Straken

by Toby Frost

  The siren hid Straken’s war cry. At the last moment the ork looked round, and Straken rammed the butt of his shotgun into its jaw. The beast dropped its prey and stumbled back, and Straken’s metal hand grabbed its forearm, the steel fingers tearing into alien muscle. Howling, the ork reached for its pistol, and Straken yanked his knife from his belt and buried it in the ork’s throat.

  An explosion made Straken turn. He looked round just in time to see the walkway collapse, pitching the ork gunners onto the ground. Marbo led the charge, hacking the fallen orks before they could respond. Weighed down by their cannons, they were cut to pieces almost instantly.

  The siren faded and died. But further back in the cavern, others rose to answer it.

  Lavant glanced at Straken. There was no need for either to mention the wire on the trapdoor. ‘They were waiting,’ the captain said.

  ‘The tunnel,’ Straken said. ‘We’ve got to give the signal.’

  Lavant nodded. ‘I think–’ he started, and then he threw his arm out, pointing. ‘By the Throne – look!’

  A vast form lumbered out of the dark, belching smoke. The ork Dreadnought came for them like a runaway train, the voice of its driver amplified into a deafening roar. It batted a pile of sheet metal aside with one arm and ploughed straight through what remained. The sound was like a car crash.

  ‘Move!’ Straken bellowed, jabbing his arm towards their destination. ‘Go!’

  The last few soldiers emerged from the trapdoor just as the Dreadnought reached them. It stomped the shed flat, the screams of men mingling with the whine of servos in its massive legs. It reached down with its gangling arms and grabbed at the Catachans. A fist designed for cutting plasteel scooped up three men and scissored them into bits. Lasgun fire pattered off the patchwork body.

  Straken glanced at Lavant. ‘We need explosives. What’ve you got?’

  Lavant opened the satchel at his side. Half a dozen melta bombs lay inside like eggs in a nest.

  ‘Good.’ Straken took one, Lavant another. ‘With me.’

  The Catachans ran from the machine, scattering out of reach. Teams covered each other with lasgun fire, but they hardly slowed the Dreadnought. A grenade burst against its side, to no effect. A pair of demolitions men lingered too long, and it punted them as though kicking a ball. Broken bodies flew from its massive foot. The Dreadnought’s speakers howled with laughter.

  It’s not seen me, Straken realised. ‘Now!’ he cried, and he ran out behind it.

  He rushed at the Dreadnought, Lavant beside him. The captain was a little faster. He darted at the massive legs, matching his speed to the rise and fall of its huge feet. At the last moment Lavant changed course, and as the leg smashed down beside him he slapped the bomb against the great cog of its ankle.

  Lavant threw himself aside, hit the ground and rolled. He came up as Straken primed his own bomb. Straken hurled it overarm, and as it struck the back of the ork machine, Lavant’s bomb exploded.

  The blast was small but massively powerful. In a rush of white fire the Dreadnought’s knee buckled and collapsed. It flopped forward, claws breaking its fall. The speakers bellowed. Six men rushed forward and hurled fresh explosives as it struggled to rise. The explosives hit the Dreadnought like razorwings diving on a stricken animal, and Straken looked away as a second set of explosions flared into life.

  The Dreadnought was silent now. But it had drawn others to the fight. Hulking shapes gathered behind the piles of junk, their gretchin minions hauling up heavy weaponry.

  ‘Move it!’ Straken called. ‘To the main tunnel!’

  In Tanner’s command squad, a scar-faced lieutenant watched the tunnel entrance. He twisted round, lowering his magnoculars. ‘Cap. We’ve got firing down there.’

  ‘How come? Give me those.’ Tanner knew the answer before the man handed him the magnoculars. For half a second he hoped that it was just another of the bloody arguments through which the orks gave and received commands, but that would be too much of a coincidence. Straken’s party had been spotted.

  The image enhancers on the magnoculars turned the tunnel into a moonlit shadow-world. Looking down, Tanner saw the ork watchtowers strung across the tunnel and, below them, the massive plasteel wall marking the edge of the ork mechs’ domain. Figures moved on the battlements, pointing further down the tunnel. An ork wearing a bizarre headset yanked a mounted gun off its tripod and disappeared from view.

  They must be sending troops after Straken, Tanner thought. Or else they just can’t bear to hold back when they know there’s a fight going on. Whatever it was, Tanner had no choice.

  ‘What’s going on, trooper?’ Morrell stood a few metres away, addressing the lieutenant.

  Tanner said, ‘They’ve spotted Straken’s team. Get the locals ready. We’re going in.’

  The commissar stared at the tunnel for a moment, as if expecting to see the flare that was supposed to signal them to advance. Hatred ran through Tanner’s body like a shot of poison. He’d spared Morrell once already. If the leash played up now, he’d nail him and damn the consequences. Right in front of the men, in front of the locals too, and they could report it to the Emperor Himself if they liked.

  ‘Right,’ Morrell said, and he turned awkwardly, leaning on his stick. ‘Good luck, captain. Emperor protect.’

  Tanner turned to his men. ‘Quickly! Get the trucks forward. I want full Sentinel cover on this! Move out!’

  The orks had hardly bothered reinforcing the rear of the tunnel. Straken couldn’t tell whether they had tried to make chicanes or just strewn the road with broken vehicles. Now the wreckage made excellent cover for his men.

  Other Guardsmen might have flinched at the idea of fighting orks at close range, but then they weren’t Catachans. The demolitions men rushed the back of the ork defences, and the battle for the tunnel began.

  ‘Mayne!’ Straken shouted, ducking for a moment behind a burned-out enforcer wagon. ‘Get Tanner on the vox. Tell him to get his people moving. We’ll distract the orks while he hits them from the front.’

  A frag grenade boomed up ahead. Orks grunted and bellowed in pain. ‘Say what?’ Mayne called back.

  ‘Do I have to do everything here? Just tell Tanner to get his lazy arse moving.’ He glanced over his shoulder, back at the great yard. Orks scurried between the piles of junk, setting their guns up. This bunch seemed less keen to run into close combat than the brutes in the main city, but they made up for it through firepower. Straken’s men would have to move quickly to avoid being trapped.

  He ran forward, and a pinging hail of bullets crashed into and through the enforcer wagon. Straken ducked back, cursed and pulled a grenade from his belt. He flicked the pin out, counted two seconds and tossed it over the wagon. A gretchin shrieked over the bang of the grenade, and an ork bellowed some sort of command.

  Straken ran out of cover and saw an ork champion shouting orders to a pack of gretchin clustered round a mortar. In a moment Straken saw the rear of the enemy battlements. Bulky green figures operated mounted guns on the wall, firing not at Straken’s team but down the tunnel, away from him.

  That means Tanner’s begun his attack. Thank the Emperor for that. Now, I just need to–

  The champion saw him and charged. Below the waist it was a mass of pistons; one hand had been replaced by a whining buzz-saw. The big ork let out a gurgle of laughter, almost childish, and Lavant ducked in from the side and emptied half a lasgun magazine into its flank.

  Most of the shots were wasted on armour plate or the brute’s thick hide, but it was enough to make the ork swing round to face this new threat. Enough time for Straken to leap in, ram his shotgun under the alien’s chin and blow out its savage brain.

  Something exploded beyond the battlements, and the ork gunners bellowed with joy. One stumbled back, overcome with amusement. Xenos filth, Straken thought, and he gave it a cartridge-worth of buckshot in the arse and thigh. It slipped, fell, rolled off the wall and hit the ground. Three of the demolitions te
am sprang on the ork before it could rise, jabbing and hacking.

  All around Straken, men yelled and fired and struggled to advance. A young lad, hardly out of his teens, threw a krak grenade at the wall. A grey-haired veteran, his bandana tied around his forehead, fell to the ground with an ork bullet in his spine. Shots came from behind Straken. The orks were bringing troops from the forges into the fight.

  ‘Move, damn it!’ Straken yelled. ‘Get up on the wall!’

  Speakers crackled and squealed along the barricades. More orks jumped down to meet Straken’s team, and as they did something huge hit the ork defences from the other side. The wall rocked.

  A gretchin leaped from a pile of junk, a rusty knife in its bony hand. It lunged at Straken, jabbering, and he blocked with his steel arm and shattered its skull with a single punch. Almost at the wall, he thought. Almost there.

  Gunfire turned the tunnel into a drumming, roaring echo chamber. Four rockets corkscrewed out of the ork defences and over Tanner’s head. Two hit the roof, throwing sparks and debris onto the men below – one was a dud, but the last smashed into the Sentinel Blood Ridge. The cockpit seemed to burst; for an instant the legs still stood, and then they buckled and crashed into the road. Nine metres behind, Sentinel Catachan Fang raked the battlements with its multilaser. Tanner saw orks drop out of view.

  Sergeant Dhoi ran over to him. Around them, men advanced in the strobing light of las-fire, while their comrades struggled to keep the enemy too busy to shoot back. They had to reach the walls. Once they were at the barricade, they could plant melta bombs, break through and relieve Straken. They just had to get there first.

  ‘Cap,’ Dhoi shouted, ‘the colonel’s just come in on the vox. He’s under heavy fire, wants us to back him up.’

  ‘What does he think we’re doing?’ Tanner called back. ‘Tell him we’re on the way.’

  Dhoi nodded. The sergeant’s left arm had been gashed by stone chips thrown up from a rocket, blood oozing over old tattoos.

  ‘And get those vehicles up here!’ Tanner added.

  An ork leaned over the barricade, trying to spray the attackers with a flamethrower, and its head popped. The Catachan snipers, stationed far back to cover the advance, were doing a brutally effective job.

  The trucks rolled forwards. They seemed painfully slow; as the rockets and heavy stubbers got to work on their improvised armour, Tanner wondered if they would just fall apart. Too bad the orks stole our damn tanks, he thought, or we could just blast on through.

  He ducked behind a heap of plascrete rubble, apparently dumped there to impede vehicles, and took a shot at a figure lining up a shoulder-mounted gun. It stumbled back, the gun belching out sparks. Not a kill, but it would at least slow the brute down.

  A truck rumbled past. ‘Go, go!’ Tanner shouted at the cab, pointing to the walls. ‘Ram it!’

  Soft-arsed locals, he thought. They wouldn’t have the guts to go right in. Catachans ran up behind the truck, using it as cover, keeping a little way back. A head appeared at the rear of the vehicle, stuck over the back, and Tanner recognised Jocasta Ferrens. She and two others heaved up a flag. Shouting hoarsely, she pointed to the wall, and the truck gathered speed. The old woman looked like a vengeful ghost.

  Vicious fire ripped from the barricades, the sheer volume of shots making up for their inaccuracy. Catachan Fang stumbled under a hail of bullets, righted itself and sprayed the battlements with high-power las-shots. On Tanner’s right, three mortars lobbed shells onto the ork defences from the cover of an overturned tram. A broad figure in a leather coat stood among them, shouting out ranges. Commissar Morrell drew his bolt pistol and shot an ork off the battlements with the quick precision of a duellist.

  Tanner glanced round and saw a Catachan setting up an autocannon, surrounded by debris. The other member of his gun team lay nearby, missing an arm and half his head. Tanner rushed over, grabbed the gun and helped the man haul it free. ‘Move up!’ he shouted at the advancing soldiers. ‘Get some bombs on the walls!’

  The first truck hit the battlement. The metal wall creaked, but the ork defences were as strong as they were haphazard-looking. Tanner ran over to the vox-trooper, grabbed the vox-mic and shouted, ‘Everyone out of the truck – get the charges set!’

  We have to get through, he thought. We have to, otherwise–

  Figures appeared on the battlements: slim and upright compared to the orks, but far more muscular than any gretchin. Catachans, Tanner realised.

  ‘Belay that order!’ he barked at the vox-trooper. ‘Tell the leash to stop those mortars. Everyone, give our boys some covering fire!’

  On the wall, three soldiers dragged an ork away from its mounted gun and heaved it over the battlements. Tanner grinned to see it fall; around him, both Catachans and militiamen cheered. Tanner took careful aim with his lasgun and put a burst into a firing slit. A massive alien stumbled about in the shadows behind the slit. More Catachans appeared on the wall, many of them armed with long knives. A gretchin fell shrieking from the parapet. From the looks of it, Tanner thought, the men were rather enjoying throwing the greenskins off.

  A figure suddenly climbed onto the wall. Catching hold of a sheet of iron, the man heaved himself up, standing entirely in view. Light glistened on one half of his bare torso. At his hip, the skull of a land shark stared down the tunnel. Colonel Straken raised his shotgun above his head, and yells of triumph answered him.

  Tanner rushed forward and his men followed close behind. It was time to open the gates.

  The orks were built for strength, but without much subtlety, and with the help of the butt of his lasgun Lavant managed to bypass the controls. Doors swung open in the wall. Other soldiers threw ropes down from the battlements for their comrades to climb. A truck rumbled up to the wall and its occupants put up ladders. The Catachans swarmed through and over the wall, and the rendezvous with Straken’s scouting party was complete.

  But they were far from safe. The smashed vehicles behind the wall were now being used as cover by dozens of orks. Worse still, the greenskins were trying to bring in tanks.

  Lavant motioned his men forwards. They advanced under the cover of mortar fire, running between heaps of machine parts like rats in a junkyard. A missile from one of the militia squads shot past Lavant’s team and smashed into the back of a looted Chimera as it backed out of the ork vehicle pool. The personnel carrier’s tracks burst apart, the rear door flopped open and a dozen orks tumbled out like organs from a gutted beast. Lavant emptied a power pack into the snarling greenskins, slapped a new one into place and called for his team to move in.

  The rows of captured tanks were near, Emperor be praised. An ork mech scrambled onto the back of a crippled Leman Russ and heaved an enormous gun onto its shoulder. The thing was an impossible mess of parts – part lascannon, part xenos weapon, connected with brass pipe and rolls of wire – but somehow it fired. Blue hissing beams pulsed out of the barrel, shattering stone like glass. Lavant saw a man fall down screaming, clutching at his face as the ground before him exploded.

  The ork let out a set of grunting laughs. Lavant stopped, took careful aim and hit it in the head. The brute turned, its left ear now a ragged mess, and looked him straight in the eye.

  Then it fired again. Corporal Hollis, three metres away, was blown to pieces. Lavant twisted away, felt blood patter against his side, and came up yelling. Grenades rolled out of Hollis’s torn combat vest. A melta bomb the size of a grox’s egg skidded across the ground and bumped against Lavant’s boot.

  For a fraction of a second, the world stopped. It’s got no pin, Lavant thought, it’s got no pin – and then the bomb rolled over, and he saw the pin, twisted but still intact. The rush of relief left him giddy, and filled him with a guilt he couldn’t understand. Images of the mission on Miral flashed through his mind, the bomb he’d set on the bridge exploding as his men checked it. Enraged, he lifted the lasgun, sighting as he pulled it into his shoulder, and shot the mech in the eye.

&
nbsp; The mech dropped out of sight. Orks scrambled onto the tanks, pulling open hatches and dropping inside. ‘They’re starting the armour!’ Lavant cried.

  Suddenly the attack became all the more desperate. If the orks could get the captured vehicles moving in any number, the raiders would have no real way of fighting them off. The greenskins would be unbeatable then, safe behind metal plate.

  A Sentinel loped past at full speed, cockpit bobbing with each stride. On the side, under a picture of a Catachan woman firing an autogun, were the words Simple Pleasures. It raked the tanks with fire from its multilaser, and beams punched through thick green bodies. Orks dropped down from the tanks as they tried to embark, but more climbed forward to take their place.

  Five men reached the tanks and Lavant saw a goggled ork step out of cover, blue flame roaring at the end of a crude flamethrower. He called out a warning, his voice lost in the cacophony of the attack, and the ork hosed the men down in a blossom of orange fire. They stumbled away, burning, their comrades struggling to extinguish the flames. Lavant shouted curses, and his lasgun cracked out along with half a dozen others. The ork fell against the flank armour of a Leman Russ, its chest smeared with foul xenos blood.

  Straken reached the tanks, and the fighting began in earnest. Suddenly they moved from the open space of the junkyard to the warren-like gaps between the vehicles. Both Catachans and orks were well-equipped for close range killing, and the battle among the tanks became a vicious game of hide-and-seek.

  Shotguns and Catachan knives were deadly now, but at such close range the bad ork marksmanship no longer mattered. Bullets and las-beams ricocheted off slabs of armour, dancing between the vehicles and through anyone in the way. Worse, under the rattle and crack of gunfire, Straken heard the low rumble of engines coming to life around him. The orks were starting the tanks.

  ‘Keep moving,’ he called to the men around him. ‘Flush ’em out.’

  He stopped, put his boot onto a huge bolt sticking out of a Chimera and began to climb up. Hatches and welding lines gave him handholds. Straken clambered onto the bent barrel of a side-mounted gun. Grunting, he heaved himself onto the top of the tank.