Warhammer: Striving to Be a Grinding Man

Chapter 122 Divine Strategist Deploys (2)

941.M41, the Armageddon landing site held its ground amidst the initial chaos.

The Orc outer defenses failed to mount an effective resistance under the combined assault of airborne attacks and rail cover. The eastern anti-aircraft array was paralyzed, and a key node of the western Void Shield generator had been destroyed. The stern doors of the transport ships opened and closed at an increasingly rapid pace, as Chimera armored vehicles and Leman Rustanks emerged from their belly compartments, deploying into an offensive formation on the scorched earth. The four long-barreled automatic cannons of the Hydra anti-aircraft guns slowly rotated, their muzzles pointing low into the sky, while the radar arrays continuously scanned behind the turrets, locking onto and tearing apart the Orcish fighters attempting to dive-bomb.

The hive was too vast. Invernus's diameter was measured in hundreds of kilometers, stretching from the ruins of the outer defenses to the industrial zones in the middle of the hive. Every passage traversed kilometers, even thousands of kilometers, of broken viaducts, collapsed buildings, and underground pipe networks. The orcs didn't need to defend every inch of land—they only needed to continuously feed new flesh and iron onto the Garros Legion's advancing axis, wearing down the Empire's steel with sheer numbers.

The orcs' counterattack arrived seventeen minutes after the first wave of armored troops advanced.

They didn't surge in from the front, but from underground. Invernus's sewer network, abandoned subway tunnels, and heating pipe corridors had been transformed into an underground tunnel network by the Techies during the days the orcs occupied Invernus. Battle fortresses emerged entirely from cracks in the ground, their bodies still smothered with chunks of broken concrete, and the sides of their turrets riveted with imperial icons torn from Imperial propaganda posters. Orc lads poured out simultaneously from ventilation shafts, pipe exits, and building basements, the muzzle flashes of their rifles glinting in the darkness.

Grom's roar echoed from the ruins of the middle layer of the hive, hoarse but overwhelming the artillery fire.

On the east wing, the gunners of the Lemanrus "Iron Fist" saw the ground suddenly bulge out 300 meters ahead in the thermal imaging. The battle fortress emerged from the rubble, and the rocket launchers on its side fired at a distance of less than 50 meters. Two rockets, trailing dark red contrails, slammed into the frontal armor of the "Iron Fist," the explosions violently pushing the vehicle to one side. The commander yelled into the intercom, the gunner steadied the sights, and armor-piercing rounds penetrated the frontal armor of the battle fortress, tearing the turret off the hull.

The second vehicle surged out from behind it. The third, the fourth. A well-organized, heavily armored convoy, personally modified by Techmaster. Combat trucks flanked the armored column, their roof-mounted rifles and multi-rocket launchers unleashing a deluge of ammunition.

The first chimera was hit less than three thousand seconds after firing. A rocket pierced the side armor, and the vehicle's automatic fire suppression system activated, spraying white extinguishing agent from the ruptured pipes. The crew abandoned the vehicle, and the infantry in power armor jumped out of the rear hatch, spreading out on the scorched earth, using bomb guns and laser guns to suppress the orc infantry attempting to charge.

"Heavy armored formation encountered on the east wing! At least two thousand combat fortresses, and the number of combat trucks is unknown!" Cole's staff marked a new red pin on the sand table, the pins sticking into the topographical map.

Cohen stood beside the sand table. His sage's robes covered his power armor, the hood undone, and his helmet hung at his waist. He wasn't wearing a helmet; the interface at the back of his head was exposed. On the sand table, the anti-aircraft array icon on the east side was painted green, while the Void Shield node on the west side was marked with a red cross.

Rellano blew that up. But that wasn't the only node in the Void Shield network—they were distributed throughout the entire hive, interconnected like blood vessels. The one he blew up was a crucial hub on the main trunk; cut it, and the entire network collapsed. Now the Imperium was going to reconnect that broken point.

The components have arrived. Inside the cargo hold of the Fireseed, the adamantite confinement chamber and energy conduits lie silently awaiting on their mounting racks. They aren't for the landing site; they're destined for the middle layer of the hive, for the node that Rellano destroyed. There, you'll find the Void Shield network's access interface, the interface left by Imperial engineers when they built the Void Shield in the hive. Once the new components are connected, the Void Shield will once again cover the hive.

The node is still in the orcs' hands, in an area that the armored forces need to advance to reach. The advance cannot stop.

"What about the War Dog class?"

"The three units on the left flank are flanking the battle fortress complex. The four units on the right flank are being entangled by the orc anti-armor squad and are being cleared out."

"Right-wing Warhounds continue the pressure, don't turn back. East-wing armored forces consolidate their lines, let the Battle Fortresses in. Marauders attack from the flank highlands."

Cole's orders were transmitted to all units via encrypted pulses. The Lemanrus Company on the eastern flank began a slow retreat, keeping their guns pointed as they moved backward, suppressing the Orc infantry attempting to charge with high-explosive shells. Chimeras spun a web of fire behind the tanks, and spent shell casings from the vehicle-mounted explosive guns bounced off the roofs.

Six Marauder-class Titans emerged from the high ground on the eastern flank. Their steps were heavier than those of the Warhound-class, their weapon platforms warming up as they moved. The cooling grates of the left arm's molten lava cannons glowed with a dark red light—not from overheating, but from standby.

Fire! Six blazing white jets of molten metal simultaneously pierced the battle fortress cluster. The first fortress hit melted in half from the middle, its front and rear halves collapsing under its own weight; the second fortress's turret was pierced by the molten metal jet, and the internal ammunition explosion sent the turret flying several kilometers into the air. Gatling guns followed closely behind, tearing a bloody path through the battle fortress cluster.

The orcs did not retreat. More battle fortresses poured out of the ruined passageways, their hulls still bearing the wreckage of the previous battle. Techmaster stood in the turret hatch, his welding torch still smoking, roaring in orcish toward the Imperial lines.

The armored forces of the Garros Legion experienced a brief period of disarray during the initial assault. The new recruits, fresh from training and facing their first direct assault on a heavily armored orcish force, instinctively slammed on their brakes. The chaos lasted only a few minutes. The shouts of veterans who had undergone human augmentation and were equipped with mental barriers exploded across the communication channels, and the commands of the company commanders pierced the headsets of every recruit like nails. The Lemanrus Company readjusted its formation, the chimera turrets began to fire rhythmically in alternating bursts, and the Hydra's anti-aircraft fire shot down one or two Orcish fighters attempting to take advantage of the chaos.

All personnel were in power armor. The CMC-100's terracotta breastplates deflected stray bullets and shrapnel, allowing infantry exposed to Ork fire in open areas to remain engaged for longer periods thanks to the power armor's joint servo systems and life support systems. A small number of CMC-200s and elite CMC-300s, with their thicker armor and enhanced power assist on platoon and company commanders, withstood the most concentrated fire at breach points.

The casualty figures slowly climbed on Cole's stats panel. Some were struck through the neck armor by rocket fragments while changing magazines; others were hit directly by fortress fire during charges; still others had their leg armor pierced by orcish pistols while covering the chimeras' retreat. Behind each fallen soldier, another soldier in grey-white power armor filled their place.

The strangulation battle over the landing zone intensified simultaneously. Thunderbolt fighters swooped down from the clouds, their twin laser cannons slicing a Pseudo-Soldier attempting to bomb a transport ship's path in two from nose to tail. Avenger attack aircraft flanked from the sides, their Gatling guns tearing new wounds into the battle fortresses on the ground. A Thunderbolt was caught by a Pseudo-Soldier emerging from the flank; its tail was pierced, the pilot ejected, and his parachute opened in the dust before being recovered by ground forces' armored vehicles. More Pseudo-Soldiers poured out from the gaps within the space wreckage and hive cities, relentlessly driven by the roars of their war leaders into the airspace already repeatedly cleared by Imperial fighters. The advance continued.

Behind the landing zone, the takeoff and landing frequency of the "Devourer" transport ships did not decrease. The four Odysseus-class delivery sequences had advanced to the fourth wave. The stern hatches of each transport ship opened the instant they touched down, and engineering operatives pushed ammunition trailers down the hatches, while gantry cranes hoisted disassembled Lemanrus turret components into their designated positions. Ammunition boxes were stacked into a waist-high wall at the edge of the landing zone, white tents for medical stations were set up on the scorched earth, and stretcher-bearers carried the first batch of wounded soldiers from the front lines. The terracotta breastplates of their power armor were pierced by armor-piercing rounds, and their respiratory and circulatory systems emitted intermittent alarms. At the edge of the landing zone, the four automatic cannons of the Hydra anti-aircraft guns fired alternately, the muzzle flashes casting dancing shadows on the scorched earth, and spent shell casings clattered around the vehicles. More troops were pouring out of the cargo holds of the transport ships, more chimeras were being deployed on the scorched earth, and more Lemanrus were heading towards the hive city amidst the artillery fire. The deployment of hundreds of thousands of people and equipment and supplies continued, and the landing zone remained operational amidst the artillery fire.

Deeper into the ruins, Kara's hundred men did not retreat. After the anti-aircraft array was destroyed, she dispersed her troops. The hundred men were divided into ten ten-man teams, spreading out in a fan shape along the edge of the ruins in three directions: southeast, east, and northeast. Some set up observation instruments on the broken overpass piers, some crawled into the underground pipe network to find passageways, and some climbed over the collapsed building ruins to occupy high ground. The communications soldier in each team crouched behind a bunker, his finger pressed on the send button on his portable data tablet.

Kara and her team occupied the top floor of a partially collapsed industrial building. The ruins of Invernus unfolded beneath her feet. She activated the magnifying scan sequence of her power armor helmet visor, and the scene rapidly zoomed in: the broken viaduct arched from the ground like the ribs of a dead behemoth, and the collapsed residential buildings piled up into several-story-high blocks of concrete and rock.

The crosshairs inside the mask were deflected five degrees to the right.

A band of orcs was driving civilians through the ruins. Ragged people were dragged from the collapsed basements of buildings; old people fell in the shoving, and children were lifted by the scruff of their necks. Kara saw a woman clutching a baby tightly in her arms when a green-skinned boy kicked her in the back. She fell to her knees, and the baby slipped from her arms. An orc picked up the baby, glanced at it, and then threw it against the nearest wall.

Kara's finger paused for a moment on the rangefinder control panel on the side of her mask. She entered a series of coordinates into the panel; behind that building, orc battle fortresses were gathering.

"Three groups on the east side, coordinates sent. Dozens of combat fortresses are gathering at the edge of the ruins. Requesting fire support."

The orbital strikes landed forty seconds later. The macro cannon's shells slammed into the edge of the rubble, the shockwaves lifting several battle fortresses off the ground, followed by more orbital strikes. Kara checked the results and then turned in the next direction.

Further afield, Group Seven heard the vibrations of orcish heavy vehicles deep within the underground network, while Group Eight discovered a techmaster repairing a battle fortress on the rooftop of a collapsed commercial building. Each coordinate was transmitted via encrypted pulses to the Fireseed's relay array, from where it was distributed to the orbital fleet's fire control system. Each coordinate landed precisely above the orcish heavy armored cluster.

The orbital bombardment lasted less than twenty minutes. The combined fleet's artillery fire reduced several heavily armored orc clusters in the middle layer of the hive to nearly 40%, turned three main reinforcement routes into chains of craters, and completely wiped out an ammunition depot converted from the Imperial armory.

The window was closing. The bombardment from the space wreck "Bonecrusher" intensified again as the Orc fleet repositioned, attempting to cut off the Combined Fleet's ground fire support. Von Hoffmann's voice came through the flagship channel, carrying a suppressed urgency: "Orbital cover will weaken in approximately forty minutes. Ground forces, accelerate your advance."

Cohen did not reply. His gaze remained fixed on the sand table. He knew that the fleet in orbit was suffering heavy casualties; the communicator indicated that several destroyers of the Garros fleet had withdrawn from combat, and a Moon-class destroyer was severely damaged and undergoing damage control. If it weren't for the reinforced adamantite armor layer, the losses would have been far greater.

The armored forces on the eastern flank reorganized their offensive after contracting their lines. Warhound-class Titans flanked the orcs, their plasma cannons chipping away at the battle fortresses attempting to flank, one by one. Marauder-class Titans provided sustained fire support from the rear, each shot from their molten lava cannons blasting a new breach in the orc lines. Lemanrus companies squeezed through those gaps, their turrets rotating on the move, high-explosive shells exploding among the orc infantry.

Four Warlord-class Titans advanced from the rear. Warhound-class Titans cleared a path, and the Marauder-class Titans increased their suppressive fire frequency to the maximum.

The Warlord-class Titan's steps were heavy, each footstep sending up a ring of dust from the scorched earth. "Unyielding Wrath" led the way, its volcanic cannons pointed towards the hive city.

Fire! Four beams of blazing white plasma shot out simultaneously. The beams exploded into four blinding orbs of light on the orcish defenses in the middle layer of the hive, each expanding, spinning, and consuming. Concrete vaporized, steel flowed. The sky seemed to darken for a moment at the instant the volcanic cannons fired—the blazing white light of the plasma overwhelmed the stars, causing pupils to constrict for a split second.

The binary hymn exploded from the Warlord-class loudspeakers, causing the chimera's armor plates to tremble slightly. It wasn't a pulse from a communication channel, but a deafening industrial hymn pouring from the arrays outside the Titan's body. The Warhound-class and Marauder-class loudspeakers joined in at the same moment, the rhythm accelerating, the pulses overlapping, transforming the resonance in the chest cavity into a tremor in the bones.

Elite combatants drawn from various capital ships rapidly assembled behind the landing zone. Nearly ten thousand men, clad in power armor and armed with molten lava guns, plasma pistols, and multi-barreled laser cannons, advanced in company-sized units towards the Titans. They lined up in the shadow of the Warlord-class Titans' leg armor, forming skirmish lines on the scorched earth, their explosive gun muzzles pointed at the entrances to the hive's middle layers where orcs were still pouring out.

These men form the ground barrier for the Titan Legion. As the Titans' massive feet crush the defensive line, they are responsible for clearing out the Orc anti-armor squads that emerge from the gaps in the ruins and attempt to attack the Titan joints with molten metal bombs.

Around Cohen, nearly a thousand members of the Storm Commando had already spread out around the command bunker. Awaiting orders, some crouched at the edge of the western crater, some set up heavy explosive grenades behind the rubble pile on the eastern side, and some changed magazines next to the sandbags at the bunker entrance.

After the orbital bombardment tore open a gap in the orcish defenses on the east side, Kara's forces infiltrated deeper into the ruins. Several small groups advanced into the heart of the hive along different routes, with signalmen constantly sending back new coordinates. Their objective was to continue searching for attackable nodes within the orcish lines—ammunition depots, the Masterworks workshop, and Grom's Command Post.

Rellano's squad, following the abandoned passageway beneath the overpass, infiltrated deeper westward, taking advantage of the orcs' confusion to destroy two communications relay stations in quick succession. The serrated teeth of their chainswords were stained with the blood of the mastermind, and their bomb pistol magazines had been emptied several times.

His communications were brief and as usual: "Continue the westward advance. The orc reserves are moving eastward, and we are behind them."

The signal markers for both teams continued to extend deep into the orcish territory on Kohl's sand table. Kara's blue arrow meandered through the ruins, while Rellano's arrow drew an arc westward and then southward on the western side, pointing towards a weak point deep within the orcish defenses.

Behind the landing site, the Tech-Priests unloaded the last batch of adamantite confinement chambers and energy conduits from the cargo hold of the Fireseed. They crouched in the massive cargo holds of several heavy trucks; the Void Shield components were to be transported to the hive, to the node destroyed by the Rellanor. There lay the interface to the Void Shield network, the original interface left by Imperial engineers when they built the Void Shield in the hive. The Orcish fleet wouldn't be blocked in orbit forever; when the Combined Fleet was forced to withdraw from orbital cover, the Garros Legion in Invernus needed its own Void Shield. Before that, the hive needed to be captured, and at least the entire legion needed to be under the protection of the entire Void Shield.

The team leader, a technical priest, confirmed that all components were assembled. The self-test light on the data board changed from red to green.

"The components are in place," he said. "Just waiting for installation."

Cohen's gaze fell on the slowly moving blue arrows on the sand table. The armored forces on the eastern flank had advanced to the edge of the middle layer of the hive, and the firepower of the Warhound and Marauder classes was tearing through the orcs' second line of defense. Four Warlord-class Titans continued firing, each shot from the volcanic cannons darkening the sky for a moment.

He pressed the all-channel broadcast button: "Gallos Legion, all units. Titans in front, armored units behind, infantry follow. Do not stop in any crater. Invernus is ahead."

There was no applause, no cheers. The only sounds on the communication channels were brief confirmation pulses from each unit and the continuous low-frequency hum of binary hymns.

The Warlord-class Titan strode forward. The muzzle of its volcanic cannon was pointed at the still-burning skyline of the mid-level hive. Its adamantine hull moved slowly through the smoke and dust, each step sending tremors through the entire battle line.

The scorched earth of Invernus trembled beneath the giant feet of steel. The empire's march did not cease.