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Then, without a moment’s hesitation, the auxiliary soldier acted.
He threw every ounce of his weight behind the rifle stock, both feet braced hard against the ground, then wrenched outward with everything he had, twisting the blade savagely at the same time.
As the bayonet rotated in the wound, a larger gash tore open across skin like ancient bark.
More life poured away with the gush of blood.
Beneath it all came the faint, brittle sound of vertebrae cracking.
The ork’s pupils slowly lost their focus.
The massive body surrendered every last trace of support, toppled backward, and rolled and tumbled down the same rubble slope it had just climbed — crashing heavily to the ground outside the wall and throwing up a cloud of dust.
“waaaaaaaaagh!” “WAAAAAAAAAGH!” That kill did not frighten the orks.
It was a drop of water hitting scalding oil.
The endless green sea massed below the wall ignited into a complete frenzy.
More orks witnessed the death of their kin.
Instead of fear, it only drove their savage instincts into a wild, howling hunger.
With the roaring of countless orks and grots, more green figures surged up the rubble slope.
They were no longer a disorganized mob.
Behind them, the slightly “smarter” Nobs and Warbosses had begun laying down covering fire with their crude but effective heavy weapons.
Massive solid-shot shells screamed into the walls flanking the breach.
Their explosions hurled storms of broken stone that suppressed any Imperial soldier who dared raise a head to fire.
Rough-built rockets trailed white smoke across the sky and slammed into the wall sections, triggering fresh collapses and fires.
A dense torrent of rounds swept across the Imperial positions like water thrown from a bucket, striking the battlements and sending sparks and debris flying in every direction, forcing the soldiers to crouch low and press themselves as far behind the wall as they could.
“Hold steady!
Hold steady!
Fire!
Free fire!” a sergeant bellowed at the front, but his voice was nearly swallowed by the explosions, the words distorting under strain and desperation.
The melta gun in the sergeant’s hands let out a deep, guttural roar.
A jet of superheated energy instantly vaporized one of the lead orks along with half its iron-plate armour — but in the next second, two more orks came charging through the fading embers of their fallen comrade.
For the Imperial forces, the worst had come to pass.
A melee erupted at the breach.
The moment it did, that breach became the most brutal death-spiral on the battlefield.
Both orks and Imperial soldiers threw everything they had into killing the other, whatever weapon came to hand, or teeth, or bare hands if it came to that.
One Imperial soldier had just dropped an Ork Boy with a snap shot from his lasgun when the larger ork beside it was already swinging a heavy iron bar studded with spikes directly at him.
The soldier raised his weapon on pure instinct to block.
CRACK.
One sharp sound.
The lasgun’s metal stock shattered along with the bones of the soldier’s arm.
The soldier screamed and crumpled.
In the next second, the ork finished him with the iron bar.
The ork barely got its victory roar out before another Imperial soldier nearby leveled a weapon and squeezed the trigger.
A ruby beam punched through in an instant, blowing a large hole clean through the ork’s skull.
Elsewhere, three auxiliary soldiers stood back to back in a small bayonet formation.
They were breathing in ragged gasps, their bayonets already thick with green and red blood.
An ork howled and charged.
Three bayonets drove into it simultaneously, but its dying momentum and brute force scattered the formation apart.
A second ork seized the opening and broke through.
Its massive cleaver swung wide and drew a curtain of blood.
Two soldiers were cut clean in half, intestines spilling white and loose onto the ground.
The third was luckier: the blade only caught the side.
“Brother!” A cry of anguish.
Then the survivor lunged forward in rage and threw both arms around the ork’s body, hauling it down.
“Die!” The ork crashed to the ground.
The soldier pulled the pin on the frag grenade.
“waaaaaaagh!” “Aaaaaaaaah!” BANG.
Both of them screamed into the other’s face, pouring every last measure of fury left in their bodies into that final roar.
Then the grenade detonated, and they were blown into a shared mist of blood.
Deep in the defensive line, one veteran was in the thick of a desperate fight.
The veteran had only just wrenched a blood-soaked bayonet free when another ork was already lunging in.
There was no time to aim.
A clumsy sideways roll, barely enough to dodge the killing blow.
The ork’s cleaver slammed down onto the very spot where the veteran had been standing and struck sparks from the ground.
The veteran dropped to one knee and raised the lasgun to fire.
The ork kicked out.
The force of it sent the veteran and the weapon flying, crashing hard into a stretch of crumbled wall, vision going black, organs feeling as though they had been shaken loose.
“Son of a bitch…” A snarl through clenched teeth, then a fierce gaze locked onto the approaching ork.
“WAAAAAAAAGH!” The ork bellowed in triumph and closed the distance in long strides, raising its cleaver for the finishing blow.
A flash of blue light cut through the air.
“For the Emperor!” A squad sergeant came in hard.
The power sword hummed and sang, sweeping down at a precise, vicious angle, not toward the ork’s heavy pauldron, but straight at the wrist of its weapon hand.
The Disruption Field tore through the crude iron bracer without resistance, shredded the tendons and bone beneath, and reduced the whole mass to a spray of red mist.
The ork let out a shriek of pain.
The sergeant did not pause for an instant, stepping in and driving the power sword home in a straight thrust through the ork’s heart.
The sergeant hauled the barely-conscious veteran upright, voice quick and hard: “Can you still move?
Soldier!” “I — yes, sir!” The veteran struggled to stand and grabbed a weapon again.
“Good!
Stay on me!
Plug this line!” The sergeant wiped a smear of ork blood from the visor and swept a gaze across the increasingly desperate front.
At the breach, green figures were piling in faster and faster.
The human line was being forced back step by grinding step, every step leaving behind bodies and severed limbs.
The fighting had become the most chaotic, most savage close-quarters slaughter on the field.
The sharp crack of lasguns firing at point-blank range.
The dull thud of power weapons cutting through flesh.
The terrible sound of ork bludgeons breaking carapace armour.
The death screams of human soldiers.
The raging howls of wounded orks.
All of it woven together.
The clean snap of shattering bayonets, the grinding shriek of weapons beaten apart, the muffled crack of bones, it never stopped.
Blood was thrown across charred walls and gathered into small streams, flowing down the angle of the rubble.
Red and green intertwined, spreading a stomach-turning reek of gore.
Severed limbs lay scattered everywhere.
Scraps of Imperial Army uniforms and the rough iron plating of ork armour mixed together among the rubble.
On this battlefield, someone fell with every passing second.
A soldier caved in an ork’s facial bones with a rifle stock and was immediately split across the shoulder by an axe thrown from the side.
A sergeant overloaded a plasma pistol and blew apart a cluster of orks, then was knocked to the ground, badly wounded, when the weapon itself detonated.
Countless massive ork war beasts were goaded into crashing the line, their tusks and talons tearing open the defenders’ positions…
…
“Why is the pace of the assault so slow!
Those little runts number barely a few tens of thousands!” Skulltaker Guldane was incandescent with rage, the roar reverberating through the star fort’s command room.
What had once been an orderly command room now had dozens of Imperial officers’ bodies strewn in every direction, blood soaking the floor and spreading a nauseating stench through the air.
These officers had clearly been completely helpless when the orks hit without warning, their lives stripped away in an instant, leaving behind nothing but this scene of appalling carnage.
“My lord, we—” “I don’t want your excuses!
I want results!” Guldane’s fury did not abate at the babbling of the ork before him.
With blood-red eyes bulging, the Warboss continued to bellow at the subordinates: “Pick up the pace!
Tell those boys to hit them harder!” The voice was like a thunderclap.
The walls of the command room trembled.
Guldane raged and strode, grinding underfoot every grot that got in the way without the slightest mercy.
The small, grotesque creatures let out pitiful squeals beneath those enormous feet, but Guldane paid them no attention at all, mind entirely consumed with fury at the sluggish rate of advance.
That massive frame stood nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with a Dreadnought, and each step struck the floor with a thunderous impact.
Guldane strode with purpose toward the control room being worked over by ork Meks, the nerve center governing the star fort’s entire defensive system.
In a vast control room, hundreds of burly Big Meks were hard at work around the enormous star fort control apparatus, hands running across every surface and panel.
Suddenly, a bellow shattered the din.
“Well?!” Several Big Meks instantly dropped their work, scattered from the consoles like a startled swarm, and rushed over in double-quick steps.
“Nearly done, my lord Skulltaker!” one of them answered in a breathless wheeze, a thread of nervousness running through the voice.
Guldane listened to the reply.
A sinister smile spread across that savage face.
“Keep destroying the star fort’s control apparatus!” The command was given.
A burst of crackling and popping immediately followed, indicator lights across the apparatus beginning to flicker, alarms blaring to life throughout the fort.
Guldane paid none of it any mind, gaze fixed unblinking on the display screens, watching the numbers representing the star fort’s energy reserves tick steadily downward.
This was the plan: use the star fort to strike the final defensive line of those little runts and wipe it clean off the map.
After that, they would never be able to mount any effective resistance again.
Guldane was still lost in that vision when, out in the darkness among the stars, more than a dozen battleships and battle barges completed their transit through the Warp and came driving directly toward the star fort.
➤ Next: The Word Bearers Answer Your Call