A House Divided
Act 2 - The Shadow of the Abyss
Chapter 1 - The Green Grindstone, continued...
As Valens was engaged in the guts of the train the party decided on a plan of defense for the incoming orks. At least ten separate ork assault convoys, each between 5 and 10 vehicles, was converging from all directions. The plasma turrets, though inaccurate, could assist with some of the groups, but the commander was certain that some orks would breach through by virtue of their numbers alone. Vadik and Wu-10 decided to remain on the train to call the turrets shots and repel any boarders, while the rest of the party clambered into a Chimera that Cassius convinced the commander to "lend" the party for the duration of the ork assault. They would intercept and handle the orks that got past the turret defenses. The Taurus gun trucks from the original repair convoy would assist them by targeting whatever convoys the players chose not to engage. Finally, in the distance, the plumes of dust from the orks rabid assault became apparent, power readings to the plasma turrets lit hit maximum, and the gunners asked for targets. The battle for the train had begun.
If the orks had laughed at the prospect of a single Chimera rolling out from the train to meet their assault, their humor did not last long. Cassius used the APC as a weapon unto itself, driving through or over any ork that dared steer his bike too close. Aurora, racking the charging handle of the Chimera's autocannon, laid waste to wagons and trukks of the convoy with sustained bursts of heavy fire. She reaped a green harvest in the name of the God-Emperor, until a lucky shot from one of the bikers took her through the shoulder. Manus tended her wound with psyker energy, but their luck seemed to be turning. Another lucky shot from one of the orks blew out the las-turret Merrick was operating, and when he tried to reboot the gun it overloaded the secondary weapon systems of the Chimera and rendered the entire las-turret system dead. In exasperation he kicked open the crew access hatch to the back ramp and decided he would be better served employing his sidearms as Aurora regained her position in the turret. An ork holding aloft a grenade gunned towards his hatch, seeing its chance to destroy the human vehicle. It did not anticipate that the human in the hatch would be capable of putting a hipshot round through the grenade itself. The last time it thought anything was the least likely thing it ever would have, that a human had done something it found impressive.
Cassius, Valens, and Aurora took lead speaking with the pair. They carefully explained who they were, who had sent them, and shared with the pair the documents of pardon that Roa Mahaka had secured for them. Siduran seemed ready to accept them on face value, but the commissar asked pointed and terse questions about the finer details of the letter's stipulations behind an emotionless mask of self-control. In the end, Siduran himself was the one that sought a compromise. He noted that the pardon stipulated that control of the prisoners was to be transferred to the party only once it was "tactically feasible" to do so. Siduran explained that the normal guardsman had been pulled back, and the penal regiment left as a suicide force to defend the fort in the face of an oncoming ork assault in less than a week. Siduran had four objectives to secure before the assault, objectives he lacked the troops to accomplish on his own. The party had four prisoners they wished to liberate, and could obviously handle themselves if they had gotten all the way out to Ft. Dorn. Siduran agreed that for each of the objectives the party helped him to accomplish, he would grant them access to one of the soldiers.
With the dust and flames settling, the party pulled their Taurox past the wreckage of the orc assault and up to the lost convoy. One of the two massive haulers had been overturned by an explosion, but the other hauler and its two Taurus gun truck escorts remained functional (if bullet-riddled and low on ammunition). A gruff NCO identifying himself as Winthrop thanked the party for their intervention, and asked if could assist him in collecting his dead so he could burn the bodies before resuming his convoy to the broken train. He was pleased that Gen. Sanchez had sent the group, and did his best to organize what few of his men remained to expedite the process. Valens took the time to strip the overturned hauler of ammunition and grant absolution to the broken machine spirits of its operating system to ensure orc Mekboys did not disgrace the sacred machines with their blasphemous works. The convoy quickly resumed travel northwards, as early morning gave way to the oppressive heat of a summer afternoon. They began to realize how close they were to their destination when the sustained sound of explosions they assumed to be far off thunder turned out, in fact, to be the discharge of the armored train's plasma cannons.
As the convoy barreled between the last hills separating them from the train they finally understood why Sanchez valued it so highly. It was a titanic vehicle separated into six sections that were each four stories tall and close to fifty meters long. Two nuclear-powered engine cars with side and top-mounted plasma cannons propelled the gargantuan mechanism back and forth along the mag-lev line, and each section of the train was enclosed, armored, and sporting its own plasma turret on top. The train's momentum and weight could see it barrel through almost any obstruction short of a Warlord titan, it's armor was almost as formidable as a void shield, and the dozens of charred craters and strewn debris spoke to the lethal capacity of its weapon systems. It was the lifeline of Sanchez's outpost system on this sector of the planet.
As they approached the convoy Sgt. Winthrop patched them into the communication system, and they learned why the war machine was crippled. A catastrophic failure in one of the train's two nuclear reactors had caused a coolant system failure that had compromised the engine and killed the tech-priest who ministered to the train. The train's second reactor could power its weapons, or power its propulsion, but it couldn't do both. So long as the orks continued their assault the train was grounded, unless someone could repair the coolant system to the other reactor. Unfortunately, the continued battle for the train had drawn the attention of a massive convoy of ork vehicles, which were enclosing on the train from all sides. As the party pulled into one of the massive garage cars Valens proceeded to engineering with Wu-10 and Muffin while the others refitted and prepared to meet the oncoming ork menace. If the orks were to claim the train it would cripple the war effort on Orion 9, they would have to fight to defend it as Valens saw to the repairs.
Down in engineering Valens found a chaotic rabble of surviving crew, sweating and crippled from radiation exposure, desperately trying to get the coolant system operational. He commanded them all from the compartment; not the sake of their health, but simply because their continued presence would distract him from being able to affect the repairs in the most timely and efficient manner possible. Wu-10 assisted him to removed the ruined components of the coolants tanks and hoses before heading back to the garage to assist with the ork assault, and Valens set about his repairs with the singular, mechanical focus his order is known for. While his comrades met the ork assault he fabricated a plan to piggy-back coolant from the rear engine's tanks to the front, and set about getting the train moving again.
As Valens was engaged in the guts of the train the party decided on a plan of defense for the incoming orks. At least ten separate ork assault convoys, each between 5 and 10 vehicles, was converging from all directions. The plasma turrets, though inaccurate, could assist with some of the groups, but the commander was certain that some orks would breach through by virtue of their numbers alone. Vadik and Wu-10 decided to remain on the train to call the turrets shots and repel any boarders, while the rest of the party clambered into a Chimera that Cassius convinced the commander to "lend" the party for the duration of the ork assault. They would intercept and handle the orks that got past the turret defenses. The Taurus gun trucks from the original repair convoy would assist them by targeting whatever convoys the players chose not to engage. Finally, in the distance, the plumes of dust from the orks rabid assault became apparent, power readings to the plasma turrets lit hit maximum, and the gunners asked for targets. The battle for the train had begun.
The first few moments of the assault seemed surreal. Little could be seen of the orks yet, but with Vadik and Wu-10 directing their fire the plasma turrets would repeatedly power up and then discharge a white-hot lance of destruction that burned as bright as a sun and caused entire groups of the ork vehicles to disappear in hellish fire. For all the awesome power of the turrets, though, it was clear that their targeting systems were struggling without the tech-priest to soothe their angered machine spirits. One turret, pushed beyond its capacity, exploding in an overload cascade that did little to help Valens' work in the ruined reactor. Two ork convoys would make it inside the perimeter of the plasma cannons. When the vehicles of their green-skinned foe came into view they knew the time had come, Cassius gunned the throttle and roared out off the loading ramp of the garage section of the train and towards the largest of the ork convoys. Wu-10 began to scale the side of the train to take up a firing position atop the vehicle with his Radium rifle, and Vadik procured a sniper's scope for his rifle so he could better observe the battle and provide support to his comrades.
If the orks had laughed at the prospect of a single Chimera rolling out from the train to meet their assault, their humor did not last long. Cassius used the APC as a weapon unto itself, driving through or over any ork that dared steer his bike too close. Aurora, racking the charging handle of the Chimera's autocannon, laid waste to wagons and trukks of the convoy with sustained bursts of heavy fire. She reaped a green harvest in the name of the God-Emperor, until a lucky shot from one of the bikers took her through the shoulder. Manus tended her wound with psyker energy, but their luck seemed to be turning. Another lucky shot from one of the orks blew out the las-turret Merrick was operating, and when he tried to reboot the gun it overloaded the secondary weapon systems of the Chimera and rendered the entire las-turret system dead. In exasperation he kicked open the crew access hatch to the back ramp and decided he would be better served employing his sidearms as Aurora regained her position in the turret. An ork holding aloft a grenade gunned towards his hatch, seeing its chance to destroy the human vehicle. It did not anticipate that the human in the hatch would be capable of putting a hipshot round through the grenade itself. The last time it thought anything was the least likely thing it ever would have, that a human had done something it found impressive.
With his repairs finally finished in the engineering compartment Valens hooked into the train's turret system and usurped control from the crude ministrations of the crew. He directed more accurate fire while he could, but soon it became obvious that two of the ork convoys were going to break through the turrets last line of deterrence. Too close to the train and the blast area of the turret discharge would risk damaging the train, he quickly disconnected his min-impulse link and headed back to the garage compartment to see if he could assist with the defense more directly. The train's commander, realizing he had sufficient power to keep his turrets running and resume travel ordered the train to resume its course towards Ft. Dorn despite the Chimera and two Taurus vehicles screening its perimeter still engaged. And while the party had fared well against the orks thus far, the Taurus crews had already been hard pressed and exhausted from the ambush on the repair convoy. They turned for the train and desperately attempted to outrun their ork pursuers. Cassius gunned the throttle of his Chimera and set an intercept course for the beleaguered troopers.
Despite consistent support fire from Wu-10 and Vadik, the latter picking off the driver of the lead ork's war wagon and forcing the brutish warboss to punch through the cab's roof to steer the wagon himself, one of the Taurus gun jeeps succumbed to the orks and exploded in a gout of flame. The other, now alongside the train, found itself unwilling host to an ork boarder who struggled with the guardsman in the turret briefly before the desperate trooper managed to unholster his sidearm and unload the entire magazine into the ork at close range. The remaining orks of the last attack convoy were rapidly closing on the train as Cassius slammed into their midst, rolling over two more choppers and causing another trukk to spin out of control. He continued through the wreckage and turned wide to re-engage just as Valens rejoined his comrades in the garage. Taking quick stock of the situation he reached into the folds of his robe and produced a small canister he had been saving for just such an occasion. He set a small series of dials before casually dropping it off of the side of the train, where it clattered and rolled before exploding in a shower of hyper-pressurized nitrogen coolant in the middle of the remaining orks. The billowing cloud of sub-zero chemical sealed the fate of the orks, only the warboss atop the wagon survived (though both of his arms snapped off at the elbows when he attempted to move. As his wagon began to slow and drift, a careful shot from Vadik finally broke through the armor separating it's vile heart from the sweet release of death.
Despite their victory the commander, quite shaken by the experience of being stranded in hostile territory, refused to slow the train to allow the Chimera and Taurus back aboard until they were in sight of Ft. Dorn. As they pulled in, they finally saw how desperate the fighting on Orion 9 had become. The fort, like dozens of others scattered around the front, was a squat multi-story wall of plascrete ringed with gun towers as a last line of defense. It was effectively split into two, straddling the mag-lev line with massive steel gates which were retracted on ail systems of their own to let the train in and out of either end of the fort. For hundreds of meters surrounding the fort's walls there were convoluted and intersecting lines of trench systems broken up by bunkers and fortified positions. Even as the train pulled in there was an assault ongoing somewhere in the trench line which could be faintly heard, though not seen. As the train pulled to a stop Cassius gently guided the Taurox off the cargo ramp and down into a massive loading hangar where the party were struck with an odd, and foreboding, sight.
Well disciplined, though exhausted and battle-worn, ranks of Imperial Guardsman stood patiently in platoon formations on the northern side of the hanger. After gangway ramps were lowered they filed in good order from there onto the train. On the south side of the hanger, a ragged and desperate group of men and women, identifiable as Imperial Guard only from the uniformity of their tattered green uniforms, milled about restlessly and eyed the crates being unloaded from one of the train's compartments. They tugged and scratched at odd collars that had been fitted around their necks, and there seemed to be little cohesion or purpose to their presence. That was, at least, until they saw what they were waiting for. As one the milling mass lunged forward, shoving train crew out of the way, even assaulting one who protested, before prying crate lids off with their bare hands. Inside they pulled vials of red liquid from vacuumed packaging and screwed them with shaking hands into receptacles on their collars. A sudden crack of sub-gun fire rang out, and the collared guardsmen stumbled away from the crates as a grim man in the trench and cap of a commissar stalked forward, flanked by two collared lackeys with smoking guns. The commissars henchmen executed a writhing soldier on the ground as he dispassionately ordered the crates to be repacked. Once done he took count of the dead and realized that there were three open crates but only one dead guardsman, with a dismissive wave of his hand ordered his men to kill two more to justify his count. Once done, he turned and walked stiffly out of the hangar as one of his men stayed behind to oversee the offloading.
Well disciplined, though exhausted and battle-worn, ranks of Imperial Guardsman stood patiently in platoon formations on the northern side of the hanger. After gangway ramps were lowered they filed in good order from there onto the train. On the south side of the hanger, a ragged and desperate group of men and women, identifiable as Imperial Guard only from the uniformity of their tattered green uniforms, milled about restlessly and eyed the crates being unloaded from one of the train's compartments. They tugged and scratched at odd collars that had been fitted around their necks, and there seemed to be little cohesion or purpose to their presence. That was, at least, until they saw what they were waiting for. As one the milling mass lunged forward, shoving train crew out of the way, even assaulting one who protested, before prying crate lids off with their bare hands. Inside they pulled vials of red liquid from vacuumed packaging and screwed them with shaking hands into receptacles on their collars. A sudden crack of sub-gun fire rang out, and the collared guardsmen stumbled away from the crates as a grim man in the trench and cap of a commissar stalked forward, flanked by two collared lackeys with smoking guns. The commissars henchmen executed a writhing soldier on the ground as he dispassionately ordered the crates to be repacked. Once done he took count of the dead and realized that there were three open crates but only one dead guardsman, with a dismissive wave of his hand ordered his men to kill two more to justify his count. Once done, he turned and walked stiffly out of the hangar as one of his men stayed behind to oversee the offloading.
The train commander informed them over radio that they had just met the commissar assigned to the penal regiment they were here to find, Axel Kane. He also told them that he had radioed for the commander to send someone to escort them to the command center. Moments later a shell-shocked trooper waved for them to park their Taurox alongside other vehicles and then follow him. He led them past a scene of controlled chaos as guardsman laden with packs and crates hurriedly sprinted for the train, filing past penal troopers too numb from drugs or mental trauma to care anymore. As they entered the command tent they the commissar, seated in immaculate uniform across from a man in worn fatigues that showed he was a colonel, even if his haggard features were did not express the confident command expected of the rank. He looked at the approaching party with bemused exasperation as he took a pull from a hip flask.
Cassius, Valens, and Aurora took lead speaking with the pair. They carefully explained who they were, who had sent them, and shared with the pair the documents of pardon that Roa Mahaka had secured for them. Siduran seemed ready to accept them on face value, but the commissar asked pointed and terse questions about the finer details of the letter's stipulations behind an emotionless mask of self-control. In the end, Siduran himself was the one that sought a compromise. He noted that the pardon stipulated that control of the prisoners was to be transferred to the party only once it was "tactically feasible" to do so. Siduran explained that the normal guardsman had been pulled back, and the penal regiment left as a suicide force to defend the fort in the face of an oncoming ork assault in less than a week. Siduran had four objectives to secure before the assault, objectives he lacked the troops to accomplish on his own. The party had four prisoners they wished to liberate, and could obviously handle themselves if they had gotten all the way out to Ft. Dorn. Siduran agreed that for each of the objectives the party helped him to accomplish, he would grant them access to one of the soldiers.
- The fort had recently been the victim of gretchin sapper efforts. The beasts had tunneled into the fort in several places and wreaked havoc. The party would need to enter the tunnels and find a way to stop the sappers.
- There was a command bunker in the trench system outside which had fallen to an ork assault and hastily abandoned. A portable cogitator containing encrypted frequencies and decoding capabilities was still inside of it. Before the orks realized what they had and turned their mekboys loose, the party would need to retrieve or destroy the cogitator.
- A nearby ork observation post in a ruined factorum was directing surprisingly effective artillery fire, and making it impossible to move outside of the walls without being seen. The party would have to neutralize the OP.
- In the last two weeks the orks had emplaced an artillery battery north of the fort. The artillery was pinning them in place, and keeping them bottled for while ork troops amassed for the final push to destroy the IG outpost. They would have to find the artillery pieces and destroy them.