"We must not fail in this war. We cannot let the historians say that when evil was at its apex, the men of Chinchare failed to stand before it."
"I assure you, such a thing will never happen…"
"–Yes! It is reassuring to hear those words from a leader of the Adeptus Astartes–"
"…Because should we fail, there will be no more historians for the Imperium."
Conversation between Captain Aidon See'mer of the Sabbatorus Free Militia and Chapter Master Krex Legerdemain of the Imperial Falcons.
Within Wheels
By Trent Roman
Brother-Warrior Barad scanned the horizon with his enhanced eyesight, keeping his hands firmly on his raised bolter. He knew that there would be nothing to see yet – due to the sedimentary ridges that crested the surface of Sabbatorus Minor IV, they would hear the Ork vermin before they would actually see the horde – but he couldn't help but be alert with all his senses. Anybody can watch and see, but true observation was a skill that required constant use, else it would atrophy like the sword-arm that never sees battle.
Barad took in the haunted landscape of SM-IV, as he had the moment before and the moment before that, noting the different colours of sediment strata that made up the geological formations that surrounded them, cresting towards the inky darkness above like solar flares frozen by the chill of the void. He watched Sabbatorus itself spin slowly against the sheet of the eternal night on this low-atmosphere moon, casting its grey reflective light across the surface of the soon-to-be battlefield, making everything look slightly wispy and ephemeral. It combined with the distant glow of the Chinchare sun to cast double shadows from every ridge and rocky protrusion, one stretching away from the Imperial Falcons and into the distance from which the Orks would emerge, the other falling above the combined force of the Adeptus Astartes and local militia.
So many shadows waiting to engulf us, Barad thought. But the shadows have their use. They can be used for concealment, as we are doing now.
Their force was thirty battle-brothers strong, reinforced by three times that number of soldiers recruited from the refineries and plasma plants on Sabbatorus. Most were untested in battle, and betrayed their nervousness by shifting from foot to foot and fiddling with their antiquated lasguns and pellet rifles. Barad noted all this in his extended peripheral vision, and felt like admonishing the Sabbatorii for their apprehension. The Chapter Master, Krex Legerdemain himself, had issued the orders that had led Barad and his brethren to this desolate moon, and Barad had absolute faith in the abilities of his leader. Though not gifted with the sight – none of the Falcons were, due to the Sojourn – Legerdemain's skill in predicting the enemy was legendary.
They should show more faith, Barad thought. Why does the Sergeant let them shuffle around like undisciplined children?
Then Barad heard a heavy crackling sound, more or less rhythmic, reverberating through the ridges. He recognized it immediately as the sound of an Ork slugga, those primitive weapons the green vermin favoured so. It was a weapon that inspired disgust in Barad, being crude of make and unsubtle in application. But powerful, he added. Mustn't forget that either.
The crackling repeated itself, and was occasionally joined by the fainter, higher-pitched sound of lasguns. The sounds became more distinct with every passing second: their Sabbatori bait, fighting a feigned retreat right into the ridge valley and the waiting caress of the Imperial Falcon's bolters.
Monitoring stations on Sabbatorus above had detected an Orkoid presence on this moon over a week ago, delivered there by landing craft from a pair of Kill Kroozers that had briefly danced across the short-range sensor screens of the mining stations before vanishing again. It was not like the Orks to hide, and the Chapter Master had concluded that the Orks must have an actual plan for once, rather than just throwing themselves madly into the fray. The Chapter Master believed that the Orks were merely waiting for the opportune confluence of orbits to move their force over to Van Sele's World, where they could presumably breed a massive war horde on the surface of the abandoned planet.
It could not be allowed to happen. It must not be allowed to happen. Imperial forces were stretched thin enough as it was without the outlying systems in the Eye of Terror turning into another Armageddon War, siphoning desperately needed resources away from the Cadian Gate.
Barad saw the first hint of movement on the target ridge and felt himself stiffen in his full-body armour. Two figures crested the ridge, both of them garbed in the drab brown jumpsuit-uniforms of the Sabbatorus Free Militia, wearing recycler masks over their face to compensate for the low oxygen ratio in this moon's atmosphere. They were running towards the gathered forces as fast as they could, lasguns apparently forgotten in pumping hands as they fled the greenskins behind them.
Suddenly, the shoulder of the slowest militiaman seemed to explode outwards, torn by a slugga shell, the red of his blood contrasting sharply against the borrowed grey glow of Sabbatorus. The first militiaman paused in his flight, looking back as if intended to turn around and help his injured comrade, but even halfway into the motion one of the Imperial Falcon battle-brothers at the forefront of their group had darted in with preternatural speed, scooped up the fallen man as though he weighed nothing, and retreated back into the ranks just as quickly. Barad knew from experience that the injured soldier would be rapidly passed from battle-brother to battle-brother until he was deposed at the edge of their crescent, momentarily out of harm's way.
Barad nodded to himself in silent approval. Waste not, want not, he thought to himself. It is something the Imperial Falcons had learned during their long Sojourn on Nacirema, something that the decadent chapters could not understand in their affluence. The injured man may yet survive this battle, and live to fight again for the glory of the Imperium. Another maxim rose to his mind, from the Nacireman indoctrination classes: "Every fighting man and woman is a tool at the Emperor's disposal. To waste the Emperor's tools is blasphemous."
After all, the militiaman had bravely volunteered for this baiting run into Ork territory. Even the Orks, dumb as they were, would suspect something was amiss if they saw battle-brothers of the Adeptus Astartes fleeing without an attempt to fight. But cowardice on the part of the Sabbatorii, normal humans not even trained by the Imperial Guard, would not arouse the suspicions of the dim-witted greenskins.
Then a primeval roar blasted through the thin atmosphere of the moon, and there was no more time for aphorisms. The front ranks of the Imperial Falcons, including Barad, knelt in order to let their battle-brothers behind them fire over their hand when the time came. Barad kept his eye on the ridge and his finger on the trigger, sight and weapon linked as though part of the same system, inescapable cause and effect.
Movement. A flash of green and black cresting the ridge. Depression. The concentrated explosion at the bolter's maw, the brief yellow light, the pressure of recoil against his hand, easily compensated for. Hit. An extra splash of green against the alien's pitted mockery of a head, the body falling to the ground.
And then the Orks swarmed into view, and there was no more time for precision shots. Still kneeling on the cold, slightly powdery surface of Sabbatorus Minor IV, Barad swept the sudden wall of green skin and black armour with his bolter, the dependable machine spitting round after lethal round into the Orkoid mass, causing eruptions of flesh and leather and metal all along the enemy front. If the Orks were surprised to find a group of Adeptus Astartes and militiamen waiting for them instead of a pair of bedraggled humans, they didn't let this abate their enthusiasm in the least. Renewing their savage battle cry, the survivors charged down the slope, firing their shootas to little effect (at least against the Space Marines), waving their choppas in anticipation of the close-quarters combat that they preferred.
Barad felt the weight of his standard-issue chainsword hanging from the green utility belt/holster at his waist, but made no move to draw it. These beasts, he knew from the indoctrination sessions and prior experience, excelled at hand-to-hand fighting. It was best to stand their ground at fell as many as possible with their bolters and lasguns before the swarm was upon them. Then, just as Barad could see the small, beady red eyes set deep into the Orks' beastly visages, he shifted his bolter to his left hand and slammed it against his left leg, locking it into position there, and drew his chainsword with his right hand, bringing it up to bear so that the sword was horizontal and parallel to the ground.
The choppa, aimed at his head, smashed into his raised chainsword with amazing force. But he was a Space Marine, and his kneeling position allowed him to use the ground itself as strength, so Barad did not shift a centimetre under the blow. The Ork stumbled; the sudden block of his choppa leaving him overcompensated. Barad kicked out with his free leg, feeling his foot connect with his foe. Most other opponents would have had all bones in their leg crushed from the blow of a fully armoured Space Marine, but the resilient build of the Orkoid spared him this fate. It did, however, distract him sufficiently that Barad could break his sword of out the weapons' lock, sliding it along his opponent's arm to sever it neatly at the elbow.
The Ork stared dumbly at the stump of his arm for a moment, and then turned back towards Barad, roaring his anger, intent on finishing the job with fist alone. However, the moment of surprise on the Ork's part had given Barad enough time to throw himself backwards onto the ground. Lifting his left leg from his supine position, Barad's hand flew to the trigger of the bolter attached there, unleashing a hail of directed shells into the Ork's chest, piercing its crude armour and reducing a variety of internal organs to bloody pulp. The greenskin fell forward like a toppling pillar, raising a thin coating of pale grey dust into the air.
Barad quickly got back to his feet and looked around, withdrawing the bolter from its leg holster. All around him, his battle-brothers clashed with the Xeno scum, deftly parrying crude axes, illuminating the ghostly terrain with flashes from their bolters.
Barad saw a cluster of Orks charging towards three Sabbatorii militiamen that had become isolated from the main theatre of combat. They fired their lasguns with seemingly no effect. The larger Ork at the forefront of the cluster threw a choppa he had been holding in one hand at the Sabbatorii, the twirling axe spinning in the reduced gravity and lodging itself in the brown-uniformed chest of one of the militiamen. Calmly raising his bolter, Barad sighted on the leader of the pack and fired at head level. The Ork's head seemed to collapse inwards, and it fell to the ground, rolling and tripping up the Ork behind him. Barad kept up the barrage, downing two more greenskins before they realized where the attack was coming from. The survivors fired at him in turn, but Barad had noted the shift in body posture that preludes a firing stance and jumped to the side, slugga shells whizzing harmlessly overhead.
Barad hit the ground, angled his bolter upwards and resumed firing. The bolter shells tore into the greenskins, ripping off an arm here, pulverizing a face there. Barad noted with detached amusement that one Ork fell with a small, still-steaming hole in the back of its head where the militiamen's lasguns had fried what passed as an Ork brain. Between the powerful bolter shells and the lasgun shots to their less-armoured backside, the Ork cohort was quickly whittled away.
Standing again, Barad scanned the battlefield for more targets of opportunity. However, it seemed as though the combined forces of the Adeptus Astartes and the Sabbatorus Free Militia had taken the day. Those few Orks left standing where encircled would be quickly disposed of. Although there were about a dozen brown-garbed bodies of the Free Militia on the moon's surface, Barad was pleased to note that not a one of his battle-brothers had fallen. It was a good day when victory was seized with no substantial losses to themselves.
Even as he was mentally congratulation himself and his fellow Adeptus Astartes on a battle well fought, Barad heard a low-throated roar reverberated through the thin atmosphere. He looked up, at first mistaking the sound for a aircraft of some kind, but it soon became apparent that the noise was coming from the same area that their Ork quarry had emerged from. Barad saw others in the valley follow the sound to the sediment ridge, militiamen looking at each other and at the Space Marines in obvious apprehension, the Imperial Falcons automatically assuming shooting stances in response to this new threat.
When they crested the ridge this time, it was not in dribbles of four and five Orks at a time, but a literal sea of green flesh and blackened armour, sweeping into the valley like a storm front, raining a deadly hail of slugga shells. Barad fired his bolter into the mass, unable to see how much effect the Imperial fire was having because any Ork that fell was quickly overtaken and trampled by the greenskins behind him.
Such numbers! thought Barad. The Ork presence on Sabbatorus Minor IV was known to be substantial, but that was why they had assumed guerrilla tactics, using tricks and traps to chip away at their numbers. But it seemed like this particular ambush had been turned against them. The main body of the horde must have heard the sounds of combat and came rushing to sate their bloodlust.
We will not be able to stand against such a multitude, Barad understood. Could it be that the Chapter Master had made a mistake? Barad shook the heretical thought aside. It didn't matter how they had come to this. Only the enemy before him was important. We will sell our lives dearly.
His bolter clicked empty, and Barad cursed himself for not paying more attention to the number of shots he had fired. Emptying the bolter with one hand, he quickly reached for the replacement cartridges at his belt with the other, unclipped it and slammed it into the bolter, firing again even before the shells were swept into the bolter's firing chamber. He only had time for a few more rounds before he could see the enraged red eyes of the onrushing greenskin horde. He slammed the bolter into its holster and swung his chainsword into a defensive posture, ready to meet the Xeno menace.
Within the first few blows traded, Barad felt time break down and parcel out as he slipped into a combat trance. His eyes tracked the rise and fall of the enemy's weapons. His arm and hand moved of their own accord, parrying and thrusting. He was awash in a tide of doppelganger greenskins, any traces of individuality subsumed by the blurry pace of the battle. Parry, jab, block, kick, duck, thrust. Barad existed only from moment to moment, his past reduced to the finely honed fighting skills he possessed, and the future even more unimportant, except for a few seconds worth of observation and anticipation to track the likely avenue of the enemy's blows. His body felt disjointed, his mind always ahead of his limbs, so that even as he brought his sword to jab or block, he was already considering the next tactic.
All around him, evident in his highly alert peripheral vision, he saw the waves of green and purple smash into each other, occasionally flowing past the demarking line, then pushed back by the force of the tide. He saw Sabbatorii brown, at first common and then increasingly rare, often accompanied by a flash of colour, red so violent against the ghostly grey ground and the inky night.
There was a roaring overhead, but Barad, deep in combat, couldn't look up. Even as he fought, a secondary track in Barad's mind focused on the sound, trying to identity it. They hadn't been told that the enemy had any of their primitive bomber aircraft on the moon, and the sound was too steady to come from engines designed by an Ork mind. Unless a new player had entered the field of battle, the modulated whine of engines above could only be Thunderhawk gunships.
His guess was confirmed shortly, as he saw lances of bright white energy rain down from the sky into the green horde before him, vivid red-and-yellow explosions mushrooming across the landscape, occasionally propelling a silhouetted Ork into jetpack-unaided flight.
But how could the Thunderhawks have arrived here so quickly? Barad wondered to himself, dodging a choppa, spinning 180 degrees as he did so to drive the tip of his chainsword into the greenskin's gut. The Thunderhawks could only have been dispatched from the Fourth Company Strike Cruiser, the Darting Blade, concealed in geosynchronous orbit on the other side of Sabbatorus. But it should have taken them at least twenty minutes to reach the battlefield from there, and they had only been fighting this latest wave of Orkoids for half that time.
Unless the Chapter Master knew beforehand that we would be outnumbered and in need of evacuation – but then, why send us to fight in the first place?
An ear-splitting scream to his left shattered Barad's train of thought. An Ork had just separated head and body of the Space Marine next to him, and was aiming his slugga at Barad over the still-falling body of the unfortunate Falcon. Using the lowered gravity of the natural satellite to maximum advantage, Barad jumped across the body of his fallen battle-brother, his chainsword swinging in a downward arc. He crossed the gap between his opponent and himself just as the greenskin fired.
He had brought his chainsword down on the Orkish brute's weapon, causing it to deflect away from his chest, but wasn't fast enough to avoid the metal blaze. He felt something burn a searing path into his left leg, and didn't need to look to know that his armour would be pitted and smoking from the passage of a slugga shell.
The Ork took advantage of his distraction and swung his free arm straight at Barad's helmet. The Imperial Falcon Space Marine reeled from the twin blows, staggering backwards. Had the Ork brought his slugga to bear again, Barad doubted he would have been able to avoid it. But the Ork reached for an obscenely large axe that had been strapped to his back instead and charged forwards. Barad had just enough time to spin sideways, his injured leg screaming in protest, seized the bloodthirsty beast as it flew past him and use the alien's weight and momentum to throw it to the ground. Without wasting a second, Barad unclipped his bolter from his leg and aimed it at the Ork. He had a moment of worry as he depressed the trigger – What if the slugga shell had hit his bolter? – but then felt the satisfying push of the weapon's recoil as it spat death into the still-supine body of the Ork.
Suddenly the battlefield was awash in the incendiary glow of explosions overhead. Taking advantage of a momentary lull in the battle, Barad scanned the heavens. There, as expected, were the boxy purple shapes of the Imperial Falcon Thunderhawks, still several hundred meters above, visible only thanks to their running lights. Barad could see the red flashes of spatial combat.
The Kill Kroozers! Barad thought. The two Ork vessels had been hiding ever since the Imperial Falcons had arrived at Sabbatorus, but those savage Orks simply couldn't resist the chance to shoot their Thunderhawks out of the sky, trapping the Falcons and their Free Militia allies on the planet with the greenskin horde.
Barad raged with impotence, understanding there was nothing he could accomplished here on Sabbatorus Minor IV that would affect the outcome of the battle above. He focused his rage on the greenskins still fighting about him, pumping round after round of bolter shells into their thick green hides, switching to his chainsword when the ugly brutes got too close for efficient shooting. He shot and hacked his way through the Ork mass, taking two more slugga shots in the process, one in his right shoulder and one on the left side of his chest, thankfully deflected from any important organs by a combination of his Space Marine armour and chestbone. His purple armour, normally polished to a proud shine, was dull with splattered Ork vital fluids.
Unexpectedly, a flash of light of tremendous intensity engulfed the battlefield, momentarily turning the combatants into mere shadows before downshifting to a more tolerable range of yellow and red. Pausing as if by prior agreement, the Imperial and Orkoid battle groups looked up into the frozen void above. In the sky, two ships were burning like candles against the starry darkness, a roiling mass of flame and explosions, ignited plasma creating a luminous blue trail behind them. In a moment, the shockwave reached the atmosphere of Sabbatorus Minor IV and translated into vibration as it stuck the thin air. It was as if a thunderclap had been magnified several times over, and the less resilient militiamen dropped to their knees, hands pressed against their ears through their oxygen masks.
There was a moment of silent inactivity on the battlefield – as silent as it could be, with the residual ringing in his ear – as both parties realized what had occurred. The Thunderhawks were still in the sky, undamaged, though their engines now seemed muted because of the loud explosion above. The colossal explosions they had witnessed could only have been the Ork Kill Kroozers.
In an instant of insight, Barad understood everything that had happened on and around the barren moon that day. No doubt aware of the size and location of the main Ork horde, the initial baiting mission performed by the Sabbatorii had always been intended to lure the entire cohort to the small ambushing force, the "failure" of their ambush tactic creating a false sense of security in the alien leadership. Using the fact that the Imperial forces were clearly outnumbered, the Chapter Master dispatched the Thunderhawks, who arrived a little early but not sufficiently so to tip off the Orks that they were being blind-sided. Confident of their victory, the Orks aboard the Kill Kroozers moved to intercept the Thunderhawks in order to trap the Imperial forces on Sabbatorus Minor IV – and in doing so exposed themselves to the Imperial fleet, made up of the Falcon's two Strike Cruisers and perhaps allied and local navy.
Barad could see the dark forms of the Thunderhawks still hovering overhead, growing larger as the Space Marine vehicles descended towards his position. This, Barad understood, was the final part of the plan. More of an epilogue, really: the Thunderhawks, already in position, would airlift the survivors of the ambushing force off the surface of Sabbatorus Minor IV, leaving the Ork horde stranded on the barren moon and vulnerable to the Chapter's atomics. Barad marvelled at the ingenuity of the plan: by placing a mere hundred of the Imperium's defenders in harm's way, the Chapter Master had managed to effectively counter the Ork threat in the system. All those who survived this day by avoiding direct confrontation with the Xeno scum would be ready to meet the forces of Abandon if – when – the Despoiler's forces poured out of the Eye of Terror.
The two clashing forces on the bleak moon had paused to observe the skyward pyrotechnics and weigh the consequences of the drama playing out above them, but the belligerent impulses of the Orkoid mass did not stay dulled for long. One of the aliens raised his choppa in a defiant roar, echoed shortly thereafter by hundreds more greenskin throats. The cry snapped Barad back to reality, and he raised his bolter again, firing into the Ork ranks. Until those Thunderhawks landed, they were still outnumbered. They could still be wiped out by their vengeance-filled foe.
The Space Marines began to fall back, firing their weapons all the while, closing their ranks into a tight semi-circle. The Sabatorii militiamen, seeing this, did likewise, adding their bodies to a brown-uniformed outer ring, kneeling in many instances so that the Adeptus Astartes behind them could fire their more powerful bolters at the enemy. The militiamen, aiming their lasguns at the legs of the advancing warriors, managed to pierce the weak armour there and crippled the greenskins. Undeterred, the bloodthirsty aliens crawled ever onwards with their powerfully muscled arms.
Barad reflected that they were fortunate to be facing Orks, obsessed with close combat, rather than enemies like the tainted Traitor Legions or the ghastly-looking Necron constructs, which would have used the Imperial forces' concentration as an opportunity for massed long-ranged fire or even artillery weapons. As it was, however, the combined firepower of dozens of bolters, firing as if linked, mowed down rank after rank of Orks.
For now, the greenskins in the back were prevented from firing due to the massed presence of their fellows in front of them, but they would speedily climb over the bodies of the fallen and propel themselves into the front rank almost as soon as the bolter shells shattered the Ork in front of them. Gradually, metre by metre, the Orks were gaining ground, clambered over the fallen to get into choppa-range. The defenders of the Imperium were being forced back into a narrower and narrower semi-circle, the ghostly grey wall of the canyon they had selected providing both a defence against being encircled and attacked from the rear as well as serving as the anvil against which the human troops would be hammered by the Xeno horde.
The ring of choppa against chainsword, multiplied a dozen times over across the front-line, echoed hauntingly in the low atmosphere of the moon. Whenever a Space Marine managed to disentangle himself from the charging Orks, his bolter would blaze a storm of righteous metal into the advancing greenskin mass. So tightly pressed were their opponents that half-a-dozen of the foe's warriors would fall in the seconds before the inexorable advance of the Orks brought another of the barbarians close enough to swing his crude choppa weapon at the armoured figure of the fortunate Astartes battle-brother.
Bright lances of energy lit the landscape as the Thunderhawks racked their lasguns across the green mass, searing entire squads' worth of Orks in a single fell swoop, but succeeding only in creating a charred black line in the dust of surface of Sabbatorus Minor IV before any trace of the attack vanished in the surging tide. Barad saw the pilots' dilemma quite clearly, even as he caught a poorly-swung choppa blade in his free hand, cutting through armour and biting into his palm, while burying his chainsword in the ugly face of his assailant. There was simply no room to land near the Space Marines on the ground; any attempt to do so would merely cause the deep-purple troopships to be swamped with Orks.
Barad heard a scratchy command come through his helmet's voxcoder. It ordered him – the entire Imperial force, in fact – to get low, drop to their knees, and watch for incoming debris. Barad obeyed instantly, despite his knowledge that they would be placed at a tactical disadvantage. His training did not permit otherwise, and his faith in his superiors gave him strength to believe that a plan had been hatched, one that may very well see them off this rock. Almost as an afterthought, he side-stepped a charging Ork, seized the back of the greenskin's head as the brute overran his position, and brought his opponent down to the ground with him, the head of the blue-tattooed savage making a satisfying crunch beneath the force of Barad's power-armour augmented strength.
Both Thunderhawks came into the valley low, so low that the Orks could practically jump up and touch them. Several attempted to do just that, repeated failure not diminishing their enthusiasm for this new exercise at all, while a few of the more reasonable examples of the species contented themselves with riddling the undercarriage of the troop transports with impacted bullets from their shootas. The Thunderhawks directed their engines downwards, cutting the strength of the jets to a quarter-strength so that they wouldn't be blasted away from their position hovering above the Orks by the strength of the blow-back. However, the force of the engines was enough to flash-fry the Ork warriors directly under the flaming path of the jets.
Barad saw one of the remaining Sabbatorii militiamen break out of the defensive circle the Space Marines has establish and break into a run towards the Thunderhawks. Barad shook his head, even as he gauged that the distance between him and the militiaman was too far to intercept him. The Sabbatorus native must have thought that the Thunderhawks were attempting the clear the ground of Orks for a landing. Barad knew this couldn't be the plan: given the weight of their enemy's numbers, such a clearing would exist only long enough for the Thunderhawks to land, and they would be overrun with Orks again. Indeed, the hapless militiaman somehow managed to evade the Orks long enough to get caught in the heat backwash of the Thunderhawk's engines, disappearing into a cloud of smoke and ash.
Even as the ever-diminishing ring of Imperial defenders tried to keep the Orks at bay from their kneeling position, the Thunderhawks rotated to face them and fired their weapons into the cliff-side above them at an oblique angle. An unspeakable cloud of ash and dust bulged from the impact site, shrouding the combat zone in a powdery miasma that made it difficult to make out the shapes of the ever-charging Orks, still undeterred by the considerable firepower that had been deployed against off them, feeding off the energy of the mob. Fortunately, the defensive line was concise and Orkoids had a distinct morphology, which would prevent friendly-fire casualties.
Only moments later, the first of the debris began crashing down on their position, a veritable cascade of rocky fragments and pebbles being blown away from the blast zone. As he felt a barrage of cliff-side chunks come crashing down on him, Barad was grateful for the reinforced metal of his helmet and his genetically-augmented brain-case, the bone much thicker than that of a normal human. Distantly, Barad was aware that the Sabbatorii militiamen had neither the protection of technology or gene-seed to shield them from the stony deluge, and he felt a brief twinge of regret at the necessity of sacrificing their local allies. For rabble press-ganged into service, they had fought bravely and more-or-less competently.
The shower of debris stopped as the angle of the Thunderhawks' fire inclined ever upwards, forging a path into the cliff-side, detritus now arcing backwards or sideways, any fragments of rock heading in their direction incinerated by the constant stream of destruction pouring from the troopships. Even before the sediment layers lining the newly created corridor had lost its red superheated glow, the Imperial forces were engaging themselves in the passageway. Protected by the thermite barrier of their boots, the first Space Marines into the passageway picked up the surviving militiamen, slung them over their shoulders, and ran away from the battlezone.
The rest of the Adeptus Astartes semi-circle performed a fighting retreat. The Orks, divining that their quarry was trying to escape, attacked with renewed vigour, but this time the terrain was to the advantage of the Imperial Falcons. Even as Barad, walking backwards, blocked a descending choppa with his chainsword, one of his battle-brothers further along the corridor – and therefore higher than the mass of the battle – was able to fire over his head and turn Barad's opponent into a green pulp. Instead of another Ork taking the place of his fallen comrade, Barad saw a purple-armoured figure step into the gap before him. Securing his chainsword, Barad drew his bolter, took the opportunity to slap a fresh cartridge into the weapon, and began firing into the alien mass below.
The Thunderhawks, having forged a ramp for the Imperial Falcons to escape, now gunned their engines and lifted away from the Ork-infested valley, flitting briefly over their battle-brothers on the surface before landing on the sedimentary plateau at the end of the pathway. As rigorously disciplined as befits the Emperor's finest, the Falcons did not turn and run towards their troopships as would lesser mortals. They continued their steady backwards motion, letting the Ork tide smash itself against the bulkhead of the Space Marine shield, supported by the relentless fire of the battle-brothers above.
At the top of the conduit, the Space Marines carrying the remaining Sabbatorii dropped their charges into the opened troop transport and joined the co-pilots and sass operators in providing supporting fire. One by one, still firing, the Imperial Falcons climbed into their ships. Barad felt the unyielding edge of one of the Thunderhawks at his back, jumped up and backwards so that he landed in a sitting position of the ledge of sass and drew himself up again, all the while never ceasing to pour a steady stream of bolter shells into the enemy below.
As the last of the Falcons climbed into the vessels, the Orks threw themselves against the side of the vehicles, latching on to conduits and struts, firing angrily at machinery and futilely trying to pierce the armour with choppa blows. The pilots gunned the engines and the sass operators triggered the closing sequences, battle-brothers still firing at the Orks hanging onto the Thunderhawks. There was a noise like a sudden hailstorm as the greenskin horde below poured their shoota fire into the now-pockmarked bellies of the Thunderhawks, and then they were away, well out of range of the primitive weapons.
Barad finally allowed himself to relax. Any Orks still hanging to the ship would be burned off by their fast ascent, even in the moon's low atmosphere, or would fall to the chill of the void. Looking over his photographic memories of the boarding sequence, Barad estimated that twenty of the thirty battle-brothers who had participated in the ambush had survived the day. Ordinarily, a one-third casualty rate would be unacceptable for the Imperial Falcons, but against the overwhelming numbers they had to face, Barad judged they had gotten away with their pride intact. The Sabbatorii had not been so fortunate: only a handful of injured militiamen languished in the troopship's hold.
Barad turned away from his companions, turning his sight inwards. He offered up a brief prayer to the Emperor for granting them victory this day, and for preserving his life on the battlefield. He also gave thanks for his primarch, whose intricate plans had probably prevented an Ork invasion of Van Sele's world with only sixty-odd soldiers sacrificed in return. As the Thunderhawk returned to the Darting Blade, the Fourth's Strike Cruiser, Barad meditated on the lessons learned today. There would no doubt be many more battles before Abaddon's tide of evil could be turned back, and Barad fully intended to fight the scourge of the Despoiler with faith, body, bolter… and mind.