The chimera’s engine let out a dying roar, its tracks kicking up a sky-high dust storm, and the speedometer needle was already pushed into the red.
The troop carrier was hurtling across the Gobi at a relatively safe speed of 60 kilometers per hour, its body bouncing like a tin can tumbling in a washing machine.
Alex gripped the turret’s handle, looking through the wide-angle sight to both sides, expecting to see infantry—even super-infantry—left far behind.
The sight that met his eyes made his scalp tingle.
It was a red shadow.
Captain Tarkus, clad in hundreds of kilograms of ceramite armor, was clinging tightly to the chimera’s rear-flank like an out-of-control heavy truck.
Each of his strides was impossibly wide, his heavy boots pounding the ground, causing the chimera’s body to feel a slight resonance.
Above, Thaddeus, the assault trooper, had intermittent flames spewing from his jump pack, like a giant red eagle, performing aerodynamically impossible propulsion jumps at low altitude, easily keeping pace with the vehicle.
“Is this right?” A human body structure—even a modified one—moving at such a speed while carrying this weight should have had its joints shattered long ago.
Yet they ran so…
smoothly.
The combination of immense mass and extreme speed created a sense of incongruity that instinctively instilled fear.
“Wait…
where’s the other one?” Alex suddenly realized someone was missing.
Where was that irritable big brother with the heavy weapon?
He adjusted his view to look directly behind.
At the end of the rolling dust, a red speck was frantically moving its legs.
Avitus was falling behind.
As a Destroyer Sergeant in specialized reinforced power armor, burdened with heavy ammunition boxes and servo-arms, he clearly lacked the abnormal mobility of the other two.
“mortal!
Straight ahead!
Suppressive fire!” Tarkus’s voice interrupted Alex’s observation.
At the edge of the horizon, the sky-high yellow sand was cut by black smoke plumes.
The Argus Gate had arrived.
It lay like a gray mountain ridge at the end of the sand sea, with three layers of walls stacked upon each other, their massive double-headed eagle reliefs long since blasted beyond recognition.
And at the foot of the walls, was hell.
Thousands of Calderis Planetary Defense Force soldiers were huddled behind crumbling sandbags.
Their defense line had been battered into a twisted wound.
“Hold!
No retreat!” A blood-stained officer roared.
But in his vision, it was a suffocating green tsunami.
Countless Orks drove motorcycles and trucks, crashing into the defense line like a mudslide, and there were even several steaming Killa Kans, battering the defense line like a torrent of mud and rock.
The resistance of the mortals was too weak.
“Waaagh—!!!” An Ork on a motorcycle charged into the trench, its massive jagged tires directly crushing the Lieutenant in two.
A corner of the defense line instantly collapsed, and fear spread like a plague.
Just as the defense line was about to break.
Rumble— The dry riverbed on the flank suddenly erupted with an engine’s roar.
A mottled chimera armored vehicle, with an unstoppable momentum, burst out from behind the sand dune.
“Stop!
Right here!
Turn the vehicle sideways for cover!” Alex didn’t waste words; when his hand grasped the cold multi-barreled laser cannon control stick, that familiar feeling, etched into his soul, returned.
This wasn’t the blind firing of the Defense Force, who only knew how to pull the trigger.
The turret rotated, servo motors emitting a light hum.
In the wide-angle view, the Ork motorcycle squad that had just broken through the defense line was roaring towards them.
Alex focused, and the world in his eyes began to slow down.
Distance 400.
Relative speed 80.
Windage correction…
what laser correction, ignore it.
He didn’t spray.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
The three thick, high-energy laser beams, as if guided, precisely drilled into the gap between the engine covers and the driver’s seats of the leading three motorcycles—that was the fuel tank’s location.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Flames instantly erupted, and the motorcycles spun out of control in the blaze, turning into a burning wall of fire that immediately blocked the charging route behind them.
The Ork convoy abruptly stalled.
The greenskins were stunned; they were used to the Defense Force’s area suppression fire that just made noise, and had never seen such pinpoint heavy weapon shooting.
“What kind of marksman is in that metal box?!” an Ork boss yelled, waving a big choppa.
“Get him!
Blast that metal box!” Several crude rockets, trailing messy exhaust, shrieked as they plunged towards the chimera.
Exactly, exactly right.
“mortal, maintain suppression.” A deep, irritable voice exploded outside the vehicle.
Avitus.
The Destroyer in red power armor did not stand behind cover.
He strode to the side-front of the chimera like a mobile turret, directly using his body to block Alex’s blind spot.
Facing the incoming rockets, Avitus didn’t even dodge.
The heavy bolter in his hands let out a thunderous roar.
Boom boom boom boom boom—!
The heavy bolter rounds directly detonated the incoming rockets in mid-air.
Flames and shrapnel clanged against his thick ceramite shoulder armor, but he didn’t even flinch.
He turned his head, his red oculars fixed on Alex in the turret.
“If your firepower is that accurate, then pin them down!” Avitus roared, pointing his gun at the densest concentration of Orks, “I don’t want to see any greenskin raise its head!
Keep up with my rhythm, mortal!” …Completely speechless, Alex pulled the trigger all the way down.
The chimera’s laser cannon began to roar.
Alex displayed gun control skills that even the Astartes found astonishing.
He wielded this heavy weapon, originally designed for area suppression, with the precision of a sniper rifle.
A Killa Kan had just turned to aim at Avitus— Zzzzt—Zzz—!
Alex’s precise shot directly severed its knee’s hydraulic rod.
The Killa Kan stumbled to its knees.
The next second, Avitus’s bolter rounds shattered its cockpit.
A Gretchin carrying a rocket launcher had just poked its head out from the ruins— Zzzzt—!
Alex sliced it and its launcher in two.
“That’s it!” Avitus’s voice held a zealous pleasure, “Thirty degrees to the left!
Suppress that xenos vehicle!” Alex swiftly rotated the cannon, and before the truck could unload its infantry, he precisely detonated its driveshaft.
The truck overturned sideways, crushing a load of greenskins into pulp.
This was the Pilot’s suppressive power.
The previously crumbling Argus Gate defense line, thanks to the intervention of this flank firepower, miraculously stabilized.
Those desperate mortal Defense Force soldiers looked at the chimera, as if possessed by a god of war, and at the turret fighting alongside the Angel of Death, and their extinguished morale reignited.
“For Angus!
Follow that vehicle and fight!” The laser beams became dense again; this time, they no longer trembled.
However, the true threat had just arrived.
With a screech of twisting metal, a section of the ruins directly in front of the city gate was smashed open.
That thing came out.
Kustom Mek Bad Smasher piloted his masterpiece—a Deff Dread cobbled together from various vehicle wrecks.