuclear shock waves, pasting the tank crews against the hard walls of the tank interiors.
Men on foot evaporated, leaving their nuclear shadows burned into the ground where they had been.
This was a disaster!
The ork nukes missed and hit their own front line forces, evaporating hundreds of thousands of orks with nuclear fire.
The surviving orks were CHEERING at having been nuked, they LIKED it!
The crop fields of Broadmeadow would be RUINED if these nukes didn't stop, radiation would contaminate the fertile meadows and all of this fighting would have been for nothing!
The Imperial air units desperately shot down incoming nukes, not getting all of them and mushroom clouds appearing in random places with appalling accuracy, obliterating everything they hit.
The Imperial spearhead force was decimated by nukes but not completely destroyed, the force spread out behind ork lines to make themselves harder to nuke.
The ork nukes stopped as the Imperial air forces established complete air superiority over the immediate battlefield.
The huge warlord titan "Gaussian Elimination" stood undaunted by the nuclear fire, its colossal void shields having absorbed the energy of the atomic bombs with little more than a reserve capacitor blow out from the power strain. The Gaussian Elimination let fly high energy death from its mighty plasma destructor arms, evaporating orks in the trenches who had survived the nuclear friendly fire.
Hundreds of thousands of imperial guard reserve soldiers advanced to storm the burning ork positions, but hundreds of men dropped down dead in the intense radioactive fallout, the battlefield was CONTAMINATED!
The Gaussian Elimination was still raging unopposed, unbothered by radiation and simply destroying orks indiscriminately.
Maybe a million orks were some variation of "dead" from the events of this battle so far, but the Imperial casualties were also catastrophic. More than half of the approximately ten thousand new tanks were now burning radioactive wrecks, at least hundreds of thousands of men were dead or dying, mostly from the nukes and the resulting radiation.
The Imperial guard generals argued that this was probably an imperial victory, as they had killed more orks than humans and had captured some ground. The ork front lines were in disarray, but the location was now so radioactive that it was difficult to really take proper advantage of the situation.
The Gaussian Elimination then messaged the high command that it was running low on ammunition gas for its colossal plasma destructors…
The Gaussian Elimination withdrew behind friendly lines to take on fresh ammunition gas, even titans did not have unlimited plasma ammunition. The imperial guard generals groaned.
Companies of elite storm troopers in radiation armour were deployed in the radiation zone by Valkyrie aerial insertions, ordered to hold the open positions as the high command tried to muster together some forces that could withstand radiation.
The orks were charging into the radiation zones now, their fungal flesh so tough that they shrugged off the lethal rads with nothing more than a "ouch that hurts!"
The storm troopers stood their ground and fired their hell guns into the orks, burning laser holes right through them, but the orks charged forward in an unstoppable scrum and slammed into the storm troopers in a blue painted green tide, ramming roaring chainsaws up their bottoms and sawing them messily in half.
Artillery fire avenged the fallen storm troopers, their sacrifice bunching the orks together tightly enough to allow basilisk artillery to mince the orks into fungus chunks. Few orks survived as ten thousand artillery guns flattened their location at exactly the same moment.
The Imperial Guard was quickly realising that capturing this radioactive ground would be very difficult and potentially futile, and they were now instead focusing on killing as many orks as possible in revenge, artillery opening up savagely to obliterate as many orks as they possibly could.
The wind changed, blowing radioactive fallout across the imperial front lines!
Hundreds of men were soon vomiting with radiation sickness, the orks used dirty DIRTY atomic bombs with obscenely high radiation levels!
This situation was not going to plan.
The imperial forces withdrew from the radiation, actually LOSING ground in this supposed victory!
They took trenches several kilometres back from the original front line, letting the orks freely gain kilometres of extra ground!
The mauled spearhead forces behind ork lines were in confused disarray, what the hell was going on with their carefully planned big push!?!
Then the Gaussian Elimination returned to the battlefield with full gas tanks for its plasma destructors.
The huge god engine boomed with laughter with its war trumpets as it vaporised thousands of orks, none could stand before its might.
Burning ork chunks littered the battlefield as the Gaussian Elimination burned everything around it with berserk war trumpet laughter, it was single handedly holding the entire battlefield and it was winning.
"You orks DARE to stand before Legio Mathematicus!?! Insolent insects, I shall destroy your very atoms!" The Gaussian Elimination roared at the orks.
"Um, dat is a bit too much dakka lads, a fight is good an all but that fing got too much dakka." Various orks muttered to each other apprehensively, the beasts were growing afraid of the Gaussian Elimination now.
The Gaussian Elimination roared and turned more orks into white hot molecules.
"Zog this, too much dakka, leg it!"
Thousands of orks were now retreating from the battlefield, the Gaussian Elimination had won the day!
The Gaussian Elimination lifted its mighty head and roared in triumph at the sky, none could stand before its might.
Glory to Ferrous Prime!
Glory to the Legio Mathematicus!
Tremble puny insects before the god engine might!
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