Molten lava, bright red with its own luminescence. It burst through the sundered rock, broke over the ork’s back, and the creature let out a howl of incandescent pain. Lorenzo didn’t stop to ask how it was possible, how the planet could have pumped its own lifeblood so close to its surface. This was Rogar—and he could feel the lava’s heat scorching his face even before it reached him. He kicked out at the scalded, screeching ork, and landed his boot dead centre where all its images combined. It staggered, fell backwards, and its bulky form all but plugged the fissure as Lorenzo had planned. The ork’s screams were quelled, its body shuddered and fell still, as liquid fire crept over its shoulders and between its legs.
Lorenzo and Armstrong had a moment’s respite. Many of the orks behind them had held back, or tried to back up along the narrow tunnel, when they’d seen the lava. They were colliding with each other, knocking each other down. From the chorus of screams that suddenly rose from up there, somewhere in the darkness, Lorenzo guessed that another lava spring had just opened behind them.
The Jungle Fighters ran—but Lorenzo dragged his comrade to a halt as, suddenly, he saw where they were. Above them was the hole in the roof through which they had dropped: the one that led up to the natural gallery. A way to circumvent the main chamber and all the confused, frightened, angry orks within.
He gave Armstrong a boost, and the veteran shouldered his way up through the narrow opening, attained the ledge above, then turned and reached down with his good arm for his comrade. As Lorenzo took it and scrambled up after him, an ork came roaring out of nowhere and swung its axe at his dangling legs. The shifting earth threw off its aim, and Lorenzo stamped on the ork’s face and pushed himself up the final section of his climb. He fired his lasgun down the hole behind him to discourage pursuit, then turned and followed Armstrong along the narrow passageway—to find, to his horror, that it came to an abrupt end.
The gallery, their route to freedom, had crumbled away. They were looking out of a hole in the side of the main chamber, at another hole too far to reach by jumping, the intervening expanse of wall too sheer to climb along even if it hadn’t been shaking madly. Lorenzo’s foot touched something: the lantern they had passed earlier, still on its side, wedged into position by a stubborn outcrop. He followed its light beam, and on the floor of the chamber he saw a molten river.
The chamber had split down the middle, and its halves were divided by a roiling, bubbling lava flow. Dozens of orks had been trapped on its far side, and panic had broken out. An ork tried to leap the stream, but fell short, howling as its legs were dissolved, the rest of its body sinking after them until only a thin wisp of steam remained of it.
Lorenzo had his own problems. An ork head popped up through the hole in the floor behind him. He and Armstrong fired at it—and, holding on with both hands, there wasn’t much it could do to defend itself. Even in death, though, it kept coming, the head followed into the passageway by a pair of broad shoulders, then a green-skinned torso. Lorenzo realised that the corpse was being pushed up by more orks below, shielding them as they followed it. The muzzle of a crude ork gun appeared over the hole’s edge and fired blindly. Bullets ricocheted around the confined space, and Lorenzo drew a sharp breath through his teeth as his shoulder was nicked.
“We’re easy targets up here,” muttered Armstrong. “We can hold off these greenskins for a while—but our backs are exposed to the main chamber. Once the orks down there see us, we’ll be caught in a crossfire, dead meat.”
He was saying nothing Lorenzo didn’t know. He cast around for something, anything—and his eyes found the lantern. It was trailing tangled cables in each direction around the great cavern, clockwise, the next lantern still clung to the wall, but anticlockwise, the nearest two had been wrenched free from their moorings and were hanging suspended. Lorenzo pulled at the cables in that direction, and found plenty of slack.
Armstrong glanced at him, saw what he was thinking and nodded his approval. “That might get one of us out of here,” he said. “Go. I’ll buy you some time.”
With that he was off, before Lorenzo could stop him—back down the passageway, leaping onto the first ork as it hauled itself up out of the hole, taking it by surprise, forcing it back down but falling with it, toward the bloodthirsty pack that Lorenzo knew must have gathered below. His instinct was to go after his comrade, to do what he could to help him—but not only was it hopeless, he would have been doing him a disservice. Armstrong had sacrificed himself to save Lorenzo, to give him a chance at least—because Lorenzo had let him, because he hadn’t spoken up first, because he hadn’t told his comrade that his life was over anyway, that if the orks and the quake didn’t finish him the poison would.
Armstrong was relying on Lorenzo to tell that story—which was all that kept him going now as he yanked on the lantern, tore out the taut cables from one side of it and gathered the loose ones to the other. He looked for a safe landing spot, clear of orks and lava and falling rocks.
That was when he saw it. Amid the chaos below, a great brutish ork, trapped on the far side of the lava stream but walking taller, more confidently, than its fellows. It was surrounded by an entourage seven-strong—one of which was festooned with bizarre totems and carried a staff.
As Lorenzo watched, two of the guards seized another gretchin, and bore it face-first into the lava. First the larger ork then the shaman used it as a stepping-stone, hopping onto its back and across to safety before it boiled away. Then the big ork turned and shouted impatient curses at its guards, and they tried to follow but without any such assistance. Four of them made the leap, two did not.
Lorenzo didn’t care about them. He had eyes only for their master, with its tough, leathery skin and its gleaming new axe, twice the size of the other orks’ weapons and with ceremonial trappings. He had no doubt that this was him. The warboss. Big Green. He even knew, with a flash of insight, what the strange-looking ork with the staff had to be, why it was getting preferential treatment. The source of Big Green’s vaunted intelligence. An ork psyker—a weirdboy!
Everything he had ever wanted. His blaze of glory…
Lorenzo wrapped his hands around the entwined cables, calculated the trajectory of his swing. The ork leader was facing away from him, at the edge of the lava flow. One kick between the shoulder blades, with enough weight behind it, would send him reeling. Hit him at the right angle, and the weirdboy might even go with him. And the fact that Lorenzo would doubtless follow both orks into the fire—well, that was good too. A fitting end for a hero.
Only, he realised, with a pang of despair, who would see it? Who would tell the story of this, his greatest moment? He hesitated.
Which, in turn, made him angry with himself. Not this time, he thought. His last chance to count, to make his life mean something. At least he’d know.
So, Lorenzo pushed himself off from the rock, and his heart leapt as he saw that his path was true, that even the quake hadn’t shaken him off-course. He saw his destiny rushing towards him, and in that moment he knew that someone, somewhere, would tell a story about this some day.
Even if it was only the orks themselves.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Everything had changed in an instant.
Lorenzo was on the ground, fighting unconsciousness, not sure how much of the violent, lurching motion around him came from the earthquake and how much from inside him. He tried to put together the pieces of what had just happened.
He had seen it lain out before him: the rest of his life. His heroic death. The ork warboss, growing larger and closer until there was nothing else in the world, nothing else that mattered. Only the warboss, and the river of fire.
Only Big Green, somehow, had heard him coming, or maybe a follower had shouted a warning or his psyker had muttered a prediction, because he had turned—and, with no time to swing his axe nor to sidestep, he had leapt instead, and met his oncoming attacker head on. His muscular arms had encircled Lorenzo’s legs, and they had hit the gro
und together but the warboss had landed on his feet while Lorenzo had been smacked down onto his back.
He expected to die a failure—until he realised that the warboss had staggered, at least. He had taken a step back to brace himself—and his foot had slipped into the lava stream. The psyker let out a panicked chittering sound at his master’s peril and hobbled away. Lorenzo held his breath but the warboss’ self-control was incredible. He triumphed over what must have been searing agony to keep his balance—and he loomed over the Catachan with his axe raised high, though one of his legs now tapered to a dripping, cauterised stump at the ankle. Lorenzo still didn’t know what to do, because he hadn’t planned for this situation, hadn’t planned to survive this long.
So it was just as well that his instincts took over—and he kicked out at the warboss’ intact leg with all his might, and he managed to fell him but not backwards as he’d hoped. Lorenzo scrambled on top of the huge ork, still hoping that somehow he could roll them both into the lava—but Big Green was too heavy and unyielding, and Lorenzo was seized from behind by two of his four remaining bodyguards.
He kicked and yelled as he was dragged from his foe—as more orks streamed towards him from all directions, disregarding their own peril in the face of his threat to their leader. Rarely had he seen such a display of loyalty from the greenskins. Now a curtain of snarling faces closed in front of Lorenzo, and he couldn’t see the ork leader anymore, and he knew it was all over.
The sounds of las-fire seemed distant at first, as if they came from a world that was no longer his concern. It was only when the orks began to scatter, when one of those that held him was hit and loosed its grip, that Lorenzo realised a new element had entered the equation. Or rather, two new elements. Sergeant Greiss and Braxton. Lorenzo didn’t know where they’d come from—a tunnel opening beneath the collapsed gallery was his best bet—but they had bought him another chance when he had thought he was out of chances, and he wasn’t about to waste it.
He tried to throw his remaining captor, but failed. Again, his instincts came to the rescue, predicting the patterns of the quake, telling him when the ground would buck beneath the ork’s feet, which way to push when it did. The greenskin squealed as it fell, surfed the shifting floor on its back and wound up with its head in the lava.
Lorenzo drew his gun, and immediately found a target. The greenskin psyker. He had thought it long gone, but it must have run into the new arrivals and reversed its flight. At least, he thought as he killed it, that was the end of the warboss’ advantage. He was just a normal warboss now. But his squad’s orders hadn’t been to kill the psyker, they’d been to kill Big Green himself, and he intended to do just that.
The warboss couldn’t have gone far—not with only one foot. Indeed, there he was, just a few metres distant, being helped along by two guards. But Greiss was closer, and Lorenzo could see the familiar gleam in his sergeant’s eyes, knew he had spied an opening and would take it, heedless of the cost to himself. While Lorenzo’s path was blocked again, and he couldn’t clear, it in time—though he ploughed into the orks anyway, lasgun flaring, fang flashing, and he wasn’t sure if the red mist he could see was a product of his own unreasoning anger or his poisoning or just an afterglow from the lava stream.
All he knew, in that desperate moment, was that he had to reach the warboss before his sergeant did. He couldn’t help himself. Greiss was tired of life, wanted to go out on a high—but he had earned his name. Weren’t there enough stories told of him already?
Greiss was wading through orks like they were nothing. They’d given up trying to shoot him, because it was hopeless aiming through the quake, and they were throwing themselves at him to be hurled aside or gutted or just trampled as they mistimed their rushes and fell at Greiss’ feet. Lorenzo was so busy watching this performance that he was barely aware of his own actions, moving on autopilot, stabbing at an ork throat here, reacting to the whistle of a descending axe there. It was only as a substantial chunk of the chamber’s roof fell, as Lorenzo danced out of its way and a dozen orks were crushed, that he realised what he’d been doing: drawing his foes to him, bunching them together, setting them up for a fate no man could have predicted… could he?
Dust billowed black around him, rubble made his footing treacherous, and the last of the lanterns toppled from its high perch, smashed and died. The only light now came from the lava—and Lorenzo almost plunged into it as, scrambling to find the warboss, he slid on a layer of scree. Then the earth cracked again, and suddenly the molten stream had a hundred narrow tributaries, crazing the cavern floor. Lorenzo vaulted them two at a time, he knew where he was going, almost as if he could sense his prey’s ponderous, one-legged footsteps through the ground itself.
There he was—stranded on an island, only one guard left at his side, the lava flows around him thin and shallow but impassable to one with his disability. As Big Green saw Lorenzo, his eyes widened with fear and hatred, and he yelled and gesticulated to his guard, ordering it to lay itself down as a bridge for him. The ork signalled its refusal by swiping at the warboss’ neck with its axe, evidently, loyalty had its limits, especially when an ork sensed that its leader’s day was done.
But Big Green had earned his position for a reason. Some warbosses had been known to go toe to toe with Space Marines. Displaying the same lightning reflexes with which he’d met the Jungle Fighters’ first attack upon him, the warboss caught the axe’s blade between both hands, a centimetre from his slavering sneer, and twisted the weapon right out of his startled guard’s hands.
Lorenzo was firing frantically—but like the orks, he found his shots knocked astray, the warboss had his traitor guard by the neck, had wrenched its arm up behind its back, and was pushing it down, and it looked like he was about to get his bridge after all, so Lorenzo sprang for the warboss’ back.
He timed his leap just right, to benefit from an upsurge beneath his feet, Big Green whipped around and swung his giant axe, but Lorenzo was higher than he could have expected, and the blade passed beneath his feet—and then he was on the warboss’ shoulders, and he plunged his knife into the ork’s eye and tried to work its point up into his brain.
Big Green howled and threw back his arms, trying to swat the Jungle Fighter from his back. Lorenzo held on as long as he could, but between the warboss and the quake it was like trying to straddle three grox at once. He pulled his knife free and jumped before he could be thrown, landing nimbly on his feet.
He parried an axe thrust with his knife, and simultaneously kicked out at the warboss’ injured leg, making him howl again. But Big Green didn’t fall. He barely even flinched—and Lorenzo had been counting on at least a momentary respite to drop back into a defensive position. The axe blade whistled toward him again, and the flat of its blade struck a resounding blow against his wrist, splintering bones, and his knife flew out of his grasp.
It was spinning towards the lava, and Lorenzo leapt after it without thinking, dropping his lasgun, catching the knife with his off-hand in midair, twisting to avoid a scalding death himself. He landed on his back, winded as the ground rose up to meet him. The warboss lunged, and Lorenzo barely brought up a foot in time, tried to kick the warboss away, but the ork batted it aside. Then he was on Lorenzo, the sharp points of his tusks almost touching the Catachan’s face, dripping drool onto his cheek and blood from his punctured eye, and Big Green’s axe haft was pressed down across Lorenzo’s throat, crushing his windpipe.
All Lorenzo could do was take that haft himself, try to force it upwards, away from him, but the warboss was too strong, and he could feel the breath being choked out of him. His lungs were empty, burning, and his head felt light. He held on, because every fraction of a second he could keep Big Green here dealing with him was a further delay to the warboss’ escape. Lorenzo may have failed to kill this monster, but he could be the hero who engaged it in single combat, kept it trapped long enough for the earthquake to finish it. A forlorn hope, he realised.
Then
, suddenly, the pressure on his throat was released, and Lorenzo tried to see what was happening, but without him knowing it his eyes had closed and he couldn’t open them because they were prickling with tears and his entire body was preoccupied with just trying to breathe. His stomach convulsed as he heaved in air, and spluttered on its gritty texture.
By the time he could look again, he knew what he would see: Sergeant Greiss, wrestling with the warboss. Greiss had landed a few good blows, too—the warboss had a livid scar on his cheek to add to the one Lorenzo had left across his eye. But he was fighting on, as if nothing would ever stop him.
Lorenzo’s legs were too weak to stand, so he contented himself with hitting his opponent low, the combination of his efforts and Greiss’, and Big Green’s missing foot, flooring the big ork again. They piled on top of him, fists and knives flying, but they couldn’t still his axe—and its blade swung and impacted with Greiss’ head, cleaving his miner’s helmet in two, cutting into his scalp and, with a resounding clang, hitting the metal plate just below the surface. Greiss fell back, blood matting his grey hair as Lorenzo used the momentum of the warboss’ swing against him, and with a tremendous, last-ditch heave, tipped and rolled him into one of the narrow streams. The ork leader was facedown in the lava but still thrashing, and Lorenzo placed his good hand on the back of the warboss’ head and, releasing a strangulated roar of utter hatred from the back of his throat. He pushed down…
Then he was scrambling towards Greiss, though he didn’t know what he could do for him. The sergeant was bleeding freely, but all Lorenzo could see in his face was a malicious satisfaction at the death of an enemy. And maybe, when he looked at Lorenzo, a hint of approval?
Then, a sudden change of expression—a warning glint in Greiss’ eyes. Lorenzo whirled around and the warboss was standing, molten lava streaming from his face, most of the skin burnt away, but he was coming at them again…
[Imperial Guard 02] - Death World Page 20