Zzzzt—
"Commander Calanthus? We hear heavy weapons discharge and are moving to intercept at the source."
The sudden burst of Nalson's voice over the vox-caster startled Calanthus. Since separating from Axion, they had been operating under a localized vox-shroud. In the heat of the infiltration, he hadn't realized that as the planet's sky had turned to true pitch, the atmospheric interference had finally dissipated.
Calanthus maintained his sprint, weaving through the dark as he prioritized a high-gain link to the Strike Cruiser holding station in high orbit.
"Hadrian! Order all hands to battle stations. Launch all armed Thunderhawks. Inform the Captain to initiate a preliminary orbital bombardment on my current data-slate coordinates. Notify the Tech-Priests to prepare for rapid extraction—we recover the materials and we leave. Now!"
Calanthus cut the link before Hadrian could acknowledge. A heavy-caliber solid slug, crudely engraved with a leering Orkoid face, whistled past his helm, close enough for his auto-senses to register the jagged, primitive markings on the brass casing.
…
Across the shifting front, Axion's threat-detection subroutines spiked to maximum.
He remained wary of the three warriors in silver, the Grey Knights, who had been tracking him with an unsettling, persistent intensity. However, they were not the primary threat.
The presence of a holographic projector on this world confirmed the existence of a Federation facility. Whether it was a research station or a classified experimental hub, its strategic value was absolute; such high-end tech did not exist in a vacuum.
The fact that a piece of hardware meant for a hardened command center was currently lying in the dirt suggested the Greenskins had already unearthed and ransacked the facility. No one knew what secrets a clandestine Federation site might hold—experimental munitions, volatile STC fragments, or worse.
If the Orks had learned to trigger a projector, there was no telling what other horrors they had inadvertently awakened.
Axion felt a cold, logical pang of concern. Had he access to a Standard Template Construct manufactorum and a steady stream of raw materials, he could simply have drowned the Greenskins in a tide of expendable automata. If the enemy possessed a "super-weapon," they would eventually be forced to reveal it. Only then would the true nature of this site be unmasked.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
The sudden roar of sustained autogun fire erupted from the flank. A hailstorm of lead slammed into the squad's formation.
They were near the periphery of the Ork encampment. Nalson, desperate to regroup with Calanthus, had abandoned all pretense of stealth, driving his squad along the camp's edge toward the sound of the guns. While Calanthus possessed the veteran instinct to sniff out hidden Kommandos, Nalson had charged straight into an ambush.
The Grey Knights accompanying them were accustomed to hunting the Daemonic; their experience with the crude savagery of the Orkoid xenos was limited. They had been stalked for hundreds of meters before the trap sprung.
The Kommandos had waited for the perfect kill-zone, unleashing a wall of fire to hammer the interlopers. Heavy slugs sparked off ceramite plating, illuminating the darkness in brief, violent flashes. On the flat, featureless plains outside the camp, there was no cover to be found.
Without a word, the squad returned fire. The distinctive, rhythmic thud of bolters harmonized with the erratic chugging of Ork "Snazzgunz," punctuated by the wet thuds of exploding xenos flesh.
The helm-integrated targeting spirits made the Astartes' fire terrifyingly efficient. Unarmored Orks were pathetic targets for mass-reactive shells; every bolt-round spent claimed a life in a spray of green ichor.
But the noise acted as a dinner bell. A literal tide of Greenskins poured from the camp, turning a skirmish into a desperate fighting retreat. Thousands of Orks surged toward the muzzle flashes.
"WAAAAAGH!"
"FOR DA BOSS!"
"STOMP 'EM! RIP DEIR HEADS OFF!"
The cacophony of war-cries fueled the xenos' frantic bloodlust. Axion watched the encroaching wave, a flicker of archived tactical data crossing his processors.
How familiar, he thought.
The Iron Men had fought with similar doctrine—tides of autonomous war machines masking the horizon, a sea of steel crashing against the enemy. The sky then, as now, had been lit by the brilliance of lasers and plasma. The only difference was the silence. The Iron Men did not howl; they did not break formation into a disorganized mob.
Both squads were now sprinting across the wasteland, each pursued by a swelling wake of Orks. Axion extended his arm backward as he ran, venting a concentrated stream of high-energy neutrons.
The brilliant amber beams cut through the night. The neutron burst punched through ranks of Orks, incinerating the first three in line and turning the fourth into a screaming, living pyre of white-hot flame.
The sheer lethality of the weapon gave the Orks pause, for a heartbeat. Then, fear was replaced by a localized explosion of rage and greed.
"WAAAAAGH! Get 'em! Dat big shiny shoota is MINE!"
The roar of boots was soon joined by the rhythmic thrum of engines. From the rear of the camp, the Warbikers emerged. They straddled a bizarre array of "deff-bikes," no two alike, unified only by their excessive armaments and the deafening, illegal roar of over-tuned engines.
Axion observed the vehicles with clinical curiosity. One bike used a massive front tire paired with rear tank-treads. Another featured a looted anti-grav plate on the nose, but due to a catastrophic lack of weight-balancing, the Ork had bolted a training wheel to the back for stability.
The Bikers howled with glee, pinning their throttles. The bikes bucked and leaped over the uneven terrain, their high-flying stunts drawing cheers from the chasing mob.
As the bikers closed the distance, Nalson realized the danger. If they were bogged down by the cavalry, the main horde would swallow them whole. In such an event, perhaps only the Grey Knights and Axion, with their esoteric means of displacement, might escape.
Seeing the bikes bearing down, the three Grey Knights finally leveled their weapons. They did not slow their pace.
The wrist-mounted Storm Bolters they carried had a shorter effective range than the Mark II Cawl-pattern Bolt Rifles of the Ultramarines, but at this distance, they were devastating.
"Feel the fires of the Emperor's Wrath!" one of the silver warriors intoned.
The Storm Bolters roared at a cyclic rate that defied logic, stitching a curtain of fire across the horizon. The lead Warbikers, hurtling forward at breakneck speeds, drove headlong into the leaden wall.
The first dozen bikes vanished instantly, engulfed in a chain reaction of exploding fuel tanks and detonating ammo drums. The few "hover-bikes" at the front, carrying the most momentum, disintegrated into shrapnel that scythed through the following ranks.
To the Orks, the sight of their comrades being blown into red and chrome mist wasn't a deterrent. They roared even louder, hooting at the spectacular explosions as if the battlefield were nothing more than a particularly violent festival.
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