Pilot John Wood jumped over the river, clenching his pistons and extending them suddenly to make Marjorie, his sentinel, leap into the air. He landed on the other side with a hiss of hydraulics. He turned to look behind him, and dared his wingman to try the ambitious jump. Sergeant Avery shook his head, and forded the river with his vehicle. The rest of the troop crossed the river in their own way. Pilot Robinson decided to walk his sentinel across a wide log, deliberately swaying the cockpit to make it more dangerous.
Avery called them to order, and even though they could all see him inside the cockpit of his scout sentinel, his voice still came through their vox sets. "Troop, stow it. Spread out, one hundred metre spread, advance for half a mile and scout everything. Flyboys have spotted Ork vehicles in this damned forest. You see anything, you blow it up, clear?"
A dip of the cockpit was considered a salute in the sentinel troops of the Velionan Scout Regiments, and all the pilots gave the traditional acknowledgement. John, still grinning from his river crossing, turned Marjorie and began stepping through the trees.
He felt the rush of adrenaline he always got when he piloted Marjorie. He had had the girl for almost two years now, and her smooth movements and clear instruments still excited his senses. She was a marvel of engineering, small, compact, lightly armoured but armed with a multi-laser and the huge chainsaws that were standard on Catachan and Velionan sentinels. She moved like a dream, and if he had wanted too he could have sprinted her through the forest, over fallen logs and under branches. She was easily as nimble as a human, and in her leather-padded embrace he felt safe and secure.
His open cockpit gave him a clear view of everything that was around him, although Marjorie's exhaust did prohibit his rear view. He forgave the girl this though, as he had never needed to see behind him anyway. Velionans didn't retreat, they always faced the enemy. Marjorie was camouflaged in muted browns and greens, and she didn't stand out from the trees at a distance.
Absorbed in moving through the forest and his thoughts for Marjorie, John didn't notice the green shapes up ahead. He did notice when they fired a rokkit in his direction from the back of a heavily disguised trukk. John swore, and wrenched Marjorie aside, mentally apologising for his rough handling. "Bloody hell, contact sarge. Blasted greenskins!"
Avery replied quickly, "I'm on my way pilot. Troop! form up. Greenskins on the left flank."
John weaved Marjorie through the trees, keeping the Orks to his side and seeking to lengthen their range. So much for not having to look behind, he thought. He leapt through a small gap between two trees, and brought Marjorie round the side, hoping to catch the Orks off guard. He clicked two green buggers screaming through the trees towards him, shouting their vulgar war cry.
John depressed the trigger on his right joystick, and the multi-laser began put-putting away. The red las-rounds soared through the air and caught one Ork. The beast's chest sizzled as rounds entered, and the beast fell. John bounded forward and cut down the other Ork screamed as another few put-cracks pierced his mouth and fried his brain.
Avery and the other sentinels arrived on John's right, multi-lasers cracking the air with their distinctive laser sound. The Orks screamed, but one lucky brute fired a rokkit towards the sentinels, causing them to scatter. John snarled, how dare they, ugly little brutes, threaten his friends' sentinels. He charged across the forest, between and around the trees, firing his multi-laser. His charge served to scatter the greenskins, and several lay dead by the trukk, but John was now out in the open away from the rest of his troop. He back-pedalled, watching for greenskins to appear. One popped his ugly head up, wielding some sort of clumsy gun. He fired it, and John felt the round pinging off Marjorie's legs.
Avery and the other sentinels closed with John, and within seconds the sentinels were arrayed behind a log in a line. The Orks were scattered, but the trukk could easily have hidden several within its bulk. Avery voxed his orders to his troop, "Boys, two of you to each side, flank the buggers. I'll deal with that second-rate piece of scrap." So saying, Avery popped his sentinel's head over the lip of the log and fired his lascannon at the trukk. As troop leader, Avery's sentinel was the only one equipped with the devastating heavy weapon. While powerful, it overheated quickly and had a slow rate of fire.
The lascannon's powerful shot impacted the trukk dead centre and promptly blew the vehicle up. The shoddy contraption flew apart, and some of the rusty pieces used in its construction simply disintegrated, leaving the ground scorched and orange.
Avery whooped, and the other sentinels moved off. John moved around to the left with Robinson, scanning for targets among the undergrowth. For several tense minutes the troop found nothing. There was a whoosh though, and one of the other sentinel pilots suddenly let out a yell and gabbled into the vox. "Shit, they're on my legs, give us a hand mate, dirty little green bastards. Take this, you swine!" John heard the screech of the chainsaw, and then a scream as the pitch of the saw turned to a whine. Through the trees he saw an Ork fall to the ground with his arm hanging by a thread of skin and his face savaged by the monomolecular edged blade. This was followed by the thwack of a multi-laser as it putted rounds onto the other Ork. Both creatures fell into the undergrowth and began to bleed out.
The savaged one fell silent with a gurgle, and John tried to shut his ears to the disgusting noise. God, he hated Orks. The little buggers corrupted all machinery that fell into their hands and turned it into rusty, uneven little contraptions that belched smoke and fire in haphazard displays of poor engineering.
Robinson suddenly began firing his laser and shouting into the vox. John spun Marjorie around and saw why. "Throne! gretchin!" John added to the fire-power, his first las-rounds putting fist sized holes in the chests of two grots and blowing off the head of a third. The decapitated beast's body spasmed, and its axe cut another gretchin's face in two. The grots must have been hidden in the shrubs and grass, and seeing the Imperial walkers had stirred their need for machines.
John kept firing, and six more gretchin went down with another volley of las-rounds. He checked his heat and ammo counter and swore when he saw it. His multi-laser was nearly overheating, and whilst his ammo was fine, he ran the risk of jamming his weapon if it got too hot. He voxed Robinson, "Mate, I'm nearly overheated, let's pull back." Robinson agreed, and fired sporadic bursts to cover John as they both moved backwards.
There were still several dozen grots following them though the trees, chittering and yelling to each other in the strange Ork dialect. The rest of the troop had mobilised now, and they joined John and Robinson in the fight. Two more multi-lasers started thwacking out rounds, and the gretchin's front rank crumpled in screams and burns.
The smell of burnt flesh reached John's nostrils. It was sickly, and rotting, and putrid. He almost gagged, but stopped himself with the promise that these disgusting, unclean creatures would be wiped out. He fired his weapon again, and the fusillade of shots took down several gretchin with more sizzling wounds. Several of the dim-witted gretchin stopped their charge to loot the bodies of their former comrades. Soon, as the others tried to get in on the action, the charge stopped and the gretchin were fighting each other over their own corpses.
Their pathetic lack of fighting spirit amused the sentinel pilots and enraged them, and within seconds the put-putting multi-lasers had slaughtered the degenerate gretchin. John shot a gretchin through the head as it bashed in its comrades skull in an attempt to get a bigger axe. Then he shot the gretchin he had just saved through the back as it brandished its new weapon.
The gretchin charge had been stopped and the gretchin killed, and John and the other pilots congratulated each other. The troop stalked over to survey their handiwork, and |John was impressed. The gretchin had numbered around twenty or thirty and the sentinels had put them down in less than a minute.
John turned Marjorie to the troop, and voxed Avery, "Sarge, we showed those blighters. What now though, do we advance, sarge?"
Avery seemed about to reply, but he never managed to say it. His sentinel suddenly lurched as a group of grots who had snuck up on the troop. Another pilot, Wright, screamed as a particularly agile gretchin managed to climb into his cockpit. The little buggers were all over them, and John felt the tell-tale extra weight on his right leg. Thinking quickly, he called to the troop. "Spread out, lads, use your chainsaws and shoot 'em off everyone else." He clicked the button for his chainsaw and activated the camera feed. The grainy image showed two gretchin clambering up his leg.
The two beasts chittered nervously as the chainsaw started whirring, and as one drew close John moved his joystick and swiped the blade across the grot's torso. The second gretchin, seeing the limp corpse of his comrade falling away from the walker, jumped off and landed in the grass. John moved Marjorie's foot quickly and squished him. The sound of bones cracking and flesh splitting was ear-splitting, but John was satsified. At least they hadn't hurt Marjorie. He turned to the rest of his troop, and noticed Wright struggling with a grot in his cabin. The dirty thing was trying to kill him with a rusty, serrated knife. John took aim, and when he saw an opening shot the gretchin as Wright pushed him back. It was a lucky shot, and the beast spurted blood from his frying wound.
Robinson was fighting the grots on his legs, and John could see Avery menacing a gretchin with his laspistol. He shot it and its brains erupted from its head, scattering into the air. The last pilot, Jenkins, did not fare so well. A gretchin managed to climb up behind him by using the hot exhaust.
Jenkins screamed, and John saw that the gretchin had stabbed Jenkins in the spine. Jenkins' scream cut off, and he looked unconscious. The gretchin, instead of finishing Jenkins off, tried to scramble around him to the sentinel controls. John ran Marjorie up next to the vehicle, and searched for a way he could stop the grot before its multi-laser started causing havoc. His arm fell upon his standard-issue laspistol in its holster.
John drew the pistol, and reached his arm across the gap between the two sentinels. He aimed at the gretchin and shot. The gun bucked very slightly and the laser round hit the gretchin in the stomach. The creature collapsed, groaning and spurting blood, and John sighed in relief.
The rest of the troop had fended off their grots, and silence returned to the blood-spattered clearing. Dead, burnt grots lay everywhere. John breathed deeply, and wished he hadn't. The smell of charred meat was stil thick on the air, but the troop had prevailed. They had one casualty, but the Orks in this particular forest were dead.
John gave Avery a grimace, and received on in return. These Orks were bloody persistent.