Chapter 457: The Tank Regiment
After that, Kian's tank force pushed forward alongside the infantry, closing in on the Ork trenches and foxholes, wiping out every Ork infantryman inside with tank cannons and grenades.
With the fighting over, a much larger stretch of the battlefield fell under Kian's control, and his tech-priests could now work the recovery operation without interference.
One functional tank after another was hauled away. The ones too damaged to save were stripped down for parts instead.
Tank guns, bolters, heavy stubbers, engines, transmissions, anything usable was pulled and salvaged.
A human tank regiment typically fielded around a hundred vehicles, give or take, and there had been two full regiments engaged against the Orks here.
Assessing the site, at least 30% of the wrecked armour had genuine salvage value, and between that and the usable parts recovered, combined with the vehicles he already had on hand, Kian figured he could stand up an entire tank regiment of his own.
Spend a little more time recruiting some skilled crewmen, and he'd have a power-armoured infantry regiment, an officer corps stocked with graduate-level educated troops, and now a heavy tank regiment as well, all under his own banner.
And if he got every squire-suit and Knight in his possession fully repaired, paired each Knight with its own retinue, he could field a full Knight legion numbering in the tens of thousands.
The thought alone left him buzzing with excitement. This was exactly what a real platform could do for him.
If he'd stayed cooped up on that little agri-world backwater, he probably could've spent his entire life and never assembled a force of this caliber.
But once he'd gotten out into the void, hopping between worlds, in under a year, he'd already built up something this terrifying.
Once his strength consolidated a bit further, do Trasolh a few favors to settle the balance owed on their contract, and he'd finally be free, free to roam the stars and carve out his own domain wherever he pleased.
Sitting in the neural-tank, lost in thoughts of that bright future, Kian couldn't help but laugh out loud.
Just then, Rudolphson's comm request came through.
"Commander! We found something out here. You should probably come take a look."
Kian drove straight over, dismounted, and found Rudolphson standing beside a massive Ork transport vehicle.
"My lord, look at this Ork transport. We found this inside it!"
The rear hatch of the Ork vehicle had been blown open with brutal force, and a few soldiers, using a Chimera transport, were dragging a piece of equipment out with heavy chains. A transformer.
Rudolphson said:
"My lord, this transport was taken out by our own tank regiment. All the impact scoring is on the rear, which suggests the Orks were purely trying to run, not fight, when this happened.
They were trying to haul this transformer out of the area, but this particular transport got destroyed before it could escape.
We found several sets of matching heavy tread marks on the ground nearby. Best guess is at least three more of these transports got away clean, meaning they successfully made off with at least three transformers total."
Kian rubbed his chin thoughtfully. So the Orks had hit the intercontinental substation specifically for the transformers. What could they possibly want them for?
He called over a tech-priest and posed the question. The tech-priest answered:
"My lord, transformers of this scale are typically used for extremely high-power voltage conversion.
We can't say for certain what the Orks intend to use it for. Chaos and unpredictability is simply a defining trait of their kind.
But my best guess would be that stolen transformer equipment is destined for some kind of high-energy device."
Hearing that, Kian's mind flashed back to his time wearing the "Grot Marjack" disguise, when he'd overheard the Gretchin talking about Big Mek Three-Arm building some kind of massive walker.
Could that transformer be a component for that same walker?
While he was still turning the thought over, Little Joel's voice came through his helmet comm:
"My lord, there's still enemy resistance holding out inside the substation city! We're currently engaged, requesting support!"
Kian quickly climbed back into his tank, rounded up nearby armoured vehicles and power-armoured infantry, and pushed straight into the substation city.
By now, the city had been picked over completely. Every scrap of visible metal had already been stripped by the Orks, most of it hauled away, and whatever remained had been dumped in the open, piled up into mountains of junk.
Most of that work fell to the Gretchin, who functioned almost like the decomposers and producers of greenskin society, breaking down unused scrap and converting it into usable resources.
Their favorite pastime was piling up junk they had no immediate use for but suspected might be valuable someday, letting it build into a proper scrap heap.
Then, whenever the need arose, they'd dig through the heap and, more often than not, actually find something worth using.
Little Joel's infantry squad was currently exchanging fire with exactly this kind of Gretchin group.
The Gretchin were putting up a chaotic, shrieking assault against Little Joel's men, plenty of them armed with pistols, or paired up to operate Grot Big Guns together.
Others rode Snotlings, bouncing rapidly across the battlefield, trying to close in on Little Joel's unit with satchel charges and sidearms.
But Little Joel's unit was extremely well-equipped. Every soldier wore standard Reactive Power Armour.
Even the lowest-tier infantry loadout carried a heavy-barrel lasrifle, and there was no shortage of bolt carbines, plasma rifles, and rocket launchers besides.
There was even a soldier in heavy power armour carrying an automatic grenade launcher.
That kind of firepower was simply catastrophic against small Gretchin. By the time Kian arrived with reinforcements, Little Joel's hundred-plus-man platoon had already killed several thousand Gretchin and Snotlings.
Kian, still seated in his tank, keyed the external vox and asked:
"What's the situation here?"
Little Joel answered:
"Commander, the whole substation city is crawling with these xenos, but compared to the big ones, these are just small fry."
Kian looked out at the streets, littered with Gretchin corpses in every direction, lost in thought.
Just then, a soldier suddenly called out a warning:
"Three o'clock! Enemy vehicle inbound!!"
Everyone turned toward the three o'clock position and saw several hundred small Gretchin surrounding a scavenged scrap wagon, a transformer loaded in its bed.
The Gretchin seemed to be trying to haul the transformer out of the city through the opposite side, but unfortunately for them, they'd run straight into Kian's forces.
The Gretchin swarm froze in a panic, breaking into shrieking, chattering alarm.
Most of them charged straight at Kian's position, while the wagon carrying the transformer kept moving, hauling it toward the edge of the city.
Kian's line opened up with a scattered volley of mismatched weapons, and the Gretchin filling the streets were wiped out in short order.
One soldier, shouldering a rocket launcher, took aim at the distant Gretchin wagon, meaning to blow the whole thing sky-high, but Kian stopped him.
"Hold fire! Don't shoot. Let it go."
Kian narrowed his eyes, watching the Gretchin wagon slowly recede down the street, disappearing into the ruins of the city.
"I've got other plans for that one..."
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