by Nick Kyme
Tsu'gan found a smile was curling his lip.
The orks were doomed.
In desperation, the last of the tribal chieftains had assaulted the wall up one of the wrecked wagon towers. It gained the battlements, bloodied but unbowed.
Elysius, just finished dispensing with one of its lessers at the end of his bolt pistol, rammed his crozius through the foul beast's chest as it appeared. It snarled, only for the Chaplain to head-butt it with his battle-helm, shattering a tusk and then snapping off the other with a savage pistol-whip from his still-smoking sidearm. He tossed the weapon aside, seizing the dying chieftain in his gauntlet, the other hand gripped tightly around the haft of the crackling crozius, and lifted the ork into the air.
In a stunning feat of strength, or faith, Elysius raised the flailing ork above his head and flung it, screaming, onto the ground far below.
'I cast thee out, abomination!'
Coupled with the Fire Anvil's fury and the wrath of Praetor's Terminators, it proved a decisive blow.
The orks fled en masse, back across the killing field and up to the ridge.
Their warboss took their capitulation badly. Every one of the fleeing greenskins was slaughtered by the hordes that still remained.
A strange lull descended. It was punctuated by a deep throbbing in the back of Tsu'gan's skull, like the Salamander could feel the ork warboss's rage. So potent was the beast's fury that it had manifested physically, a distinctive pulse in the greenskins' natural psychic overspill.
In the absence of battle, the sense of despair from earlier returned. Tsu'gan lurched forward to grip the lip of the battlement for support.
'Sire?' hissed Iagon, leaning conspiratorially towards his sergeant.
Tsu'gan held up his hand to show he was all right. He gripped his bolter for reassurance. Guilt flooded his body pervasively like a cancer, and he longed for the brander-priest's rod and the pain that dulled the ache inside him.
'There is evil here…' he heard himself slurring, as low as a whisper.
It was eking out of the stones. In his delirium, Tsu'gan almost imagined he could see it: a thin, trailing mist of utter black.
'Hold together, brothers,' Elysius girded him, 'and we shall smite the alien.'
The baleful effects of the iron fortress ebbed. It was not yet strong enough to overcome the Chaplain's fervour. Tsu'gan straightened again, gritting his teeth.
'Let's finish this.'
The warboss bellowed, reasserting his dominance. The orks charged again.
Dak'ir emerged from the chasm to a different world than the one which he'd left previously. An eldritch darkness blanketed the ash dunes now. A black shape, like a moon or planetoid, smothered whatever celestial body of Scoria should have held prominence in the night sky. This then was the black rock of which Illiad had spoken; the carrier for the orks. Its orbit had brought it close enough to the ashen world for the greenskins to launch an assault. As time passed, Dak'ir knew it would only bring them closer.
The strange milieu brought other sensations with it, too - the sounds and smells of battle. The bulk of the Vulkan's Wrath, still high as an Imperial bastion's defence tower even though it was partly sunken into the desert, obscured Dak'ir's view but he could still see a warm orange glow tinting the darkling sky. There was something serene and beautiful about it, despite the distant crump of explosions and the whiff of smoke and promethium wafted on a hot breeze.
The comm-feed in his battle-helm crackled, like life breathed back into a corpse, and he heard the voice of Brother-Sergeant Agatone.
'Marshal your forces, brother,' he snapped, clearly perturbed that they'd been out of vox contact for so long. The inquest would come later. 'We are about to be under attack.'
Dak'ir didn't question it. Instead, he ran around the half-submerged prow of the Vulkan's Wrath and climbed up to the summit of a small dune. What he saw there quickened his heart to a state of combat readiness.
'Pyriel,' said Dak'ir. The Librarian had been right behind the sergeant and followed him up the shallow dune. 'When you said there were no oceans on Scoria…'
Before their eyes, still distant but closing, there boiled a belligerent green sea.
'I was wrong,' Pyriel replied simply.
The voice of Illiad intruded.
'Swine-tusks…' he uttered, hoarsely.
The rest of the combat squad had positioned themselves around him in battle formation. They'd all heard Agatone over the comm-feed.
'The swine-tusks have returned,' rasped Illiad, gaping in terrified awe at the grotesque spectacle swarming the dunes. 'The slayers of your brothers are back to kill us all.' Dak'ir hadn't heard fear in the human before… until now.
The main swell of the greenskin horde was far off at the iron fortress, yet still their masses could be seen by the defenders of the Vulkan's Wrath, spreading across the land like a dark stain. A tributary had peeled off from the major force and was surging towards the stricken strike cruiser.
Do you feel them, Dak'ir? Pyriel asked psychically.
Dak'ir nodded slowly. Yes, he felt it.
'Such rage…' he muttered.
The orks were not that far away now. Dak'ir could make out the crude and jagged forms of their vehicles and see their brutish weapons as they discharged them into the air. He discerned the snarled visage of the barbarous greenskin and his fist clenched. These were the spore of those beasts that virtually wiped out his ancient brothers. Here, upon the same ashen fields, the battle would be refought - Salamander versus greenskins. Dak'ir was adamant that this time, the orks would not be back.
The comm-feed spat static for a few seconds and then cleared again.
'Sergeant,' growled the voice of Agatone. 'I need your forces now.'
'On our way,' Dak'ir returned and cut the feed. He ordered his combat squad to move out. They left the dune swiftly, Illiad in tow, and went to liaise with Agatone and the others.
Rounding the vast bulk of the Vulkan's Wrath, Dak'ir saw that the medical tents were already emptying. The injured that could walk or be moved safely were trailing out in ragged groups.
Battle-Brother Zo'tan - from the other half of Dak'ir's squad - had taken charge of the armsmen and able-bodied human crew, forming them into auxiliaries. A quick head count revealed almost three hundred troops, divided into six fifty-man battalions, assigned squad leaders and commanders. The auxiliary had started to assume strategic positions around the medical tents.
They were the last line of defence, there to protect those still festering in their pallet-beds. Even though the badly wounded probably wouldn't survive, the Salamanders would not leave them to be butchered.
Brother-Sergeant Agatone was stalking towards them. Sergeant Ek'Bar remained behind where they had been discussing a holo-chart, and waited patiently.
Agatone dispensed with any preamble.
'We have three Tactical and one depleted Assault squad,' he began. 'Venerable Brothers Ashamon and Amadeus have also been roused from slumber by Master Argos.' The doughty forms of the Dreadnoughts loomed in the distance, prowling the extremity of the defensive cordon designated by Agatone.
As he looked, Dak'ir noticed acting Sergeant Gannon also up ahead. He was kneeling upon a high dune, his Assault squad gathered around him, surveying the orks through a pair of magnoculars.
Agatone was interrupted abruptly by the comm-feed. The sergeant pressed a gauntleted finger to his gorget, as his battle-helm was mag-locked to his belt.
'Go ahead,' he instructed.
Gannon's voice came through.
'I estimate four thousand enemy,' reported the acting sergeant, 'with assorted vehicles and bikes. Armament is mainly automatic chain-gun and solid shot rifles and pistols.'
'Good work, sergeant. To your positions. In Vulkan's name.'
'In Vulkan's name.'
Gannon secured the magnoculars and stood up. A second later he and his squad took to the air, jump pack engines screaming as they ignited, and trailing smoke and fire.
Agatone gestured to the middle distance, where the Thunderfire cannons had patrolled earlier. There was no sign of the tracked heavy guns now, or their Techmarine operators.
'The grenade line is still untouched,' he told them, 'and we've added additional explosive payloads. Our stratagem is to funnel the orks into it, launching a full assault into their vanguard when they're scattered, hurting and confused.'
Dak'ir regarded the greenskin splinter force as Agatone relayed his plan. The xenos had forged some distance between themselves and the parent horde; the latter was just a dense black line cresting a far-off high dune now. He also noticed that the splinter force had become stretched in its eagerness for a fight. A vanguard of bikers, trucks and the faster orkoid elements ranged ahead of a much larger body of greenskins comprising foot soldiers and rumbling half-tracks.
'See how they are spread?' said Agatone. It was wide, widening all the time as the speed-obsessed orks raced and tried to out do each other. Dak'ir was put in mind of a giant maw slowly opening as it prepared for its first bite. 'We need them to become a dense column.'
'Corral them,' said Dak'ir, seeing the potential at once to manoeuvre the fast, but brittle greenskin advance forces.
Agatone nodded, a slight hint of irritation in his manner. 'It is already in place.' He pointed to distant flanks, just beyond the Dreadnoughts. Dak'ir saw something moving there, obscured by the eerie half-darkness.
'Thunderfire cannons,' he thought aloud.
'Just so,' Agatone replied. 'Subterranean blast shelling will commence as soon as we've got the orks' attention. The tremors will force them into line. Any that don't will be dealt with by the Dreadnoughts.'
Dak'ir's eyes narrowed as he pictured abstractly the full realisation of Agatone's plan.
'We need bait to draw them in.'
The other sergeant nodded.
Dak'ir checked the load of his plasma pistol, then secured it in its holster again.
'I'll take a combat squad only,' he said. 'Where should we deploy?'
'Five Astartes is all I can spare, Dak'ir,' Agatone replied. He gestured to a patch of rocky ground about two hundred metres shy of the grenade line. 'That's your squad's position.'
It was as good a staging point as any. The rocks provided some cover and the ground was set into a small depression the Salamanders could use like a crater to hunker down in if necessary.
'Five Fire-born to engage a horde of about five hundred,' said Ba'ken, his tone sardonic. 'Good odds.'
'And the rest of the force - what will you do about the ork reserves?' asked Dak'ir.
'Argos is working on something,' Agatone replie looking slightly uncomfortable for the first time during the impromptu briefing, 'We just need to give him some time. Stall the greenskins.'
'How much time?' Dak'ir asked levelly.
Agatone's expression was stony.
'As much as we can.'
It didn't take an anthro-linguistic servitor to realise that Agatone's obvious misgivings were grave. The sergeant went on.
'Once the vanguard is eliminated, fall back to the second line. You'll see it because I'll be stood at it with the rest of our forces.'
'And after that, if the orks get through?'
Agatone snorted in mock derision. There was a sense of pathos to the gesture.
'After that it won't matter.'
CHAPTER TEN
I
Into the Dragon's Mouth
Dak'ir cradled the bolter in his gauntleted hands, feeling its heft and running his fingers down its stock. He muttered litanies of accuracy under his breath as he familiarised himself with the holy weapon.
The Vulkan's Wrath carried several additional Astartes armoriums aboard. It was well stocked with surplus bolters, ammunition and other materiel in the event that the company should require it. During his scout training, when he was just a neophyte and not part of the 7th Company, Dak'ir had been instructed in the use of the bolter by the stern-faced Master of Recruits. Old Zen'de was dead now but the lessons he had imparted upon Dak'ir lived on.
All of the Salamanders crouched in the shallow depression, the rocky outcrop to their fore, advancing orks glimpsed over the jagged tips of these crags, had a bolter slung to their sides. Bursts of sporadic fire, at range, were intended to attract the attention of the onrushing greenskin vanguard. The squad would then stay visible but hunkered down so as not to present an easy target. Only Ba'ken and Emek, bearing their flamers, wouldn't be so armed.
Dak'ir's five had also become six with the addition of Pyriel. He too hefted a bolter, his force sword and pistol remaining sheathed for now. The Librarian had not been swayed by Sergeant Agatone's arguments when he had insisted he stay with the main force. His talents, he surmised with a tone that brooked no further discussion, would be best served aiding Dak'ir.
Illiad was another matter, of course. With no time to explain what had occurred beneath the surface right now, Dak'ir had merely expressed how important the human was to them and that if they survived the fight with the greenskins, Illiad would need to be brought before N'keln immediately. As it was, the leader of the settlers was determined he would stand with his distant Nocturnean kin and so joined one of the battalions. The human could fight and had his own lasgun, so Agatone saw no reason to oppose him. Dak'ir would see him protected, of course, but supposed that standing shoulder-to-shoulder with fifty other armed men was about as safe as it got right now.
'A thousand metres,' Apion reported, keeping sentry on the orks' approach with a pair of magnoculars.
'Weapons ready,' snapped Dak'ir. His tone was clipped and precise as he brought up his bolter. Each Salamander occupied a section of the outcrop, snug in makeshift firing lips rendered by the natural permutations in the rocks. A staccato of arming sounds disturbed the heavy silence before the air was still again.
'Eight hundred…'
Dak'ir sighted down the bolter's targeter.
'Seven hundred…'
Dull percussions from the Thunderfire cannon salvo were rippling across the dunes. Clustered explosions plumed in fiery grey, slowly pushing the greenskin vanguard together. 'Six hundred…'
'In Vulkan's name!' Dak'ir roared and the bolters roared with him.
Muzzle flares ripped into the darkness followed by the flash of explosive rounds tearing up the leaders of the motorised ork vanguard. Bikes spun front over end, chewed up by the brutal fusillade coming from the Space Marines. Trucks flipped as their fuel tanks ignited, turning them into rolling fireballs. Spitting shrapnel shredded those outside the heart of the bolter storm, forcing bikes to slew into others and trucks to veer widely and crash as their drivers were cut to pieces.
The frenzied ork advance slowed momentarily as the ones that followed on picked their way through flaming wreckage, and as the greenskins at the periphery were forced into a cordon by the distant bombardment of the Thunderfire cannons.
Bellowing curses like wielded blades, the orks regrouped and found a focus for their anger - the six Salamanders blazing away at them from an outcrop of rocks. Like a hot spear-tip the orks came together. In truth, the bolter fire had barely scratched them, but the bloody nose they'd received was stinging.
Errant bullets from the greenskins' chainguns and solid-shot cannons chipped at the rock wall. A shard spanged against Dak'ir's pauldron but he barely felt it. The spatial display on his right helmet lens told him the orks were just three hundred and sixty-five point three metres away.
In less than a minute they'd be hitting the grenade line. Then there would be two hundred metres between them and the horde.
'Reloading,' shouted Dak'ir, ducking back behind the rocks to expel the partially spent magazine and ram home another one. The process took less than three seconds. As he returned to the firing lip to resume the fusillade, Brother Apion ducked back in his sergeant's stead, cycling through the ammo replenishment strategy Dak'ir had devised. This way, the Salamanders could maintain a barrage of uninterrupted bolter fire with lit
tle deterioration in intensity between reloads.
At the head of the greenskin pack, a howling ork biker was suddenly kicked up into the air, riding a blossoming fireball. It tore out the vehicle's undercarriage, blasting off its rugged wheels, as well as shredding the ork's legs and abdomen. The beast was still raging until it struck the ground with a wet crunch. Others followed it, shooting up into the air in a macabre, pseudo-pyrotechnic display. Explosions from the grenade line churned up ash in a dense cloud, causing further carnage and confusion. Riderless bikes trundled through the fog aflame, slowly succumbing to inertia without their throttles opened up. A truck barrel rolled out of the murk, its hapless passengers battered to death as they thrashed continuously against the ground. It settled into a mangled heap, a pair of ork bikers blinded by their ash-smeared goggles, colliding into it and exploding after the impact.
The damage was horrendous, the densely-packed greenskins, precisely corralled by the Thunderfire cannons and impelled by Dak'ir's ''bait'' squad, suffering badly in the grenade field. Momentum carried the greenskins behind into deadly debris and the remnants of the sunken grenades yet to be disturbed. They couldn't stop; their maddened fervour, coupled with the undeniable instinct to go faster, wouldn't let them. The orks piled on through and kept on dying.
Two hundred metres became a hundred and fifty in Dak'ir's helmet lens. With so many orks in the vanguard, it was inevitable that some would make it through. But the brother-sergeant had made contingency for that too.
Raking a slide of his bolter, he switched the gun to rapid fire. They'd burn through ammunition much faster this way, but the punishing effects of such a salvo would be irresistible. Loosing his fury, Dak'ir saw the muzzle flare at the end of the bolter expand into a knife-edged star of fire. The oncoming orks became a haze before it, rendered into steaming flesh and bent metal.
The orks, more tenacious than a plague, rolled on into the firing line, scarcely fifty left in the vanguard from the five hundred who had broken off from the slower element of the splinter horde.
Solid shot struck his elbow, finding a spot between the plates, and bit. Dak'ir grimaced, another deflecting off his left pauldron as the orks got close enough to be partially accurate with their return fire.
