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Sergeant Haethe snarled as he rammed his fist forward, crushing the spiked knuckles of his gauntlet into the slavering yellow fanged maw before him. The beast reeled backwards with a trumpeting bellow. He thrust his other hand forward and barked off two rounds from his bolt pistol, bursting the Orks head like ripe fruit. All around him the men of the 8th and a contingent of the 10th pummelled into the greenskin menace aboard the free booters own ship. The Tau had been suffering under the suffocating press of Ork and so had driven them by any means necessary into the nearest Imperial occupied system that wasn't Ultramar. The Ork flotilla had pushed into the system and engaged the Spear of Athena before the home fleet could muster. The mighty strike cruiser had been gutted and destroyed, her souls condemned and left to tumble through the void as the battle raged on around her. Sister ship to the Spear, the Errant, pushed away from its mooring station above the second planet in the system packed full to the bulk heads with warriors of the Astartes and men of the 130th.
The Errant engaged.
Haethe curled his fingers around the hilt of chainblade, ceramite clacking together as he wrenched the brutal weapon from its hip sheathe. He pushed back the second Ork before him with a punishing barrage from his pistol before flipping off the safety guard on his blade and clutching the rotor peddle. The machine roared into life, razor edge teeth becoming a whirring blur as he stepped back into the press of bodies in the crude docking bay.
Chunks of meat and a sheet of watery ichor sprayed up his front, filling his fanged mouth with a bitter acidic taste. He laughed, the sound short and lost beneath the grunts and gunfire. He rammed the tip of the chainsword into the gut of the Ork before him, churning out its innards and ramming the barrel of his bolt pistol into the face of another, shattering its teeth and blasting out its skull in a clap of firepower. The blood tasted good.
Beside him Lord Valoran, Knight-Captain of the Tenth, spun his power sword in punishing arcs. The blade, glowing white hot and as bright as a star, carved limbs from greenskins all around him. His chain clad armour was heavy with gore, his thick adamantine scale cloak following in his wake like a star trail, his plumed helmet forming a rallying point for the men of the invading forces. The air was filled with a terrible, chaotic sound. The screaming of men, the bark of bolters, the snap and whine of lasguns, the rattle and chatter of Ork weaponry. The grunts and snarls, shouts and cries and above all, only privy unto the Astartes, was the sound of the blood. Rushing and pumping, flooding and loud, it called to the curse within them, luring their thirst to the fore.
Valoran brought his helmet slamming forward into the Nobs face, cracking its tusks and blinding it on the left side. His own face collided with the combat screen inside his helm, the green glow flickering and several of the mini screens fading out of synch, he could feel and taste blood trickling from his nose. The move had been reckless but his blade had been trapped by the body of another greenskin, so he used his head, literally. The brute staggered forward once more, bellowing flecks of slimey blood into Valorans face plate. Valoran roared back and levelled his long blade, the white sheen sending tendrils of energy snapping around him. They charged each other in the press of bodies.
Private Hesiod and the thirty troopers left to his command provided support fire for the towering warriors of the Knights. Arrayed in clusters of five men, with autogun and lasrifle they scythed down gretchin creatures and lesser Orks. Filling their heads with Imperial death until their tiny brains registered the punishment. Hesiod worked the trigger of the bolter he'd obtained back on Presae and sent screaming rockets into whatever chest or head he sighted along the weapon. The men and women of the 130th, those not still planet side, had adopted Hesiod as their acting officer and it scared him, probably more so than the fact not one hour after retreating from the surface of the planet he was engaged in boarding actions against the Ork ship. The Thunderhawks had split, the gunship bearing the Scouts and Sergeant Tiberius and the item they carried had veered off away from the pitched battle in space, the one carrying them and Sergeant Haethe's squad banked to join the fleet of gunships disgorging from the mighty warships and speeding towards the Ork cruiser.
Valoran saw two icons flash orange, then red and settling on a thick grey in the top left of his visor. He snarled into his vox grille as he brought his blade shimmering down, cleaving the Nobs head in twain, the blade biting down into its chest and shearing its thick crude armour. He wrenched the blade backwards and stepped backwards, letting two Astartes behind him bearing combat blades and shields fill the breach and begin their assault on the enemy. He jabbed his vox bead.
++Brother Tybalt! What is your status? Have you secured your objective?"++
In the vast bowels of the ship, beneath the layers of machinery and metal that separated the battle above from the gritty corridors of the Orkish engine bays, Knight-Captain Tybalt brought the hissing structure of his power fist up into the Orks chin, obliterating its face with the closed fist. His bionics whirred and clicked as he focused upon the huge bank of computers ahead of him in the corridor, his right eye a gleaming red lens set into the polished chrome of his face. He snarled an order to his men around him and three of the ten Astartes thundered their jump packs into life, searing molten patches of decking as they were born aloft on twin trails of fire. Bursts of vivid green plasma popped Ork mechanics, sending their now flaming corpses to splash along the decking. Tybalt pulled his fist back, locking the talon fingers into position, the glare of the power field reflected from his half face. He barged forward, slamming one greenskin against the vast rumbling turbine beside him, crushing its chest with his combat shield, his fist pulverised the groin of the Ork lunging at him. His men either side of him hacked into the seething mass of Orks with chain blades and power weapons, each one keeping his shield consciously protecting the teleport beacon upon their belts.
Three of Tybalts squad crashed back onto the decking, buckling the metal beneath and sending greenskins tumbling. The first to land embedded his axe into the leering face of the largest Ork mechanic, splitting the creature almost in two. His brothers engaged in close melee with the towering brutes in crude piston powered suits of armour, their claws clashing and parried by Astartes blades. Arias hauled his arm back, releasing his axe from the corpse and slamming it sideways into the gut of a Mega Nob, shearing its innards out in a spout of organs. He rammed his plasma pistol upwards into its jagged helm and let the poisonous green coils discharge their deadly load. The Nob crumpled, aflame. Arias rammed his pistol against his thigh, letting the magnetic plates lock together, he clutched his axe as his brothers protected him. His free gauntlet found the thick cylinder at his hip. He pulled the object free and twisted the activation lever then slammed it down onto the massive control centre for the Ork engines. The melta bomb began to tick over as Arias confirmed their objective to the Knight-Captain. Tybalt dealt the Mega Nob before him a brutal uppercut, devastating its head and shoulders before he responded to Knight-Captain Valoran. He sent another coded vox and twisted a dial upon the teleport beacon on his hip. He ordered the rest of his men to comply and five moments later they disappeared in a crack of purple energy.
Valoran grinned savagely beneath his helm as he brought his blade arcing down above the shields of his brothers, shearing the snout and jaw off the first Ork he saw. He heard the crump of detonations beneath his feet and relished in the secondary explosions that gutted the ship. The vast turbines powering the cruiser stuttered and died, washing the lower decks with searing blasts of flame. Every Ork in the bottom of the ship perished as the ship floundered in space. Valoran stepped back, ordering his brothers to form a shield wall across the wide corridor. The sound of ceramite clacking together echoed above the roar of the Orkish wave. Valoran deactivated his sword, the white hot glow evaporating to reveal an inscribed blade, free of gore. He laid the weapon against his shoulder and tapped his vox bead.
++Brother Gyr, you may release our brothers, engines have been pacified and we are withdrawing back to our extraction point. May the Emperor guide their souls.++
He shut of the link and ordered the forces underneath him to withdraw back into the gunships, the brothers of the Eights forming a steady line of blade and shield that the Orks broke themselves upon. The Thunderhawks released from the hull of the cruiser spread away from the vessel, leaving areas of the ship unpressurised, greenskins writhing and dying in space as they were sucked through the breaching holes. All but two of the Thunderhawks returned back towards the Errant and the rest of the Knights Vermillion fleet, those that stayed behind finally released their troop holds into the confines of the Ork ship. Templar Gyr, terrifying in his baroque suit of terminator armour, skull faced and snarling advanced amongst a tide of black clad warriors. Each warrior bore a skull painted upon his helm, his hands bearing no weapons except vicious talons built into each gauntlet. The Chaplain of the Templari led the hallowed Death Company on a campaign of butchery within the innards of the enemy ship. They would not stop till every Ork had perished, the corridors awash with blood and death.