"Even if that Beast wasn't dead, it should have been crippled, right?"
"After being crushed beneath a Gargant and caught in its catastrophic explosion, even a Warlord-class Titan would have suffered devastating damage."
"Keep the heavy firepower pouring in! Even if the Orks counterattack, we must hold the line!"
The Iron Father could barely restrain the frantic pounding of his two hearts. Even his augmented mechanical arms twitched and spasmed involuntarily.
If they killed the Beast, it would be a moment of unparalleled glory for the entire Iron Hands Legion.
Ever since Ferrus had died on Isstvan V, the Tenth Legion had become the only Loyalist Astartes Legion to lose its Primarch.
Without their Primarch, the Legion had lost its soul.
Even though they had later rebuilt the Legion's strength and reinforced it through Primaris enhancement technology, they still could not suppress the tendency toward internal division that arose from within.
Ten clans, ten different cultures and beliefs—under the social Darwinist traditions Ferrus had left behind, which discouraged intervention in clan conflicts and encouraged infighting to cultivate the strongest, the Iron Hands' current state was easy to imagine.
As the leader of Clan Avernii, the clan most favored by the Primarch, Mel Aen desperately hoped to reunify the once-glorious Tenth Legion.
If he could earn the merit and prestige of slaying the Beast, perhaps the other clans would truly change.
They believed that might made right, and had gradually become so extreme that they embraced the belief that flesh was weak and steel eternal.
Even if Mel died here at the hands of the Orks, his deeds and accomplishments would still be recognized by the other Iron Hands.
That was why he would kill that Beast even at the cost of everything.
The firepower unleashed by the armored tide was