Zerberyn rolled, glass caltrops disintegrating, just as a pair of armoured boots crunched down where he had been.
It was an ork, three metres tall and almost as broad, clad in moulded black armour of some dense, energy-deflecting ceramic. Its shovel face and clawed hands were painted in black stripes. The metal parts of its multi-barrelled custom shooter had been rubbed in soot. Even its tusks were darkened. It punched the bright red release buckle of the line harness it was wearing, cables whipping up towards the broken ceiling, then levelled its weapon in one brute fist.
Zerberyn did likewise. Too slow.
The ork’s upper body vanished in a splatter of green vapour. An Iron Warriors Terminator pumped a torrent of combi-bolter abuse through its remains, turning ponderously as solid rounds spanked off his baroque battleplate.
‘Brother-captain. The door.’
With a thunderous crash of spilling drums, the metal door from the alley shoved back the barricade and orks in spiked black-and-white armour pushed through. The lead ork roared, slugger spitting out lead even as it kicked aside a barrel. Zerberyn put a bolt-round between its eyes. Antille and Galen accounted for a further one each. Tosque hosed the entryway with fire, but the orks charged into it, unloading their bulk magazines as they came.
What he would not sacrifice for Karva’s heavy flamer right now.
Apothecary Reoch stood by the veteran’s remains, his narthecium’s sampler deep into his brother’s gorget softseals and the progenoid sacs in his throat. Off-hand, he blasted one of the ork drop-troops off its feet with a bolt-round in the gut. It would take a long time for a wound like that to kill an ork. Zerberyn suspected that the Apothecary knew that.
‘Exemplars, to your duty!’ Zerberyn roared, bolt-pistol executing one bloody headshot at a time. ‘We are the wall that stands forever!’
A blast of rubble buried whatever reply he might have received.
An articulated wrecking arm smashed through the street-side wall, the ork dreadnought Zerberyn had seen outside of the terminus station stamping itself a bigger hole. It resembled a uranium waste drum painted with yellow-and-black chevrons. Its other arm was fitted with a screaming buzzsaw, burning promethium dribbling from a dangerously crowded platform of grenade launchers and flamer weaponry. A bestial cry boomed from its speakers as it swung out its wrecker arm to knock in what was left of the wall.
In a growl of engines, a refurbished Salamander command tank climbed the rubbled wall and slammed onto its glacis suspension on the manufactory floor. Glass splinters chinked across the floor or simply exploded under its mass. It growled menacingly, heaving with excess engine power, hull-mounted heavy bolter grinding about to maximise its threat angles. Its original dust-bowl camouflage had been patchily done over in red, a pair of crossed axes painted onto the side. A troop compartment that should have housed a full forward command squad of Praxian militia was filled by a single enormous ork. Its armour was blood red, massive plates swollen around a gnarled head wired in to some kind of vox-apparatus.
Zerberyn ejected his clip and slammed in a fresh one containing armour-piercing vengeance rounds.
Kill the Bloody Axes first, Bryce had said.
With an alien roar, the big ork boss took the firing toggle of the Salamander’s pintle-mounted storm bolter and blazed at the Terminators as the vehicle beneath it filled the air with fumes. The cry was answered by something more palatable, but just barely.
They were human mouths.
Soldiers in what looked like local militia fatigues, with crossed axes daubed over their flak vests and unit identifiers branded into their shaven heads, charged over the broken wall after their tank. Las-fire lashed the rumbling production line and by sheer volume forced the Fists Exemplar into cover. A las-bolt scorched Galen’s faceplate and sent him stumbling behind a conveyer.
Tosque moved protectively in front of his brother, took aim at the Salamander and, with a furious blast of white heat, unleashed the single-shot plasma charge of his combi-weapon. The crackling discharge struck under the light tank’s armour skirt and shredded its tracks. Links flapping, it slewed off to one side and crashed into a giant steel hopper that fed one part of the conveyer network. The mistreated hopper split up the side and spewed thousands of litres of partially-cleaned bone fragments and flesh scraps over the revving tank.
Reoch growled some choice words of approval. Zerberyn did not register them. In his horror — no, in the white roar of his fury — he had not taken a shot since the arrival of the human troops.
More were running in behind the wreck. Battalion strength. Maybe more. They had no hair, no teeth and their bodies marked with brands and maltreatment. This was humanity’s fate. This was why the orks waited for Terra’s surrender rather than simply levelling the world as they had Ardamantua, Eidolica, and a thousand others. They did not want another conquest.
They wanted a client race.
A trillion times a trillion, the citizens of the Imperium were numberless beyond count. As individuals they were negligible, to a certain mindset disposable even, but as a whole they were humanity. They were the gene-seed of Holy Terra, where He dwelt in His incorruptible glory.
Unbidden, the image filled his mind of the xenos breaking Eternity Gate, sweeping through the Sanctum Imperialis, and hauling the Emperor from His Golden Throne.
No. No!
He would virus-bomb every last world more than a week from Terra if that was what it took to end this. He would do it personally.
With a wordless snarl he advanced into the las-storm, flipping his pistol’s shot selector to rapid fire and mowing armour-piercing rounds through the lightly-armoured troopers. Troopers? Traitors. The outcome was bloody overkill and better than they deserved.
Around him, meanwhile, the orks’ pincers closed.
Tosque and Antille stood back-to-back, rocks of rugged grey where reds, yellows and black-and-whites crashed over, and with Exemplar stubbornness refused to give ground. Inhuman voices bellowed. Servos screamed. Bolters were abandoned now in favour of knives and fists.
Reoch pulled Galen to his feet. The latter shook a jam from his bolter, then emptied what was left of the clip into the onrushing horde. The first to reach him went down with a boltgun smashed through the side of its skull, but after that there were too many mobbing in to be sure what was being done to whom.
The battle-brother’s rune in Zerberyn’s visor display went dark.
Only the Iron Warriors were still firing. The Terminators were mobile firebases, arms outstretched, wrist-mounted combi-bolters kicking out a remorseless torrent of firepower whether there was an ork in front of their tusked helms or not.
A jet of flame flooded over the Terminators, burning promethium lighting the Traitor Space Marines up like devils as the orks’ dreadnought stomped towards them.
Beating a gold-armoured ork into the ground with a downwards smash of his hammer, Zerberyn shoulder-crushed through the mob of traitor auxiliaries to peel off three shots into the advancing dreadnought. Mass-reactive rounds splashed across a barrier of rigid blue force an inch above the walker’s yellow-and-black plate.
His heart sank.
A void shield. How could something that size generate the power to sustain a void shield?