Gerhard made it back to the spot where Sera was waiting. She looked visibly pissed off.
"What?"
"I was starting to think you'd finally found a hole deep enough to die in," Sera snapped, her voice rough. "You've been gone for hours, Gerhard. In this Hive, three hours is long enough to die, your corpse to decay and for new life to grow from it."
"What are we? Married? I had to carve my way through a few thousand Orks to get the components I needed. That kind of shit takes time."
Vahl didn't rise to the bait. Her eyes narrowed, scanning his burnt clothing.
"You were injured."
"It's nothing."
She held his shoulder, and despite the difference in strength, her grip was like a vice. The strength of a woman who had literally butchered her way through a blood and plague-cult while her own flesh was melting. Gerhard stopped and turned to face her, showing her the respect she deserved. Ranks mattered nothing to him down here, but Sera deserved it.
"You're behaving like a fucking child. Are you functionally operational, or am I going to have to carry your corpse back to that hole you call a workshop?" she asked.
"How do you think I got my ass back here?"
In a sense, Sera had taken on the strange role of a Lieutenant of the PDF even in this situation. Or it would be more accurate to say she had never laid down that role.
She knew that Gerhard didn't need her help, but it was precisely that feeling of being a weight that pulled him down that bothered her. She was a strong woman and abhorred the feeling of doing nothing while others returned from the battlefield.
"I'm alright. A momentary lack of vigilance," Gerhard said.
"What happened?"
"Well, there was this Tech Priest and--"
"Tech Priest?! You found that cunt member of the Priesthood of Mars? Where is he? If he has a vox-array or a shuttle, we could actually get off this rotting rock."
...
"Uhhh, he... died..."
"Died?"
"Yep."
"To what? To the Orks?"
"No. He had his cogitator taken out of his head... quite a messy sight."
Vahl narrowed her eyes, feeling that Gerhard wasn't telling her all he knew. She could smell the lie. Gerhard cursed her instincts but kept a perfectly neutral, innocent expression. Thank you, Gamer's Mind.
It wasn't that Vahl was a danger to him, or some other anime bullshit trope where the female was violent and it was supposed to be funny. Gerhard simply judged her as not yet ready to hear that he had killed a member of the Imperium, no matter the truth of the situation.
If he told her, he would explain himself; she wouldn't believe it and would call him a liar, forever mistrusting him. Or worse, try to attack him or something like that. And Gerhard wasn't interested in killing the only human he had saved in the Hive. Hans was good company, but having a human around who didn't constantly shout BS was a nice change.
Besides, she was a skilled commander, at least from what she told him. It would be a waste to kill such a capable individual.
"I hate not knowing the variables, Gerhard," she said, her hand dropping from his shoulder to the grip of the Lasgun at her side.
"I'm a Lieutenant. I spent my life leading men into meat-grinders because we lacked the 'miracle tech' you seem to pull out of your pockets every third hour. If there's a force up there capable of gutting a Magos, I'm coming with you next time. I'm not sitting here like a fucking civilian ward."
Truthfully, Vahl hated being 'not good enough' for a hard task. It was what made her rather bitter about not being allowed entry into the Imperial Guard. She clearly had the will and the mind for it. She claimed the officer who tested her wanted to force himself on her, and she beat him to a pulp, barring her and almost making her into a Servitor, had others not seen what happened.
Whether that was the truth was anyone's guess. But Gerhard didn't care either way.
He explained what happened and lied about most of it. Unlike him, having too much knowledge was a curse for others, which was why he kept his abilities a secret from her as much as possible. She didn't know what happened behind closed doors and wouldn't ever find out.
"You're not coming with me next time."
"Yes, I am."
"This is not a debate."
"You're right, it's not. I'm a Lieutenant of--"
"Seriously? The Planetary Defence Force no longer exists. These are things you can't fight."
"The PDF exists as long as a single member exists."
She was a bit emotional about losing all of her fellow PDF members. To her, it felt as if she had failed terribly.
"I'm not giving you a suit."
"You think this is about the suit?" she growled, her voice dropping low.
"I've held back-line trenches against Xenos and Heretics with nothing but a combat knife and a prayer to a Throne that didn't hear me. I've watched my entire platoon get turned into red pulp because some high-born Hive-Spire cunt thought it beneath him to spend some forces to get right of all the Orks when they attacked the first time."
She poked a hard finger into the centre of his chest.
"I don't need your clockwork armour to be lethal, runt. And I don't need a nursemaid. What I need is for you to stop treating me like a civilian who wandered into a war zone. I am the war zone."
"Urgh, barf. I can't physically throw up in my mouth, but if I could--"
"Shut the fuck up, you idiot. I'm not good with words. If you can forge a weapon like this," she lifted the novice-grade Lasgun he'd given her, "then you can stop hoarding the frontline. You want to save this Hive? You want to burn out that Xenos rot? Then stop playing the lone martyr. Give me the frequency, give me a sector, and let me do the one thing I was bred to do: Hold the line."
"This isn't about you, Lieutenant!" Gerhard said, raising his voice for the first time.
"You don't know anything about the Orks, other than the propaganda bullcrap that you have been fed all your life. Xenos threat this, heretic that. This is a bit more complex than it appears. The Imperium's war strategy is to throw as many bodies at all Xenos and try to overwhelm them with numbers. News flash: that won't work here!
You're smart, think about it. The Orks love us, humans, precisely because we fight that way, but that won't help us now. I am not playing around here. There are far more serious threats approaching than this."
"Then tell me how to fight them, if you know better."
Gerhard felt Gamer's Mind keep his mind clear and dampen the spike of annoyance, but he couldn't deny the sheer strength of her conviction. She wasn't asking for permission; she was making it clear that she was willing to learn but would fight either way.
"I don't care if you're the second coming of the Omnissiah," she said. "I don't even care about tech heresy or whatever bullshit they usually spout. When the Inquisition comes for you, I'm dead either way, so what does it matter?"
...
"Haaahh... very well. Then let us get some facts straight. Fighting Orks is a losing battle for most who face them. The galaxy, this reality, all the wars... the Orks already won. They don't care about much, but hearing their weapons go off and getting close enough to crush all of us. That makes them extremely dangerous.
But as dangerous as the Orks are, they are also rather dimwitted and most of the time predictable. That doesn't mean that they are easy to fight. But it means that we can plan somewhat."
"And how would we do that?"
"As long as they live long enough, and if they continue to fight and commit violence, the Orks grow stronger. Not only that, they are incredibly resourceful when they have to be. And even if they die, if their blood isn't burnt, they will return in greater numbers, stronger and with better technology. Hungry for more."
"So we need to kill them fast enough and use fire to do it."
"Yes and no. The Orks' greatest strength can also become their weakness if their violence and bloodlust aren't channelled. Usually, that's the biggest and baddest Ork that does that and guides a warband or Waaagh and makes them incredibly dangerous."
"So if we take out their leadership..."
"Yes. If we take out the Warboss, the Ork Nobz will start to fight amongst each other for leadership, and that, similarly to the Tyranids, will make them very ineffective and easier to kill for us."
"Then how do we take him out?"
"That's the problem. You can't. At least not the way we are right now. The suit I created is powerful, but not enough to just march through all of the probably hundreds of thousands of Orks and kill the Warboss."
"So we bait him?"
"Precisely. And I already started with that."
"And how exactly did you do that? I thought you'd ''introduced yourself to the Orks.'' Those were your words, or not?"
"Yes. On one hand, I tested out my suit, killed thousands of Orks, scavenged their equipment and bodies, and introduced myself as a formidable enemy. I also let two of them live to spread the word and deliver my challenge to the Ork Warboss," Gerhard said.
"A challenge? Why?"
"I challenged him and the rest of the Orks to another battle to see 'who is the best and strongest'. He won't be able to refuse such a challenge and prepare for it."
"So that way you get him closer and take him out?"
"That would be optimal, but it's unlikely to work with the way things stand. I need to improve my suit's power."
"So what can I do?"
"Hmm... How are your sniping skills?" Gerhard asked.
"Average."
"That's a problem then. You will need to train if you truly want to become useful. If you snipe Orks from a distance, while I fight them head-on, no one will notice in the chaos. And if you're truly good, you might even kill the Warboss that way. However, there is no chance that you can accompany me on the battlefield."
"Why don't we just attack them right now? Wouldn't the element of surprise catch them off guard?" Sera asked.
"It would, but it would also prove that I'm a lying git and no longer make them trust me."
"We want them to trust you? Why would we want Xenos scum to trust us? And why would you show honour to them?!"
"Haaa... Because belief matters. If they believe me to be honourable, they won't see the moment coming when I'll stab them in the back and assassinate the leadership. But that will take a while. Plus, it gives us time for the last aspect of this plan."
"Which one?"
"The Archenemy, of course. It still exists, even if I managed to damage it greatly."
"And how could the Xenos help us in that regard?"
"Simple, they will fight them for us. If both forces fight one another, we get to watch and pick off the stragglers later."
"And why would they even meet?"
"Because the Warboss won't take things lying down. He will send forces to search for me. So they'll come to the Underhive."
"But they won't find you, they'll find the Archenemy."
"That's a bingo."
"I see. Make the beast reveal its neck to you and cut off its head when it least expects it. Make the Xenos and the Heretic kill one another. I like it."
"We appear honourable, while one side grinds the other to the ground, and we are planning to assassinate the Warboss, or until you get a lucky shot in during the fight. Or I kill him. All's possible in war."
"Very well. Then let's begin. Do you have a sniper rifle?" Sera asked.
"Do I have a sniper rifle? Of fucking course I have a sniper rifle. Do you have a sniper rifle... The nerve on this woman."
The edge of Vahl's mouth moved up the slightest bit, but was back down again a second later, when Gerhard handed her the Long-Las.
That was the moment Sera started training again—something she hadn't done since her youth as a fledgling PDF member. Gerhard watched her train and set up targets for her to practice on. He created several courses for her, including moving targets, stationary ones, and others.
And in between, he worked on creating better weaponry and improving his MK III-H power armour. He knew that Sera wasn't going to get close to good enough to help in one month, so he used [Instant Dungeon - Create] and the now 6:1 time dilation to work on his things.