Herald of the Stars: Chapter Seventy-Two (Patreon)

I didn't want to split up the fight and leave you all on a big cliff hanger so today's chapter is a little longer than usual. I hope all my readers enjoy the big duel.

The arvus lighter sets down in the arena. I turn to Bola and say, “Go hover out of the way. You’re my ride out of here. My associates will keep an eye on my payment.”

“Whatever you say, Rusty. Make sure you finish the job this time, eh?”

I hide my fear behind a jaunty wave and stop down the ramp into the arena.

“Give me a count, E-SIM. How many orks are there in this arena?”

++Approximately twenty thousand, and another thirty five in gretchin. There are multiple squads of armoured nobz, flash gitz and other specialists, as well as half a dozen different clans. The most notable is the Kult of Speed. They even brought their bikes.++

“So we’ve only been facing the dregs so far. I know one is not supposed to underestimate the orks, and I try really hard not to, but it looks like that’s exactly what I’ve done.”

The arvus takes off behind me and parks inside one of the many corridors leading to the arena. Through my remote access I can tell Bola is already trying to cause trouble, but there isn’t much I can do about it now.

I lift my hammer into the air and roar, hyping myself up.

The crowd love it and cheer too as they exchange bags of teeth, snacks, and part before the wandering squigs who have no idea what is going on and are becoming excited by the large, noisy crowd.

Not to be out done, Spikesnik waves his power klaw in the air and stomps closer in his mega armour, the closest thing orks have to space marine terminator armour, the Imperium’s most resilient infantry.

The pilot light of Spikesnik’s kombi-skorcha glows in the dim light. Three stikk bombs are clipped to his breastplate. There’s some energy readings coming from his armour that I don’t recognise. A tricorn hat sits on his head and a gretchin perches on his shoulder.

Spikesnik’s four and a half metre is more intimidating the closer he gets and his metal skull and bionic eyes are unnerving.

“Rusty Slayah!” Yells spikesnik. “I be lookin’ forward ta dis fer a long time.”

Trying to draw out the encounter so I have time to scan and plan, I rest my pipe against the sandy floor and say, “Spikesnik, you useless git. Just because you’re bigger, doesn’t mean you're more cunning, or more brutal. You can’t even manage the most basic aspects of what it means to be orky. It’s so obvious that even an outsider like I can see what is plain to everyone here. You. Are. Weak!”

The crowd hoots and hollers and four fights break out in the stands.

“I, Boss Spikesnik, am a generous ork. Big. Fighty. Lot’s o’ teef. I bring my crew fights,” He waves at the arena. “I bring dem dakka,” He lets out a couple blasts of flame towards me. “And,” He points a klaw at me, “I bring dem entertainment.” Spikesnik spits at me then wipes his right foot slowly against the sand, like he’s trying to scrape squig shit from his armour, and sneers at me.

“Wot you got over me, Slayah? A few bugs? Shoot up a few weak boyz and fink yer ‘ard enough? I am da biggest. I am da boss. Today, Rusty, we fight. Da boyz ‘ere watchin’ are ‘ere to laugh at yah. I’m here to stomp yah. An’ you, Rusty? Well, yer ‘ere ta die.”

I laugh and point my pipe at Spikesnik, “Big words from a petty ork. You got something to prove?” I thump my chest with my fist and a loud clang echoes through the arena. “Then why haven’t you done it?”

There are a hundred metres between us. Spikesnik breaks into a sprint with a yell, firing his kombi-skorcha. Metal slugs and burning promethium are launched towards me at high velocity. The bullets spark into light as they hit my conversion field and the promethium falls short, setting the sand alight with thick fuel. Spikesnik charges through the conflagration unperturbed and I return fire.

I fire my heavy arc rifle, blasting Spikesnik with great gouts of fearsome energy.

Spikesnik covers one hundred metres in six seconds. As he lumbers towards me, the strange energy reading flares and my counterfire is scattered by the orks’ personal field: energy shielding similar to my conversion field. He fires his skorcha a second time at almost point blank and I leap sideways, unwilling to bet the sticky, burning fuel is travelling fast enough to be filtered out and neutralised by my conversion field.

Roaring, Spikesnik tries to slow and turn, but his weight and momentum are too great and he blasts past me; his reach is great enough to take a swipe with his power klaw as I avoid his kombi-skorcha.

I crouch beneath the blow, firing my heavy arc rifle up at his face to no effect. With a thought, I send an order to my servo harness. Four mechadendrites unfold and pull krak-grenades from my pauldrons, then flick their payloads at Spikesnik in a gentle arc.

Four disk shaped grenades slip beneath Spikesnik’s personal field’s velocity limit and magnetise to his armour backplate. Spikesnik slows and jogs in a short circle and faces me a second time. The grenades explode and he stumbles. His face wrinkles in fury.

“Stand still you git!”

I reply with a blast from my own flamer, setting the ork alight.

He just laughs, “‘Ave ta do bettah dan dat, Rusty. ”

What few auspex readings I get through the personal field suggest I don’t have enough fuel to heat the five centimetre thick plates of his mega-armour to compromise its integrity or cook the ork within. The armour doesn’t cover his whole body perfectly, but there is so much ork that minor burns do not phase him and his skin is likely thick enough to absorb significant lasgun fire and phosphorus rounds.

The gretchin crawls from Spikesnik’s shoulder and sprays Spikesnik with a fire retardant foam that drags the burning promethium off his armour and onto the sand.

My hellfire pistol takes three shots at the gretchin and it flinches, but the gretchin is close enough my shots are dispersed by Spikesnik’s personal field. It grabs one of the stikk bombs from Spikesnik’s chest and lobs it at me. My hellfire pistol automatically shoots the grenade out of the air.

I have three haywire and nine high-explosive missiles left. Setting Spikesnik as the target I sprint away and launch three haywire missiles followed by five high explosive missiles.

The missiles launch in front of me, ignite and shoot up into the air then reverse away from me and come down on Spikesniks head.

Spikesnik’s personal field holds the arcing electricity at bay, turning him into a lightning ball, then the high explosives hit and the explosion washes over the sphere of energy to little effect and I realise Spikesnik’s personal field can likely withstand the combined fire of a Stellar Corps company for a handful of seconds and is completely beyond my ability to take down.

The next time I redesign my loadout I am adding shield busters to my grenades and missiles, maybe a fire extinguisher for my armour too.

With great reluctance, I attach my arc rifle to my servo-harness, draw my pipe, and charge Spikesnik. I swing my pipe at his knee, trying to embed the crowsbeak into the small patch of green skin just above the joint. Spikesnik lifts his leg slightly and my blow hits his armour, vaporising a thin line of metal.

My mechadendrites attach four grenades to Spikesnik’s legs and I hose him down with nanites.

An electric current arcs off the mega armour, disabling my nanties and zaps me too. My armour locks up a tenth of a second and I stumble. The gretchin, is hit as well and the electric discharge boils his blood and scatters him across the arena.

“Told you I’d make it special. Did you fink I would forget?”

The crowd cheer and fire the occasional shot at us, which miss by a handful of metres.

Spikesnik tries to batter me aside with his kombi-skorcha, and I grab hold of his arm and let him fling me away. The grenades explode. Shrapnel and green blood spatter across the sand and Spikesnik yells.

I had hoped to sever his knee, but alas, the resilience of ork flesh is as unnatural as it is bizarre and all I give him is a limp. The mega-armour’s servos and pistons have been compromised though and are leaking lubricants down Spikesnik’s left leg. He keeps turning to face me, refusing to let me get another shot at his back and I realise I may have to dismember him, rather than compromise his powersource and trap him in his own armour as I originally intended.

“E-SIM can the advanced E-WAR suit disable the mega armour?”

++No.++

“Dismemberment and decapitation it is then.” I focus my thoughts on my armour and my machine integration module converts them into binary. “Power Armour Status?”

A second machine-spirit answers, its voice a hissing whisper I can barely hear.

++Servos compromised. Artificial muscles degraded. Power armour speed and strength has fallen, on average, thirteen percent. Armour plates ablation at two percent. No critical damage. E-SIM link-up nominal. Nanite repair underway. Full function to be restored in fifty seconds. Estimated material reserve after repairs: ninety-six percent.++

Spikesnik unleashes a burst of dakka at me as I slide backwards. Flashes of light dance around me and I reconfigure the conversion field, pulling it into an oval, rather than a sphere, as well as increase the distance between the field and my front arc.

Rounds begin flying past me without triggering the field. I don’t really know how anyone could miss at such close range and I delight in Spikesnik’s atrocious aim. His skorcha, however, has no difficulty in hitting me and I am bathed in flame. My armour’s paint peels away, shedding the viscid fuel alongside it.

I sprint sideways towards Spikesnik, slipping out of the raging stream of fire, knowing that, with the paint gone, I won’t avoid damage a second time. My many minds focus on the problem, going over the details of the conversion field to see if I can lower its interception velocity, or link it to my auger and forcefully activate it, but it is too complex to reprogram so quickly and I any new code might accidentally disable the device.

Spikesnik cuts off his flame and bullets.

I accelerate my perception and everything around me slows. After the debacle with the space marine STC I’ve avoided doing this, but now is not the time to indulge in my hang-ups, no matter how reasonable they may or may not be.

At last I am able to track the bullets with my eyes and observe the boiling flames as they seep forward, overtaking each other in their race to thermal oblivion.

With a sweeping uppercut, Spikesnik strikes at me with his power klaw.

Anxious to avoid another paralysing discharge, I intercept the blow with a downward strike from my pipe, rather than try to grab him again.

The two weapons clash, their powerfields contesting their might. Our bodies and armour strain against each other. Spikesnik is at least twice my strength and I am lifted from my feet. A component along Spikesnik’s arm fails with a bang; I sever a klaw, then fall to the ground and land on my bulky feet.

Surprised by the sudden failure, Spikesnik is unbalanced slightly and I go for his right knee with my pipe and my servo-arm grabs his kombi-skorcha while my mechadendrites whirl and cut into the oversized gun.

Welds fail, screws fly and the kombi-skorcha is scattered over the arena in under a second.

My pipe thumps into Spikesnik’s right knee and vaporises the armour in a fountain of powdered, rusty metal. My second swing misses as Spikesnik retreats a step, pulling me along with him as my servo-arm is clamped to what’s left of his kombi-skorcha.

Spikesnik stabs his power klaw at my chest.

My servo-arm rotates me to face the blow, even as I swing towards Spikesnik. I thrust my pipe forward, intercept the klaw and let the force swing me horizontally off Spikesniks arm, treating him like a gymnastics bar. Engaging my servos, I add extra momentum and rotate the servo-arm so I remain upright, rather than upside down like an acrobat.

Four mechadendrites reach out and stabilise me, adding extra anchor points to Spikesniks armour and taking the strain off my magnetic boots and servo-arm.

Spikesnik shakes his arm, and my servo-harness keeps me steady, letting me cling to the ork and pulling me towards the ork’s shoulder.

The audience dislike my acrobatics and jeer, calling me a pointy eared git, clown, and snotling.

I despise the insinuations, though I do not let them distract me from the fight.

Spikesnik triggers his electric discharge a second time. As I cling to his armour, the powerful current flows over my armour to little effect as I am too far from the ground.

Perhaps the orks think I am cheating or lack sportsmanship because two-hundred and seventy-six orks open fire, trying to shoot me from my perch. Two thirds of the shots go wide and the third that actually hit are intercepted by Spikesnik’s personal field.

The rokkits, I feel, are a bit much though. Twenty-eight rokkits scream towards Spiksnik and I: my hellfire pistol picks off ten rokkits, another twelve miss and explode around Spikesnik and I take out four with my last missiles. I fail to intercept the final three.

No matter how I try to hide behind Spikesnik’s bulk, I will be hit by at least one of them. While he is distracted by the incoming fire, I kick his hat off and bring my pipe down on Spikesnik’s over-wrought cranium, disintegrating a chunk of his head. Then, for good measure, I draw my backup phosphex pistol, stuff the barrel into his grey matter, and unload four rounds into his skull cavity. Being so close renders Spikesnik’s personal field ineffective.

As Spikesnik’s brain and cybernetics burn with hot, white light, a mechadendrite grabs my MOA shield and interposes it between the missile and I.

The tank buster missile shatters the shield and mechadendrite. The focused plasma spike created by the explosives is much longer than I thought possible and cuts through my breastplate and under armour. My new hyperweave musculature and armoured organs mitigate the rokkits remaining force. I am rattled by the explosion, though my servo-harness and boots keep me firmly attached to the mega armour.

The other two missiles collide with Spiksniks breastplate and backplate, burning holes right through his armour and cooking his tough flesh.

My injury is debilitating, though not fatal, and I have to switch control of my arms to my armour via my machine integration module as my chest muscles are damaged and inadequately anchored to my shoulders and arms. I have also sustained minor damage to my lungs as, even with their flexible armour, they are still sensitive to the intense heat and impacts. E-SIM shelters me from most of the pain. With such a focused breach, my power armour’s functionality is only slightly diminished.

Spikesnik sways on his feet and slumps, his armour locking him upright. I think he is dead, but I am taking no chances and my remaining mechadendrites shove three grenades through the burning white mess of his skull and down his throat into his chest.

I leap from the armour and fall four metres to the ground and land unharmed. A haywire and two frag grenades detonate. The force of the three explosions is contained by the mega armour and focused upward, showing the arena and I in gore.

The crowd yells and erupts into violence. E-SIM filters out the words and correlates the data.

++Congratulations on your victory, Aldrich. The orks are split into two sides. A third think they accidentally killed the boss and therefore they are in charge, another third supported Spiksnik and believes that they are entitled to his power. The last third want to have a go at you, thinking that killing you makes them the boss, but are getting swept up in the fight between the other two sides.++

I saunter over to Spikesnik’s hat and a mechadendrite reaches out and places it on my head. “That sounds bloody perfect, E-SIM.”