by Toby Frost
‘Mortars,’ he cried, ‘take ’em out!’ He wasn’t sure they heard him, and he grabbed a soldier who had braced his heavy stubber on a tank’s sponson and yelled at him. The man stared back, turned and scrambled onto the Griffon.
He squinted at the Catachans in the Triumphal Gardens a hundred metres away. The orks were now among the trees, and the fight had become wild and close. Despite the carnage around the gates, Straken had failed to stop the orks from getting in.
Idiot, he thought. If it became hopeless, he’d order the men to fire their mortars into the trees. ‘Keep firing, damn you!’ Morrell bellowed over his shoulder. Half a dozen tanks boomed in response; in the streets running parallel to their position, others followed suit. He gritted his teeth. More than likely, the orks would reach his own line soon. But he was damned if he’d give up. In a way, this was what he had been waiting for all his life.
‘Kill them all!’ Morrell shouted. ‘No surrender!’
Suddenly there were orks among the trees. A goggled trooper bounced up in front of Straken as if in zero gravity, belching fire from its back. A volley of las-shots punched through its jump pack, and on its next bounce it exploded. The pipes of promethium at the edge of the park caught light, and flames burst out among the orks as they charged off the road. Someone screamed on Straken’s right. A foul rubbery smell rose from the burning mushroom trees.
‘Ah, great,’ Straken growled. More orks followed; even the withering gunfire from the Catachan positions wasn’t killing the enemy fast enough. In the back of Straken’s mind a tiny, treacherous voice began to whisper that this was it, that they were going to be overwhelmed.
Well, if he was going to be overrun, he wouldn’t stand here and wait for it. ‘Catachans!’ he bellowed. ‘Do I have to do everything myself? Follow me!’
He rushed forward, towards the mob of howling greenskins at the edge of the park, and his men followed.
The orks didn’t expect to be counter-charged. Straken ran straight in, smashed the butt of his shotgun into a huge brute’s ragged ear and blew the brains out of another alien’s dented head. A hiss and a rush of heat shot past him, and he saw Sergeant Pharranis lower his plasma gun. An armoured warlord toppled back like a felled tree, his head turned to steam. Then Straken’s soldiers were around him, jabbing with knives and bayonets.
‘Straken!’
He looked round. Tanner ran over, his round face covered in sweat. Mortars boomed behind him, and something big caught light in the ork ranks. Copters streaked across the cavern roof, frantic as midges.
‘We need to fall back over there.’ He pointed towards the gunline. ‘Those orks’re breaking through.’
‘Right.’ Straken saw a huge ork grab one of his soldiers from behind. He rushed forward and punched his metal hand into the creature’s back, mangling its spine. It fell, howling, and the soldier scrambled on top to finish the alien off, machete in hand.
‘They’ll be on the tanks in a minute,’ Tanner yelled. He stopped to fire a burst into a pack of gretchin clustered around a wheeled gun. ‘We need to pull back to the next line.’
Straken looked at the chaos, at the great carpet of foot soldiers pouring down the slope between the gates, and said, ‘Damn it! You’re right, Tanner. Where the hell’s Lavant?’
‘I don’t know. He was with the miners – Straken, look out!’
A copter swung down from above, lining itself up. Straken threw himself down, Tanner beside him. Bullets and energy bolts cut the air. The ground burst around them. More orks were chopped down, along with several Guardsmen. The copter banked, engines spluttering, and Straken hauled himself upright.
Tanner spat out dirt. ‘We’ve not got long!’
‘I know. Get Morrell to move the tanks back to point two, and get them firing. Now.’
‘What if he doesn’t?’
‘Make him. And if he won’t go, you know what to do. I won’t have some leash making my people into his last stand!’
‘Right,’ Tanner said with a kind of grim satisfaction. ‘I’ll make sure.’
I bet you will, Straken thought, and for a second he wondered whether Tanner was about to settle his old grudge with the commissar. Then he saw more orks scrambling forward, shoving their way through the thick vegetation, and knew that he had bigger things to worry about. ‘Come on!’ he roared at his men. ‘Bring those green sons of bitches down!’
They fought wildly, but it was not enough. Even with the bottleneck of wrecked vehicles around the gates, the orks kept on coming. They dismounted and scrambled forwards on foot, slowed by the wreckage. Ork Dreadnoughts struggled to haul the damaged armour aside, while Morrell’s artillery tossed mortar shells and punched tank rounds into the enemy walkers, adding huge metal bodies to the heap. But although the defenders might slow the tide, they could not halt it.
Morrell walked down the line of guns as if on parade, glowering, his bolt pistol raised to shoulder height. The gunners were a motley but potent mix, and they churned out shells at a fearsome rate, but there was no denying that the xenos were gaining ground. Massed firepower poured into the horde, turning the gates into a wall of sound that rang with the howls and bellows of the enemy.
A missile corkscrewed out of an ork buggy and into the corner of an apartment block fifteen metres away. A sniper was blown to pieces: he simply seemed to turn to red smoke. Dust and bricks sailed out, bounced off the hulls of tanks, knocked the brains out of one militiaman and broke another’s arm. Someone shouted for a medic.
To his left, Jocasta Ferrens leaped up on the wreckage of a mining truck, banner in hand. She swung it like an axe, crying out to the militia around her. White hair streaming, the old senator looked magnificent – and a moment later she was hit in the stomach, fell backward and vanished among the tanks.
One of the locals stopped manning his mortar. He stood up and yelled something, pointing behind him. Morrell couldn’t make the words out over the boom and crackle of the guns, but he had seen men make that gesture many times before – and punished them for it. He fired his pistol in the air, and the roar of the bolt was almost lost in the chaos around him.
They’re going to break, he thought. Useless rabble. I’ll have to make an example–
‘Morrell!’
He turned, and looked into the face of Hal-Do Tanner.
The commissar froze. For a fraction of a second he felt almost guilty, caught red-handed, as though thinking of field execution had summoned Tanner here like an angry ghost. Then his confidence, and his anger, rushed back as the Leman Russ battle tanks fired again.
‘Pull your men back,’ Tanner shouted over the guns. ‘That’s an order.’
‘From you?’
‘From Straken. I’m here to make sure you do it.’
One of the ork foot soldiers let rip with an enormous stubber. The perforated barrel roared with flame. The range was bad and most of the bullets missed, but three men fell at one of the autocannon emplacements. Bullets sprayed the Sentinel Simple Pleasures and sent it staggering in a cloud of sparks. They sounded like hammers on its armour.
‘Morrell! I said pull back!’ Tanner waved his arm. ‘Everyone, fall back by squads to the second rank!’ He leaned close, and his voice was a growl. Morrell suddenly was aware of how large, and how near, the captain was. ‘Tell them, commissar.’
The commissar looked back to the men. He felt a weird pang. A voice in his head, so calm and clear that it hardly seemed like his own thoughts at all: You’re getting soft.
‘You heard the captain!’ he screamed. ‘Pull back, damn you!’
The loudspeakers squealed and the command rang out. A shell screamed overhead and landed somewhere in the cavern far behind.
Tanner turned away to help direct the falling back, and only then did Morrell see the vicious little knife in his hand. Tanner looked back, caught Morrell’s eye, and they both understood what the captain had been ready to do. Then the tanks rumbled into life around them, stinking fumes coughing from shivering
exhausts, and the fight raged on.
Morrell strode back, shouting out commands, and gasped. A shot of pain flicked up his leg, like an explosion from deep inside. Morrell stopped and looked down, the yelling of men and the rumble of tanks around him. His leg seemed fine. He leaned over and rubbed his knee cautiously. The pain did not return. Nothing to worry about, he thought. Time to get going.
One of the men cried out beside him. He looked round. The fellow, a local, pointed to the middle of the ork horde, yelling and shouting. A Catachan, bare chested and filthy, stopped still and stared, following the man’s pointing finger.
‘Fall back, damn it,’ Morrell snarled, and then he too saw what they’d spotted and froze.
A huge metal cone was rising from the centre of the horde. It looked like a spear-tip, but it was spinning. It rose three metres high, six, and orks fell around it.
What the hell was that? For a moment Morrell couldn’t take in the sheer weirdness of the sight. Where was it coming from? And then he saw the mining guild emblem on the side, and realised that it had drilled up from underground.
Ork soldiers leaped on the drilling machine, beating with their knives and cleavers, and then discovered that the nose cone was red hot. The driller cleared the hole and flopped onto its side. Doors burst open in its flanks. Men rushed out of the machine, their flamers hosing the orks down by the dozen. The horde paused, faltered and turned to the new enemy in its midst.
Morrell fired his pistol in the air. The Catachans glared at him; several locals flinched away. ‘Cancel that order!’ Morrell shouted, pointing at the drilling machine. A second plasteel cone broke the ground – Lavant’s detachment had arrived in force. ‘I repeat, remain at your posts! Give those men some covering fire!’
An ork officer in a massive suit of chequered armour charged towards Straken. He rushed in from the side, ducked its servo-assisted claws and ripped the chestplate out in a burst of sparks. He drove his metal fist into its face, fingers out, and the ork bellowed in pain. Sergeant Pharranis rushed in with five others, and the ork went down in a hail of las and plasma fire.
From the left, a second massive brute lumbered forwards. Straken sidestepped and raised his gun – but, quick as a snake, a human arm slipped around the ork’s throat from behind. Straken saw the edge of a blackened knife pass gently across the ork’s throat – and suddenly it fell shuddering to the ground. Its killer glared at Straken for a moment, and he recognised Marbo. The soldier turned and slipped back into the melee.
Straken paused, trying to take in the situation. He wanted to keep fighting, to plough on through the orks, hacking and tearing at them – but that would only get him killed. They’d tear him down sooner or later, like a pack of dogs. No, much as he wanted to sink his fang-knife into ork flesh, he was the commander, and it was his duty to lead.
Then the first of the drilling machines broke the surface, overturning an ork wagon and a dozen thuggish soldiers like a wave, and he knew exactly what to do.
‘Catachans!’ Straken bellowed. ‘You want to see how it’s done? Follow me!’
He advanced, his men around him, cutting a path towards the drills.
Lavant looked out across the battlefield. As the motors in the drilling machines fell silent, the sheer chaos outside hit him like a blow to the ears. The orks were pouring through the gates from above, but they had stalled, and the ordnance fire was murdering them.
Around him, men scrambled out of the hatches and got to work. Flamers cleared out the nearest orks, and heavy weapons teams slapped tripods down and slotted guns into place on top of them. In a few moments bolter and stubber fire cut down the surprised greenskins; half a dozen autocannon shells hit an ork Dreadnought from behind and its magazines detonated.
For a moment Lavant wondered where Straken was, but a glance at the mayhem around him showed how hopeless it was to try to pick anybody out. The battlelines were now a swirling, close-ranged brawl, where shotguns and knives were as useful as heavy weapons. Orks and men fired at each other at twenty-five metres, and those who broke through the gunfire were hacked down at arm’s length. Lavant raised his lasgun, pulled the stock in tight to his shoulder and put his eye to the sights.
An ork boss ran towards him, shoving its troopers aside. Lavant’s first shot caught its knee, causing the brute to stagger. His second blew out its brain. Next to die was a gretchin carrying a box of spare ammunition. Lavant hit the bearer in the chest, flicked his gun to auto and sprayed the ammo box until it burst into a crackle of wild shots. Orks threw themselves down around it, but the explosion still tore half a dozen of them apart.
Lavant reloaded. As he slapped a new power pack into place, a third drilling machine broke the surface, half collapsing an Administratum building in a cascade of brick and plasteel. A huge shape lumbered in from the right, bellowing. The squiggoth hit the emerging drill, and suddenly was rooting at the ground with its tusks while the orks in its howdah fired wildly. The monster made Lavant think of a grox digging out a poisonous groundsnake, only a thousand times larger. It stamped on the drill, buckling it. A few men struggled out as the machine caught light. No way to die, Lavant thought.
‘Lavant!’
He turned. Straken ran in from the side, bare chested, his knife and metal arm slick with ork blood. The colonel was panting, and a vein had burst in his one eye. He looked hardly less savage than the orks.
‘Sir! How the hell do we kill that thing?’ Lavant shouted, pointing to the squiggoth.
‘I’m working on it,’ Straken called back. A rocket burst against the beast’s flank, and one of the turrets on the howdah collapsed, pitching six orks onto the ground. ‘We had it stunned.’
‘Where’s Killzkar?’
‘I don’t know.’ Straken glanced round, his face set in a snarl. ‘Listen – regroup your people and head south to join up with Morrell. Tanner’s in the trees. I’ve voxed him to fall back.’ Straken looked around, and said, ‘There’s still too many, Lavant. We have to get Killzkar!’
Lavant nodded. As soon as Straken said it, the truth was obvious: with their warlord still alive to drive them on, the orks would win by sheer force of numbers. Hell of a last stand, Lavant thought.
‘Look!’ A shotgunner to Lavant’s right threw up his arm and pointed.
A huge figure rose to its feet at the nape of the squiggoth’s neck, half hidden by the beast’s metal crown. Killzkar shouted into a comm-link, and his voice howled out of speakers mounted on the squiggoth’s flanks. The warboss threw his arms up and his head back, and let out a roar of rage and hatred. Like some backwoods preacher, Killzkar hollered and ranted at the sky, and beneath him, his followers pressed their attack in a frenzy. Even the squiggoth, nearly concussed by the original barrage, blinked and stirred. Shells and rockets crashed against the monster’s fields; they did nothing to either Killzkar or his mount, and for a horrible moment Lavant wondered whether the ork gods really were protecting their champion.
‘We’ve got to kill that thing,’ Straken shouted.
Bullets rang off the hull of the drilling machine. An ork howled and moaned. ‘What about Tanner?’ Lavant replied.
‘He can handle himself. Priority one is Killzkar. He’s mine.’ Straken pointed. ‘We’ll get into those buildings, near the squiggoth, and work our way up.’
Lavant whistled and whirled his arm. ‘Move up north-westerly and take cover in the ruins. Go!’
In the three minutes since he had climbed out of the driller, Larn Tarricus had notched up three kills – not bad for a miner with a bald head and sore knees. He was furious, angrier and more determined than he had ever thought possible, but quick and precise too, the way he’d been taught to be. He flicked his autogun from one green face to the next, putting a burst into each ork as they swarmed towards the drilling machine.
There were more of them than he had thought possible – killing them was like shooting drops of water in a tidal wave. Seeing the screaming horde, he understood why Father Sarr had turned a
gainst the Imperium in despair. This, he realised, was the end of Excelsis City. In the back of his mind he knew that he would almost certainly die. But by the Holy Throne, he’d make sure these xenos scum remembered him.
Tarricus shouted every curse he knew and sprayed the enemy. He saw people he recognised torn down and killed: old Merro from the guild canteen, bitten in the throat by a squig; Calli Montara pulled back from the front line by medics, missing half of her left arm. Tarricus slapped a new magazine into his autogun and thought about his lost friends. Then he started shooting again.
Straken led the way, barking out orders over the gunfire. They hurried over rubble, past the wreckage of ork war machines. ‘First squad, hold this point,’ he shouted. ‘Give us covering fire.’ He pointed to the cracked dome of the Senate House. ‘Demo team, with me.’
The first squad quickly took up position in the wreckage. A pack of orks surged forwards and was promptly shot down. ‘We can hold here,’ Sergeant Carrow called. ‘Just come back for us when you’re done!’
Straken looked at Lavant. The captain checked his gun. ‘Let’s get Killzkar,’ Lavant said.
They ducked low and ran between the once-opulent buildings. Behind them, the battle roared on. Straken saw tattered scarlet curtains hanging out of a looted hotel. Half of a saint remained in a stained glass window: robes without a body. The twenty men went quickly, watching windows and roofs.
Something the size of a fist dropped among them, bounced on the cracked pavement with a loud metal tink and burst.
The grenade threw men onto the ground and into walls. Two died instantly. Smoke poured out, and in it Straken saw brutish bodies. Ropes dropped from the rooftops, and orks slid down them. Many wore gas masks and goggles – all had red paint smeared on their scalps.
Straken flicked to image enhance. Silhouettes dodged and struck in the smoke. The orks made the demolitions men look slight. He raised his shotgun and blasted a huge alien in the side, then saw an ork wrestling with one of his soldiers against the wall, ran up and threw it off the man. The trooper immediately lunged, and the alien dropped to the floor, moaning and croaking.