Chapter 433: Showdown with Blackiron
The gold squire-suit burst clean out of the battle line, tearing forward more than two hundred meters ahead of the rest of the force.
Shielded by its thick adamantium plating, it soaked up incoming Ork fire from every direction and closed to melee range, tearing through the Ork armoured line with cold steel.
Kian drove a knee forward, sending a killer-can flying, its faceplate caved in from the impact, the Gretchin pilot inside pulped instantly.
He swung both chainswords at an Ork Dreadnought next. It raised its twin claws to block, but the sheer force behind the swing tore straight through the guard. The chainsword's teeth caught the Dreadnought's head and carved a sparking trail straight down through its body from crown to chest.
Kian kicked the wrecked hulk aside and pivoted just in time to dodge a massive chain-axe swinging in from the flank. That Dreadnought's swing missed and it raised the axe for another strike, but Kian moved faster, driving both chainswords straight into its chest cavity and grinding them there, shredding its internals under spinning teeth. The Dreadnought shuddered and collapsed.
In moments, Kian had taken down two Dreadnoughts. Then a flash of red light flared ahead of him. He dodged on pure instinct, and a massive Ork cannon shell tore through the exact spot he'd been standing.
He looked up to see an Ork tank charging in from over two hundred meters out, treads roaring, several turrets already firing at him. It ran only one true heavy gun alongside a scattering of lighter cannons.
He ignored the lighter guns entirely and closed the distance at a sprint. The small-caliber rounds bouncing off his plating barely registered, his full attention locked on closing in before that main gun finished its reload.
The instant he caught the muzzle flash of the main gun firing, he threw his stride sideways. The heavy round streaked past, grazing close but missing entirely.
A few long strides carried him straight to the tank, and he pivoted to its rear flank. Both chainswords plunged in like daggers, driving straight through the side armour. A shrieking metallic wail followed as the massive blades tore the plating open with ease and buried themselves inside.
The Ork crew inside and the machine's internal systems both got shredded in the process, the tank grinding to a dead halt. Kian finished it off by sawing through the remaining turrets one by one, reducing it to a wreck entirely.
Back at the mine entrance, Boothe, directing the militants' fire while watching Kian's fight unfold from a distance, marveled to himself.
"Piloting a squire-suit with the same ease as his own body. My lord, just how strong is your psychic strength, truly?"
He watched Kian's fluid, brutal movement with genuine awe. Piloting something this massive through a full neural link was an exhausting mental effort under normal circumstances. Most pilots fought with a visible lag, the suit's movements sluggish, half a beat behind intent.
That wasn't a limitation of the machine itself, it came down to the pilot's mental fortitude. Only so much output the frame could deliver when the mind driving it couldn't keep pace.
Across the field, Red's squire-suit was pinned down by several killer-cans, his movements noticeably slower than Kian's, every tactical maneuver arriving with a beat of lag. That was a pilot's limitation showing through.
If a comparison helped, it was like the difference between someone with a healthy brain and someone recovering from a stroke, the body still physically capable of running and jumping, but the damaged mind could only manage a stumbling, uneven gait.
Boothe had genuinely never seen a pilot push a squire-suit to its full hundred percent potential the way Kian was doing right now.
"My lord, a frame this small is beneath you. The moment we're back, I'm prioritizing your Knight suit's repairs personally. Only a machine that size is worthy of psychic strength like yours."
Boothe murmured quietly to himself.
Meanwhile, Kian had already dropped his fifth Dreadnought, hacking off all four of its powered limbs with the twin chainswords before kicking it flat on its back. Before it could recover, both blades plunged straight down, and a shriek of tortured metal followed as its cockpit was punched clean through, the machine going dead still.
He pulled the blades free, shook a scatter of metal debris off the whirring teeth, and looked for his next target. His run through five Dreadnoughts solo had clearly rattled the surrounding Orks, few of them willing to close in and challenge him now.
Orks loved a fight, sure, but that didn't mean they felt no fear at all. Push a target strong enough that every attack against it only ends in certain death, and even an Ork would rather retreat and preserve itself for another day than throw its life away for nothing. Some instinct wired deep into their nature, probably, a war-serving trait: an enemy that simply can't be killed no matter what you throw at it is an enemy you can't beat, and the smart move is to fall back, survive, and fight again later.
So Orks weren't entirely fearless after all. They could fear death and run, then, once recovered, snap right back into battle-mad frenzy without missing a beat.
Right now, Kian stood at the center of a field littered with five wrecked Dreadnoughts, countless shattered killer-cans, and a mess of destroyed tanks. Finding no fresh target nearby, he bellowed out:
"WHO'S NEXT?!"
"Heh heh heh. Knew dat shrimp fightin' dis good had ta be Old Fart Kian!"
The moment Kian's shout faded, laughter rolled out from among the wrecked tank hulls ahead. And then, an enormous Ork figure emerged from the wreckage. Blackiron. Warboss Blackiron himself.
Wrapped in a suit of heavy black power armour, standing a full four and a half meters tall, the sight made Kian's pupils contract sharply. Christ, he's massive. Orks generally topped out around three meters, and this thing had blown right past that into borderline legendary territory. If Blackiron hadn't been confined to a single Forge World, if he'd ever built himself a fleet and taken this to the wider galaxy, he could've genuinely triggered a full-blown green tide crisis on his own.
"Heh heh heh! Finally we meets face to face, Old Fart Kian. Hope ya don't die too quick, I wants dis ta be fun!"
Blackiron carried himself with total, earned arrogance. And Kian's expression turned grim, his gaze locked on the massive powered claw held in Blackiron's left hand, gripping a limp white-armoured figure. Apothecary Desai.
Desai, who'd gone to recover his brothers' gene-seed, had been captured, now dangling like a broken toy from the crushing grip of that massive claw. His armour was torn wide open, blood and exposed bone visible beneath, one mechanical arm severed entirely, his whole body hanging limp as a rag doll.
Kian froze in place, not daring to move. One more squeeze from that claw, and Desai's spine would snap clean in two.
Blackiron, cunning as ever, had figured out long ago just how much these "big tin can" humans meant to the ordinary human soldiers. Rather than killing Desai outright when he'd caught him, he'd carried him out to the battlefield, still clamped in his claw, as leverage.
Now, facing down Kian's squire-suit, Blackiron raised Desai's limp body high overhead as a living shield, and with his other hand, swung his massive cannon around, aimed straight at Kian, and fired.
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