"…he said he could forge his way to the mountains and get a head start," Lystartro replied. "Once the raid happens, we can direct troops to move in to support him or else make our way there on our own." Around the mess hall, the troops were still coping with the news. The Water Dogs, who had just been released, were equally as shocked as the guardsmen. Xenos in their midst was a difficult thing to imagine. But no one seemed angry. Like him, they understood the value of an ally in warfare.
Frens was fully healed. At last, his company could have its lieutenant back. He was sitting this meeting out, insteady taking time to practise with his bayonet skills in another room, to make sure his body hadn't forgotten since his injury. Kins stood behind an empty space on one of the mess hall tables, arms crossed and face shadowed by his visor. He looked like he was at a tribunal. If anyone looked unaccepting of Mhal or the eldar, it was him. He hadn't spoken yet.
"So when this raid comes sir, how are we going to get attention?" asked Kins, his voice full of demand.
"Our short-range vox should be able to send and receive on the raider's frequency," replied Osprey. "I'll take a few guys up top and try to get in touch with them." Yueka put up her hand.
"I'll totally go with that," she said. "In case anything or one gives you flak."
"Who else is god with the vox?" asked Osprey.
"I am," Lystartro replied, "and I am a voice of authority. Curth and the 89th can provide some guns, in case we're attacked. I'll go with you…"
"Me too," Kins said suddenly, his sharp voice reflecting his dark mood. "I am a much different kind of authority." He pointed to Frens. "He can babysit the others."
"If the orks come out to counter the raiders and block our advance on the mountain with their numbers, we'll pull a Porto Kalis, alright 112th?" Lystartro's command was answered by a chorus of affirmatives from his men. He saw Osprey lean in to one of the 112th sergeants and ask him something. The guardsman whispered something back.
"A subtle, fighting advance, like what we did to get from Porto Kalis to New Rynn City, back during the Snagrod invasion," the sergeant said.
"And I don't want any blasted heroes. We all work together to get the rest of us to that mountain. If Mhal is as good as his master said, the eldar should have the whole game figured out by then," Lystartro finished.
"Didn't he say something about a walker, guarding something in there?" Osprey asked.
"Yup," Lystartro replied. "But I dunno if even the eldar know what." Lystartro didn't say it, but he had a feeling they did know. It had to be a temptation of power that the eldar didn't want any dumb imperials getting their paws on, perhaps so they could take it for themselves?
There was no time to puzzle that out. As the meeting broke.
…
Nighttime came to Urbanis 1 and all was quiet, at first. The stars shone brightly and the air itself seemed asleep with peace. But this night was different. Up in the sky, amid the display of stars, a new constellation hung overhead. It was a vast V and the bright, white stars that made it were moving rapidly across the sky. They were not stars however, but gunships, whose bright engines propelled them towards their objective. The horrors of the night commenced when the calm of the night air was brutally awoken.
In the distance, the manmade thunderclaps of falling bombs trembled through the air. On either side of the flight of gunships were several flights of bloated Imperial Navy bombers, dropping their rounded cargo down in sporadic streams to the wasteland below. The night was lit by the strobing flashes of exploding bombs, which created enough light to outline half-visible fixed-wing silhouettes high up in the night.
From the flight of gunships came a gas-tailed rainstorm of fat rockets. The slammed into the tortured soil below them, causing further destruction in the already immeasurable damage to the city. Flaming blossoms leapt up, throwing light across the world of Essendrav grey.
Coming in behind the gunships, swarming like gnats, came the body of the raid.
Swooping flights of grey and white valkyries were the first to touch down, their black markings distinctive in the fires of the rocket impacts. Squads of black-clad guardsmen jumped out, securing a perimeter for the next wave of drops.
Somewhere down there, amidst the dozens of valkyries who were hammering themselves down onto Urbanis 1 like a grey snowfall, a pair of guardsmen swept their sights over a fallen hab unit with their night goggles. A startled ork stomped out of the door, his sheet-metal suit screeching with every step, squinting in the darkness, firing blindly into the shadows with his stubber. One of the guardsman fell back as a lucky shot ripped through his heart.
First blood to the orks.
His surviving comrade leapt back, shooting precisely into the ork's squinting eyes. Three more men joined in to help him bring the beast down. A shot tore through its skull and it crumpled. Now, the raid was on.
Around the scene, gunshots ripped out of the darkness as more blind orks stumbled out of their lairs, trying to find the fight they heard in the dark. Ork vision suffered worse than a human's in this light. Whole mobs of orks stumbled like drunkards into gunlines, then were mowed down with ease by disciplined vollies. One young trooper, jumpy and nervous as he swept one hab block for aliens, was startled when a bellowing ork carrying a large hammer barreled out of the wall, crashing right through it. Though they were short meters apart, the ork was swinging blindly around the room, trying to find the human he'd heard come in. The startled trooper did not shoot. His friends behind him did the work for him. Before this raid ended, this timid young man would be shot by a commissar.
The night was alive with gunshots now. Through the dark, guardsmen stalked blind orks. Grenades blew orks out of their holes. Lasguns cut them down. Indiscriminate ork shooting fared even worse than normally. For some, this was the best fight they'd ever had against the greenskins.
Bulky troopships, like flying beetles, came down next. They landed in the middle of the rings of valkyries. Assault ramps licked open and heavier equipment swept forth. Sentinels charged forth to add their heavy guns to the perimeter. Flame tanks came out next, followed by the unmistakable shapes of the Leman Russ battletank. From smaller ramps came rivers of fighting men, their booted footfalls making the ramps ring, as officers ordered them into position. A few flares were cast out into the night, illuminating the crumbled scenery a ghostly white that abruptle ended into an inky darkness wherever the flare's light did not reach. In the light of the flare, the proud green and gold flag of the Chazzan Cityguard was seen billowing in the cool night, held aloft by a charging guardsman.
More assault ramps opened and more men came forth. The colours of the Ersonian PDF bled down to intermingle with the grey and black Chazzans. In one place, a company of men, whose feral homeland was dominated by mounted warlords, threw their faces to the sky and howled a primitive warcry before they charged the darkness. And from one ship, came a column of Morchaghan troops and their attached Ersonian elements.
…
Mehzner and the nine others from his squad hurried around the corner, their night goggles letting them see all. This was a large warehouse that the good sergeant believed should be searched for nests of greenskins. The black facemask of the sergeant showed no sign of his searching expression when he looked in at the main storage room and saw piles and piles of heaped crates. With a gesture, he directed his men in. Lasguns raised, they were ready to…
A slender shadow dodged across his vision, but just for a moment. But there it was, between those crates. Mehzner pointed it out, his gun raised.
The door behind them slammed shut. His squad took a startled look, but saw no one there to have closed it. By then, it was too late.
Purple beams of light shot out from above a pile of crates. Mehzner caught a glimpse of a sniper, who was gone in an instant. The beams exploded through two of his men, bursting their bodies apart into bloodless ash. As it flew out, even the ash was disintegrated, boiled away, by the light. Only boots remained of two of Mehzner's squad.
"Back!" Mehzner shouted. These weren't orks!
The door behind them shot open. Two pale-faced men, their stingy black hair drawn behind their head, appeared. Their bizarre jagged guns rattled a wicked, liquid sound before they jumped back. Mehzner and his men fired at them, only to be caught from behind by that sniper and his awful gun.
"They're all around us!" one man cried before a shot disintegrated him. What was going on? These weren't orks!
Mehzner and his last surviving squad mate jumped into the maze of boxes to take cover. Amidst the empty boxes, they came face to face with a masked helmet, shaped like a snarling monster from a lunatic's nightmare. They didn't have time to raise their guns as hooked blades shot into their guts. Even if he couldn't see the black-armoured fiend's evil eyes, Mehzner knew he was grinning as he drove his two blades into the humans.
"When the rest of the kabal arrives, we will strip your world empty," a sneering voice hissed from behind that mask. His blades came out and shot across their necks.
…
The overall chaos of the scene was deceptive. What Stolce was watching was actually a very precise manuver being put into place. As the advance troopers cleared the perimeter, the men from the larger troopships were forming a steel ring, in the center of which would be dropped the command centre and the fuel dumps.
"89th!" Stolce confidently shouted to his detachment, seventy boys strong, "just like we practiced. Come on!" They ran after the Morchaghan company, leaping over piles of rocky rubble or twisted metal and flopping up beside them against a ridge of Urban destruction that lay visible from the flare. Stolce had to squint to keep the glare from hurting his eyes as he aimed into the shadows. All the while, his ears rung with the shouts of guardsmen. He heard the lieutenants under captain Sage shout orders to him.
"Spread out! Guns up!" A clanking sentinel stomped past them as Stolce tried to shout over the commotion. Out in the night, there was so much gunfire, broken by the loud shouts of the bigger guns. He hoped they were outgoing shots. "89th, advance!" Stolce and his boys rose up at his order and walked forward, forming a small part of a much larger band of infantry, advancing into the ruins under the watch of a layer of sentinels behind them. Stolce's gun was one of hundreds raised. He felt proud, larger and part of something important. This was not like his first sorry encounter with orks. Here, he was doing his duty and doing it well.
A round of artillery erupted in the flare-lit ground before him. The fountain of dirt and dust did make him jump, but he did not feel greatly afraid. So many comrades at his back, Stolce felt immune.
"Auspex has contact!" bellowed a deep-voiced Chazzan. "Guns up! Incoming!" The whole line halted. Contact? With what? Stolce's firm heart, hardened by days of fighting since that first terrible raid, felt shifted by fear.
He waited, watching the shadows beyond the flare. All around him, the sound of gunfire intensified while an undercurrent of alien yells poisoned his hearing. He couldn't even hear the trucks approach.
Bursting through the night, erupting like a leviathan from the sea, came four ramshackle trucks, festooned with bones and attractive scrap. Their bold lights hurt Stolce's eyes more than the glare. He could barely make out writhing aliens loaded into the back, spilling out over the side. The roaring faces of goggled drivers peered from over those white lights. Parts of the line broke when they saw the trucks coming their way.
The sentinels behind them opened fire. Hot, thick laser beams tore into two of the trucks. Fire burst from both as the two came to a gradual halt. Orks spilled out from them, so many. So many. How could they hold so many orks? The third truck ploughed into the line of guardsmen. Stolce actually heard bones break while it broke through like a bullet through flesh. Twitching men hung from its spiked hull as it carried on. By now, it was on fire, having come under the sentinel's laser blasting wrath. But it did not stop. It careened over a pile of debris and overturned, knocking a sentinel over and crushing its legs. Stolce saw the truck's driver jump out, hooting with laughter at the insane violence he had caused.
"Fight!" Sage's voice called over the din. Stolce didn't need to be told that. The orks from the trucks were coming at them now, either rushing them headlong or shooting from behind rubble. The line fell back into cover, behind ridges of ribble, in craters or from around lonely walls, cracking lasbolts into the orks. A few slow or unlucky guardsmen were brained or riddled with ork bullets. One man tried to defend himself with his lasgun as an ork fell on him with a cleaver. The ork opened him from chin to groin with the blow, which clove his lasgun clean in two. Stolce could see the dark blood dripping down in the light of the dying flare and the fire.
In the bad light, he saw the orks who had charged them reach the guardmen, hacking and killing as they went. Humans were torn apart like wet paper. Focused, determined lasfire was bringing them down fast, but the fearless mob still killed before they themselves were slain. It was the ork lifestyle in moments: fight and kill all you can regardless of danger, then be killed yourself. Only their covered brethren remained. Laserfire from the sentinels burned through the rocks and scrap they crouched behind, blasting ork flesh off the bone and leaving smouldering corpses.
"Behind us!" a few men shouted, albeit, using different words. Stolce turned from the lip of the crater he hid in and saw the chaos of the rest of the scene.
Orks were coming at the landing from all directions. Their trucks were lighting the night with their wrecks, but stomping, hollering orks were still pouring forth from them. The imperial line was still holding. Platoons were fighting according to the plan and not disappearing beneath the violence, but the enemy was still there, coming out of the shadows on foot or in trucks. The tanks Stolce saw were occupied with hurling shells into the scrappy ork four-wheelers that exploded at random from the dark or laying chugging bursts of explosive bolter fire on knots of aliens wherever they might be. They were holding for now, but there were deaths. Parts of human bodies lay wherever there were fallen orks. Yes, there were definitely casualties.
"Boys!" Stolce shouted to his beloved 89th, "watch our backs!" He took careful aim at an ork with a topknot as it jumped out of the darkness, waving an axe and shooting randomly with its heavy pistol. He fired as carefully as he could and when it went down, he congratulated himself on the kill, even if there were other men firing at it. Around him, the band he had been a part of was not just shooting at what was before them, but also at those orks who had gotten behind them too. And there were many. Ploughing trucks that roared past imperial troops as they died vomited out many barbarians from their fat cargoholds.
The whole furious scene was awash with gunfire and alien roars. The fight lost all coherency. There was no plan but to sit down and shoot. Glowing ork rounds flew over his head. Fanged alien warriors rushed around in mobs on all sides, blasting at the guardsmen with whatever crude guns they had. More ramshackle fighting vehicles popped out of the darkness to unleash hissing rockets onto the imperials. At some point, Stolce saw one of their flametanks explode, hit by a rocket. The silhouettes of burning guardsmen writhing around it was a scene from hell. Stolce couldn't see their faces, but it stuck with him all night.
There were enough fires now to give the whole fight its light. Over two score fiery wrecks provided the killing with a sun by which to fight. The light attracted orks like moths and prolonged the carnage.
"Got one!" laughed one of Stolce's 89th. Who? He didn't care. He slammed a new power pack in and tensed as a growling, spitting ork halftrack zoomed out of the dark in front of them. It ran over the dead from both sides and launched a spray of bullets at his crater. He ducked down to the crater's bottom. A loose body in an 89th tumbled after him, its head shot off, adding to the long dynasty of dead boys Stolce had seen during his time in Essendrav. He had long since gotten used to it. He didn't even check to see who it was as he returned to the crater's lip, in time to see the halftrack blown from existence. Dark scrap cartwheeled from the explosion that claimed it. Heads ducked to avoid the stinging shrapnel. Stolce took aim and added his shots to the vollies that sliced down the knot of orks who emerged from behind it. These orks, in contrast to some of the others, seemed directionless. They didn't immediately fire back when the humans began to kill them. A few turned and ran for the shadows. Some stumbled alone towards the guard in cover and shot off their feet. A sentinel's chugging cannon blew the remaining three into chunks of green meat, that roasted in the fire of the burning trucks.
What was that?
Calm. There were still some gunshots, but the orks had stopped coming and their voices were silent. Stolce wiped sweat off his brow. It sure was hot here. He sat back and caught his breath. They had fought and held the line. He knew though the orks would be back. They had only retreated to regroup, probably under Skullkicker: their target.
Stolce thought of Skullkicker as a version of Curth the bully, but infinitely worse than any human could be. That's what Skullkicker was: a huge bully. And they were its victims.
The real fight was only beginning.
Stolce was asleep when the mobile command centre touched down with the supply ships.
…
Osprey slowed his breathing and fired. The driver of the warbike snapped his head back as the bullet found his brain. The lonely ork's bike rolled a few more meters and fell into a crater, sending the dead ork against the handlebars. This was the third time this morning they had to duck down to let an ork pass, but this was the first time he had actually shot the alien.
"Out," Osprey whispered after a minute. The 89th, Lystartro and Kins appeared out of the ruins like rats in uniforms. He returned to the vox-set. Moments ago, he had found the right frequency, though it was proving hard to get any help from the raiders, who had arrived three kilometers north sometime last night. They just kept telling him to "come in and help," but also to take cover because they'd be shelling the surrounding regions.
…
Through the air, the growling alien flew. This ork had no name except "you's." It was born in a moist part of a kill kroozer. This planet was the first place it had set foot onto. As its rocket propelled it towards the humans, it rattled off shots from the gun it had salvaged off the battlefield, while shrieking unintelligibly with the lust for battle.
Seconds later, a lashing spray of laser blasts streaked across the part of sky it soared through. The orks rocket exploded, shredding the remains of it to the tempest of the battle-filled air.
This was the second attack that had happened since touching down. It was even bigger than the first, with tanks and sentinels stalking far ahead of the main guard forces to hunt and pick off orkish vehicles. Mobile platoons shadowed these sentinels, blasting down any orks they saw from around the sentinel's feet or tank's treads. Behind them, by the landed troop transports and command centre, rocket-berzerkers were swooping down on the entranched defenders in violent flocks. Behind the protective transports, long-nosed guns launched shells into the ruins, directed by airbourne spotters. While alien infantry and the odd war machine smashed into the Imperials, these guns ceaselessly turned out shots onto the destroyed city, their shoots leveling ork strongpoints nestled amid Essendrav. Hundreds of orks were killed and scores of orkified structures were flattened. The target of the raid was still to be accounted for.
Amongst these brave infantry who held the line around the guns, there were no deserters. There was nowhere to run to. Orks, who had escaped the advance parties, slipped in from all directions. More than any other, rocket-berzerkers rained down. Guardsmen were crushed by landing orks, eviscerated or blown away by their weapons, or decapitated by their blades. But no man was wasted and every man died fighting. Ork dead were growing heavier. Dozens of rocket-berzerkers were clipped from the sky or blown into chunks of green meat and metal scrap by the accuracy of the heavier Imperial guns.
And the artillery still did not stop.
…
Stolce ducked down with his squad as three more orks appeared in the hab before them and opened fire. Steady Morchaghan lasbolts flashed into those windows like a verticle rain of red, bright death. Stolce saw a great horned shadow fall in the windows and the orks went silent. They broke cover and crept through the wartorn streets of these hab blocks. These square habs must have been the most boring place in Essendrav before the war. Now, war wounds had given these unimpressive buildings some character. Stolce walked through the hole left by a fallen wall and onward through the streets.
Behind him, he heard someone vox the punisher they (the 89th, the 112th and the so-called 783rd Chazzan Cityguard) were escorting. The tank ground up after them, its round, multi-barreled cannon looking ominously deadly in the morning light, its shining gunmetal colour the brightest thing on the black and grey Chazzan tank. With a sprut of flame from its side sponsons, it cleared a hab that carried signs of orkish habitation. Its escort: a nimble Chazzan sentinel, stalked behind it on its chicken legs.
The group crept forth carefully, eyes on the windows, listening for the greenskins. Stolce signaled for his men to stay close to the habs and out of the open in the street. He had a feeling…
Yes! Just as he moved, ork machineguns raked the ground. Three Chazzan guardsmen dropped backwards, bleeding out. The Morchaghan veterans and their less experienced Chazzan comrades shot back at that tall spire, standing there above the habs. The muzzle flashes of crude ork guns were blazing away. It was so far! Lystartro had said they couldn't aim! Not even Stolce could make a good shot.
The sentinel stalked around the punisher to spot the tower and raised its lascannon. A short pause followed as the pilot aimed. Then, the cannon flashed once. Just once. The orks stopped and Stolce saw smoke come from the tower. But there was no time to celebrate.
Suddenly, there were orks appearing out of alleyways in the street before them: great scarred aliens in buly metal or cloth armour, adorned with fleshy trophies, attractive scrap or alien glyphs. These were not the bright green young orks Stolce preferred to fight. These were veterans, not only of Essendrav, but of wars amongst their own kind. That one, with the big hammer, the scar on its face must have been from another ork's axe.
A perfect target for the punisher, or so Stolce figured.
One of the orks, as it jumped out, lifted a pole with a rocket attached to its end. In a hiss, the rocket shot across the road and exploded into the front of the punisher. Flames licked up from its front and the tank drove clumsily backward.
"Uh oh!" Stolce heard himself say as both sides exchanged fire. Humans leapt behind cover or backed away, but the orks kept on a hot advance. Stolce cracked off a shot before he heard the rocky, tumbling sound of moving debris beside him. He shot across the road with one of his squad, ducking behind the punisher as the hab they were beside was pushed down. The rest of his boys, still against the side of the street, backed away in alarm from the great thing that moved through the rising dust.
A trash can, with four crab legs and a pair of claws. One ended in a cruel hammer and another hoisted a buzzing saw. The machine twisted violently to one side to slice the head off a startled boy as he raised his head from the alley he was in.
In a hurry, the sentinel fired. Stolce saw dripping bits of metal dribble off the hole the shot made, but the walker crawled on, smashing the road threateningly with its hammer.
Stolce ducked over the punisher and fired a burst of lasfire into the faces of the orks. They were engaged with the front guardsmen now, rushing after them to fight them room-to-room in the habs or struggling with them in the street. Guardsmen lay dead, cut apart, wherever Stolce looked. They were being dragged down or beat aside as they fell back.
"Hit that one!" Stolce shouted to his squad, pointing at a brute with a horned helm that had pushed a wounded guardsman into another, knocking both violently down. A stream of lasfire hammered the ork. It turned its face at the squad as lasfire ripped off its skin. Then, a lasbolt caught it in the face and it fell back. Stolce pointed at another, a bald monstrosity with spiked shoulder pads, hurtling towards them.
"That one!" A burst of fire followed and the beast dropped. Stolce jumped when an ork looked down at them from the punisher's top and raised its sword. Stolce shot it in the eyes while the rest of his squad finished it off, dropping it off the side.
"Back and reload! Check your packs!" Stolce ordered, dodging back as more orks got closer. One of Stolce's squad was punched to the ground by an ork slug. Two of his squadmates dragged the bleeding PDFer. A bloodthirsty warrior with two barbaric axes lunged at them from around the tank, but the Chazzans put it down.
The walker, which had been distracted by the guardsmen in cover and the sentinel, now turned to the wounded soldier and the boys helping him. Stolce would not lose another. But how could he stop that thing? Once more, he was facing a great bully with primitive, violent desires.
"Hey!" Stolce shot at the walker. Where was the damned sentinel? It wasn't in the street. "Get over here!" Stolce fired and jumped. A few ork shots flew past him and the 89th fired back in reply. "Get over here!"
"Sir? What are you doing?" someone asked. The walker turned from the wounded as they retreated down an alley. Now, he was the target. Stolce could see little painted skull kill markings on the walker's rusted, blood red hull. They stared at him in rows, asking him to join.
The clanking monster stalked at him. It was faster than he thought! Stolce's squad scattered like mice from light, but he remained fixed, alone before this big iron bully.
From an alley, a laser bolt lashed out, fiery red. The bolt struck the walker's rightmost leg, making it stumble, amputating it cleanly. One leg now ended in a molten stump, like a severed human limb was bloody. The sentinel stepped out of the alley and fired again at the walker's flank. In contrast to his earlier shot, which struggled against the thick, roughly crafted armour, this shot slid thorugh the orkish machine as if it wasn't even there. A hot lance burst from the machine's other side and it toppled down, landing heavily, like a bag of chains.
As the orks maneuvered around their slain champion, guardsmen blazed fire into them. From windows and dark alleys, lasgun bayonets thrust into necks and eyes, withdrawing faster than an ork could swing.
Then, the whole orkish mob was lost in a puddle of sun that issued from the flamers of the punisher. The tank was still alive. Stolce could see shapes of orks with skins of fire thrashing in the inferno. From every corner of the street that the orks had not reached came guardsmen: Chazzan, Morchaghan and Ersonian PDF. Lasguns knocked orks down, bayonets finished off wounded orks who burned in the street. As the punisher's main cannon came back online and the fire on its hull vanished at last, the Imperials thrust down the street. Steel and machinery was their tool of wrath, but their strength came from the ancient instinct of human courage. Against that, not even these alien veterans could endure. The last ork died as it lay thrashing on the ground, gutted by a shot from the sentinel and slain at last by a bayonet pushed through its thick neck.
…
The distant thud of the nearby battle provided Osprey with a backdrop to his message.
"…So I want all resistance groups hearing this message to come to the rallying point I have described to join in our mission," finished Osprey into the vox. He handed it back to Lystartro. "That'll bring in at least a small platton worth of guns." Lystartro smiled at how sure he sounded.
"What the hell kind of place is that?" Lystartro asked. "And are you sure there's gonna be enough guys to fight us to the mountain? Orks aren't stupid brutes, they'll be watching the ruins for any tricks we try on them. Fighting our way to the mountain's gonna be like Rynn's World."
"Except without the Astartes," Osprey sniffed. "Yueka?" The woman looked up. "Take some of these 89th babies with you to the square and wait and see if anyone heard our message and joins our little rescue mission." Yueka nodded and took all the present 89th troops into the ruins. Then, they were gone.
"Makes me wonder how much time we have," Osprey said as a whistle broke the air.
"Artillery!" Lystartro called, ducking into a crater with Kins as a shell hammered the ground nearby. A few more shots broke the ground around them. Osprey just stood dumb and looked up.
"Looks like they're bringing us some help after all," Osprey confided with a point. The shells stopped as, streaking down through the air above their heads, came a trio of black valkyries, escorting a smaller ship. Some kind of lander, perhaps for a sentinel? Lystartro and Kins stood up, the commissar holding his hat to his head as the landing craft washed air over the three of them. They saw stormtroopers, real stormtroopers, exiting the valkyries in rehearsed, professional formations. The small lander, an eyesore in the world of grey with its bright red and black paint, let down a ramp.
"Wait…that symbol," Lystartro said as he set his shotgun aside and squinted. "Damn," he said to Kins, "why now?"
CLICK. He heard a gun cock behind them. Lystartro didn't even bother looking as the stormtroopers surrounded them, guns raised, faces covered. That lander wasn't made to carry anything to Urbanis 1.
"Now my good boys, what's all this crap about?" Lystartro asked innocently.
"Drop your guns," said a familiar voice behind him. Lystartro turned to see Frens, his eyes hard, his hands clutching his officer's laspistol. "In the name of the Inquisition," Frens commanded, "drop your guns." Osprey and Kins discarded their weapons. Lystartro was speechless as Frens indicated the manhole cover that led down to the Water Dog's sewer home. "It's all down there, boys," he said as the stormtroopers began to file down, sliding down the ladder, agile and sure.
"Frens? What is…" Lystartro began through a tight jaw.
"Consorting with a heretic captain? And xenos? Shame shame," Frens sighed. "My master, inquisitor Dolman, won't be happy."
"You've been spying…"
"I've been looking for heresy on Dolman's behalf since this regiment was founded," whispered Frens, "I've uncovered more than my share in the past. Those loose nurses back on Salsheema'dosh? You ever wonder why they stopped showing up? But you sir? Why?"
"You idiot," snarled Lystartro. "The dark eldar…"
"In the name of the inquisition, I place you all under arrest." Stormtroopers jumped them, beating even Commissar Kins to the ground. "Take these heretics below. But leave the purging to the boss." Frens collected Lystartro's shotgun as they were all dragged below.
…
Frens stalked through the corridor of the underground complex. Behind him, two faceless men marched, their chests marked with the insignia of the His holy inquisition, their eyepieces red in the unlit mess of this rat's home of a hideout. Frens had been injured for a long time and had missed many meetings with the aliens and their heretical middleman. He entered the messhall.
"You will talk now," Frens demanded, his voice stiff and unforgiving. "Where is Mhal Dannit? Have you not been told about the new status of Mhal Dannit?" Pause. "Well? Where is he?"
"You're wasting your time," said Lystartro as he stood to his feet. "You know, I thought you were better than this. Selling us out…"
A few seconds later, Frens shot his captain and longtime friend. His human side felt some sympathy for Lystartro, but his inquisitorial indoctination regard such feelings as weakness. He would kill all of the 112th just to catch Mhal Dannit.
"Emperor…curse…you…" Lystartro gasped to the man he used to call his friend. Frens could see the hate in Lystartro's eyes. The hate of a man betrayed. "I…hope…you…die…" He would get in the way of Frens and his investigation. The law said Frens had to finish him off.
"You first." He shot Lystartro in the head. Lystartro, the grizzled old Rynn's World veteran who had a natural instinct for shotguns and a fear of fire, died silently, blood making a puddle on the table he lay upon.
The whole room erupted. Resistance fighters stood up, but were beat down and led out. Only Osprey did nothing. Frens approached Osprey and offered him a tobacco stick. Osprey took it in his mouth but did not light it. The fear of the inquisition had him in its talons. In the talons of the imperial eagle, so Frens thought of it.
"Now," Frens asked Osprey as the last of the traitors were led out. Lystartro lay where he fell, eyes still open. "What happened? Start from the beginning."
"Mhal, he's gone to the mountain. We're to meet up with him and the eldar. I've called for aid from the local resistance," Osprey replied. "Please, the Water Dogs are innocent, you know that."
"I'll leave your judgment to the inquisitor, but I'll put in a good word for the Water Dogs if you're helpful," Frens replied. Osprey, trembling, told Frens everything he knew about Mhal, from what he had seen, to what he had heard.
