They rounded a corner into the corridor leading to the first bank of scanners. Fortunately, for all their guile in targeting the ship’s engines and trying to disable the scanning array, the orks were not so advanced that they had thought of leaving a rearguard. In fact, only about two dozen of them had stayed with the spark-spitting cutters at the bulkhead outside the sensor chambers. Presumably the others, having safely delivered the cutting crew to their objective, were off looking for more butchery and fun. Kulik would have breathed a sigh of relief had he not been out of breath from the running; commanding a capital ship was not always the most physically taxing of jobs and though he had made efforts to stay in shape, age was catching up with him. A glance at Shaffenbeck showed that the first lieutenant was at least reddening in the face a little.
One of the orks glanced back at the sound of tramping boots and let out a noise somewhere between a cry of alarm and a whoop of joy. Responding, the other greenskins turned as the first armsmen opened fire with their lascarbines, filling the passage with red bolts of light and the scent of ionising air. A few orks fell casualty to the salvo, but a plethora of pistols and stubby-nosed automatic weapons rose like a thicket around the survivors. Kulik slowed his run as he stared into the multitude of gun barrels.
The clatter of the orks’ return fire combined with the boom of shotguns, deafening Kulik in the enclosed space. The captain fired his pistol into the face of an ork about forty feet in front of him. The las-blast ricocheted off the side of its head, leaving a scorch mark in its green flesh but doing no greater damage. Bullets screamed and whirred past Kulik — inches away, it felt.
Saul was yelling encouragement, urging on the ratings as more and more of them fell to the scything ork bullets.
‘Up and at them, men of
An armsman just in front of the captain fell sideways, his head and helmet scattering bloodily across the corridor. Two orks wielding the ramshackle cutting devices turned their equipment on the charging humans. Lightning arced, catching Sergeant Latheram and three more men in a tempest of black and green energy.
An unthinking rage fuelled Kulik as he thumbed the power switch of his sword. A flickering energy field flowed along the blade, casting bizarre, jolting shadows on the walls. A tiny, more rational part of the captain’s mind screamed in terror, but it erupted from his mouth as a wordless bellow of defiance.
Around their captain, long boarding pikes held level, the lance gunners charged too, driving the tips of their gaffes towards the greenskins. Shaffenbeck had his sword in hand, its blade the near-transparent blue of tempered plasteel alloyed with ardamite crystal threads.
One-on-one the men of the battleship would have been no match for the bestial greenskins, but as a mass they pressed in, following their officers, united in purpose and momentum. Years spent working the aiming gears and exchanging the energy cells of the immense lance cannons had made the ratings tough, muscled men, and with the force of desperation and the shout of their lord and master ringing in their ears, they drove home their spears with irresistible force.
The orks crashed heavy mauls and cleavers against the metal-sheathed hafts of the boarding pikes, but to little avail. Pinioned in many places, the closest orks were pushed back into their companions, the men behind the pikes twisting the shafts as they had been taught, to drive their weapons even deeper through flesh.
Kulik stabbed the tip of his sword into the eye of a transfixed alien, ramming half the blade into its head to be sure. On his right, Shaffenbeck slashed the guts out of another greenskin. There was no room for parry and thrust, cut and riposte. The captain lashed out almost blindly; it was impossible to miss, his only care to avoid his crewmen with his wide swings. It was not so much swordsmanship as it was butchery skill.
Miraculously, Sergeant Latheram had somehow survived the strike from the electro-cutters, though his chest, left arm and half his face were a mass of burns. There was smoke drifting from his hair and the ragged remains of his clothes. A single eye stared wildly from the mass of scorched tissue, filled with such loathing that it scared Kulik. The sergeant brought his glowing power maul down onto the skull of an ork, crushing it with a single blow. Another sweep caved in the chest of another.
Kulik felt the armsmen surge again around him and was happy to be pushed back away from the melee for a moment, lashing out one last strike across the throat of an ork that was trying to bite the head from one of the pikemen. Shotguns barked, lethal even to the orks at this close range, shredding bodies and obliterating heads and limbs.
