Sel's lips were pulled back in a ricktus as she pushed the throttles to the gate. Everything was chaos and confusion. The multilazer whined its deep bow lossening pulse and the heavy bolters roare in antiphonal chorus, spent brass clattered onto the deck, and las guns spat from the gun ports which could bear. Elara was screaming into the long range vox set, though her words were lost in the assault of noise and chaos. It was difficult to see what was going on through the slit in the armorcys.

"Change shooters when you reload!" Sel yelled into the troop compartment, though whether she was heard or obeyed she had no idea.

"Frak this," she muttered and pulled open the drivers hatch, yanking the seat hyudralics to lift her head out of the vehicle. She cursed and pulled her dust goggles from her webbing and slapped them on, blinking away tears brought on by hot dust and gunsmoke. Immediately Sel felt better, it was much more like piloting a sentinel when she could see what was going on, and if that meant a bullet splashed her brains over the turret facing well, this was the guard and you shouldn't have joined if you couldn't take a joke.

"All units follow me to..." she took a moment to consult the compass built into the hatch coming, "point 223 and for god sake keep your distance. Dust leaped up in twin tracks which crackled across the ground ahead of her, she glanced up in time to see some kind of ork gyro bearing down on then trailing streamers of thick prometheum smoke, she yanked the controls in towards it just as a bomb came clear of its rack. The ugly red munition crashed into the course she had been following a moment before. Amazingly it didn't detonate and the following pair of chimeras split left and right of it. The gunfire was doing terrible damage, the multilaser and heavy bolters at an rate, she saw las gun hits which blew craters in green flesh but the orks barely seemed to notice, they were doing far more damage to each other as they laid two with axes and crude bolters. Sel saw a metal jaw the size of a sentinel' top hatch get blown into the air, winking in a glittering arc. The smell of hot air, charred earth and burnt ork was intense and she wrapped her dust scarf around her mouth and nostrils to block it out.

They were around the first rok now, barreling towards the second one still spewing light, smoke, and devestation. A giant section of the second rock fell away, hitting the desert floor with a crack she could feel through the treads. It wasn't a ramp exactly, more of a controlled rockslide. Ugly armored vehicles began to raced down it at speeds which would have been insane on paved roads. A pair of rockets lit in bursts of ugly fireshot smoke. One rocket whipped between the three racing chimeras missing the rear of the second vehicle by less than a hands breath, the second curvetted in a series of crazed loop de loops until, in a coincidence not to be believed by those who hadn't seen combat, it struck the ork gyro on its return pass, detonating it in a giant fireball which showered debris for a click in every direction. This was bad, as Kayden had feared they were getting their armor, if such a grandiose term could be applied, unshipped. They would never get up the ridge with vehicles shooting at them, even ork vehicles.

"Hold on! Brace! Brace! Brace!" Sel shouted and yanked at the controls. There was just time to frame a quick, and certainly blasphemous, prayer to the Omnissiah, before the chimera smashed into one of the landing legs of the rock. The sideways impact knocked everyone off their feet and drove Sel's chest against the hatch combing, her flak armor converting broken ribs and internal injuries into a full body bruise that would be real pretty to see, assuming she survived. She fought for control of the carrier, fish tailing wildly before pulling herself back onto something resembling her original course. The dented landing leg gave a grown of tortured metal, then gave. The entire rok seemed to wobble, and then in slow motion started to topple.

"Gun it!" Sel shouted as though everybody wasn't pouring on all the juice they could already. Like an accelerated veiw of a crystal growing the rok tilted gaining speed. The legs on the oppisite side ripped free from the ground with vast plumes of dust, tossing clods of earth bigger than a man hundreds of meters into the air. It came down with a boom that shook the earth, flattening the partially debouched vehicles and several hundred orks beside. A wave front of dust blasted out and Sel ducked inside and slammed the hatch closed above her, limited visibility be damned as dirt and debris sand blasted the side of the vehicle. Elara was staring at her open mouthed, the vox handset squaking in her hand, completely forgotten. The mutlilaser was still firing, how in the Emperor's name had Kayden kept his feet? and blowing glowing traces as the beam converted the filty air to glass and burning mud. There was a sound like a buzz saw being murdered with a hammer as the whirling treads ripped appart the armored coverings which Sel had just dented to ruin. She leaned on the sticks, compensating for the drag of the injured tread, her eyes flicking from the dust obscured vision slit to the compass bearing with metronomic intensity. They burst out of the expending dust cloud in time for Sel to slew them sideways so that they didn't hit the base of the rise head on. The abused engine shriked but the began to climb. The right reflector was gone, but Sel caught first one, then the other chimera emerge from the wall of dust. For the thousandth time in her life she swore she was going to go to temple for real this time. Reaching out she snatched the vox reciever from Elara's hand.

"All batteries this is Charlie Two Three, fire on established coordinates, all batteries fire for effect, danger close!"