The Titan

by Dan Carkner

Jeara the guardian ran over the ridge and dived behind the metal barricade.  It would provide some cover from the continuing  rain of fire from the cursed humans.  He gasped unhealthy breaths of the foul air, the black fog that had rolled over the plains early in the morning.  Looking down at his lasrifle, he noticed the focusing lens was out of alignment.  He delicately pushed it until it was lined up with the rest of the lenses.  Cursing the black stench that surrounded him, he pulled a detonator from his belt and manipulated the controls.  Then, he looked around the corner of the barricade and coughed.  He hurled the detonator with one swift movement into the human emplacement.  He waited a moment, and was dismayed when nothing happened.  He looked around the corner again, but he could see nothing for the black fog.  He considered his options.  His train of thought was interrupted by a resonant crash from nearby.  He looked again, and saw nothing.  He scanned the fog and looked up, up beyond the blackness.  The night sky was faintly visible, with stars and the round moon high above.  He looked left, and beheld a great machine, a human titan.  It was taller than the fortress the humans were holding, indeed it seemed to be almost touching the stars.  Jeara clutched his weapon close to him in fear.  All was lost.  The remaining sons of the Ser-Jeia craftworld would be crushed under the mighty foot of the Emperor.  He didn't even know if any of his brothers were still alive, for he had been separated from them when the sun had been at its highest.  What hope did infantry have against such a behemoth?  He wept with despair.  Not knowing what they were doing, the humans would stumble upon the vaults of the sacred lords, and learn things they were not meant to know.  Jeara knew he had to stop them, for their own good.  He crouched against the metal barrier and prepared for what he knew he would have to do.

When the great titan took another step, and its massive foot came to rest on a nearby ridge, Jeara leaped up at what he knew would be his only chance.  The titan paused for seconds, surveying the terrain.  Jeara ran the short distance to the edge of the foot, and saw a large pipe of some sort near the ground.  With a straining leap, he grabbed onto it.  Climbing to a safe spot, he then hooked his arm claw onto the metal.  The great foot of the titan lifted to take another step, and wind smashed his face violently.  The foot came to rest on a ruined building, crushing it.  He took advantage of the seconds he had and climbed to a higher level.  The foot lifted again, but he had attached his arm claw just in time and did not fall.  When at last it came to rest on the ground again, he scaled the remaining distance to a stained glass window.  He smashed it, looking inside at the same time, and rolled over the edge into the inside of the titan.  He had not spotted anyone inside.  He stood up and brushed the filth off his meagre armour.  Jeara saw he was in some kind of cleaning room, and probably a waste releasing room from what he had heard of human ways.  He checked the charge on his weapon, and opened the door.

The hallway was empty, and it had handles all along its wall to keep one's balance when the titan was in motion.  He decided to go left, and as he did the room seemed to turn sideways, presumably from the motion of the foot.  At the end of the hallway was an intersection of two other hallways.  He peered down each one, making sure there were no humans about. Seeing
none, he walked farther into the core of the foot.  At the next corner, he heard the halting ugly speech of a human and he dived into the shadows.  A rough-looking human walked by carrying several rolls of what appeared to be parchment.  When he was gone, Jeara stepped silently after him, hoping to find a room of some importance.  After a bit he came upon a diagram of some sort, and he took it to be a map of the area.  It was, of course, incomprehensible to him.  He surveyed the room and several more signs.  They probably told the locations of key areas, if only he could decipher them.  He pondered it for a moment, and his eyes widened in realisation.  The rectangle, followed by a tapered triangle, indicated the direction the subject was located in.  He looked for something he could apply this knowledge to.  Seeing a sign with the symbol, and what appeared to be two ironhalos, he looked closer.  He had heard about ironhalos from a brother, supposedly they meant that the owner had committed a deed of bravery.  They were used by the elite humans, the adepts-astartos.  He looked around to see that no one was approaching, and then thought about the symbols some more.  No, he thought, this was not an ironhalo.  The spikes circling it ended in a flat face, and this was not how it had been described to him.  He tried to fathom what they could possibly mean, and it dawned upon him.  They were turning gears, a common sight in human mechanics.  He blessed the brother who had been so knowledgeable of the humans. This meant that the direction indicated held machinery of some kind!  This was his
chance, and he had to move quickly.  The shots fired from the titan's main armament were becoming more common, probably because it was walking into the main troop area.  He sprinted quietly along the dark hallways until he saw a large sign with the same gear symbol.  Unfortunately, a human stood there with a surprised expression on his face.  Jeara ended him mercifully with a blast from his weapon.  He prayed for the human's soul and continued into the gear room.  Feeling terrible for committing such an unholy deed, he lifted his rifle and started firing.  Humans dropped all about, and machinery split apart under the hot bolts from his lasrifle.  Spotting the largest mechanism he had seen yet, he pulled a powerful detonator from his belt.  It was of the demolition type, and he knew he would not survive a blast so close to the source.  He armed it and hurled it into the main gears.  He kneeled and made peace with his elders, and was finished in a burst of fiery light.

-Dan Carkner


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