Chapter 92: The Harvest of Iron
What followed was a period of cold, clinical execution. As the rebels launched their full-scale assault, the PDF lines shattered. Seeing their armored vanguard stalled and smoking, the Imperial regulars lost whatever resolve they had left. The "Glorious Purge" turned into a desperate rout as the soldiers broke cover and sprinted back toward the forest edge.
In the chaos, no one noticed the silent reaper on the ridge. Kian Voss remained prone, his breath slow and rhythmic. He emptied his ten-round magazine, methodically picking off the NCOs trying to organize a retreat.
Clack-shirr.
He reloaded, thumbing fresh 9.9mm slugs into the internal spring. He checked the horizon through his 20x optic.
The PDF's transport trucks were still parked at the boundary of the forest and the fallow fields, roughly 1,500 meters away. The surviving regulars were scrambling into the cargo beds, screaming at the drivers to ignite the engines and flee back to the Hive.
Kian consulted the firing table taped to his arm. "Fifteen hundred meters. Wind-socks are still... zero. Pure gravity-drop."
He centered the crosshairs on the driver's side of the lead truck. A soldier had just hauled himself into the pilot's seat, frantically mashing the ignition rune. Before the engine could catch, Kian squeezed the hair-trigger.
BOOM.
The heavy sniper slug shrieked across the plains for several seconds. The truck's reinforced windshield shattered into a spiderweb of cracks, and a fountain of red mist erupted inside the cab. The driver slumped over the wheel.
Kian cycled the bolt. BOOM.
The second truck's driver was erased before he could engage the gears.
He aimed for the third truck but held his fire. A group of rebels had managed to burst from the woods, swarming the vehicle. They jammed the muzzles of their autoguns through the cab windows, emptying their magazines into the interior. The PDF regulars inside were cut down before they could even scream.
Kian panned his scope across the battlefield one last time. There were no more "High-Value Targets" left in the open. He shouldered his rifle and began a rapid descent down the slope.
The mission was a technical success. Winchester was trapped in the crippled Chimera, his promotion effectively liquidated. But for Kian, the "Main Quest" was secondary to the loot. The forest floor and the plains were now littered with Imperial-pattern weaponry, and he intended to claim the lion's share.
Instead of heading for the trenches, Kian sprinted toward the forest-fields boundary. He reached the abandoned PDF trucks.
He didn't want the vehicles for the drive; he wanted them as "Stash Boxes." He checked the cargo beds. Most were filled with crates of low-grade rations and basic medical kits. But in the lead truck, tucked beneath the soldier's benches, he found the prize: ten heavy crates of 20mm Ammunition.
He siphoned the fuel from the other four trucks, dumping the promethium into the lead vehicle's tank. He then climbed into the cab, shoved the corpse of the driver out into the mud, and ignited the engine.
Kian roared the heavy truck into the rebel camp, driving right onto the "Killing Grounds" where the fighting had been thickest.
The warren was a scene of grizzly triumph. The rebels were both weeping and cheering. They had won, but at a staggering cost. Of the thousand men who had stood at dawn, barely two hundred remained uninjured. They weren't looting; they were busy dragging their wounded brothers into the shacks, their faces masks of shock and grief.
Kian ignored the sentiment. He backed the truck up to a pair of fallen heavy weapons.
He leaped from the cab, grabbed the barrel of a 20mm Heavy Stubber (Lumberer-pattern), and heaved. With his Strength at 23—more than twice that of a normal man—he manhandled the eighty-kilogram weapon as if it were a bag of grain.
He tossed the first heavy stubber into the truck bed, followed quickly by the second.
These are going on the brewery gates, Kian thought, his eyes gleaming. Let the gangs try to audit my taxes when they're staring down a pair of twenty-millimeter autocannons.
He scavenged the bodies of the gun-crews, finding two spare barrels and two Tactical Maintenance Kits.
[COGITATOR NOTIFICATION: CRAFTING COMPONENTS ACQUIRED]
Items: 2x Heavy Maintenance Rucksacks. Required for Sanctum Machinist Station LVL 4.
Kian threw the kits into the cab and continued his sweep. He remembered the locations of the PDF specialists he'd dropped from the ridge.
He found a dead gunner near a fallen tree. Beside him lay a PDF Light Machine Gun—a "Space-M249" pattern with a 100-round belt-box. It was a beautiful piece of hardware, weighing 7.5kg and capable of a much higher sustained fire-rate than the standard autogun.
Kian snatched it up, then jogged toward the next "X" on his mental map. He spotted the glint of another LMG near a crater.
He stepped forward to snatch the light machine gun, but just then, the hand of a rebel soldier reached out as well, gripping the weapon.
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