Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

The countercharge hugely lifted the morale of the Astra Militarum.

As for the greenskins—even though greenskins are the creatures least affected by morale—their fighting spirit still inevitably sagged a little.

These shrimp they'd been hounding so relentlessly just a moment ago—how had they suddenly grown a bit hard to chew?

Granted, this dip was only a slide from wildly excited down to ordinarily excited, but the greenskins' inconceivable 'I-reckon' power is intimately bound up with their numbers and their morale.

They still had eight hundred thousand Orks and a tally of Killa Kans running into the thousands, yet that psychic force no ordinary man could comprehend had genuinely fallen off by no small measure.

This weakening of the psychic energy was soon made tangible upon the Gargant, which relied on the Waaagh energy of all the Orks to hold itself together.

The Volcano Cannon, freshly cooled down, was aimed and fired by the master gunner. But just as in the previous shots, no one in the Titan's crew expected this single lance of las-fire to do any real damage.

Christina felt the machine-spirit's displeasure; the high-intensity firing had already driven the residual heat in the Volcano Cannon's coils to a dangerous level. Soon she would have no choice but to lower the Titan's rate of fire to keep the entire Titan running properly.

But the hope of destroying the Gargant grew dimmer by the day...

As the Titan's captain, Christina had never once felt this God-Machine to be so powerless. Her mind raced through countermeasures for after she throttled the rate of fire. But the next instant, she heard the master gunner's cry of astonishment.

"Confirmed hit on target.... By the Omnissiah above! That thing's arm finally came off!"

Christina froze for a heartbeat, but very quickly she felt the Titan's joy and the report from the augurs.

That arm of the Gargant, the one mounting the enormous Zzap Gun, had been wrecked by this shot. It dropped clean off the Gargant, turning the machine into a ludicrous one-armed giant.

The Titan had punched through what would conventionally be its vital points several times over with the Volcano Cannon, yet up until now the Gargant had shown no sign of decline. The Orks' inconceivable psychic energy had sustained its overall structure, letting this Gargant—no bigger than a Reaver-class—trade blows on even terms with a Warlord-class Titan.

But once the greenskins' numbers and their fervor had both been ground down, the physical laws of the real universe took hold of this Gargant once more.

It could no longer withstand any further blows!

Every reading leapt at dizzying speed through Christina's mind, and, swept up by the machine-spirit's emotions, she excitedly reported her estimate to Lin:

"That Gargant won't last much longer—I only need half an hour!"

Lin, out on the line, had of course seen the wounded Gargant. Unlike the Astra Militarum troopers who were so thrilled they could nearly leap into the air, what arrived in his mind was the far-from-encouraging news relayed by Hays, away in the command room.

"The line we plugged earlier can't hold anymore." Hays was terse and to the point, but Lin could picture his anxiety.

"How much longer?" he asked.

"The staff officers' assessment is one hour. But those Orks desperate to link up with their warlord are too crazed—I'd say it's less than half an hour."

That was no surprise.

Though the CMC forces had been unstoppable earlier when they pulled the breach closed again, the Orks had since come to their senses and concentrated the kans that had been scattered across the line, and more and more Ork armour began battering that sealed breach again and again.

The situation now was already different from ten days ago. The greenskins that had just made planetfall were in an almost purely primitive state, nothing but Ork boyz; though their descent from the heavens had been a stunning spectacle, the fully equipped Astra Militarum still held the advantage over them.

But now the greenskins had built their kans—these contraptions that stuffed a Gretchin inside as the driver turned the originally feeble Gretchin into a powerful killing machine, further widening the greenskins' numerical edge.

And beyond the kans, the greenskins had even cobbled together no small number of heavy guns. Yet the Astra Militarum, masters of artillery, couldn't even mount a single concentrated counter-battery barrage to knock out the Ork gun positions.

Because the Orks simply had no such thing.

The Orks' scattered gunfire followed no discernible order, but the casualties inflicted by their relentless bombardment had become hard to bear. The Astra Militarum's earlier equipment advantage had already grown thin, and every Astra Militarum position was now under continuous assault by greenskins numbering at least three to one.

On top of all this, Lin had even pulled away the artillery supporting the front line to encircle and destroy Gadda.

That they couldn't hold was only to be expected.

Christina needed only half an hour to destroy the Gargant; by then, holding the upper hand in the giant-machine clash, they could turn this battle into a one-sided slaughter.

But how many more half-hours could the Astra Militarum endure?

Even if the eight hundred thousand they now had surrounded were pigs, they couldn't round them all up in an hour!

The greatest effort of mortals can only keep the battle from collapse—but that is every bit as important as seizing victory through transcendent power.

Once the breach was forced open again and the outer Orks came flooding back in, letting the Ork warlord withdraw, Lin guessed this Big Mek who had taken a beating would surely whip up another Gargant—maybe even one with more kick than the last.

So he had to end this battle right here.

There was only one tactic that could achieve such a goal.

Decapitation!

"Christina, abandon the Gargant." Lin commanded: "While keeping the Titan safe, blanket as many of the Orks on the ground as you can!"

The Warlord-class Titan swung its muzzles around, sweeping the Orks before Lin clean away with sheets of heavy bolter fire in concert with the cannons.

The Gargant won itself a measure of breathing room, but Gadda, perched atop it, sensed something was wrong.

The boyz below were dying in swathes... and though their deaths would spawn ever more boyz, that, after all, was not for now.

The Waaagh energy pouring into his body had already weakened.

He could feel it—Brother Mork's gaze, once turned toward him, was drawing away!

Gadda jabbed at every button on the Gargant he could jab, but the half-wrecked Gargant utterly failed to answer his expectations. As the Waaagh energy waned, this mechanical monster grew ever more rickety, completely unable to pose any real threat to the Titan.

If things went on like this, even tying down the Titan would become a luxury.

Gadda roared in fury.

He leapt out of the cockpit, yanked out an Ork boy at random, stuffed a bundle of cables into the boy's head, and let this boy take over the Gargant.

"Yer only job is ta drive our mek straight at that big thing an' smash inta it!"

The greenskin boy's eyes rolled white under the cables' shock, and the Gargant began firing chaotically in all directions.

Gadda didn't care whether the boy had even heard his order—he had already climbed into his own death-kan.

"I don't want that big hunk o' junk no more! I'm gonna use me Zzap Kannon ta send 'em an' the shrimp ta the sky together!"

He bellowed out his decision, then drove the giant kan in a single leap downward.

The death-kan fell like a plummeting meteor. Its mechanical joints shrieked with grinding friction, and its ponderous steps shattered the earth below. The instant it struck the ground, a shockwave radiated outward from the point of impact, kicking up a sky full of dust and debris.

Gadda swiftly adjusted his stance, and when the dust cleared, all that showed of him seated in the cockpit was a pair of mechanical eyes glowing red, coldly fixed ahead.

All Orks worship both Gork and Mork at once; and though as a Big Mek he would rather Mork favoured him, he didn't mind solving problems Gork's way either.

"I want the shrimp dead!"

Gadda's recklessness was exactly what Lin wanted to see.

The very instant the Ork warlord appeared on the ground, Lin locked onto his target.

"The target is the Ork warlord." Lin said to Kurande, checking his exoskeleton suit to make sure all its functions were operating properly: "Get me right in front of him!"

Kurande understood his meaning, of course.

Grappling with a kan towering so far above oneself drained a warrior's stamina more than ordinary fighting, yet Kurande had no intention of taking the slightest rest.

His armour soaked with not-yet-dry greenskin blood, he leveled his blade-tip toward the death-kan in the distance and gave the order to the Ultimate Wall's allied forces:

"Sons of Dorn! Whatever the cost—advance!"

The Orks themselves don't understand what Waaagh energy is, but that doesn't hinder these born psykers from wielding that energy with what is almost instinct.

After all, the reason Orks can grow bigger and stronger rests entirely on the 'I-reckon' power empowering them.

Orks love battle, because battle makes them into bigger, more Waaagh greenskins. To grow bigger and more Waaagh is the lifelong pursuit of every boy, which is also why they cannot accept their own power being diminished.

At the very least, Gadda would never accept it!

The Waaagh energy now falling because of the humans' counterattack was the greatest possible provocation to him, an Ork warlord.

The enraged Gadda no longer thought of seizing the shrimps' Titan and using it to rig up something proper big and proper kicking.

He had joined the battlefield in person for one purpose alone: to tear this gaggle of shrimp, together with their big toy, all to shreds!

His impulsiveness made the decapitation possible.

Within half an hour, Lin had to take Gadda's head!

But the direction Gadda chose to advance was not quite what Lin had expected.

As a Big Mek with a little something between the ears, Gadda saw at a glance that the Space Marines charging fiercely toward them were not to be trifled with. So he chose another direction, circling round toward the Titan.

The Space Marines' fighting power was, to be sure, formidable, but the unbroken string of battles had dropped their already scant numbers down to around five hundred.

Unlike assaulting those disjointed Ork units, what they now had to face was the Orks' main force. Even if they were a steel needle, such numbers were utterly unremarkable before the vast ocean of the Orks.

The needle-tip still pressed forward with difficulty through the surging waves, but this fell far short of keeping pace with Gadda's advance through the Astra Militarum positions.

Here there were no fortified positions for the Astra Militarum to hold; the Astra Militarum, having pushed up under the cover of armoured units, were no match at all—not even for a single exchange—against the Orks led by the death-kan.

Some soldiers used Chimera transports as cover, but the Death Klonk Kannon on the giant kan tore them apart along with the Chimeras. As for the other infantry on the line, they were swept down with ease by the Giga-Shoota mounted coaxially with the Klonk Kannon.

The Astra Militarum numbered a full four hundred thousand, yet Gadda moved as though through unguarded ground!

The Astra Militarum's collapse made it all the harder for the Ultimate Wall's allies, who were trying to cut through the Orks and reach the side where Gadda was. Admidel, Sorn, and Kurande led from the front; holding the very foremost place, they carved a path open for the allied force—yet the sustained, high-intensity fighting left even these transcendent warriors showing signs of fatigue.

The Astartes' superhuman vigor and reflexes had grown sluggish under such a brutal battle; one careless moment, and these transcendent warriors too could be swallowed by that endless green tide.

Lin hammered open the skull of an Ork boy with his Power Fist—a boy who had squeezed in through the gap left by a fallen Space Marine.

He cried out the name of the Titan captain.

"Christina!"

His answer was a string of heavy bolts.

The Gargant's fighting style had turned into a fight to the death; in the time the Volcano Cannon spent cooling, it rapidly closed the distance with the Titan, as if meaning to drag the battle into close quarters.

The Titan, needing to keep its condition as intact as possible, could only retreat while using bolts to halt the other's advance. This string of heavy bolts was already the utmost support Christina could spare.

Such firepower cleared the obstacles before the allied force for the moment, and the Space Marines' formation abruptly picked up speed. But it still couldn't catch up to Gadda's force.

"If the Astra Militarum can't stop that Ork warlord, we'll never catch up!" Sorn loudly pointed out the crux of the problem.

"They will stop him." Lin was quite certain of this.

In this universe beset with peril on every side, the Imperium's battle line is always first forged by these ordinary warriors.

The Imperium's greatest reliance has always been these legions of mortals!

The death-kan was still slaughtering the Astra Militarum along the line to its heart's content, trampling these shrimps' futile struggles. But at a position just behind this resistance, a forlorn-hope squad had been mustered together by a Commissar.

"First squad, draw their attention head-on. Second squad, ready the melta charges—the moment we land it, third squad charges in at once!"

The Commissar in his uniform gave the final command in a hoarse voice, drew his chainsword, and delivered the most direct pre-battle exhortation for this attack from which there would be no return: "I'll lead the second squad myself!"

The first squad, clutching rocket launchers, sprang out of cover; they took aim at Gadda charging at the very front, and rockets screamed toward the Ork mek—but most of the rockets were torn apart in mid-air by the shoota's hail of bullets, along with the soldiers who'd fired them. The few that struck home left only a handful of sparks on the armour plating, as useless as beating stone with a twig.

But the smoke of the blasts momentarily veiled the death-kan's field of vision, and the second squad seized the chance to dash in, creeping right up before the death-kan.

Though their efforts seemed somewhat insignificant before the Ork warlord.

The death-kan's unbelievable hydraulic power system granted it an agility far beyond its bulk; even though Gadda only spotted these onrushing soldiers at very close range, in the blink of an eye he swung his guns around and cut them down.

Only the Commissar reached the front of the death-kan, facing this six-meter-tall hulk. Without a trace of fear he brandished his chainsword.

"For the Emperor!"

He roared and brought the chainsword chopping down, but what met him was the keen saw-blade on the giant kan's other arm; the high-speed spinning saw-teeth severed the chainsword with ease and, carrying through, sliced the Commissar in two at the waist.

Gadda worked the kan, stamping this pitiful mortal—now no more than an upper half—beneath his foot. The Commissar opened his mouth to say something, but the blood welling up had already choked his throat.

In the end all he could do was spit at the kan's foot.

Such an act enraged Gadda, and he crushed the Commissar's corpse over and over, nearly grinding the man's upper half into pulp. This fury was such that only at the very last did he hear the ticking coming from the Commissar's lower half, severed and lying off to the side.

That was the countdown of a melta charge.

"BOOM!!!"

Amid the earth-shaking blast, flames and metal shards sprayed in every direction. The death-kan staggered, its mechanical foot letting out a piercing screech of grinding metal.

The death-kan's scientifically compact metal structure and Waaagh energy held its own integrity together to the greatest possible degree under the detonation of this low-yield melta charge, but its locomotion gear still suffered partial failure.

It came, unavoidably, to a halt.

This pause created an opening for the last squad; braving the storm of fire from the other kans, they charged fearlessly to the very front of the giant kan. One man clutching explosives rolled into a seam in the mek's armour; another tried to force his way in through a hatch on the kan that hadn't been welded shut; yet another used his own flesh to block the kan's viewport....

Gadda bellowed in rage:

"Cursed shrimp! I'll blow ya apart, I'll blow ya apart!"

To Gadda these men were nothing but shrimp he could crush at a careless flick—but at this moment the ants could also drag down the colossus.

Killing these men was no trouble, but the time wasted was real and undeniable. By the time he'd dealt with these annoying shrimp one by one, Lin's voice had already rung out behind Gadda like a thunderclap.

"Greenskin boss!"

The Ork tongue he uttered, amplified through a loudspeaker, called out by name—before the eyes of all the watching beasts—Gadda, the driver of the death-kan.

"Step out and face me! Like a real WarBoss!"

The allied forces of the Ultimate Wall, now...

had already arrived!

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