Chương 76: Volume Two - Chapter Thirteen - Glorified Turret

Waiting for the other shoe to drop made the night pass with agonizing slowness. But it didn't. Sylvia awoke in her small room in the bunkhouse without an assassin from one of the other noble homes waiting for her. The morning was busy. Technically, holding a funeral was against regulations. She had her men line up at the back of their section of trenches for an 'emergency training session' where they placed down the helmets of their lost comrades down in a row, all of them facing out towards the orkish threat.

A servitor came over and welded their dogtags to the wall. There were millions of tags already. Some of them so old and pitted by rust and wear that they would be impossible to read. Still, they served as the very first layer of defence. Once that was done, the 'exercise' started. Three shots of their lasrifles, aimed up and into the air. One in thanks, one in remorse, and one more for good measure.

She dismissed her troops, welcomed a gaggle of newer recruits fresh out of basic who would be getting a very quick lesson on how war really worked, and then she spent the rest of the morning filing paperwork. There was a missive from her family. She dutifully ignored it. There was nothing that House Nekoton could say now that would help her.

"Ma'am," Morgan said as he walked into the bunker. He gave her a quick, perfunctory salute.

"We got a report from the auspex team. Looks like they're getting ready for their daily run." Sylvia looked up from a requisition sheet she was filing. Her replacement troops had come over with weapon and armour, but not their full rations. They had some squirreled away, so it was fine for now, but the Administration were going to let them starve if she didn't specifically nag them about it.

"So we have about an hour, then?" she asked.

"Anything unusual on the ork front?"

"Hm," he said.

"Funny you should ask. Looks like there's been some extra activity going on."

"They did send out more that usual yesterday," she replied.

"It's… we're getting into a routine, Morgan. They send their squighog riders around noon, we beat them back, some die, some retreat, and we repeat the next day. But that's not how it was before." The last siege, four years ago, had been a slog. The warboss had broken through the first wall in the first wave, and then occupied a large section of the space for the entire siege. The rest of the outer walls were attacked as well, usually in force.

In most sections, they'd either spend weeks with nothing, or have to deal with a thousand-ork strong push out of nowhere. The orks weren't planning things last time, or the time before that. They'd just gather a big group, pick up whatever weapons they'd made, get into whatever vehicles they had, and then they'd charge in. This siege was different, across the entire front. It didn't make sense. This wasn't how orks did things. And yet, she and her men and high command had gotten used to it.

"I don't know, lieutenant," Morgan said.

"I know our orders are to keep this section safe." Sylvia stood. She finished the request with her signature, then moved to the door.

"Give this to the runner when they get here. I'm going to have the Eternal Pride moved."

"The entire knight?"

"It has some functional guns. I think… if we all the orks to see weakness, then they'll target us first."

"That's not very orkish," he replied. Usually, they made a point of trying to fight the biggest, toughest person on the battlefield.

"That's true. But… call it an instinct, but something tells me that the normal rules don't apply." She fixed her cap on, then stepped out of the bunker into a light drizzle. The rain today wasn't nearly as bad as it could be. She walked through the trenches, nodding to the men that saluted her. It was… good to see that there was no open hostility. Her move, the day before, had cost several lives.

There was some necessity to it, but trying to explain to a man that their death was necessary was always a losing proposition. It was better, safer, to simply stoke their anger against the enemy, and try to make sure that most of the orders given were sensible. Unlike a lot of officers, she had started from the bottom up. She could have been the product of nepotism, but she wasn't. Not entirely. She rode a logistics truck to the back and walked into the hangar where the Eternal Pride was being worked on.

Magos Tech-Wright Eisle Tayer was there, observing the knight where he hung from the gantry. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Will he be able to fight?" she asked.

"The venerable war machine is yet incapable of moving."

"You said he would be repaired," she said. The magos made a dismissive sound.

"No. You insisted. I relayed that repairs to partial functionality would take nine days." He looked up, and the sparks from a welder flashed across his multi-lensed eyes.

"However, my tech-wrights have been at work through the night. The Eternal Pride is incapable of walking, but the venerable machine's weapons, some of them, have been brought back online." He extended a mechadendrite with a datapad, and she took it. The volcano lance was functional. The primary drive had been maintained, and was deemed secure. Some of the auspex had been replaced, and one of the two siegebreaker turrets was repaired. The plasma gun was a write-off. Repair was impossible.

But they had sealed off the worst of the wounds, for now. Like covering a stump in bandages. The motive system, the legs, were broken. Not beyond repair, but the nine days that the magos had asked for was the minimum necessary to repair the damage.

"I see," she said. She had talked to Vyper a little. She had a plan.

"My family has certain… old archeotech. Seeing as how this is our last knight, I can't see why we would sit on it. I'm going to be deploying some of it."

"Curious," he said.

"Yes," she agreed.

"We'll see. Can you drag him out to right behind the trenches?"

"That would be unwise."

"Unwise is having a partially functional war machine being a hangar princess while the enemy is charging at us," she replied. The magos didn't like it, clearly, but she had her wish. The Eternal Pride was lifted up by a towing rig, and then slowly carried out of the hangar. They brought it right up to the rearmost trench and didn't even bother unhooking him. He was lowered, however, and ended up looking like a large, discarded toy towering over the backlines. Sylvia issues more orders.

Moved her men around, and generally tried to stay on top of things. Then the call came. The orks were coming, a larger group, again. Squighog riders at the front, a gaggle of orks on bikes and in trucks just behind. Sylvia climbed up the Eternal, opened the hatch, and dropped into the cockpit. It smelled like fresh welds and rotting blood, but she chose to ignore that for the moment as she turned and seated herself on the throne.

Reaching to her back, she moved her hair aside, felt her ears flick once frees of her cap, and then she gently inserted the MIU connector into her skull. Unlike the first time, this connection felt smooth. A little grating, sure, but her sensation of Eternal wasn't like receiving a brike to the face.

"Pilot. Intruder. You have returned."

"Greetings, Eternal Pride."

"Yeah, I'm back," Sylvia said. She knew that there was a way to speak to venerable machine spirits. It involved much scraping and bowing and being subservient, but… no. The Eternal Pride felt to her the same way the men standing next to her in a trench did. There was this feeling that they were peers, in a way.

"We have orks incoming," she said as she reached out and flicked the auspex scanners on. The feed was missing in half of her monitors, but what her MIU fed her was a little clearer. The Eternal's targetting system was picking up the distant orks already.

"The plan is simple. We're going to let them get close so that when they run, we can finish them all off. Eternal, I need to kill as many of them as possible. We can't let others steal our kills."

"Yes. We are hunters. Not prey."

"Damned right," she said. She flicked a few more buttons, and the volcano lance started to warm up. Then they waited. She had the two meltas at the front both reading green, but they'd only use those if the enemy came very close. The siegebreaker had decent range, but it was only going to kill an ork with a direct hit. Though it would stun them. The volcano lance was her big-ticket. It had a cooldown on its use, but as long as she killed a few orks every time it fired, she was going to be happy enough.

The first orks came into range, and she waited. Her men in the trenches opened up. Some of them had marksman lasrifles, and they were able to tag some orks or their squigs from afar. It wasn't enough to kill outright, but… Then they were in her ideal range, and Sylvia found herself grinning.

"Let us reap the foe, little squire!"

"Firing," she said.