Day 22
The main gates of Deimos, massive and made of thick slabs of ceramite and rockrete, had not ever been opened in the living memory of Monstrum's rulers. They were as old as the city itself, supposedly, built in a time of great strife, constructs the size of the God-Machines of the Mechanicus and nearly as tough. There had been no reason for them to be unsealed in all that time, as no one of sufficient import had ever had a reason to stride out into the grey wastes that surrounded the hives of the planet. At least, no reason that they wanted to bring the entire city's attention to, in any case. It was not even certain if the gates could still be opened.
The Orks had tried anyways. Again and again, they charged the most heavily defended area of all Deimos, knocking upon its doors with their charges, only to be pushed back by the city's valiant defenders. Through it all, the portal had stood strong and unbreached.
Yet now, in a rare moment where the Orks had withdrawn from their attack, the mighty and ancient constructs swung on mechanisms freshly checked and applied with sacred oils, their enduring master-craft parts creaking with stress and rust loudly enough that the sound could be heard for tens of kilometers in every direction, creating a cacophony that even those in the base of Deimos' spires heard the tones of.
From behind them, louder than even the gate's protestations, was a single, harsh command:
"FORWAAARD… MARCH!"
The Imperial Guard was going to war.
In four columns each a hundred men thick, with dozens of tanks supporting their vanguards, four regiments of the Monstrum Urban Cohorts began their march out of Deimos, two million men united into a single force of awesome power.
The Orks were not ones to sit idly by when an opponent marched out to meet them. Unlike the ordered and disciplined ranks of the Cohorts, there was no coordination to their response beyond a general objective to meet them head-on. Hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of Orks rushed straight at their enemy, shouting and hooting and hollering with joy at the approaching slaughter.
As the Inquisitor had expected. Upon the walls above the gate, hidden wherever they could find cover, thousands of the Cohorts' best marksman and snipers opened fire with powerful las rifles, targeting the largest Orks in the encroaching horde, the leaders of the mob.
While the las rifles were prized for their range and power, even they had limits and could not be expected to reliably kill even a regular ork alone. For that reason, accompanying their surprise attack was the boom of almost every artillery piece Deimos had in its defense arsenal, save those that could not be moved in time for the counterattack. While the demand had severely weakened the other sections of the city's walls and defenses, the resulting slaughter of greenskins and the loss of leadership and morale in their enemy made it well worth the sacrifice.
The charge faltered and slowed, even while the Guard continued to march outwards, forming firing lines akin to ancient terran armies. The front ranks had set their lasguns to full burst, unleashing the maximum power of their lasguns into the enemy horde, sending waves of red death crashing into the fragmented horde. When their ammunition ran dry, they withdrew from the front rank and filed between the lines of their comrades to reach the back of the vanguard, where they would reload. Meanwhile, the second rank became the first and repeated the process.
What resulted was a near endless stream of lasfire that cut through the horde like a power sword sheered through flesh. Thousands of Orks died as the columns marched forwards, their tanks opening fire and adding their voices to the crackling thunder of discharged lasguns.
The Orks, bruised and battered, fled back to their roks in the far distance and a victorious cheer went up among the Guard, but Ellen knew the battle was far from over. This had been the vanguard of the siege, not the bulk of the Ork forces around Deimos. They had been caught unprepared and their defeat had been more due to the surprise and shock of their sudden attack than any actual damage they had dealt.
With enough room to breathe, fresh power attacks were distributed among the four regiments and their lines change formation. Where before they had been a hammer to break the Orks, now they would be marching out from the cover of the city's defenses. They could not afford to be taken by surprise.
Another four regiments emerged from the city, forming a massive block made up of thousand men battalions, forty units thick and a hundred long. Once more, the tanks and other vehicles the Guard had were placed in the spaces between the battalions.
Their formation had eaten up much of their time, but the Orks had not yet responded. So, the eight regiments marched out, eager to continue their initial success.
Ellen studied the battle map, not displayed on her hololithic artifact, but a smaller and far less advanced construct. The flickering, in part due to the poor connectivity with the servoskulls surveying the field, was frustrating to have to deal with, but she had little other option at the moment, unless she wanted to have statuettes on paper in place of any live feed.
The initial march out had gone well. Perhaps a little too well. She had never seen Orks abandon a fight so easily. The violent greenskins were stubborn, if nothing else. Yet they had broken quickly.
Unimportant, she decided. The fury of the God-Emperor was with them. Orks could be cunning, but she doubted convincing an entire mob to fall back in the middle of their charge was possible for any Warboss, let alone one that seemed absent from the battlefield entirely.
On the edge of the map, where the feed was at its grainiest and regularly flicked in and out of existence as servoskulls were unable to get closer due to drawing the notice of the enemy or simply left range, the main Ork force could be seen, the furthest remnants of their shattered vanguard rejoining the roiling mob.
That force was already on its way to meet the regiments, driven forward by the largest of their kind and their own lust for battle and bloodshed. Already, hundreds of thousands of Orks were getting ready to charge their enemy.
An open battle favored the Orks and their brutish strength, but this would be no slaughter. The core of the front ranks, where once lasguns had dominated, were replaced by teams carrying heavy weapons and the tanks and artillery pieces began reforming into a wedge in the center as well, while the flanks were held by infantry.
The Hammer of the Imperium would smash right through these vile xenos, shatter their lines. If the Warboss was among the horde, it would almost certainly be in that center. The flanks would fight a delaying action, forming five lines of defense that the enemy would have to get through to deal effective damage to the Guard's center.
Corren's face and that of his squadmates were all the same, stoic expression, but inside he was shitting himself. Posted on the first line on the right flank was… not a great place to be and staring down an endless green tide of screaming orks would make a man feel less than stellar about his prospects of living. The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer spoke of greenskins as being weaker than humans and as dumb as plants.
While he would never doubt the veracity of such a sacred text, not aloud anyways, he couldn't help but get the slightest impression that whoever wrote those words was… misleading, a tad.
Orks were not weaker than a man. Over the last few days defending Deimos from their onslaught, he'd seen Orks rip men apart with their bare hands, others with mechanical vice-claws that acted as replacements that could crack armor and bone like crumpled parchment in their grip.
True, they did go down in a single shot… from a tank, at least. His lasgun might have killed a few of the orks in the initial charge, but there were at least ten of his fellow guardsman shooting at the same targets as he was.
He kept all this to himself, of course. No point giving Commissar Blair a reason to doubt his bravery or think he'd make a good means of motivating the rest of them.
However, as the rest of the Orks prepared to charge at them across an open field, he couldn't help but grip his lasgun a tad tighter and wish they still were in the cover of the hive city. Even Blair, normally the most boisterous and ferocious among them to set the example as a commissar did, had fallen silent at the onrushing horde. He thought the man might have had a slight tremble from the way his bolt pistol was shaking.
He set his worries aside and looked for the biggest, meanest ork he could find in his line of fire. He didn't have to look far to find one that fit the bill, a towering creature encased in scrap metal shaped almost in a mocking imitation of true armor.
He didn't fire. He waited. He waited for orders over the commbead in his ear, despite the nerves wracking his body and mind, despite the growing pit in his stomach as he saw that giant come closer… and closer… and closer… and-
"FIRE!"
He squeezed the trigger and his vision was consumed by waves of red light interspersed with blue flashes as every guardsman beside him opened up with their own weapons. The crack of heavy stubbers and cannons and bolters split through his ears like a thunderous crash that threatened to deafen him. The roar of the orks was temporarily drowned out, as was all sight of the approaching horde during the split second where the light that covered them was so bright he might have been in the barren lands.
He kept firing, though it took a minute before his vision actually allowed him to see anything. When he heard the familiar click of his lasgun emptying its final round, it was muscle memory that let him remove the power pack and replace it with a fresh one from his belt, and what let him resume firing despite having no idea if he was actually hitting anything.
Eventually, his vision was restored and the waves of light had become broken up enough that he could see the enemy through it and the pit in his stomach only grew deeper. The orks were still rushing forward, only a few hundred meters away now. If their attack had killed any, he had no idea, the foe's numbers had covered them in the rush.
Order the withdrawal, he prayed, still firing endlessly. He saw three of the smaller gretchen creatures fall to his weapons fire, though that was all they did: fall. They were still moving when they collapsed, though they wouldn't be able to get up again as their own allies crushed them under the weight of their charge as they continued to rush forward.
The orks had been firing the whole time, but now their shots were beginning to land. There was a spray of blood from his right as Mel collapsed to the ground, a heavy metal round having ripped its way through his torso, nearly tearing the man in half. Corren thought he might have heard his squadmate screaming, but he wasn't sure.
Order the withdrawal, he repeated. His lasgun was proving ineffective against the larger orks' heads on its own, doing little more than burning their faces it seemed, so he changed his approach and aimed lower, at their knees and ankles. The Emperor's eye was with him and he managed to cause one of the larger orks to stumble and fall, the last sight of the vile xeno its eyes widening in shock before it was swallowed by the rush.
To his left, he saw Commissar Blair, wildly waving his chainsword over his head as though wanting to fight the orks hand to hand, bolt pistol pointed down at the ground, roaring a battlecry, disappear as several rounds tore their way through him, sending chunks of flesh and cloth flying everywhere. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of his squadmates stop firing for a moment to go over and pull the bolt pistol out of Blair's arm, which had landed several meters away from where the man had been standing.
ORDER THE DAMNED WITHDRAWAL, he shouted, begging the God-Emperor to spare a moment of His time. Finally, He seemed to hear his servant's request.
"First line, throw grenades! Withdraw to second line!"
The moment he heard the voice in his ear, Corren chucked the grenade he had been entrusted with before the battle before turning and booking it for the second line. He did not bother turning to watch the explosions, nor to see the carnage that resulted as heavy stubber fire filled the pre-planned gaps in the withdrawing first line to further slow the Ork charge.
He ran fast and he ran hard, keeping his head low. One of his squadmates, Sephor, was faster, but wasn't as lucky, getting closer to the second line than the rest of them before a brown mass that looked more like a mouth with legs than a true animal shot towards him, its maw opening wide to snap shut around the poor man's lower back, a sickening crack being heard as the force of the collision snapped Sephor's spine and sent him to the ground. He was screaming for a while longer before the squig's razor sharp teeth sliced him in two.
Someone with a bolt pistol, perhaps the guardsman who had picked it up from Blair, fired a shot that caused the vicious beast to explode before it could finish its twitching meal.
Corren reached the second line and dove, sliding victoriously behind the next rank of Guardsman. He panted for breath and began crawling towards the back of that line, only to feel a pair of hands on his shoulders haul him up back onto his feet. A commissar, with a vicious grin on his face, clapped him on the arm almost good-naturedly.
"Well done, son!" The man shouted over the din of battle. "Now, join the line! There's a good man!"
Shit.
"Right flank's first line has withdrawn and reinforced the second line," One of the colonels, placed in charge of that flank, said. Ellen nodded, not looking away from the center of the battle map. Things had developed quickly.
"Sections of the left flank's first took too long," Another colonel, in charge of the left, noted. "They've engaged the Orks with bayonets."
"They'll buy us time," Ellen said. "Heroes, one and all."
She said the words almost absentmindedly as her attention was on the meat of the battle in the middle of the battle map. The Orks had crashed against a wall of stubber, cannon, and las fire, chewing through their front ranks like a chainblade chewed through flesh. The field was already littered with corpses, but something was nagging at Ellen. This felt too… simple, even for Orks. A headlong rush was completely in keeping with their style, but they were almost entirely made up of infantry.
The Orks had vehicles, there had been numerous sightings of them during the siege, but outside of a few warbikes and other light vehicle they were notably absent. Had they been deployed elsewhere on the planet?
It was minutes before the next major change occurred and she heard one of the colonels swear under his breath, perhaps thinking she wouldn't hear him.
"Right flank's second line needs to withdraw," The man said to the vox officer nearby. "Throw grenades and pull back."
"The left flank's second line is holding," The second colonel said, hiding a sneer in his voice and Ellen noticed the other man shoot him a glare.
"Their center is collapsing," Ellen said quietly, causing both men to forget their animosity and refocus their attention on the task at hand. They watched as a combined arms force of tanks and infantry a few thousand strong began to push forward into a breach that had been created. Over the course of minutes, they looked at something like a boarding pod rip through the hull of armor, expanding the breach to be further widened as Ellen ordered more and more troops into the offensive.
"Once we break through their central line, we'll roll up both of their flanks," Ellen said, a moment before there was a shift in the orks.
"Their… flanks are reinforcing the middle?" The first colonel said, sounding almost astounded. "They're pulling back on the right."
"The left as well," The second man said. "They're leaving themselves wide open."
"Order the flanks to encircle the orks," Ellen quickly said, leaping on the opportunity. It was a change in their plan, but the flanks were no longer needed to guard the center.
Her orders were swiftly carried out and the flanks began to close like a vice-grip around the neck of their foe. It was then that Ellen noticed a section on the right of the battle map wink out of existence and she glanced at the tech-priest.
"Servoskull-182b and Servoskull-281c have lost connection," The tech-priest stated as he plugged in several mechadendrites into the display. "Attempting to reconnect."
Grinhide smiled as he watched the faroff specks of fire that had once been a pair of floating humie skulls crash to the ground, taken out by some device crafted by his mekboys. Some kind of 'ee-lek-trow-mag-nat-ick' shoota or something. He didn't really care about the weird name, but the results were useful for blinding the humies.
In the distance, he could just about make out the humies army slowly closing in around his bait. A part of him, a big part, had been itching to be in that fight, to just join in the rampant slaughter rather than do all this sneaking around. Still, this was fun too he supposed. Their faces would be a sight to see, he was sure.
His metal boots stomped loudly up onto the top of his kill krusha, stepping onto his place right behind its main gun. He turned to face those behind him.
"ALRIGHT, YOU GITS!" Grinhide snarled at his forces, remarkably quiet for a horde of orks piloting all kinds of wagons and tanks, slowly being revealed from under massive tarps of human skin stained with the black ash that covered the ground. "WHO WANTS TO FOIGHT SOME PUNY HUMIES!?!"
The silence of the gathering area was shattered by the united roar of orks and revving engines and firing shootas.
"'ERE WE GO, LADS!"
Corren barely managed to pull himself out of the way of the descending choppa, its misshaped teeth cutting through the air where he'd been less than a moment earlier. He lunged forward, his lasgun's bayonet sinking deep into the neck of the ork, its dark blood choking its final gasps as it died. For good measure, he gave the blade a twist before yanking it out, breathing hard, blood pounding in his ears.
Around him, the ordered firing lines of Guardsmen had devolved into a brutal melee as the withdrawing orks suddenly rushed forward again with renewed ferocity. He barely saw the ork choppa falling towards him from his right and he leapt aside, crashing to the ground atop an armored ork's corpse, feeling the scrap metal plates of the xeno's gear sharply digging into his ribs with enough force that they might have cracked.
He raised his lasgun, kept in his hands only by a grip tighter than a dead man's, preparing to either fire a shot or spear the new enemy through, only for a blinding flash to burn his retinas. When he blinked them clear a moment later, he saw the Ork was gone, replaced by a charred corpse and fried gear, choppa fallen from its vaporized hand.
He glanced at his savior, a man wielding a plasma gun, unsure whether to thank him for saving his life or condemn him for firing such a volatile device so near to him, but there was no time. A gretchen leapt upon the weapon's wielder from behind, burying a shiv in his throat in the gap between helmet and chestplate, gruesomely similar to how Corren had slain the ork from earlier.
The plasma gun wielder collapsed to the ground, his weapon falling with him and Corren froze for a moment, half-expecting the unstable device to explode. When it did not, he didn't breathe a sigh of relief, instead moving towards it.
The gretchen was seemingly caught in a blood rage, repeatedly stabbing the already dead guardsmen with its blade again and again. Corren took full advantage of the filthy creature's distraction and fired a shot from his lasgun, briefly enjoying the sight of the resulting miniature explosion as the energy bolt sliced through its neck and caused the thin structure to explode outwards, effectively decapitating the xeno.
He rushed forward and abandoned his lasgun in favor of the plasma gun. He had been trained in its use, though never with an actual weapon as there weren't enough to go around. He hoped the machine spirit did not mind the profuse amount of blood that had covered its frame.
He readied the weapon just as a huge ork, a nob he identified, emerged from the chaos of battle and turned its horrific gaze upon him. The ork roared a wordless warcry and charged, but Corren's finger was already squeezing the trigger and there was another blinding flash and a shriek of bestial pain. Horrifyingly, the monster had survived the blast, despite the lower half of its body being vaporized and everything else being scorched beyond recognition. The ork wailed in pain reaching out with a charred hand at him as though in an attempt to reach his neck to crush it in its grip, before the cry was cut off with a gurgle as another guardsman, one Corren didn't recognize behind all the blood covering his face, stabbed through its neck with a bayonet.
Corren was already moving, already searching for the next target with his new weapon, when he heard the sound of engines piercing through the din of battle. Engines that were louder and far different to those of the Leman Russes and other tanks brought to this battle by the Guard.
He turned, a deep fear in his stomach, almost uncaring if an ork managed to sneak up behind him as had occurred for the previous wielder of his plasma gun. Because at least then he wouldn't need to face what he saw coming for them next.
Barreling towards him at shocking speed was an endless sea, not of the green of orks, but of scrap metal welded onto vehicles that ranged from barely the size of a man to twice that of a Leman Russ. And ahead of the pack of hollering orks and their war-engines was a tank that had to be the size of a vehicle like the legendary baneblade that he had only heard of.
Shit.
"They… They're supposed to just be dumb animals…" One of the colonels, Ellen wasn't sure which, whispered under his breath. She was too busy staring at the battle display as a steadily growing wave of ork vehicles began to spread across the map, her power armored hands squeezing the metal frame of the device tighter and tighter, much to the alarm of the tech-priest.
The orks had outflanked them. They had outflanked her.
"Pull the right flank back and prepare to meet their charge!" The colonel in charge of that flank reacted laudably quickly, quickly delivering a further deluge of orders, more than a few of which were overreaching his granted authority. But that didn't matter.
"Major Lensk," Ellen said, her voice low and dangerous. The Scion stepped forward instantly, his face the mask of a professional killer. "Ready my bodyguard and all our reserves. We're heading out."
"Yes, Inquisitor," The man responded, departing immediately.
"Inquisitor?" The other colonel left the question in his voice unspoken.
Ellen gave no answer, simply turning and storming out of the command tent. Four infantry regiments of the Guard would not be enough to defeat that force of vehicles… But they should be enough to get her to the Warboss.
She had made a mistake, a serious and costly one. But if she killed the leader, the mob would fracture. And, if she failed… she would not have to live with the shame of being defeated by an ork, at the very least.
From high above and far away in the spires of Deimos, the silent watcher saw the battle unfolding before him as he'd expected it to. Catherine Ellen, as the Lord-Inquisitor and other reports had told him, was brash and inexperienced. He'd seen the signs of the orks preparing their ambush, as they moved more and more of their vehicles away from the front to a place hidden even to his excellent vantage and perception.
The waves of ork vehicles crashed into the right flank of the Guard's forces, slashing them to ribbons like power claws through plastek. Ironically enough, the lines closest to fighting the orks that had been left as bait were the ones least impacted by the assault, as the counter-encirclement pushed for the center of the Guard's lines, aiming for the strongest forces.
It was only minutes before the four reserve regiments were rushing out, their few transports rushing ahead of the bulk of the infantry that had to fast march towards the enemy. Those minutes cost the Imperium's forces dearly, tens of thousands dying to the onrush of ork forces.
Ahead of the rest of the Guard's transports was a single, more special chimera, one that had been crafted to higher specifications and bore the signs of authority upon it, flanked by another two, more standard transports. The Inquisitor had taken to the field, apparently intent on either defeating the Orks herself… or dying and not having to deal with the aftermath of her momentous failure. This too had been expected.
The time had almost come. The Vindicare assassin did not tense in preparation, did not shift even a millimeter to prepare his shot. He did not need to.
Grinhide roared in delight at the slaughter unfolding before him, watching as tens of humies were grinded into a red paste under the mass of his kill krusha. He could already see the puny tanks and he rotated the massive turret he stood behind, slamming his fist down on the giant red button labelled with the ork rune for 'fire'.
The massive kinetic round sliced straight through one tank and embedded itself in another behind it before it exploded, shaking the ground with the force of the blast. His tank crashed into a third tank, simply rolling over the top of it and crushing the humie vehicle with its sheer weight.
However, that had proven a mistake, as the ammo cache of the kill krusha's victim exploded and Grinhide was thrown clear of his tank, landing in a heap on the ground.
Undeterred by or unaware of the loss of its Warboss, the superheavy tank trundled onwards, barely bothered by the explosion under it. Grinhide snarled and roared in rage.
"GET BACK 'ERE, YA GITS!" Grinhide shouted at the top of his lungs, waving his massive choppa, which was covered in saws, above his head wildly, but he could not be heard over the sound of fighting. He grabbed the nearest grot and brought the shaking and terrified creature up to his face. "TELL'EM TO COME BACK!"
With those orders, he threw the diminutive beast full force at the tank, the grot screaming as it soared through the air. Grinhide's aim was a little off, as the grot went straight over the top of the kill krusha, disappearing behind its frame. Satisfied that the grot would surely fulfill his orders and definitely hadn't been killed either by the force of the fall or being subsequently crushed by the kill krusha, Grinhide's attention turned to his surroundings.
A dozen puny humies were charging at him with their gun-choppas held ready. Grinhide smiled savagely and revved the whirling blades on his choppa.
Corren wasn't sure how he'd survived the ork encirclement. He'd just kept shooting anything green that moved and that had somehow worked. A dozen other guardsmen, none of which he knew the names of, had gathered around him, moving from the burning wrecks of ork vehicles that had either been destroyed in battle or simply failed. The main ork forces had moved on to attack the center, apparently content to leave pockets of survivors behind to get to the real fighting faster.
Not all of them, however.
Six boys charged out from behind a collapsed ork battle wagon, four with choppas and two with shootas. Corren was already moving before even any of his fellows and the plasma gun, which had already proven itself a dozen times over, unleashed a flash of light that saw one of the gun-wielding orks turned to ash in an instant. The other ork with the shoota was the target of half-a-dozen lasgun shots that dropped him dead almost as quickly.
The four remaining orks roared as they charged and Corren barely had enough time to set his weapon, close to overheating, down before they were upon them, drawing his combat knife. One of the orks ran straight for him, swinging its choppa sideways at his neck, and Corren dropped down low. The ork tried to change the direction of its swing at the last moment, but all it accomplished was throwing off its balance as the blade soared harmlessly over his head. The lumbering beast stumbled to the side and a trio of blasts from a lasgun pelted its armored sides harmlessly.
Corren jumped forward and turned in the same motion, getting behind the ork in an instant, using both hands to bury his combat knife deep into an uncovered section of plating in the ork's shoulder. The xeno shouted in anguish, dropping its choppa as its hands tried to reach the combat knife, but Corren had already wrenched it free and brought it down again, this time onto the monster's skull.
The blade embedded itself into thick bone, but did not sink as deeply as he'd hoped it might. Not deeply enough for the ork to stop moving, its heavy frame suddenly turning to slam the back of its fist into his chest, sending him flying and crashing to the ground, combat knife left stuck in the beast's skull.
There were screams from a few of the guardsmen, death cries Corren had become far too familiar with in the last few hours, and he saw no one was coming to help him as the ork trudged towards him, its square face radiating rage. And he was unarmed now. The ork was unarmed as well, but… well, it was an ork.
The greenskin rushed forward and Corren leapt to the side to avoid its haymaker, lashing out with a kick of his own that harmlessly struck the xeno's armored shin. The ork reached down and grabbed him by his leg with alarming speed and Corren knew he was going to die at that moment.
The ork tossed him like a ragdoll and it was a miracle that his leg wasn't wrenched out of its socket from the throw. The hull of an ork tank halted his short flight and he heard the crack of his ribs as they broke more than he felt the fractures. The air was knocked from his lungs and he gasped futilely for breath, unable to even stand as the ork approached, a vicious grin on its face as it reached up and pulled the combat knife that he'd embedded in its skull, seemingly preparing to return the favor.
Corren's hands closed around something familiar, a hand grip. Barely aware of what he was doing, he leveled a weapon that had the same familiar blue coils as the plasma gun but fitted for a pistol and squeezed the trigger.
The blast held all the fury of the plasma gun he'd wielded before simply contained in a smaller package and the ork fried as easily as the rest had.
He laid there for a while, staring at the charred corpse as it slowly disintegrated in front of him, barely aware of the fact that the other orks had finally been slain by his makeshift squad, now four men fewer.
His eyes fell to the plasma pistol in his hand, a sacred weapon if ever there was one, something he was lucky to even see let along wield. Something even commissars and officers would not always have had access to. He could only think of a single word as he stared down astonishedly at it, one word that fully encapsulated the awe he was feeling at how damn lucky he was.
Shit.
"WARBOSS!" Ellen shouted, her voice augmented by vox cast as her power blade sliced through an ork's torso, parting the two halves of its body with ease. "FACE ME!"
She couldn't be sure she was close to the warboss, but her challenges were being heard by all kinds of orks. Surrounded by her Tempestus Scions, their chimeras abandoned as they pushed into the chaotic melee the battle had devolved into, she was in her element.
No more politicking, no more schemes. Just destroying the enemies of the God-Emperor of Mankind, one corpse at a time.
Another pair of orks charged her, but they were as swiftly cut down as the nob had been and she passed them by without a second thought, her eyes searching through the mob of orks, looking for the largest.
She spotted it, but it was clear this was not the Warboss. All the same, a xenos to be expunged from His galaxy and she moved towards it, her crackling power blade a whirlwind of death and blood as she pushed forward, every stroke cutting down one or more of the vile greenskins.
The ork nob spotted her in turn and roared a challenge as it rushed forward, its own blade falling to slice her skull in half. She moved nimbly even in power armor, darting to the side, her own blade slashing through the dull choppa with utter finesse before following through the nob's own skull, ending it in the same strike.
"WARBOSS!" Ellen shouted again, even louder this time. "COME AND FIGHT, YOU COWARD!"
"OI!" Came a cry as equally as loud as her own and filled with equal parts rage and, somehow, indignity, despite lacking any augmentation of its own. "WHO YOU CALLIN' COWARD, HUMIE?!?"
The Ork Warboss was a towering monster, taller than her by half and bulkier by far even in her power armor. It was covered in metal plating and wielded a choppa that was as long as she was tall and covered in whirling saws with wicked teeth already soaked in blood. Its face was square and ugly with long tusks and dark green skin. She thought she could see stitching around its neck, but she wasn't sure.
"Come and fight, monster!" Ellen said, no longer shouting but still able to be heard thanks to the vox caster. She leveled her blade at the ork in challenge.
"ALRIGHT!" The Warboss seemed both angry and pleased and rushed forward, moving blaringly fast for such a large creature. Lensk and his men opened fire on the approaching ork, but even their hellguns were incapable of dissuading the beast or even doing more than burning its flesh, most of the energy bolts being absorbed by its heavy armor.
Ellen rushed forward to meet the beast, her power blade slicing through the air to meet the Warboss' choppa. She expected it to part through the blunt weapon as easily as it had the nob's, but instead it met resistance as it caught against the whirling blades, the power field met by a similar energy that wreathed the saws.
Ellen was not deterred, however, and she brought her blade up for another blow that fell upon the ork's side like a lightning bolt, only to be met by the ork's choppa once more.
Lensk and his men fired again and the Warboss grunted in annoyance, levelling its freehand at the Scions, revealing an underslung barrel hidden beneath its wrist. The first three shots took out two Scions in explosions of gore and they scattered under fire, searching for cover.
Seeking to take advantage of the momentary distraction, Ellen struck again and again, but the Warboss parried her every blow with frustrating ease. More orks began to arrive around the Warboss, but they stayed away from their fight, instead moving to engage the Scions, removing Ellen's support.
She snarled. She wouldn't need them to deal with such a creature. She didn't need anyone.
The Warboss grinned back, cackling with cruel laughter as it resumed its attack on her. She could not block the strength of the blows, only redirect or evade them. However, now that it was focused on attacking, it seemed to give up all concept of defense and she found her own attacks able to get through.
A single, shallow cut sheared off the ork's shoulder plating, sending a chunk of scrap to the ground and revealing a grisly sight. Sown onto the skin of the ork's shoulder, she saw a set of human lips, cut from the face, tipped upwards in an unnatural smile.
"LIKE MY TROPHIES?" The Warboss somehow combined a whisper with a shout, still grinning viciously. "THAT'UN WAS A GOOD FIGHT. GIMME A GOOD'UN TOO AND I'LL ADD YOU!"
Ellen suppressed a shudder of disgust and redoubled her attacks. She would not become such a thing. She refused!
Yet, all the same, she was being pushed back by the ork's attacks. The monster was faster, stronger, and had further reach than her. And, worst of all, she could tell it was toying with her even as she tried her hardest to slay it.
God-Emperor be with me, she prayed, even as she began to take step after step back, slowly making her way towards the burning wreck of numerous tanks and other vehicles.
Corren could have sworn as he ducked and rolled under the swing of the ork nob, raising his newest sidearm and vaporizing the vicious xeno. Fresh pain shot through him at the feeling of his broken bones being jostled, but his stims were running out and he had no more to deal with the pain.
Around him, his makeshift squad had changed once more. They were now six in number, but he was the only one of those who had been in it when he'd discovered the plasma pistol who wasn't dead. The orks had returned in numbers, but they'd managed to survive thus far through either the grace of the God-Emperor or sheer dumb luck.
A part of him begged him to stop, to rest, to hole up in one of the wrecked vehicles and simply defend that position, but he knew that was a futile hope. If they stayed in one spot, the orks would flock to their position until they were all dead. He'd already seen the aftermath of eight squads of varying sizes who had tried to hold out. Their only hope was regrouping with their main force, if there even was still such a thing.
Unfortunately, what that meant was moving slowly towards where the most fighting could be heard.
A new explosion rocked the ground and nearly sent him tumbling to the ground and he tensed for some new orks to arrive, but none did. Instead, what he saw was a dark shape that flew through the air and slammed into a pair of his poor squadmates, the loud snaps of shattering bones and squelching of ruptured organs easily reaching Corren's ears but failing to even make him flinch at this point.
Rising from the pair of fresh corpses, Inquisitor Catherine Ellen, bruised, bloodied, but alive rose up, covered in her black power armor and still wielding a crackling power sword. She seemed entirely unaware of the fact that she'd inadvertently been used to kill a pair of guardsmen, her gaze never wavering from the source of where she'd been thrown.
Emerging from around another tank, a walking behemoth emerged, the largest ork Corren had ever seen, one whose armor had been partially sliced away, piece-by-piece, to reveal a horrifying sight: dozens of human mouths had been sown into its green hide, lips drawn upward in unnatural grins.
This was not an ork. This was a monster.
Corren froze, the icy grip of terror seizing his heart, as the monster moved. Nothing that large should be able to move as fast as it did, but it lunged forward, knocking aside another of his adopted squadmates with a fist as it charged the Inquisitor, killing the man instantly as his skull was crushed by the force of a hammer blow.
The Inquisitor met him blow for blow, but it was clear she was on the losing side of this fight, unable to do more than slice off more and more of the monster's armor, revealing ever more grins.
His two remaining squadmates were able to move and fired upon the ork with their lasguns, but their attacks did no more damage than anger the Warboss and make it momentarily pull its attention from the fight at hand. Another backhand and a swift strike from its choppa saw both men crumple to the ground, dead.
Corren wanted to run, to drop his weapon and flee, but his legs were frozen in place. He'd slain more orks than he could remember in the last few hours, but now he wanted this to be over. He wanted to be a PDF trooper again, to deal with riots and hive-gangers, not… this.
He wasn't sure what made him move next. His training, perhaps. The God-Emperor, maybe. Or even something more base than that, something primal. Regardless, the result was the same.
He stepped forward and raised his plasma pistol, aiming squarely for the form of the Warboss. The Inquisitor saw him and, eyes widening, she suddenly leapt back just as he squeezed the trigger.
There was that familiar flash and a shriek of rage and pain. Corren blinked the spots from his eyes, but even that moment of distraction was too long.
"YOU GIT!" The Warboss roared, its half-scorched body smoking, but not close to being dead. The mouths of several humans had either been vaporized in the blast or peeled away as they were charred by the heat. "MY TROPHIES!"
Shi-
Corren didn't get to finish that thought as the ork's blade descended down upon him. Only instinct saw him move to the side, saving his life at the cost of his arm, the whirling saws sheering through his shoulder. There was a feeling of being lighter as he fell over onto the ground, before darkness took him.
Ellen leapt forward at the Warboss' distraction; however, the machine spirit of her power blade chose that moment to lose power. Her blade buried itself deep into the scorched side of the ork's back, eliciting a fresh shriek of pain, but unable to deal a finishing blow. She tried to wrench her sword free again, only for the Warboss to whirl around and knock her away again.
The Warboss roared wordlessly, a deep madness in its eyes as foam began to form in its lips. Ellen rose and drew her hellpistol, but she knew it was hopeless.
She would die here, remembered only as a failure on every level.
The Warboss charged… and the Vindicare squeezed.
There was a thunderous clap that threatened to deafen Ellen's hearing as the skull of the Ork Warboss simply disappeared, replaced by a shower of gore that splattered everything, covering the ground and her armor with dark blood and pinkish brain matter.
The Warboss's body, already dead but perhaps not yet aware of that fact, took another step forward, stopped, then teetered over, slamming to a shivering rest at Ellen's feet, limbs twitching wildly, but harmlessly.
Ellen stared at the fallen warboss with wide eyes, uncomprehending of what had just happened. She waited for her death to come, but it never did. She wasn't sure how long she remained there, but once she slowly rose to her shaky feet she realized the battle was already and suddenly over.
The Orks, discouraged by their Warboss' death, fled terrified into the wastes. The Guard, exhausted and battered, did not give chase.
They had won. Yet it did not feel like a victory to Ellen.
By the time the Orks had finally fled from the sight of the walls millions of their xenos filth were dead, piled in mountains of corpses that oozed rivers of dark blood. However, just as many Guardsmen were mixed in with those mountains as Orks.
Fully half of the twelve remaining Guard regiments were gone, two million men dead along with all but a handful of damaged tanks and vehicles. The cunning Ork trap had not defeated them, but it had managed to tear open a great wound. Deimos would stand, the head of the Ork horde had been cut off, but the Imperium's hammer was broken.
Ellen withdrew into her personal chambers as the Guard returned to Deimos to lick its wounds. She shut the door behind her and strode over to her bed, the mud and blood of her battle-tarnished power armor ruining its fine silks as she collapsed wearily onto it, taking a seat on its edge. Dark thoughts raced through her mind.
She had failed in every conceivable manner. She had failed to ready and maintain twenty regiments for the mission to Ervak. She had failed to deal with the genestealer uprising. She had failed to respond properly to the Ork assault. She had failed to see the Chaos traitors. She had failed to keep the Sisters on her side. She had failed to understand whatever was happening in Malum. She had failed to even defeat the Ork Warboss herself, having to be saved by some mysterious sniper who she knew was not one of those under her command.
She had thought she was doing the God-Emperor's will. She had been so self-assured of her own rightness, of her infallibility, that she had lost control of an entire planet. Had her faith not been strong enough? Her zeal?
In her armored hands, she was still holding her hellpistol, she realized. She considered it for a long while, a blank expression on her face. Its lines and barrel, the grooves of its grip. The purity seal that had been affixed to its side was gone, ripped off somehow in the heat of battle, and there were small dents on the grip where her powered fingers had nearly crushed the handle from holding it too tightly. She checked the power pack and found it still held charge. It had remained unfired throughout the battle, after all.
She held the barrel of the hellpistol to the temple of her skull and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
She sobbed a laugh. She had even failed to maintain the machine spirit of her own weapon. How… typical.
A knock on the door to her chambers interrupted her thoughts. It was light and tentative. Familiar. Purilla. Her Scion guards had not alerted the Inquisitor and Ellen realized she had not seen them since her fight with the Warboss. So, they were dead too.
Ellen did not want to hear the psyker's words, but she didn't have the strength to tell the woman to leave. The knock came again, slightly louder this time. Still, Ellen said nothing, simply returning to staring at the hellpistol in her hands.
The door creaked open and Ellen glanced up, feeling a glimmer of surprise. She had not given permission to enter, yet Purilla had chosen to intrude upon her anyways. That was bold and certainly punishable, yet the psyker showed no fear as she entered Ellen's abode.
Another failure on Ellen's part then, for not instilling the proper respect within her agents. The fact that Ellen did not even try to respond to the act only added to that failure.
"Catherine…" Purilla said, a look of concern and sadness on her face. Her eyes slid down to the hellpistol in Ellen's hands and there was a marginal tightening in her jaw.
"Wh-," Ellen choked on her words and she realized there was something wet on her face, something that wasn't blood. She tried to speak more clearly, but she couldn't manage it.
Purilla approached, slowly, cautiously. Ellen just stared, having given up trying to talk.
Purilla kneeled in front of the Inquisitor, not as a servant might kneel before a master, but as a mother might do so to comfort a weeping child. Was that all she was now? A child, a foolish brat who'd thought she could play at being a servant of the God-Emperor?
Purilla's hands wrapped around Ellen's own powered ones, gingerly pulling them off their grip on the hellpistol. Catherine had no strength to resist her.
Purilla placed the hellpistol aside and took a seat beside Ellen, saying nothing, just wrapping her in her arms.
Ellen broke at last, her quiet sobs filling her chambers as the stress of all she had done finally caught up with her. Through it all, Purilla said nothing, just sitting there and stroking her fingers through Ellen's hair.