Chapter 57: Overload! The Machine Spirit Rejoices!
The soldiers around Duvette were still fighting. Las beams and crude Ork projectiles crossed the air in both directions. Explosions came from multiple directions without pause. The casualties on both sides were severe.
But Duvette kept his eyes locked on the six dangerous red contacts on the Strategic Display. They were still moving in a straight line, smashing through everything in their path.
Three hundred meters out, behind the spore fog and the rubble, nothing was visible to the naked eye. But the display showed the contacts driving in a straight line toward a cluster of buildings that were still relatively intact, at the eight o'clock position.
He did not wait for them to break through the buildings and reveal themselves.
"Captain Ronan! Fire! Target the eight o'clock bearing, three hundred meters! Full spread!"
Ronan had his doubts, but in this moment he chose to trust. He drove his voice into the comms. "All tanks! Eight o'clock bearing! Volley fire!"
The four Leman Russ turrets rotated simultaneously. The 120mm battle cannons fired in near-unison, the muzzle flash cutting through the dimness in a series of hard white bursts. The shells crossed the distance in under two seconds.
The concussive wave from the impacts blew the spore fog clear of a wide area, briefly exposing the buildings ahead to everyone's line of sight. Brick, timber, and dust erupted upward. The blast wave rolled outward through the fog.
On the Strategic Display, one red contact disappeared.
The remaining five emerged from the dust of the collapsed building.
Five massive silhouettes broke through the settling debris cloud. Rust-red iron bodies. Heavy mechanical legs. Four mechanical arms each carrying an assortment of welded-on weapons: rotating saw blades, flamethrowers, rocket launchers, crushing claws. Every surface was studded with rivets and rough welds. Exhaust ports belched black smoke. Each step sent a tremor through the ground.
Deff Dreads. As he had suspected.
Duvette watched the four-armed iron constructs coming through the smoke and ran the assessment quickly. Deff Dreads were what Ork Meks produced when they applied their particular brand of engineering to the concept of a walking weapons platform. No precision targeting systems. Relatively thin armor by the standards of what they were imitating. Movement that was more determined than agile.
If the comms blackout had not let them ambush the Third Squadron from behind, the Third Squadron should have been capable of destroying them at effective range without particular difficulty.
Almost before the assessment was complete, all five Deff Dreads charged the tank position. Every arm weapon opened up simultaneously. Rockets traced white smoke trails toward the Leman Russ. Flamethrowers threw long tongues of burning fuel forward. The spinning saws produced a high-pitched shriek that carried over the rest of the battle noise.
The quality of Ork engineering asserted itself: several of the rockets missed the tanks entirely and detonated in the buildings behind the position, incidentally killing a number of their own side's infantry in the process.
All four Leman Russ fired again. The range was closer now. Four shells landed on four Deff Dreads.
The first took a direct hit to the torso. The iron shell opened like paper and what had been inside it, the Ork crew and the internal structure, became shrapnel.
The second lost its mechanical legs to the impact. The mass of it hit the ground heavily and lay there still waving its mechanical arms at targets it could no longer reach.
The third and fourth each took hits that found their fuel and ordnance. They became burning wreckage before the smoke had cleared from the previous shot.
One remained.
Duvette had been tracking it in his peripheral vision and now he looked at it directly, because something was wrong with the scale.
It was larger than the others. Considerably larger. The body was heavier, the arms more substantial, and the weapons mounted on them had a different class of threat behind them.
A Gorkanaut.
He swore internally with considerable emphasis.
A Gorkanaut was what happened when Ork Meks got access to captured Imperial heavy equipment and applied Ork methodology to the question of what to build with it. The result was something that did not behave like a standard Deff Dread. They were rare enough that most Astra Militarum soldiers completed their entire service without encountering one. And there was one here, on a second-line battlefield, closing at speed.
"Fire! Now! Fast!"
The Gorkanaut and the last standard Deff Dread were within a hundred meters. Their weapons were blazing. Rockets and shells detonated in the tank perimeter, throwing debris in every direction. The Gorkanaut's massive rip saw had begun spinning up, the sound of it rising through the frequencies and cutting across every other noise on the field. It was clearly intending to close to contact and use the saw directly on the Leman Russ armor.
The gap was closing.
Then Ronan pulled himself through the turret hatch again. The desperation on his face was visible from where Duvette was standing.
"Sir! We are out of ammunition! Main gun ammunition is completely exhausted!"
Duvette's heart nearly stopped.
He swore again. The Gorkanaut was within eighty meters. The rip saw's pitch was climbing. The ordinary Orks around the position had erupted into their loudest Waaagh cry yet, as though they had already seen the outcome and were celebrating it.
He bit down hard and made his decision in under a second.
"It doesn't matter. Fire anyway!"
"We have no ammunition!" Ronan's voice was at the edge of breaking. "There is nothing in the breach!"
"FIRE!"
Ronan answered through his teeth. He had no rational explanation for what Duvette thought was going to happen. There was no ammunition. The breach was empty. The ammunition racks were empty. That was a physical fact.
He watched the Gorkanaut close to fifty meters. The rip saw's teeth caught the dim light and threw it back cold and bright. The multi-barrel cannon's muzzles were rotating up to firing speed, the mechanism cycling through its pre-fire sequence. The Orks around the position were roaring in what was clearly anticipated victory.
Captain Ronan closed his eyes. He used everything his lungs still had.
"FIRE!"
He braced for the dry mechanical click of a hammer on an empty breach.
What he heard instead was:
A cannon shot.
Louder than any of the previous shots. The sound of it hit every person in range like a physical impact.
Ronan opened his eyes.
The muzzle was still venting fire. A 120mm shell was already in flight, traveling in a near-flat trajectory toward the Gorkanaut.
His mind worked through this without finding anywhere stable to rest.
The Emperor's own hand? Or could it possibly be â€" the Machine Spirit was pleased?
The other Leman Russ, registering that firing was apparently still possible, fired in the same moment. Three more shells struck the Gorkanaut. Then, without any reloading, a second salvo. A third. A fourth.
Sixteen hits from four Leman Russ main guns. Considerably larger problems would not have survived that. A Gorkanaut was not in a different category than those problems. Under the sustained barrage, the Orks around the position went silent. Then they ran.
Duvette stood in the middle of the position and felt the cost of it settle in his chest.
He had not wanted to activate the skill. The cost efficiency was poor. Four vehicles, a temporary command authority, spending three hundred Emperor's Wrath on this particular skill at this particular moment was a straightforward loss. But with certain death arriving on mechanical legs and spinning saw blades, he had no other option.
He had activated:
[Overload Drain (Level 1)]
[After activation, for the duration of the skill, units under your command may continue firing without ammunition. Firing interval is greatly reduced. Duration: 30 seconds. Upon expiration, the durability of affected vehicles and weapons will be permanently damaged beyond repair.]
[Cooldown: 2 hours]
[Do not ask where the ammunition comes from. You need only listen to the Machine Spirit's final roar!]
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