Chapter 18: New Guns, New Game
Six fully armed Catachan Jungle Fighters moved through the dark corridors of Deck Seventy-Five. Compared to an hour ago, they were a different squad entirely.
An hour ago they had been six men with knives, scraping kills off the greenskin population one trap and ambush at a time.
Now every one of them was loaded down with firearms, ammunition, and grenades. Their collective firepower had jumped by an order of magnitude.
This was more like it.
Number 1 stopped at a ventilation duct junction fifty metres ahead and held up the standard Catachan jungle-silence signal.
Contact. Left front. Numbers unknown.
Rosen pulled Number 1's full sensory feed through Shared Awareness in an instant.
Roughly eighty metres ahead and to the left, in an open compartment, seven Ork Boyz and a couple dozen Gretchin were clustered together arguing over their loot.
He assessed the space quickly.
Compartment area approximately four hundred square metres. Ceiling height around six metres. Three entrances. They were facing the main entrance head-on. To the left was a half-collapsed maintenance hatch. To the right, a cargo door mostly blocked by warped metal plating.
Not many greenskins. But enough to put the new equipment through its paces.
"Number 1, Number 3 — take firing positions at the main entrance. Number 2, Number 4 — flank left through the maintenance hatch. Number 5, with me. We push through the front."
Twenty seconds. Everyone in position.
Rosen counted down in his head.
Three. Two. One.
"Fire."
Bang. Bang.
Number 1 and Number 3 squeezed their triggers simultaneously.
Two .75-calibre mass-reactive rounds crossed eighty metres at supersonic speed and hit two Ork Boyz who had their heads down sorting through the loot.
Mass-reactive rounds worked by punching through the outer layer of a target and then expanding and detonating inside.
The first Ork Boy's chest cavity was blown open from the inside. A fist-sized hole. Green blood and fragments of organ sprayed nearly three metres behind it.
The second had it worse. The round struck slightly higher, catching the junction between the collarbone and the base of the neck. The explosion tore open its carotid and took half its shoulder with it. The massive head flopped sideways, held on by nothing but a flap of thick green hide.
"Waaaaaagh! Contact! Humies —"
The remaining five Ork Boyz and two dozen Gretchin erupted.
But there was a fatal gap between their reaction speed and that of Catachan fighters already in the killing mindset.
Number 2 and Number 4 opened fire from the left flank through the maintenance hatch simultaneously.
Two high-energy las-beams cut vivid red lines through the dim compartment.
Las-fire didn't hit as hard as bolts on a single shot, but at this range against Gretchin it was more than adequate. The system notifications came in rapid succession. A dozen Gretchin went down under the crossfire.
Rosen pushed through the main entrance with Number 5 at his shoulder.
One Ork Boy finally got its bearings. It grabbed a crude, heavy cleaver and charged straight at Rosen.
"Waaaaaagh! I'm gonna —"
It didn't finish the sentence.
Bang.
A .75-calibre bolt round at under fifteen metres caught the Ork Boy full in the face.
Point-blank bolt fire and mid-range bolt fire were not remotely comparable. The Ork Boy's face ceased to exist.
A second Ork Boy came in from the side.
This one was bulkier than the rest, wearing a rough patchwork of old tyres and riveted iron plates, swinging a two-handed chain-toothed cleaver so large it barely fit in the corridor.
"Block."
Number 5 stepped in front of Rosen.
The force field generator on the power shield activated. A translucent blue energy barrier shimmered into existence across the face of the shield.
The Ork Boy's chain-cleaver smashed into it.
The collision between the force field and the physical impact sent a blinding blue-white arc of electricity crackling through the air.
Number 5's boots slid back nearly a metre across the metal deck, heels dragging twin lines of sparks.
Rosen came out from behind the shield.
Catachan Fang in a reverse grip in his left hand, driving upward at a precise angle into the femoral artery on the inside of the Ork Boy's right thigh.
Green arterial blood erupted like a pressurised hose.
In the same motion, Rosen brought his bolt pistol up with his right hand and pressed the muzzle under the Ork Boy's jaw.
Bang.
The remaining two Ork Boyz went down in sequence under concentrated fire from Number 1 and Number 3.
The Gretchin had already scattered and run, but with Number 2 and Number 4 cutting off the exits with las-fire, fewer than five made it out.
From the moment Rosen gave the order to fire to the last shot, the engagement had lasted under forty seconds.
The improvement in combat efficiency over their previous knife-and-trap methods was not a small step up. It wasn't even in the same category.
Rosen swept the compartment.
Seven Ork Boy corpses lay across the deck in various states of ruin. Green blood pooled across the floor.
They needed to move fast. Gunfire in sealed metal corridors carried at least two kilometres in every direction. Orks had an instinctive excitement response to the sound of boltguns firing. More greenskins would be on their way.
"Number 2, Number 4 — set traps at the forward corridor bend. Number 3 — help move the ammunition."
Rosen pulled grenades and melta fuse cord from the Armoury storage.
The grenades went in at the corridor bend in a layered pattern. One cluster buried under metal debris on the deck. A second cluster daisy-chained to the load-bearing pipes along the ceiling.
First layer drops the front rank. Second layer tears through whoever follows. Standard depth-kill configuration.
Trap set. Rosen picked his firing position.
The corridor behind the trap fork into a Y-junction approximately forty metres back.
The left branch led into a half-collapsed maintenance passage — a viable emergency withdrawal route.
The right branch had a clear sightline and a warped blast door frame that provided cover while allowing aimed fire without exposing the body.
"Number 1, Number 3 — main firing position on the right branch, use that door frame for cover. Number 2, Number 4 — second firing line at the pipe junction thirty metres behind me, take over fire when we pull back to your position. Number 5, with me. We hold the Y-junction as the core position."
The five Death Warriors moved into place without a word.
Rosen holstered the bolt pistol and pulled the heavy boltgun from Armoury storage.
Click.
The thick curved magazine locked into the feed port.
Each round in this weapon carried nearly twice the propellant charge of a standard bolt. It would open an Ork Boy up to football-sized.
They didn't wait long.
Three minutes in, the sounds from further down the corridor began to build — feet on metal, growing heavier, and the greenskin battle cry they had all heard more times than they could count.
"Waaaaaagh! Humies! Humies! I can smell humie blood!"
"The guns were over there! Big humies over there! Waaagh!"
The first things to appear at the edge of their sightline were a loose cluster of Gretchin scouts.
About thirty metres behind the scouts, the main body came around the corner.
A dozen or more Ork Boyz, with upward of a hundred Gretchin flooding in behind them.