Chapter 403: Titan
Kian stopped paying attention to whatever happened next and just rode the shuttle down to the hive city like a good passenger.
The Forge World's hives dwarfed anything on an agri-world, and there were several of them scattered across the planet. Every single hive was a mega-factory in its own right, with a cluster of space elevators connecting its upper reaches to orbit. Only now, with the war raging, the stations were wrecked and every elevator with them.
The gaps between hives were filled wall to wall with factories, smokestacks packed as densely as blades of grass on a lawn. That level of industrialization had turned the whole planet into desert. Every drop of water on the surface had long since been siphoned into industrial use, and even the oceans had dried into continental wastes.
The shuttle touched down at the hive's airfield. The pilot gave Kian a last warning.
"My lord, please remember, no matter where you go, never remove a filtered helmet. Even inside the hives here, the pollution's severe. Breathing unfiltered air for any length of time causes lung disease."
Kian acknowledged and stepped off.
The airfield stretched wide, hundreds of shuttles parked across it, and Trasolh's troops filed out one after another, forming up into ranks. Officers barked orders across the field as each soldier hit the ground and was immediately issued a filter mask, replacement cartridges, a chem-suit, and hazard boots.
Gear up on the spot, then class on the spot. A forty-five minute session, covering nothing but survival on a Forge World.
Survival here wasn't a small matter. It was treated like a genuine academic discipline. Respirator maintenance, how often to swap filter cartridges, treating radiation pustules, healing chemical burns, what to do if drinking contaminated water left you passing blood in your urine.
Most human worlds weren't nearly this hostile. Green recruits from elsewhere who skipped this briefing wouldn't even make it to the front lines, the air alone would kill them first.
Kian's power armour had its own built-in filtration, so none of that applied to him. He moved freely through the radiation-and-chemical-soaked air without a second thought.
While he was mulling over where to go scout out some side opportunities, a female officer approached and snapped to attention with a salute.
"Sir! Major Noa, reporting. I'll be your dedicated guide."
She had a close-cropped haircut, a basic respirator mask, and a face harder than the rock underfoot, the classic Imperial Guard officer type, tougher than most men.
Kian gave a short nod and started walking, hands clasped behind his back.
"Major Noa, I hear your Forge World runs a close partnership with the Adeptus Mechanicus. Walk me through it."
"Yes, sir! Our world is jointly governed by the Planetary Governor and a Magos. The Governor handles civil and military administration, while the Magos focuses exclusively on industrial production and planetary development. At our peak, we had a hundred and fifteen shipyards operating, twelve warships under construction simultaneously, along with a range of support vessels. Once the greenskins hit and the xenos crisis took hold, most of those in-progress ships either had to be launched early under conventional power and sent to safer systems, or, for the ones that were still just bare frames without any propulsion of their own, deliberately destroyed to keep them out of Ork hands."
Kian felt a genuine pang at that, all those valuable vessels lost for nothing. He asked next about Nor'n.
"I hear your world called in Astartes support, the Crimson Bite Chapter, right? I've got a friend in that Chapter. Any idea where they're deployed?"
Hearing that Kian actually knew an Astartes personally, Major Noa's expression shifted, a touch more respect creeping in.
"Yes, my lord. The Crimson Bite answered our world's distress call, arrived from the deep void, and have been fighting the greenskins here for years now. Currently, the Chapter has more than fifty Astartes deployed across our world, spread across various fronts, helping hold the line against the Orks. Before the Chapter arrived, the Orks had actually secured full air superiority over our world, with more than sixty scrap-ships in orbit. The Astartes fleet destroyed a good portion of them, which enraged the rest badly enough that they broke off and gave chase, and the Astartes ships led that pursuit out into deep space, drawing the remaining Ork fleet away with them. As for now, with the Inquisitor's fleet arriving and destroying what remained in orbit, air superiority has returned to us. That should make the ground war considerably easier going forward."
Kian asked, "So the Crimson Bite are still fighting on the front lines right now? Any chance I could go meet them?"
Major Noa hesitated before answering.
"Sir, the Astartes' exact positions are classified at the highest level, known only to the Planetary Governor. If you want to visit them at the front, you'd need to submit a request through the proper channel. Would you like me to file that request for you now?"
Kian nodded. "Do it. Tell them my name. Trust me, Nor'n and I have been through hell together. He'll hear my name and come find me himself."
Major Noa pulled out a personal terminal and worked through it for a moment.
"Sir, the request has been submitted. We'll need to wait on approval from above. In the meantime, where would you like to go? I'm your guide, I can take you anywhere."
Kian remembered he still had a few wrecked Knight suits waiting on repairs and asked, "Does your world have a Forge Temple? I've got a few Knight suits that need Mechanicus attention. Can you take me to see a tech-priest?"
Major Noa immediately led the way and got Kian into a waiting jeep.
"Of course, sir. Our world builds warships, and it builds other divine machines too. Sir, have you ever heard of a Titan?"
Kian's eyes lit up instantly.
"A Titan? Your world has a Titan?!"
A touch of fervor flashed in Major Noa's eyes as she drove, nodding along.
"That's right, sir! Our world has a Titan, housed in the Titan Temple itself. It's a magnificent, peerless machine of the divine."
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