Chapter 426: Saving Sergeant Nor'n
Kian's shuttle touched down outside the Titan Temple's steel ramparts, right as Trasolh's own shuttles finished delivering Kian's private troops to the surface.
For infantry, Kian brought only his first five companies, every man in power armour. One in every three carried a plasma rifle, the rest either wielding a Lumberer-pattern stubber as a standard rifle or one of the precious bolt carbines. Only a handful carried heavy-barrel lasrifles, reserved for mopping up light infantry.
Given how heavily industrialized this planet's Orks were, nearly every one of them wore power armour by now, and standard weapons could no longer punch through it reliably. Only large-caliber and specialized weapons posed a real threat, so quality mattered here far more than headcount.
The rest of the column: twelve of his own Leman Russ tanks, twenty-four Chimeras, plus the eighteen tanks Major Noa had scraped together, and finally the four squire-suits. A genuinely strategic-tier heavy strike force, pulled together with a handful of phone calls.
Troops assembled steadily around the Titan Temple's perimeter while Kian flew straight into the Temple itself to take up his own suit.
At the outfitting bay, the Traffic Light Trio had already climbed into their rides, standing ready. Boothe had the gold squire-suit's cockpit hatch open already, waiting for Kian to board.
Kian disembarked, climbed up into the suit with a servitor's assistance, and completed the neural link at record speed. The gold suit strode out of the bay to join the Trio.
Kian was about to give the order to move out when Boothe suddenly ran up and blocked his path.
"My lord, please wait. Magos Ferrocore wishes to speak with you."
He raised a mechadendrite, a small glass-orb projector mounted at its tip. An instant later, a massive holographic image projected outward, Ferrocore's hulking mechanical face rendered nearly as tall as the squire-suit itself.
"Foolish creature of flesh! What do you think you're doing?!"
Ferrocore launched straight into it.
"I've heard of your reckless plan. You intend to pilot a squire-suit four hundred kilometers into Ork-held territory? Is this suicide?! Your worthless, fragile life means nothing to me, but understand this: repairing your Knight suits was a payment I extended on good faith. Your obligation in return is to provide protection, guaranteeing this Titan Temple remains untouched by the xenos. If you die in enemy territory, I receive nothing in return. This is a direct breach of contract! Militants! Surround him! He is not to leave this Temple!"
The moment he finished, thousands of red-robed militants swarmed in from every direction, heavily augmented cyborg troops armed with arc rifles, las-rifles, and large-bore plasma weapons.
Weapons that small looked almost like toys next to a six-meter squire-suit, but at this range, with nearly a thousand of them firing at once, even four suits couldn't shrug that off.
Kian had already completed the neural link with his gold suit. He glanced at the ring of red robes closing in around him, let out a cold snort, and turned his attention to Ferrocore's holographic image.
"You skinny, meatless mechanical worm, whether you even count as human is genuinely up for debate, and now you're gonna lecture me? Read the contract again. I'm not under your command. I'm your hired contractor. You know what that means? Someone who takes the money and walks whenever he damn well pleases."
Ferrocore roared back through the projection.
"Repairing your Knight suits consumed enormous resources, resources you have not fully repaid. That makes you my property! The squire-suit you're piloting right now is not your asset, it is mine! Mine! I spent my own resources repairing it! And since it is mine, you will obey me! I forbid you from taking it into Ork territory. If you die, my investment is lost entirely. You will remain here at the Temple, defending the divine machine, until the Ork crisis is fully resolved. Only then will your debt be paid, and only then will you earn your freedom. Do you understand, slave?!"
Kian let out a cold laugh.
"Stinking bug, Titan-obsessed lunatic. You think you can buy my life for cheaper than a discount clearance sale? Have you actually thought this through? If the Astartes trapped at the Deathmine die, this whole planet's mortal defense force morale collapses instantly. You know who's actually holding the front line right now? Billions of ordinary mortal soldiers. And the Astartes, the Emperor's own Angels, are their spiritual anchor. Take that anchor away, panic spreads, billions of defenders fall apart, and the greenskin tide rolls straight over everything. What are you going to defend your precious Titan with then? Your little red-robed Lego men?"
On the holographic projection, Ferrocore looked visibly furious, no facial muscles left to express it, but the violent trembling of his mechanical limbs made it obvious enough. Strangely, though, he didn't argue back.
His processing cores were already running the numbers, and the conclusion they'd reached was: Kian was probably right.
Mortal soldiers, flesh and blood, were fragile and psychologically brittle. Faced with an enemy as terrifying as the Orks, without something to anchor their morale, total collapse was a very real risk. This whole planet was being held together right now by mortal troops. If they broke, the comparatively small Mechanicus militant force alone would never hold back a full greenskin assault.
Watching Ferrocore twitch and tremble like a switch had been flipped, Kian glanced at the nearly thousand red robes still surrounding him and continued.
"The front's barely hanging on against the Orks, and you're hoarding this much manpower back here doing nothing? Got the energy for infighting but none left for actually fighting Orks? What kind of world works like that? Here's the deal. Every one of these red-robed toy soldiers comes with me. I'm using them to rescue the Astartes. You don't like it, fine, I'll disband my whole strike force right here and now, and you can go save the Astartes yourself. I'm out. I'll just sit right here, guarding your Titan like the contract says, right up until the front collapses, right up until the greenskins reach your steel walls, right up until they push into this Temple itself and take your precious Titan for themselves."
"NO! I absolutely forbid that!! The divine machine will never be defiled by xenos filth!!!"
The outburst genuinely startled Kian. Ferrocore cut the connection abruptly, and silence settled back over the bay.
Kian blinked. What the hell was that? Just cutting off mid-tantrum like that?
A data stream flickered through Boothe's mind, and he raised a hand, signaling the assembled militants to lower their weapons. He turned to Kian.
"My lord, Magos Ferrocore has just transferred command authority over these thousand militants to me. I'll be coordinating with you to rescue the Astartes."
Kian smacked his lips. "Your Magos is a genuine psycho, throwing tantrums like that."
Boothe raised a hand, and the militants fell into ranks, marching out of the Temple in perfectly synchronized, near-identical steps.
"My lord, Magos Ferrocore has never had an emotional suppressor installed. He believes complex, uncontrolled emotion is a source of genuine inspiration."
That explained it. Mechanicus tech was capable of keeping someone alive on nothing but a few chunks of preserved brain matter. Emotion, at its core, was just hormones, and controlling the dosage flowing to the brain meant controlling emotion itself. Plenty of tech-priests walked and talked like machines, flat and lifeless, and that was the telltale sign of an emotional suppressor installed. The benefit was sharper execution and cleaner logic. The downside was that a person stopped feeling like a person, started feeling like a machine wearing flesh, and lost the spark of genuine creative insight that came from real, messy emotion. Which is why some tech-priests deliberately preserved a portion of their emotional range, specifically to hold onto that flash of inspiration.
Ferrocore had gone about as far into becoming a mechanical worm as anyone could, and yet the man's emotional range was disturbingly intact, bordering on obsessive. Kian figured his devotion to the Titan had crossed well past healthy at some point.
Not the time to worry about that, though. Rescuing the Astartes came first.
The Mechanicus forces were already loading weapons, ammunition, and armoured transports, long, half-tracked personnel carriers. Each could hold twenty militants, who, once inside, extended their weapons through firing ports along the hull. The whole vehicle turned into a mobile fortress bristling with guns, not unlike something out of an old strategy game.
While the loading continued, Rudolphson walked up to the gold squire-suit.
"Commander, I want to pilot a Knight suit too!"
Rudolphson had been the first old acquaintance Kian had made on this journey, and the two of them went back a long way. He'd watched Kian grow from a battlefield nobody into something he could barely comprehend anymore, and it left him with a lot to think about. Kian was a proper Knight pilot now, and the idea genuinely tempted him.
He knew several wrecked Knight suits were still being repaired, and every one of them would eventually need a pilot. He felt himself falling further and further behind Kian's pace. Back on Glory, Kian had recruited a whole regiment of highly educated soldiers, and standing next to that crowd, Rudolphson felt he had nothing to offer. If he didn't seize an opportunity now, before Kian's ventures grew even bigger, he'd never get another shot at rising with him.
Before Kian could answer, the Traffic Light Trio, standing nearby, cut in first.
"That quiet and you wanna pilot a Knight?"
"No energy! Can't hear you! Can't hear a thing!"
"Again!"
Rudolphson's face flushed red, and he shouted louder. "Commander! I want to pilot a Knight suit!!!"
Seeing his enthusiasm, Kian nodded. "Good, that's the spirit. But piloting a Knight isn't easy. I'm going to test you. Rudolphson, listen close, here's the deployment plan. When the column advances, companies one through five ride Chimeras seven through ten, leading the front. Tank squadrons one, three, and five hold the forward-middle position. Squadrons two, four, and six hold the rear-middle. Militants bring up the rear. Once we enter Ork territory, the formation shifts immediately, front becomes rear, rear becomes front. On contact with the enemy, the middle becomes the front, the front becomes the flank, and the rear becomes the general reserve. Repeat that back to me."
Lieutenant Rudolphson's mouth hung open, drool pooling at the corner. He shouted, "Sir! I didn't retain any of that!"
Kian glared at him through his mechanical optics.
"Fine, forget it. Go man the roof-mounted gun on a Chimera."
Rudolphson trudged back to the column, dejected, climbed onto a Chimera, and gripped the top-mounted machine gun. The driver's hatch popped open beside him, and Corporal Nyegorkin, in chem-suit and gas mask, poked his head out with a grin.
"How'd it go, Commander? Career plans didn't work out?"
Rudolphson shot him a glare for the mockery.
"Corporal Nyegorkin, listen close, here's my deployment plan. Maintain a steady speed during the advance. In an emergency, shift from first gear straight to third, then third to fifth. Once the situation clears, shift from fourth to second, then second to the handbrake..."
The column finally finished preparations and surged forward at full speed. A purely mechanized force, tanks and armoured vehicles alongside supply trucks, and even the four Knight suits riding along strapped down inside four massive Battlewagons.
The column tore forward at sixty kilometers an hour, and in what felt like no time at all, they crossed from the relative safety of human-held territory into the danger of Ork-controlled ground.
Kian's Knight sat quietly inside its Battlewagon transport as he opened a comm channel to Apothecary Desai.
"My lord, any word from Captain Doron?"
Desai's voice came through, edged with real worry. "No contact. I suspect they're deep underground in the tunnels, physical interference blocking the signal."
Kian acknowledged, then opened the broadcast channel to the whole force.
"Alright, everyone. Our primary objective here is rescuing the Astartes. Killing Orks isn't the mission. Once we make contact, don't hold back on ammunition, full firepower, everything we've got. We can't afford a drawn-out fight, they outnumber us badly. The moment we engage, we hit them with overwhelming force, break their morale instantly, grab the trapped Astartes, and pull out immediately. These Angels have fought and bled on this planet for years, and their presence alone has, in the broader sense, already saved billions of lives. They've given this world everything. Now that they're the ones in trouble, it's our turn to give something back. I'm naming this operation Saving Sergeant Nor'n. Move out!"
A wave of battle cries roared back over the comm, Major Noa's local tank crews screaming loudest of all. Just as Kian had said, without the Astartes, this planet would've fallen long ago. Getting the chance to return the favor, every one of them was ready to give everything.
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