Chapter 496 - 496: Clash of Titans

The Reaver Titan was the hottest thing on the battlefield. Beams of every kind poured off it into the greenskin hordes all around.

Until now, the greenskins had been strutting around under the Gargant's void shield. The Gargant protected them, and the human shrimp couldn't get in.

In return, they fed the Gargant an endless supply of WAAAGH energy. It was a virtuous cycle.

Then, out of nowhere, a Reaver Titan showed up. It shrank its void shield, walked straight through their fire and into the Gargant's shield, and started slaughtering Orks.

In an instant the tables turned. The Orks never got a chance to fight back. The Titan just gunned them down without mercy!

As the Reaver's massacre went on, the boyz grew fewer and fewer. Panic spread through the ranks, and the WAAAGH energy they could supply kept shrinking!

The Gargant's void shield was visibly contracting. No matter how Blackiron raged, and no matter how much he shelled Kian, Kian ignored him completely and kept methodically butchering the boyz!

Finally the boyz couldn't take it anymore. Trapped inside the void shield, they had no way to survive the Reaver's 1,000mm-plus cannon fire!

One after another, they drove their tanks and walkers toward the edge of the void shield, running for their lives!

But the moment they left the Gargant's shield, Sergeant Nor'n and his men caught them cold!

Nor'n had the remaining Astartes and the last hundred thousand or so Skitarii dug into cover, and they opened fire on every Ork unit that broke out of the void shield!

Heavy bolters, plasma, flamers, meltabombs, radium lasrifles, arc rifles: every high-energy weapon they could scrape together hammered the Orks stumbling blindly out of the void shield!

The greenskins had barely cleared the shield before a storm of fire cut them down. They fell as corpses, or took a direct hit from a high-energy explosive and melted into slag!

A few Ork tanks pushed through the withering fire and rolled clear of the shield, looking to shell the Skitarii.

But plenty of heavy gun emplacements had survived in the Titan Temple's core. These guns had been pre-sighted long ago. They fired at once, and their heavy shells blew the Ork tanks apart!

That was the fate of the Orks who ran forward: Nor'n's men and the Skitarii cut them down.

Some Orks ran the other way. The moment they left the void shield, macro-cannon shells came down from the sky and blew them to pieces!

On the flagship, Inquisitor Trasolh shouted with excitement:

"All macro-cannons and lance batteries! Target the perimeter of the Ork Titan's void shield!

"The moment any Ork unit breaks out of that shield, do not let it get far. Blow it to pieces at once!!"

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!!

Lance beams and macro-cannon shells rained from the sky and reduced the fleeing greenskins to ash.

Now the Orks were trapped from both sides. If they stayed inside the void shield, the Titan shot them. If they ran outside it, the warship shot them. What were they supposed to do?

Blackiron was panicking now. He dumped every last shell in the super rotary shoota at Kian in one long burst, but the Titan's void shield stopped every one of them.

Next he fired Whoever I Look At Dies, pouring a continuous laser beam into Kian's void shield.

Whoever I Look At Dies blazed and blazed. After more than thirty seconds of sustained fire there was a loud crackle, and the red laser died!

It had been running far too long. Whoever I Look At Dies had shorted out. The giant laser emitter was trailing smoke, and it was actually broken!

By now Kian had gone completely berserk. The greenskins who had been sheltering under the Gargant's void shield were almost all dead!

The Reaver Titan's machine spirit was radiating a wild, frenzied joy. After more than twenty years without a war, it felt every one of its rivets singing with pleasure!

Its neural sync with Kian hit a staggering 120%!

Kian could control every joint of the Titan as easily as his own body!

He swept his gaze across the battlefield. Apart from craters and scrap metal, the only thing left standing was the Gargant, alone in the smoke.

Its super shoota was out of ammunition and couldn't fire a single shell more. Its Whoever I Look At Dies was still smoking from the short.

The Gargant was nothing like the swaggering monster it had been a moment ago. It just stood there, lost, unable to do anything at all.

Kian laughed out loud and strode toward Blackiron, his voice blasting from the loudspeakers:

"Blackiron, you son of a bitch! I'm pulling up on you IRL! I'm knocking every tooth out of your head and ripping your hair out by the roots! Nobody's saving you! Not even Gork and Mork can cover for you now, and that's a PROMISE!!"

The Reaver Titan closed in on Blackiron at a tremendous pace.

Blackiron kept trying to fire the super shoota, but it truly couldn't fire a single shot!

All he had left was the gravity weapon in his other hand, so he turned it on Kian.

But a gravity weapon was built for clearing out chaff. The pull landed on the Titan and couldn't even slow it down!

In the blink of an eye Kian was right in front of Blackiron. He raised the power fist on the Titan's right arm high overhead and swung it at the Gargant in one tremendous backhand!

"THE EMPEROR'S HOLY BITCH-SLAP!!"

With a grinding, shattering crunch, the Titan's power fist smacked the Gargant square across its big Ork face.

The disruption field flared. A huge section of the Ork face caved in, cracks spidering across it like glass!

The Gargant took the Emperor's Holy Bitch-Slap and rocked wildly back and forth. It lost its balance, and its enormous body actually toppled over backward!

KRA-BOOM!!!

The ground heaved, and the Gargant, thousands of tons of it, had been slapped flat on its back with a single blow!

Blackiron was mind-linked to the Gargant, so he felt that slap land on his own face. His head swam, and he lay there unable to get up!

He tried to heave himself upright a few times without success, and he started yelling in blind panic.

Inside the Gargant's cockpit, Three-Arm had gone flat on his face too. He crawled out of a pile of junk and loose parts, shook his dizzy head, and said:

"Well, dat's dat. Time for da emergency plan!"

Blackiron asked quickly, "Wot emergency plan?"

Three-Arm dug a rocket pack out of the junk pile and strapped it on, then pulled a pair of goggles down over his eyes.

"Da heat's on! Time ta leg it!"

Blackiron froze for a second, then bellowed, "Take me wiv ya! TAKE ME WIV YA!!"

Three-Arm kicked out an armour plate, exposing the open sky.

He glanced back at Blackiron. Blackiron's body had grown completely into the Gargant. There was no way to fly him out.

Three-Arm shook his head.

"Ya part of da Gargant now. I can't rip ya out. Yer on yer own!"

Blackiron froze. Then terror and panic flooded through his whole body.

"No! We's in dis together! Ya can't ditch me! If we go, we go TOGEVVER!!"

Three-Arm shook his head again.

"Blackiron, truth is, yer personality's kinda rubbish. I never liked ya much. Laters. Lose me number."

With that, Three-Arm yanked the cord on his rocket pack.

The sketchy-looking rocket engine ignited in a puff of smoke and pushed Three-Arm out through the hole and away from the Gargant!

Abandoned, furious and horrified at once, Blackiron let out a scream. It was the kind a movie would shoot from high overhead, with the camera slowly pulling back through the pouring rain as thunder cracked and lightning split the sky, dramatic and gut-wrenching all at once:

"NOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

But Three-Arm never finished his escape. His rocket had only just lifted off the Gargant, and it was still slow to pick up speed.

He'd barely made it a few metres into the air when the Reaver Titan's huge mechanical hand shot out, grabbed him, and snatched him right out of the sky, rocket and all!

☆☆☆

-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!

-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper

(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)

If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you