'This way,' I told her. 'We'll have to get round it.'
'Right.' She nodded, decisively, the clear and present danger we were in obvious enough to forestall any further frivolous objections, and beginning to display some of the fortitude which had sustained her in the tunnels under Fidelis. 'At least that should be as much of a barrier to the orks as it is to us,' she added, with a final glance at the collapsed ceiling before moving to join me.
Hardly had the words left her mouth, though, than the utility hatch she'd been leaning on just a few moments before suddenly bulged perceptibly, the thin sheet metal from which it was formed twisting under the impact of a blow which reverberated between the corridor walls like the tolling of a cathedral bell. 'Run!' I shouted, as the sound was repeated, but before I could take my own advice the flimsy hatch popped from its hinges, framing a sight I'd hoped never to see again (but which I continued to see more often than I can count over the years): the head and shoulders of a snarling, blood-crazed ork, which bellowed in exultation the second it saw us, and charged.
TWELVE
LUCKILY FOR US, and unluckily for the greenskin, my weapons were already in my hands, and with reflexes sharpened by paranoia I cracked off a couple of las-bolts the second I saw it. Both rounds hit their mark, inflicting wounds which would have crippled or killed a human, but which only seemed to annoy the ork. Not for the first time, I found myself marvelling at their resilience even as I cursed it. The shots did serve to distract the brute, however; as it pushed its way through the narrow gap, the frame of the hatchway deforming to admit the full width of its shoulders, it staggered from the impact, catching its foot against the threshold. Pivoting adroitly out of the way of the toppling slab of bellowing, spittle-spraying malevolence, I decapitated it neatly with a single stroke of my chainsword, and turned to run before either segment of the creature had hit the deck plates.
'What are you waiting for?' I shouted, finding my way blocked by Mira, who, to my amazement, was trotting towards the downed ork with an expression of grim determination on her face.
'I need a weapon,' she said, stooping towards the outflung hand which still clutched a huge, crudely made pistol.
'Not that one!' I shouted, knocking her out of the way just as the cadaver's terminal muscle spasm tightened its finger on the trigger, and the spot she'd been standing on abruptly became a hole in the deck and a blizzard of razor-edged metal shards. Even if she could have prised the ork's hand open, a dubious proposition at the best of times, grabbing the gun wouldn't have helped her much in any case: she'd have had trouble even lifting the thing, and any attempt to fire it would simply have dumped her on her well-padded aristocratic arse, probably breaking her arm in the process[65]. Now was hardly the time to be explaining all this, though, so I simply pointed at the howling, frenzied mob of greenskins fighting one other to get through the gap in the wall, while the brighter ones began to dismember their erstwhile comrade in an attempt to get past the obstructing corpse to reach us. 'Run!'
Stubborn and argumentative she may have been, but Mira was no fool. She was hard on my heels as I pelted along the corridor, intent on nothing more than opening up as big a lead as I could before the orks could force their way past the cadaver, and one another. A brief burst of gunfire behind us spurred me on, indicating as it did that the question of precedence had now been settled in the traditional orkish fashion, and that the vanguard was probably already in pursuit.
'What's your plan?' she panted.
'Don't get eaten,' I said. I'd be the first to admit it wasn't much of one, but it had always worked up until now. I activated my comm-bead. 'Cain to bridge, contact confirmed, hostiles engaged.' (Which I thought sounded a lot better than ''run away from after a lucky hit''.)
'Oh, and the Viridian envoy's still with me.'
'Acknowledged.' The Astartes captain sounded a little distracted, even given the current emergency. As he paused, the faint sounds of combat drifted through the tiny vox receiver in my ear. It seemed the orks were assaulting the bridge, just as I'd feared, but had yet to break through the defences I'd seen being erected on my way out[66]. 'All units are currently engaged.' In other words, good luck, you're on your own.
'May the Emperor protect,' I said as I signed off, which he was welcome to interpret as encouragement if he liked. I had someone a little closer in mind for His attention, and couldn't help wishing He'd had a few spare Astartes to make the job easier.
'I'm on my way, commissar,' a new voice cut in, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit to feeling a sudden surge of relief at the familiar sound of Jurgen's phlegm-thickened tones. Here, at least, was aid I knew I could rely on, even if it was going to take a while to get here.
'We'll save a few greenskins for you,' I assured him. No Valhallan Guardsman would relish sitting on the sidelines while there were orks to be shot, and I was certain he'd been chafing under my orders to remain where he was. 'Any sign of them down there?'
'Not even the sniff of one,' Jurgen said, his faintly resentful tone confirming my guess.
'Then we'll meet you halfway,' I told him. It appeared I'd been right about the guest quarters being as close to a safe refuge as anyone could find aboard the Revenant under the circumstances, so it seemed a pity not to take advantage of the fact. Jurgen may have lacked my affinity for three-dimensional mazes, but his straightforward mental processes would more than make up for that. I'd have bet my pension (which, like every other commissar in the field, I never really expected to be claiming in any case) that he'd simply head for K fifteen by the shortest possible route, and Mork[67] help any greenskin standing in his way.
'Meet who, halfway to where?' Mira demanded, only having heard one side of the conversation, and I filled her in as rapidly as I could.
'Jurgen, the guest quarters. There's fighting going on all over the ship, so it seems the best place to keep you safe.' There were always the saviour pods, of course, but taking to them would definitely be the last resort: our chances of surviving in a system crawling with orks were negligible. The Revenant, on the other hand, was our home ground, albeit infested with greenskins. If they weren't reinforced again too quickly, we might yet turn the tide.
As if to mock my hopes, the voice of the auspex operator rang in my comm-bead almost as soon as I'd completed the thought. 'Incoming torpedo volley. Stand by to repel more boarders.'
'Like we're just going to ignore them,' I muttered irritably, receiving a sharp look from Mira, who probably wondered if I was finally cracking under the strain. Before she could distil her disquiet into a typically acidic comment, however, the rather more welcome voice of Drumon crackled in my ear.
'Enginarium purged. Transiting now.'
Hardly had he finished speaking than the synapse-wrenching sensation which usually accompanied entry to the warp swept over me, more strongly than I could recall ever having felt it before; clearly, whatever the Techmarine had done, he'd done in a hurry, without time to complete all the necessary rituals. As the wave of nausea pounded through my body, I still found it in me to thank the Emperor that he'd managed it. The wave of reinforcements the auspex op had just detected would be passing harmlessly through empty space by now[68], instead of injecting another dose of poison into our reeling vessel, and the balance of the battle had just tipped decisively in our favour. Now it would just be a matter of tracking down the ones who'd already made it aboard, and eliminating them.
65
Cain is speaking with some authority here, as he had considerable experience of captured ork weaponry on Perlia.
66
Hardly surprising, as they were being contested by a Space Marine captain and his command squad, as well as the armed crewmen Cain had previously noted.
67
One of the greenskins' principal deities, a piece of xenological trivia he'd presumably picked up during his hectic sojourn on Perlia a few years before.
68
Or, more likely, dragged into the warp in the wake of the Revenant, to be preyed upon by whatever daemons happened to be around at the time.