At the same time, Number One cut in from Lawson's other side, muzzle trained on the densest cluster of gretchin.
The las-bursts punched a string of carbonized holes through those short green bodies. Three gretchin were skewered by the same beam and toppled in the same direction.
But gretchin had numbers to spare.
The remaining dozens of them, along with the Ork boy whose wrist had already been severed, all lunged at Number One at once. The Ork smashed the barrel of Number One's lasgun aside with the ragged stump of its broken wrist, then slammed bodily into his shoulder.
Number One was knocked into the support frame of a side conduit.
The moment he landed, he snapped the lasgun back on target and fired into the Ork boy.
Not a killing shot, but enough to force it back a step.
Lawson used that opening. He planted a boot on the head of a gretchin trying to pounce at him, pinned it to the ground, and yanked the Fang of Catachan out of the oversized Ork's skull.
In the same motion, he swung the stock of the boltgun sideways into the face of the Ork with the ruined wrist.
Its nose broke cleanly in two, and it staggered backward. In that brief gap, Lawson drove the blade forward, the tip slipping precisely into its throat.
[Life Points +7]
With the Fang held crosswise, he killed three more gretchin in quick succession.
Before crossing over, Lawson had ruled Earth for centuries. Even in peacetime after unification, the hive mind had never stopped tempering the Deathsworn in battle, from South American jungle narcotics wars to the shit-pits of the Indian subcontinent.
The Deathsworn had honed themselves through endless killing. Every scrap of muscle memory from fighting back in hopeless situations, every neural reaction, every tactical feint, had flowed continuously back through the hive mind, where it was processed, iterated, and reforged billions of times.
As the one holding highest authority, Lawson had inherited all the combat experience the Deathsworn had accumulated in the harshest environments imaginable.
His fighting skill and tactical instinct were, on Earth, unquestionable apex-level talents.
Now he moved like a predator through the Orks, Number One matching him step for step.
By the time Lawson kicked away the last half-corpse of an Ork that had tried to latch onto his leg, there were no greenskins left standing in front of them.
They had cut straight through the mob.
The system notifications were popping like a string of firecrackers, and the Life Point total was climbing rapidly.
And at that exact moment, the pursuing greenskin tide came thundering around the corner and saw them.
"WAAAAAGH!!!"
"Run!"
Lawson grabbed Number One, who was cut and bruised in several places, and sprinted toward the end of the corridor.
At the far end stood a massive blast door.
This kind of door was normally used to physically seal off ruptured compartments aboard voidships. It was a full meter thick, cast from solid alloy.
Lawson charged to the control console, smashed the corroded glass cover with one punch, and slammed his hand down on the red emergency lockdown button.
Clank clank clank...
Age and neglect had made the blast door's hydraulic system agonizingly sluggish. The enormous metal slab above only descended a third of the way before letting out a shriek of grinding steel and jamming in midair.
"Shit!"
Behind them, the green flood was already less than twenty meters away. The leading Orks had even started raising their crude shootas.
Lawson and Number One leaped at the same time.
The two of them clung to the bottom edge of the half-hanging blast door like giant geckos, both hands locked tight, muscles swelling all at once.
"Get down here!"
BOOM!
Under their combined, savage pull, the jammed hydraulic rods finally snapped.
The alloy gate, weighing dozens of tons, came crashing down like a guillotine.
BAM!
One unlucky gretchin, the fastest of the bunch, had tried to dive beneath the narrowing gap. It did not even have time to scream before the door flattened it into a two-dimensional splash of green paint.
The heavy gate slammed fully into its floor groove, sealing tight and cutting off the green tide on the far side.
Bang! Bang bang bang!
KABOOM!
Deprived of their target, the Orks on the other side began blasting the thick alloy barrier with every large-caliber weapon they had.
But a fortification like this was obviously not something a pile of junk-metal guns could punch through.
Then came a particularly loud explosion from the far side of the gate.
Several Life Point notifications popped up immediately.
"Heh."
Lawson let out a short laugh.
Some Ork had managed to blow apart an abandoned pipe while firing wildly. It had fallen and crushed a few gretchin.
And the system had actually credited him the Life Points.
Lawson did not bother questioning the system's logic.
Dead was dead.
They needed a temporary place to rest.
About forty meters ahead there was a small storage room, relatively isolated, with only one entrance.
"No good. If we get sealed in, we're dead."
He kept moving and found a suspended platform folded into an abandoned side passage, one that had already completely lost contact with both the upper and lower decks.
The two of them climbed inside.
Number One leaned against the opposite side. His left arm had bent into a shape that was not pleasant to look at.
There was also a wound about four centimeters long across the knee of his right leg, deep enough to expose bone.
Number One's expression did not change in the slightest.
Lawson opened the Deathsworn interface.
Beside Number One's status bar was a prompt:
[Consume 10 Life Points to restore designated Deathsworn to full health.]
Lawson did not hesitate.
[10 Life Points consumed: Number One fully restored.]
Under the influence of some microscopic force, the fracture in Number One's left arm and the wound in his right leg rejoined and healed.
Number One flexed his arm, confirmed it could move normally, and raised a salute.
Lawson accepted the gesture, then looked back at the Deathsworn panel.
Current Life Point reserve: just over four hundred.
Adamant steel: barely above two cubic meters.
Enough for two more Deathsworn, though the steel was still a little short.
[Consume 200 Life Points and 2 cubic meters of adamant steel: Exchange for 2 Catachan Jungle Fighters.]
Two Catachan hulks, identical in build to Number One, appeared out of thin air on the platform. They turned their heads, glanced around, then simultaneously placed their right hands over their chests.
"Loyalty!"
Lawson looked them over and issued his orders.
"You're Number Two. You're Number Three."
"Number One stays here on guard. Number Two, Number Three, go out and keep collecting scrap. Max out the adamant steel reserve."
Numbers Two and Three acknowledged the order and departed.
Lawson leaned back against the mechanical base again, rested the boltgun across his legs, and began sorting through the current situation in his mind.
This space hulk was one hundred and twenty kilometers across, and they had explored only a tiny corner of it.
There was no telling how many greenskins still infested the ship.
No telling whether there were any other survivors from the Eighty-Eighth Assault Detachment.
And no telling whether the Emperor's Unbroken Will was still out there in the void, waiting for them.
Lawson let out a quiet breath.
"One step at a time. It's not like we can get out anyway."