Chapter 492: An Armed Bid for the Titan, Part 4
At the Titan Temple's outer perimeter, the Gargant had now reached the third wall.
The third wall bristled with a dense array of gun emplacements, all unleashing devastating fire straight at the Gargant.
But no matter how heavy the barrage, no matter how large the calibers, every shell that struck the void shield produced nothing but a brief flare of flame, entirely unable to touch the Gargant's actual body.
The Gargant's eye flared red, and another beam of high-energy laser swept across the wall.
Another two hundred, three hundred meters of steel wall melted away instantly, the gun turrets caught in the heat suffering catastrophic ammunition detonations, erupting in violent secondary explosions.
"WAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!"
The Gargant let out a savage roar, and the greenskins surrounding it answered in kind, surging forward alongside it, breaching the third wall and plunging into brutal close-quarters combat with the Mechanicus defenders.
Elsewhere, on the rail tracks, the Mechanicus procession had been devastated by the EMP charges, the majority of its personnel left paralyzed.
Then the fifty Astartes had burst from cover and cut them down without mercy, leaving the site littered with Mechanicus dead and wounded.
Ferrocore watched in horror, and an overwhelming surge of fury boiled up inside him.
This towering mechanical construct, three meters tall and over twelve meters long, brandished an array of weaponry across all three of his mechanical arm-pairs.
One hand gripped the great ceremonial war axe of the Mechanicus. Another wielded a chainsword. The remaining four arms carried high-energy laser emitters.
Ferrocore charged forward like a runaway train, his sixteen legs clattering across the ground in a rapid, driving rhythm, straight toward the Astartes.
"NO ONE! WILL STOP ME! FROM PROTECTING THE PURITY OF THE SACRED TITAN!!!"
He barreled straight up to one Astartes mid-fire with his bolter and brought the great war axe down in a single devastating swing.
The Astartes was cleaved cleanly in two, blood and viscera splattering across the ground in an instant.
That single strike sent a shockwave of fury through the entire company. Every Astartes present redirected their weapons, unleashing a devastating barrage on Ferrocore.
Heavy bolter fire, plasma bolts, every kind of heavy weaponry they carried, all of it converging on the towering construct.
Ferrocore's movements, despite his sheer bulk, were startlingly nimble, weaving and darting like a berserk serpent, dodging the overwhelming majority of the incoming fire.
The few shots that did land against him were absorbed harmlessly by an ion shield.
Nor'n, gripping an adamantium shield and a bolt rifle, opened fire on Ferrocore relentlessly.
Watching his rounds deflect off the shield, Nor'n's eyes went wide with shock.
"This lunatic actually mounted a reactor AND an ion shield onto his own body?!"
An ion shield was the same technology used by Knights, notoriously power-hungry, requiring nothing less than a full plasma reactor to sustain, a genuine nuclear power source.
What sane person voluntarily installs a nuclear reactor into their own body? And this mechanical worm apparently had one, believe it or not.
Watching Ferrocore cut down another one of his battle-brothers, Nor'n's fury boiled over.
He slung his bolt rifle across his back, drew a chainsword, and, raising the adamantium shield high, charged straight at the towering construct.
Ferrocore's mechanical head swiveled sharply, tracking like a point-defense turret's camera, locking onto Nor'n's charge.
His four mechanical arms turned toward Nor'n, and four beams of laser fired simultaneously.
Nor'n raised his shield, catching all four beams, and closed the distance, swinging his chainsword in a devastating arc.
There was a sharp, grinding crunch, and two of Ferrocore's mechanical arms on one side were sheared clean off.
Ferrocore, lacking any sense of pain, felt nothing of the injury itself, but the loss enraged him regardless.
He unleashed a stream of binary curses and swung the great war axe straight at Nor'n.
Nor'n raised his shield and activated its energy field.
The heavy axe crashed down against it, erupting in a violent shower of sparks.
Nor'n swept his chainsword upward from the other side, severing the two remaining laser-arms, then drove the blade forward, plunging it straight into Ferrocore's central chassis.
A harsh, grinding shriek of tearing metal, and the chainsword bit deep into his mechanical body.
But that alone wasn't enough to kill him. His body, heavily modified beyond recognition, had no true vital point left anywhere. Even reduced to a mangled stump, he could theoretically keep fighting.
He swung his remaining chainsword-arm at Nor'n, who drew his own chainsword and blocked the strike.
Mid-exchange, Ferrocore suddenly heard the roar of an engine.
A Leman Russ, tearing along at sixty kilometers an hour, ignored the raging melee entirely and charged straight toward the Titan.
The Leman Russ pulled off a sharp drift, coming to run alongside the massive transport carrying the Titan, and its turret hatch popped open, Boothe climbing out first, followed by Kian.
Boothe supported the dizzy, unsteady Kian, guiding him to the Titan's massive foot, where a series of climbing handholds ran up its length toward the entry hatch mounted at its very top.
Boothe followed just below Kian, occasionally giving him a boost from behind to help him climb.
Watching Kian begin his ascent up the Titan's frame, Ferrocore's processing cores nearly overloaded and melted down entirely.
His vox erupted in a burst of static, binary profanity screaming past at thousands of times normal speed.
His remaining mechanical arms surged with sudden power, the war axe and chainsword hammering relentlessly against Nor'n's shield.
Nor'n, overwhelmed by the sheer, relentless force, had no chance to counter at all, his chainsword torn straight from his grip.
All he could do was grip the adamantium shield with both hands, bracing against the frenzied assault.
After only a few more strikes, Ferrocore abruptly broke off, spun around, and unleashed a devastating tail sweep.
His massive mechanical tail slammed into Nor'n's midsection, launching him through the air like a fired shell.
"YOU DAMNED FLESH-WORM!! GET OFF OF HIM!!!
HE IS MINE! MINE!! MINE!!!"
Ferrocore's vox shrieked, twelve mechanical legs pounding rapidly across the ground, charging straight toward the Titan.
Just as he reached the base of the transport platform, beginning to climb, meaning to grab Kian and tear him limb from limb, the roar of an engine erupted behind him.
Halfway up the climb, his gimbal-mounted head snapped around, and he saw a Leman Russ bearing down on him.
BOOM!!
The Leman Russ slammed into Ferrocore's body with devastating force!!
At twelve meters long, Ferrocore had been climbing in a vertical orientation when the impact hit.
The tank drove nearly two-thirds of his body into the steel wall of the Titan's transport platform, pinning him there.
He thrashed like a centipede caught in a slammed door, his upper body writhing and twisting violently.
But Ferrocore had already lost his mind entirely. He didn't care in the slightest that a tank had just slammed into him, his eyes remained locked on Kian, still climbing steadily above.
"HE IS MINE! NO ONE ELSE IS ALLOWED TO DEFILE HIM! I WILL KILL YOU! I WILL TEAR YOU APART!!"
The instant he spoke those words, the tank's engine surged, roaring with sudden, furious power.
Inside the cockpit, Lieutenant Colonel Noa's foot was pressed flat against the throttle, her face twisted with rage as she screamed:
"The Titan?! HE'S NOT YOURS!!
Three generations of my family. Twelve lives. We gave everything to the work of restoring that Titan!
Three generations on this forge world poured their youth, their ashes, into the furnace, just to bring that broken, ruined Titan back to life!!
That Titan belongs to ALL of us! It has NEVER belonged to a twisted freak like you! DIE!!!"
THOOM THOOM THOOM!!
The Leman Russ's exhaust pipes belched thick black smoke, treads grinding into the earth, the whole vehicle driving forward with relentless, crushing force.
Ferrocore let out a shriek of pure, tearing agony, his mechanical body buckling and warping under the pressure.
☆☆☆
-> 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