The battle raged from day to night, and from night until the first light of dawn.
The pile of corpses at the breach in Sector C8 had risen three meters high—a gruesome mound of human and Greenskin remains, their blood frozen into jagged, scarlet blocks of ice. These remains would eventually need to be purified by promethium fire; otherwise, the fungal nature of the Orks would inevitably sprout a new generation of green-skinned horrors from the soil.
However, the Orks gave the coalition no time to clear the charnel house. They charged wave after wave, a relentless tide that never ebbed.
Leo couldn't remember how many Orks he had slain. Five hundred? A thousand? His power armor's servo-motors were whining on the verge of overload, and every breath felt like liquid fire in his lungs. A third of his chainsword's teeth had been sheared off, the casing choked with green gore and scrap metal. He tossed the ruined weapon to one of his bodyguards and snatched up a freshly repaired replacement.
Over the course of twelve hours, eleven "Deff Dreads" had squeezed through the gap. These seven-meter-tall metal monstrosities were nightmares of rusted iron; their hydraulic power claws could tear through the armored hull of a Leman Russ battle tank as if it were parchment. Each salvo from their shoulder-mounted rokkit pods cleared entire squads of defenders.
The coalition forces used every desperate measure to halt them. Melta charges had severed the legs of two walkers, causing them to collapse in the breach and temporarily block the passage. But the following Orks showed no mercy, tearing their fallen comrades apart to clear a path.
An anti-tank missile struck one Dreadnought in the chest, blasting a ragged hole in the chassis, yet the bio-wired "pilot" inside—a crazed Ork Boy—miraculously survived. Unlike the revered Space Marine veterans interred in Dreadnoughts to preserve their wisdom, these Orks voluntarily underwent the Mekboy's "surgery" to be hard-wired into these "Deff Dreads" for the sheer joy of the slaughter. The machine continued to rampage for several minutes until a soldier managed to shove a melta bomb into the exposed iron coffin, finally silencing it.
But the remaining walkers remained the most dire threat. Concentrated fire from heavy bolters only left shallow white gouges in the frontal armor, which was over thirty centimeters thick. Even las-cannons struggled to find a weakness in the chaotic, overlapping plates.
"Sir!" a PDF captain's voice roared over the vox-net. "The eastern flank has buckled! The 47th Company has been wiped out! We can't hold them!"
Leo didn't answer. He was staring at the gap where a twelfth walker was forcing its way in. This one was larger than the others, its chassis painted a lucky blue. Its left arm ended in a long-barreled "Big Shoota" spear, while its right was a massive, snapping power claw. A crude, white skull—the glyph of the Deathskulls Clan—was smeared across its chest.
The machine stooped low, its power claw effortlessly rending a temporary bunker into scrap. Behind it, a fresh surge of Ork Boys poured through, howling their war cries and brandishing choppas, their eyes alight with the primal lust for battle.
Leo took a deep breath and switched to an encrypted, private channel. "Aiden."
Silence.
"Knight Aiden, I know you're listening," Leo said, his voice laced with annoyance. "The old man sent you to watch over me, didn't he? He's afraid I'll die here and end the Saint Gallus lineage."
After a burst of static, a deep, weary voice replied: "Young Master Leo, you can still withdraw. I have an Arvus Lighter prepped; it can be at your coordinates in three minutes..."
"I'm not leaving," Leo interrupted. "And I have a task for you."
A moment of silence followed. "Speak."
"You see that blue Ork walker? The big one?"
"I see it."
"Kill it."
There was another pause before Aiden responded: "Young Master, such intervention is outside the parameters of my current standing orders."
"Aiden!" Leo's voice rose to a command. "This is a direct order! In the name of the Heir of the House of St. Gallus, I command you: Engage!"
Aiden sighed, a heavy sound transmitted through the vox, but he did not reply. Leo cut the link and gripped his chainsword tighter.
"Fine. If you won't move on your own, I'll force your hand."
He locked his gaze on the Deff Dread, which was now only ten meters from the next line of fortifications. The Orks behind it were cheering, ready to unleash a massacre. Leo began to run, charging headlong toward the mechanical beast. He vaulted over a collapsed barricade and sprinted across the frozen dead.
The walker spotted him. Its massive, rotating head-sensor locked onto the tiny human. The power claw rose, whistling as it tore through the air in a downward arc. Leo rolled desperately to the side; the claw slammed into the earth, pulverizing stone and ice into a cloud of shrapnel.
He scrambled up and continued his charge, sliding beneath the walker's bulk just as it leveled its Big Shoota. The weapon barked, spitting oversized, solid-slug rounds that exploded on impact with the ground. The shockwave tossed Leo aside like a ragdoll. He tumbled, adjusted his posture in mid-air, and hit the ground running.
As he stood, he aimed his plasma pistol at the walker's knee joint. But he was too slow. The power claw was coming down again, and this time, there was no room to dodge.
Suddenly, the tolling of a great bell echoed from the sky. Three shadows plummeted from the clouds, striking the earth with the force of meteors.
Massive plumes of dust and snow billowed outward. As the haze cleared, a silver-grey Knight Errant stood tall upon the battlefield. Its pauldrons bore a shield emblazoned with a roaring bear. Its left arm housed a "Vengeance" pattern Gatling Cannon, and its right arm brandished an oversized, whirring Reaper Chainsword.
The Knight opened fire the moment it landed. The Gatling Cannon roared, spewing a two-meter tongue of muzzle flash as shells stitched a line of destruction across the Ork ranks.
Following the lead Knight were two smaller Armiger Warglaives, their chassis a deep, regal blue. They flanked the primary Knight, their shoulder-mounted rocket pods snapping open to unleash a swarm of missiles.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The explosions incinerated the Orks surrounding the blue Deff Dread but left Leo, crouched beneath the walker, untouched. The power claw that had been seconds away from crushing Leo was shredded into scrap by a precise burst from the Gatling Cannon.
With a gait that belied its massive size, Aiden's Knight surged forward. The Orks fired back with their "Kustom Mega-Blastas," but every shot flickered and died against the Knight's glowing Ion Shield.
Aiden brought the silver Knight face-to-face with the Deathskull Dread. With a crackle of disruptive energy, the Reaper Chainsword swept through the air, effortlessly slicing the Ork machine in half. The massive walker collapsed into two smoking heaps of junk.
Aiden pivoted his Knight toward the breach. The Gatling Cannon continued its rhythmic thunder, a metallic storm of shells reaping the green-skinned ranks like wheat before a scythe. The two Armiger squires advanced alongside him, their Thermal Spears and Reaper Chain-cleavers making short work of the remaining Ork walkers.
They threw the Deff Dreads into a daze with heavy strikes before piercing their thick breastplates with molten heat. With the arrival of these god-machines designed specifically to hunt large-scale threats, the tide of the battle at Sector C8 was briefly, violently turned.