For a fraction of a second the surviving greenskins stood in stupefied astonishment, watching another leader topple to the deck plates, then as one they reacted, charging forwards with a roar of 'WAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!' Despite this, I felt a faint surge of optimism. I'd seen many times on Perlia that once a group of orks falls below a critical proportion of their original number they tend to lose heart for the fray, breaking off to seek out another mob to join instead of pressing their attack. If I could just pick off another, that might be enough to shake the resolve of the rest.
But before I could squeeze the trigger again, the space beyond my sights was suddenly devoid of ork. The whole group of them had fallen, sprawling across the deck plates like drunkards in a drinking den, thrashing and bellowing with rage as they tried to rise, hampering each other as they flailed around like tantrum-throwing toddlers.
Mira looked at them with a faint air of disappointment. 'I was hoping they'd drop their weapons,' she said.
'That was your brilliant idea?' I asked, with a touch of asperity, getting ready to flee again. There was about as much chance of an ork dropping his weapons as deciding to take up flower arranging. 'A tripwire?' Which explained why she'd needed my hat, of course: the first principle of setting a booby trap is to direct the victim's attention elsewhere.
'Mostly,' she admitted.
'Then shouldn't we be running again?' I asked, with a hint of impatience. The only point of a tripwire would be to delay our pursuers, and standing around while they stood up and dusted themselves off would throw away that momentary advantage.
'Maybe,' Mira said, still looking back down the corridor with an air of vague expectation, and showing no signs of movement. Acidface had scrambled to his feet by now, bellowing imprecations at the others, and swatted at my dangling cap with the axe in his hand, no doubt relieving his feelings in the most direct fashion he could.
As the crude weapon smacked into my headgear, a blue-white arc of energy sparked across to the metal blade, and the ork spasmed, roaring and bellowing as he suddenly completed a circuit with the cable Mira had strung across the corridor. His comrades were caught in the discharge too, thrashing on the metal floor like fish on a griddle, their own ululations echoing loudly enough to pain the ears.
'That went about as well as could be expected,' Mira said, her expression now smug in the extreme.
I looked at her, then back to the twitching pile of smouldering orks.
'Why didn't you barbecue yourself while you were setting that up?' I asked, in some perplexity.
Mira shrugged. 'Rubber-soled boots,' she said. 'Saves time rigging the shock fence round a camp. It's an-'
'Old hunter's trick,' I finished for her. 'Next time you see that old hunter, thank him for me.'
Before she could reply, the abused power feed finally shorted out, and the standing greenskin collapsed on top of his comrades, with a faint clatter of falling weaponry. A fresh odour, pungent and familiar, forced its way past the stench of charring ork, and I turned to greet my aide.
'Jurgen,' I said. 'Prompt as always.' I indicated the feebly stirring mound of incapacitated greenskins behind me. 'If you wouldn't mind?' I could quite easily have put a las-bolt through each of their heads myself, but I'd promised to save him a few, and he'd only have sulked if I didn't.
'Of course, sir,' he said, and trotted off to administer the coup de grace to the fallen with every sign of enthusiasm. A few moments later he returned, bearing my cap, which he handed to me with a faint air of puzzlement. 'I'll have to see what I can do with this,' he said, 'but I'm afraid it's a little singed.'
THIRTEEN
AS I'D SURMISED , now they'd been deprived of the almost infinite number of reinforcements they'd surely been counting on to take the Revenant, the remaining greenskins were easy meat for the Reclaimers. Tracking them down took a little time, of course, given the size of the vessel, but a fully-grown ork isn't exactly hard to miss, and the Astartes were extremely adept at xenos hunting. By the time Gries called a meeting to discuss the situation, the shredded remains of the last one had been hauled away to the taxidermist[72], and the ship's enginseers were inhaling through their teeth[73] at the damage all those bolter shells had done to their nice clean bulkheads. Mira had, of course, been invited, but to no one's surprise elected to return to bed instead. Before doing so she disinterred her laspistol from the bottom of her luggage and tucked it under her pillow, as I habitually did. Better late than never, I supposed, but just in case there was still a kommando[74] lurking somewhere in the bowels of the ship, I'd asked Jurgen to keep an eye on the corridor. Needless to say, his vigil was a vain one, but he took the disappointment as stoically as he did everything else.
Which left Gries, Drumon, Yaffel and me arranged about the hololith, while the ship's crew scurried around us tidying up the bridge. The damage in here appeared remarkably slight, although the number of holes, scorch-marks and disquieting stains in the surrounding corridors bore mute and eloquent testament to the ferocity of the battle to preserve it. Hard to tell if I'd have been better off remaining here after all, or whether, despite my misadventures, I'd been prudent to get out while I could, so I gave up speculating about it in favour of the discussion.
'Damage to the enginarium was severe,' Drumon reported, 'but the guardian spirits of the circuit breakers responded promptly, preserving the core systems from harm. Our enginseers are performing the rites of reactivation, and have already honoured the guardians. The warp engines are performing as well as one might expect after a cold start, but will need shutting down for complete resanctification after we next emerge into the materium.'
'That sounds like a long job,' I ventured cautiously, not liking the sound of it at all. If our next port of call turned out to be a fire-wasp nest like the one we'd just escaped from, the last thing we needed was to find ourselves stranded there with no line of retreat.
'Roughly nine days standard,' Drumon replied promptly. 'Half that if we put in to a void station with a Mechanicus shrine, but we might as well wish for a forge world this deep into the Gulf.'
'I'll happily settle for a system free of orks,' I told him, while Gries and Yaffel reflexively meshed their fingers in the cogwheel gesture of the Adeptus Mechanicus, in response to the passing reference to one of the hallowed worlds devoted to the works of the Machine-God.
'Under the circumstances, so will I,' Drumon agreed.
'Then we must trust to the Omnissiah to provide the respite our systems require,' Gries said, in a voice which made it clear he'd take a dim view of it failing to honour the request, and moved on to the main topic on the agenda. 'Though your resourcefulness saved our vessel, it may have put the success of our mission at some hazard.'
'Quite so.' Yaffel nodded, oscillating a little as he always did, and went on. 'The conditions under which we enter the warp are crucial to our ability to follow the right current. Being somewhat distracted at the time[75], I was unable to complete the relevant calculations before we made the transition, which in turn renders our ability to detect the next emergence point problematic at best.'
'What's the worst-case scenario?' I asked, to show I was paying attention, and trying not to seem visibly pleased that this fool's errand sounded likely to be coming to an end before too much longer. There was bound to be a Guard presence on any Imperial worlds in the vicinity, to discourage opportunistic raiding by our recent hosts, so if I made myself known, I should be able to find a ship heading back to Coronus without too much trouble. Mentioning this prior to my departure might get back to Mira, however, so I kept my own counsel, wary of finding her turning up at the bottom of the boarding ramp again.
72
It's unclear here whether Cain is being literal, or merely making a flippant reference to Mira's use of her hunting expertise. Many Space Marine Chapters do indeed display the bodies of their defeated enemies, but given their profusion tend to be rather more selective about it.
73
A traditional artisan's benediction while assessing a repair job; its origin now lost, although some scholars speculate that it's a symbolic communion with their materials, infusing themselves with their essence before commencing work. At any event, the tradition persists throughout the Imperium.
75
According to the log of the Revenant he was fending off an attacking ork with his mechadendrites and a convenient chair at the moment the vessel entered the warp.