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Day 2, 00:14

bLAMMNn!

A work of art, that is, the way the first ork’s midsection burst open like a ripe melon and rained spongy-green offal in every which way. The ork didn’t even have the opportunity to bellow out a scream or warcry: now lacking anything so elaborate as a pair of working lungs, the greenskin dropped to the ground and thrashed like a beached fish for a while.

bLAMMnn!

The other ork tried to defend itself against the close-range bolt-shot. As Galmech’s finger tightened on the trigger, the ork interposed its cleaver between its body and the muzzle of the weapon. The mass-reactive round hammered into the length of corroded metal and detonated, shattering the blade into a hundred razor-fragments. From where the round detonated, a number of the rounds tore into Galmech’s armored midsection, perforating or ripping the exposed cabling and tubing over his belly. He had the redundancies to keep going. The other ork... not so much.

When the after-flash faded from Galmech’s eyes, he saw the ork standing in front of him like a ploin-fruit set upon by a madman with a jackhammer. Ripped and torn, the ork’s still-gasping, still-guttering body wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Its porcine eyes caught Galmech’s gaze for a second or two. They rolled up into its skull. The ork fell sideways, expelling its last, wet breaths into the night air.

With Solus off with the Mega-Nob, Galmech was alone with the Flash Git. The greenskin slammed a new box magazine into the receiver, popped up from behind cover, and squeezed the trigger, filling the air between them with solid, explosive, and/or defective rounds.

Right. It was a duel, then.

Bullets and bolts streaked past each other in a deafening staccato. The two combatants punished each other for the grave offense of existing in the other’s presence in the way that only heavily-armed and bio-engineered beings could.

Odds were that there was something in the ork’s salvo that could take down Galmech. Odds were that a shot could strike Galmech in a devastating way and topple him.

But the world will never know, because Galmech blew the nob to smithereens first.


Day 2, 00:09

Initially, the trooper didn’t have an answer to give. Nobody did, really. There was still mopping up to do, and the guardsmen were too busy making sure that the flank was secure before they could get an accurate headcount.

Eventually, though, the gunfire ceased. Squads and fire-teams checked in. Bodies, ork and human alike, were accounted for and disposed of (humans got body-bags, orks got five rounds to the skull). Something suspiciously similar to order returned to the lines. At the end of it, Haysa got the answer he was looking for.

7 Guardsmen were MIA. A fireteam hunkered down forward of the defensive line in a scouting position had been missing before anyone knew they were under attack. The squigs dragged one hapless guardsman off into the woods, and he’d be listed as MIA until morning, when he’d be assumed dead. A seventh trooper just up and disappeared during the thickest round of teleportation: the theory was that he got swallowed up by one of the same teleport mishaps that dropped the orks in their midst. Added onto these numbers was the lone Space Wolf who, a few brief minutes ago, had been regaling the mortal guardsmen with tales of his prior exploits. On occasion, someone mentioned hearing the three-stage report of a boltgun off in the distance, but, wherever Blackmane was, no Imperial eyes had seen him since the start of the fighting. What that meant, nobody knew.

More than a hundred and thirty Guardsmen had been stationed north of the camp. In addition to the 7 MIA, 26 were killed, and the majority of the rest bore at least some form of injury as a mark of the skirmish. Nobody knew how many greenskins there were: with them popping in and out like they were, nobody could make an accurate tally, and there often wasn’t enough left of a corpse to know where one body ended and a new one began. Conservative estimates put the ork and gretchin dead at 30, and at least 20 squigs tacked on. Looser estimates doubled those figures.

For the time being, orders from the camp were to stay put and hold the line against further attacks. From what could be gathered from the scattered vox updates, the teleportations had been occurring all over the place. Not just the front lines, but behind them, in the camp, in every imaginable place. In the repair shop, in the bastions, out in the minefields... everywhere, the orks had been popping into existence with nary a warning, and some locations were still putting down the sudden attacks.

But thankfully, as Haysa was leaned against the trench wall and the information disseminated to him as a medic checked him out, there was nothing left to come at them that night. Wherever else the tellyporta storms were, they’d done enough to the northern line. Until the sun rose, the night was an uneasy quiet.


Day 2, 00:14

The nob in its super-heavy armor swiped at Solus with its massive claw. Quickly, Solus brought the shield up to block. Brilliant sparks and a crackle of lightning burst from the site of the impact, filling the air with light and heat, heat, tremendous heat and static.

The ork screeched and blinked its eyes rapidly, trying to chase the after-image of the lightshow from its eyes. For a moment, it was effectively blind, and not even the harsh light of Solus’s sword and shield could be seen.

wrrrRRAM!

Solus’s charge brought his storm shield into the ork’s midsection with the force of a battering ram, knocking the greenskin off balance and momentarily stunning it. There wasn’t a whole lot that the beast could do to save itself after that. With a mighty swing, Solus drove the Nemesis blade into the ork’s side, cutting through the thick slabs of steel and looted ceramite.

It didn’t get all the way through. It didn’t cut the monster in half. But it broke the skin and slipped between a few ribs, making a sizzling mess of the greenskin’s innards. Then the psionic abilities of the blade activated, and-

(another invalid onomatopoeia here)

-the life was ripped from the ork’s flesh and bones, wreaking havoc throughout its body and armor in equal measure. After a few seconds of this, Solus was free to remove the blade and send the beast collapsing to the ground.

And then, there was silence.

Galmech stood a second after the gunfire quieted, making sure the orks were dead before relaxing at all and reloading his pistol. Holstering it, he picked his Heavy Bolter up and moved to the remaining Leman Russ tank. Looking it over, he checked for both tools and parts, as well as seeing if the tank itself was still running or how bad the repairs would be to get it in such a shape. He then took to the task of making what repairs he could to his own armor.

It was only then that the inkling in the back of his mind reminded him to check for surviving guardsmen.

Day 2, 00:15

The only sounds coming from the column were the whine of the space marines’ servos, the tread of their boots, and the stereo retching of the crewmen within the last tank. One of these things was louder than the others.

“BLARFFGH!” went the tank commander as he applied a fresh coat of puce and bile over the hull. He took a few glutinous snorts before repeating the gesture, dry heaving, and then getting something closely approximating control over his now-empty stomach.

Aside from a pressing need for cleansing oils and holy unguents to wash away the defilement, the last tank was fit-enough to carry on. The only other things wrong with it were the crewmen, who slowly but steadily regained control of their senses.

The commander started saying, “Throne be pr-” before seeing the looming silhouette of the Devastator standing over him. Even for a man used to driving tanks, a space marine was an awe-inspiring sight. The Terminator’s presence, a figure of transhuman and ceramite that nearly matched his tank’s weight, didn’t help things.

“Ready to move out, sir,” the commander said.

And, shortly thereafter, they did just that. With the noise raised by the attack and their position revealed, the survivors were understandably a little antsy about remaining there and being set upon by more orks. Thankfully, the orks had something else to occupy them that night.


Day 2, 05:22

Welp.

Sunrise.

Big Mek Wazzguta rubbed the sleep from its eyes. Some kind of ruckus had gone down in the night, the sound of it filtering from the Imperial camp off in the distance. In the middle of an ork camp, not exactly known for its noise discipline, that was pretty impressive.

The ork heaved itself to its feet, reached over and bit the head off of a snotling, and ambled out of his hovel and toward the scrap metal shack that it called its workplace. Headless corpse in one hand and a mangled wrench in the other, the beast pushed in through the opening. Along the way, it ignored the press of activity all around it. Orks and grots were going places. Probably to take advantage of whatever the Mork happened last night while it was trying to get some shut eye.

Once inside, it looked upon its machine. It was as massive as a Predator tank and, even deactivated, electricity crackled from numerous protuberances sticking out of every square foot. Commissioned by the Boss, the device was what Wazzguta liked to call a “Mass Invasion Teleporter”. When it was feeling classy, anyway. Through a mouth too small for the dozens and dozens of big and pointy teef cramming it full to bursting, the best it could call it was Der Big Flashything. For when you want to deposit an army somewhere in a hurry and don’t mind losing half the boyz in the process or being off the mark by a league. Or, you know, arriving three hours ahead of time, because the Warp and space-time share a tumultuous-yet-passionate relationship that leaves everybody feeling dirty afterward.

And it was nearing completion.

Wazzguta muched off the snotling’s torso and hit a slab-like flank of the machine with its wrench. That screw was looking loose. Hit it with a wrench. The ozone meter was high. Hit it with a wrench. The wire was sparking. Hit it with a wrench. The polarity was reversed. Hit it with a zogging wrench.

whirrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Well.

That shouldn’t be happening.

Wazzguta was at a loss for words. That didn’t stop the ork from spewing out a most undignified string of profanity imaginable. The machine was building up power, and lightning crackled all along the flanks with an intensity capable of flashing a small child to vapor in a heartbeat. Soon, it had enough power to leave a full-grown ork as nothing more than a steaming, greasy smear on the wall of the hut.

Wazzguta pulled the plug. Wazguta yanked the levers on the control panel so hard toward “Off” that they broke in its hands. The ork tore through the wiring in hopes of destroying the delicate machanisms within. Nothing. Nothing stopped the machine’s buildup to activation. The ork tore off a panel to get to the heart of the machine and stop it at the source.

That was when the ork saw it.

Deep within the machine, something dull red and gunmetal grey moved. Its eye flickered green, and a shower of sparks erupted from its mandibles. The thing took one look at the ork, chirped, and blinkered away.

“What in der name of Gor-”


Day 2, 05:29

The Reclusiarch, Chaplain Mendoza of the Crimson Fists, was clearing his head. He was literally made for the constant buzz of activity that came from warmaking, but even he needed to get a breath of fresh air every now and then. It wasn’t easy getting a Celestian, half-dozen colonels, brigadier-general, High Magos, and Very Loud Beaurocrat Of Uncertain Profession and Gender With An Embarrassing Surname to get along with each other. Sometimes, he thought that the orks might be onto something, what with their tendency for the biggest and meanest to beat the smaller ones over the head until they fell in line. It had its merits.

But, that was off the topic.

The Crimson Fist had managed to secure himself five minutes’ peace to breathe and eat a ration pack atop the West Tower. It was the first opportunity that he’d had to do so since making planetfall, and he wanted to make the most of it. The orks hadn’t made a move during the night, at least, and there was little sign of activity in their camp. With luck, that meant that his minutes could be spent in peace and qui-

First, there was a flash of light.

Second, there was a storm of metal, dirt, and shredded bodies.

Third, there was smoke.

Fourth, there was a sound like the world ending.

When the dust settled, there was a half-mile-wide crater in the middle of the ork camp, as though some titanic earthmover had descended from on high and removed a perfect hemisphere of the camp from the ground. Everything for another half-mile out from the crater’s rim looked like it had been bowled over by a hurricane-force wind. Buildings, tanks, half-finished gargants...

“¡Madre de Emperador!” the chaplain exhaled, disbelieving of his senses. But, if they were to be believed, then something had just gone terribly wrong for the orks. It hadn’t destroyed half, nor even a quarter, of the camp, but it was damned impressive to look at anyway.

The shouts and bedlam throughout the camp and the yammering of the aides-de-camp and commanders inside the tower told him that his break was over.



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