"Doom Marines! Engage the enemy!"
Amidst the drifting ashes of the battlefield, a roaring shout shattered the heavens, breaking the dead silence that had accumulated over years of grinding attrition.
On the left flank of the human line, over a hundred black-armored warriors strode out from beneath the fortress walls.
With the butt of each weapon planted firmly on the ground, three-meter-long light blades erupted with a hiss, their azure glow crackling with lightning as they unleashed an incredibly sharp and menacing aura. In the ranks, custom-forged halberds, spears, swords, glaives, and axes of various designs were raised, but at this moment, they were all aligned for a single purpose: slaughter.
The legionaries donned their helmets with one hand, and their blood-red visors snapped to life, as a crimson flow of light rippled along the red outlines of their black auramite armor. Standing tall and imposing, they looked like the legendary heroic spirits of myth. Their armor was adorned with unique engravings, and their left and right pauldrons bore the crimson emblem of the legion alongside the embossed Roman numeral "II".
The Doom Slayers Legion—Second Company, stood ready to clash with the Rangdan assault cohort.
At the very front of the formation, John held a double-headed light spear in one hand and a dimensional light shield in the other. Engraved upon his chest was the Lightning Eagle, symbolizing the glory of the Unification Wars; slung at his waist was a bolter, a testament to his journey through hell alongside his genetic father.
Behind the Second Company Captain, the company standard-bearer held the war banner high, flanked by tech-marines and apothecaries, while the squad leaders stood with chests puffed out and heads held high.
In front of the Second Company, looking past the lines of mortal soldiers, the Rangdan elite warriors could be seen launching their charge under the cover of their shields. The charging horde kicked up clouds of bone dust and ash, surging forward with a tangible aura of sheer ferocity. Those hideous bone-white bio-armor carapaces looked monstrous, their neural antennae radiating malice, while their radiation rifles gleamed with a sickeningly pale green under the stellar pulse light.
Within the Rangdan assault formation, heavy mobile shields followed closely alongside mechanical tanks, forming a integrated combat vanguard. At the very rear of the advance, eighty-meter-tall titans strode out from colossal gates, each step of their six bio-mechanical limbs shaking the earth more violently than heavy artillery.
Deploying high-end combat assets for the first time, the Rangdan had sent five thousand elite soldiers, accompanied by numerous tanks and an entire titan legion. Facing these horrific creations saturated with psychic pollution, the mortal soldiers felt their minds grow dizzy with a single glance. This was an irresistible terror; no matter how resilient a mortal was, it was difficult to overcome a living being's instinctual dread of such colossal entities.
"Iron Men, advance!"
The mixture of primal fear and psychic pollution caused physiological discomfort among the elite mortal cohorts. But at that moment, a cold mechanical voice used logic and reason to dispel the encroaching, twisted chaos.
Heavy Iron Men lowered their chassis, the tracks on the inner sides of their six mechanical legs snapping out as they transformed into heavy tanks, preparing to charge. Beneath the massive walls of the barrier mountain range, the main iron gates slowly ground open, and hundred-meter-tall humanoid mechs armed with long lances and draped in phantom cloaks strode out. Behind them followed the mortal Titan Legions, presenting an imposing and awe-inspiring display of power.
The appearance of these friendly behemoths, their footsteps shaking the heavens and the earth, shattered the fear in the hearts of the mortal soldiers.
On the battlefield, only a giant beast could slay another giant beast!
Hum——!
A howling wind tore through the air as the commander of the Atlantean mechs raised his hand, summoning a localized storm that pointed toward the edge of the battlefield, issuing a direct challenge to the Rangdan Titan Legion.
Wroooongh!
A heavy, ear-splitting siren wailed, its sound waves visibly rippling through the dust. The Rangdan Titan Legion turned, responding to the challenge with immediate action.
Soldier against soldier, leader against leader.
Regardless of the race, titan pilots were invariably proud, viewing the hunting of enemy titans as their ultimate career goal. They all understood that if the enemy titans were not eliminated, their respective ground forces would be left open to a total massacre.
The electronic muscle groups in the Atlantean mech's legs suddenly flexed, and its core reactor precisely routed energy to every bundle of muscle fiber. With the smart systems making real-time micro-adjustments, the hundred-meter giant bolted forward. Its heavy steps hammered the ground, covering thousands of meters in the blink of an eye, while its phantom cloak shed illusion particles, trailing several lifelike afterimages behind it.
The mortal titans moved with heavy strides, far less agile and powerful than the Atlantean mechs. They maneuvered into fire-support positions, their fifty-meter steel bodies lowering slightly as their right-arm rail accelerators locked onto the enemy.
"Second Company, all units assault!" John bellowed, leading the charge as he rushed toward the Rangdan elite warriors.
"Veterans to the front of the line, new blood to the rear! Maintain a clear, tiered charging formation!" the charging black phantom reinforced, his voice leaving no room for argument. "New blood, stay close to our Iron Men brothers! Rely on them to provide fire support for the veterans!"
There was no flaw in John's tactical distribution. The veteran legionaries possessed unimaginable strength, while the new recruits had yet to fully mature by comparison; providing fire support was the safest and most effective protocol.
"Understood!" The response was uniform and powerful, ringing with absolute resolve.
Through the psychic link, which was only used in critical situations, the Second Company Captain's impassioned battle cry echoed: "A death well-deserved!"
This was Blazkowicz's creed of war, adopted by the legionaries as their sacred battle cry.
"A death well-deserved!"
As the legion's battle cry echoed in their minds, the charging vanguard's aura grew even more lethal, as though everything in their path were mere dust. A force of just over a hundred facing five thousand, yet their momentum did not yield an inch.
With the sudden escalation of the battle, all eyes in the system locked onto Planet Five. This first formal clash would dictate the morale and direction of the subsequent war.
In the Warp, the two powerful entities temporarily paused their direct struggle, directing their consciousness back to the material universe to look down upon the battlefield from a high vantage point. Primarchs, Rangdan Overlords, and other transcendent beings set aside their duties to watch the first clash of these elite soldiers through holographic projections.
Blazkowicz, draped in his sovereign cloak, strode into the command hall, raising his hand to signal that there was no need for formal salutes. Taking three steps in two, he quickly reached the command console and observed the macroscopic battlefield through the holographic tactical map.
Opening a direct channel to the Second Company Captain, he took a deep breath and said, "John, unleash everything you've got!"
"I want this opening clash to build absolute momentum, to strike pure terror into the hearts of these Rangdan xenos!"
Hearing his genetic father's encouraging words, John Wick felt an boundless surge of strength rise within him. An oath burst from his lips: "To the absolute limit of my strength!"
"I look forward to your performance," Blazkowicz replied to the frontline before turning to command Junior: "Broadcast the frontline combat footage via quantum communication."
"Use facts to silence the skeptics, and let's clear up the public channels."
"We must not only defeat the Rangdan on the battlefield, but we must also seize this opportunity to deal a devastating blow to the morale and spirit of Rangdan society."
"I understand," Junior nodded in agreement, tapping the interface of his command throne to relay the order to the central command hub.
As a vital component of warfare, psychological operations were a razor-sharp blade against the mentally active Rangdan. The public channels indeed needed a thorough purging. Over the past twelve years, both sides had traded ceaseless insults and vitriol through the channels, making the basest street brawls look noble and pure by comparison. They needed a heavy blockbuster to secure the absolute moral and psychological high ground for humanity!
Soon, the quantum communication network established by Nur in the J-11 system began broadcasting the frontline footage of the legionaries' charge. Their fearless charge made the blood of everyone watching run hot. The public channels fell instantly silent; everyone who had the capability to watch forgot about trading insults, completely transfixed by the battlefield.
Under the gaze of billions of eyes, the titans had already charged out from the protection of their faction's void shields, closing into engagement range.
The Atlantean mechs, piloted by Doom Marines and assisted by supercomputer intelligences, possessed incredibly fast reaction speeds. The synchronization between pilot and machine was so high that one could even see the chest of the mech rise and fall, mimicking a human breath.
A colossal dimensional lance carved deep trenches into the earth, its spearhead igniting to project an eighty-meter light blade, wrapping the dimensional edge in bound lightning. As it swung, it looked as though multiple full moons were rising over the battlefield.
The compressed plasma cannons mounted on the mech's shoulders charged, dimensional light bursting from the gaps around the muzzle as they locked onto a Rangdan titan.
[Shield Penetration Warning!]
[Shield Penetration Warning!]
Inside the cockpit of the Rangdan titan, red warning lights flashed frantically. Flaws opened in their neural link as multiple void shields were pierced by the light beams. The bio-titan pilot remained unfazed in the face of mortal danger, treating the threat as nothing, and relayed a final neural command to unleash all missiles in a desperate counterattack!
In titan clashes, firepower was almost always overwhelming. Because the Atlantean mechs were equipped with jamming suites and phantom cloaks, the enemy's targeting systems could not lock onto them, nor could they be tracked visually. The well-prepared Rangdan, however, had equipped multiple missile pods to counter this technological disparity with carpet-bombing saturation.
Blue-white beams of intense light flashed across the battlefield as highly compressed plasma shot through the shield breaches carved by the dimensional channels, striking deep into the protected interior. In an instant, the bio-titan's biomass armor dissolved, its muscle groups and armored bone plates vaporized, and the plasma lance pierced straight through its power reactor.
Before the reactor could detonate, the missile pods unleashed a volley of missiles, as the titan fulfilled its final duty for the cohort.
A thousand armor-piercing missiles poured out, a dense barrage screaming toward the human titan vanguard. If they all connected, even a machine as powerful as an Atlantean mech would inevitably suffer damage. This overwhelming strike had cost the Rangdan several of their bio-titans, and their titan legion was determined to make it count!
Faced with this desperate strike, the Atlantean combat group charged on, showing no signs of retreat in their strides.