Zerberyn ran into the ork hangar, a wide metal hole haphazardly floored by welded plates, shielded from the void with a buzzing yellow integrity field. Two squads waited by the Thunderhawks Aegis of Alcazar and Pride of Oriax, snapping off disciplined volleys of fire into the corridors leading into the bay. The transports faced inward, away from the freedom of space, their front and rear ramps down. Their cheek-mounted heavy bolters twitched, lest any ork be foolish enough to come around their fronts. Orks fired sporadically from the gallery circling the bay, but they were few and quickly fell to grenades and missiles when they showed their faces. Mounds of greenskin dead choked the hangar doors.
His warriors’ guns zeroed in on Zerberyn as he thundered back into the bay followed by Squads Torr and Nubius, held a moment, then tracked away to find other targets.
‘Odrazar, we leave as soon as the others join us,’ Zerberyn ordered his pilot. ‘Begin preparations to depart now!’
As soon as the order was given the Thunderhawks came to life, their engines thrumming in anticipation of flight. The deck vibrated at their awakening.
Communications crackled in through his helmet vox. Squad Escoban reported that the shield generators had been destroyed, Squad Rodrian that the main reactor was rigged to explode. Zerberyn and his squads joined the firing line of the raiding party rearguard and awaited their comrades.
They came soon, Squad Escoban first: two brothers hauling their wounded sergeant between them, four more covering each other in pairs. Fire, retreat, cover, fire, retreat, cover, fire. Zerberyn selected their squad icon in his suit’s faceplate. It was tending from green to amber. It expanded, pushing out squad level detail for the rest of his taskforce and listing the brothers individually. Nine had set out, seven returned.
Rodrian came next. Their squad marker was red. Only four of eight remained. All were wounded.
‘Board the transports!’ shouted Zerberyn. The nineteen warriors already with him raised their weapons. Squads Rodrian and Escoban ran past, Sergeant Escoban dragged up the ramp leaving a trail of rapidly clotting blood.
The orks came after them. There were dozens as opposed to hundreds, their numbers thinned, but they were still dangerous. Many were lesser varieties of the ork technical class, while others wore massive harnesses covered in an unlikely array of guns. They flooded onto the deck, brandishing bizarre energy weapons that they wasted no time in using. A beam of searing ruby light pulsed out, neatly bisecting Brother Irken. Another dead. Twelve warriors lost in this battle alone.
‘Kill them all!’ roared Zerberyn. He needn’t have expended his breath — his brothers were already responding, riddling the ork crew with mass-reactive fire. The Thunderhawks’ anti-personnel weapons opened up, stitching so many lines of light across the hangar that Zerberyn found it hard to see Pride of Oriax from his position at the foot of Aegis of Alcazar’s front ramp. So many orks were hit that their atomised flesh misted the air. The walls were repainted dark red.
‘Squad Torr, board!’ ordered Zerberyn. Torr led his men aboard Pride of Oriax, two of them covering the rest as they thundered around to the front of their craft and up the assault ramp. Beams of barely focused light and small, hissing rockets scored the hull as the door swung shut. One impacted inside. A flash, and a jet of fire suppressant, then the hatch was shut and the Pride of Oriax was lifting off, engines in rocket mode, blasting out blades of blue-white fire. Its blunt rear penetrated the crude integrity field with an electric crackle and it was away into the void, swinging about, all engines engaging, and racing away from the flagship.
The orks fell back, sniping at the Fists Exemplar from the doorways and gallery. A lascannon blast slammed into the roof of the Aegis of Alcazar, bringing down a shower of molten ceramite and calling forth the voice of a tocsin from inside. Another of Zerberyn’s brothers fell, a smoking hole punched through his face. The others bore the hail of bullets and micro-missiles stoically, firing calmly back.
‘Evacuate!’ ordered Zerberyn. His men broke their line and pounded up the ramp. Zerberyn was last aboard, still firing outward as the Thunderhawk’s ramp closed. His warriors set themselves into their flight restraints. Zerberyn pushed past them, up into the rear compartment and on into the flight deck. Odrazar and his co-pilot were strobed by the light of gunfire flashing through the canopy. Bolt-rounds continued to chug from the forward mounts, dismembering orks foolish enough to chance the bay again.
‘Captain,’ Odrazar acknowledged Zerberyn.
‘Brother. Time to leave.’
Aegis of Alcazar reared up and back. The roar of the engines outdid the crackle and boom of the orks’ strange weaponry. Sailing backwards, it breached the integrity field and turned away, running along the side of the ork ship. Gunfire blasted from multiple mounts, forcing Odrazar to jink between their streams of shells and energy.
All was silent. The void brought peace. The ork ship vented its fury voicelessly. The rumble of the craft and the quiet conversations of active machines filled the cockpit.
Odrazar banked around and opened up the engines to maximum, and the flagship fell away behind them. Burrok’s World rolled into view, its marbled clouds and seas stained with the black smoke of worldwide fire. Burrok’s World was yet another nowhere planet beset by the greenskins. They attacked indiscriminately, invading whatever place they happened across. The world had little strategic significance for either orks or humans, but Zerberyn would gladly fight them wherever they were. The opportunity for resupply the battle presented was a secondary consideration to him. He wished only to slay orks.
‘There is an energy spike on the ork flagship, captain,’ the Thunderhawk’s co-pilot said. Zerberyn went to the ship’s operations desk. With his backpack on, he could not sit in its empty chair, but he keyed the display, selecting the Thunderhawk’s aft augurs.
The ork flagship was a brute of a thing, with a prow as blunt as an ork’s jaw welded to a long, rickety body that gave it the overall appearance of a predatory oceanic life form. When the Fists Exemplar had tackled it initially, it was powerful and proud, protected by an energy field that Space Marine ordnance was powerless to penetrate. Now the projection vanes were wilting, the field they generated was out and the ship suffered under the bombardment of the Space Marine fleet.
Slowly, the craft began to fall towards Burrok’s World. Zerberyn smiled as fire like solar flares burst from the haphazard array of vents and exhaust ports around the engine stack, and it turned, presented half its belly to his inspection. Explosions rippled from gun decks and fighter bays, catching the smaller craft fleeing it in their fires. In typical orkish fashion, the guns continued firing to the very last, but madly, targeting nothing. The mindless biting of a wounded animal.
The void sheeted white as the mechanician-admiral’s junk ship exploded into a maelstrom of spinning debris tortured by crackling green lightning. A weak shockwave of expanding gases tilted the Thunderhawk. The hull pinked and tinkled with a hundred micro-impacts. When the viewscreen’s image returned, in the flagship’s place was a crowd of fizzing sparks that went out one by one. Burning wreckage hurtled away into the void or scorched fiery trails into the upper atmosphere of the planet. In moments there was no sign the ork ship had ever existed.
Zerberyn remained in the Thunderhawk’s cockpit as it crossed the void towards the Dantalion. The ork fleet was well into the process of transformation into a debris field. With their admiral dead, the flotilla broke in all directions. Lightstorms flashed as the fleeing ork ships were picked off one by one. Engine stacks blew into greasy, roiling balls of fire.