A/N: Thanks for the reads and reviews so far. I'm glad people are enjoying this story, and I hope you stick around to see where Fenwick ends up. You may have noticed that in the description for the story, it says that 'things don't immediately go horribly'. The key word there, of course, is 'immediately'. Believe it or not, this is still 40k.
"Um…"
"Have you something to say, human?" Thurion asked, stopping and turning halfway towards me. As he stopped, so did the others, turning to look back at me curiously. As they had paused, so did I, and took the opportunity to discreetly catch my breath. Having gotten my breathing to level out, I pointed at the dust-shrouded structure in the distance. It looked suspiciously like a rundown military base.
"Is it just me, or are we going towards that?"
Marrlë and Thurion looked at each other for a moment before the former burst out laughing, while the other chuckled behind the gorget of his armour. I looked at them in confusion before Damantin stepped over to me and quietly apologized for both of them, and proceeded to explain to me that we had, in fact, been heading towards that structure for the better part of a day now, ever since the entire group had sighted it. Well, the entire group except for me.
"We may have forgotten that your vision is not enhanced beyond normal human capacity, I'm afraid," he conceded, actually sounding contrite. "As soon as Marrlë saw it, he began making for it, and we all followed. It was easy to guess what his intentions are, but such a place holds value beyond-."
"Orks," the Khornate snarled eagerly, and ran his hand over Gorelady's head. "There have to be orks there. They've probably orkified the place, too. I can't wait…"
"Hold on. There are orks there, and we're going… towards them?" This seemed to fly in the face of all logic, until I remembered whose logic we were operating on, and nodded resignedly to myself. Right. Naturally, Marrlë was eager to sink his chainaxe into something again. He had been remarkably patient in terms of waiting for a fight; it had been another week since our last encounter with a band of orks, and in that time he had neither threatened anyone with violence, nor had he started foaming at the mouth and screaming heretical oaths. Well, for the most part.
I preemptively loaded my lasgun with a fresh power pack, which earned me a nod of approval from Damantin. The Thousand Son had been giving me daily shooting lessons, and according to him, I could now confidently call myself a good shot. By normal human standards, anyway. Regardless, I was feeling much less nervous about getting into a fight, especially with the squad drills the sorcerer had been putting us through.
As we drew closer, he went over and spoke to each of us individually, giving us hypotheticals and instructions concerning the battle that no doubt awaited. As I looked at them, I realized Marrlë wasn't the only one itching for violence. Thurion's fingers were drumming on the hilt of his power sword, and Rosie's claws were clacking impatiently. While they all seemed to have their little rituals, I wasn't quite sure how to pump myself up for an upcoming fight, and as I thought this over, Damantin appeared beside me.
"Nervous?"
To my credit, I did not flinch from his sudden proximity. "I am," I admitted, "but not as much as I would be without your lessons. They've helped a lot, I think."
"Save that sort of statement for after we've won." Nevertheless, he sounded somewhat pleased. I nodded and put on a brave face while he doled out instructions to me. As we had practiced, I would provide cover fire while Rosie and Marrlë tore through the orks on the walls, drawing most of the fire while I ensured nothing too dangerous was able to pin them down. Thurion would battle them on the ground, and lure them into a position where Damantin would be able to roast most of them with a few psychic blasts. As we went, we would use whatever defenses the orks had set up to our advantage. They would be expecting an attack from beyond their walls, not from within; Damantin's teleportation would give us that much-needed edge.
As we drew carefully closer over the wasteland, keeping to rockier terrain to minimize our chances of detection, I saw faint movement on the fort's wall. I realized that at this point, the others would be able to see what was going on with much better clarity than I, and so I would have to rely on their guidance until we started our assault.
While Damantin continued his tactical evaluation, Thurion loaded his bolt pistol, Marrlë paced impatiently and Rosie polished her claws to a glistening black, I pulled out the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer and skimmed through it, smirking at some of the more ludicrous statements, especially where the effectiveness of the lasgun and flak armour was concerned. Of course, it wasn't as if the Primer was a complete pack of lies: there was plenty of useful information regarding military command hierarchy, forms of address and gear maintenance. Giving that last section a quick review, I made sure my lasrifle was in good shape, filled up my flak armour's pockets with power packs, adjusted my helmet and gave myself a determined nod. I was ready, or at least, as ready as I could be.
Or so I thought. Reaching into my pack to store the Primer, my hand brushed against something hard and round. With a suspicious frown, I gave the unseen object a squeeze, and pulled it out to inspect it. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I found myself holding a grenade, catching Marrlë's eye. He raised an eyebrow, and I waved him off. I didn't know what sort of grenade this was, and until I did and found a good reason to use it, this thing was staying firmly clipped to my belt.
Before I could ask Damantin what exactly I had just stuck to my waist, the sorcerer nodded and declared, "Now."
Muttering a spine-chilling incantation, Damantin waved his force staff and ripped open a churning hole in the fabric of reality. I had barely enough time to register its existence and try to fathom its purpose when Thurion stormed through it, energy crackling from his sword and bolt pistol held at the ready. With a quick clench of Gorelady's throttle and the expression of a child who has been gifted a new toy, Marrlë followed suit. Rosie stood at the gate's edge, shifting on her taloned feet, and looked over to me. "Well?" I forced myself to lock into reality and gave her a quizzical glance, in response to which she laughed and reached out her delicate hand. "Aren't you coming? We have a fort full of orks to kill."
I blinked and looked at her hand, hesitating for a second. Only for a second, though. "Let's go," I said, wearing the inimitable grin of someone who has been forced to discard reason and common sense in order to stay sane. I closed my hand around hers, and we leapt through the gate together. The hole in reality spat us out atop the base's walls, whereupon we were greeted by autogun fire whizzing through the air around us. I yelped and dove behind a nearby barricade, while Rosie danced through the hail of gunfire and whirled onwards, claws open and prepared to rend any ork unfortunate enough to find itself in her way.
Timidly lifting my head above the ramshackle barricade, I assessed the situation as best as I could. The wall of the fort ran around the central building, and on it were mounted several dakkaguns – orkified autocannons, all pointing outwards. No one was manning them, though; a trail of green and red gore signaled Marrlë's progress along the wall, where he and his axe had no doubt had a grand old time. There he was, on the opposite side of the wall from me, standing his ground against a crowd of greenskins who were literally falling over each other – some tipping off the wall onto the melee below – to reach him. Their close proximity to one another, and to Marrlë, was making their otherwise dangerous guns less useful. Therefore, they were forced to pit their crude choppas against the Khornate's screaming chainaxe, which wasn't going in their favour.
One Boy tried reaching out and forcibly pulling Marrlë into their midst, where they could beat and hack him to pieces with ease. The look of astonishment on the greenskin's face when the frenzied warrior tore its arm off with his bare hand and used it to brain its former owner while fending off the other orks was priceless. I might've laughed, if it weren't for the shouting and gunfire going off all around me. Slipping out from behind the barricade, I set my lasrifle to semi-automatic mode, and looked around for a better place to focus my fire.
There – Rosie was racing around the wall to reach Marrlë, and some of the orks on the ground were turning their guns up towards her, forcing her to dodge their attempts to shoot her as she ran on. Now that I looked closer at them, I realized with a bit of amusement that the orks were hilariously inaccurate – the danger of their guns came from the sheer volume of bullets being sprayed, not the marksmanship of their wielders.
My fire, then, went to cover Rosie's progress. The orks aiming at her found their guns jamming as my three-shot lasgun volleys slammed into the hefty weapons. This had the desired effect of getting them to stop shooting at my Daemonette ally; however, it resulted in them firing at me instead. Inaccurate as they were, I decided to stay out of full cover for a moment longer. Something on the ground was drawing my attention.
The reason the cluster of orks on the ground weren't riddling Marrlë, Rosie, and their own with gunfire was because the majority of them were converging on a single point, intent on being at the forefront of the fierce battle occurring there. I watched, awe-stricken, as the warrior in forbidding black armour stood at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the wall, single-handedly holding the greenskin mob at bay.
If Marrlë and Rosie were whirlwinds, then Thurion was a thunderstorm, his sword cutting down several orks with every swing, and each bolt from his pistol bursting a green cranium as it found its mark. I couldn't fathom how he was able to create an impassable wall of death with his blade and still fire with such impeccable precision, but he could. All by himself, he valiantly held the stairs, drawing the attention of the main body of greenskins while Marrlë and Rosie wreaked havoc on the wall.
Yet it was becoming apparent that even a warrior as fearsome as Thurion couldn't last against such numbers. Though he gave no ground, every so often a choppa would breach his defense and strike his armour, with all the fearsome strength of an ork Boy behind it. It was slowly wearing on him, I could tell, and so, without a second thought, I forsook the safety of the barricade, darting along the wall to one of the unmanned autocannons and, wrenching it around with all my might, began firing as carefully as I could into the mass of orks on the ground, aiming for those immediately behind the ones he was fighting.
Compared to my humble lasrifle, the autocannon was incredibly effective, ripping into the orks like tissue paper. The damn thing was near impossible to control and groaned menacingly with each round fired, so I let go of it before long for fear of hitting Thurion, but I had drawn their attention long enough for the Space Marine to dig in his heels and lay into the orks closest to him with new vigour as the pressure of the greenskin mob lessened. I couldn't be sure, but I thought I saw him send a subtle nod of acknowledgement my way.
Seeing that I was providing cover fire, several more Boyz spun around and began to unload their guns at me; or rather, in my general direction. However, the amount of bullets coming at me was reaching a treacherous volume, to the point where I really was in grave danger of taking a salvo to the face now. I dove back behind the nearby barricade, wishing I could help out more. A suit of carapace armour would be very, very nice right about now, but that was neither here nor there.
As the green tide surged against Thurion, some of those orks who had been distracted by my initial cover fire turned their guns on Marrlë and Rosie. The two of them were now forced to battle the orks on the wall while weathering the grounded orks' barrages of gunfire. Perhaps the most dangerous thing about them was that they never seemed to run out of bullets. Slowly, Marrlë and Rosie were forced back along the wall, and the orks closest to the stairs began turning on Thurion. Soon, he'd be surrounded, and with me currently pinned down and the other two struggling on the wall, the sheer numbers would overwhelm him.
I was on the verge of despair when, at last, help arrived. Soaring over the wall on a strange blue and gold spike-rimmed disc with a single roving eye at its center, the Chaos sorcerer stopped in the air, briefly surveying the battlefield. His disc carried him lower, and while the orks noticed him and began firing on him, it seemed no bullet could touch him. He spoke a Word, and his fists clenched as those orks attacking him were suddenly engulfed in unnatural blue flames. Screaming faces and impossible shapes danced within the fires, biting and clawing at the orks even as the blaze ate their flesh away.
At last, Thurion began to retreat up the stairs, briefly disengaging with the mob beneath. They made to follow him, but before they could, Damantin spoke another Word.
Raising his arms above his head, the Thousand Son stood tall, with his head tilted back as if enraptured by some unseen entity. The very air twisted and churned, as if protesting what was being done to it. Before my eyes, it became something unnatural and frightening, intangible and yet all too real. With an abyssal howl, the air curled upwards, wreathing the sorcerer in a shroud of dark power, before flowing downwards and crashing over the massed orks like a tidal wave.
I had never seen such devastation before in my life. The greenskins caught in the way of the howling wind were bowled over and devoured, the raw power of the Warp corrupting and consuming their bodies to the point of utter destruction. Thurion, having retreated up the stairs, had avoided the blast, as had the few orks that had managed to follow him in time. As the deadly windstorm passed, though, they found themselves alone on the stairway with the Space Marine who moments before had gutted two dozen of their brethren.
This was to say nothing of the fate of the orks facing Marrlë and Rosie, who, no longer supported by the gunners below, now met with the unbridled fury of Gorelady and the Daemonette's scything claws. I drew out from behind my barricade to lay down cover fire, but at that point it really wasn't necessary; I took out a single Boy in the time it took the others to finish splattering the remaining orks over the walls and stairway.
Descending until his disc hovered only a foot above the ground, Damantin waved his hand and banished the odd contraption back to the Warp. As the others staggered down the stairs to meet him, he uttered one final Word of Power, and the ork corpses were set alight. This, I understood, was to prevent the spores they released upon dying from becoming more orks.
I waved to the others and began heading around the wall to reach the stairs. On my way there, I got an eyeful of my companions; besides Damantin, each of them had taken their share of hurt. Marrlë had several dripping gashes on his forearms, and there was a cut running straight through his lips on one side. Rosie's treasured claws had been scratched up, and several of the spines protruding from the back of her arms had been broken off. Thurion's suit had received several nasty dents, and black blood trickled out of an old wound in his side that had been reopened through a weak spot in his armour.
As I came down the stairs, Marrlë peered at my chest, then met my eyes with a chuckle. "Huh, look at that. I guess Guardsman padding counts for something after all." I looked down and saw, running across my stomach in a horizontal line, dents where an autogun's fire had raked over my body. Without the flak armour and the now-ruptured power packs stored in its pockets, I would almost certainly have been cut in half – or at least, very seriously injured. I blinked, astonished at not having felt the bullets hit me, and then laughed out loud.
Shame on me for doubting the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer. I'd be more respectful towards my standard-issue flak armour from then on.
