Chapter 431: Sandstorm Standoff
The orbital bombardment arrived in an instant, macro-cannons and lance batteries of every caliber tearing into the ground around the Deathmine.
Beam fire striking armour vaporized it on contact. Shells weighing in the hundreds of tons carved craters deep enough to hold a reservoir with every hit.
BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!
BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!
The bombardment rained down relentlessly, blanketing a full twenty-kilometer radius centered on the Deathmine. The ground itself was scorched to glass under the high-energy beams, then that glass shattered again under the following blasts, dust and smoke rolling hundreds of meters into the sky, kicking up rolling waves of storm-force sand.
Kian sat in his Knight suit, having climbed down off the Battlewagon, watching the distant carnage in silence while the orbital strike ran its course. He hoped the Orks would just die plainly, cleanly, under all that fire, and with real luck, take Blackiron with them. A warboss of that caliber dying would send shockwaves of panic through every greenskin on the planet.
The bombardment didn't last more than a few minutes before cutting off, leaving a twenty-kilometer haze of smoke and dust centered on the mine shaft. Impossible to see what was actually happening inside, or how much damage the Orks had actually taken.
Right then, Trasolh's voice cut into Kian's mind.
"Bad news. My ship's sensors just picked up a void shield signature. There's a shield generator active dead center of the strike zone, protecting a roughly four-kilometer circular area. Orbital fire can't touch anything inside it, which means there's almost certainly a substantial number of Ork survivors in there. Be careful."
Kian's brow furrowed at that. How the hell did Orks have a void shield?
Warships held absolute dominance over a planet's surface, but the ground wasn't entirely defenseless either, void shields being the most effective countermeasure available. A void shield generator was typically an enormous piece of equipment, drawing power from multiple dedicated plasma reactors. It was genuinely rare hardware too, in some ways nearly as difficult to acquire as a warship itself.
Trasolh continued. "Most likely they salvaged a void shield generator out of a captured hive and rigged it into a mobile unit. Watch yourself in there. My guns can't reach through the shield, but I can keep hammering any Ork reinforcements trying to reach you from elsewhere. Right now there's a column heading your way from fifty kilometers north. I'll wipe them out with ship fire, so you can focus entirely on cracking the shielded position."
Kian acknowledged and had his troops disembark, deploying alongside the tanks and armoured vehicles, advancing carefully into the shielded zone.
Void shields intercepted high-speed, high-energy attacks, but let low-speed targets through untouched. In theory, a person could simply walk into a shielded zone on foot. In practice, the extreme heat and radiation inside made that a death sentence for anyone without proper hardened protection. Kian's troops were all in power armour, and could push into the shielded zone without difficulty.
Right now, everything was a haze of smoke and dust, visibility down to nothing. Kian figured this actually worked in their favor. Human vehicles carried far more advanced optics than anything the Orks had, and in conditions this blind, that gap mattered even more.
The column spread into combat formation and pushed into the shield's perimeter as one.
While outside the shield, their sensors had been unable to see through it at all, the shield's own heat and radiation signature effectively jamming most electronic surveillance. But the moment the vehicles actually crossed inside, every auspex and sensor lit up at once, the display flooding with red markers.
"WAAAAAAAAAGH!!!"
A terrifying war cry erupted ahead. Sheltered behind the shield from the orbital strike, the Orks inside had already sensed the enemy's arrival and surged forward in a delighted charge.
Leman Russ and Chimeras opened fire immediately, heavy shells, rounds, and beam fire pouring forward through the haze. Visibility was nothing, but with advanced optics compensating, the crews still landed their fire with real precision into the Ork ranks ahead.
The Orks gave as good as they got, infantry and war-machines charging heedless through the incoming fire while their own vehicles lobbed shells from further back. A few Chimeras took direct hits and were reduced to scrap on the spot.
The area was littered with wrecked mining vehicles, exposed coal seams, and bomb craters from the earlier strike, and Ork infantry used the cover to weave forward, dodging fire, closing distance. Plenty made it right up to Kian's column, firing heavy weapons point-blank into the armoured hulls, or unloading rocket after rocket from shoulder-mounted launchers.
Kian's own elite troops gave just as good, ducking behind cover and leaning out to fire plasma, bolt, and heavy laser fire back. That non-standard weaponry punched through the Orks' scrap-plate armour with ease.
But the Orks fielded a special unit too: their commandos, proper Ork special forces. Camouflaged, moving fast and low through the storm, confident nobody could spot them, and against human sensor gear in this haze, they very nearly weren't.
One squad of over a dozen commandos slipped through the storm and worked their way to the flank of a Leman Russ, spotting a dozen or so power-armoured troopers trailing it. The squad leader signaled, and his men raised sniper rifles.
A few precise cracks, and each targeted trooper's head burst apart under his own armour, dropping instantly, dead before hitting the ground. Not a single miss.
The squad leader signaled again, and two commandos rushed the tank, slapped a pair of demo charges onto its hull, and pulled back fast.
A thunderous blast, and the Leman Russ, still firing away obliviously, went up in flames.
Without a word, the commandos melted back into the storm and stalked toward their next target, another Leman Russ. Once again, they closed in unseen, sniped down its escort troopers, and moved in to plant charges.
Just as two commandos closed in with their charges, a war cry cut through the storm behind them.
"FOR THE EMPEROR!!!"
A hulking figure in white power armour burst out of the haze, moving with blinding speed, closing the distance in an instant, chainaxe flashing twice, cutting the two demo-charge Orks down in a spray of gore. He spun in the same motion, bolt pistol snapping up, two precise shots, and the sniper Orks hidden further back had their skulls burst open.
"FOR THE EMPEROR!!! FOR MY BROTHERS!!!"
Apothecary Desai roared, chainaxe in hand, tearing straight into the mass of Ork infantry, cutting them down in a wild frenzy, his armour slicked in Ork blood and gore within moments.
Nobody watching that scene would've guessed this was the same man whose day job was healing people.
Meanwhile, Kian and the Traffic Light Trio, riding all four squire-suits, spread out evenly across the front of the human line, pouring fire forward. Every Ork tank and war-machine that came at them got torn apart.
But this Ork force wasn't the ordinary kind. Their war-machines ran heavier, better-built than anything Kian had faced before on this world, bigger frames, thicker armour, more terrifying weaponry. All manner of Ork cannons, rocket batteries, and even an Ork-built high-powered laser cannon, called by the Orks themselves a "deffray gun," poured fire onto the four suits without letup.
The four squire-suits fired back without pause, but even they were starting to struggle to keep up.
The fight had barely lasted three minutes when Green's voice suddenly cut in over the comm, startled.
"Damn it, my left shoulder plate just blew, the whole arm's ripped clean off! I can't hold, requesting to fall back!"
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