They came at sundown.

First, shots came up at them from the street, then guardsmen at the windows said they saw shadows in the dark, moving shadows. Mandrakes. Kins and Cav collaborated, planning where they would place their lanterns. Mhal had recommended they lure the mandrakes into a trap.

"We fall back into the basement," Cav explained as he and Kins crouched in the hab's abandoned cellar. It was dark down here. Not even a mandrake could see through this gloom. "The men form a firing line and wait in the dark. I'll draw them down and everyone can ambush them when they hit me. We turn on our lanterns so the mandrakes can't hide and kill them all." Kins was startled, having planned to use Mhal as bait. He suggested it.

"But Mhal is injured. We need someone faster, like me. Besides, he's a better shot. If I'm not quick enough, he can kill them fast while they finish me off," Cav continued. Kins nodded and looked at the stairway. Mhal stood in it, gun in hand, leaning against the wall.

"You're sure about this?" he asked, "the dark kin will take their time. It will not be an easy death."

"But you said mandrakes love to carve and torture," Cav replied. "So they'll all go for me. Besides…" he patted his chest, "I'm just a stripling. I think they'll just think they've found some hapless whelp. They'll come at me like bullies, guard down, and we get them." Mhal nodded solemnly and left to rally the others.

Moments later, Cav was wandering through the empty hab, armed with only a lantern. He was dressed in rags, to appear to be a noncombatant. He knew what to look for, what to watch for. He was afraid, there was no denying it. Even with his plan in motion, the threat of the unknowable dark eldar frightened him. When he heard the door open, he jumped and crept through the silent hab and peeked down the hall that led to the door.

The door was open, letting the night in. The hall was empty.

Cav whimpered and ran the way he came, towards the entrance to the cellar. He stopped in the room where the stairs leading down were and looked behind him.

No one there in the night-blackness that enshrouded the whole ruined hab. The flicker of his lantern promised him there was nothing in the room except himself. Mhal's education assured him otherwise.

His eyes only saw shadows but Mhal's words guaranteed him that mandrake eyes were watching him. The silence was a physical thing, coating everything like a sheet. He could hear his own breathing and his own fear. His senses saw nothing, so why run?

Darkness and silence. The lantern's ghostly light showed him only blank walls and floors, populated only by broken glass and dust. Hollow shadows danced at the edge of his vision and unseen specters that he imagined were there lurked in all around him like a besieging army.

And yet, there was nothing here.

A shadow moved, or was it just the light? Cav whimpered and stepped back fearfully, his face a mask of terror. It was what victims of bullies did when cornered.

Cav could hear Mhal's voice in his head, telling him they were in the room with him, telling him to run. Unable to bear the silence any longer, Cav turned and ran down the cellar stairs. As soon as he turned, a blade flashed from the shadows. His lantern fell to the floor.

Cav ran down the flight of stairs, away from nothing. Yet something tackled him from behind. He fell with it down the stairs and hit the bottom in pitch darkness. Cav screamed as he felt taloned hands turn his body around. He felt hot pain against his face. He heard dozens of cold laughs chill the night.

"Lanterns on!" roared Curth's voice.

Cav's eyes must have been closed, because he heard lasguns fire and inhuman screams. Bodies fell around him. The trap was a success. As the last gunshot died, Cav heard his squad run up around him.

He did not hear them when they spoke.

…

Mhal stood in the doorway on the ruined hab. Behind him stood his outcast friends, still dressed as stormtroopers. The lights of their waveserpent lit up the windows. In the night sky, Kins could make out dancing stars. Eldar ships of Alaitoc, he was sure.

"We have just received word that the kabal is broken. Our work here is done. If that kabal was allowed to flourish on the profit of this raid, it would have brought pain to Alaitoc, " replied Mhal, leaning the wall for stability. "The dark kin have fallen back. Your people are safe from them." Kins snorted.

"So we can fight on alone?" he asked. Mhal gave a subtle nod.

"I am sorry, but you know we cannot fight alongside you as brothers…"

"What? We fought…"

"In the open," Mhal finished. Kins nodded, as did Arcantillius, as did the other 112th who had come to bid farewell to their heretical ally.

"I promise I will not speak of you to the inquisition," swore Arcantillius proudly. Mhal looked at Kins, who merely nodded. Even if it was the right thing to do, it still felt wrong. But who would ever know? He could just say Frens had uncovered dark eldar, rather than Mhal and his Alaitoc craftworld kin.

"Will Cav make it?" Mhal asked, "if you want, we can take him and restore…"

"He belongs here, among his own kind," Kins replied. "If he dies, so be it. Let the ground of his home embrace him." Mhal nodded and said something in another language to the eldar, who left for the wave serpent. Mhal cleared his throat.

"May the spirits guide you," he said.

"The Emperor protects," Kins answered. Mhal turned and walked aboard the wave serpent. The hatch closed and it soared off and vanished like a glass ghost into the urban wilderness. Moments later, a star rose from the city to join the night. Kins watched it go. The dancing stars disappeared and the eldar were gone.

"Come on," Kins said to Arcantillius. "Get that stretcher Mhal gave us and take Cav out of here."

…

That morning, the inquisitor landed. Frens and his master Dolman searched the mountain. They found remnants of dark eldar forces, dead guardsmen and dead insurgents. But there was no trace of craftworld eldar, not even a single round of their ammunition. The mountain was normal. There were no holes in it anywhere. Dolman's official report to his comrades in the Ordo Xenos spoke only of dark eldar.

As for Frens…

"Well, I was so sure there were craftworlders here," Frens said to Dolman as they walked back towards the inquisitorial lander, escorted by Dolman's bodyguard.

"Still, you have done well," Dolman replied. "I will see to it…"

A shot rang out from the ruins. Dolman's bodyguard clustered around their master and scanned the ruins. No sign of the shooter, not even a shadow. Dolman hurried aboard, warning of orks while his bodyguard dragged Frens up the ramp, his lifeblood gushing from his chest.

…

"Got you, you bastard," Yueka hissed vengefully at the man who betrayed her people to scrutiny. She looked up from her scope, reloaded her rifle and was gone.

…

The orks let up after sundown. All throughout the night, the Imperial navy launched raids against ork forces massing for the morning's assault. Their fights lit up the horizon and let Curth have very little sleep. When the morning came, he said his prayers and loaded his last power cell into his lasgun.

For the first time since coming here, the 89th fought as one. One hundred boys, the last survivors of four hundred, joined in the fight with the 112th Morchaghan, also fighting as one. They manned a single long trench that cut across the flattened city, shooting out at waves of orks who charged from the distant ruins, guns blazing. They all ducked down when a trio of bright red ork planes cruised across the sky, leaving soot in their wake. Reports from other sectors spoke of worse attacks. It was hardly encouraging to know that this sector was being softly hit compared to some places.

The withering lasfire, autocannons and whistling mortar rounds heaved upon them by the combined group was enough to break the orkish charge. The group came forward, all guns and anger, but could not break through. Explosions hurled green bodies high into the air. Autocannons ripped them off their feet. Lasbolts were furious enough to whittle their numbers down. Curth expended his last shot and called for another pack. None came, so he had to watch as the last few orks were shot down without him.

It was a victory, but not a victory.

Vox reports came in from other sectors. They had to fall back. Colonel Vistigo, who had at last taken the field, withdrew his regiment. Curth and Stolce shared command of the 89th as Malreth was dead and Cav was dying. Poor Cav. Curth didn't see Kins and Arcantillius emerge from the early morning light with him on a stretcher, but he knew of his condition. Another dead friend, or soon to be.

The two units moved back closer to the sound of fighting and closer to those vital landers. As they came within sight of the drop zone's efensive perimeter, they saw how badly they were needed.

The guardsmen were fighting desperately against the orkish crowd. Tanks fired into the aliens at close range. Some were close enough to drive over them. Ramshackle orkish fighting machines towered over the crowd, pouring clumsy shells into Imperial lines. The imperial ring was hard pressed by the sea surrounding it. Curth grimly felt how close it was to total collapse.

…

Kins activated his chainsword and held it in both hands as the nearest orks rushed them. The column of guardsmen did what they could, but the wounded orks made it to him. A backhanded swing killed one and the second was dropped by several bayonetes, but the third cleaved down a veteran 112th before being cut down in turn by lasbolts. Vistigo snapped for disciplined vollies. Firing from cover at the orkish puddle that lashed against the Imperial ring seemed so hopeless. There were so many. It grew worse when the cloudless sky began to thunder.

"Rocket-berzerkers!" Kins roared. He dodged to one side as a heavy ork warrior slammed down, his goggled eyes wide in alien rage. Its jagged, rusty blade hacked off a human head. Others were slamming into the guardsmen, breaking bones or knocking men down. Those who landed too far away had a short run to get into melee. One ork even landed on his head, breaking his neck. Kins laughed at the sight, even with the orks among them.

He swung his blade and heard and saw its teeth roar into an orkish flank, sparking away the creature's armoured side and throwing up a spray of red drops as it chewed in. Kins drew his sword out in time to step back as the ork's fist swung at him. It hit his chainsword and almost knocked it from his hand. The rocket-berzerker surged forward and bowled Kins down. It chopped at him, missing as Kins rolled to one side. He struggled to stand back up as the ork came forth once more. The ork would have caught Kins on unsteady feet, if Curth had not stabbed it from behind. The ork elbowed Curth, knocking him out cold. But Kins had enough time to regain his footing and attack. The ork's neck opened up and it bled out.

The last rocket-berzerker fell a minute later. Two men for every ork. That was good, considering how they had dropped down on the 112th like that. Vistigo only had time to warn of more when a fat orkish plane roared overhead, dropping a stream of rocket-berzerkers down. Luckily, they went elsewhere.

The weary men now looked at the orkish force. Kins recited a quick prayer and they rushed to join their comrades.

…

Curth had been roused very crudely and was now, with a light head and an empty gun, rushing across a field of debris to fight to the death defending the drop site. He saw a trio of hellhounds pouring gouts of flame across the sea of green. He saw sandbag walls and mobile rockcrete barricades being swarmed by orks and brave guardsmen fight mindlessly to try and force them back. It was a good thing the orks didn't have the ring surrounded of they'd have no way of joining the others to die with them.

"Ammo?" Curth shouted as he joined the main force, fighting back the sea. His voice was a ghost in the noise. So much shouting and gunfire, so much of it. He saw an eviscerated guardsman on the floor and found himself fingering through his torn meat and exposed organs, looking for ammo. Nope. None.

"Ammo? I need a pack!" Curth screamed to the 89th. He saw many of them hadn't reloaded. They too were empty.

But his shouts were rewarded. He saw a Chazzan he didn't know hand him a power pack with bloody fingerprints on it. The Chazzan didn't wait or ask for thanks as he passed on. Curth reloaded. One power pack. Better make it count.

He surged through the throng of guardsmen with the 89th and found cracks in them to shoot thorugh. He imagined, somewhere, someone must have been shot by a friendly in this press. He stuck the snout of his lasgun out and peered at the orks, who were coming at them in lorries.

Heavy weapons were shredding their trucks and knocking them onto their sides, but too many were surviving these crashes and climbing out. Curth thanked the Emperor when the last truck was sent cartwheeling by a lascannon. Elsewhere, other parts of the defense were not so lucky. He took aim and fired, joining the hundreds of cracks that fought to fight the orks back.

He shot carefully, savouring each shot like an expensive wine. He made each shot his best shot ever, aiming for faces and firing only when he was surest of a hit. He slowed his breathing and whispered a litany of accuracy. He shot an ork with a red topknot in the stomach when he was aiming for the head. One shot at a time, he gently drained his ammunition.

All around him, others fought and died to hold the ring. Superior imperial tanks outgunned any orkish parodies that rolled up. Gunlines and weapons nests fought furiously to drive away the sea. Falling imperial shells blasted holes in the massed horde. Flamethrowers teams killed over a hundred orks in some cases.

Over their heads, dogfighting navy planes battled the enemy fliers. Smoking craft from both sides crashed into the city below. Though guardsmen died in the hundreds, they had something the orks did not. They were organized and precise, each element working to its fullest potential. The orks were just a disorganized crowd, attacking as a mass of individuals. As more shells fell on their crowded heads, their numbers began to grow less able to absorb losses so easily. The horde was melting, slowly softening and shrinking.

Curth noticed this but paid it little thought. If they won today, they would fight tomorrow with even less, prolly against the same odds. Damn it! Why did they have to come here? It was obvious they weren't killing Skullkicker in this way. He saw a navy bomb drop into the remaining horde. The blast was thrillingly large, slaughtering a whole Imperial Guard company's worth of orks. A few men cheered, but Curth did not. This would be a hollow victory. The orks would keep hitting them like this until they broke.

Curth fired another shot, still surprised his pack wasn't empty.

…

In another part of the line, Arcantillius and Kins were leading a company of Morchaghan guardsmen against a wave of orks who were rushing their sadbag wall. Kins struck out, killing his twelfth ork of the day. His chainsword was growing weaker with each kill. He'd need to clean to motor. If he survived.

"Fight on!" Arcantillius shouted regally, shooting an ork in the knee. "For the Emperor!" A few exhausted voices took up his cry. Another ork reached the line and was hacked down, but the one behind him used its spear to take one of the Chazzans in the neck. They were one man down, one less body for the rest of the operation.

"Do we have word from command on numbers? Or if there are any more xenos?" Kins shouted.

"No orders, but there's always more orks!" Arcantillius shouted back, helping to gun down an ork that was crawling over a mound of corpses. "Just stand and fight, orders will come once there's more flexibility in this battle!" Right now, it was just stand, fight and die. No orders needed for the most part. Kins readied his sword as another wave of orks came, running over the heaps of dead that protected the sandbags like a moat.

Those who made it through the lasguns faced bayonets. Some were killed quickly and some hacked into the packed guardsmen, killing with their massive swings. Kins lunged forward like a cobra and took a throat, before sweeping back to safety. To his left, a big ork was carving his axe into the men behind the bags. Kins lunged out again and cut a gauge from the alien's arm in a spray of black blood. It didn't even notice.

They didn't even notice them at first.

"Kill that one!" Kins shouted, his empty pistol still in its holster. The nearest guardsmen didn't need him to tell them to kill the brute. It died at last, six men dead by its hand. And still no one saw what was in the sky.

As the last orks of this wave were cut down, Kins looked to the sky to search for rocket-berzerkers and saw it at last.

Kins saw a wave of dark meteors shooting down from the clouds. Their dark-blue skins and flaming tops grew clearer the closer they got. They were Astartes drop pods, shooting down from the blue sky like missiles. They grew larger and closer until they slammed down into the edge of the shrinking ork horde one or two hundred meters in from of them. Orks disappeared under the doors that exploded open.

…

In the command centre, the transmission came unexpectedly into their vox sets.

"To any Imperial commanders receiving this," said the loud, masculine voice. "This is Captain Histan of the Crimson Fists space marines. We are dropping two battle companies directly to your position. Stand by."

The room cheered. The space marines had come to Ersonia at last.

…

The whole line cheered at the arrival of this unexpected aid. Kins felt his face smile like a child's. He watched a number of squads of giant Astartes warriors disembark from their pods. They wore dark blue with proud red heraldry. They tore into the orks like tanks against men. Never had Kins ever seen such a sight.

"Rise up!" Kins shouted. "To their aid! Charge!" All around the line, others were calling the order. The guardsmen stormed across the ground towards the marines, who carved and slaughtered their way through the orks with their huge blades and magnificent bolters.

…

"Space marines," Curth was breathless. He had heard of them and dreamed of seeing them. Now here they were, defending his world. When the order to charge came, he ran forward, cheering. When the guardsmen reached the ork horde, there was little left to do.

…

Songs of victory lasted long into the evening. Even in his medical tent, Cav could hear the men speak of the space marines who had just arrived. He heard Curth and Tigerson come to his side and tell him of how amazing the space marines fought. Cav smiled painfully and nodded. With their help, Cav got out of his cot and left the field hospital to greet the new recruits to the 89th that had just arrived with the wave of reinforcements.

Squinting in the white glow of the lanterns, Cav saw his beloved 89th all present, one hundred strong, in a smart parade formation. Their faces were lit up like a moon's surface, serious and hard, like men. Beside them, Kins stood, recording something on a notepad. All around them, ghostly cargo trucks roared in the lanterns and tramping guard regiments marched past them. Towering over their heads and rearing into the night sky were the pale forms of the landing ships. And they were all part of it, all one small part of this hive of military force.

Huddled in the dark in a messy parody of the 89th's intelligent block, was a wide-eyed unit of 17-year-old boys in freshly sewn PDF volunteer fatigues. They were emblazoned with clean 89th crests. Cav didn't think of them as fellow shotstoppers, not yet. They looked wonderously at Cav, awed and horrified at his appearance. It unnerved them to see a boy almost their own age in as bad a shape as Cav was in. The lacerations the mandrakes had made on his face were still red and done up with black stitching. Was this their future, standing before them?

"Two hundred and ten in all, schoolboys stolen from their mommies just like us. Still green, so I hear, except for powder monkey detail. I don't think any of them have died," Curth whispered, "so we're what? Three ten strong?" Cav nodded and winced at the pain moving his face had brought. "Kins says we're cutting them up amongst the groups as we see fit."

"I'll do it later. For now, you and Stolce split them. Tell them all about what we've seen, what to expect," Cav whispered back. "I want them better prepared than we were." Curth nodded and even threw in a salute. The brutish bully he'd once been would never have shown respect.

"Troop!" Cav said, stepping up to the new recruits, trying not to show he was leaning on Tigerson's shoulder, "I am Cav of the Angelspear hill tribe and of the 89th Ersonian PDF Volunteers. But you will call me sir. I think you already know why you're here. Tomorrow, when you wake, you will be under my command and the command of your group leaders. If you obey, you live. If you disobey, you die. Plain as that." As he spoke, a hazy-winged moth flew around his face, drawn by the light. He swatted at it with his left hand. His left arm ended at the elbow and his forearm was now a metal augmetic, complete with a hand and fingers. The moth flew too slowly and Cav caught and crushed it in his augmetic grip.

"Alright, to bed boys and dream of pretty girls. Because tomorrow, you will be at war."