‘We must divert their attention,’ said Thane. ‘These orks are strange, and apt to use many unusual technologies, but look at them. Projected from the other side of the galaxy, they come out roaring and snorting, hungry for war. Whatever new tricks these beasts have mastered, they remain orks.’
‘Orks cannot resist a direct challenge,’ said Bohemond. ‘Provoke them, and we may direct their fury as we might. Let us send word to the fleet and land our armoured vehicles. Deploy them in the tunnels — that is a lure no ork could resist. They will die before the guns of our tanks while we attack from the rear.’
A taskforce-wide vox-blurt signalled the beginning of the attack. Across the main triple highway into the core the massed tanks of five Chapters advanced. In the subsidiary tunnels to the sides, hundreds of Space Marines fanned out to stop any orks who might choose an alternative route around the advancing Land Raiders, Razorbacks and Predators. The moon rumbled with new detonations as vital passageways were brought down, blocked with millions of tons of rock and metal. At the peripheries of the territories held by the Chapters, Space Marines prepared for the moment the orkish reinforcements would be cut off. Thereafter they were to drive forward, trapping the remaining greenskins.
There would be slaughter, Koorland was sure, but the cost in gene-forged blood would be high.
The Terminators worked their way into position around the gate as the orks took the bait, advancing up the main tunnels where they hurled themselves at the advancing Space Marine tanks. The armour worked its way forward purposefully, slowly, the tunnel resonating with the reports of their weapons and the howling of orks.
Koorland fought alongside Thane and his bodyguard of Terminators. Through a labyrinth they proceeded, slaughtering orks wherever they found them. The corridors rarely ran straight, and where battle was met it was a vicious, close-quarters affair. Koorland’s freshly painted armour was soon a mess of nicks and scratches, the bright yellow stained dark red. His sword was caked from tip to pommel in blood baked black by its power field.
‘This feels good,’ grunted Thane, smashing an ork’s head deep into its shoulders with his power maul. ‘On Eidolica, we kept them back as long as we could, slaying them with our guns. Tactically proper, but where vengeance is involved, I prefer to see my enemy’s face close.’ He let out a shout as he smashed another ork down. Koorland cut the hands from his own opponent with a single well-placed blow. The ork roared its anger and battered at him with bloody wrists. Koorland spared a single round from his storm bolter to end it.
‘Close-quarter melee conserves our ammunition,’ said Thane at the sound of the gun. ‘We are going to need it.’
They rounded a corner. The corridor opened up onto the floor of the gate chamber. Thousands of orks were pouring from the flaring mechanism.
‘There are so many. It is as Eidolica was,’ said Thane.
‘So it was on Ardamantua also,’ said Koorland. ‘An endless tide. Let us stop it up. Time to announce ourselves!’
Thane strode into the chamber, selected a tall crackling machine for his ire, and smashed its casing with his power maul. Sheet metal caved in, exposing the flashing innards. Another blow arrested its processes explosively. Fire belched from the array of pipes on the top, followed by a greasy cough of smoke.
‘Destroy the machines! Destroy them all!’ roared Thane.
‘Interrupt the power supply,’ said Koorland. ‘Close the gate.’
Five more machines died before the orks noticed their attackers. Piggish, ugly faces turned at the sound of the destruction. Without breaking stride, a portion of the orks streaming from the gate up the tunnels changed direction, and charged at the new threat.
‘Now is the proper time for the expenditure of ammunition,’ shouted Thane. ‘First Company, fire!’
Forty of Thane’s Terminators formed a bowed line centred on him, while the others fanned out and destroyed the machines. Their guns spoke with one booming voice. Storm bolters on full automatic blazed a streaking hail of fiery darts. Assault cannons spun up to firing speed, spitting out a torrent of bullets. Where bolts met orkish flesh, they penetrated and exploded. Orks staggered on with horrendous injuries. Many required two or three further shots to down. Where they encountered the furious sweep of the assault cannons, they were cut in half. The orks stumbled and fell, or were blown backwards in bloody chunks. Stacks of supply crates were shredded. Munitions within them detonated. Shoulder-launched cyclone missiles exploded in tight clusters, tearing red holes in the ork hordes. The enemy tumbled over the corpses of their fellows, piled high by their own momentum, a line of ruined flesh at the edge of the Space Marines’ range. Still they came.
All over the cavern, explosions roared upward as other Terminator groups entered the hall and set to work. Koorland headed implacably towards the nearest of the gate horns. He smashed down an ork that had made its way through the torrent of fire. An electric fizzling crackled across the chamber as a tall, horizontal wheel covered in bronze balls came off its mountings. Green lightning jagged out into walls, floor and machinery. Another huge boom, and another. Gouts of fire rolled upward.
‘Company, change ranks!’ yelled Thane. His first line, their ammunition exhausted, stepped back, smoothly changing places with another line that stepped forward, storm bolters already chattering. There was no interruption to the wall of death the Fists Exemplar dealt out.
Koorland and his entourage were beyond the edge of the firing line, and the orks came more thickly. They brought them down, smashing their way towards the horn. Koorland cut the cables running along the floor. Fires blazed everywhere, tinged with green, choking black smoke billowing from them, moving strangely in the erratic artificial gravity of the gate room. The gate stuttered, its light and its buzzing interrupted. Orks passing through during this intermission were torn in half.
‘Press on, press on!’ roared Koorland. The flow of orks lessened. The gate blinked off again, longer this time. Koorland emptied his magazine into an important-looking machine, blasting it to bits.
The gate went out. The orks roared as one. All around the chamber they were facing lines of Space Marine Terminators. At measured pace, the Space Marine lines converged, trapping the orks between them. The sons of Dorn suffered their losses, but for every champion of humanity that fell, twenty orks died. The orks flooding up the tunnel towards the tank line milled about, unsure which enemy to engage. They surged back and forth, before finally switching direction and running towards the Terminators.
At Thane’s position the guns of the second line clicked empty. No third line existed to replace them. The orks clambered over their heaped dead, and charged into the Space Marine ranks.
A cacophony of weapons hitting thick battleplate announced the meeting of orks and Space Marines, followed by the banging of matter annihilated by disruption fields as the Adeptus Astartes swung their power fists.
‘Onward, to the gate horn!’ ordered Koorland. Orks pulled at his arms, thick green fingers slipping from his gory armour. He shook them off. The horn towered over him. He pulled out the melta bomb maglocked to his thigh, twisted the flask handle, and slapped it into place. Two more Terminators followed, attaching their own bombs. Across the smoking, empty platform, Koorland saw Bohemond and Issachar’s warriors doing the same, Malfons himself attaching his bomb to the third horn.
‘Charges placed,’ voxed the lord of the Iron Knights.
‘Withdraw,’ voxed Koorland. ‘Prepare for extraction. Our work here is over for today. Initiate teleport countdown.’