Chapter 480 - 480: The Gargant Advances!

The Gargant advanced step by heavy step, retro-thrusters torn from a warship mounted on its back periodically igniting to boost it forward, accelerating the fifty-meter mountain of metal up to sixty kilometers an hour in short, terrifying bursts.

A fifty-meter mountain of steel, sprinting forward every few minutes with a screaming burst of speed. Genuinely, deeply terrifying.

Flanking the Gargant marched an enormous column of land battleships, close to a hundred of the massive transport vehicles, the very same type Rudolphson had once ambushed and blown apart with melta charges.

Beneath those hulking transports rolled a dense mass of smaller vehicles, Ork mechs, and several hundred thousand Ork infantry.

These infantry were absurdly well-equipped, every single one decked out in heavy power armour, mechanical arms mounted on their backs.

Since nearly all of them were Mekboys, each one having personally souped up his own gear, the equipment quality was ridiculously high across the board.

The Gargant's battlegroup was, in every meaningful sense, a planet-killing strike force.

This mobile mountain of Ork metal advanced on a real mountain range, one where the Astra Militarum had established a forward operating base, garrisoned by a full three infantry regiments, over ten thousand troops strong.

The Astra Militarum soldiers stood in their trench fortifications along the ridgeline, jaws hanging open, utterly at a loss, watching the slow approach of the massive metal mountains in the distance.

Blackiron had, by now, fully fused with the Gargant. The Gargant was his body.

The war-machine's colossal mechanical frame fed neural signals straight into him, and Blackiron felt himself grow impossibly, overwhelmingly powerful.

He looked out at the tiny, insignificant humans scattered across the distant ridge and let out a wild, deranged laugh.

"TASTE MY SUPER BOOM-BOOM CANNON!!"

His left arm's triple-barreled 300mm rotary cannon spun to life, a violent grinding of gears, and the massive muzzle swiveled to aim at the distant mountains before firing.

BOOM!!!

BOOM!!!

BOOM!!!

The Super Boom-Boom Cannon fired one massive round roughly every two seconds, each shell weighing over 500 kilograms.

The shells arced across dozens of kilometers, slamming into the distant mountains and detonating with unimaginable force.

Mounted across the Gargant's head, waist, and hips were countless rocket pods, and the Mekboys manning them opened up in unison alongside the main cannon, raining rockets down on the ridge as well.

In an instant, the sky filled with smoke-trailing rockets, joining the 300mm shells in pounding the mountain range, blasting up terrifying waves of destruction.

The bombardment swept from the mountain's peak down to its base, engulfing the entire range in a rolling wall of smoke and debris.

Each 300mm shell alone gouged a crater into the earth big enough to house a whale, and the smaller rockets, while less individually devastating, still turned the entire mountainside into a cratered wasteland.

The trenches and bunkers the Astra Militarum had dug into that ridge had only ever been designed to withstand conventional weapons fire. Against an assault of this scale, they never had a chance to even register what was happening before being wiped from existence entirely.

The bombardment continued for over a minute, the Super Boom-Boom Cannon alone expending more than thirty large-caliber rounds, alongside over two hundred rockets.

By the time the Gargant ceased fire, the entire mountain range was blanketed in thick smoke, its actual condition entirely hidden from anyone watching from a distance.

Several heavy transport vehicles trailed alongside the Gargant, their hoists loading fresh shells beneath its skirt armour, from where internal cranes lifted them up into its ammunition racks.

A single Gargant was terrifying enough on its own. Flanked by an entire fleet of maintenance vehicles, ammunition haulers, and support units, resisting a fighting force like this was next to impossible.

Inside the hive command center, the Governor and his Marshals watched the satellite feed, jaws hanging open in disbelief.

One officer stammered:

"Three... three whole regiments, over ten thousand men, wiped out in under a minute?"

The Governor let out a shriek that would have shamed a startled schoolgirl.

"BY THE EMPEROR, WHAT KIND OF MONSTER IS THAT?!"

One Marshal swept a hand forward. "Launch the nukes! LAUNCH THE NUKES!!"

At several military installations ringing the hive city, launch silos opened, and over a dozen massive nuclear missiles roared skyward.

The missiles quickly adjusted trajectory, streaking north toward the Gargant's battlegroup.

But the moment those missiles cleared the atmosphere, the Gargant's absurdly advanced sensor array, infused with WAAAGH-field power, locked onto every single one of them instantly.

The Gargant's massive iron head tilted upward, and the lance battery mounted in its right eye, torn straight from a warship, began glowing an ominous red.

Bzzzzzzt!!!

A crimson beam of laser light lanced upward, vanishing into the distant sky.

Over a thousand kilometers away, in the vacuum beyond the atmosphere, one of the missiles had just finished orienting itself for the strike, closing in on the Gargant's position, when the beam struck it. Its outer armour melted instantly, followed immediately by detonation.

Then, over the next two or three seconds, the Gargant's right eye fired again, a beam lasting just over a second, and across that same thousand-plus-kilometer distance, every remaining missile was detonated mid-flight in open space.

"AH HA HA HA, WHOEVER I LOOK AT DIES, WHOEVER I LOOK AT DIES!!"

The Gargant let out a wild, triumphant laugh. By now, every greenskin's WAAAGH network across the entire planet had linked directly into this colossal war-machine.

With this much surging WAAAGH energy feeding it, the towering construct had grown capable of feats that outright defied the laws of physics.

Inside the Governor's command center, an officer let out a horrified cry:

"All thirty of our nuclear missiles were shot down the instant they entered atmosphere!

That xenos monstrosity has some kind of advanced targeting and anti-missile system! Our nukes are completely useless against it!!"

The Governor wiped a cold sweat off his brow.

"It's fine, it's fine. We still have the fleet. Inquisitor Trasolh's ships are still in orbit. Have them bombard that mechanical monstrosity into oblivion!!"

A few hours later, Inquisitor Trasolh's fleet moved into low orbit above the Gargant's position.

The next instant, a rain of lance-battery and macro-cannon fire poured down onto the Gargant's battlegroup.

But attacks capable of leveling entire mountains landed with no effect whatsoever, because the Gargant had raised a void shield.

A massive, dome-shaped void shield, over ten kilometers in diameter, enclosed the entire Gargant battlegroup like an inverted bowl.

The orbital bombardment slammed into the shield, most of the released energy absorbed and vented straight into the Warp, with only a small fraction leaking out into the surrounding atmosphere, producing little more than noise.

The fleet kept up the bombardment for a considerable while, to absolutely no effect.

Inside the Gargant, Three-Arm let out a wheezing chuckle.

"Da void shield I ripped outta dat warship, I swapped its power source for our WAAAGH power instead!

Long as there's a single boy left standin' next to dis Gargant, ain't no way anyone's ever breakin' through dis shield!"

He popped open a section of the Gargant's armour plating and leaned out, shouting down at the vehicles trailing below:

"Give dose human shrimp-tin-can warships a taste of somethin' special!!"

Among the Gargant's battlegroup sat several massive missile-launch trucks.

Receiving Three-Arm's order, they raised missiles the size of submarines skyward and unleashed dozens of them, streaking up into the sky.

☆☆☆

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