Chapter 473: The STC Template, Part 3
Deep in the pitch-black sump, Kian pushed his team toward the rail station, gunning down Orks as they went.
Every so often, one or two greenskins would leap out of the darkness to attack them.
But this batch of Orks was pitifully weak, mostly armed with melee weapons, and the few carrying firearms couldn't scratch power armour anyway.
Kian's five hundred elites steamrolled through with barely any effort and reached the station without much trouble.
The station was lined with rail carts, most of them open-topped mining haulers.
These carts had once transported ore down to the Mechanicus shrine three thousand meters below, feeding raw material into the Sentinel manufacturing process.
Magos Robert approached one of the carts, a mechanical arm flaring with red light as he scanned the locomotive head, then said:
"This cart's structural integrity is fully intact. It's simply lost power.
I've brought a battery pack. Installation will take a little time."
He gestured, and a dozen or so tech-priests came forward, each hauling a small cart behind them loaded with battery components.
Robert directed the tech-priests to begin installing the batteries while Kian's team held a defensive perimeter around the cart.
The instant Robert successfully wired the first battery into the cart, an alarm suddenly blared from the locomotive head!
Kian's stomach dropped immediately. They'd just alerted the entire greenskin population in the area.
Sure enough, the next moment, a chorus of WAAAGH-noise rose out of the darkness surrounding the station, followed immediately by the thunderous stomp of countless feet.
A massive tide of Orks, drawn by the alarm, came pouring in from every direction, an overwhelming number, like every single greenskin left in the entire sump had converged on this one spot.
Kian's power-armoured guardsmen opened up in a frenzy of return fire, plasma spheres tearing into the Ork infantry and detonating, turning entire clusters into burning husks in an instant.
Arc rifles fired precise crackling bolts, striking Orks and unleashing a violent discharge, cooking their brains to ash on contact.
Soldiers in heavy power armour braced Lumberer stubbers, their mechanical belt-feeds running back to massive ammo drums strapped to their backs, unleashing an endless, uncaring stream of fire.
Kian, decked out in heavy power armour, held the front line, drawing the bulk of the Ork attention.
His head-mounted stubber auto-tracked and fired on its own, his left-hand plasma rifle periodically loosed a burst of light, and his right-hand power sword swung left, then right, cleaving every charging Ork clean in half.
Any Ork foolish enough to touch a single round from his squad died instantly. His force's sheer quality and density of fire made human-wave tactics functionally useless against them.
If this kept up, it wouldn't be long before Robert finished repairing the cart, and they'd be able to drive off at their leisure.
But right then, Kian felt a sudden, violent surge of psychic energy wash over him, and instinct took over. He dove sideways without thinking.
The instant he cleared the spot, a thick bolt of green lightning slammed into the ground exactly where he'd been standing, blasting a massive crater into the hardened floor.
Kian's heart lurched, and he looked up toward where the bolt had originated.
There, deep in the Ork crowd, stood an unusually tall Ork, 2.5 meters at least.
Its skull bristled with cables, each one running down to a crude staff clutched in its hand, and its entire body radiated a faint green glow. That devastating bolt of green lightning had come from it.
Kian narrowed his eyes, raised his arc rifle, and fired three consecutive bolts straight at the strange Ork.
Three plasma flares burst outward, incinerating every Ork caught in the beam's path along the way.
But just as the blue flares were about to strike home, a shimmering green field around the strange Ork's body deflected them aside, sent them flying, exactly the same as the WAAAGH field the Gorkamorka Walker's totem had projected.
That confirmed it for Kian. This thing was one of the Ork psykers, a "Weird Boy."
Ork psykers, or "Weird Boyz," "zappers," "wyrd boyz," whatever the Orks called them, were born with an innate psychic gift.
They could resonate with the WAAAGH energy stored in the minds of nearby Orks, drawing on that collective power for themselves, and unleashing devastating psychic effects.
But this had a serious downside. A Weird Boy forcibly siphoning off other Orks' WAAAGH energy and concentrating it in his own body ran the risk of losing control entirely, a psychic overload.
The result, if that happened, was catastrophic: the Weird Boy's own eyeballs would explode outright, and every Ork he'd drained would suffer a violent backlash, their heads exploding in turn.
In short, it was an ability offering enormous payoff, but with an equally enormous risk attached.
Right now, having watched his ambush attempt on Kian fail, the Weird Boy narrowed its eyes.
It raised the staff in its left hand and swept it through the air. Instantly, a faint green glow bloomed across the bodies of every Ork nearby, threads of light stretching out and connecting back to the Weird Boy itself.
The Weird Boy let out a roar, its body crackling with bursts of green lightning, a ball of green energy condensing atop the staff, clearly preparing to unleash something devastating on Kian.
Seeing his opponent gearing up for a spell duel, Kian immediately tucked both his weapons behind his back, freeing both hands, raising them high, a ball of golden lightning beginning to gather between them.
Both sides charged their spells for over ten seconds, then, in near-perfect unison, unleashed them at each other.
The Weird Boy's green lightning met Kian's golden lightning head-on, the two bolts colliding and locking into a raw beam-clash.
Kian's psychic power was clearly stronger. His golden lightning overpowered the green, steadily pushing forward, driving toward the Weird Boy.
Seeing itself losing the clash, the Weird Boy's eyes flared with rage, and it drew on even more Ork psychic energy.
Several thousand Orks across the battlefield suddenly flickered with faint green threads, all linking back to the Weird Boy.
Reinforced, the green lightning thickened noticeably, slowly beginning to push back against Kian's golden bolt.
Seeing this, Kian voice-commanded his power armour's internal servos to apply a dab of Sanctified Anointing Oil, boosting his Focus by ten, and his golden lightning surged forward again, pushing the green back.
Seeing that, the Weird Boy roared: "GIVE ME ALL YER LIGHT!!"
And with that, it drew on the psychic energy of every single Ork across the entire surrounding area, several thousand of them at once.
Green light crackled violently across its body now, especially around its eyes, bolts of lightning snapping and popping, the thing clearly on the verge of collapsing under the sheer psychic overload.
But it was worth it. The green lightning bolt bearing down on Kian grew monstrously thick, surging forward with terrifying speed.
Watching that massive green bolt bearing down on him, Kian's eyes went wide with alarm, and he shouted:
"Little Joel! LITTLE JOEL!!"
Little Joel, cradling a Lumberer stubber and gunning down Orks nonstop, already had well over two hundred bodies piled up in front of him.
Hearing Kian's call, he shouted back immediately: "I'm here, sir! Orders!!"
Kian bellowed: "Little Joel, from where you're standing, am I on your left or your right?!"
Little Joel blinked, baffled. What kind of question was that?
But as a soldier, obeying orders had become pure instinct by now.
He was currently standing to Kian's right, which meant, from his own perspective, Kian was on his left, and the greenskin Weird Boy was on his right.
He answered quickly: "My lord, from my angle, you're on my left!"
Kian's blood ran cold. He shouted immediately:
"Little Joel, run to my other side, right now, and just watch me. Don't do anything else!!"
Little Joel was even more baffled now, what kind of order was THAT, but he obeyed anyway, abandoning his position and sprinting over to Kian's left side.
From that new position, looking at the fight, the framing had flipped: now the Weird Boy stood on the left, and Kian stood on the right.
As anyone who knows anything knows, in a beam-clash, left side loses. Always has.
The moment Kian secured the correct positioning, the effect was immediate.
The Weird Boy had been on the verge of overpowering Kian entirely with its green lightning, but the instant Little Joel switched sides, the Weird Boy suddenly found itself unable to contain the surging WAAAGH energy anymore.
Every Ork on the battlefield's psychic power was pouring straight into its body, then discharging back out in a violent, uncontrolled overload, its body practically a transformer on the verge of meltdown.
It kept straining to hold the beam-lock, still trying to force Kian down, but the lightning sparking loose from the corners of its eyes was growing brighter, larger, more uncontrolled by the second.
Then, suddenly, its body couldn't take any more. The green lightning surged out of control, bursting straight out of its eye sockets, blowing both eyeballs clean out.
That was only the beginning. The overwhelming psychic backlash tore through its entire body, cooking it from the inside out, and then detonated in a massive psychic explosion, its whole form bursting apart like a high-explosive shell.
Every Ork it had been drawing energy from suffered the backlash in turn, the surging psychic power slamming back into their own bodies and frying their brains outright.
In an instant, several thousand Orks across the battlefield collapsed as one, as though their souls had been ripped straight out of them, smoke curling from their skulls, thoroughly, permanently dead.
The private troops, mid-firefight one moment, found the enemy simply collapsing en masse the next, and gradually stopped firing.
The chaotic battlefield fell almost instantly silent, the air thick with the smell of gunsmoke and charred, burnt flesh.
The Weird Boy's psychic backlash had, effectively, wiped the entire map clean on its own.
Just then, Magos Robert finished swapping the battery into the cart and shouted:
"We're clear to move! Everyone, on board!"
Kian shook out his hands, still hot from the sheer volume of psychic energy that had just poured out of them for the beam-clash.
"Remember this, kids: since ancient times, left side loses in a beam-clash.
Everyone! Board up! Keep watch on both sides of the cart, careful of any Ork ambush!"
The power-armoured infantry filed aboard one after another. The cart was massive, each car capable of carrying several dozen people, and with over twenty cars total, all five hundred guardsmen fit easily.
The cart set off at a cautious thirty kilometers per hour, slow enough to stop instantly if needed, descending steadily into the depths.
The Mechanicus shrine housing the STC template sat three kilometers straight down, but the cart followed a winding, sloped path, meaning the actual route stretched well over ten kilometers.
The cart chugged forward along the rails, every soldier keeping their weapon trained outward into the darkness, alert.
This hive had been without power for over twenty years, and under Ork control for just as long. God only knew what might still be lurking down here.
As the cart continued its descent, Robert's mechanical eyes stayed locked on the track ahead, his built-in auspex system capable of scanning great distances.
Suddenly, his auspex picked something up, and he immediately raised the alarm to Kian:
"Watch our left side, something's closing in!!"
Kian turned to look, and out of the darkness came the grinding screech of metal.
The downward track they were on ran through an unusually wide stretch, flanked by dozens of parallel rail lines.
Further out along the tracks stood a cluster of small metal structures, low-rise buildings that had once housed the hive's residents.
And right now, atop those low metal structures, several Sentinel walkers were bounding, sprinting, closing in fast on the cart.
"WAAAAAAAAGH!!!"
The Ork pilots aboard the Sentinels let out a war cry, charging hard toward the train.
The Sentinels still bore visible traces of Astra Militarum camo paint, clearly captured Imperial equipment repurposed by the Orks.
Some carried small cannons, others heavier guns.
They moved with startling agility, bounding across the complex rooftops, leaping onto the tracks alongside the cart, and opening fire on the passengers with their mounted weapons.
RATATATAT!!!
BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!
Heavy machine-gun fire sparked off the cart's steel hull in bursts, while cannon rounds slammed into the cart and detonated, blasting several power-armoured soldiers off their feet.
Over thirty Ork Sentinels, and in an instant, Kian's force had already taken more than a dozen casualties.
Magos Robert told Kian:
"Have your troops fire the arc rifles. The Sentinels rely on internal gyroscopic stabilizers, extremely precise instruments.
An arc rifle's discharge can instantly destroy that stabilizer with the electrical energy it releases!"
Kian gave the order immediately, directing every trooper carrying an arc rifle to open fire.
He grabbed one himself and began methodically picking off Sentinels with precise shots.
The air filled with the sharp smell of burnt ozone, streaks of crackling electricity flashing out in rapid succession.
When the arc struck a Sentinel, it left nothing but a thumb-sized scorch mark on the hull.
It looked like barely any damage at all, but in reality, the high-energy discharge had already ripped through the machine's internal wiring, frying every electronic component inside, along with the more delicate mechanical parts.
Kian fired two shots from his own arc rifle at one of the Sentinels.
The walker seized up as though it had grabbed a live wire, both mechanical legs locking rigid, and it toppled straight over onto the ground.
After several more rounds of controlled fire, over half of the thirty-odd pursuing Sentinels had been taken down, all of them sprawled and disabled across the rails.
A handful of the remaining Sentinels managed to stagger back upright, but after only a step or two, they collapsed again, stumbling drunkenly like something had burst a vessel in their brain.
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