Not a bad tally for a night’s work, he told himself.
He wondered how many xenos his sniper rifle would claim once the shooting started. More than sixteen, he hoped.
The other Scout assigned to provide forward eyes and sniper cover for Drakken’s team was a fairly fresh initiate by the name of Janus Kennon.
Brother Kennon was young, and Mishina had expressed concerns to Captain Icario that the inexperienced Scout needed more training before a critical deployment like this. But Kennon’s innate skills had apparently marked him out for great things. In over a hundred years, no other initiate had come close to matching his scores on the practice range, even in thick simulated fog. Kennon’s accuracy and targeting abilities bordered on the preternatural, and Mishina got the impression that Captain Icario saw a potential protégé in the young Space Marine.
Kennon was currently crouching on the corner of a dust-covered rooftop about eight hundred metres to the northwest of Mishina’s current spot, covering the ork defensive post on top of the comms tower from a western flanking position.
At least, that was where Mishina had told Kennon to go. Had it been anyone else, Mishina would have assumed his orders were being followed to the letter, but not so with Kennon. The boy was far too sure of himself. The captain’s praise had gone to his head.
Mishina couldn’t help himself. For a brief moment, he turned his goggles northwest and increased magnification.
He soon detected Kennon’s heat signature… exactly where it was supposed to be.
Mishina felt the briefest flash of shame for doubting a fellow Crimson Fist.
Jealous, Ezra, he asked himself? Jealous of the boy’s talent? You’ve no reason to doubt him. He went through the same psycho-indoctrination programmes you did. Trust in Captain Icario’s choice.
These thoughts had barely filtered through to the front of Mishina’s mind when Kennon’s voice addressed him over the comm-link.
“Shadow Four to Shadow One. Can you hear me, sergeant?”
“I hear you, brother,” said Mishina. “Speak.”
“Sergeant, I’m not sure whether you can see this or not, but a monster of an ork just dismounted from some kind of truck in the middle of the plaza. He’s climbing a stair on the west side of the building. It must be the greenskin leader. The beast is as broad as Brother Ulis!”
Mishina doubted that. Ulis was a Dreadnought, one of the Chapter’s revered Old Ones, and about four metres across from shoulder to shoulder. The largest ork Mishina had ever seen in person had been almost three metres across. It had taken a direct hit from a Predator tank to slay that bastard.
Mishina squinted up ahead, but, from this angle, he couldn’t see the creature Kennon was talking about. He was about to move to a neighbouring rooftop for a better angle when Kennon reported, “He’s going up to the rooftop of the bunker. I have his ugly face right in the centre of my crosshairs, sergeant. Requesting immediate permission to take the shot.”
“Request denied, brother,” said Mishina. “Hold position while I—”
“I can take him out, sergeant,” Kennon insisted. “He must be the leader. One kill-shot could put their entire force in disarray. Again, I strongly request permission to fire.”
Mishina’s words were as hard as bolts themselves. “You will not take the shot until Captain Drakken gives the order. Is that understood?”
Kennon was silent.
“I said is that understood, brother?”
Reluctantly, not bothering to mask the contempt and disappointment in his voice, the young Scout replied that it was. Mishina immediately contacted Captain Drakken and said, “Shadow Four reports that he has what he believes to be the ork leader in his crosshairs, captain. He is requesting permission to take the shot.”
Drakken barely needed time to think about it.
“Negative, Shadow One. Authorisation denied. Sergeant Werner and his squads are preparing to assault the water purification facility as we speak. I want those orks drawn off before we strike the comms bunker. Is that absolutely clear?”
It was. If Brother Kennon took the shot—hit or miss—the orks at the comms bunker would deploy all their light armour against the most local, most immediate threat.
Mishina could understand Kennon’s eagerness well enough. It was a shot he would like to take himself, a single squeeze of the trigger, one muffled cough from his weapon’s muzzle that would garner the kind of glory and honour few brothers in 10th Company would ever have a chance to claim. To think that a single shot might defuse, or at the very least, greatly delay a potential Waaagh…
Not just a triumph for Kennon, thought Mishina, but something the entire company could be proud of. There would be decorations for everyone deployed here.
At the very back of his mind, a tiny voice said: Results come first. Let Kennon take the shot.
Mishina had heard that dangerous voice before. He expected to hear it again many times throughout his life. He responded to it now as he always did. He crushed it to nothing, just as he had been trained, just as his mind had been rigorously conditioned to do. He drowned it out with a silent litany of obligation.
Think of the Chapter, he told himself. Think of the primarch, of the Emperor and Terra.
None of these were best served by indulging one’s sense of personal pride. A true Astartes was better than that.
There was a sudden brief transmission on the comm-link’s mission channel. “Sergeant Werner’s force is about to light up Objective Two,” Drakken barked. “Brace yourselves!”
A sudden clap of thunder shook the rooftop under Mishina’s feet, and a great flash of white light, supernova bright, lit the whole town from the direction of the south-eastern precinct. It was followed by three more in rapid succession, each shaking the entire town like the footfalls of a mighty Titan.
Mishina screwed his eyes shut and turned his head away from the direction of the blasts, anxious not to be temporarily blinded by the glare. Sergeant Werner’s party had launched their attack on the water purification plant in spectacular style. Stealth protocols were no longer in effect.
When the sound of the melta explosions had dropped to a ringing in his ears, Mishina opened his eyes. From the buildings all around the comms bunker, a great cacophony of orkish grunts and roars could be heard, merging together with the revving of powerful, fume-spewing engines.
The sound of distant gunfire echoed from between the streets and alleys around the water purification plant. Mishina’s supremely honed ears recognised the distinctive bark of bolters being fired from about ten kilometres away. There was an awful lot of fire being traded. He muttered a prayer to the Emperor for the safety of Sergeant Werner and his men. From the plaza in front of the comms bunker, the first of the ork bikes and buggies began to move off in the general direction of the gunfight, their engines growling and sputtering like mad animals.
That’s it, you brainless muck-eaters, thought Mishina. Keep moving. Go and see what it’s all about.
It was happening exactly as Captain Drakken had anticipated, and, for the first time since the ork vehicles had shown up, Mishina started to feel truly confident that everything would go according to plan.
That was when he heard Kennon on the comm-link again.
“The warlord is moving, sergeant. I can’t wait any longer. I’m taking the shot!”
Mishina almost forgot himself. Scouts were habitually quiet individuals. Shouting tended to give one’s position away. Even so, he almost yelled over the comm-link, “Hold your damned fire! That’s a direct order. If you take that shot, upstart, I’ll see you flayed alive, by Throne! Do I make myself cl—”
There was a brief burst of blue-green light from the direction of the comms bunker. Mishina felt his primary heart skip a beat. He knew instinctively what the flash meant. Kennon had taken the shot anyway. His magnified vision confirmed it when Kennon fired a second time, then a third. All of Kennon’s rounds had been right on target, but they had detonated with brief, bright
, harmless flashes on some kind of invisible energy shield.
Zooming in further, Mishina could see the shield-generating apparatus strapped to the monster’s back. Ho sniper was going to fell that beast. Kennon had just given himself away for nothing.
The ork boss spun in Kennon’s direction, took a great lungful of air, and bellowed out a battle cry that seemed to vibrate the foundations of the entire town.
Absently, Mishina registered that Kennon hadn’t been exaggerating greatly about the creature’s size. It was a formidable looking thing, the great bulk of its blocky apparatus only adding to the effect.
A half-second after this thought ran through his mind, bright light stabbed into Mishina’s eyes. The orks on the roof had turned searchlights out into the night, and the Scout-Sergeant’s night vision goggles hadn’t been able to adjust to the sudden brightness quickly enough. Mishina threw a hand up over his face. Stubber and heavy weapons fire begin spitting out in all directions. Countless alien throats began calling out threats and challenges in what passed for their rough alien tongue.
Any chance of splitting up the greenskin force at the comms tower was now lost.
“Shadow One to Captain Drakken,” said Mishina urgently.
“Don’t bother, sergeant,” snapped Captain Drakken on the other end of the link. The ink-dark streets where the ork searchlights couldn’t penetrate now began to strobe with muzzle flashes as the battle-brothers of 3rd Company moved up, claiming the first of their kills early in the exchange. “If we live through this,” continued a furious Drakken, “you can explain to the Chapter Council what in damnation just happened.”
Mishina loosed a bitter curse and promised he would see Kennon strung up for this. Then he knocked his bolt-rifle’s safety off, checked that there was a live round in the chamber, and scanned the streets below his position, sector by sector, eyes alert for anything that threatened to flank Drakken’s men as they stormed towards their objective.
Gunfire from both sides rang out for hours on end.
The dry, dust-caked streets of Krugerport soon ran red.
“Astartes, fall back!” bellowed Drakken.
He wasn’t sure they could hear him, wasn’t sure the micro-vox circuitry in his gorget was sending them his voice. His helmet had been struck by some kind of greenskin plasma round that burned right through, crisping the flesh of his left cheek.
His visor had gone dead. He’d had to strip the ruined helm from his head in a hurry, enemy rounds rattling like hail on his armour while he was temporarily blinded. Now, with ork stubber-fire blazing all around him, shells ripping onto the hab walls on either side of the street, he had to shout his orders.
The enemy kept coming, spilling from everywhere, no matter how much fire he and his Fists spat back at them. They had felled scores, perhaps hundreds, of the slab-muscled aliens already, but the charges continued. They trampled their dead into the blood-soaked dirt without the slightest reverence. A foul odour came with them, an odour Drakken knew well, stale sweat and fungal stink, worse than rotting garbage.
Drawing a bead on the largest, darkest-skinned ork he could see, Drakken pulled the trigger of his boltpistol. Nothing. Without pause for thought, he switched magazines, his armoured hands moving in a well-practiced blur. He took aim once more. The beast had covered ten more metres, lumbering forward on legs as thick as a man’s torso. He fired, and a bolt thundered into the centre of the creature’s sloping forehead.
It kept running. Orks didn’t go down easily. A second later the exploding bolt blew out the creature’s brain, and its heavy, headless corpse hammered against the dusty street spouting thick red blood.
Drakken took a second to look down the avenue behind him and saw that his orders had gotten through. His squads were making a staggered retreat in the direction of the breach through which they’d come. Sergeant Werner’s group would rendezvous with them there. Whoever reached the gap in the wall first was to hold it and wait for the others.
Across the street, in the shadow of another hab, Drakken saw one of his Astartes, Brother Cero, laying down cover with a heavy bolter. The massive weapon chugged and chattered, throwing its lethal rounds out in great scything arcs, cutting the front ranks of the charging orks to ragged red pieces. The death toll was so great it caused the ork charge to momentarily falter, as those immediately behind the fallen tried to turn and force their way to cover.
Drakken took this brief lull to race over the open street and slide into cover beside Cero.
“Can the others hear me over the link?” he yelled in Cero’s ear.
The rattle of the heavy bolter should have drowned him out completely, but the Lyman’s ear implant could filter out and separate even the slightest of noises. Cero heard his captain, and replied without turning from his targets, “They can hear you, lord. Sergeant Werner has just sent word that his party has secured the breach. They are holding it, but their Scouts report xenos moving in from all sides.”
“Then we have to move now. Why haven’t you fallen back as I ordered?”
“Someone has to cover your own retreat, lord.”
“You can’t move as fast as I can,” said Drakken. “I want you to make for the corner hab to the south. Go now. I will follow once you’ve established a firing position. Move!”
Cero loosed a last brief burst of fire, then dashed out from the shadow of the hab and ran towards the end of the street where his brothers were engaging enemy forces from the east. As he ran, Drakken leaned out from the bullet-chewed edge of the sandstone wall, and began picking off the closest greenskins, his every shot taking one down, if not killing it outright.
Cero’s legs pumped hard, but the great weight of the heavy bolter and its back-mounted ammunition slowed him significantly. He didn’t see the vast silhouetted form loom up on the roof to his right. The first he knew of his attacker was when the bright beam of its lascannon—a weapon pilfered from the fallen Imperial Guard forces—sliced through both of his knees, cutting bone, flesh and ceramite armour with ease.
Cero tumbled to the surface of the street, roaring in agony, his cropped legs gushing hot blood.
Drakken turned and saw his battle-brother scrambling in the dirt, trying to recover his weapon despite the pain, desperate to return fire on the beast that had maimed him.
The beast in question had disappeared already. It was nowhere in sight. The orks to the north had witnessed the Space Marine go down. They surged forward, driven into a frenzy by the sight of their enemy’s fresh blood and the sounds of his agony.
“Get some suppressing fire over here,” Drakken demanded over the link.
Had he been able to hear the voices of his fellow Astartes, he would have realised they were already being heavily suppressed themselves. The orks swarmed through the streets, their vehicles careening down the broader thoroughfares, pintle-mounted weapons spewing lead in all directions.
Drakken picked off three more of the closest threats. Ammunition was running out. He ripped a fragmentation grenade from his belt, priming it in the same movement, and hurled it at the enemy. Then he ran from cover, straight towards Cero where he lay in the middle of the street.
Behind him, there was a sharp boom, and a chorus of alien howls.
He slid to a halt at Cero’s side.
“Leave the weapon, brother. Grab my arm. Quickly!”
“Run, my lord,” said Cero. “I can still cover your escape.”
From a dark alley to the left, a massive green brute surged out with twin cleavers raised for a killing stroke. Drakken saw it too late. He didn’t have time to swing his weapon around. The ork opened its razor-toothed maw and screamed its war cry as it made range.
Suddenly, its head snapped backwards, a neat hole punched in its right temple. It fell to its knees. A moment later, its head burst in a shower of red gore and chips of bone.
Drakken looked up, automatically triangulating the shot, and saw Sergeant Mishina on the corner of a rooftop nearby, the butt of his sniper rifle
pressed tight to his shoulder.
“We must move, my lord,” Mishina shouted down. He fired four rounds up the street, striking targets with phenomenal precision. Four brass casings landed at his feet. Four orks dropped, their meaty carcasses tripping those closest behind them.
“Leave the weapon,” Drakken barked at Cero.
Cero released his heavy bolter and detached the ammo feed while Drakken uncoupled his bulky backpack.
“Hold on,” said Drakken, gripping Cero’s wrist, “I will drag—”
A blaze of white light cut straight through his words.
Pain erupted out of nowhere, a fire consuming his every nerve. He would have screamed, but his lungs were empty and wouldn’t refill. Distantly, he heard Cero roaring in protest, his shouts accompanied by the sounds of gunfire.
Why was it all so faint, so far away?
His pain fled so quickly and completely that it was as if he had only dreamed it. Now it was replaced by a sensation of falling. He knew he had struck the ground when the sensation stopped, but felt no impact.
His inner voice spoke to him one last time, quieter than he had ever known it.
“So this is death,” it said. “It is warmer than I expected.”
Scout-Sergeant Mishina turned just an instant too late to open fire on the captain’s killer. He wouldn’t have been able to save Ashor Drakken anyway. He only caught the briefest glimpse of the ork as it charged off down another street, looking for its next prey but it was enough to recognise it.
Urzog Mag-Kull. The hulking warlord on which Kennon had opened fire, precipitating this whole damned mess.
Mishina’s rounds would have bounced off the monster’s force-field just as Kennon’s had done. He would have fired on it anyway, given half the chance.
Brother Cero was still alive down there, his lower legs shorn off at the knee, unable to escape without aid. He cradled the armoured body of his dead captain in his left arm. In his right hand, he gripped the captain’s boltpistol.
[Space Marine Battles 01] - Rynn's World Page 7