‘Tactics.’
The ork lowers the choppa and as I turn away it lumbers alongside me, Grot at our heels. A burst of fire erupts from the troops ahead before we reach the sanctuary of the pits. I don’t bother heading for a ramp, just jump straight down, but misjudge the drop. I land hard, almost breaking my ankle. Nazrek thuds down next to me and turns, the heavy pistol in its fist almost immediately barking poorly aimed shots.
There are more of us than I realised. Some of the others must have taken cover here before us but I hadn’t noticed. Maybe fifty guns waiting for the orks as they spill from the brightly lit passageway into the echoing vastness.
They’re bigger than the runts, each at least a head taller and almost twice as broad. Smaller than Nazrek, I think, but that’s little comfort. The ork roars a challenge, louder than the snarl of autoguns. A bass hollering returns from the oncoming horde, gathering into a single wordless bellow that rolls like a physical wave across us.
I start firing, barely having to pick targets, the orks coming at us in a thick mass. Pounding after us at speed, their aim is worth less than an old ration tin in a card game, bullets pinging from the tiles in front or whirring overhead. As they approach, a couple of hundred metres away, I can see more detail. Checks and dags painted on slabs of scavenged armour, some of the larger specimens with back banners displaying orkish glyphs. Nazrek taught me a few and I recognise some of the shapes – death, stab, break, smash. They could be names, or boasts, or threats, it’s impossible to tell the difference.
The onrushing horde starts to split. Our position is about fifty metres aside from the line between the entrance and exit, and a good chunk of the orks are heading straight after the last of the others, bunching together as they try to get out. The rest come straight at us. If we leave now to intercept the group going after the fleeing crowd we’ll just get cut down.
I try to focus my frustration into something useful, but I find myself snapping off shots hurriedly, the anger like a pounding in my head. A crazy notion grips me – to clamber out of the pit and charge headlong at the orks, to cut them open with my knife. Through the shooting I hear curses and threats, even some laughter from the troops around me. I can feel their battle-lust, like nothing I’ve experienced before.
A jade glow follows the group coming at us. Arcs of green energy lick upwards while sparks dance from blade tips and helmets, casting erratic shadows. Behind them, even more orks are pouring into the cavernous hall, but they’re not coming towards us, following in the wake of those heading straight across the open ground.
Nazrek grunts something as a fresh surge of green light bubbles around the ork assault force.
‘What was that?’ I ask.
‘Weirdboy,’ it says, tapping the side of its head with the smoking muzzle of its pistol. ‘Magnet for big green. Brain powers. Real ’eadbanger.’
As if to illustrate Nazrek’s meaning, the orks part, revealing a garishly dressed ork, more like a runt than a full-grown warrior. Gangling, holding a staff in its hands topped by a sun symbol, loops of metal around its arms and neck, green sparks swarming like flies around it. The sparks coalesce into a shimmering green fist and Schaeffer hollers a warning an instant before the apparition howls towards us. I throw myself down. Out of the corner of my eye I see a blaze of green energy smashing into the edge of the pit a few metres away, and hear the pained shout of one of my people as she staggers back, arm and head alight with green flames.
Nazrek lets rip with a deafening howl, head tilted back. At first I think it’s been hit, but as I watch green sparks flicker from fangs and eyes, I realise it’s a moment of joy not pain. Something to do with the big green, I guess, firing more shots at the green horde still piling towards us.
Even as I shoot I can’t help but glance over at the even larger tide of alien warriors simply running past us, bellowing and roaring as they head straight across the hall. I can imagine some of them going after the easier prey of the fleeing crowd, but it’s not like orks to ignore an actual ongoing fight.
‘What are they doing?’ I ask Nazrek, smacking the ork on the shoulder to get its attention.
Ropes of drool fall from its bulbous lips as it looks over at the other xenos. Nazrek’s brows knit together, making ravines of its green forehead.
‘Look like running away.’
Chilling realisation creeps up my back as these words sink in. Suddenly I see the orks in a completely different light. Yells and snarls of fear, not anger. Desperation, not bloodthirst.
‘Colonel! They’re not coming after us! They’re running away!’
Schaeffer pauses between bursts of autogun fire and looks over at me, a moment of confusion becoming an uncharacteristic look of concern. He voices the question I’m trying to avoid.
‘Running from what?’
I’m really in no mood to find out, but we’re all out of options – the orks are too close for us to make a break for it, and too many to hope we can fight it out. Looking at the green-skinned creatures bearing down on us, I gain something of the calm clarity that wrapped me up in its embrace as I fell into the fire chasm. I thought then that perhaps it was just certainty. The knowledge of the coming end, a death that can’t be avoided. Perhaps it was something more, like the touch of the Emperor.
‘We have to buy time for the rest to get away,’ I say, bringing my pistol round to the orks heading after the others.
The pressure in my head is pounding now and an odd quiet descends, like a fog on my hearing that dulls the tramping of ork feet, the crack of bullets. My heart is smashing against my chest, trying to pound its way out, but my hand is steady and my aim sure.
I pull the trigger and a bolt of red light flares into the orks. I shoot again and again; it’s impossible to miss hitting something but I try to track a target to score multiple hits in the hope of bringing one of the tough aliens down.
Nobody else seems to have followed my lead.
Through my hammering pulse I sense a change around me.
‘Kage!’
It’s not the first time the Colonel has barked my name. I turn sluggishly, teeth gritted hard, trying to focus on his face through a swirl of red mist. It’s just the ruddy lights, I’m sure.
The others are moving, heading towards the ramp and I don’t understand why. My gaze moves to the orks that were charging towards us. Their impetus has slowed. They’re turning around, raising weapons towards something behind them. The weirdboy shrieks and another blast of emerald energy leaps out into the gloom, directed at their pursuers.
‘Maybe it’s Imperia…’ My mumbling dies away as I focus on what is beyond the tide of orks. Something big – six, seven metres tall – strides purposefully across the gloom. Wings broader than a gunship’s stretch out behind it and a bestial face wracked with unimaginable rage glowers at everything before it. Each clawed fist bears an axe that glimmers with sickly black light, the motion of the blades as it advances leaving bleeding cuts upon the air itself. It is clad in bronze armour that shimmers with heat, vapours coiling from flared nostrils. A furnace heat proceeds it, tinged with the stench of hot blood. Bullets bounce from its armour and hide as though striking a battle tank, leaving a shower of blunted projectiles falling around it.
I turn and run.
Raw instinct takes over, putting one foot in front of the other, again and again, without me having to think about it. Which is just as well because my brain is both a blank and a crash of conflicting thoughts. Nothing settles in my mind, just a blur of dread, hope and anger. There’s a sense of release as well. Freedom. A freedom I didn’t realise I’d missed, but the sensation bursts through me, carrying me on even more swiftly.
I could keep running forever.
Everything is mayhem around me. Orks and humans crowding through the gate together, united in our blind need to get away from the death at our backs. Hoarse yells and higher-pitched screa
ms combine into a constant noise of terror.
Unable to go further into the press, I turn, about five metres from the archway.
I wish I hadn’t.
The monster looms over the thinning crowd of xenos, hewing left and right with its nightmare axes, every sweep slashing through a handful of orks. I hear its bellows in the back of my mind, a bass punch inside my skull that brings to harsh reality the growing pressure of the last few days. Looking upon the bestial incarnation of murder fills me with a lightness of spirit, and for an instant I crave to be with it, seeing its power and majesty. Then pure dread kicks in again, the colour fading from the scene to the ruddy pulsing of the lights and my heartbeat, and I see the mangled corpses of hundreds of orks reflected in the slayer’s armour, distorted and sheened with blood.
Around the monstrosity swells a red surge of smaller abyssal creatures. About the height of a man, hunched over, with bulbous heads and dead, white orbs for eyes. They carry triangular blades with glinting edges, long forked tongues licking ork blood from serrated teeth. Some are bigger, black horns curling back from their brows, plated in ornate, ancient armour.
The air churns with a bloody mist, partly real droplets of life fluid steaming from the carnage, partly the distortion of reality where the abyssal warp tries to bleed into the mortal world. More shapes writhe through the death fog, of immense brazen steeds ridden by axe-wielding Neverborn, and bat-winged maws that swoop like vultures over the slaughter.
From the ork throng explodes a bolt of green energy, swirling like a maddened serpent as it scythes through the ranks of the Neverborn warriors. Arcs of green power leap from the ork psyker, some of them burning through the eyes of its neighbours, others lancing away into the abyssal masses to explode with clouds of sparks. As the red-skinned creatures converge on the ork, its discharges become more erratic and even more violent. It spins on the spot, caught in a whirlwind of its own energy, blasts of random fire flaring from the twister. Shuddering to a halt, the ork drops to its knees, copper staff falling from fingertips made of flame. Shuddering, the alien arches its head back, massive jaw opening wide to vomit a stream of jade fire. The torrent of psychic energy continues, becoming brighter and faster, incinerating abyssal servants by the dozen until the ork detonates with a green mushroom cloud, levelling its companions, the vortex of its destruction ripping apart even more of the Neverborn.
I remember Nazrek’s words. A real headbanger.
A hand on my shoulder jolts me from a view of hellish half-lizard hounds bounding through the remains of the psyker, their howls joining the bellows of rage and scraping of blades.
Schaeffer.
He’s recovered some of his composure but I can tell by the way his eyes flick from me to the oncoming abyssal army that he’s about as scared as he’s ever been. Without a word he drags me into the morass of humans and orks, and together, surrounded by a knot of troopers, we ride the living wave into the corridor beyond.
With the air almost crushed from me by the close-packed bodies, I have no choice but to go with the flow of the panicked mass. I concentrate on keeping my feet, knowing that to fall now would be to go under a stampede of footfalls, crushed in moments. I’m sure I step on other people, the flat ferrocrete becoming disturbingly bumpy and soft now and then, but I can’t look down even if I want to. Eyes fixed ahead, elbows and shoulders muscling my way along with the others, I can feel the back of my neck prickling as though from an intense heat.
The physical high of action is draining away, replaced by a more lingering dread – not only of the things that can’t be so far behind us, but also of what happens now, surrounded by dozens of orks, flooding into totally unknown territory. This mob could charge over the edge of an acid pit and we’d never know until it was too late.
Strangely enough, my brain doesn’t seem to be in the mood for coming up with coherent plans…
I check our surroundings in more detail. Corridor. About twenty metres wide, thirty metres high. Vaulted roof, a lot of the network ripped out by scavengers, ferrocrete crumbling and cracked in between. Been moving from the gateway for a few minutes, probably covered at least half a kilometre. There are other archways leading off the main concourse, heading to Emperor knows where.
There seems to be a simple choice. Stick with the crowd or try to force my way out and go it alone.
Pack instinct is a powerful force, even when half of that pack are slab-muscled green aliens that would gouge my face off given half a chance. On the other side, nagging at me with the intensity of a short-arse corporal I once knew, is the thought that I’d be better off by myself.
The answer is almost given to me as the passageway breaks out into a number of small halls and dormitories, unlit but for patches of luminescent fungal growth. The mob splinters, underhivers and xenos still together as some go left and right, others slowing as they consider their options, creating eddies in the retreat like swirls in a stream.
‘Burned Man!’ someone calls out, recognising me through the throng. I feel tapping on my shoulder and look left, one of my followers reaching out with desperate fingers to get my attention. Her face is a rictus of fear, cheeks coated with tears, eyes red, short hair plastered to her scalp. ‘Lead us to salvation, Burned Man!’
Her words fire up a feeling of hope, reminding me that the Emperor is watching over us, even in this dire time. And if He really has a purpose for me, He’ll guide me to it, despite the circumstances. A bit of faith is required.
‘This way,’ I shout, dragging an arm free to point in the direction I want to go – a side passage where a lot of my followers are heading already.
‘Is that right?’ the Colonel shouts over the noise of the fleeing mob. ‘Where does that lead?’
‘Bloody well away from here,’ I tell him with a half-mad laugh, because I don’t have a clue where we’re going. ‘Any better plan?’
I don’t wait for an answer but gather myself to push sideways against the flow of people. The very act of resistance causes some of them to change direction, like damming a stream, and a splinter of several dozen people breaks away with me, heading into the near pitch-black of the tunnel.
We keep running, more measured than the flight from the hall, at a pace most of us can keep up for a while yet. Some of the orks start to look in our direction, alien instincts to fight pushing back into their thoughts. We pound down loading ramps and across abandoned quaysides where ancient subterranean canals used to cut through into the heart of Acheron. Sometimes there is light, flickering lumens powered by millennia-old reactors lost somewhere in the compacted mass of the hive depths. Other times only a few lanterns guide our progress as we pick our way through moss-slicked pipes and down stairs as much rust as metal.
I’ve lost all sense of direction and time. We could be heading back into the centre of the hive or a few kilometres from the open air. Either way, it seems for the moment that the abyssal horde is not on our heels any more. I get the feeling this isn’t going to be a one-off event, though. The memory of building tension, the simmering anger of the orks and my people, all point towards an incursion of terrible proportion.
You hear rumours, of course, but nobody ever says anything out loud. Ships lost in the warp. Garrisons that disappear. Even mutterings of the Inquisition wiping out whole planetary populations. Exterminatus, they call it. The warp taint, they say. Mutants. Unsanctioned psykers. Sometimes you might hear mention of aliens that live in that empyrean vastness, like the enslavers that turn psykers into living warp gates, or the brain-scarabs that feed on your nightmares, stoking your fears with telepathic emanations.
But there’s another word, forbidden to know, which we’ve all heard. It’s the name between the lines of the preachers’ prayers.
Daemon.
A thing not of flesh, but of the abyss itself.
My thoughts are interrupted by an ambient glow as we exit the underhive docks to c
ome upon an old transit route, five platforms beneath a splintered dome of plascrete. There are cracks as wide as a man’s shoulders everywhere, dust falling in billowing clouds through beams of light that emanate from a few functioning glow-globes in recesses high above. There are machines here, too, remarkably. The layer of grit and dust is undisturbed, and I look back to see that there are slews of rubble either side of the jagged opening we just passed through. Sealed by a hivequake for centuries, only now has the terminal become accessible again.
The group uses the space to separate, humans moving towards one side, eyeing the orks as they drift towards the other. Inside crude shacks we find human remains, still dressed in mouldering work gear, a few with tools close by.
No weapons.
I muster the people together to take stock of what we have, while across the platforms the orks are starting to argue with each other, with a lot of waving of blades and jabbing of clawed fingers in our direction.
On the human side of things, most seem too numb to even think about what has happened. Some are lying down, exhausted or terrified it’s impossible to say. Others glance fearfully over at our green-skinned company. I issue a few softly spoken words to those with weapons, telling them to be on their guard but to do nothing aggressive that would provoke the aliens.
It’s an uneasy few minutes while I take stock of our situation.
Seventy-two of us and, to my delight, Nazrek is one of them. There are fourteen troopers left, and the Colonel, and of the rest of my people here, thirty of them have guns of some kind and most have picked up bits of broken pipe, blades and so forth. There’s probably half as many orks, but they’re orks, and only fifty metres between us doesn’t give us much time to open fire and thin their numbers further if they decide to finish what the daemons have started.
Nazrek prowls back and forth at the edge of our group, alternating between looking at me and glowering at the other aliens. It’s the closest it’s been to more of its kind since joining the Burned Man, outside of direct fighting. I’m still not sure about the big green and what it does to them, but I would say its pull is growing stronger with each passing minute.
Armageddon Saint - Gav Thorpe Page 6