Chapter 414: Ork Rockets
"Kill, kill, kill! Saw, saw, saw! Wa wa wa!"
Dozens of four-meter Gretchin killer-cans scrambled up the slope, their four mechanical arms swinging saw-blades wildly.
Gretchin ranked at the very bottom of Ork society, thanks to their small size, which made getting the chance to pilot a four-meter killer-can a genuine honor. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Gretchin would brawl each other for the privilege, only the winner earning the right to climb inside and drive one.
Unfortunately for them, no matter how hard-won the seat, a killer-can was still just cannon fodder in front of a real war-machine.
Kian crouched behind a large boulder, occasionally leaning out to fire his chest-mounted twin heavy bolter down at the advancing killer-cans. Precise short bursts of bolt rounds, three or four shots enough to cripple one outright. Their armour wasn't especially thick, a mid-tier target easily handled by bolt fire. The bolter could punch through up to a hundred and twenty millimeters of armour, and a killer-can's frontal plating maxed out around eighty. A single round could punch straight through and detonate inside, killing the Gretchin pilot instantly.
Kian fired four bursts, dropped four killer-cans, and immediately shifted position without lingering. The moment he moved, the boulder he'd just left erupted under a hail of gunfire. One Ork tank even swung its massive barrel around and fired a high-explosive round directly at it.
The shell obliterated the boulder outright, sending up a shockwave and a wall of black smoke, the rock simply gone, leaving a fresh crater carved into the ridge.
Fortunately, Kian understood the value of staying mobile: fire twice, relocate. He bounded across the reverse slope, using the squire-suit's excellent mobility to shift to a new firing position a hundred meters away.
Once in position, he leaned out and fired his left-arm triple plasma cannon at three Ork tanks near the base of the ridge, one shot each. Three bathtub-sized balls of blue plasma streaked out and punched into the tanks, detonating violently inside. Heat approaching the surface of a star spread outward instantly, the direct hits melting the tanks where they sat, triggering secondary detonations from whatever volatile munitions they carried inside. Dozens of nearby Ork trucks and light vehicles caught in the blast radius had their armour partially melted, their gunners cooked instantly, popping like eggs in a microwave.
With all three shots fired, the plasma cannon began venting excess heat, steam hissing off the barrels.
Three tanks down, Kian shifted aim to a cluster of killer-cans halfway up the slope and opened up again with the chest-mounted heavy bolter. Two or three more bursts dropped two or three more killer-cans, crippling them on the spot. He shifted position again immediately.
He'd barely relocated when the Trio's warning crackled over the comm.
"Boss! Look up!"
Kian snapped his head skyward mid-sprint and spotted three Ork rockets streaking toward the ridge, thick trails of smoke pouring from their tails.
Just from their size, these things were massive, over a meter in diameter, more than eight meters long. Knowing the Orks, every one of them had to be packed solid with explosives. If even one landed on the ridge, the blast would probably flatten the entire summit.
Kian shouted, "Max power on the las-cannons! Shoot those rockets down first!"
The Trio acknowledged instantly. All four suits snapped their heads skyward, rotary cannons swinging up to track the incoming rockets.
Beams thick as an adult's thigh streaked out from every barrel, all four squire-suits pouring six hundred rounds a second of high-energy laser fire up into the sky, saturating the three rockets.
Lasers didn't suffer from travel-time lag, lock the sight and pull the trigger, and the hit landed instantly. The first rocket, still climbing and not yet at full acceleration, took repeated hits across its body almost immediately. Its structure erupted in a string of small explosions, armour melting under the heat, and its flight path started wobbling. After roughly seven seconds of sustained fire, the rocket couldn't hold together any longer and detonated in a massive secondary blast high above.
"Second rocket! Focus fire!"
Kian shouted, and everyone shifted target to the second rocket, which had already closed most of the distance and reached full acceleration, moving fast.
The Trio's reflexes couldn't quite keep pace with something moving that fast, most of their shots went wide. But Kian locked in with total focus, his mind racing to track the high-speed target, and all three barrels of his rotary cannon landed square on the rocket's nose, every heavy beam a direct hit.
The rocket's armour scorched, buckled, and warped under the sustained fire. Finally, one beam punched clean through the weakened nose cone.
BOOM!!!
A massive shockwave of energy detonated in the sky, the air itself visibly compressing from the blast.
Two rockets down. But the third had already reached maximum acceleration, streaking toward the ridge like a falling meteor.
"Scatter, now! Can't stop this one!"
Kian shouted and broke immediately for the reverse slope, the other three squire-suits scattering in every direction.
The Ork rocket adjusted its trajectory as it neared the ridge, nose angling down toward the ground, diving. And impossibly, it seemed to have eyes, tracking Kian directly as he sprinted, homing in on him alone.
Kian ran for his life, the squire-suit's wide-angle cameras swiveling upward with ease to keep the rapidly closing rocket in view.
"Damn it, why is it chasing me specifically, go hit someone else!"
The rocket kept correcting its course mid-flight, locked squarely onto Kian. He cursed and ran even faster, sprinting from the ridgetop down to the mid-slope, then out onto flat ground, and the rocket stayed on him the whole way.
What Kian couldn't see was that inside the rocket rode a live Ork gunner. Crammed into the nose cone, the Ork tracked the target below through a crude optical sight, physically adjusting the rocket's flight path to steer it into whatever he wanted hit.
Two targets stood on the ridge: the Traffic Light Trio, and Kian in his gold-painted suit. The Ork found the gold armour way more impressive, way more WAAAGH, so, acting as living guidance, he steered the rocket straight for Kian.
"WAAAAAAAGH!!!"
The gunner inside screamed and yanked hard on a lever beside him. The rocket triggered its final acceleration burn, flame roaring from the tail nozzle, and its speed spiked to several times the speed of sound.
But that violent acceleration knocked the gunner clean unconscious. And as he blacked out, he stumbled and knocked against the rocket's own steering mechanism.
It was the equivalent of flipping a car's wheel hard at 180 kilometers an hour, on a highway, the vehicle would flip and lose control instantly. At the speeds this rocket was traveling, the effect was even more catastrophic.
The destabilized rocket tore itself apart mid-air and detonated in a spectacular blast.
Kian, still sprinting for his life, felt a violent shockwave hit from above, kicking up a wall of dust and sand thick enough to blind him completely.
He ran clear of the dust cloud and looked up. The rocket that had been chasing him relentlessly was gone, blown apart. He had no idea exactly what had happened, but let out a breath of relief regardless.
Then, right after, he looked toward the small ridge they'd just been holding, and saw a dark, churning mass of Ork war-machines pouring down it toward them.
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