Dahan brought the Iron Fist to a skidding halt before theWarhound.
‘What is the Legio doing?’ he voxed, hoping that someone,anyone, in Sirius might answer him. ‘You must stop this madness now!’
Stay away!
‘For the love of the Omnissiah, stand down!’ yelled Dahan inthe vocal, binaric and noospheric spheres. ‘Put up your weapons, I beg ofyou!’
A fiery haze of superheated light built along the length ofLupa Capitalina’s arm, the plasma destructor’s firing vents squealing as theyprepared to bleed off the volcanic excesses of heat. Knowing what was to comenext, Dahan dropped into the Iron Fist and slammed the hatch down after him,hoping it would be enough. Inside the tank, Dahan closed the Iron Fist off fromthe outside world, disabling its auspex, vox and pict feeds.
He slammed the vehicle into full reverse, and even throughthe armoured hull and over the roar of the engine he could hear the plasmadestructor draw in a screaming intake of breath.
‘Bracing,’ he said, shutting down as many of his ownextraneous systems as he could manage in the microsecond he had left before theengine’s gun reached optimal firing temperature.
And a thunderclap of pulverising thermic energy slammed intothe tank, burning through its refractor fields in an instant and meltingthrough a handspan of ablative plating. The internal temperature of the tank’screw compartment flashed to that of a blast furnace, and what little skin Dahanhad left peeled off in an instant.
Before he could even register the pain, the kinetic blastwave of the Titan’s weapon discharge plucked the Iron Fist from the deck andswatted it like a troublesome insect.
Hawkins heard the Titan’s enormous weapon screaming as itdrew breath to fire, and hurled himself into the lee of a fallen building. Raeand a score of soldiers rolled into cover with him, while others ran forshelter behind armoured vehicles, piles of debris or whatever else mightprotect them from the backwash.
Imperial Titans were a welcome sight on any battlefield, b