The Might of the Machine Legion

"Never been a better day! Time to fight huge piles of scrap!" Fei Bengzha had never been so excited! His hands gripped the control stick tightly. The throttle that should have been beneath his feet was gone; ever since he had heard from the mekboy that he would be fighting the humies' Gu Juji, he had torn it out. Now, a hose ripped from a humie vehicle ran directly from the fuel tank into the engine.

He felt his seat shaking violently with the engine's rumble, but Fei Bengzha liked it. It even made his flying feel better. His precious plane carried one super-heavy bomb, bought with teeth he had saved up, as well as several burna bombs hanging beneath its wings.

Gork above, he could already see the spires of the humies' Gu Juji. Behind him, the engines of the other planes spewed fire and even more black smoke as they accelerated. But how could they possibly outrun clever Fei Bengzha? He did not even need to step on a throttle. All he had to do was pull his control stick and keep flying.

An Ork bomber.

The humies' Gu Juji were truly ugly. No spikes, no grinning faces. Only that thing built like a great, great, great fortress looked halfway decent.

A barrage of shells raced toward Fei Bengzha's speeding plane. He reacted instinctively, as though born with the ability, slipping through the deadly net of flak fragments. Thousands of Ork aircraft of varying sizes and designs swooped down upon the Machine Legion from the front, while several hundred more, piloted by cunning flyers, spread out to both flanks in an attempt to attack from the sides.

One aircraft after another was struck by radiation rounds and plasma blasts from the ground-based Skitarii, exploding in midair alongside their bombs. With the aid of their exceptional Auspex systems and ballistic correction units, the Titans' anti-aircraft guns swept through the planes like electric mosquito swatters over the mosquitoes around stagnant summer ponds, each volley destroying whole strings of aircraft.

Flying madly through exploding fragments and falling wreckage, Fei Bengzha's tongue flopped against his face in the wind, while drool streamed backward behind the plane. The windshield ahead of him had been blown to pieces by a Hive anti-air missile, and his aircraft was riddled with holes, constantly groaning as its metal structure buckled under the strain.

But Fei Bengzha was not worried in the slightest. He was only a hundred kilometers from the biggest Gu Juji. He just had to fly a little farther, then he could drop his precious big bomb on them and give them a surprise! Fei Bengzha reckoned he could do it. His plane could do it too!

His roar of Waaagh! joined the chaos of the battlefield, echoing with explosions. Fei Bengzha threaded through the barrage with extraordinary skill, brushing past explosive shrapnel by the narrowest of margins. Every sheet of metal welded onto the plane had been stripped away, exposing the tangled mess within. Its wings and engines sparked and spat lightning; to any Imperium soldier, the aircraft looked one second away from crashing, coming apart, or exploding on its own.

Having finally broken through layer after layer of firepower, the plane closed in on the Imperator Titan. At the press of Fei Bengzha's excited, trembling thumb, the burna bombs beneath its wings and the super-heavy bomb slung under its belly ignited their thrusters and shot toward the Titan.

"Ork bombs detected. Estimated yield exceeds Imperium standard equivalent by one thousand four hundred times. Initiate Void Shield protocol immediately."

"Command received. Void Shield array activated at 10 percent."

A Void Shield rose, covering the entire front of the Imperator Titan's massive body. Fei Bengzha's bombs struck it and unleashed an earthshaking explosion. Yet the terrifying blast merely sent ripples across the immense shield. Heat, flame, shockwaves, and shrapnel were all blocked on the far side of the Void Shield, failing to leave even a scratch on the Imperator Titan.

"Attack vehicle locked. Shatterer Hive Missiles ready."

"Calculating lead... complete. Hive Missiles launched."

A string of missiles fired from the high towers of the cathedral-fortress atop the Imperator Titan, tracking Fei Bengzha's battered aircraft.

"Gork! I let ya down!" Fei Bengzha was crushed by despair and abandoned control of the plane. The out-of-control aircraft plunged headlong toward the ground, where it was blasted to pieces by the Skitarii below and the Hive Missiles chasing behind it.

The Skitarii suffered losses from the bombing runs and crashing Ork aircraft. Skitarii whose mechanical legs had been blown off used their exposed cables and oil hoses to turn themselves over, lying flat on the ground as they fired at the Orks. Thousands of Ork planes, like a locust swarm sweeping across the land, were destroyed within only a few hours of battle. Only a handful of aircraft skirmishing around the battlefield's edge saw that things were going wrong and quickly turned to flee.

No one cheered at the destruction and retreat of the Ork air wing, because this was not a victory. More Ork armored units and infantry were rapidly closing in.

Mannheim thanked the Omnissiah. Under His sacred doctrine, the Machine Legion held together tightly like an indivisible Yareem Plate, rather than being mindlessly savage, loose, and weak like the Orks, whose forces of different speeds constantly became separated.

The Skitarii swiftly recovered equipment from the ground and the damaged bodies of their comrades, modifying and redesigning them before fastening them to stones or aircraft wreckage for use as temporary fixed turrets. Through the Skitarii's ruthless and efficient excavation and labor, a temporary defensive position was built in a ring around the Titan Legion.

The Imperator Titan fired the first shot. Its enormous cannon, far larger than that of any other Titan, possessed unimaginable range and power. A half-charged Plasma Annihilator fired a massive ball of plasma over the heads of every Titan and Skitarii, shooting toward a distant place beyond their sight.

First, a blue flash of bursting light flickered across the lenses of every Skitarii mask. Then came a shockwave filled with violent ions. Ten minutes later, the air finally carried the sound of the explosion to the Skitarii positions. Witnessing such a miracle and the Omnissiah's supreme wrath, the Skitarii simultaneously performed the Cog salute in perfect unison, their vocalizers issuing the most devout praises.

The gigantic shells and wildly twisting, crackling lightning fired by the Orks' massive scrap mountains—the Gu Juji and Stompas—smashed into the Imperator Titan's Void Shield. Fortunately for the Titan, the lightning missed, twisting downward as though it had been drawn to the Skitarii on the ground.

The ionized explosion instantly overloaded an entire section of Skitarii into scrap. The terrible energy contained within it was released in the blast, transforming the land, already plowed over and over by bombs and radiation rounds, into a reflective field of glass.

"Void Shield load at 13 percent. Rebalancing Void Shield energy distribution."

"Plasma Annihilator cooling at 53 percent. Sixty standard seconds until recharge."

"Cathedral-fortress Earthshaker Cannon fully charged. Gatling Blast Macro-Cannon loaded. Destruction Direct-Strike Missiles deployed."

The emotionless announcement sounded across the bridge. Through the consciousness linked to the machine spirit, Mannheim sensed one devastating weapon after another standing ready to unleash its fury. He controlled the Titan as naturally as he had once controlled his own flesh before being placed inside this amniotic tank. Through the Imperator Titan's eyes, beneath his cold and emotionless gaze, he saw the distant ground vaporized into a lake of magma by plasma blasts; he saw armored wrecks scattered into pieces by explosions and shockwaves; and he saw even more remains, reduced to little more than scattered bones and powder.

Among these savage Orks were four or five Gu Juji and Stompas, each a full size larger than the Imperator Titan. Enormous gun barrels and exposed missile racks had been crudely mounted atop them without the slightest consideration for firing arcs or interference during rotation. They looked as ridiculous as loaves of bread stuffed full of wooden sticks. Yet they could not be underestimated. Their shells and destructive lightning would teach any fool who looked down on these mobile fortresses a lesson they would never forget.

(It had to be mentioned here that among the Orks, Gargants and Gu Juji were two different things. You only needed to know that even the largest Gargant was smaller than a Gu Juji.)