The Battle of Sigma Ustali, World Forger (5)

When the crimson beams descended from the sky, Fabricator General Borolis trembled all over with excitement.

That shudder sent astonishing power surging through his seven-meter-tall mechanical body. The eight melta cannons mounted on his shoulders fired again and again, and under the control of his noospheric core, they vaporized most of an Orc Death Dreadnought outright. The vile creation, built from scrap metal and utterly devoid of mechanical beauty, crashed to the ground, its wreckage crushing a swath of Orcs to death.

"Omnissiah!"

Borolis's specially made vox-unit let his voice ring across more than half the ground battlefield. The Fabricator General roared as he raised his six mechanical arms and strode forward. "Charge, my heroic Skitarii! Charge!"

He did not use communications. He did not use binharic cant. Instead, he bellowed madly across the battlefield in noble High Gothic like a Berserker. "The Omnissiah's creation has reached orbit and sent revelation down to me! Forward, warriors, forward! Exterminate these ignorant, uncivilized primitive creatures!"

No one knew exactly how he had learned the news, but the crimson beams that kept falling did not lie. They possessed destructive firepower the Orcs could not withstand at all. Every time those beams landed, countless Orcs died violent deaths.

The cowards among them had already been scared out of their wits and could only huddle beneath trenches or beneath the ashes of their companions, trembling.

Many powerful Orcs tried to resist. They piloted their armed walking machines and attempted to push the Skitarii and the Adeptus Mechanicus back. Gorkanauts, Morkanauts, and Death Dreadnoughts over a dozen meters tall began countercharging, but before they could even take aim at the Adeptus Mechanicus Titans, they were immediately destroyed by the beams.

Melted ash drifted through the smoke-stinking air, and also into Ismara-1-Gamma's nasal cavity.

She had yet