Heedless of the artillery shells falling around them, 5th Armoured advanced with a roar of engines and clattering of tracks.
The two Vanquishers slowed slightly to allow the more versatile Leman Russ and infantry killing Exterminator to the front of the formation.
Inside his tank, Sergeant Elam regarded his auspex screens, noting the fast moving targets appearing as white blobs on his screen.
"Loader prepare standard HE round. Gunner lay on targets approaching fast up the track to our left. Driver advance and be prepared to swing round on my command" confident orders poured from the Sergeants mouth as he assessed the evolving situation.
Corporal Muir's Executioner crunched fir saplings beneath it's bulk as it edged half off the highway and began its rumbling chatter of autocannon fire into the woodland.
Ahead of them Elam noted that the Recce Sentinels were edging back towards the squadrons protection area. One was limping and leaking greasy black smoke, another bled fire as the crew stowage burned furiously, but it appeared to be fully operational.
They added their autocannon fire at the incoming Orks, throwing green bodies into the air as a Trukk had its fuel tank touched off by one of the rounds.
A crude tank, a mass of rattling armoured plates, haphazardly put together around a big cannon edged into view and belched fire as it opened fire at the Imperial Tanks.
"Gunner, lay on target at mark 00.26, fire when ready" Elam ordered.
"Aye sir, mark 00.26, FIRING!" the gunner shouted back.
Around them, their tank rocked on its suspension and the noise bracketed the entire interior. Their own hearing protection blocked the danger, but didn't muffle it entirely. The gunner and loader deftly swayed to and fro around the cannons breech as the block was thrown back with ninety tonnes of force, as the casing from the spent shell was funneled off into the ejector.
The Ork Tank seemed to collapse into the ground nose first as the hypervelocity shell hit it squarely. The force of the explosion rocked the tank and sent it careening over, crushing the turret flat as it landed on its roof.
Loose armour panels clattered around, then internal munitions went up and annihilated the tank in a massive fireball, as well as several Orks on foot and a mob of warbikes racing past. Their own machines turned into cartwheeling burning scrap.
"Good firing, let's see if we can get another..." Elam began, but was cut off as their tank shunted sideways several meters.
A second Ork Tank had been following and avoided the explosive death of the previous vehicle. It had hit Elam's machine squarely with a round, buckling the track guard and stunning the crew.
Inside Elam bellowed for his crew to retask their scopes and auspexes as the screens bled white interference into the dimly lit interior.
As the scopes regained cohesion, Elam paled as the Ork Tank was baring down on them...
*****
The second tank of my Armoured Squadron is now finished, this time (if you hadn't gathered from the continuation of the story above), featuring Sergeant Elam's machine.
This is a standard Leman Russ Battle Tank with a hull Heavy Bolter and sponsons attached for more firepower.
This kit is the latest version of the tank with the lower slung turret, if I'm being honest I prefer the older style kit with the taller turret as that reminds me of when I started collecting 40k, along with all the old metal Imperial Guard regiments.
Anyway, I followed the same steps as the Vanquisher previously featured in the first part of this series.
So camo netting, stowage, army badges, dirt, soot all got added following the same steps as before. I added an army badge on the side of the turret as it was a large flat area with nothing going on, then I scrubbed the dirt drybrushing over it to blend it in, the same as the army badge and squadron badge which were added at the lower plate of the hull in this case, as I don't have any track guards for this tank.
Photo's can do the rest of the speaking:
And a photo of the two tanks together so far:
Hobby bingo l, and this tank gives me another 60 points to my total, clearing another box and a line down.
This leaves me just one box to go on this grid to claim the entire thing.
My new total score is 770 points.
Just a piece of scenery to go and the grid is complete at last.
Until next time...
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