by C Z Dunn
Waiting until the ork was at full exertion, he jerked the chainsword away, the axe falling to the floor in a shallow arc and embedding in the stone. Balthasar gripped his blade with both hands, leaping into the air with assistance from his jump pack and raising the weapon over his head. He cut the thrust and dropped towards the ork, its back exposed as it leaned over to retrieve its axe. Just as the death blow was about to land, the ork freed its weapon, raising it to block the Dark Angel’s snarling blade. Before Balthasar’s feet could touch the floor, the ork threw out a leg, its foot catching the Space Marine just below the breastplate, cracking open the already damaged armour and sending him crashing against the rampart wall.
Balthasar’s battle-brothers fighting with him on the outer wall were powerless to aid their commander, each of them engaged in their own battles with the warboss’ personal guard. In the previous duel, both Zadakiel and Puriel had shown the ork general too much respect, had tried to duel him with honour. Balthasar had learned from their mistakes, was prepared to employ any tactic to defeat this foe. Tapping on the vox-bead in his ear, he opened a link to Serpicus, poised with his bolter on the roof of the inner citadel.
‘Take the shot,’ Balthasar ordered.
Its report lost amidst the cacophony of battle, a single bolter shot rang out, a lone round heading inexorably for the warboss’ head. The shot was true, the round striking it squarely on the temple, embedding itself amongst the spikes ridged along its skull.
The massive ork barely flinched, let alone went down.
It raised the head of its axe, looking at its own reflection in the polished surface, and then let forth a booming laugh, obviously impressed with the new adornment.
‘Space Marine fight dirty,’ the ork snarled, menacingly swinging his weapon with only one hand. ‘Groblonik enjoy killing Space Marine. Groblonik always enjoy killing Space Marine.’ He tapped the skull mask hanging from his waist, laughing louder than before.
‘Aim for its throat next time, Serpicus,’ Balthasar voxed.
‘Do you think that’s likely to kill it?’ Serpicus replied.
‘Probably not,’ Balthasar said, rising to his feet, fingering the ignition stud of his chainsword. ‘But at the very least it’ll shut the green bastard up.’
The Vostroyans heard the ork before it heard them.
Alerted by the sound of the doors being blasted open, it had ventured down the stairs to deal with whatever had come through them, the wooden steps audibly straining under its bulk. Allix and the others crept back into the shadows, waiting for it to pass them before they took it out. Dmitri silently unsheathed his knife, ready to stick it between the greenskin’s shoulder blades, but Allix put a hand on the albino’s to prevent him from using it. The time for subtlety had passed; they needed to make sure they killed the ork, not remain undetected.
It stepped out into the stairwell, oblivious to the presence of the Vostroyans, and headed for the next set of steps. Just as it was about to turn down them, its back was ripped open by a volley of las-fire. When it refused to go down, Kas finished it off with a blast from the heavy bolter.
The noise was still echoing around the enclosed stairwell when they heard more orks – three at least – heading downwards. Rather than hide in the darkened corners of the stairway, this time the squad waited at the foot of the next flight of steps, unleashing the full fury of their weapons the instant the greenskins hove into view. Scrambling over the fresh kills, they moved upwards, the sounds of the relentless ork guns getting louder the higher they went.
Allix was the first of them to reach the top floor, three quick shots to the head accounting for the first of the orks. Four more turned their attention away from firing out of the windows and opened fire on the Guardsmen, those already in the room ducking for cover, those yet to enter hanging back until the fire slackened. Within moments of each other, the orks ran dry of ammo, and the Vostroyans sprang up from the bales of fabric they were sheltered behind and recommenced shooting at the xenos, three of which had drawn blades and were rapidly eating up the distance to the Guardsmen. The fourth produced a pistol from the waistband of its filthy, ripped fatigues and took aim at Mute. The silent Vostroyan, wise to what was about to happen, raised his lasrifle. They both fired at the same time.
Mute’s shot hit the ork in the face, the flesh of its cheek blackening and blistering, causing it to emit an annoyed grunt. The ork’s round was more accurate, striking Mute in the torso, dropping him in a shower of blood.
‘Mute!’ Kas yelled, hefting his heavy bolter and blowing the head from Mute’s assailant’s shoulders. Two of the other greenskins still posed a threat and the big man kept his finger on the trigger, raking them both with heavy-calibre shells, dealing them the same fate. Ammunition belt exhausted, he threw the weapon to the ground and ran to Mute’s side. Marita was already crouched beside the semi-conscious Vostroyan, checking him over.
‘Move him over there,’ she said, checking his pulse. The factorum building they were in was some kind of garment manufacturing facility, large industrial stitchers and bolts of fabric filling the entire top floor. Kas carefully lifted Mute and carried him over to a pile of olive drab cloth, no doubt intended to be used for Honorian uniforms, which soon turned crimson.
‘Is he going to be all right?’ Kas asked.
Marita checked the pulses at Mute’s wrist and throat before placing her hand on his forehead, the flesh already drained to the colour of Dmitri’s. She shook her head gently.
The others, aware of Mute’s plight but powerless to do anything about it, were at the factorum windows exchanging fire with the orks in the building opposite.
‘Kas?’ Allix called, ducking behind the shelter of a wall to avoid an ork volley. ‘They know we’re here now. Block the entrance with this machinery so we don’t get any surprises.’
Kas looked to Marita. The Honorian girl shook her head, letting him know there was nothing more he could do to help his friend.
Kas went to obey Allix’s order, throwing over one of the heavy stitchers in frustration.
‘And Marita?’ Allix added, moving out of cover to deliver a headshot to one of the orks across the street. ‘Unless you can do anything to save him, we could do with some help over here.’
Marita looked down at Mute’s midriff, blood spilling out of the deep gash with every breath he took, then over at the Vostroyan lieutenant.
Reluctantly, she picked up her lasrifle and took up position at one of the windows.
The duel between Balthasar and the ork warboss raged for over an hour with neither combatant able to gain the upper hand.
Both warriors bore the marks of combat. Balthasar’s previously damaged power armour now barely functioned, more akin to the heavy suits of plate that the Calibanite warriors of old had donned in battle than a one-man fortress. Even at a distance, the first sergeant could sense Serpicus’ hackles rise every time the greenskin laid a blow on him.
The warboss fared little better, blood oozing from two head wounds and a huge gouge taken out of his triceps thanks to a well-placed shot from the Techmarine. None of these injuries hindered the ork in the slightest, his strength and ferocity undiminished since the Dark Angels had first swooped over from the inner citadel.
Atop the battlements, the remainder of the strike team were too preoccupied handling the tide of orks spilling over from outside the walls to aid their acting commander, Serpicus, Diezen and the skitarii likewise controlling the greenskins’ numbers rather than trying to bring down the warboss.
The stalemate was holding but Balthasar knew that it could not persist much longer. Fuelled by the promise of battle, the orks were flooding into the city in ever-increasing numbers and the initial gains made by the Astra Militarum forces on the ground were being eroded by the minute. Unless something happened soon to turn the battle in the Imperial forces’ favour, all they would have achieved was the post
ponement of their own doom.
It was time to take a calculated risk.
Igniting the twin engines of his jump pack, Balthasar rose into the air, drawing fire from several of the orks on the outer wall. The majority missed, those that were on target bouncing harmlessly away or embedding in ceramite plate. Reaching his apex, Balthasar spun himself around in mid-air, diving back towards the ground head first, chainsword held out in front of him. Alert to the danger, the warboss swung its axe upwards to block the Dark Angel’s attack, but Balthasar suddenly spun around again, changing his angle of approach so that he dodged the ork’s weapon and planted both feet hard into the side of its head.
The warboss lost its footing, crashing backwards into one of the battlements with such force that tiny cracks formed in the surface of the thick stone. Balthasar was unrelenting, surging after the ork general with a powerful thrust from his jump pack, chainsword poised to claim the greenskin’s head. Instinctively, the ork threw up the power fist to protect its head, the metal teeth biting into the oversized glove and snagging there. Balthasar tried vainly to free his weapon but the ork brought its other arm up, grabbing the Dark Angel by the throat and squeezing hard. Balthasar relinquished his grip on the chainsword, its protesting motors grinding to a halt, and tried to prise the massive ork hand from around his neck.
‘Space Marine fly,’ the warboss said, carrying the struggling Space Marine over to the side of the wall that overlooked the city. He held Balthasar aloft for his troops down below to see. In response, they cheered and chanted their leader’s name. The ork smiled, his broken teeth and tusks coated in his own blood, and raised his looted power fist high.
Expecting the killing blow to land, Balthasar was surprised when the glove came down and tore his jump pack off rather than his face.
‘Now Space Marine really fly,’ the warboss chuckled, throwing Balthasar down to the baying mob below.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Mute died just before dawn.
Marita had split her time between tending to the Vostroyan and aiding the rest of the squad when the fighting was at its fiercest. A new batch of orks had taken position in the building opposite and so the Honorian had hurriedly applied fresh dressings to Mute’s wound before taking up a position at one of the windows. When she returned ten minutes later to check on him, he had stopped breathing, his skin turned the same colour as the bandages before she had wrapped them around his stomach. On the wall beside him, written in blood, were four words scrawled in clumsy Low Gothic.
MY NAME IS JONAS.
Marita did not need to inform the rest of the squad, her face speaking volumes, but his loss only served to spur them on, and they redoubled their efforts to protect their comrades below, the numbers filtering into the street undiminished by the passage of time. None of them knew how the war was going in the rest of the city, but the battle for the relatively tiny piece of it they were fighting over had already cost thousands of lives, the bodies piled so high in the streets they reached the second storey of the factorum they were holed up in.
As the nascent rays of morning light broke over the city, the stalemate showed no signs of being broken. Every time the Vostroyans claimed a few metres of territory, the orks would retake it in short order and vice versa. Fortunately for Allix’s squad, the orks had been unable to dislodge them from their position, any attack from the ground futile and attempts from the buildings opposite thus far repelled.
All of that changed when the orks deployed flame weapons.
Paying no regard to their own kind, a squad of orks entered the far end of the street, long jets of superheated promethium indiscriminately burning anything, or anyone, in their path. Even high above the street, Allix and the others could feel the intense heat as the piles of bodies turned into mass funeral pyres, the screams of the living abruptly cut off as lungs filled with flame and scorching air. In a matter of seconds, all gunfire stopped, panicked Guardsmen and xenos alike desperately trying to escape the narrow confines of the street lest they be consumed by the inferno. Some of the more quick-thinking Vostroyans scrambled up the sides of the buildings, crawling in through broken windows and claiming sanctuary behind their walls. Unfortunately, even the most dull-witted of the orks were capable of mimicry and upon seeing the humans escape the fire, followed suit.
Despite the threat of orks within the factorum, Allix’s squad turned their attention to the most immediate danger. Whooping and laughing as they spewed flame, the advancing orks were completely oblivious to the Vostroyans up above waiting to ambush them. Las-fire dropped the first two the instant they moved into range, a precision shot from Kas rupturing the fuel tank of a third, the ensuing fireball setting off a chain reaction that accounted for the rest.
‘That one’s for Mute,’ he whispered bitterly as he reloaded the heavy bolter.
As the echo from Kas’ shot abated, the Vostroyans became acutely aware of the near silence, the crackle of flames and pop and sizzle of burning fat, the distant sound of combat a stark contrast to the cacophony of the battle that had so recently raged out on the street. For several moments nobody did anything, each of them covering their nose and mouth, the stink of burning flesh all pervasive. The quiet was abruptly broken by small-arms fire, loud and close.
‘That’s coming from inside the building,’ Allix said, looking out of a window and seeing only burning bodies.
As they listened, several lasrifles fired sporadically, answered by ork guns. After a pause, the lasrifles fired again, fewer in number this time. As before, the response came in the form of solid shot. Then silence.
Then the screams of men being butchered alive.
‘We’ve got to help them,’ Marita urged.
‘They’re dead already,’ Dmitri said. ‘If we leave here, we join them. If we stay, perhaps the orks don’t find us. And if they do? They have to get through our barricade first.’ He pointed to the door and the tons of machinery blocking it.
The death-cries of the Guardsmen ended abruptly, mercifully, and for the next few minutes Marita and the Vostroyans believed that their luck had held out, that the orks were too stupid to realise there were more Guardsmen on the top floor of the factorum and had moved on.
Their luck ran out the moment the first ork axe smashed through the door.
The Angel fell.
Weighted down by his armour, it would only be a matter of seconds before Balthasar hit the ground. The fall would not kill him – like all of his brothers he had been trained to land safely from freefalls from even greater heights – but the enemy awaiting him likely would. Tens of thousands of orks, all of whom had witnessed the duel between Space Marine and warboss, awaited him, baying for his blood.
He angled his body mid-fall, twisting so that he would land on his feet, ready to slay as many greenskins as he could before he inevitably succumbed himself. Bereft of both chainsword and bolter, he reached for the combat blade sheathed at his hip.
As the knife cleared the scabbard, halfway through his descent, Balthasar realised that he had stopped falling.
On top of the outer wall, Groblonik roared with pleasure at having slain another of the Dark Angels.
Looking out over the millions of orks making their approach to the captured city, he raised his power fist skywards, his bellow carrying across the thin, cold air. His troops returned the celebration so loudly that the walls of the city shook. Groblonik roared and pumped his fist again. This time the response was not what he was expecting. Instead of jubilation, a murmur of fear spread through the greenskin throng like wildfire. Some of them turned and fled, others halted, pointing towards the sky above Groblonik. The walls of the city still shook.
Furious, Groblonik turned to see what had caused his troops to falter, the cry of anger dying in his throat when he saw it.
Overhead, over the entire city, lightning crackled across the sky turning the clouds purple, orange, blue, green
and many other unnatural hues. A fierce wind whipped up accompanied by artillery-like booms of thunder. The walls shook harder.
Keeping his fear in check, Groblonik roared again, this time forming words in the human tongue. ‘Show yourself!’
His nemesis obliged.
Encased in a psychic shield, Ezekiel rose high into the air, until he was over the battlements. Rephial and Balthasar flanked him.
‘You were dead,’ Balthasar said.
‘So I’m told,’ Ezekiel replied. He stared intently at Balthasar, his new augmetic eye blinking.
‘But how?’ Balthasar asked.
‘The how can wait. Right now we have a war to end.’
Atop the wall, some of the orks had overcome their fear and were readying to open fire, but Ezekiel had already foreseen this, issuing forth jets of golden flame from his sword, setting them ablaze before they could take aim. He guided the protective ball of energy over to the battlements and set the three of them down three hundred feet away from the warboss.
‘Keep the rest of them away from us,’ Ezekiel ordered, dropping the psychic shield. ‘This won’t take long.’
Rephial revved his chainsword, his frustration at being away from the battle subsiding with every revolution of the razor-sharp teeth, every greenskin that fell to its bite. Balthasar swung his combat knife in wide arcs, opening the throat of any xenos foolish enough to get too close to him. Ezekiel drew his sword, the blade coming alive with psychic energy, and advanced upon the warboss. The massive ork charged to meet his foe, power fist held aloft just as Ezekiel had foreseen, just as he had foreseen all of this.
The two warriors clashed, the ork’s fist thrown powerfully at the Dark Angel’s head in an attempt to end the duel with a single blow but, armed with the power of foreknowledge, Ezekiel avoided it easily, opening up the warboss’ flank with a swipe of his sword as he ducked under it. Knowing that the ork would follow up with a two-handed sweep of its axe, Ezekiel parried early, the force of his block knocking the greenskin backwards and off-balance. Ezekiel tore a gouge out of the ork’s other flank.
