The Purging of Kadillus

by Gav Thorpe

  ‘You heard the commander!’ roared their sergeant, grabbing one of the troopers by the scruff of his flak jacket to haul the soldier to his feet.

  Boreas barely heard the padding of their boots after him, his ears filled with the thunder of his twin hearts as the surge of battle consumed him. He fired another salvo of twisting, deadly shots and plunged into the melee with his crozius blazing.

  Crashing through a wall of empty ammunition boxes, the Chaplain struck out at the back of an ork’s skull, smashing through bone. His backswing took another greenskin full in the throat. Pistol rounds disappeared in flares of light around Boreas as his rosarius field activated. He shouldered aside another ork, which was set upon by the squad following the Chaplain.

  ‘Drive them back!’ Boreas illustrated the order by smashing his bolt pistol into the face of an ork, splintering fangs, crushing its puggy nose. ‘Let the Emperor’s wrath fill your limbs!’

  Boreas’s pistol barked in his hand, bolts tearing through the orks around him. His crozius carved a path of blood and shattered bone. The Piscinans were being battered to their knees and cut down by the ferocious orks, but the presence of the Chaplain bolstered the nerve of the troopers and they fought on with gritted teeth and wide eyes.

  ‘Brother-Chaplain.’ Zaltys’s calm voice cut through the haze of anger that washed through Boreas. The Chaplain side-stepped a cleaver and drove his knee into the gut of the ork wielding it.

  ‘Report, brother-sergeant,’ Boreas snarled.

  ‘Enemy are gathering for an attack against the centre, brother. Shall I move to engage?’

  Boreas rammed his elbow into the jaw of a greenskin and fired a bolt into its chest as it fell back. The Chaplain was surrounded by a press of foes and could see nothing of the wider battle.

  ‘I leave it to your discretion, brother,’ he told Zaltys. ‘The orks must not gain a foothold within the power plant.’

  ‘Confirm, brother. We will engage if the enemy reach the power plant.’

  A spinning, toothed blade slammed into the side of Boreas’s helm, dazing him in a shower of sparks and shredded ceramite. Out of instinct, he swept up his arm to knock away the blade, its jagged edge ripping a furrow through the Chaplain’s elbow pad. He kicked out and felt the ork’s ribs collapsing. Blinking to restore his blurred vision, Boreas found himself face-to-face with the snarling alien, two dagger-like tusks jutting from its jaw.

  Boreas let go of his crozius so that it swung on its chain from his wrist, and grabbed the throat of the ork, fingers digging into corded muscle. The ork’s eyes bulged and thick saliva drooled from its twisted lips as Boreas bent the creature backwards, twisting its spine. A hand hammered at Boreas’s chest, claws leaving scratches on the embossed design. With a grunt, Boreas lurched forwards, snapping the ork’s spine. The Chaplain fired a round into the greenskin’s chest as it flopped in his grasp.

  With a flick of his arm, Boreas snatched up his crozius just in time to ward away a crackling power claw swinging at his face. The two power fields met with a flash of blue sparks. The Chaplain matched stares with his foe; an ork even taller than Boreas wearing thick pads of armour covered with riveted plates. The bestial alien closed the claws of its glove into a fist and punched the Chaplain in the chest. Boreas’s rosarius blazed, absorbing most of the impact, though the Chaplain was forced back a step by the blow.

  A frown of confusion knotted the ork’s brow. It glanced down at its power claw, tears streaking down its face from the light of the conversion field’s activation. Boreas swept his crozius upwards, the winged angel on its top connecting squarely with the chin of the greenskin.

  The ork fell to its backside, shaking its head, jaw split to the bottom lip. Boreas stamped, crushing the heel of his boot into the greenskin’s face. With a spasm of reaction, the ork clamped its energy-wreathed claw around Boreas’s knee. The Chaplain felt armour buckling and a warning light flashed in the corner of his right eye.

  Wrenching himself free from the ork’s death-grip, Boreas stumbled back a few steps, his knee flaring with pain. In a moment the acute sensation passed, to be replaced by a dull throbbing that even his armour’s pain suppressants could not wholly mask.

  The Chaplain was aware of shouting. He looked up and saw that the orks were falling back, limping and bleeding, dispirited by the death of the leader Boreas had slain. The Chaplain took a deep breath and looked to his right, where the fighting was still fierce.

  Zaltys’s squad had torn into the central attack and were pursuing the broken orks down the gorge. There was still an intense firefight between the squads at the base of the power plant and the orks in the administration buildings. The orks’ position was wreathed in a cloud of dust from the mortar bombardment and Boreas could see the corpses of many greenskins piled behind the broken walls and hanging from shattered windows.

  There was similar carnage close at hand. At a glance he counted at least thirty dead orks around the barricades, and more than that number of fallen troopers. He saw an officer’s body draped in a tattered, blood-soaked great-coat, the Piscinan’s chainsword still stuck in the chest of a dead ork. The hacked and broken bodies of squad-mates were heaped upon each other, their faces caught in their last moments of agony and horror.

  Limping slightly, Boreas stepped up to the remnants of the barricade. He activated the long-range comm.

  ‘Chaplain Boreas to Master Belial. Contact report.’

  The response was far quicker than earlier.

  ‘This is Belial. Make your report, brother.’

  ‘Second enemy attack met, brother-captain. We still have possession of the power plant. Position secure but request further forces.’

  ‘Negative, brother. There are no more forces available at this time. We cannot weaken our presence in the city or on Koth Ridge. Scout reports suggest that you are not facing the bulk of the enemy army. This is just a raiding force. You must continue to hold.’

  ‘Understood, brother. We may have faced the worst of it. Casualty ratio seven-to-one, we will cleanse this unclean horde from the galaxy!’

  Boreas cut the link and assessed the remaining strength of his troops. Judging by the number of bodies over half the Piscinans had fallen, while the number of those remaining showed that twenty or thirty more had broken away and fled during the fighting. His gaze following Zaltys down the gorge, the Chaplain saw that two more Space Marines had also been killed by the orks.

  It was not much compared to what he had started with, but it was probably enough to see off the dregs of the ork army that had survived the last attack. The power plant’s defenders still had the advantage of higher ground and a prepared position.

  ‘Surviving officers, report to me for fresh dispositions,’ Boreas announced.

  Two officers picked their way wearily through the bodies and destroyed barricades. A third was pointing to the west, towards the right flank. The man turned back to Boreas with a horrified expression, his peaked cap falling from his head.

  ‘Master Boreas! Orks!’

  Boreas looked to where the lieutenant was pointing and magnified his view. A massive ork was shouldering its way through a stand of trees and bushes at the far end of the line. Encased in a solid suit of yellow armour decorated with black flames and glittering gold, the warlord was accompanied by half a dozen monstrous orks and twenty smaller greenskins.

  The Chaplain quickly realised what had happened. Obscured by the rocks and foliage was another narrow defile running almost parallel to the main gorge, up to the outskirts of the power plant. Glancing down the gorge, Boreas could now see where the rocks parted at the far end. It appeared that the earlier screen of smoke and dust had not been to obscure the main ork advance, but to allow the warlord and a small entourage to slip unseen into the crevasse. The subsequent attack had drawn more and more of the defenders away from the flank and now there was nobody to stop the warlord and its bodyguard sweeping in behind the emplacements.

  ‘Zaltys, return to the line!’ Boreas
snapped. ‘Enemy flank attack. Engage immediately.’

  ‘Sir, the orks are coming back,’ a sergeant called from Boreas’s left.

  The Chaplain turned around to see the greenskins that had been hurled back gathering again in the rocks and bushes on the left flank. Boreas hissed in irritation as it dawned on him that he had been out-smarted by a greenskin.

  ‘It’s not over yet, you green-skinned filth,’ the Chaplain growled. He switched his helmet vocaliser to maximum amplification, voice booming out across the gorge. ‘Man your weapons! Take up your rifles! This battle is not lost. Destroy the foes of the Emperor!’

  ‘We’re trapped,’ murmured one of the lieutenants beside Boreas.

  The Chaplain rounded on the officer, skull helm a hair’s breadth from the lieutenant’s shocked face.

  ‘Then you have nothing to lose by fighting, do you? Rally your men!’

  Quivering and gulping, the officer backed away, shouting for his command squad with a broken voice. Past him, Boreas saw Zaltys’s squad racing back up the gorge, bounding over the rocks and rubble.

  The orks split. A mob of black-clad greenskins wielding pistols and jagged blades broke into the power plant while the heavily armoured warlord and retinue turned to confront the approaching Assault Marines. The warlord raised its right arm, which ended with a multi-barrelled cannon. Smoke plumed from the exhausts of the warlord’s armour as the barrels started to spin. Around their leader, the bodyguard also lifted an assortment of outlandish energy weapons and rocket launchers.

  The warlord bellowed a command and the orks opened fire. The leader’s weapon spewed a hail of projectiles that glowed with a green light, the salvo rippling across the Assault Marine squad as they sprang up the slope. One of Zaltys’s warriors was engulfed by the fusillade. Mid-leap, his jump pack exploded, sending the Space Marine tumbling into the rocks as pieces of his shoulder pads and chest plastron flew in all directions. Several rocket trails hissed past the leaping Space Marines to explode further down the gorge, while pulses of plasma screeched through the squad like miniature stars.

  Zaltys crashed down onto the rocky ground, took three paces and jumped again, soaring high above the warlord. Behind the sergeant, the Assault Marines opened fire, flickering bolts and more plasma shots slamming into the ork bodyguards.

  With a clang that resounded from one side of the gorge to the other, Zaltys descended feet-first into the chest of an armoured ork, sending it reeling. The Assault sergeant’s hand flamer engulfed the greenskin from waist to shoulder. The huge bodyguard ignored the flames licking up its armour and swung a glittering axe at Zaltys, the blade crashing into the sergeant’s right arm.

  Boreas had to look away as a shout from the troopers reminded him of the orks surging back up the gorge. The Chaplain glanced back to Zaltys and realised there was nothing he could do to intervene as the Assault Marines and orks set upon each other with roaring chainswords and deadly power claws.

  ‘Hold the flank!’ Boreas shouted at the defence troopers. ‘Fire at will.’

  Las-fire and bullets raced past each other as the orks closed on the Piscinans. Autocannons and heavy bolters punched gaping holes through the attacking greenskins, but the orks were filled with a wild desperation.

  Boreas realised that this was the warlord’s last gambit. If the orks could be held back now, the enemy had nothing else to offer. The Chaplain sought out one of the Piscinan lieutenants, a craggy-faced man shouting orders whilst crouched behind a pile of empty cable reels. Boreas hauled the lieutenant to his feet.

  ‘Fight to the last, victory is at hand,’ the Chaplain snarled. ‘Give every drop of blood for the Emperor.’

  The lieutenant nodded, lifted his chainsword above his head and bellowed for his command squad to follow as he leapt over the barricade into the orks. Boreas fired a few more rounds from his pistol into the greenskins tearing up the slope and looked back to check on Zaltys.

  Two of the bodyguard had been felled by the Assault Marines, but at the cost of four of their number. The sergeant was still alive, battering at the chest of an ork with his power fist. To his left one of the battle-brothers was gripped around the throat by a power claw, firing his pistol into the ork’s face. The two combatants fell together, the Assault Marine’s legs sticking out from under the massive bodyguard as it toppled onto him.

  Zaltys grabbed a piece of torn armour and wrenched it away from his adversary, exposing the ork’s chest. As the sergeant raised his glowing fist, the warlord loomed up through the melee behind him, crackling claws spread wide.

  ‘Zaltys, behind you!’ Boreas said over the comm.

  The warning came too late. The claw snapped shut as Zaltys turned, razor-sharp tines slicing through the sergeant’s head in a spray of shattering eye lenses, ceramite and skull.

  The one surviving Assault Marine launched himself at the warlord, hacking with his chainsword. The ork raised up a steel-clad arm to ward away the blows and fired its cannon, the hail of shot ripping through the Space Marine’s abdomen. Stooping, the warlord reached into the ragged wound and lifted the Space Marine up. Spitting blood, the Assault Marine drove the point of his chainsword at the ork’s face but the whirring blades missed as the warlord shook the Space Marine from side to side.

  The Assault Marine flopped as his spine snapped. With a bestial roar, the warlord lifted its trophy high and then brought down its arm, smashing the Space Marine’s corpse into the hard ground.

  ‘They’re falling back again,’ reported the aging lieutenant. The officer clambered back over the barricade, a ragged cut across his nose and cheek, face smeared with blood. His command squad all lay dead amongst the pile of ork bodies further down the gorge.

  Boreas looked down the slope and saw that it was true. The greenskins had been shot and cut down before they reached the barricades and the few that had survived were running back to the administration building with plaintive wails.

  ‘Good work,’ said Boreas. He pointed to the warlord. The greenskin was striding across the gorge flanked by two remaining bodyguards. ‘Target your heavy weapons on these brutes. Detail the rest to watch the power plant. At least twenty ork infantry are inside.’

  Wiping the blood from his mouth, the lieutenant nodded and yelled orders at the remaining troopers. There were less than thirty left. They manoeuvred the remaining heavy weapons to point across the gorge towards the approaching warlord: two heavy bolters, the same number of autocannons and a single lascannon could be salvaged from the remains of the Piscinans’ arsenal.

  ‘Target to the front. Open fire!’ The lieutenant brought down his chainsword as he bellowed the order.

  The harsh blast of the lascannon cut through the air, passing over the warlord’s head. In response, the air bucked and crackled around the small group. A reddish aura surrounded the orks, wavering and indistinct. A volley of autocannon rounds slammed into the field. Boreas could see the shells slowing as they passed through the insubstantial barrier; some fell short and impacted the ground in front of the advancing orks; others skewed off-course and passed by without hitting. The few that remained on target had lost so much speed they bounced harmlessly from the orks’ thick plates of armour.

  The lieutenant looked over at Boreas, despair written in his features.

  ‘Keep firing,’ Boreas said, dividing his attention between the advancing warlord and the shadows of the power plant. The Chaplain relaxed his grip on the haft of his crozius and forced himself to speak calmly. ‘Try to overload their shield.’

  ‘Pour it on, men,’ snarled the officer.

  The force field flared and roiled around the greenskin entourage, becoming more visible with every heavy bolter round, autocannon shell and lascannon blast that hit it. Energy rippled and wreathed from each impact, sending sparks leaping into the air.

  The pounding of feet drew Boreas’s attention to the blocky transformers of the power plant. The black-clothed orks stormed out of the shade, firing their pistols and grunting battle cries
.

  ‘Small arms, engage enemy to the right,’ Boreas told the bloodied troopers around him. ‘Heavy weapons, continue to target the warlord’s retinue.’

  The orks’ force field was fizzing madly, a dome of constantly writhing bolts of red electricity that encapsulated the warlord and his bodyguard. Smoke and steam billowed in thick clouds from the warlord’s engine as the field generator struggled to hold back the Piscinans’ cannonade.

  ‘That’s it, keep on them,’ said the lieutenant. ‘We’ve almost got them.’

  Las-fire crackled from Boreas’s right as the defence troopers engaged the orks emerging from the power-plant structure. He saw several shots hitting home, but the orks shrugged off their wounds and continued onwards, ignoring holes in their flesh and burning wounds across their skin.

  ‘Power pack’s dead, sir!’ bawled the lascannon gunner. ‘No more shots, sir.’

  The Piscinan lieutenant cursed and waded into the mess of crates and boxes littering the emplacement, looking for fresh power cells.

  ‘Belay that nonsense,’ Boreas barked at the officer. The Chaplain turned on the Piscinans manning the lascannon and pointed towards the orks in the geothermal plant. ‘Find yourselves lasguns and secure the power station.’

  As the troopers snatched up rifles from the hands of the dead, Boreas focussed his attention back to the warlord. A few seconds later, when the hulking aliens were less than fifty metres away, the warlord’s field collapsed with a huge blaze of energy that spiralled rapidly around the orks before flickering into nothing. Immediately, the greenskins brought their own weapons to bear.

  ‘Take cover,’ warned the Free Militia officer.

  A rocket sped into the emplacement to explode against the barricade, showering the cowering men with shards of metal and splinters from the piled crates. An autocannon loader fell back with a jag of wood jutting from his eye. His gunner turned in surprise and reached out to the screaming man. Boreas loomed over the pair of them.

  ‘Attend to your weapon, trooper,’ said the Chaplain. The Piscinan looked up at the battered skull helm of Boreas, nodded dumbly and returned to the autocannon.