“Drop it!” Sand summoned up the most commanding voice he could muster.
The ogryn in question pouted and held up the bloody mess of a Nob’s armoured arm, rusty armour still attached. “Trophy.”
“I’m not letting that on a transport without sanitation!”
“Hmph. Gramps more fun.” The giant swung the limb like a club and decapitated a few nearby Orks. The improvised weapon exploded into splatters of blood and gore, raining down on the surrounding melee.
Being dubbed more serious than the actual commissar certainly stung, but he had bigger things to worry about. The Chimeras were almost all on fire now; the Ork commandoes had been neutralized, but not quite fast enough. The transports were not completely totalled, but further operation was impossible without repairs. Without the covering fire from their guns, the greenskins had pushed closer and closer. Now, they were well within what the veterans in the regiment liked to call ‘fisting range’. Unfortunately, Orks were seldom on the receiving end of this wholesome, family-friendly activity.
Their augmetics were the only thing keeping the men alive and in the fight. Gene-enhanced bulk and industrial-grade myomers strained against evolved xeno strength as soldiers exchanged brutal punches, headbutts, and backhands. Mono-knives sang and sparked against crude cleavers. The stench of blood, sweat, and death was heavy, choking what little air remained out of the cramped hallway. The burning vehicles blocked their retreat to the camp, where the automated defences could have helped. Hammer and anvil.
The Skitarii chittered in binharic, lost in the depths of engrammatic battle-lust. They clambered up the walls and hung from the ceiling like demented spiders, the war-spirits of their weapons singing with unleashed glee. Mechadendrites lashed out with improvised blade assemblies and integrated weaponry. Hardpoint cryo-shunts glowed and hissed as mounted guns discharged brutal destruction into the enemy horde. Precision was terrifying and exacting, avoiding friendly fire in even the most entangled melees. The sheer volume of data-streams and broadcasts flying through the air made Sand’s skin tingle. The Ferrite Guardians had trained alongside their fair share of Skitarii clades, but the forces of the Mechanicus fought an entirely different kind of war outside the simulations. Whether this disparity was due to different conditions or deliberate deception, no one could say.
A few Orks broke through the knot of seething bodies and charged him. Instantly, his bionic eye was on the move, filling his vision with tactical data as it auto-tracked their trajectories and possible movement variations. Chem-glands dumped a cocktail of combat drugs into his bloodstream, ramping up his neuro-transmission speeds as his hand found the power sword at his waist. Ducking and rolling under the first clumsy blow, he came to his feet with weapon drawn, the micro-cogitator in its hilt interfacing with his targeting subsystems. Sidestepping a swing from a second greenskin, he thrust the blade through its torso. The humming metal slid smoothly through the dense flesh, crackling with disruption fields as it emerged out the other side.
Unfazed, the xeno roared and swung again: a blow which Sand dodged, slicing the blade smoothly out through his flank. In the same motion, he brought it back around, neatly decapitating his foe. Crushing the fallen head with a powerful stomp, he turned to face the next one, mindful of more closing in.
He struggled with the next few, but eventually, his body adapted to the stress. His movements became more purposeful, his swings more economical, his senses more acute. Combat neuro-conditioning took over, paring away all distractions until only the battle remained. Artificially engineered feedback loops turned his biology wholly over to fighting, activating, enhancing, and interlinking gene-mods and augmetic systems. Every quiver of a blade, every twitch of a muscle, every flicker of an eye popped like a bright flower in a meadow. He did not see or hear or smell or even taste enemies. He felt them as they approached, as if the battlefield had become his body and every movement of theirs a painfully obvious dance on his skin. Every move, every tactic, every weapon was perceived and acted upon before they could even be processed by his conscious mind.
Data, repetition, augmetics, and conditioning: the sacred pillars of Mechanicus combat training that turned the body into an engine fighting with invincible machine might. The Skitarii believed that when they entered this state, the Omnissiah spoke and acted through them. While Sand could never aspire to their level of communion with his limited improvements, he could appreciate in these moments why they thought so.
Only dimly, he felt the aftereffects of his actions. The fine mist of blood weighing down the air around him. The satisfied ripples of energy across his blade as they dissolved tatters of flesh. The mounting pile of limbs and bodies around his feet. The low hum as the sword slit an Ork in two. Everything was far away, and secondary. There was only him. And death.
A hand landed on his shoulder. Immediately, he was twisting, bringing the powered blade around in an eviscerating slash.
“Whoa!” Veridara stepped back to avoid the blow.
It was futile, because he had already stopped. “Palatine.”
“You can stop now. The line is back together.”
Without realizing, he had taken out the stragglers and joined the thick of the melee at the front, alongside his men. Not the best place for the regimental commanding officer.
Taking a deep breath, Sand replaced the sword at his belt and extricated himself, muttering words of encouragement along the way. His heart was pounding against his ribcage like an industrial piston. Chilly sweat sprang up on his brow, quivering in time to his strained breathing. Everything was too bright, too noisy, too pungent. The slightest movement in his vision left scores of afterimages. Combat highs were great. Coming down from them, not so much.
“I had it covered.”
“Of course you did, Colonel. But if they keep coming like this, we won’t have it covered for much longer.”
He took another wheezing breath, feeling it rattle in his chest. Inflammatory response. The drugs had stressed his immune system, and now his lungs were rapidly filling with fluid. His glands pushed a new anti-histamine cocktail through his bloodstream. “I thought we’d wiped them out, but there must be more teleportariums out there.”
“And more xenos. This is not sustainable. We have to pull back to more defensible positions.”
Thinking was returning now. Slowly. “Or push forward and strike at the source.”
“Forward through this? That’s impossible!”
“About as impossible as pulling enough men off the line to even begin to shift that wreckage.”
“We’ll climb over.”
“And be sitting ducks with our backs wide open? Come on, Veridara. The Emperor’s daughters are supposed to be more fearless than that. Find your ground and stand it!”
The palatine clashed her teeth together, like a wolf. “There’s a difference between bravery and idiocy, and you’re crossing that line! You’re battle-crazed, Sand!”
“That’s a bad thing?” Sand grinned and raised his fist, calling every ounce of spare bio-electrical power to his vox amplifiers for a shout that carried across the battlefield.
“Every green-skinned motherless bastard that fancies itself a leader, get your ass over here so I can mount it on my wall!”
He was answered by a hundred outraged roars as every Nob rose to the challenge. Swinging crude blades, large rocks, and improvised bouquets of corpses over their head, they steamrolled through the lines like forces of nature. Veridara muttered increasingly complicated swears under her breath as she revved the flamer she had somehow acquired. Maybe from one of the transports. Either way, a few dozen eight-foot walls of muscles were running at the speed of a truck, right at him. Great.
The thundering mob got closer. Closer. Closer. Veridara raised her gun, the pilot flame sputtering maliciously as the promethium dispensers spooled up. They were almost on top of him. Sand raised his hand and made a fist.
A few short cracks echoed across the overhead walkways. The hulking Orks collapsed mid-run, tumbling to the ground as their insides turned to mush. The needled slivers of toxins buried neatly in their necks were already dissolving.
Hesitantly, the palatine lowered her flamer. “What?”
Sand exhaled and activated his vox. “Good work, Gana.”
The ratling huffed. “Really? ‘Good work’? I want double amasec rations for the next month, at least. For the whole squad.”
He pointed at a knot of Orks battering down on their left flank. “Clear out that spot and it’s yours.”
More cracks, and suddenly his men were wading through puddles of liquefied fungus.
“Good work. I lied, though. We don’t get that much amasec.”
“With all due respect, sir, fuck you.”
“Next meal’s on me.”
“The rations are free.”
The conversation had reached its natural conclusion, so Sand terminated the comm-link. “And there we go. That’s, what, all the enemy leadership? Palatine?”
She shrugged. “Not bad, colonel. Not bad.”
“Something something battle-crazed, if I remember correctly?”
“All I will say is that you should count yourself lucky that the God-Emperor decided to grace you with a fraction of His wisdom in your need.” She shot a gout of flames over the heads of the frontline, roasting a few Orks. They laughed it off and kept fighting. Typical.
“That’s high praise, coming from you. Almost makes me not want to ask Gana to put a needle in your neck. Almost.”
Veridara’s eyebrow twitched. “How about we ignore the high treason that just occurred here, and you say ‘thank you’ instead?”
Sand’s vox crackled. “Say the word, colonel. Just say it.”
“Eavesdropping again, Gana?”
He laughed his guttural laugh. “Kind of hard not to do that when you have an auditory auspex turned on.”
“I prefer my sensors pointed at the enemy. We have Gramps for shooting things on the wrong side of the front.”
“Is that the commissar I see on the channel, sir?”
“What?”
“Hah, just messing with you! Gana out!”
Sand shook his head. “That man’s Emperor-damned lucky we forgot the small-sized whipping post at the last mustering point.”
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
“Language, colonel.”
“Yes, matron. Sorry, matron. Either way, with the Nobs gone, greenskins will get weaker. More cowardly, too. They should break apart soon.”
“And then what? We press on?”
“Not until we get orders from the Ark, no.”
Veridara rolled her eyes. “Are we really going to entrust our future to Techpriests?”
“Why not?”
“They barely look up from their cogitators and see the reality of the field. What if more enemy reinforcements arrive? What if they concentrate on us and overrun our positions?”
“The info-sphere is still active. The early warning servo-skulls will let us know if there are any unexpected movements.”
“There you go with the ‘data’ again, colonel. You have an intuition too. Listen to it. Listen to me. They cannot account for everything. I know that’s hard for you to believe, but they can’t.”
“I know that. Even they know that. The Cult Mechanicum accepts its frailties openly. But the Techpriests can account for enough. In any case, they can account for far more than we can. I trust their judgement in strategic matters.”
“The Adeptus Mechanicus is not invincible. They raise you in their… cult, to make you believe that they are. But they get things wrong too. We can’t afford to wait for more data or some other bullshit! Not here! We have to be aggressive and push out!”
“Is this the commanding officer speaking, or the avenging angel of the Emperor?”
She met his gaze head-on, eyes hardening like rapid-setting rockcrete. “In our sisterhood, there is no difference. Unlike you, our devotion to His will is eternal.”
“You doubt my loyalty?”
“Oh, no. Not a chance. You are loyal to the bone. I just fear your loyalty lies in the wrong place.”
The air turned brittle and sharp between them, like a frag grenade seconds before exploding. They were saved from the inevitable shrapnel, however, by the appearance of an all too familiar and annoying voice.
“Colonel! Does the pride and joy of the Astra Militarum really take so long to deal with mere Orks, or is there something more you would like to tell me?” Inquisitor Loran clambered over the burning wreckage and slid down smoothly near them, batting out the few embers that had caught on to her power armour’s purity seals.
Sand sighed, scratching at the pommel of his sword. No one was watching. Maybe, just maybe a foul xeno blade could find its way through a chink. Only the memory of Bax’s sincere request managed to quell his homicidal thoughts. Barely.
“Inquisitor Loran, this is an active warzone. I would suggest you withdraw to a safer location while we handle things here.”
“Pssh. I’m not a little girl, soldier. I don’t need to be protected.” She swung her staff, and the crackling of Empyric energies suffused the air, coalescing into a wave of pure energy that turned a small squad of greenskins into fine dust. “I can handle myself. What I need is to be told what the fuck is going on.”
With more slipping and sliding noises, Bax and a few of his stormtroopers joined their ward’s side.
“My sincerest apologies, Inquisitor, but the 21st only answer to their general officer commanding on the battlefield. If you wish to be informed regarding any protected information, take it up with Zeta-21.”
“The Skitarius? Please, Sand. He’ll just stonewall me, not that his machine face doesn’t just do that to everyone. No, I need to talk to you. A fellow human.”
He could almost feel a vein twitch in his temple. “Zeta’s as human as any of us.”
Loran cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t believe that.”
“As I said, if you want any battle data, take it up with the chain of command. If you’ll excuse me—”
“Apologies for his tardiness, Inquisitor.” Veridara pushed forward, elbowing past him. “It would seem the Forgeworlders could so with some lessons in respect.”
“Finally! Someone who speaks my language. Can you answer my questions, sister…”
“Veridara. Palatine Veridara. The Sororitas would be honoured to give whatever aid we can to His Majesty’s Holy Inquisition.”
Sand stepped forward. “I will not allow—”
“Do not obstruct the Inquisition, guardsman!” Loran raised her staff, the wood glowing and sparking threateningly. “Your men aren’t around to save you now. Speak, Sister Veridara.”
Sand glanced at Bax. He shrugged imperceptibly. Sympathetic, but he could not help in case a fight broke out. Not without committing high treason. A steep price to ask of anyone.
“Of course.” Veridara bowed slightly. “It is our duty as an Inquisitorial Chamber Militant to keep you informed of our strategic situation.”
“Kiss-ass,” Sand hissed under his breath.
She ignored him. “The Orks are advancing on our positions en masse. We can count multiple Nobs among their numbers, though the colonel has managed to thin their numbers considerably by goading them repeatedly into sniper fire. Our preliminary barricades were overrun approximately twenty minutes ago and we have now retreated to our second line of defences, the transports. Though, as you can see, they are no longer in any position to provide covering fire.”
Loran sighed. “Yes, yes, I can see all that. Now let’s get to the juicy stuff! How many units do you have? What are their positions? What is your battle plan moving forward? Do you have the means to—”
“You do not need to concern yourself with these mundane matters, Inquisitor.” Veridara gave her the sweetest sickly smile Sand had ever seen. Well, second-sweetest. The first spot would always belong to that Keeper of Secrets back on Akacris-IV.
“And here I thought you were done being insubordinate, palatine. Shame.” Loran arrogantly fingered her rosette again. He found his mind wandering back to the old pair of knuckle-dusters he had left behind in his little prefabbed habitat on Sanctus Ferrum’s moon. It was a shame that its worn metal wasn’t around to leave some affectionate gestures on that face.
“We are your Chamber Militant, Inquisitor Loran. We would never dream of not cooperating.”
“Then—”
“I firmly believe you do not need to consider yourself with these…”—Veridara paused for emphasis—“tactical matters.”
A spark of inspiration ran through Bax’s eyes as he pulled the Inquisitor aside before she could say anything further. After a brief and animated discussion, Loran turned around and cleared her throat.
“I understand, Palatine Veridara. The compact between our orders is as old as time itself, and I trust you will continue to honour it as… diligently as you have today. Then, as usual, I will leave this battle to you. Please inform Sergeant Bax if you wish to contact me. I will be in my quarters.”
Veridara bowed a little, saccharine smile still going strong. “That would be for the best, my lady.”
Loran’s eye twitched a little at the unprofessional honorific, but she turned around and clambered over the debris. Apparently, she was finally learning the merits of not picking a fight wherever she went. Though Sand could not attest to his own appreciation of this lesson. Soon, only Bax was left behind.
The old man slumped against one of the Chimeras. Even through his helmet, his emotions were not tough to read. “Quick thinking, sister. I owe you one.”
“Hold on.” Sand raised his hand. “What the fuck just happened? You were giving her a little under-the-table, and then the hand comes off, and she… leaves? Just like that? Did you sneak some xeno mind-control bug in her ear while I wasn’t looking?”
Veridara wrinkled her nose. “Your metaphors could use some work, but like I said, we are the Inquisition’s Chamber Militant, bound by ancient oats to their service. We fight where and when they ask us to.”
She jammed her helmet back on, somehow having managed to reacquire one. Probably from one of the fallen. He tried not to think about it. “But? What’s the catch?”
“Well, those oaths are pretty long and stuffed with little loopholes from both sides trying to sneak in as many little legs up as possible. I just used one of those. The Inquisition tells us where to fight, but now how. The Chambers retain tactical autonomy. But, in this case, since Inquisitor Loran has joined the campaign only as an observer, strategic authority lies with your ‘cog daddy’, as one of your… disposition would put it.”
“Archmagos is fine, Veridara. Preferred, even. ‘Cog daddy’… is decidedly not. There are standards.”
“Alright.”
“That was literally a war crime,” Bax agreed.
“Noted!” Her tone, even filtered through the vox, betrayed obvious embarrassment and regret. “Anyway, that basically means that his appointed officer, Zeta-21, is actually the one making strategic decisions. In other words…”
“You just cut the fair lady out of the entire chain of command,” Sand finished.
“See, I knew all Forgeworlders weren’t slow.” She elbowed him a little, before realizing what she had done and backpedalling a few feet.
Sand elected to ignore it. She had just done him a favour, so it would be ungrateful of him to capitalize on her mistakes. Next time, though… There was always next time. “And I knew all sisters didn’t think with their aquila instead of their heads.”
Almost involuntarily, she made the aquila across her chest at the mention. “Of course, being the Chamber Militant officer, I also have command of all Inquisitorially sanctioned forces on behalf of Loran. So, I’m technically your boss now.”
“Oh! Sure thing, chief! Why didn’t you say so before?” Sand pulled a bolt pistol from his hip and cocked it, motioning vaguely behind her with the barrel. “Please turn to the whiteboard so I can debrief you.”
“Ha-ha.” She slapped the gun away.
A dull explosion shook dust from the walls. A cloud of debris and nebulized blood wafter up from the frontlines. Instinctively, Sand ducked in front of Veridara to stop any debris. Which was a stupid move, given that she was the one wearing power armour.
“Sir, if you’re done flirting, we could use a plan!” A voice floated back from the tangle of NCOs.
“I don’t flirt with someone who can’t come to my bloody planet, sergeant!” Sand shouted back. “But he’s right. We do need a plan.”
Bax pushed himself back to his feet. “I think I can help with that. We could push through their front while it’s thinning, before the Nobs come back. Get to the rear, break the teleportariums, grow a third eye from the resulting Warp exposure. You know, the usual.”
Veridara shook her head. “We don’t know where all the devices are located. Besides, Techpriest Vakor and his forces are trying to do just that. We can’t all be doing the exact same things.”
“But we do need to get out of fisting range as soon as possible. We’re holding our own only because of augments, and they have the numbers. We’ll be done for soon enough.”
“Both of you are right. Which is why we’re not even going to try to kill them all.” Sand pulled out his auspex scanner and tuned into the Mechanicus info-sphere, projecting the mapped region of the hulk into a hololith. “We’re going to box them in. Collapse both ends of the hallway containing the teleportariums.”
Bax frowned. “Isn’t it part of the convoy route?”
“It was. It’s the path in the best condition. But it’s not the only one.” With a tap, he highlighted a branch about half a kilometric measurement behind their position. “This corridor branches off, skips the affected section and rejoins the larger arterial behind the teleportariums. About a kilo-mem and a half behind them, in fact. A clean bypass.”
“Sure, but we’d need someone on the other side.” Bax’s eyes cleared. “Ah, the cogboy.”
“Indeed.” Sand touched his ear, activating the vox-bead. “Vox-op, any working vox-op?”
The line crackled. “CP, AF 2 vox-op reporting, colonel. Equipment nominal. Relay message.”
“Patch into the AdMech bridge line. We need demo on supports 200 mems beyond ground green-zero.”
“Acknowledged. Receipt tag?”
“Vakor 9/7A.”
“Roger that, sir. Missive away. Vox-op out.”
He nodded and cut the link. “That should do it.”
“And what about our end?” Veridara asked.
“Zeta contacted me from the camp. They’ve received word through the landing zone Manifold bridge. We’ll have our own, uh… tracked demo here soon. Should be about ten minutes out now. All we have to do is hold for ten minutes.”
Bax’s eyes flickered over the lines. “It’ll be close.”
“Where’s the fun otherwise?” Sand cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted, “Alright boys, the AC pansies are inbound, one-oh chrono-standards. What are we going to tell them?”
“Tell them to take a ten-minute potty break, we’ve got this!” someone yelled, to raucous laughter. The Orks they were fighting also joined in, albeit unsure of what exactly was being laughed at.
“I’ll tell them to make it twenty! Gramps! Where’s Gramps?”
The commissar climbed out of a knot of men, bloodied mono-sabre in hand. The gilded bolt pistol reserved for executions, thankfully, was still at his belt. “What is it?”
“You’ve got something to say before this starts for real?”
You could say what you wanted about the greenskins, but they knew how to appreciate the ambience of a fight. All across the front, they courteously stopped attacking, turning their brutish faces expectantly to the old man’s towering figure.
Gramps sighed, deliberately sheathing his sword and planting his hands on his hips. His eyes roamed over the soot-caked faces of the men, and then the toothy grins of the xenos. Even Veridara was attentive.
He took a deep breath, and sighed. “By the Emperor, this job sucks.”
The men cheered. A few of the smarter Orks, who appeared to be some kind of leaders, nodded sympathetically.
Sand grinned. “Well, that’s as good a pep talk as any! Forward!”
Gramps finally drew his pistol. “And not one step back.”
The clash began again, the men screaming curses at the top of their lungs as they bodily tackled the bulky xenos, pushing them back one step at a time.
Sand palmed his vox. “Gramps, keep pushing them forward. I want all the Orks behind that support.”
He nodded at Bax. The stormtrooper nodded and trained a pointing laser on one of the massive arches supporting the ceiling.
“Understood, colonel. The God-Emperor go with you.”
“Don’t shoot too many.”
“I survived the Catachan 252nd, boy. No Forgeworlder pussy’s going to frag me. Prefectus out.”
“Sand out.” He sighed and cut the comms. “And there we go. A few more minutes, and—”
An ear-splitting roar shook the air. The Orks responded immediately, diving to the sides of the hallway. Even those in the middle of fistfights scrambled away, practically climbing over each other to clear as much space in the middle as possible.
“What’s happening?” Veridara frowned.
A few of the eagle-eyed NCOs noticed before anyone else did. “Scatter! Scatter! Break formations! Brace against the walls! Scatter!”
“What is it, soldier? What do you see?” an officer demanded.
Before the wide-eyed man could answer, it became apparent. An elephantine beast the size of a tank was charging at full tilt down the ad-hoc pathway, yellowed tusks bristling at the mouth. Crusted blood gleamed menacingly on their tips. Rusty armour dug into a tough, scaled hide. A massive horn protruded out of its massive snout; the still-intact skull of some poor human had been tied to its base. The men shouted more warnings and tried to get out of the way, trapped by their own bulk and numbers. Others reached for lasguns and turned power settings to the maximum, firing shots that flashed against its scales, burning but unable to get through.
“Squiggoth,” Bax breathed. “Who brought a fucking Squiggoth here?”
Veridara sighed. “How many minutes, again?”
“Lascannon!” Sand shouted. “Where’s the bloody Lascannon when you need it?”