Chương 79: Volume Two - Chapter Sixteen - Sunday Driver

Alexis probably shouldn't have been upset that the plan was working… but she was a little upset that the plan was working. First came the easy part. They circled around the outside of the ground-side base, moving closer to the actual cliffsides and closer to a wider road leading into the ork base. She wished they could have landed on top of Overcliff, but the terrain there made that impossible, and also, the orks had a lot of guns up there. So, down here they were.

Arriving at the road, one of the Voidsmen pulled out a flare gun and fired it off into the sky at a lot angle, so that it wouldn't hang in the air for all that long. Then they moved deeper into the woods and hid. It only took five minutes before two ork trucks and a half-dozen orkish bikes and ATVs showed up. Alexis watched through a hidden auspex that Red-C61734 had set up as they moved into the woods in the direction the flare had fallen in, leaving only a half-dozen orks and grechin behind.

"Let's charge in?" Octavia asked. Someone cleared their throat. The lieutenant in charge of the Voidsmen they were accompanying.

"Ma'am, if I may?" he asked. Alexis scanned him up and down, then picked up his name from an insignia on his lapel. Lieutenant Greyspout.

"Yeah?" Octavia asked.

"We have a few good marksmen here. We can have them pick a target each. A lasrifle shot will make less noise than, ah, the enthusiasm that the sororitas bring to such situations." Alexis held back a giggle at the affronted look on Octavia's face, and on the few sisters of battle who were close enough to overhear. The lieutenant was probably right, however. Octavia wasn't exactly subtle, and her sisters were sometimes worse.

"Fine, then. Set up quickly. But if your men miss…"

"Then KYS can rush in and finish them off," Alexis said. She's very fast, and her strikes are pretty quiet." Octavia pouted, but the plan was sound enough. Besides, the bright blue cloth she and the other sororitas of the Order of the Shatter Glass wore stood out rather starkly in the green woods. They marksmen set up, then on a whistled signal that sounded like a birdcall, they fired. Five of the six orks went down. The little gretchin around them started to panic.

"Go," Alexis ordered, and KYS rushed out from behind a bush and moved like a blur. The marksmen took a second shot, this time targeting the smaller gretchin. KYS leapt up and landed knives-first atop one of the orks, then started to slash and stab as quickly as she could, staining herself and the ground around her with ork remains before she rolled off the corpse and beheaded one of the panicked grechin.

"Move!" Octavia called out.. Kills Confirmed: 1x Ork 1x Gretchin New Point Total: 966 Alexis picked up the hem of her robes and scampered after the group. They arrived in short order and immediately started to empty out the back of the truck. There was scrap in there, as well as cooked squig and some rusty old weapons. All of it was tossed aside to make room for their entire strike group. Alexis took the forward truck, sitting behind the wheel.

The seat had been removed and replaced by a stool, probably because orks didn't fit in spaces made for normal humans. She could only barely see over the dash and through the slits in the windshield armour, but it was doable. She turned the key, then winced at the painful noise that the truck made as it started up. The dash had warning lights, and every single one of them lit up in a dangerous red.

"Omnissiah forgive me," she muttered. They drove the trucks around, then got back onto the road. The orks had messed with the suspension, so the ride was far, far from smooth. Alexis probably shouldn't have been the one driving. She had to use her mechadendrites to hold onto the wheel while she wrestled with the shifter. The Tech Priest sitting next to her, an unfamiliar older man, was staring at her with growing concern as she pressed the gas pedal down with her full weight and launched them forwards.

They rushed into the open space before Overcliff, almost running over a pair of gretchin hoisting a crude missile over their heads before Alexis wrestled the wheel straight. For a moment they were driving on two wheels. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. She screamed, eyes wide, as she pulled the wheel the other way, then somehow managed to point the truck into the wide open hangar at the end of the tarmac.

A few orks turned around to glance their way, but Alexis suspected that her less-than-ideal driving was actually helping disguise the fact that they weren't orks themselves. They were swallowed by shade as they moved into the hangar. The tuning in its centre towered above them, covered in several levels of scaffolding where orks and gretching were wielding welders and torches and rivet guns with more enthusiasm than skill as they slapped on layers of additional armour onto what she was certain was a gargant.

It was as tall as an imperial titan, and Alexis had no idea how the orks planned on getting it out of the hangar when its head was higher up than the upper edge of the hangar door. She winced as her wild driving had them crashing through the poles of a crude scaffold, taking out six of them in a row before driving on. The scaffolds crashed behind her, almost crushing the second truck, but its driver managed to slip around the disaster.

Kills Confirmed: 1x Ork 3x Gretchin New Point Total: 1016 Ahead of them and to the sides were berths for knights. Those, at the moment, smaller orkish war machines. Not quite gargants. Stompas, maybe? Alexis wasn't well-versed in orkish military nomenclature, but the crude mechanized walkers were something of that sort. She pressed on the brakes. That did nothing.

"Oh no," Alexis cried. Seeing no other option other than a sudden and violent stop at the far back of the hangar, she pulled them to the side, then winced as she rubbed the side of the truck against the outer wall. The side mirror flew off, then the truck spat sparks into the air. Alexis turned the truck off, then pulled harder to the side until, finally, they came to a stop. She was panting when she turned to the Tech Priest next to her.

"Uh... made it?" she tried. He was staring back, his one organic eye huge. Alexis made a shooing gesture, and he opened the passenger side door and jumped out. The back of the truck was open and the Voidsmen within were leaping out already, with the second truck having stopped nearby. It wasn't piloted by Octavia... perhaps fortunately. Alexis would never say it aloud, but she wasn't sure if her friend's feet could reach the pedals.

The strikeforce regrouped in a hurry, and Alexis freed her friends from the back of the truck. They only had--"Oi! Them's humies!" an ork shouted from nearby. Someone shot a lasrifle and the ork went down with a smoking hole in his head, but it was too late, others had noticed.

"That way!" Lieutenant Greyspout shouted. He was pointing to an entranceway on the side.

"Before we're swarmed by greenskins. Retreat in order." The Voidsmen spun around and started to move backwards, guns aiming out towards the orks that were starting to mobilize. For now, they had the upper hand, the orks weren't expecting enemies within their hangar, and the trucks--and Alexis' driving skills--had gone mostly unnoticed. Alexis kind of hated that the plan was working this well. She took off running towards the side-door, then scrambled to a halt when it opened up and a trio of big orks stomped out.

"What's all dis then?" the ork that stepped out asked. Unfortunately for him, the sisters of battle were leading the way, and they were a little trigger happy at the moment. The door was blown off its hinges in the aftermath, but that only made more space for them to rush into the corridor behind.

"Holy shit, it's turning around!" Alexis glanced back at the Voidsman that had shouted, then her attention was pulled to the side by the sound of metal clanking as an entire section of scaffolding was ripped apart. The gargant was turning around to face them. It had guns large enough for Alexis to walk into with her head held high. She decided not to stick around and hurried her friends along into the corridors. That... was going to be a problem. The goal was to 'find' an STC in Overcliff.

It wasn't to run into a major ork manufacturing hub or challenge the orkish equivalent of an Imperial Titan in a straight fight. That was going to complicate things.