Chapter 464: Battle of the Four Titans, Part 2
The Gork Walker and Luca's Lancer collided head-on, the Lancer's powered lance driving straight for the Gork Walker.
The Gork Walker knocked the lance aside with a single claw swipe, then swung the Fist of Gork straight at Luca.
"It ain't YOU I want!! I want Old Fart Kian!!!"
Luca raised the ion shield mounted on his left arm, a barrier of glowing blue plasma energy flaring to life, catching the Fist of Gork's blow head-on.
BOOM!!!
A thunderous explosion erupted where the Fist of Gork met the shield.
Luca pulled back fast, resetting his stance, then drove the lance forward a second time.
"Xenos! Death is the only destiny you deserve!!"
The two melee titans clashed on, while off in the distance, the two ranged war-machines traded fire of their own.
Every attack Kian threw was either deflected by the Ork WAAAGH-field shield or canceled outright by an answering burst of green lightning.
The Mork Walker answered with its super-rotary cannons, unleashing a torrent of heavy-caliber rounds in an instant.
Kian quickly raised his ion shield, a pale blue barrier flaring up in front of his mechanical head.
The Preceptor carried an internal ion shield generator, capable of projecting a defensive barrier ahead of the Knight to intercept incoming attacks.
The catch was its enormous power draw. Sustaining the shield for even ten-odd seconds would drain the plasma reactor's stored energy entirely, requiring a wait afterward for the reactor to recharge before the shield could be raised again.
Which meant a skilled Knight pilot had to use the shield sparingly, raising it only at the exact moment it was truly needed.
Right now, Kian had raised the shield in front of the Preceptor, angling it to protect the four head-mounted lascutters, the optical sensors, and both Annihilator cannons.
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!
The Mork Walker's rotary cannons unleashed a devastating storm of fire, blanketing the Preceptor and the surrounding area in an instant.
Rounds that struck the surrounding ruins kicked up thick clouds of dust. Rounds that hit the Preceptor's legs were absorbed by its adamantium plating without issue, while the majority of the incoming fire was caught cleanly by the ion shield, no damage taken at all.
Inside the Mork Walker, Three-Arm let out a wheezing laugh.
"Da shrimp-tin-can's machine may be shiny, but it ain't worth a single hair on my creation!
DIE!! DIE!!"
His rotary cannons kept firing, and kept firing, the sheer Gatling-style mechanism giving the weapon an unmatched rate of fire.
Kian held the shield up, weathering the onslaught head-on.
He watched calmly as round after round detonated against the ion shield in front of him, the shield's integrity starting to buckle.
But his focus stayed locked on the countdown ticking in the corner of his display, the cooldown timer on the Annihilator cannons.
The advanced cooling system worked continuously, venting superheated steam out of the cannon housings.
Finally, the one-minute countdown expired, the cannons finished cooling, and Kian raised his hand, firing another pair of devastating Annihilator plasma bolts.
But once again, the totem mounted on the Mork Walker forcibly deflected both plasma spheres with its WAAAGH field.
One shot went streaking off into the sky. The other veered left and slammed into a forty-plus-meter skyscraper, detonating with tremendous force.
Three-Arm let out a wild, boastful laugh.
"My creation's got an endless supply of energy! Nothin' you throw at it is gonna work!
All you boyz! Give me your strength, let's show da human shrimp-tin-can what I'm made of!!"
The next instant, a bolt of green lightning began slowly gathering on the totem mounted atop the Mork Walker's head.
Once that ball of green lightning had swelled to the size of a serving platter, it discharged in a sudden, violent burst, streaking straight for Kian!
The bolt moved so fast, Kian had no chance to dodge.
The lightning slammed into the ion shield and detonated, instantly overloading the shield past its safety threshold, causing it to automatically dissipate.
Seeing his shot break through Kian's shield, Three-Arm cackled and unleashed both super-rotary cannons again, a fresh wave of heavy rounds slamming straight into the Preceptor's exposed adamantium frame.
The adamantium hull could shrug off most solid-round attacks, but the joints, optical sensors, power conduits, and exposed weapon mounts weren't nearly as durable.
One round struck Kian's electronic eye dead center. It didn't blind him outright, but the shatterproof glass covering it had already begun to crack.
With his ion shield temporarily down, Kian didn't waste time. He turned and bolted.
The Preceptor's massive frame made for a somewhat sluggish runner, but Kian managed to swing the chassis around and drive it forward down the broad street ahead.
"Ya useless coward! Runnin' away?! Dat's pathetic! Dat's weak! Fight me! FIGHT ME TO THE END!!!"
Seeing Kian flee, Three-Arm panicked in equal measure.
Taking down an enemy this powerful, this massive, would guarantee him legendary status on this forge world's Ork leaderboards.
There was no way he was letting Kian slip away, and he set off after him at a dead sprint.
The streets of this secondary hive were still fairly wide, most stretches a full four lanes across, plenty of room for two fifteen-meter war-machines to play a game of cat and mouse.
Kian ran ahead, Three-Arm chased behind, every street and structure they passed getting crushed or demolished underfoot.
Three-Arm, trailing about a kilometer behind, rounded a street corner, spotted Kian's fleeing back in the distance, and raised the rotary cannons to fire.
But Kian, as though sensing it coming, suddenly swung his massive frame sideways and slammed straight into a nearby apartment building.
With a thunderous crash, the four-story building collapsed entirely, and Kian forced his way through the rubble onto the next street over.
Three-Arm, losing his target, muttered a string of curses and hurried after him.
He ran through the gap Kian had punched through the apartment block, and the instant he emerged, two Annihilator plasma bolts came streaking straight at him!
Once again, though, the totem atop the Mork Walker deflected both shots with a burst of WAAAGH energy, sending them careening off into the sky.
Both plasma spheres traveled dozens of kilometers before finally detonating, leaving two enormous, sun-like flares hanging in the sky.
Three-Arm strode out of the wreckage and spotted Kian a kilometer ahead, ducking behind a building, taking potshots at him, and let out a mocking sneer.
"I already told ya, dat little shrimp-tin-can toy ain't gonna work on me. I'm linked up with every Boy on dis whole rock now. I'm UNSTOPPABLE!!"
Kian raised an eyebrow and kept retreating down the street, keeping the chase going.
Meanwhile, the two melee titans were still locked in savage combat.
Blackiron had always been an Ork with exceptional close-combat prowess, and once neural-linked to the Gork Walker, that raw talent translated perfectly into full-scale mech combat.
His Claw of Gork kept grabbing and deflecting Luca's thrusting lance, while the Fist of Gork swung again and again, trying to land a solid hit on Luca's frame.
But Luca was a veteran Knight in his own right, having fought through more than a thousand Knight-on-Knight duels in his time.
His experience ran deep, and he held Blackiron to a dead even fight.
His powered lance sat mounted on a telescoping frame, capable of extending and retracting continuously.
The lance-tip could either stab and pierce armour directly, or fire a high-energy las-beam at range.
Luca's Lancer was fast, its intricate bio-mechanical legs allowing for rapid, agile maneuvering.
He timed a razor-thin retreating step, dodging a swipe from the Claw of Gork, then thrust the lance forward, driving it straight into the Fist of Gork's mechanical arm, sparking violently on impact.
"AAAAAAAAAAH!!!"
Because of the neural link, Blackiron, the pilot, felt it as though his own arm had just been run through, and he howled in agony.
He lashed out wildly with his still-functional Claw of Gork, forcing Luca to back off.
But Luca simply pulled back into a nimble evasive step, opening the distance, then thrust the lance forward again, straight at the Gork Walker's face. Blackiron, startled, barely managed to knock the lance aside with the claw.
The instant he did, though, Luca's massive left fist, fitted with the ion shield, was already there, slamming straight into the Gork Walker's face and caving in a huge section of its mechanical mask.
Blackiron staggered back several steps, eyeing Luca with genuine wariness.
This human was simply too skilled a fighter, or rather, his skill piloting a war-machine this size was on an entirely different level.
A human brain, with its limited processing power, controlling a chassis this massive, should have had some measure of input lag baked in.
Back when Blackiron had fought with his own flesh, he'd been fast as the wind.
But piloting a mech meant fighting with lag, meant having to plan a move out ahead of time before executing it.
And if the opponent read that intent early and prepared a counter, that delay would spell disaster.
Dozens of exchanges in, and Blackiron hadn't gained a single advantage. Instead, one of his own arms had been run clean through, the Fist of Gork now useless.
He shot a wary glance at Luca, who was busy readjusting the lance's extension, and bellowed:
"Get in there! All you boyz, get 'im, KILL 'im!!"
Blackiron shamelessly called for backup, and the watching crowd of Ork mechs, hearing their boss's order, surged forward with excited howls, eager to take a swing at the Lancer.
They had no idea what they were walking into. The Lancer-pattern was, hands down, the most aggressively offense-oriented Knight class ever built.
Luca shouted "For the Emperor!" and charged straight into the crowd of Ork mechs without hesitation.
He moved with blistering speed. The first Ork tin-can he reached, seven meters tall, took a single easy thrust from the powered lance, punched clean through, top to bottom.
Another Ork Dreadnought charged in from the side, and Luca's left-hand power fist caught it dead in the face, driving the mangled faceplate straight back into the chassis, crushing the Ork pilot inside into paste.
A left punch here, a lance thrust there, his two mechanical legs stepping in and out constantly to adjust position, and in the blink of an eye, he'd already skewered more than thirty Ork tin-cans.
Thoroughly terrified of Luca by now, the surviving Ork tin-cans started opening fire on him from a distance with an assortment of heavy weapons instead.
Luca didn't flinch. Charging forward, he raised his ion shield to cover his front.
Then his lance-tip discharged bolt after bolt of high-energy laser fire, precisely punching through the distant Ork mechs one by one.
When he reached a nearby Ork tin-can, he speared it through with the lance and kept it skewered there, using it as an improvised meat shield as he pressed the charge forward.
His two long, elegant mechanical legs propelled the Lancer's slender frame across the battlefield at incredible speed.
Whatever fire the Ork tin-cans threw at him from every direction, he either blocked with the ion shield or absorbed with the meat shield still impaled on his lance.
He closed in fast on a cluster of Ork tin-cans, the lance flicking out in quick succession, piercing each one clean through.
In under half an hour, Luca had racked up a full century of kills, over a hundred Ork mechs destroyed.
The surrounding ground was a dense field of Ork mech wreckage, every single one of them run through by the powered lance.
The Orks were thoroughly cowed by now, standing frozen in place, not one of them daring to make a move.
Luca flicked the meat shield off his lance and pointed the tip straight at Blackiron, still standing frozen in the distance.
"Xenos commander. Sending these vermin to their deaths in your place. Could it be that you're afraid?!"
His faintly ethereal voice carried across the entire battlefield through the Lancer's external vox, and every Ork present turned as one to look at the Gork Walker.
Blackiron, inside the Gork Walker, said nothing. Truthfully, he was afraid. Just a little.
This human's movements were simply too fast, too clean. Piloting a machine that massive, and yet there wasn't a shred of input lag anywhere.
Blackiron could feel the crushing lag in his own control over the Gork Walker, but this human shrimp-tin-can piloted something just as large as though it were his own flesh and blood, smooth, seamless, not a hint of delay anywhere.
Sure, he had the size advantage, but if he forced a fight now, he wouldn't last a hundred exchanges before his opponent found an opening and ran him clean through.
The totem mounted on the Gork Walker was a passive defense system, only effective against ranged, high-velocity attacks. It offered no protection against melee strikes at all.
And that damned Three-Arm, terrified of a possible uprising, hadn't installed a single ranged weapon on the Gork Walker.
Not even that green-lightning trick the Mork Walker used had been taught to him. He was purely a melee unit, nothing else.
While Blackiron stood there, lost in a swirl of conflicted thoughts, the watching crowd of Orks around him started losing patience.
"Wot are ya standin' there for?! You scared or somethin'?!"
One Ork jeered, and the rest quickly joined in.
"Why won't ya fight 'im?! You a coward or wot?!"
The surrounding Orks kept pressing him to engage, but Blackiron didn't dare.
This hesitation wasn't pure fear, exactly. If it had been Old Fart Kian standing in front of him, he'd have thrown himself in without a second thought, no fear of death at all.
But facing this unknown human pilot, he was afraid of dying pointlessly before he ever got his shot at revenge, and that fear had taken root.
That flicker of cowardice set off a chain reaction, and the watching Orks began booing him openly.
Ork morale across the entire battlefield began plummeting hard, and through the amplifying link of the Gorkamorka Walkers, that collapse in morale threatened to ripple out across every greenskin on the planet.
The Gorkamorka Walkers functioned as totem-tier units, meant to project a war-buff aura, and the two of them together acted as amplifiers for Ork morale and WAAAGH energy.
But that amplification cut both ways. A hit to morale would spread through the exact same channel, multiplying outward to every Ork on the entire world.
Back on the other side of the fight, still chasing Kian, Three-Arm noticed the WAAAGH energy feeding into his own walker starting to drop, a wave of negative energy spreading outward through the link to every Ork on the planet.
He went pale with alarm and immediately reached Blackiron over the comm.
"Wot da hell are you doin', ya useless git?! Da WAAAGH energy's droppin'! If it drops too far, da Gorkamorka's gonna shut down completely!
Get yer act together RIGHT NOW, ya damn coward!!"
Blackiron, on the receiving end of Three-Arm's furious tirade, felt his temper flare right back up.
He let out a roar, raised the Claw of Gork, let the useless Fist of Gork hang limp, and charged straight at the Lancer.
"I'm gonna smash you! I'm gonna smash you to bits!!"
☆☆☆
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