Dawn Of War II

by Chris Roberson

  The old woman nodded curtly, and waved a hand at the boy. 'Then take him. A slim chance at life is more than he will have if he remains here.'

  * * *

  'PICK YOUR TARGETS and fire at will!' Sergeant Avitus shouted, unleashing a stream of bolts from his heavy bolter at the heads and shoulders of the feral orks attempting to scale the city walls.

  On either side of Avitus his battle-brothers in the Ninth Squad opened fire with heavy bolters, melta-guns and flamers, pouring death down upon the besieging greenskins. Captain Thule had tasked the Devastator squad with manning the eastern wall of Argus Township, where damage from earlier assaults had already weakened the integrity of the walls which the oncoming hordes of feral orks were now threatening to topple.

  A firebomb lobbed by one of the lead orks smashed into Avitus's chest, wreathing him in sickly-green flames, but he paid it no mind, and returned the ork's fire with a few well-placed bolts of his own.

  'Sergeant,' called Avitus's battle-brother Barabbas.

  Avitus glanced over to see Barabbas indicating the ground beneath the wall to their right.

  'They're resourceful,' Barabbas said, unclipping a frag grenade from his waist and tossing it out into the mass of orks below. The shrapnel tore into the greenskins, ruining flesh and smashing bone. 'You have to give them that.'

  Avitus merely grunted in reply.

  Like all the Blood Ravens, Avitus knew that these were feral orks, primitive tribes only a few stages removed from their earliest beginnings. In many ways orks were more fungal than animal, reproducing by the dispersal of spores, their green colouration from the algae that coursed through their crude blood and made up so much of their internal processes. A single world could be overrun, in time, if a single mature ork were to be killed on its surface. The dying ork would release spores, which would then develop into cocoons, which given time and suitable conditions would hatch into the more rudimentary of forms, that given the opportunity would eventually mature into fully-grown orks. Was that how the greenskin plague had come to Calderis? Ork Waaaghs! had never touched the Aurelia system, or else the chances were that there would be no humans still living here. Perhaps nothing more than a single ork vessel, cast off from some mindlessly drifting space hulk, had crashed on the far side of the desert world, over across the mountains, at some point in the distant past, and the death of its passengers had over the course of centuries or even millennia eventually given rise to the untold thousands of greenskins who had covered the western hemisphere like a plague since time out of mind.

  But these were not yet the most developed orks that waged their eternal Waaaghs! across the stars. These were feral, primitive, little more than beasts. They lacked the technological sophistication to manufacture or repair engines of war - bikes, buggies, trucks, and so on - or even to devise firearms, and instead rode upon the backs of enormous beasts, and fought with little more than rocks and sticks, with primitive explosives being the pinnacle of their technological prowess.

  Individually, any one of the feral orks presented hardly any threat, since a human with a ranged weapon could, with enough distance between him and his target, bring down any ork with a few well-placed rounds. And even though the lumbering creatures were all but immune to pain, and able to fight on even after receiving wounds that would fell even an Astartes, they were mindless fighting machines, bereft of any strategy or form, and a Space Marine with a sword in hand and his wits about him could best an ork in individual combat nine times out of ten.

  The problem with feral orks, and with these feral orks in particular, came in their overwhelming numbers. Even with the addition of the forces from the Armageddon reinforcing them, Thule's defenders totalled little more than three dozen. Facing them were hundreds upon hundreds of greenskins, if not thousands, raging monsters with little thought for their own safety, and none at all for the safety of their fellow orks. This was perfectly exemplified in the strategy now being carried out beneath the walls of Argus, as Barabbas had pointed out.

  'Burn them down!' Avitus shouted to the Blood Ravens fanned out to his right along the barricades. 'Concentrate fire!'

  Lacking the technological sophistication to create siege engines, even something as rudimentary as a ladder, the feral orks had hit upon a novel approach to assaulting the high city walls. They simply piled the bodies of their fallen brethren one atop the other, creating an asymmetrical pyramid of ork bodies leaning against the walls of Argus. Some of the orks in the pile were dead, some were dying, and some had just had the misfortune of being knocked from their feet and had not stood up again before their brothers seized them and threw them upon the pile. Already the pyramid of greenskin bodies rose halfway to the top of the Argus walls, and was growing higher every passing moment.

  Avitus had faced orks countless times in his century and a half of service to the Blood Ravens Chapter, but nearly all of those instances had been against the more developed orks who travelled between the stars in their salvaged space hulks. Like their feral cousins, the more developed orks had a similar lack of concern for their own longevity, and a disregard for the safety of their brother orks, and like the orks of Calderis they took to the field of battle in what were often incomprehensibly large numbers. But unlike the feral orks that Avitus and his squad now faced, the developed orks had mastered the machine, and brought to bear cannons, missiles, guns, munitions, and more.

  The immense numbers of feral orks assaulting Argus made them an all but unbeatable foe, but their lack of technological sophistication meant, at least, that there was little chance that the Blood Ravens would not be able to carry out Captain Thule's orders and complete the recruitment search before withdrawing back to the Armageddon. If they had been developed orks which the Blood Ravens now faced, on the other hand, there would have been every chance that none of the Blood Ravens would have made it off Calderis alive.

  A long wooden stick, sharpened to a point, bounced off the faceplate of Avitus's helmet, a spear thrown by one of the greenskins below.

  'A spear?' Avitus said in disbelief.

  Avitus, in a rare flash of humour, actually grinned, if only slightly, as he returned fire, ripping the green-skin's arm from its massive shoulder with a barrage of bolts.

  Yes, the sergeant reflected as he continued to pour death down upon the attackers, at least these are merely feral orks that we face.

  'SQUAD,' THADDEUS VOXED, pausing to reload his bolter before continuing, 'form up. We're approaching the edge.'

  Thaddeus and his brothers in the Seventh Squad had pushed ever further south, each Space Marine an unstoppable juggernaut with bolter and chainsword in hand. For hours they had fought their way through the seemingly endless ocean of feral orks that stretched out beyond the walls of Argus, but Thaddeus's auspex indicated that they were now, finally and at long last, approaching the outer edge of the ork army, the far shore of the endless sea.

  On the visor display within Thaddeus's helmet, runes representing each of the other eight members of the Seventh Squad were tinged green, indicating that each of them had survived the fight to this point. Though Thaddeus had issued orders that they were to maintain close formation as they pressed southwards, the hordes of orks had been so densely packed around them that at times they had lost sight of one another, each Space Marine left to fight his own way south against the overwhelming number of enemies until they regrouped again further along.

  Now, as they neared the edge of the horde and the next phase of their mission, Thaddeus could only make visual contact with four of his battle-brothers, though most of the others were separated from him only by a matter of a few dozen metres at most. Only Battle-Brother Renzo trailed behind by a matter of several hundred metres.

  'Renzo,' Thaddeus called over the vox-comm. 'Time to catch up. Hit your jump pack, and plot a trajectory to just south of our position.'

  'Acknowledged,' Renzo voxed back. 'Apologies that I have lagged, sergeant.'

  'Knowing you,' Thaddeus chuckled, 'it was a
ll a ruse, so you could leapfrog the rest of us and get clear first.'

  'As you say, sergeant.'

  'Give me a full report on what you can see up there,' Thaddeus ordered, knowing that Renzo would be taking to the air any moment. It had been too long since they'd gotten any perspective.

  Periodically through their trek south, Thaddeus and the others had employed their jump packs to take prodigious leaps, which allowed them not only to speed their journey south but also to survey the surrounding terrain, spot enemy dispersal patterns, and so on. It had been nearly an hour since their last jump, at which point they could still see nothing in all directions but the unbroken ocean of unwashed greenskins, but now that they neared the edge of the horde, Thaddeus needed to know what lay beyond.

  Their orders had been to locate a group of human refugees fleeing north towards Argus, and then to escort them to the township safely or, failing that, at least select any potential aspirants from among the group to bring back with them. Thaddeus wasn't eager to leave the rest of the refugees behind, but knew that the Chapter's priorities were new recruits, and that if the other citizens had to be left behind to ensure the safety of an aspirant, so be it.

  'Arcing up now,' Renzo voxed. 'Approaching apex. I can see the horde's edge and… Golden Throne!'

  A feral ork made a charge at Thaddeus's position, and the sergeant swung his chainsword in a wide arc that took off the top of the greenskins head before it even reached him. As he sidestepped the ork, who lurched by without even realizing yet that it was dead, Thaddeus glanced overhead to see Renzo beginning his descent a few hundred metres south of their position.

  'What was that, Renzo?' Thaddeus voxed, charging towards the south through the gap left by the near-headless ork. 'Repeat!'

  'Sergeant, it's not just ferals!' Renzo's voice sounded almost frenzied over the vox. 'There's…'

  A deafening cracking sound split the air, and Renzo suddenly fell silent.

  'That was heavy ordnance!' Thaddeus shouted, to no one in particular.

  Renzo didn't answer.

  Thaddeus couldn't risk taking a leap if it meant opening himself up to whatever had just taken out Renzo. So he redoubled his efforts to wade through the last of the greenskins before him, leaving the rest of the squad to contend with the hordes of feral orks pressing in on either side.

  What had Renzo meant? That it wasn't ''just ferals''? What else was there… ?

  Thaddeus cleared the edge of the feral ork horde, and he had his answer.

  Beyond the edge of the horde there was a wide stretch of open desert, a few hundred metres across. In the midst of this open stretch lay the broken and bloodied form of Battle-Brother Renzo, looking like a puppet whose strings had been cut. At the other side of the open ground, Thaddeus saw the source of the cracking sound, the thing that had brought the leaping Renzo back down to earth once and for all.

  There were thousands of them. Orks with augmetic bionics, and others encased in piston-driven exoskeletons. Orks atop battlewagons and sitting astride combat bikes. Orks with flamethrowers, and rocket-launchers, and powerful energy cannons. There were war machines, mechanized walkers as tall as any Dreadnought. There were warbuggies, and trucks, and infantry beyond count.

  These were no feral orks. That was what Renzo's dying words had meant. These were developed orks, spacefaring greenskins armed for war. But they were, as yet, not fighting. Instead, they were arranged in disciplined lines, facing the feral hordes that attacked Argus Township. And at the heart of the serried ranks of orks was a massive battlewagon, atop which stood an immense figure resplendent in spikes and skulls, a giant gun in one hand and a massive battleaxe in the other, his face painted blood-red. There could be little doubt that this was the warboss of this ork army.

  The warboss appeared surprised to see Thaddeus standing at the edge of the feral horde, and many of the other developed orks were pointing towards the still form of Renzo on the desert sands, indicating the skies and jabbering in their inhuman tongue.

  Thaddeus was no less surprised to see them. An ork army, highly armed and developed, led by what was to all appearances a powerful and bloodthirsty warboss. On a world where, as the Blood Ravens believed, only feral orks had been seen before.

  The warboss seemed to come to some decision and, pointing his massive battleaxe in Thaddeus's direction, shouted a blood-curdling war cry at the top of his lungs. In response, the serried ranks of armoured and mechanised orks surged forward, answering their leader's war cry with shouts of their own, each of them rushing towards Thaddeus with weapons raised and ready.

  'So much for this being too easy,' Thaddeus said as he raised his bolter and fired into the onrushing horde. The feral orks had already threatened to overrun Argus and kill every human on Calderis. Whatever the reason for the sudden appearance of the orks' more advanced cousins, their presence meant that now even the Blood Ravens had no guarantee of leaving the planet alive. 'Squad! Form on me. We have company.'

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT HAD BEEN nearly two days since the Thunderhawks from the Armageddon had set down on the pitted ferrocrete landing pad of Argus Township's abused and neglected spaceport, nearly forty-eight hours since the four squads had mustered to receive the orders of Captain Davian Thule. Not yet two days, and already the battles with the orks had claimed their victims.

  Apothecary Gordian laboured tirelessly over the still and all but lifeless form of Librarian Niven inside the makeshift headquarters of Captain Thule's forces. He knew that his brother Blood Ravens had already begun falling on the field of battle but, as yet, he had been unable to go to them and retrieve the vital gene-seed that each carried within their progenoid gland. The masses of orks on all sides, both feral and developed, meant that Gordian had been unable to reach the fallen until it was too late, and the orks had already had their chance to despoil the bodies of the fallen Space Marines, cracking open the ceramite power armour they wore as though they were nothing more than rotten eggs, and then hacking and butchering the bodies within until nothing remained but pulp and gristle.

  Battle-Brother Renzo of the Seventh Squad had been the first to fall, shattered into lifelessness by a barrage of heavy weapons fire thundering up from an ork battlewagon. When Thaddeus had voxed back to Thule's command centre with news of the appearance of the developed and organized orks, Thule had dispatched Sergeant Merrik's squad to assist, and had sent a pair of the better trained Scouts to pilot one of the Thunderhawks.

  It was a risk, fielding in battle one of the gunships that the Blood Ravens were counting upon to carry them off the desert planet, but Thule considered the risk worth taking. As the gunship had swept in low, the lascannons beneath its attack wings had lanced out at the war-engines of the orks just as the four sets of heavy bolters mounted on the forward fuselage pumped round after round of bolter fire into the greenskin infantry. And as soon as the gunship had dipped low enough to the ground, Merrik and his First Squad had leapt out onto the desert sands, hitting the ground running with bolters firing, rushing to reinforce Thaddeus's Seventh Squad.

  Of the nine Blood Ravens who had leapt from the Thunderhawk, only seven had survived long enough to offer assistance. A discharge from one of the orks' massive energy cannons pierced Battle-Brother Sten through the chest before he'd taken even a half-dozen steps, and Battle-Brother Xiao was crushed beneath one of the clanking feet of an ork mechanised walker only moments after entering the fray.

  'Come on, Librarian,' Gordian said in a low voice laced with impatience, as the delicate instruments in his hand prodded the Larraman's organ implanted within Niven's chest cavity. 'I have other tasks to attend, once you are restored, so heal, Emperor damn you.'

  One of the crucial implants that transformed a baseline human into a superhuman Astartes, the organ was liver-shaped, small enough to fit in the palm of a man's hand, but was one of the most vital of the nineteen implants that separated a Space Marine from common humanity. When an Astartes was wounded, the implant released Larr
aman cells into the bloodstream, which attached themselves to leucocytes in the blood and, once in contact with the air at the site of injury, immediately began forming an instant scar tissue, which staunched the flow of blood and served to protect the wounded area.

  When Niven had been injured in the withdrawal to Argus, among other ills his Larraman's organ had been severely injured, preventing it from releasing the cells that would aid the body in healing itself. It was for this, and other reasons, that the Librarian had slipped into a state of suspended animation. Apothecary Gordian had already prepared the chemical therapies that, along with an appropriate auto-suggestion spoken aloud in the Librarian's hearing, would trigger the sus-an membrane to restore Niven to full consciousness. But until Gordian was able successfully to restore Niven's implants to full functioning, and his Larraman's organ in particular, if brought to full awareness his body would simply shut down again almost immediately.

  Gordian yearned to be out in the field, reductor in hand, harvesting the precious gene-seed from the bodies of his fallen brothers - the risk to himself be damned! Or even fighting alongside the other battle-brothers, his bolter blazing in his hands. But Captain Thule's orders in this matter were clear. Their survival, Thule insisted, depended on the Librarian being restored to full health, and unless and until Niven had regained consciousness and the use of his facilities, and while the chance still remained that he might do so, Apothecary Gordian was to stay at his side.

  Nearly two days into the undertaking on Calderis, and already three battle-brothers of the Blood Ravens had fallen, their gene-seed lost to the Chapter forever. How many more would fall, and how many more gene-seeds would be lost, before it was all said and done?

  'Heal, damn you!' Gordian said, resisting the urge to strike a blow across the face of the unconscious Librarian. 'Heal, lest the rest of us perish in waiting for you to wake!'