Chapter 434: Showdown with Blackiron, Part 2
Blackiron's right hand carried a mechanically complex Ork cannon, over a hundred millimeters in caliber, and he fired on Kian without a second's hesitation. The shot slammed into his chest plate and detonated violently.
The gold plating blackened across a wide swath, the adamantium beneath caving in visibly. The impact carried through the neural link, and Kian felt it too, like taking a full-force punch to the chest.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
Blackiron let out a booming laugh and kept firing, his handheld cannon running semi-automatic, capable of rapid follow-up shots.
Kian scrambled to dodge, knowing his suit couldn't take many more hits like that, and a stray round to the optics could blind him outright. He wanted to bring his own head-mounted rotary guns to bear, but Blackiron was too cunning, keeping Desai clamped in his claw and raised as a human shield the entire time, making any aggressive move a serious risk.
BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!
BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!
"HAHAHAHA!!"
Blackiron kept firing and laughing, watching the massive squire-suit dodge and weave, thoroughly delighted. Every so often a round connected, denting the gold armour deeper each time.
Kian found himself entirely on the defensive, with nothing to do but hope Blackiron's ammunition ran dry first.
That's when Desai, still clamped in Blackiron's claw, moved.
Bloodied and broken, he suddenly drew the combat dagger from his belt with the last of his strength and drove it straight into the barrel of Blackiron's cannon. A sharp crunch of metal, and the monomolecular blade jammed the weapon solid, wrecking it outright.
Then, with the same motion, Desai pulled a long, narrow metal case from his belt and hurled it toward Kian.
"Catch! My brothers'..."
Kian watched the case sail toward him, drove one chainsword into the ground to free a hand, and snatched it cleanly out of the air.
Opening his palm, he saw what it was: gene-seed. The recovered gene-seed of the three fallen Astartes, sealed inside.
Blackiron, furious at his wrecked cannon with a monomolecular dagger jammed straight through it, clenched his claw hard.
"Me big gun!! Dat were me favorite!!"
A sickening crunch. Desai was crushed cleanly in half at the waist and hurled aside like garbage.
Kian popped his suit's chest hatch, dropped the gene-seed case inside for safekeeping, and pulled the second chainsword free from the ground. He looked once at Desai, split in two, entrails spilled across the ground, no sign of life left in him, and roared.
"Xenos filth. You've made this personal."
He charged, closing the distance at a dead sprint, all three head-mounted rotary cannons opening fire the whole way in. Blackiron shielded his face with the claw, laser fire scorching black streaks across his armour, and charged straight back to meet him.
A six-meter squire-suit and a four-and-a-half-meter Ork warboss collided head-on.
Kian swung a chainsword down at Blackiron. The Ork's claw caught it clean, gripping the blade, and its hydraulic mechanisms clamped down hard, trying to crush the sword outright. Kian didn't back off, letting the chainsword's teeth roar and grind, hoping to shred the claw first and strip Blackiron of his weapon entirely.
What he hadn't expected: he'd assumed that rough, rust-scarred claw was ordinary metal, nothing that could stand up to adamantium teeth. But the instant it closed on the chainsword, a faint blue shimmer of a disintegration field flared to life around it.
"WHAT THE HELL! A disintegration field?!"
Kian's shock was total. He'd never imagined that battered, ugly claw carried a proper field generator. He tried to yank the blade free, but too late, the claw closed fully, and the chainsword snapped clean in half.
In the same motion, moving with a speed that shouldn't have belonged to something his size, Blackiron struck again, the claw driving straight for Kian's stomach. Kian threw himself backward hard, barely avoiding a killing blow, but still caught a deep gash across his chest plate.
Both broke apart briefly, then closed back in.
Now each of them had only a single melee weapon left, close enough to a fair fight. Kian gripped his remaining chainsword two-handed, swinging hard at Blackiron over and over, the Ork parrying every strike with his claw. Every so often Blackiron tried to bait the sword into the claw's jaws again, but Kian, unwilling to lose his last blade, kept dodging the trap each time.
Meanwhile, the twin heavy bolter mounted on Kian's chest fired the occasional burst at Blackiron, but the Ork's armour proved absurdly resistant, shrugging off bolt rounds entirely. Genuine tank-grade plating, no question about it.
Neither side could land a decisive blow, locked in a grinding stalemate of strikes and parries.
Mid-exchange, two comm channels opened in Kian's mind simultaneously.
The first, Boothe. "My lord! Good news, the Astartes are recovered, the lift's on its way up. Please hold for five more minutes."
The second, Trasolh. "Count! Bad news. I've detected a large Ork force converging on your position. They've hit my ship with a barrage of ground-launched rockets, my void shields are overloaded, and I need to break off for evasive maneuvers. I can't provide fire support right now. You need to get out of there. Ork reinforcements will be on site within ten minutes."
Hearing both, mid-swing against Blackiron, Kian knew there was no more time to waste. He made a bold call.
Where he'd been carefully avoiding Blackiron's claw jaws all this time, he now swung the chainsword deliberately straight into them.
Blackiron blinked, then grinned wide, the claw's jaws snapping open wide, disintegration field flaring, clamping down hard on the blade.
"WAHAHAHA! Yer weapon's mine now!!"
The chainsword, caught in the field, began shredding apart bit by bit.
"Heh."
Kian just laughed and let go on purpose, freeing both mechanical arms.
"Before you hold a sword, first, you've got two hands."
Both massive bionic fists clenched and slammed straight into Blackiron's stomach.
Two thunderous impacts, and Blackiron's chest plate caved inward in two massive dents.
"AAAH!"
Blackiron howled. The sheer force of those two blows had punched clean through his heavy armour and shattered ribs beneath. He swung the claw wildly, trying to strike back, but Kian closed the distance first, one arm shooting out to seize the forearm behind that claw, pinning it fast.
He raised his other fist and swung it straight for Blackiron's skull. Landed clean, that punch would've turned the warboss's brain to pulp.
Blackiron caught it just in time, grabbing Kian's descending fist with his free hand and shoving upward with everything he had.
The two of them locked together on the battlefield, each gripping the other's arms, straining against one another in a raw contest of strength.
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