The orks coming behind overcorrected. One of them turned a hard right, and sailed into the air over the gorge. The ork screamed for the entire length of the plunge. Two more bikes went down, sliding and tumbling into the destruction of the others. Their explosions washed over the next. The orks’ momentum drove them into a growing wreck. Now the sounds of metal and flesh were shrieks instead of roars. More mines ripped out the bottom of one of the buggies. It veered sideways and flipped over, crushing driver and gunner.
The way forward was blocked by a tangle of twisted vehicles and burning flesh. The orks at the front tried to stop, but the others, further back, could not see what was happening. They heard the sounds of war, saw flames and smoke, and pushed forward even harder. The carnage escalated. And when at last the horde began to react, to pull back from throwing itself on its own pyre, Krevaan’s whisper came over the vox: ‘Now.’
Along almost the entire length of the ork advance, the Raven Guard struck. They began with frag grenades. The blasts rippled over hundreds of metres. The jostling orks were so crowded together that their bodies muffled the explosions. Limbs and organs rose into the air, bubbles in a tar pit. The horde reacted with rage and confusion. The orks were being hit everywhere, and they could not see their enemy. Some of the greenskins blamed each other. They caused eddies of riot as they fought and died.
‘Fire,’ said Krevaan.
The night ripped the orks to pieces. Concentrated bolter fire smashed into them. The mass-reactive shells did more than slaughter. Their impact was such that the ork line was pushed back, closer to the drop. The more heedless ran, so intent on finding their enemies that they did not look at the ground beneath their feet. They pitched themselves into the void.
The casualties were great. The surprise was total. It was also brief. The orks recovered quickly. They were not concerned with the deaths of their brothers, as long as they were still in the fight. They began to return fire. Their weapons were crude. The guns were ridiculous in comparison to the bolters. But the orks still held the numerical advantage, and the barrage of bullets and flame took a toll. Behrasi heard the vox-chatter of damage reports begin. There was a sharp cry as one of his battle-brothers in another squad was brought down.
‘Take them,’ Krevaan said.
After one more burst of fire, the Raven Guard charged. Darkness snapped out from the trees at the orks. The Space Marines moved as one, maglocking their bolter rifles to their thighs and striking with lightning claws. A wall of ceramite bladed with adamantium turned the ork lines into meat. The Dreadnoughts closed too, unstoppable as glaciers. The horde staggered again.
‘Space,’ Krevaan had said, ‘will be the other side of our attack.’
It was. There was nowhere for the orks to take another step back, but they did, and they fell by the scores. The war music changed again. The yells of rage were interrupted by the wet, staccato thuds of bodies hitting the rocks far below.
‘Forward!’ Behrasi called. ‘Push them forward!’ He slashed and stabbed with short, quick gestures. He opened throats and punctured eyes. He used the full weight of his power armour, taking no step without being grounded. He was a mass that would not retreat. Eighth Company advanced into the orks at a slow, measured pace while their claws struck with eyeblink speed.
The orks fell beneath Behrasi’s tread. And they fell from the cliff. Krevaan’s trap was wiping them from the face of Lepidus. Still, they fought. They fought well. The more heavily armoured orks were with the main force, destroying the eldar. These were the lighter infantry. They were here because they could move faster. They were no match for Adeptus Astartes. But Behrasi’s initial impression was correct. They were bigger, more ferocious. They struggled against him with an incandescent energy. Each greenskin was war given muscle, flesh and bone. They chopped at him with cleavers and clubs, shot him point-blank with shotguns that more than once blew up in the wielder’s hands. His armour turned away the blades and projectiles. The xenos filth could do little against him. Their battle was futile, their end preordained. Yet they attacked as if the Raven Guard were the ones on the defensive. They roared with a savage joy. They fought as if their victory was at hand until the actual second of their demise.
The Raven Guard finished their advance. Behrasi stopped one stride away from the drop. The mop-up was brief. He and his battle-brothers gutted the last few orks and tossed them over the edge. It was in the final minutes of the operation, when the mass of orks was reduced to individuals, that he found himself most troubled.
The orks were laughing at him.
Their numbers were down to a tiny handful, the massacre clear, and the orks showed no frustration or any other sign of acknowledging their defeat. But they laughed.
Behrasi silenced one more greenskin, and there were none left to fight. He looked up and down the line. The battle was over. The flanking force was gone. Apothecary Madaar was dealing with the wounded. There were only two battle-brothers who had fallen, and whose progenoid glands he had to recover. The ambush had been a near-perfect success.
The laughter of the orks rang in Behrasi’s ears. He tasted something bitter. Its flavour was uncannily like that of defeat.
Krevaan emerged from the smoke that surrounded the burning vehicles. ‘Your evaluation, brother-sergeant?’ he asked.
‘Their confidence in the face of their extermination…’
‘The laughter was troubling, wasn’t it?’
‘What is it that they know?’
Krevaan shook his head. ‘There was nothing sly or cunning in that laughter. I believe it emerged from a fact of their being.’ He looked back towards the struggle near the bridge. ‘The question is not about what they know, but what we don’t. We are too much in the dark.’
On the vox’s company channel, Caeligus spoke. ‘The eldar are moving towards the bridge.’
Krevaan thought for a moment before answering. The flames cast deeper shadows over his face. ‘Let them cross,’ he said. ‘Help them cross. Then blow the bridge.’
Behrasi blinked in surprise. Caeligus said, ‘Shadow Captain?’
‘We will be with you before long.’
After Caeligus signed off, Behrasi said nothing. Krevaan heard him all the same. ‘You have a question for me, brother-sergeant?’
‘Why are we helping the eldar? Why not force the two races to finish their war? The orks would be weakened, and that is useful.’
‘Because of what we were saying a moment ago. I wish to know what is happening on this planet.’ Then he smiled. That was never a simple expression of pleasure with Krevaan. It was more like the arming of a weapon. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘I believe the eldar can be more usefully deployed.’
Chapter Two
Looking across the bridge, Havran said, ‘They won’t make it.’
Caeligus thought he might be right. The fight in the woods, followed by a huge surge from the orks, had broken the coherence of the eldar lines. The vehicles had little room to manoeuvre. The orks were immobilising them and bringing them down with the force of a mob as much as they were with the fire from their tanks and their walking cans. A number of the eldar were on foot now, and even more vulnerable. Almost all of them were engaged in individual battles. They were trying to support one another, but the disorder brought by the orks was only growing worse. The eldar were drowning in the green tide. They had waited too long to retreat.
Help them cross. Krevaan’s order. It would take more than covering fire to do that now. Caeligus would have to engage the orks with his squad directly. To take the field in direct support of a xenos race revolted him. The Shadow Captain had his reasons. He always did. But not knowing what they were grated. Caeligus believed in the power of information too. He believed in being able to judge the value of decisions. And of orders.
He did not, however, believe in disobeying orders. ‘The eldar seem bent on losing,’ he said to Havran. ‘Th
at would not be to our advantage.’ Or so I gather, he thought. ‘Brothers,’ he called to the squad, ‘the orks have been ignoring us. That is an insult. I will not tolerate it. Will you?’
They answered by joining him in formation at the bridge. ‘They do not look to the skies,’ Vaanis said.
‘They should,’ Caeligus snarled.
The jump packs of the assault squad flared. The ten Space Marines rose over the gorge. At the apex of their arc, Caeligus’s discontent evaporated. The reasons for the action became insignificant. He was airborne. His talons were extended. He was a raptor streaking down on prey.
‘Victorus aut mortis!’ he yelled in the same moment as the rest of the squad. The war cry froze the orks with surprise. They looked up, confused. Caeligus relished the stupid look on the greenskin’s face below him in the second before he hit the ground, driving his lightning talons all the way through the ork’s skull.
Squad Caeligus struck in a wedge formation. Vaanis and Havran anchored the two ends, on either side of the bridge access. The sergeant was at the head. They cut into the ork horde. The greenskins within the angle suddenly found themselves isolated from their brothers. Their confusion and rage did not last long. The Raven Guard killed them within seconds. Even as the rest of the mob began to react, the squad took to the skies again.
The orks started firing upwards. They were disorganised. Their attention was torn between the eldar on the ground and the airborne Space Marines. The eldar seized the opportunity. A brace of the larger skimmers broke through the tide and took up position in the space the Raven Guard had cleared at the bridge. Their turrets fired in a rotating, interlocking pattern, holding the ground, expanding the territory.
‘The tank,’ Caeligus ordered.
A battlewagon had emerged from the forest. Its side guns were tracking one of the smaller skimmers. Its cannon was turning towards the bridge. The squad came down on all sides of it. Caeligus and Kyremun took the roof. Kyremun butchered the greenskins riding on top of the tank, while Caeligus balanced on top of the main gun. He walked its length as it swung to the left, acquiring its firing targets. At the end, he dropped to all fours and threw a krak grenade into its mouth. On the flanks, the other gunners were silenced by bolter shots directly into the firing windows.
‘Up!’ Caeligus warned.
The squad lifted off. The gun fired at the same moment as the shaped charge of the grenade blasted inward. The top half of the tank exploded. The twisted gun flipped forward to crush the orks who had been rushing in to repel the attackers.
Many of the orks were losing interest in the eldar. They collided with each other as they tried to follow the flights of the Raven Guard. The disorder in their ranks grew with the rising casualties. Granted breathing space, the eldar gathered their force together. Their grip on the land before the bridge became more assured. Vehicles and foot soldiers converged on that point.
The orks raged. Their attacks became more frenzied. They did not become more accurate. They killed each other in their efforts to take down Caeligus and his brothers. And so they added to their own confusion.
The Raven Guard angled down to a point where the orks were spilling out of the forest, in a direct line with the bridge. As they came in, a huge shape emerged from the woods. The ork wore armour plating thick enough for a tank. It raised a huge, twin-linked gun. It moved with greater speed and precision than anything should beneath that much metal. It fired. The rounds weren’t simple bullets. They were a meteor storm. Kyremun took the full impact of the volley. It smashed into him with such force it seemed that it might arrest his plunge. Instead, his descent became a tumble, shedding chunks of armour. Caeligus took several rounds to the shoulder. The brute mass of the projectiles sent him into a rapid spin. He was still spinning when he hit the ground on his back.
He was on his feet in an instant. Kyremun had landed in front of the giant ork. His helmet had been shot away, so had one of his legs, but he had his bolter out and was firing at the monster. His shells penetrated the armour, but did not slow the ork. Its left hand was a giant power claw. It clamped its grip around Kyremun’s head and squeezed.
The wet snaps and cracks cut through the rumble of the war.
Kyremun’s corpse fell backwards, blood flooding from the headless neck. Around the giant, a group of orks in welding masks trained flamers on the rest of Caeligus’s squad. He hissed a curse for his own ears. He would not give the giant ork the satisfaction of seeing anything from him other than cold rage, and the arrival of merciless death.
He leaned forward and used a short burst from the jump pack. The angle was perfect. His flight took him straight at the ork’s head. He shot over the huge plate beneath the ork’s lower jaw. He stabbed down with his talons as he flew by. Adamantium punched through the top of the ork’s skull and severed its brain in two.
His descent pulverised one of the flamer orks. The greenskin’s reservoir burst, splashing burning promethium over its kin further back. Caeligus turned from the screams to face the armoured giant. It was still upright, still moving, still dangerous, but its actions were agonised and mindless. It stumbled in random directions. It flailed with its power claw. Convulsions pulled the trigger on its weapon. Bullets thudded into anything before it. Orks scrambled out of the way of its footsteps. Those not fast enough were trampled to death. Those in the way of its lunatic fire exploded when the bullets hit. The rounds were large enough to shatter ceramite. They turned flesh into mist.
The bulk of eldar survivors had reached the bridge. They were crossing now, those on foot first.
‘We are done here,’ Caeligus voxed.
The Space Marines took off once more, dropping frag grenades behind them, giving the orks still more reason to fear the sky. Riding flame, they flew back across the gorge. The first of the eldar had reached the other side of the bridge. Squad Caeligus provided further covering fire, sending bolter shells into the orks that tried to follow. The lance turrets of the skimmers sterilised the approach to the bridge of greenskins. The horde bayed in frustration, but didn’t stop running forwards, firing all the while. They died. More came. More died. But the advance was relentless, the embodied violence always reaching forward, their bullets finding targets, and then another tank was smashing its way out of the trees.
The last of the jetbikes crossed the bridge. The first of the larger skimmers backed onto the span, still firing. As the second moved into position, it was struck by the tank’s cannon shell. The eldar vehicle exploded. The ruptured lance released a burst of energy that brought day to the battlefield and wiped out the leading cluster of orks. Its death bought the other skimmer the time it needed. It picked up speed, gaining distance from the orks.
The horde pursued. The greenskins ran through the burning wreckage. Some fell, covered in flames. The rest came on. The orks in the lead were a third of the way across when the skimmer reached the other side.
‘Now,’ Caeligus told Vaanis.
The Raven Guard detonated the melta bombs. They ate through the span. It took a few seconds longer than Caeligus had anticipated; the material of the bridge was stronger than it should have been. But then it surrendered, and the middle half fell into the gorge.
The orks had too much momentum to stop. They ran off the edge. More than a hundred orks plummeted before the rest managed to restrain their energy enough to slow down. Stymied, they roared their curses at the eldar and Raven Guard. Infantry and tanks kept firing. The shouts of the orks grew ever louder, as if their anger itself would close the distance between themselves and their prey.
Caeligus would not have been surprised if it had.
Krevaan stood at the melted edge of the bridge and looked into the depths of the gorge. Caeligus and Behrasi were beside him. The other sergeants were keeping the eldar under close watch. Battered as they had been, the eldar still boasted a small but extremely mobile force of two dozen jetbikes in addition to the
large skimmer.
The orks had abandoned the far side of the gorge. Krevaan knew they had not given up on Reclamation. They were seeking another road into the city. They would find it. They would have to travel many kilometres, but the land to the east was a gentle rise. The orks would have to be stopped before they entered the city, or Reclamation would die.
Krevaan watched the scene in the gorge carefully. ‘They are a resilient race,’ he said.
‘But this is ridiculous,’ Caeligus protested.
Improbable, certainly. Grotesque, very likely. Ridiculous, no. Krevaan held the orks in contempt, but they were not creatures of ridicule. To consider them as such was to underestimate them. Krevaan knew better than that. And the orks below were proof that they should be regarded as a very great threat. Many of them had survived the fall. Krevaan counted fifteen climbing back up the wall of the gorge.
‘That will have to be dealt with,’ he said.
‘Flamers?’ Behrasi suggested.
Krevaan nodded. ‘Yes. Burn them as they near the top. All of them.’
‘How are any of them still alive after that fall?’ Caeligus was outraged.
‘Chance?’ said Behrasi.
‘No. Look at them.’ Krevaan pointed. ‘The survivors are all large specimens. The strongest of these orks are unusually strong. And the pattern is consistent. We are not dealing with random mutations or lucky accident. There is an increase in power and aggression across the entire greenskin force on Lepidus. Given what we have seen, the surprise would have been if the strongest of the brutes had not survived this fall. It was only gravity, brothers. Did you expect to crush this foe with so simple a weapon?’
‘But what is making them so formidable?’ Behrasi asked.
‘That is the question.’ Krevaan started back towards the gathered forces. ‘Abnormal orks. Eldar fighting to the death to save a human city. Two phenomena with no clear explanation. Is it possible that that these two mysteries are not linked? Frankly, no.’
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