Chapter 17 : The Infiltration
Ork camps smelled like a slaughterhouse built inside a chemical plant.
Nash pressed flat against a collapsed wall section, twenty meters from the nearest sentry fire, and breathed through his mouth. The stench — fungal biology, burnt promethium, decomposing food waste, and something underneath all of it that was distinctly xenos, a musk that triggered a primal revulsion in the hindbrain — saturated the air.
The system painted the camp in tactical blue. Three hundred meters of Ork-held territory between the outer perimeter and the Mek's workshop, a corrugated metal structure near the center marked by the distinctive sounds of industrial work: hammering, welding, the whine of jury-rigged power tools operating at hours when most Orks slept.
[TACTICAL OVERLAY: GORGRIM CAMP — SECTOR NORTH-7]
[SENTRY POSITIONS: 8 — ROTATION INTERVAL: 14 MINUTES (IRREGULAR)]
[PATROL ROUTES: 3 MOBILE — OVERLAP GAP: 22 SECONDS AT JUNCTION POINT ALPHA]
[THERMAL SIGNATURES: 800+ (CAMP POPULATION)]
[TARGET: MEK WORKSHOP — 280 METERS SOUTHWEST]
Eight hundred Orks. Nash's five-person team crouched in the ruins outside the perimeter, invisible in the darkness, heartbeats the loudest sound any of them made.
Volkov was two meters to Nash's left. The Commissar moved with a silence that contradicted his size — each footfall placed with the deliberate precision of someone who'd done infiltration work before, probably against human targets rather than xenos but the skill transferred. His bolt pistol was holstered. A combat knife rode his belt instead — quieter, more appropriate for the work ahead.
Nash held up a fist. Wait.
The system counted seconds. The patrol — three Ork boyz, shuffling along the perimeter with the bored inattention of sentries who'd never been attacked — passed the insertion point and turned the corner.
Twenty-two seconds. Nash pointed. Go.
They moved. Single file, low, shadows crossing the gap between ruins and perimeter with a speed that left no time for hesitation. Specialist Dren led — the hive hunter flowed over rubble like smoke, finding footholds Nash couldn't see, placing each step on surfaces that didn't creak or shift. Corporal Tash followed. Then Olek. Nash. Volkov last, moving with that unnerving silence, his coat gathered tight to prevent fabric catching on debris.
Inside the perimeter, the noise provided cover. Ork camps were never quiet — snoring, growling, the occasional fight erupting between boyz competing for sleeping spots, the distant clang of the Mek's workshop. Nash's team threaded between sleeping forms, using the system's thermal overlay to avoid the awake ones, stepping over limbs and weapons with the care of people walking through a minefield.
Nash's heartbeat pounded in his ears. His body wanted to run — every base survival instinct screaming that being inside a camp of eight hundred hostile aliens was the wrong place to be. The system countered with data: patrol positions, safe corridors, timing windows. Mathematics versus biology. Nash sided with mathematics and kept moving.
The Mek's workshop was a corrugated metal shed the size of a small warehouse, its walls vibrating with the noise of machinery operating inside. Light spilled from gaps in the construction — harsh, orange, the glow of welding torches and furnaces. Two Ork guards flanked the entrance, bigger than standard boyz, their armor better maintained — the Mek's personal protection.
Nash signaled the team into position. Dren and Tash took flanking angles on the guards. Olek covered the approach behind them. Nash and Volkov moved to the workshop's side wall, where a drainage gap in the corrugated metal offered a view of the interior.
Through the gap: the Mek. A massive Ork hunched over a workbench, one arm a complex machinery array of drills and torches, the other organic hand assembling something intricate — a power coupling for a vehicle engine. The workshop contained three partially assembled trukks, a collection of looted Imperial weaponry being modified for Ork use, and enough promethium to blow the entire structure into orbit.
Nash unslung his lasgun. Checked the sight line. Through the drainage gap, the Mek's skull was visible — the back of the head, unarmored, twenty meters away.
[TARGET ACQUIRED: ORK MEK — DESIGNATE "BIG SPANNA"]
[SHOT DIFFICULTY: MODERATE — STATIONARY TARGET, CLEAR SIGHT LINE]
[RECOMMENDED: SINGLE SHOT, CRANIAL, MAXIMUM POWER SETTING]
Nash adjusted the lasgun's power dial to maximum. His hands didn't shake. That bothered him — the steadiness. He wanted them to shake. He wanted his body to register what his mind knew: this wasn't defense. This was murder.
He planted the evidence first. The fabricated trophy — a Nob tooth carved with Gutsnag's faction markings, produced by Sigma-9's workshop using captured Ork materials — was placed at the base of the drainage gap, where it would be found during the inevitable investigation. A crude shoota round, filed to match Gutsnag's clan weapons, lodged into the wall beside the gap. The frame was simple because Ork forensics were simple — they'd see the tooth, see the weapon mark, and reach the conclusion Nash wanted them to reach.
Volkov watched him plant the evidence. The Commissar's face was blank in the darkness — no expression, no tell, just the steady gaze of a man cataloguing sins.
Nash brought the lasgun up. Sighted through the gap. The Mek's skull filled his vision — green skin, crude metal plates bolted to the cranium, the vulnerable gap at the base of the neck.
He squeezed the trigger.
The bolt punched through the gap and hit the Mek below the right ear. The xenos stiffened — the drill-arm sputtering, the organic hand clenching — then collapsed forward onto the workbench. The welding torch rolled off the edge and hit the floor. The sound was lost in the workshop's ambient noise.
[TARGET ELIMINATED: ORK MEK "BIG SPANNA"]
[XP GAINED: 150 — ASSASSINATION (HIGH-VALUE TARGET)]
Nash lowered the lasgun. His hands still weren't shaking.
"I just killed something in its sleep. Not in battle. Not in defense. I watched it work, I aimed, and I pulled the trigger. The system gave me experience points for it."
"On Earth, I agonized over firing underperforming team members. Here I execute aliens through drainage gaps and the AI in my brain rewards me with progress bars."
"Move," he whispered. "Extraction route bravo."
Dren dealt with the guards — two precise las-bolts from flanking position, dropped before either could make a sound louder than the workshop machinery. The team pulled back along the pre-planned route, retracing their path through the sleeping camp.
They were forty meters from the perimeter when the patrol found them.
Three Ork boyz, returning early from their circuit — one had stopped to urinate against a wall, speeding up their loop by nearly a minute. The lead Ork rounded a rubble pile and came face-to-face with Specialist Dren.
The hive hunter's knife was in the Ork's throat before it finished drawing breath. But the second one bellowed — a truncated roar, cut short by Tash's las-bolt, but loud enough to carry.
Answering bellows from the camp's interior. Movement. Thermal signatures shifting on Nash's overlay as Orks rolled awake and reached for weapons.
"Run," Nash said.
They ran. The perimeter gap was thirty meters ahead. Behind them, the camp was waking — a cascade of guttural shouts spreading outward from the alarm point. Las-fire crackled: Olek firing backward, suppressive, buying seconds.
An Ork round — a slugga shot, heavy and crude — sparked off the rubble beside Nash's head. He flinched sideways and returned fire without aiming, the bolt going wide, but the muzzle flash drawing the shooter's attention away from the team.
Private Olek stumbled. A las-bolt — friendly fire from a panicked sentry on the perimeter — grazed her thigh. She gasped, leg buckling, and Nash grabbed her collar and hauled her upright with strength the desk-worker body shouldn't have possessed, adrenaline converting weakness into something adequate.
Volkov appeared beside them. The Commissar gripped Olek's other arm and together they half-carried, half-dragged her through the perimeter gap. Dren and Tash laid down covering fire — disciplined, controlled, the training Volkov's own program had instilled — as slugga rounds chewed the rubble around them.
They hit the ruins at a sprint. The Ork pursuit lasted four hundred meters before losing them in the maze of collapsed buildings — greenskins were fast in open ground, but ruins favored humans, and the system guided Nash through passages the Orks couldn't navigate.
Two kilometers from the camp, they stopped. Olek's thigh wound was bleeding freely — Tash applied a field dressing while Dren maintained security. Nash leaned against a wall and let the adrenaline crash roll through him, legs trembling, lungs burning, the taste of copper in his mouth.
Volkov stood apart. Watching Nash. That blank expression unchanged — no approval, no condemnation, just the patient observation of a man who'd seen everything he needed to see and hadn't decided what to do about it.
They walked back in silence.
Five kilometers. An hour and a half. The Commissar's boots striking rubble in that measured cadence, Nash's own footsteps ragged and uneven beside them. Neither spoke. The night air cooled the sweat on Nash's neck and the blood on Olek's bandage.
Behind them, the Ork camp erupted in accusations. Gorgrim's voice — audible even at this distance, a bass thunder that shook the air — roaring for answers. The fabricated evidence was doing its work.
Nash's hands finally started to shake. He let them.
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