Chương 83: Volume Two - Chapter Nineteen - Green Tide

The Eternal Pride's pace was ponderous. In her training, she had 'walked' in simulated Armigers. They were speedy little things, able to keep up with a Tauros rapid assault vehicle, while maintaining the terrain adaptability of a scout sentinel. A good Armiger pilot could roll their knight, jump up and down, and even kick. She had never reached that level of expertise in the simulators, but she'd gotten a taste. The Eternal Pride moved slowly, ponderously.

"You move like a fucking grandpa," she grumped as she reached into the inner pocket of her coat.

"Beligerant. I would expel you from my throne and crush you under my steel-shod foot were we not walking into war." She laughed, a single, mean bark before pulling a cigarette out from the pack. It too some finessing to grab it while the knight shook and stomped forward, but she managed.

"You won't infect my interior with your foul-smelling habit."

"You don't have a nose," she reminded the knight as she scanned the auspex. As she did so, one of those little spider things scuttled up one of the broken screens, slid into the case behind it, then there was a faint zap. A moment later, a plume of blue smoke wafted out from behind the monitor, but the auspex screen flickered on, and she now had a slightly wider field of view. So, the little things were working.

She couldn't remember how long they were supposed to take to repair the knight to a like-new condition, but it wasn't fast. On the other hand, the Mechanicus were also repairing the Eternal Pride. Maybe together they were multiplicative? She could hope. They took another step forward. One leg moved twice as far as the other, but its knee was partially locked in place. Already, one of the readings to the side had gone from green to orange. The motive systems were breaking down even as she moved.

Were she a smarter woman, she might have turned around and walked the knight back to its berth. Sure, the firepower of a knight was needed now, but not so much that losing a knight on the field of battle was worth the risk. They kept stomping forward, moving one slow step at a time. She saw her men, then. Her section of the trench wasn't far from the entrance into the wall she was using. Her men were manning the far end of the trench, and already some of the marksmen were firing at distant targets.

More concerning was what she saw when she turned around a corner. The section of the trenches occupied by the 56th were a bloodbath. A hole large enough to drive a Leman Russ into was opened up, and out of that space came an army of orks. Men were piling up on the back of the trenches, firing into the tide of greenskins. Some fire was coming from above as well, men stationed on the wall itself taking shots into the horde.

"Emperor damn it," she cursed. The number of orks coming out of there was a problem. The fact that the hole was still open and that there didn't seem to be an end of them was a bigger issue. Then she glanced to the side and saw orks rushing over on squighogs. Not the usual squad of five to ten, but hundreds of them. Behind were vehicles of all sorts as well, trucks and bikes and repurposed ATVs.

One of the main guns on the wall boomed, and a few seconds later there was an explosion off in the distance, orks thrown out into the air. The orks returned fire, some big cannon going off and striking the ground fifty metres short of the trench. Her auspex scanned something, then zoomed in. Way, way out in the distance, behind the ork camp, huge tarps were being removed from atop that looked like lumbering piles of scrap. Moving piles of scrap. Her blood went cold. Stompas. Not three or four of them, but dozens.

Some were slowly trudging their way out of the sparse forests in the distance, more were being uncovered. There had to be fifty of them. And that was just for the camp she could see. The last siege had included a few hundred stompas, total, across the entire front which circled all the way around Death Bane. If this camp was anything even close to the others, then they might be facing three times as many across the front. And that was at a time when the wall was already being assaulted. She got on the vox.

"MacDonald. Order the movement of all of our supplies back into the wall. Prepare for a fighting retreat." There was nothing but static in reply.

"What the hell?" she asked after repeating the message twice.

"Eternal, is your vox damaged?" Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"No. We are being jammed."

"By the fucking orks?!" she asked.

"Do not underestimate your foe." She grit her teeth, but he was right. Of all times, this wasn't the ont to underestimate the orks. Not when they were pulling fast ones on the entire planetary guard. Instead, she focused on what she could do. She didn't have the points to buy something to counter the jamming. So she'd get them. Turning the Eternal Pride she faced the hole by the 56th. Then she armed the new gun she'd purchased.

The Castlekiller Type IX Heavy Gun Emplacement came on with a faint hum, and she noticed the firing solutions being fed into her MIU in an instant. The gun's response-time was a damned sight faster than anything she had. And it had missiles. She locked onto the opening in the ground even as a team of some two dozen gretchin pulled a large, armoured squighog through. It was pulling a sleigh covered in more guns. The lock-on happened instantly. She reached over, flicked up a safety cover, then tapped the fire button.

The missile launched with a whump, and her heart fell. Instead of travelling in a rapid, straight line in the direction she'd aimed it in, the missile flew in an upwards arc, blasting out towards the open sky.

"What the hell?" she asked. Then the missile's thrusters shut off, and it became a tiny black spec that her auspex could barely pick out against the sky. Before she could complain, however, the missile roared back to life and plunged towards the ground, curving all the while and moving so fast it became a blur. A blur that rammed right down the centre of the tunnel and went off with a massive boom that shook the earth beneath her feet.

Ork body parts, entire gretchin, and a dozen metres worth of dirt were thrown into the air followed by an expanding ball of flaming gas. Kills Confirmed: 32x Orks 19x Gretchin New Point Total: 850"Vyper," she asked.

"How much was that missile?"

"Seventy points."

"I see," she replied. Instead of cheering, she took control of the turret above, and while walking over at a slow, ponderous pace, she opened fire on the orks. That explosion had knocked a lot of them down, but was was only a momentary reprieve for the men of the 56th. Her volcano lance burning a line across the remaining orks, followed by the Castlekiller's explosive shells detonating amidst them was a little more helpful.

The earth near the far end of the trench, on the side that the orks usually came from, shifted, then moved aside as a large machine bored its way out of the ground. It moved aside, revealing a rust-covered mining machine currently manned by a gaggle of grechin. The new hole immediately started to fill as orks with cheap swords and knives and axes came pouring out, all of them shouting and hollering for blood. She armed and fired her second missile.

This time it raced straight ahead, decapitated a big ork as it flew by, then detonated somewhere deep within the tunnel. A wash of dust and fire and ork gore splattered out of the hole. Kills Confirmed: 41x Orks 9x Gretchin New Point Total: 1, 760 She fired into the orks with her main guns, then focused on the nearer ones with the Eternal Pride's chest-mounted meltas. One ork made it all the way to her, an axe held above his head. He brought it down, and it clanked harmlessly against her foot.

The Eternal's leg rose, then came down hard, crushing the ork into the dirt.

"Okay," she said.

"We've gained ourselves a few minutes, I think. Vyper... Machine Spirit Vyper. We won't survive this without your assistance."

"I am always happy to help." Sylvia reached into her jacket and pulled out a lighter. She'd been holding onto a single cigarette this entire time. Now she could finally light it. She took a pull.

"I need... a lot of things, but let's start from the top of the list. Can you replenish those missiles without me having to got back and bother the Tech Priests about it?"

"Of course."

"Great. Good. In that case... let's make a few points, and slow those fuckers down. Then we'll see about the Vox, and pull off an orderly retreat." She was vaguely aware of the men of the 56th cheering as the last ork was gunned down. The last ork here now. If they had pulled off this tunnel trick here, then they'd pull it off elsewhere, and there was an entire tide of green rushing their way.