[Excerpt: The Eye of Medusa] An Iron Hands Land Behemoth vs an Imperator Titan
Context: Sergeant Kardan Stronos and his squad are trying to reach an installation on the planet of Thennos, but their way is barred by its main defence: a legless Imperator Titan, Pax Medusan, which has been re-activated by the heretechs to stop them. Fortunately, Stronos has one big ace up his sleeve:
>Fire from the Titan stitched the landscape. It seemed undirected, as if the tactical withdrawal of any worthwhile targets had infuriated its injured spirit and led it simply to vandalise the terrain in which it was trapped. Toxic yellow fumes billowed from its waist where it was buried in the ground, cables drawn tight around its crenellated shoulders as, using its superheated plasma annihilator as a shovel, it managed to twist itself another few degrees towards the bunker complex. A blistering volley of las from a Hellstorm cannon at full stretch chopped up the ground barely a hundred metres from where Jalenghaal dragged the wailing tech-priest from his hiding place and swung him over one shoulder. It was as if Pax Medusan knew what they were planning. Superstition. Stronos shrugged it off.
>‘We are losing,’ said Vand, as Jalenghaal strode measuredly back towards his brothers’ covering bolters. ‘I lack your privileged access to the manifold, but I can see it with my eyes. Even if Kardaanus were here or Ares’ Anvilarum could make it through the wreckage field we have nothing that can hurt that.’ In a great shriek of metal and a twang of ripping cables, the Titan dragged itself a little further around. ‘We need the Ordo Reductor, but I can see for myself that they are not coming. And as for Ankaran fighting his way inside, any novitiate to the calculus logi would say that is a slim chance.’
>Another wail of butchered adamantine and Stronos found himself staring up into the barrels of a Hellstorm cannon. They took on a low amber glow as the mega-weapon built to charge. Stronos heard a rumble, like thunder.
>‘Get inside,’ he said.
>Vand did not move. ‘The structure will not withstand a direct strike from a weapon of that grade. Defensive action is pointless.’
>‘That is my judgement to make,’ Stronos snapped. ‘Inside the bunker. Obey!’
>A muted umber flash from the direction of the Titan nullified all prior argument. Stronos turned to face and log his instant of death, shocked instead to see the dying flares of a massive explosion that had knocked back the Imperator’s fortress head. The rumble grew louder, apocalyptically so, rattling the debris underneath Stronos’ boots, culminating in a great avalanche of metal falling from the path of something massive that crashed through the wreckage field on the Titan’s far side.
>‘What is that?’ asked Vand. Stronos felt himself smile. ‘Reinforcement.’
>The wall of wreckage that surrounded Locis Primus was several metres high and centuries deep. It had stymied the efforts of Clan Garrsak’s armour to approach and had driven even the superheavy siege engines of the Ordo Reductor to seek clearer avenues of approach, but the fortress-monastery Rule of One had not stopped in over ten thousand years. It would not be stopped now.
>Tanks tumbled through the thin air and rained down from the sky as the plough-fronted, uncompromisingly armoured forward drive module smashed through the outer ring of wrecks. Closer towards the Primus shard the vehicles became more ancient, more tightly packed, the layering of ages thicker, but the drive module wasn’t blocked. Instead it mounted the wall of vehicles and drove on without slowing, crushing it further, the weight and power of the scores of rattling adamanticlad modules running behind forcing it through. The crawler’s arsenal traversed to lock onto their target as it cut across its back.
>The Rule of One was primarily a support installation, albeit a mobile one, its armament principally defensive. Never before in recorded history had it been employed to spearhead an assault, but given enough time even a once-in-a-trillion event went from infinitesimal to a certainty.
>In other words: there was a first time for everything.
>With a thunderous boom and a rocking of the crawler’s connected midsections onto their left-side tracks, the quake cannon that protruded from a blister of similarly extreme-range artillery guns on the centre module hurled a block of molten rock several kilometres over ashen waste to explode under the Imperator’s fortress jaw ridge. Its defensive armament was formidable, more than a match for anything that walked or crawled under the auspices of the Omnissiah, and as serried scores of battlecannon, boltcannon, plasmic blastguns, missiles of every colour contrail and warhead, and immense triple-barrelled turbo-laser destructors roared into range, Pax Medusan screamed under her namesake world’s wrath.
Land Behemoths are very cool, an underappreciated part of Iron Hands lore: each clan company has their own, instead of the chapter as a whole having a set fortress monastery, and each is as much a super-heavy battle train as it is a hall of memory and celebration.