Chapter 493: An Armed Bid for the Titan, Part 5
By this point, Kian was already halfway up the climb. Ferrocore, refusing to waste another second, braced both hands against the Leman Russ's front plating and heaved upward with all his strength.
Noa gritted her teeth, foot slammed flat on the throttle, driving forward relentlessly, and Ferrocore's mechanical body began warping rapidly under the pressure.
The two struggled for several seconds, Ferrocore's body already twisted to the point of failure.
With both hands braced against the tank's hull, still straining upward, there was finally a sharp, brittle crack, and his body was torn cleanly in half.
Of Ferrocore's twelve-meter length, only a third managed to pull free from where the tank had crushed him.
Where his body had torn apart, a mass of neural cabling and electronic spinal components spilled out, coolant and unidentified fluids pouring from the wound.
What remained of him was barely three or four meters, with only two arms and two legs left, giving him a genuinely horrifying, half-torn appearance.
Noa abandoned the driver's seat, climbed up onto the turret, and worked the bolt on the mounted stubber, opening fire on Ferrocore directly.
The tank's main cannon couldn't depress enough to hit him at that angle, but the roof-mounted stubber had far better field of fire.
Ferrocore had lost his lower body, and with it, his plasma reactor.
Without power, his ion shield failed entirely, and a hail of stubber rounds tore into his chest, blasting off chunks of metal debris.
Ferrocore roared and slammed a mechanical hand against the gun.
With a harsh crunch, the roof-mounted stubber was knocked clean off its mount, sent flying.
Losing the stubber, Noa drew a las-pistol instead, firing several bolts straight at him.
Ferrocore thrust a mechanical arm forward, and with a wet punch, drove it straight through Noa's chest.
Noa coughed up a mouthful of blood, the las-pistol dropping from her grip, but her furious eyes never left Ferrocore's.
That look seemed to enrage him further. He roared:
"THE SACRED TITAN IS MINE! You lowly flesh-worms! Being permitted to assist in his maintenance was already an HONOR beyond your station!"
Noa's lips moved once, and she spat a mouthful of blood directly onto his mechanical face.
"Go to HELL."
The blood coated his electronic eyes, blurring his vision.
Furious, Ferrocore drove his other hand into her chest as well, tearing outward with both arms and ripping her apart entirely.
With Noa dead, nothing left to slow him down, his two mechanical hands scrubbed frantically at the blood coating his optics, but no matter how hard he wiped, it wouldn't clear.
Something occurred to him, and he looked up, and through a haze of blood, he saw Kian had already reached the top of the Titan.
He roared and abandoned all further delay, both hands and both remaining legs scrabbling across the ground, latching onto the Titan's massive foot, and began climbing.
His shattered, twisted mechanical form made for a genuinely disturbing sight as he climbed.
He wasn't thinking about anything else now, only reaching Kian in time, stopping him from entering the Titan, and tearing the man who dared defile it limb from limb.
Despite his grievous injuries, he climbed with startling speed, scrambling straight from the base to the very top of the Titan in short order.
As he reached the edge, gripping the platform, about to pull himself over, a heavy gear-axe suddenly slammed down, hard.
Ferrocore's climbing hand was severed clean off. He looked up, and found himself staring at Boothe.
Having landed the blow, Boothe raised the great axe again, swinging it straight down toward Ferrocore's head.
"How DARE you betray me! You TRAITOR!!"
Ferrocore roared, and with only one arm and two legs remaining, nimbly dodged the swing, kicking off the platform's edge, and used the momentum to scramble the rest of the way up onto the Titan's summit.
Boothe's swing missed, and he raised the axe once more, striking again.
"Magos. It is not I who betrayed you. It is YOU who betrayed us."
The axe swung down with tremendous force, but Ferrocore's advanced reactive sensors let him dodge it easily.
Then his one remaining mechanical arm drove forward, straight into Boothe's chest.
Squelch.
Boothe was run clean through. Ferrocore's hand closed around his spinal column and wrenched downward with sudden, brutal force.
With a tearing rip, Boothe's head and a length of his electronic spine were torn bodily from his body.
A ragged mess of flesh and circuitry still clung to the severed spine, a bloody, ruined head now dangling from Ferrocore's grip.
Ferrocore held the head up in front of himself, his electronic eyes staring directly into it.
"If time permitted, I would have carved your brain out myself, suspended it in nutrient fluid, and subjected you to eternal torment."
Boothe, reduced to nothing but a head, blinked once, twice, his voice unit crackling out a faint, broken whisper:
"Count Voss was right... You are nothing but... a Titan-obsessed pervert...
You served the Titan... for twenty years... and it never once answered you...
But the Titan is willing... to open its doors... for the Count... on their very first meeting..."
Those words stopped Ferrocore cold. He snapped his head up, staring ahead.
At the very top of the Reaver Titan, set into the side of its massive mechanical skull, sat a narrow entry port, wide enough for exactly one person.
Passing through that port led directly into the Titan's head, the cockpit itself.
That space belonged to a Principal, and two Adjutants.
Since this Titan had arrived on this planet, the head-cockpit's hatch had opened exactly three times.
The first, to carry out the previous Principal, for long-term preservation.
The second, when the previous Principal's hive was struck and destroyed by an Ork warship, and an Adjutant emerged to mourn.
The third, when an Adjutant, acting on the Titan's own will, went out to meet Luca, the Lancer's machine spirit.
For a full twenty years, that hatch had opened only three times. And now, for the fourth time, it opened again.
Two Adjutants stood on either side of the hatch, their eyes solemn, watching Kian.
Kian stumbled forward through the hatch, and it slowly sealed shut behind him.
With a soft clatter, Ferrocore's grip went slack, Boothe's severed head dropping to the ground, and he stared, utterly disbelieving, at the sealed hatch.
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