New objective: Reclaim the Ankylon line
Somewhere behind the clouds the sun was going down, dimming the sky to a heavy grey. The earth below was little better: the landscape around the advancing legion was dead in every direction, reduced to ash and rubble. In the far distance, a bloom of smoke rising from the defence line divided the horizon in two.
“Holy Cog.” the sensori officer below Phenro muttered, his eyes pressed to the auspex periscope. "What happened?"
"The hereteks happened." the steersman replied, as he plotted
Aeterna Victrix’s route through the zagging trench lines and the ruins of tank traps. Even with the grav-plates in the titan’s legs alleviating its mass, the ground underfoot was treacherous; artillery had reduced the ground to loose, scree-sloped craters, and most of the areas that were still even were lousy with mines.
"They're still happening, if you hadn't noticed.” princeps Phenro stated cheerfully, leaning slightly in his command throne as
Aeterna swayed right with another thundering step. He was a small man, tawny-skinned, hook-nosed and with a tangle of black beard that had seen little taming since he had bonded with the Nemesis Warbringer.
Aeterna’s eager spirit coursed through him from the data cables dreadlocked into his bald scalp.
The princeps’ fingers twitched fractionally as he nudged auspex captures from the sensori into the tactical data net.
“Mistress Zoerrin.” he voxed into the secure command channel. “I am tagging three targets of opportunity for your consideration. That plume on the horizon appears to be the Delta Sector Six command complex, which means the enemy artillery bastion is just behind. To the southeast is the salvage yard where the Patriots are no doubt rearming their damaged skitarii units. Further south is Complex Seven-Three, which was a supply dump before the line fell, and intelligence from orbital surveillance sat is that the Patriots are now using it as a staging point. Just mark me a target and clear a path for the quake cannon.”
+ + + + + +
The bass rumble of the titans’ warhorns ululated across the battlefield, shuddering through ribcages and causing the muddy puddles underfoot to tremble.
Artillery tribune Secundus Theta-Two de-synced his implants from his magnoculars and lowered the device with a jerk. Even with his relatively unaugmented eyes, he could still see the titans on the horizon: grim shadows wreathed in smoke and wind-blown dust as they advanced. They moved with the ponderous inexorability of death itself, each step eating up the ground far faster than any man could flee.
The skitarii would not flee. Their faith in the prophets was absolute, even though the tribune’s internal data stacks calculated that his chances of surviving the imminent engagement stood at a paltry 20%.
+All Basilisk units.+ Secundus canted. +New fire mission. Designate target: enemy titan group, bearing zero one zero, range five kilometers. Destroy the enemy blasphemies and slay their saints, so that the hereteks will know the futile error of their cause.+
His vox receiver was flooded with mindless blip-acknowledgements and automatic battle-prayers as the rows of gun-vehicles behind him ratcheted their cannons downward for direct fire. Secundus thanked the prophets of the machine god who had overseen his transformation. In their wisdom, they had rendered his binaric casters incapable of transmitting the organic impulses now quaking through his body. His bionic eyes could not weep, and his bionic legs locking into position ensured that he would not tremble and fall to his knees. His maniple would die hearing their commander spit binary defiance at the oncoming monsters. Not hearing the sobs of a man deserted by his prophets and his god, staring down the four harbingers of an inescapable death.
Secundus laced his mechanical fingers into the Cog sign, and crossed them over his chest. Behind him the artillery boomed, smoke-wreathed and thunder-loud.
+ + + + + +
The horizon suddenly lit up with a ripple of white flashes, as the line of self-propelled guns near the destroyed bunker thundered their defiance. Heavy shells screamed across audio pickups before shattering in a wash of fire against the titans’ void shields.
“We are receiving hostile fire, princeps.” the tech-priestess working deep within
Aeterna’s torso voxed up unnecessarily as the voids screeched, flickered and recycled.
“Maintain full stride.” Phenro ordered, a tight smile on his face as he gripped the arms of his throne. The curtain of fire parted and
Aeterna lurched clear, one foot crashing down to shake the cratered earth. “Princeps Zoerrin,
Aeterna Victrix awaiting fire command.”
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