The Water Dogs were standing out in the open, women and men, young and old, hands behind their heads. They stood in a block, like a regiment on parade. But they did not look like fighters, even the fighters didn't look like anything but starved beggars without their weapons. The Morchaghan 112th and the 89th stood alongside them, in identical formation and posture. Their inquisitorial overseers watched them while Osprey and Frens remained below.
It was entirely as the farseer's vision had told him.
Mhal and his friends lay crouched in the ruins around the parade, slender weapons raised to their eyepieces as the trap was woven with intricate precision. His crosshairs were centered on one man's helmet and his sword was alive. Quickly, they would spring.
Mhal had few reservations about killing. He had seen it so often that he no longer felt the death of another, except the closest of friends. He's seen shootings in the underhive back on that one world they zipped past. He'd seen a lot of this war. When he was a boy, he'd seen his brother die. His mind had just grown numb to it like an immune system adjusting to a virus. But killing humans didn't just threaten to sicken his thoughts. As he prepared to strike, he remembered that he wasn't one of them.
Not really.
"Initiate," sang the voice of the exarch beside him. Their hummed as thirty eldar guns rang out. The eighteen troopers watching the prisoners snapped back and down to the floor in a few rounds. One of them had even got a few shots off as he was killed. Those few shots were enough to make one of their Dire Avengers bleed. As Mhal and the eldar floated from the shadows, he wondered how many lives would have been lost if they had attacked these humans head on.
"Mhal?"asked Kins, staring hard at him. Mhal shrugged.
"Came and got you. Come on, we've got to hurry up. Arcantillius is still where I left him…" he looked around. "Where's Lystartro?" Kins didn't answer.
"So it's true, then?" Kins' eyes flapped over the eldar. One third of them dressed like stormtroopers: Mhal's personal friends. The outcasts of Alaitoc. Alongside them, were the more conventional warriors of the craftworld: warriors of Khaine who had come with the farseer. Dire Avengers. Their blue armour was tarnished and dirty so to blend in with the scenery. The vibrant colours of their crest had been covered by black.
"This is Exarch Nhimeia," Mhal said, pointing to the noble one. "He doesn't speak gothic. I mean, my rangers do but most of the warriors don't."
May we go now? The dark kin await their destroyers Nhimeia sounded impatient. He was always impatient in battle, unless tactics called for it.
A moment, honoured exarch, Mhal replied. The captives were already fleeing to join the eldar. The civilian Water Dogs crept back into the sewer.
"What he say?" Kins asked, pointing to Nhimeia. Mhal recited the exarch's words in a hurry.
"Is this all?" Mhal asked. Kins nodded grimly.
Lead us to the farseer now Mhal said to the exarch. He looked back to Kins. "Come on."
"You know boy," Kins said, "I can't quite think how you ended up with these aliens. Now, the Imperium will kill you and my men if they find you out. For saving me from the inquisition and for being such a good killer, I'll follow your plan. But you'll have to get out of my sight after this sideshow is done." Mhal nodded. "How did you end up with them anyway?"
The warzone was merciless. Even civilians were targeted.
Striding up the roadtoward the site of the massacre came a number of hooded warriors. They were too graceful to be humans and their lithe limbs wore wraithbone jewelry bought from a merchant in Alaitoc before they left for the Path of the Outcast, to become simple rangers.
From the field of corpses left by the killers, someone was still screaming. The hooded ones passed the massacre. Only one of them stayed behind, to investigate the cries. Under the body of a dead woman, whose last act alive was to shield her child, was a boy. He was probably a few months past his first birthday. The warrior standing over the boy was already an outcast who'd left her home for adventure. Who was going to stop her? Certainly not the leaders or laws of her people. And this boy's care would be a little adventure for her. She leaned down.
That evening, when the graceful ones moved on through the devastated countryside, they had an extra companion. The little human lay asleep in the alien woman's arms as the rangers slid off into the night…
"Been with them all my life," Mhal said quickly. He crawled over a pile of rubble and helped Kins over, following the patrol of eldar. "Now shush. We want to keep quiet while we do this."
…
Across Urbanis 1, they were collected together. Files upon files of marching boots rumbled the ground, causing such a clamour as to rival the far off thunder of the imperial artillery. Piggish snorts broke the air with their rusty tone. Several loud-voiced nobs roared orders to their mobs. The mobs melted together like drops of oil to create a single massed swarm, like a lake of filthy green hide and grey armour. Clanking alongside this were rag-tag bunches of vehicles, either crab-legged to handle the debris or wheeled and riding through the roads. Some wore treads and were spiked with blades and cannon.
When the cloudless sky rang with thunder, much louder than the human guns, the thousands of orks raised their weapons high. A great dark shape swooped over them, swarming escorts of rocket-driven infantry clinging to his shadow. The soaring ork banked towards a short but intact building and slammed down onto its roof. His escort followed him unsteadily. A few of them missed the building and slammed into the ground. But this one ork was too precise with his rocket packs to make such a mistake. This ork, the great warboss Skullkicker, was too good with his rockets.
He raised his claw to the sky, snapping its shearing blades.
"WAAAAAAAGH!" Skullkicker bellowed like a tempest.
"WAAAAAAAGH!" his hordes replied. Skullkicker pointed and his mob washed across the city towards the humans, barreling down anything in their way.
The invasion was on the move.
…
It was a lonely spike of almighty granite in the ground, like some pillar raised by the earth itself to honour the Emperor. It was the mountain of the Emperor's angel.
Cav stood in awe of the mountain. If he weren't a prisoner of Sectraa, the mountain would be ten times as big. It was strange to be here under these circumstances. It was like being taken hostage in his own home. Such a familiar place, but no freedom to enjoy it.
"There it is," Cav said as Sectraa led them on.
"Shut your mouth," snarled Sectraa, pushing him forward through the ruins. On either side of them, the eyes of the Halivorians and a few of their dark allies regarded them. Issinel smiled and waved at them. Sectraa ignored them altogether.
"Great! An Angelspear. Should we…" began a bearded man, emerging from the ruins. Sectraa shoved him aside and walked on. The very base of the mountain's monolith body lay before them. The ruins around it looked so small. Here and there, gazing out from the mountainside with carved granite eyes, were the many faces of the most reknowned members of the hill tribes. Cav could name them all.
"So where's the door?" Cav asked Issinel. She hushed him and Sectraa glared at him. Cav looked behind him and saw a number of Halivorians were melting from the ruins to follow them. They looked so normal, not even dressed in flak jackets. A few carried weapons: autoguns or even swords. Sectraa snapped at him and Cav looked straight. He was walking towards a hole in the mountainside, one that had been drilled recently. The ugly gauge was deep and dark and surrounded by heaps of debris. Cav felt sick as he wondered what could await him down there but was more sickened as he imagined the Halivorians wounding the mountain.
"In!" Sectraa's voice was verbal ice. Cav hardened his heart as he walked down into the mountain's wound. The warmth of the sunlit day disappeared behind his back. Only a foreboding darkness awaited him inside this underground pit. It grew cold fast. Cav could imagine the dark servants of Sectraa waiting for him down here, watching with soulless eyes and cold intentions. If it wasn't for the hand on his shoulder, pushing him forward, he wouldn't know he was moving at all.
"Faster," the snake-voice of Sectraa hissed. Cav heard Issinel complain. Did she know why Sectraa wanted her down here? He felt like crying out, warning her. But in this light forsaken hole, with Sectraa at his shoulder, it wasn't a good idea.
The sloping ground suddenly grew flat. Cav felt the hand release his shoulder. Something moved in front of him. It was like being underwater, surrounded by total darkness, cold and silence. What was Sectraa…?
There was suddenly a light in the room, a dim lantern. Sectraa held the lantern in his hands and looked up at Cav. Cav looked away from Sectraa's eyes at the faint walls. They looked smooth, like marble or bone. He judged he could fit a small family of grox in here, if he had a prod. The passage they had come in through had torn through the side of the rounded interior. Where was this? That white material was not the mountain's flesh. On the far wall, there was a door, outlined by a hair-thin crack. It was big enough to ride a grox through if he could get one down here. By the size and importance Sectraa showed towards the door, Cav expected there to be a lifetime supply of grox meat beyond the door.
Or…whatever Sectraa was after.
"This is what you shall do for me," Sectraa hissed as a pair of spider-machines trundled into the chamber with them. They worked as he spoke, tapping the door with their legs. "You will touch the rune you see appear and will the door to open, driving it forward with your emotion. Your will to open it shall be the key. You shall do so." Cav watched in facination as a black circle appeared upon the door: materializing from nowhere like magic. Witch tricks? An ancient machine spirit's will? Cav backed away when the circle's interior began to glow with hundreds of tiny white runes, written in liquid silk that shone with an eldritch glow that made Cav think more of witchcraft.
"Remember what I said," Sectraa finished.
"Please Cav, please. Do it for the Angelspear, do it for Ersonia. This world is Erson's, it's Halivor's world. Not the Emperor's, not the ork's either. Please," Issinel was pleading. Cav looked sadly at her cute smile. So bright in this dark place, so young and so pretty. He wanted to reach out and touch her cheek. But in that moment, he saw more than beauty. He saw a hopeless ignorance. Issinel was an ignorant girl who was parroting the words of a greater master, not understanding them, and believing them. Worse, she could understand them perfectly and was trying to manipulate him with her charm.
"What is there?" Cav asked. Sectraa said nothing.
"Please Cav," whispred Issinel with a voice that may or may not have been truthful in its tenderness. "I hate this war. I want it to end." Cav took a deep breath and expelled his fear with his breath. He thought about his family as he spoke, his ancestors too. All of them, watching him, praying for him to keep his courage and to do the right thing.
"No," Cav said selflessly. Sectraa was frightening, but his victory was even worse.
The spiders reacted instantly.
"AH!" Issinel screamed an unmistakable, shrill, girl-scream. Cav struggled under the legs of the spider that had jumped on him and pinned him to the ground. He saw Issinel was pinned by the other. Sectraa was standing over him, claws unfolded, grinning beneath his hood.
"Are you sure, human?" Sectraa asked. Human? Was humanity Sectraa didn't have? He looked freakishy pale, but…
"What are you doing?" screamed Issinel. "Let me up! Please!" Sectraa leaned down and Cav saw him scratch Issinel, who loved to carve wooden dolls, in the cheek. Her scream was the most awful sound Cav had heard since entering Essendrav.
"Do you want her to die?" Sectraa asked. "Do you want me to do this to you next?" He scratched again. A tear of blood fell down Issinel's cheek. What kind of monster did this to his own underlings?
"Please Cav…" Issinel was crying. "Help me!"
…
Somewhere in that command centre, the auspex detected a large mass of orks coming their way. Officers and colonels redirected the guns to lob their shells at the mass. A number of adjustments were made to the outer defenses and teams were organized to harass the enemy's flanks. Gunships were scrambled to assault them from above.
Whining shells slammed into Urbanis 1, moving through the orks. Artillery shells flung from the hollow snouts of upturned artillery guns sailed a whistling path through the air and exploded deep in the ranks of the orkish foe. The bloodthirsty horde that swept across the city to reach the humans was pitted and hammered many times by scores of blasts that shook the clouds. Whole groups of orks ceased to be when the shells hit. Thick green bodies were thrown into pieces and rained down on their comrades. Shrapnel the size of melons broke the bones of mighty orks. For the survivors, this display of brutality was a joyful display of ferocity that made them drive themselves harder. Orks carried on, spurred by the fight ahead, heedless to the death that broke the ground beneath them. The mad laughs of the nobs could be heard through the falling shells as they goaded their legions forward. When they came into sight of the gunships, the true scale of the horde was revealed.
"This is valkyrie-7," the dull voice of Rikard Smeth droned into his mask, "I have visual, looks big." Around him, other pilots began chiming in their own estimations with increasing unease.
"Valkyrie-16, I have contact with multiple large targets."
"This is valkyrie-12, I'd say about 5000 plus, or more."
"No, better make it 10000 plus."
"My god," the breathless voice of valkyrie-15 was full of fear. "There's so many of them." Rikard had no patience for this.
"This is lead. We are cleared to engage. All weapons may fire at will," beeped valkyrie-lead. With a swoosh, the valkyrie gunships drove down to the green stained ruins, weapons ready.
Smoky trails issued out from under a few of their wings and flaming bursts appeared amongst the orks, adding to the destruction already being hurled at them. Across the line, huge ork cannon pointed skyward and fired. The valkyries quickly found themselves dodging shots.
Lines of lascannon fire slashed down their craft. With needle precision, some of the larger ork vehicles that were mixed in with the horde were burst apart. Islands of fire leapt up from the sea of green whenever a lascannon found its target. Shots after shot spat down at the orks. Huge ramshackle tanks that could have smashed through infantry lines like raging beasts of steel were turned to fiery corpses. The orks pressed on, those on foot uncaring about the burning wrecks in their midst. Each shot made the coming fight easier.
"Damn, this is too easy," one of the pilots said. A scattered bonfire of wrecks that blazed with oily fire lay below them.
"Keep going!" shouted another as his valkyrie's guns fried its fifteenth ork to a charred, fleshy wreck.
"Try and hit the big ones and the damn vehicles," another piped in. A final ork dropped down, burnt to a torch before the orks finally drew blood from their flying attackers.
"Rocket! Rocket!"
"Ah! My portside wing is hi…" one of the gunships rolled to one side as it fell, stricken from the sky, leaving a legacy of smoke in its wake. It was Rikard Smeth. As he fell, he tried to touch a photopict he had taped to his window, of a smiling dark-haired woman holding a baby girl. The woman's frozen face kept smiling at Rikard as he died.
Around the flight, the orks were now intensifying their resistance. Shots were coming up too fast to dodge. Valkyries burst dozens of orkish vehicles into cartwheeling wreckage, but more of them were blown out of the sky. Sometimes, the pilots didn't have time to cry out before their vox link was cut.
When the last missile was fired at the orks, the surviving ten turned and retreated, a barrage of shells and rockets chasing an explosive path after them. Dark bursts erupted around the valkyries, shaking them on their course with their violence. One valkyrie was knocked out of the sky, blown clean in two, its grey pieces flaking apart as they burned.
Then, Skullkicker came.
He announced himself with an exploding valkyrie, which simply disappeared in a fireball of burning fuel. In one vallkyrie, a startled pilot with enchanting green eyes looked up into the sun. He covered the sun's light with his hand and tried to see what that thing he saw up there was, staring with his freckled face.
Skullkicker's foot came through the canopy, exploding through the glass and crushing the young pilot's head to paste. The ork boss grinned at the terrified man in the canopy above the man he'd just stomped. His claw tore the other canopy off and flung it off. The canopy caught the wind and was gone. The ork's other claw pulled the screaming man out, ripping through his safety straps like wet paper. The crewman thrashed around as Skullkicker lifted off and let the valkyrie drop beneath him. He lifted the pilot and dropped him, laughing at how the man moved as he fell, growing smaller and smaller. The warboss wished he could continue, but he was on a short scheduel.
He rocketed off to the north, towards the mountain.
Below him, human shells still made a mess of his forces, killing hundreds. But what did it matter, when they had thousands to replace them? The orks were killed, but not stopped by the shells that fell. They just kept on coming.
…
"Oh, this is bad," Stolce whispered as the first greenskins appeared over the hills of rubble as he looked over his sandbags. They were over a hundred meters away, but he could hear their roars like they were right there behind the sandbags with them. This time, being part of two hundred guardsmen was no comfort, even with all the punisher and three sentinels that backed them up. This was one narrow part of the defensive line and already other sections were voxing in reports of ork attacks. This narrow alley of bumpy rubble, crater holes and skeletal spires of what had once been hab units was their part. Even if they held here, all was lost of the orks got behind them.
"Blaze away!" Sage shouted, cracking off with his lasgun. Other lasguns answered. The sentinels answered. The great punisher's cannon answered, chewing off shots from its rotating barrels. Stolce saw the ork line falter. The first ranks were losing bodies. They fell and slowed or tripped the barbarians behind them. The messy charge turned into a rolling, tumbling mess as they fell down the pile of rubble they were scaling. Lascannon shots from the sentinels broke orks in two, making their ragged clothes burn and their flesh turn black. Lasguns added their usual effects. The hammering punisher's gun threw up spits of dust in long lines when it hit dirt and threw orks down when it hit flesh. Would the orks botch their charge? It sure looked like they might.
But as they were orks, the greenskins could recover. Stolce watched many of the fallen greenskins get back up and push themselves forward. It was like a mudslide now. The orks were being carried over the steep rubble by momentum. Some of them weren't even alive as they tumbled down the side of the hill. Then, they reached the bottom. Some reached it as rolling corpses, but too many were alive and ran forward, either taking shelter to launch brutal slugs at the humans or sprinting in towards the kill.
Stolce braced for the fight as he saw the first explosions of dirt leap up around the ruins ahead of them. Short ranged ork bullets were skipping along the ground.
"Rocket!"
Stolce saw an ork lift a lancher as it ran across the ground. It fired it as it was pulled down by lasguns. A moment later, a part of the sandbag wall exploded. If there were losses, Stolce didn't look. He bit his lip and prayed the orks would stop.
They kept coming. Their momentum was taking them meter by meter across the ground. There must have been ten for every human. They were losing bodies with every step but kept the pressure coming. Ten? No, there were more like twenty for each human!
'We're not going to make it,' he thought in fear. He reloaded and shot down his third ork. He used to love the thought of killing orks. Now that he was actually doing it, it made no difference. The thought of his own death was too great. He could see their rusty blades, waving in their green paws in excitement. Stolce clenched his teeth and kept shooting, not even bothering to aim as he emptied his cell on the wall of aliens.
But Stolce would be damned if he was the first man to break ranks and run!
The punisher's flamers let loose at the last second, holding the orks back a healthy 30 meters while an orderly withdrawl occurred. Everyone backed away, lengthening the ground between them and the aliens as much as they could. Stolce went with them, now facing a wall of fire and not a wall of orks. Then, it became a wall of burning orks, who still ran even as they burned to death. Stolce looked at a few unmoving guardsmen who lay by the sandbags. He didn't see anyone he knew amongst those bloody dolls.
Stolce shot down a burning ork before it could shoot him and fumbled in his pack for another pack. Then, he realized he had none left. Stolce was just a bayonet and a butt.
…
With the sound of thunder, Skullkicker slammed his feet down into the ground. Behind him, his retinue landed. Behind them, a wedge of growling, smoke belching trucks rolled through the streets. Some carried orks, some carried cannon. All were unquestioningly loyal to their warboss.
NOW FIND DA SECRET ENTRANCE TO DA MOUNTAIN! Skullkicker's voice was like a bell and a barking dog. His subordinates obeyed instantly: too smart to disobey him. The huge ork stood unmoving as he planned his strategy while the orks moved past him.
While the main body of his force (and any ambitious rivals within his underlings) were distracted with fighting the human raid, Skullkicker would find this thing the weirdboyz saw. A man, with guns for arms, as fast as a fighta and shootier than a stompa. His boys would find it and Skullkicker would loot it for himself! Then, not even the biggest, most arrogant nob under him would question his rule of this invasion.
Somewhere in the ruins, a startled human child, covered in dirt and scrawny, peered out from the shadows. They covered their eyes when they saw Skullkicker.
The warboss was huge, larger than any nob under his command. His whole body was clad in brown armour, crafted by a skilled engineer and fit specifically to Skullkicker's form. It was bulky in places, but allowed Skullkicker no significant problems with moving. His feet were hissing cybernetics: solid metal replicas of an ork's feet and bristling with blades. His hands were both dressed in power claws, which had machine guns built into them. His face was covered in a helmet that showed his fangs and bright yellow eyes. A hefty iron gob was fitted onto his jaw and it was notched for each rival he'd put down. So far, he had sixteen markings on it. Perched on each shoulder was a nest of angry-faced rockets, fitted into special launchers.
Most unique was Skulkicker's back. It was fitted with three rocket packs, which were connected to four smaller rockets, one on each limb. A connection to his brain let him control them with thought alone. He could outfly a kopta and flew better than most storm boys.
He was the invasion. He was the wings of Gork and Mork. He was Skullkicker.
…
Sectraa caressed his finger down the girl's face and stopped just beneath her neck. His favourite thing to do was torture helpless victims, savour their pain like fruit and enjoy the thrill of having power over someone. The fear in Issinel's face was delicious. He knew the Halivorians knew nothing of this and would react poorly if they learned, but SO WHAT! They were damned humans. To Slaanesh with them all!
"Why?" whispered Issinel in fear. Sectraa smiled and ran his fingers across her flanks. He looked back at Cav. He trusted a human of Cav's age would dislike the sight and sound of a dying female of his own age. HA! Such weak-willed animals! Sectraa knew he would have Cav's cooperation soon.
"Do not worry," whispered Sectraa as he put his face up to Issinel's and licked her nose. "I will make it painful." Issinel screamed in pain as his claws pricked her stomach and injected their toxin into her skin. "So painful. Pain. Pain. Delicious pain."
Sectraa! It was one of his underlings, a mere warrior named Ralreth. The young warrior stood in the shadows, his nose and mouth hidden by a rag, but his form-fitting black armour visible under the human-made cape that coiled itself around his shoulders. The orks are coming. It might be the warboss. We haven't time! Sectraa considered skinning the boyish Ralreth for interrupting his fun. Of course, he considered skinning people daily. He almost never did it.
Then kill them you ignorant whelp! Kill them or I will send you to Slaanesh! Sectraa roared. The warrior ran off and Sectraa turned back to Issinel to continue torturing her. But then, he reconsidered. His unstable whims changed. A fight? He longed to spill blood. Besides, the humans were pinned tightly. Sectraa folded up his claws. Claws were for discipline. He drew a small, featureless box from inside his armour. Cav gasped at the sight of it and Sectraa opened it.
Inside, was the imprisoned mind of a psyker, taken from its host and forced to constantly contain Sectraa's weapons inside the box. Sectraa drew them forth, and the psyker energies that shrunk their size disappeared. He put the box back and twirled his jagged sword and pointed his splinter pistol at Cav so he could look into the skull fastened to it with its open mouth over the barrel.
"You cannot escape. I will be back shortly," the dark eldar promised. The longer he was away from the torture, the more anticipation it would give him. Anticipating torture was sometimes better than doing it.
He took off into the tunnel.
Minutes later, he waited inside a bombed-out hab, far from the entrance to the hidden mountain chamber. The orks had suspected the towering temple to Saint Erson, built into the side of the mountain was what they wanted. It was not, but the sight of orks racing inside was exciting. So many to kill. A few orks remained outside, knocking their guns into the stairs to the main entrance, trying to break them loose. Fools.
For the kabal Sectraa hissed to the shadows. Show them the fury Commorragh From the shadows came a trio of warriors, who threw their skyboards forward and jumped on them, grabbing onto the reins that helped them stay on with one hand and hefting their harpoons with the other. Their boards shot out across the field, bounding over piles of rubble with ease. The orks did not see them coming.
Long swords attached to the skyboards decapitated ork warriors from behind. Those not beheaded were fixed with a harpoon. The orks looked for their attackers, but they were already gone. The wounded orks were aggressive at first, but slowed down as the virus worked into the blades began to take effect. One by one, the orks fell, blood squirting out of their eyes and noses. The warriors returned and collected their weapons. They signaled to Sectraa that the coast was clear, but he was already inside.
Sectraa walked at the head of eleven of his warriors, larglely equipped with splinter rifles. Their eyes were hard. All tied rags around their mouths and noses to hide their alien faces from human eyes. Only three wore distinct Commorragh helmets: smooth and slightly pointed, but without the jagged crests so favoured by many of the kabals. One of them, Marshrax, was carrying a so-called pulse rifle he'd taken off the bloody body of one of those Greater Good aliens from the Eastern Fringe. What was that soft race called?
As they rounded the first corner, they came into sight of three greenskins in the foyer. Marshrax's gun blew them all away in bolts of blue energy that sang out with very little noise. When another ork marched in, Marshrax blew it back with one shot. Sectraa signaled to the unit and they slid through the foyer towards the far stairs, rifles raised. They could hear orks up those stairs.
Sectraa paused to let others walk in front. When his warriors fired into the room and were shot at, he knew he'd made the right choice, plus he could hear something coming up the stairs behind them. There must have been another door into that foyer that orks could come through. Perfect.
Sectraa slipped down the spiral stairs, from the firefight, and waited in ambush. When an ork turned the corner, Sectraa lashed out with his sword. The ork's head toppled off and Sectra moved down the stairs, falling upon the second one. The beast's hands fell off. It tried to swat him, but Sectraa was already behind it. His splinter pistol blew a hole in the third one's face as he cut the second one in two, his sword passing through its bumpy armour and into its flesh, then back out. Sectraa licked the black blood on his sword as the last ork came at him, cleaver raised. If Sectraa tried to parry this blow, he would break his arm.
The ork's cleaver broke as it smashed into empty stone stairs. The ork only had time to give a surprised grunt when a sword slammed into its neck.
Sectraa came back upstairs to find the others were inside the room, having massacred the orks inside. Tsstrex had taken a bullet to the gut and the others had killed him so he wouldn't bog them down. This room, filled with foolish idols to Erson, provided much cover. Everyone found a hiding place when the orks from the next room rushed in to investigte. The dark eldar allowed them enough silence to allow all the orks to walk into the room. Then Marshrax's pulse rifle shot one through the head, spraying its skull into the face of the one behind it. Dark eldar splinter rifles blasted the others in the neck or chest, gifting them with a quick death.
'Slow death is for pleasure. This is war. Quick deaths are for war,' Sectraa thought. 'What a shame.'
Split. Marshrax, Tsin, Ralreth, with me. Sectraa took his three chosen forward into the next room to find more idols, but no orks. But Sectraa wasn't fooled. He was a dark eldar slaver: he was a hunter. He could tell there were orks behind that door there, the one in the corner behind that idol. All he needed to confirm this was the light that disappeared and reappeared beneath the door as orks moved past it…
Beyond the door, fifteen greenskins hefted their weapons and got ready to pounce. They thought themselves cunning by sitting behind these benches that filled the room, facing that big statue by the far wall and waiting to kill. Once that door was open, they'd attack.
The door opened a bit. A few brass shots knocked holes in it. The orks didn't leap up and hesitated when a small black sphere was thrown in. They ducked or backed away from it, expecting it to explode. Instead, it burst open and a billowing white cloud hissed from it, covering the door and the front of the room. The orks closest to the cloud choked and staggered back from it.
Then, bright blue flashes appeared through the cloud and bolts of pulse rifle fire cut into them. One fell back, the top of his skull blown open. The orks blasted away at the cloud. A few held their breath and rushed into the cloud, axes raised. Moments later, the sound of orks crying out came from the cloud.
Only then did the dark eldar who had gotten through the cloud appear.
From behind some of the other benches close to the front, Ralreth poked his head up and fired precise shots into orkish throats. Tsin was on the opposite end of the room, firing with equal precision, killing with every few shots. Ralreth fired fewer, but better shots. Distracted once again, the orks didn't notice Sectraa until he was right on top of them.
Alien flesh gave way to his sword. He avoided their most thickly armoured parts and targeted exposed veins, necks and eyes. Sectraa's splinter pistol fired and knocked down an ork who was rushing him with a chainsword. He twisted around and thrust his blade through the grill on an orkish helmet. He dodged back as an ork's sword bisected the bench he was against. With a flick of his sword, he cut off the hand holding that sword and ducked down to get a shot at the ork's throat. His splinter pistol fired once and the ork's eyes rolled into the back of its head. It staggered backwards and fell when Marshrax put him down.
What fun, Sectraa hissed. The others cackled and reloaded. Tsin eagerly searched for trophies, thus letting his guard down. Were he a threat to Sectraa's status, that would be his last mistake. No, Tsin was a simple gunman. It was within Ralreth that Sectraa saw his biggest adversary.
We shall return Ralreth said, This hunt is slowing down our progress.
Indeed replied Marshrax, The archon is waiting. Sectraa nodded slowly, reluctantly agreeing with his underlings. He shouldn't let them get the upper hand on him, but in this instance, they were correct.
I go back down. Marshrax, come with me. Ralreth, stay here and fight on Sectraa ordered. 'And try to get yourself killed,' he thought.
…
Through the ruins, they stalked. Water Dogs, Morchaghan guardsmen, Ersonian PDFers and the eldar of Alaitoc, all united against the dark eldar and their hapless Halivorian servants. They split into small splinters to approach the mountain from all directions at once. Kins and Mhal lurked with ten of Osprey's Water Dogs and the rangers in their stolen uniforms.
"Wait," Mhal whispered. Kins looked strangely at him. There was nothing special about these hab units they were sneaking through. "Alright, my farseer is out there somewhere with the rest of our forces. We will strike as one when the time comes."
"How many eldar does your farseer have?" whispered Kins.
"Enough. They came down to help us out all the way from Alaitoc when they learned of the dark kin…the dark eldar," Mhal answered. Kins felt some disgust in his gut at hearing a human use an alien term by mistake. And all this effort to save the silly PDF strawhead? Kins felt disgust, but most of the disgust was directed at everything other than Cav. With the inquisition, real Halivorians, eldar and this xenos-lover around him, the little matter of Cav was covered. Now that Kins could see past Cav's ethnicity, he felt some respect for the young fighter. The mountain hadn't split yet, so Cav hadn't opened the gate for the enemy. Was he resiliently holding out? Admirable.
'Great, now I'm thinking like Lystartro,' Kins thought. He heard one of the eldar tell Mhal something in their alien tongue. Mhal said something back.
"How about you fill us in?" asked one of the Water Dogs.
"The farseer thinks there's orks approaching," Mhal replied. "We are to attack soon, on his mark. When the fighting starts, you follow…"
There was an almighty explosion somewhere in the distance. Mhal nodded and the group swept forward, guns up. When a pair of humans in plain clothes with guns ran out of a hole before them, they mowed them down. After so much time fighting orks, it was refreshingly easy to gun down humans.
"So where's your blasted witch?" asked one of the Water Dogs as they snuck into a hab. They cleared out its rooms and looked out into the street, which was alive with gunfire: none of it orkish. Some of it was a shrill, singing sound, like a chirping bird. It sounded almost musical. His instincts told him that was eldar gunfire.
"Towards the mountain," whispered Mhal. They snuck onward.