Thane’s fantasy had cost him. A towering brute of a greenskin — repugnant, even by the standards of its breed — battered two ork bully-boys aside to get to the captain. It swung a length of sharpened girder in its hulking claws like a broadsword. The irresistible path of the heavy blade swooped underneath Thane’s elbow and smashed the captain to one side, cleaving the ceramite of his torso into crumpled plating. Auto-senses within his helm went wild. The girder-blade came down at Thane from above. It didn’t have the same orbital force as the first blow but all the captain had to offer in defence was his forearm plate, his empty boltgun still held tightly in his gauntlets. Slicing into the plate of the defending arm, the monstrous ork cut down at the captain as he knelt on one armoured knee.
The Apothecary’s gleaming chainblade was suddenly between them. The glint of its monomolecular teeth seemed to grab the beast’s attention. It swung the girder-blade at Reoch, the Apothecary defending as elegantly as a battle-brother might against such force and ferocity. Slicing and lopping at each other — the savage not seeming to notice the bite of the chainsword’s tip — the pair clashed blades. Holding the chainsword out in front of him, Reoch gunned it to a screeching blur.
Sparks showered the pair. The girder must have been made of some reinforced alloy, something scavenged by the creature from a crashed vessel. The chainblade was struggling against the material, and the ork used the difficulty to put its full weight behind the crude edge. The brute pushed with all its savage might, sending Reoch tumbling back into a knot of smaller creatures.
By the time it returned its barbaric attentions to Thane, the captain was back on his feet. The girder-blade came up. The tusked maw snarled. A battle-brother was suddenly there to defend his captain, his boltgun blazing, but the monster absently cleaved the Space Marine in two.
‘Captain!’ a second Fist Exemplar called. His weapon was spent also, and he cut deep into the creature’s green flesh with a gladius blade. The colossal ork’s arm shot out and grabbed the Space Marine by the helmet. His entire head was lost in the thing’s claw. The battle-brother dropped both empty boltgun and sword. His limbs thrashed furiously as the monstrous ork crushed his helm and tossed his armoured body out into the killing fields of its kin.
The beast was back on Thane in an instant. Its mongrel weapon rose. Thane brought up his boltgun. The length of the weapon was all he had to put between him and the sword’s mangling impact, but the captain suddenly jabbed the boltgun forwards, smashing into the greenskin’s tusk-crowded jaws with the empty sickle-clip. Thumbing the ejection stud, Thane retracted the boltgun, leaving the magazine embedded in the beast’s fractured face.
The broadsword came down. Thane stepped aside, and drew back his right gauntlet. Leaning into the servo-supported punch, Maximus Thane slammed his fist into the clip, hammering it into the monster’s skull. The girder-blade rang to the deck first, followed swiftly by the small green mountain of the ork’s corpse.
Snatching his remaining magazine from his belt and slamming it home, Thane blasted several greenskin savages clear of the struggling Apothecary. The remaining beasts fell to a three-hundred-and-sixty degree spin that Reoch accomplished with his chainsword, aided by the slick of gore on the void hull surface.
‘Captain?’ the Master of the Forge called. ‘Captain, are you still there?’
‘Yes, Master Aloysian,’ Thane replied, ‘but not for much longer. We have to force the enemy back to range. The alien are too many and we are too few to take them one at a time. As Apothecary Reoch says, the arithmetic doesn’t add up.’
‘What can I do, captain?’
‘You can activate the
‘Captain?’
‘Are you hearing me, Aloysian?’ Thane called across the vox-channel. ‘I want you to fire the Transept East engine column.’
‘But captain,’ the Master of the Forge protested, ‘the star fort is buried in a crater of its own making. It cannot ascend on one engine alone.’
‘Can it be done?’ Thane demanded.
‘The fortress-monastery’s superstructure will suffer damage.’
‘Would you rather the invader demolish it instead?’
‘The fort will incline, not ascend, captain,’ the Techmarine insisted.
‘I certainly hope so,’ Maximus Thane said.
Sliding about in the gore, his chainsword singing its way through tough, alien flesh, Reoch allowed himself a grunt of realisation and agreement.
‘I should vox the First Captain,’ Master Aloysian said.
‘Captain Garthas is busy,’ Thane told him. ‘I am ranking brother on the ramparts and this strategy concerns their very orientation.’
‘Yes, captain.’
‘As soon as possible, Master Aloysian,’ Thane added. ‘Brother Fists will pay for any delay.’
‘Yes, captain.’
Crashing bolts through the greenskins throwing themselves at him, Thane smashed and skidded his way back to Apothecary Reoch.
