Eisenhorn

WARHAMMER 40K: THE TARSON INCURSION

@rivaan The only thing we can want is a solution to only having one life to give to the Emperor!

@Rithy Also, finally translated that binary, how am I not surprised I wasn't far from the mark?

WARHAMMER 40K: THE TARSON INCURSION

@rivaan Oh no, you jacked the Krieger's fun once already. No stealing his chance to employ his newly modified toy. Also too lazy to translate binary rambling about tech heresy, possibly.

WARHAMMER 40K: THE TARSON INCURSION

Ansgar had been dead silent once they grouped up, following along the eerily silent halls, Type XIV (Heavy) scanning his surroundings as he followed after the Celestian, who had taken point. Between her and her power armor, she did fit the role of a lead element rather well. However, the comment of Heretics not leaving any sort of survivors was not quite true, as he muttered just loud enough to be heard, not hard considering the lack of noise in the facility at the moment. That was also a point of concern, an Adeptus Mechanicus facility that was dead silent was not a good sign, not under any circumstances. Let alone those that involve Orks or, as the Celestian pointed out, Chaos involvement. "Chaos leaves corpses right up until they need materials for their rituals, then they vanish. Doubly so if the bodies are fresh, don't discount heretics so readily Celestian, I've seen worse from their lot than not leaving bodies behind."

Once the signal to maintain silence came, the Krieger was indeed all silence, shifting how he moved to minimize his noise generation. Sure, a standard Death Korp trooper was not rained in such operations, but considering Grenadiers filled the role of Stormtroopers for the Death Korp? It wasn't terribly surprising he could operate as a commando as well as a front line soldier. Even if the subtle portion of the field training did not come into use nearly as often as acting as the leading edge of an assault. Thankfully, since the silent order had come so soon after his comment he did not need to expand on what he had already said about a Chaos cult's influence here being in the works, which saved him the trouble of speaking on classified matters and not giving them answers to questions asked. When they arrived at the Armory, he knelt by one of the corpses, face twisted in the pain of death, and a brief motion closed the eyes and settled their face. No man should die without a Quartermaster to see them off, the Kreiger mused, standing up and heading into the armory proper, looking for something in specific as the Celestian spoke about taking what they willed.

Ansgar found what he was looking for in relatively short order, a sealed room that had Chemical weapons warnings over the door. After testing an old passcode on the door, which came back negative of course, the Krieger wasted no time forcing the issue. Taking his entrenching tool (shovel) to the keypad, popping the cover off, he was working at the circuits and after shocking himself twice, he tripped the door to fail open. Not normal procedure, but reversing the wiring made it remarkably easy to do so. Cogboys weren't nearly as clever as they liked to think, and once inside the Krieger grabbed a barrel of something covered in warnings and precautions, mentioning it would eat through any organic material it came into contact with. Grunting as he dragged the barrel over to a workbench, he next procured a Flamer, setting its tank on the workbench and opening the top up, emptying one of the two tanks and altering the valve to mix the two tanks instead of just alternate as one emptied.

Filling the emptied half of the Flamer's tanks half chemical compound, half promethium, which he sealed quickly after introducing the two together and stepping back, ready to take cover. However, when the tank finished shuddering, he slung the thing onto his back and reaquainted himself with the nozzle and trigger mechanism of this model. Slinging the projection half of the weapon onto his shoulder, and resealing the chemical barrel, he made a casual note to the rest of the party as he began stuffing explosives into his ordinance satchel, which he had emptied during earlier portions of the mission. "Do not get this mixture on you, let alone if its burning. Learned how to mix this fighting Tyranid, Promethium keeps it burning until it contacts organic material, then keeps burning until its out of fuel. Whether that's oxygen, or organic material, doesn't matter. Not good for the skin."

After duly warning the rest of the squad of the chemical weapon he had turned the Flamer into, he focused on replenishing his explosives. Frags, Krak grenades, and demo charges, not bothering with the melta bombs. Too much effort for tank removal, he'd take a couple rapidly placed krak grenades over a melta charge. He could throw Krak's farther than Melta's, after all. As almost an afterthought, he grabbed a Laspistol plus several spare cells for it, the pattern some local clone of a universally accepted model of Laspistol. It would pair well with his entrenching tool should he be forced into a melee. Otherwise, he was ready, preparing his modified Flamer for action again as he met up with the rest of the party overlooking the gathered Orks. "Rearmed and ready for further orders, ma'am."

WARHAMMER 40K: THE TARSON INCURSION

@Rithy

Oh don't you worry your head none, imagine a flamer fuel that is fueled mainly by organic material (And the usual oxygen requirement)! Our resident Krieger knows how to mix that kind of batch of fuel. I even have updated artwork I stumbled across for a flamer/heavy flamer wielding Ansgar!

WARHAMMER 40K: THE TARSON INCURSION

@Rithy How fortunate for all parties involved that, once the post is done, Ansgar is bringing a flamer tricked out with some fuel mix he found works swimmingly against Tyranid so it will work just as fine against Greenskins. Consider that a preview, after all, Grenadiers that come from Engineers are still qualified to handle chemical, biological, and radiological weapons. (In refernce to the post, he has a plan. A cunning plan. Involving fire, lots and lots of fire. And explosives. He's too short not to bring explosives.)

WARHAMMER 40K: THE TARSON INCURSION

Ansgar cocked an eyebrow under his rebreather mask, skull faced mask and helmet portraying nothing of the sort as the focused barrage of lasers from the tech heretic managed to punch through a shield that a barrage of Basilisk ordinance failed to breach. Then again, it was only a light barrage, but even so, she should count her blessings. The barrage likely pushed the shield to the brink, so the anti tank weapon she carried around could pierce the remaining remnants of the shield. Of course, just as he was about to depart on foot as he had already determined, a part of him dissapointed in being unable to assault the Ork position, the Valkyrie touched down beside him, the pilot barking over the vox to him directly. "Orders got overruled Sir, get in."

The Krieger knew full well who would overrule him, and he muttered back over the vox as he boarded and found a seat. "Don't 'sir' me, pilot." not even giving the tech heretic a good job or even commenting on the success of her actions. She was doing her job, there was little need to congratulate someone for doing what was expected of them. With that sorted out, the Valkyrie wasted no time in taking off after her partner, the one carrying the other half of the retinue. The rest of the flight to the Titan facility was uneventful, the diversion working as intended outside of the minor hiccup of the Ork managing to figure out their plan. Eventually, the quieting of the engines coupled with the pilot voxxing to his passengers, announced their arrival at Landing Pad D-1283.

"Right, we're here. Thank you for flying Imperial Air, now hop to it. And thanks for cutting that tether, didn't fancy trying to drive a Valkyrie on the ground." Ansgar was the first out, a quick scan confirming they had arrived on the same platform as the other valkyrie had, being the second half of the group to arrive, and once everyone was disembarked, led the three over to reunite with the Celestian, Psyker, and Apothecary. The damaged Valkyrie they flew in on had lifted off, being redirected for necessary repairs before they would get deployed back into the action. He voxxed to the Celestian while scanning for them, standing by for follow on orders. "We've arrived ma'am, standing by for further orders."

WARHAMMER 40K: THE TARSON INCURSION

The sound of the crude grappling hook being launched would have ellicted a great deal of responses from less stoic men, irritation from veterans or terror or hopelessness from green troops. But for the Death Korp, the only proper response was to take it into account and continue issuing his orders. First, the sight of some crude force shield meant that continued barrages would range from ineffective to wasteful, after all, a handful of lives was not worth spending needless amounts of ordinance over. The Imperium produced far more bodies than it did munitions, so wasting munitions was frankly worse than wasting bodies. Despite the shield, damage had been considerably done, so he called it in as such. "Solid hits, fire effective. Halt further ordinance on my target pending further notice."

Next was relaying what was going on to the Valkyries, first the one hooked. "Make every and all efforts to break free and retreat, pilot, then proceed with orders as planned. Arbites, Mercenary, assist the pilot as required. I will continue on foot alone to the objective, further risking the air coverage cannot be tolerated." Which might sound like a suicidal proposition, running on foot through Orkish territory, and it probably would be to most, but a Krieger was raised to die after all. By this point the other two would have boarded the Valkyrie, leaving the Krieger as the only one not currently on a transport. At this point he swapped channels to the command circuit, the sounds of the explosions and reactions against the crude force field apparent.

"Slight delay encountered, ma'am. Ork with inclinations towards machinery intercepted evac route, currently preventing valkyrie lift off due to what appears to be magnetic grapple. Apothecary, does Orkish shielding technology prevent passage of persons?" If the Valkyrie couldn't free itself in the next few moments, Ansgar could not risk them being hauled down and crashing, which meant disabling the grapple. He could see where the line had been launched, being hooked in still, and he had a simple plan. Approach under the chaos of the recent artillery strike, board the Ork's machine, disable the grapple, and kill his way to the next objective. Or at the very least take as many Orks with him as possible, and they hardly seemed as fearsome as the Tyranid, so he would wager that he could take a great deal with him. If he were a gambling man, that is, which he was not.

WARHAMMER 40K: THE TARSON INCURSION

<Snipped quote by Eisenhorn>

The Death Korps of Krieg and Iron Warriors would have been like B.F.F if things were different.... !

@Rithy

Shame for the Iron Warriors that, out of the entirety of the various regiments of the Guard, the Death Korp are the least likely to go rogue, let alone outright heresy. Bet they remind the Imperial Fists a tad too much of their shenanigans with the Iron Warriors though (Iron Cage has not been forgotten.)

WARHAMMER 40K: THE TARSON INCURSION

<Snipped quote by Eisenhorn>

I suppose they arrive only after they have manually stormed every nasty trench and fortification in the way? xD

@Rithy

Add in maintaining an offensive speed that matches the timed artillery strikes (too fast and it proves friendly fire isn't, too slow gives enemies too much time to react), and it's another day in the life of the best known Siege regiments.

WARHAMMER 40K: THE TARSON INCURSION

"Disregard that, maintain current orders." Ansgar was the picture definition of a calm soldier, overriding the calls from the Arbites towards the air support. The Krieger was analyzing the situation, and an anti air weapon was mounted on one of the vehicles towing the massive Orkish throne, and ducking into cover from the fire incoming from the mass of crude Ork vehicles. As such, the man snapped off orders, being the one in charge of the current half of the group at the moment and acted as necessary. "Artillery on my coordinates, Time on Target. You two, continue with extraction, I'll keep up as necessary."

Ansgar continued his plan as if the continued following of orders wasn't dependent on the agreement of the others, but the fact they were given orders, and that was that. Acting as a representative of a portion of an Inquisitorial strike team, the order for artillery wasn't so much a request as it was treated as the order of the Emperor of Man himself. The Time on Target barrage would limit the warning that early shells would create, the concept that was meant to bring the maximum volume of fire in the shortest amount of time possible, and maximize the damage that would be done of the Orkish pursuit of the three Imperials. The normally follower of a Krieger barking orders was off putting, and the Basilisk crews were quick to follow orders if, for no other reason, to be under the more reassuring command of their Lieutenant.

Ansgar remained in position, which was far too close to the incoming artillery fire to be completely safe, spotting for the incoming fire. Priming a Krak Grenade, the Krieger lobbed a grenade at the oncoming Ork abomination of machinery, taking out the engine on one of the second vehicles, not a lead, forcing the lead vehicles to pull the ruined machine as well as the followers to push the wrecked vehicle. In other words, cripple the pursuit and put them in position to be hammered. Once the shells landed in one, mighty hammering blow, Ansgar withdrew as per his overarching orders from the Celestian. Following after the other two of this team, he would, as necessary, usher the others onto the Valkyrie so they could move on and complete the most important task at hand. Prevent the Titan falling into any hands that would do harm to the Imperium as a whole, or here for that matter.