Chapter 430: The Deathmine
Kian's heavy column pushed onward, and after two days of hard driving through constant harassment from scattered Ork raiding parties, they finally reached the Deathmine.
The Deathmine was a massive excavation site carved into the desert, most of its infrastructure buried underground, with only a handful of open pits visible on the surface. But right now, the surrounding ground swarmed with Orks, hundreds of thousands of them at a glance.
They'd built a sprawling encampment of sheet-metal shelters and improvised workshops ringing the pits, packed with vast numbers of Ork tanks and war-machines. This was a full siege camp, and its sole target was the Astartes trapped deep within the mine.
Kian halted the column ten-plus kilometers out and studied the site through the auspex. The display lit up wall to wall with red markers, small dots for armoured Orks, larger ones for tanks and war-machines. Ork armoured units alone numbered over five thousand.
Kian felt his scalp prickle. A force that size, against his own hundred-odd vehicles? There was no clean way through this.
While he studied the battlefield, Apothecary Desai's voice cut into his comm.
"Count, my life-sign detector has picked up the Captain's group. They're twelve hundred meters underground, no casualties yet, but their heart rates are elevated. They may be actively engaged with xenos in the tunnels."
Kian asked, "So that means the surface is clear to bombard freely?"
"That's right, my lord. Twelve hundred meters of rock overhead is more than enough to shield the Captain from orbital fire."
Kian immediately connected to Trasolh.
"My lord, you there?"
Trasolh's voice came through. "I'm here. Macro-cannon lock established. The Sleepless Eye is directly overhead. Looks like quite a party down there. Ready for orbital bombardment on your word."
Kian said, "Open fire, my lord."
Meanwhile, deep within the Ork encampment, a dense crowd packed the mouth of the Deathmine's main shaft. Ork Boys and Nobs alike, every one in power armour, spoiling for a fight.
"I wants ta fight! I wants ta fight! I wants ta fight da human big tin cans! Get da lift movin', WAAAAAAAGH!!!"
The Orks roared and shoved, eyes fixed on the massive lift mechanism at the shaft's mouth. That single elevator could haul two hundred Orks down twelve hundred meters at a time, straight to where the human "big tin cans" were holed up. Fighting a proper big tin can beat fighting some pathetic human shrimp any day.
Egged on by the crowd, a few hundred Gretchin, directed by a Mekboy, worked the machinery and got the massive lift rising. Before it had even fully arrived, Orks were already shoving and scrambling to board, brawling with each other over the limited slots.
After a chaotic scramble of shoves and headbutts, two hundred lucky, blood-hungry Orks piled onto the lift and descended to trade blows with the human tin cans below.
Above the shaft, one particularly gloomy-looking Ork watched them go, that gloom belonging to none other than Warboss Blackiron himself.
Blackiron stood truly massive, even by Ork standards, a full four meters tall unarmoured, shoulders two meters wide, an absolute wall of muscle. And on top of that, he wore a stunningly ornate suit of black power armour, a powered claw mounted on the left arm, a huge cannon on the right, over a hundred and twenty millimeters in caliber.
Mounted on his back was a trophy rack, not unlike the little decorative flags worn in traditional opera, except Blackiron's rack held severed heads, the heads of enemies he considered worth remembering. Five heads hung from it now: three Astartes in the center, flanked by two chemically preserved skulls of rival warbosses, former competitors he'd personally defeated.
Blackiron wanted more trophies. He wanted a better fight. But there wasn't much left on this planet capable of matching him. He was simply too powerful. The human tin cans were among the rare few enemies who could still give him a good time. Unfortunately, every time he actually got close, they scurried off underground and hid in the tunnels. He was simply too large for the shafts himself, standing four and a half meters in armour, two and a half meters across, no chance of squeezing in. Even forcing his way through, he wouldn't have the room to actually fight properly. Those cunning little humans, hiding down there deliberately just because he was too big, was genuinely infuriating.
All he could do was watch his own boys ride the lift down to have fun with the tin cans while he sat topside, utterly miserable.
While Blackiron sulked, a Mekboy, two and a half meters tall and bristling with mechanical limbs, approached from behind.
"Boss, da duel's ready. Ya wanna go have some fun?"
Blackiron turned and headed toward a makeshift arena. "Let's go. Hope dis one's got some spirit in 'im."
The so-called arena was a rough circle of wrecked tanks and sheet metal, where any Ork itching for a fight could brawl inside. Currently, a Dreadnought, over five meters tall, stood inside the ring, its cockpit fitted with a limbless Ork pilot bolted directly into the frame.
That Ork was furious, hurling scrap around the arena in a rage. He hadn't volunteered for this. He'd been knocked unconscious, had his hands and feet crudely amputated by an Ork field-medic, and had metal components rammed straight into the stumps by a Mekboy, forcibly converting him into a walking war-machine. Every part of him was in agony now, especially his skull, where a thick metal rod had been driven straight into his brain, an agony that felt like it might drive him fully insane.
That rod was the Ork version of a neural interface, linking the pilot's brain directly to the Dreadnought's systems.
"IT HURTS!!! I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL ALL OF YA! AAAAAAAAAH!!!"
The Dreadnought thrashed wildly, slamming into the surrounding scrap walls, trying to tear its way through with its powered claw and rampage out to kill everything in sight.
"Heh heh heh heh. Now dat's a lively one."
Blackiron stood atop the scrap wall, watching the raging Dreadnought with genuine delight, and dropped straight down into the arena.
The Dreadnought, already driven mad with pain, didn't care who'd arrived, and charged Blackiron with a shrieking howl. Blackiron let out his own war cry and swung his massive powered claw, charging to meet it head-on.
A four-and-a-half-meter Ork, fighting bare-handed, against a five-meter war-machine.
Three minutes later, the Dreadnought's cockpit had been torn wide open, its pilot reduced to a smear of gore. Blackiron, sporting nothing worse than a few fresh scratches on his armour, sat down on the wreckage, already thoroughly bored.
"Dat was no fun. If I don't find somethin' worth fightin' soon, I'm gonna WAAAAGH da whole galaxy."
Just then, some instinct made him look up, and he saw a rain of fire descending from the sky.
Blackiron blinked, then broke into pure, ecstatic delight.
"NOW DAT'S DA FIGHT I WANTED!!"
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you