Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

The mortal troops kitted out in CMC powered suits were the absolute elite that Lin, working with Hays, had cherry-picked from the ranks of the Astra Militarum. Hays had even posted his own personal guard into the unit.

Unlike the makeshift version Lin had cobbled together earlier on the Azure Star, these powered suits — which on the Forge Worlds had now entered serial production — were forged from high-grade ceramite-steel that afforded superb fully-sealed protection.

Although most of the suits' auxiliary systems had been gutted out of deference to the Warhammer setting's prohibition on Abominable Intelligence, the powered suit alone — paired with the electromagnetic rifles its wearers carried — already far outclassed the armaments of the bulk of the Imperial Guard.

These battle-tempered veterans had been resolute of will to begin with, and now, harnessed into armour more advanced even than what the Tempestus Scions wore, they appeared more formidable yet.

At a single command from Lin, the troops who had long lain hidden in ambush burst out from both flanks of the salient like wolves and tigers.

Their numbers came to no more than two thousand, but the Penetrator electromagnetic rifles in their hands — pushing a rate of fire as high as five thousand six hundred rounds a minute — vomited forth a torrent of firepower fiercer than that of tens of thousands of ordinary Astra Militarum lasgun fire.

Dense storms of steel-nail slug rounds blanketed the unwitting greenskins, and in an instant numberless Orks had been riddled into sieves.

These weapons — fitted out from the outset for mortal hands — were now at last truly displaying their towering worth!

The Ork host, which had been pushing happily into the line, juddered to a halt. Realising that the weapons in these shrimpies' hands were not lasguns, the Orks scrambled in haste for cover — only to be punched clean through, cover and all, by the supersonic steel nails.

A portion of the Orks tried to return fire with their dakka-guns, but the veterans in their CMC powered suits, leaning on their range advantage, kept the distance between them constant.

The greenskins' touchingly poor accuracy at that range simply could not threaten the veterans. The occasional round that did strike home was deflected by the ceramite-steel armour plates, leaving nothing more than a few inconspicuous dents.

The Orks bellowed in rage. After a spell of milling and shoving, they at last pushed a handful of cobbled-together vehicles up to the front. They huddled furtively behind these vehicles' armour plates, hoping in this way to close the distance to the CMC units.

But Lin had no intention of indulging them. He picked up the vox-handset and gave his second order.

"Siege tanks — open fire!"

Unlike the Basilisk artillery pieces, which were limited to a range of a mere fifteen kilometres, the Shockwave Artillery Cannons — boasting nearly twice the Basilisk's reach — allowed Lin to deploy them in zones the greenskins could not even see.

Pushed along by their electromagnetic accelerators, the shells traced a graceful arc through mid-air and, in accordance with the firing solutions called by the spotters, plunged in among the Orks attempting to close on the CMC units.

The high-explosive rounds detonated on contact with the ground, blooming murderous fireworks within the Ork throng. Vehicle parts and greenskin limbs flew together in tandem, sounding the opening notes of the counter-attack.

The Ork assault was broken.

But the bloodthirsty artillery were plainly not satisfied with that. Following the plan Lin had earlier laid down, they raked the entire stretch of position the Orks had previously torn open with a creeping barrage.

The fire from the electromagnetic cannons — which had no need to wait for barrels to cool — came swift and dense, and very soon the greenskin boyz pressing in behind were broken to ribbons. The few that slipped the net were mopped up one by one by the CMC units advancing in the wake of the bombardment.

No matter how undaunted by death the Orks might be, their struggles were futile in the face of such firepower.

This was artillery. This was the God of War.

Beneath the wrath of heaven and the shaking of the earth, the Orks could no longer hold the breach they themselves had earlier opened. The seemingly unstoppable green tide was now sundered down the middle by this elite mortal unit, as though Moses had parted the sea. Ordinary Astra Militarum held in reserve moved swiftly up to plug the gap and fill in this stretch of defensive line.

This marked the successful completion of the first phase of Lin's plan. Hays grew elated; he, who had earlier still been doubting the combat power of this unit, now slammed his fist hard through the air, betraying an emotion too great for words.

Lin himself showed nothing of the sort — all of this had unfolded exactly as he had foreseen.

The Ork main force, with the Gargant at its head, had already driven deep into the line under Gadda's leadership; and although over a million Orks were still pouring through the breach behind him, the follow-on Ork formations had little of those bizarre armoured contraptions left, and it was reasonable enough that the elites Lin had so painstakingly prepared could hold them back.

Except that the ammunition-expenditure reports being passed up to him left Lin reeling…

The thinly manned CMC units had, in this short space of time, already burnt through over a million rounds of ammunition. Were they not backed by an entire Forge World, the appalling logistics on this Warhammer side would never have stood up to that kind of consumption.

Fortunately, Lin had prepared abundantly for this battle. Wagon after wagon of ammunition was being hauled to the re-established Astra Militarum line, with massed batteries giving support from behind. With heaven's timing, earth's terrain, and the harmony of men all blessing them, the Astra Militarum veterans — fighting fiercer the longer they fought — pummelled the greenskins who were trying to reopen the breach and link back up with their Warboss into wailing wrecks crying for father and mother.

In an evenly matched fight, the Orks could often pull off improbable victories on the strength of their 'I-reckon' power; but in this present scenario, where it was sheer crushing one-sided force, even the might of the two Brothers Gork and Mork could not help these greenskin boyz, who could not reckon any path to victory whatsoever.

The fearsome firepower butchered the greenskins, who continued to throw themselves at the line like headless flies, and the place where the breach had earlier been torn open was now turned into a greenskin abattoir.

Which meant that the Orks' drive deep into the interior of the line had now been severed at the waist!

By this point, even Gadda had realised that this was a trap.

But he didn't care.

He didn't so much as consider turning his army back to break out; instead he led the greenskins around him on a rampage straight on through the defence line.

He was, after all, mounted in a mighty Gargant — who could stop him?

Who would dare stop him!

"Boyz!" he bellowed. "Dem shrimpies can't beat uz in a fight, dat's why dey've gone an' set traps fer uz!"

"Wiv Brother Mork to guide us — let's tear every last shrimpy ta bitz!"

"Gork an' Mork 'em! WAAAAGH!"

The battle-hungry Orks, stoked by Gadda's words, were whipped up into fervour once more. This half-mechanised Ork host went rampaging on within the defensive line.

A preliminary estimate showed that the Orks who had pushed in past the line numbered something over a million. Coupled with the excellence of their gear, even if all three million Astra Militarum along the defensive line were redirected to encircle them, it was by no means certain they could put down this mob of Orks.

To say nothing of the fact that, at this moment, every scrap of the Astra Militarum's attention was bent on holding the front itself.

The attack the Orks had launched — at a scale numbering in the tens of millions — was a comprehensive offensive, and every point along the line was under Ork assault. The Astra Militarum's elites had been pulled by Lin to Gadda's main axis of advance to plug the gaping wound torn open there, which in turn meant that the Astra Militarum on every other stretch of the line were already locked in desperate fighting, stretched too thin to spare a hand.

On the front facing Gadda head-on, just four hundred thousand Astra Militarum fought and fell back, fought and fell back. They drew the Orks toward a refining plant within the resource zone, intending to wage the final battle there.

It was one of the few places on this plain where systematic resistance could be organised, and it was also the decisive battleground Lin had selected.

Here he had laid traps in advance and dug entrenchments. The last remaining armoured strength on this line was likewise concentrated here — in addition to two Astra Militarum armoured regiments, there was also Christina's Warlord-class Titan, which had until now never once taken the field.

The mortal armies had done all that mortal armies could do.

What came next was the battlefield of the transcendent.

Lin gave a slight nod toward Admidel, and Admidel — taking his meaning — fell in at Lin's side and walked out with him.

The deployments were all complete; there was no longer any point in remaining here.

The handling of the fine details could be left to General Hays.

He himself meant to set the closing stroke on this battle by his own hand.

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