Herald of the Stars: Chapter Seventy (Patreon)

Thank you to PortlandPhil, Thomas Louman, Alexander Belousov, Kyle Browning, Atoll, Johnny2by4. Today's struggle is dedicated to you. I am incredibly grateful for your aid in my endeavours. 

The kataphrons cut down the orks with ease and trundle into the room, mowing down half formed orks and setting fire to thousands of tonnes of ork fungus. The cavern fills with smoke and spores, obscuring our vision and degrading the sensors slightly.

There are six passageways from this seventy-five thousand cubic metre birthing chamber. It looks more like a fungus forest in a fantasy dungeon than the origin of a galactic threat.

Twenty-five kataphrons and two tech-adepts remain to secure the area and we jog over the rough hewn floor and travel deeper into the vessel.

As we near our target, resistance increases. Orks pour from large holes in the ceilings and walls, only to be shredded by heavy arc-rifles and plasma culverins. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t outfit them with heavy phosphor blasters and cognis flamers as they are much better at burning away the spores shed by dying orks; these kataphrons were originally configured to tackle tau mobile and infantry armour and machines, not sapient fungal bio-weapons.

We blast through the opposition and enter a two hundred and forty thousand cubic metre cavern. The room is filled with rusting tanks that stretch fifteen metres from floor to ceiling.

There are over two thousand orcs in the room and Emperor knows how many gretchin and snotlings. I can’t put enough power into my auspex to get an exact count. My armour picks out seven mek-boyz, two mad doks, nine nobz, twenty one killa kans, and a deff dread.

Wondering what could possibly require this level of force to defend and have orks actually do it, I query my auspex and get an odd mix of highly toxic chemicals; the main components are water, alcohol, and psychedelics.

After a couple of seconds I snort. This is no mechanically vital resource, like fuel or reaction mass. Here be fungus beer to go with the gerblins. I won’t die for a mission like this, but the orks should, which is all that matters.

Every ork that can, and some that really shouldn’t, open fire as the kataphrons race into the breach. Kataphrons push aside the battle servitors that are destroyed by ork dakka, turning the wrecked kataphrons into an advancing, expanding, semi-circle of cover.

After sacrificing forty kataphrons, there is enough space for another one hundred and twenty-five to accelerate their push into the room and establish a forward point. The remaining sixty are still in the corridors.

I’m not pleased with my singular breach point as this is an incredibly wasteful and crude way to assault a room. The tech adepts and I stay well away from the carnage and I scowl as our losses mount. Eight minutes in and I’m down fifty one kataphrons total in exchange for about four hundred and twenty greenskins. Seven of the eighty three fungus beer tanks are pierced and leaking and the orks are so enraged their eyes are glowing red.

The kataphrons are slightly over-gunned. They kill everything they hit, which is impressive against orks, but they don’t have a high rate of fire, which lets the orks get in close and hack at them with their choppas. Their arc claws are powerful and also kill everything they touch, but kataphrons are less nimble than orks and it is only supporting fire from their fellow machines that can save them, along with significant damage from friendly fire.

Nine killa kans, after much prodding and the threat of a big gun, are cajoled by three mek boyz to charge my lines. Twelve kataphrons, firing in groups of three, work their way across the enemy assault, their heavy arc rifles stripping the killa kans of their motive force and blasting appart the squat constructions with ease.

The ork fire stutters and their charging boyz slow their assault as their ‘sure fire tactic’ gets scrapped. The hollers and whoops of their fellows rapidly restores their confidence and the boyz and shootahs renew their attack.

Three meks point their big gun at us through the walls. A runtherd grabs a snotling, tosses it a mek and he shoves the snotling into the weapon’s breach.

I don’t question how they might hit us and dive to the floor. Before I can alert the tech-adepts or they can copy me, the weapon’s maw opens and spins. A green glow ignites within the aperture.

A burst of energy ripples over the cavern and two killa kans explode. A tech-adept shudders and claws at his chest then collapses. Two tech-adepts approach and run their auspex over him.

Something bangs on the inside of the dead tech-adept’s armour and his corpse shakes as something struggles to get out. Over a minute, the thing stops struggling and the body stills. Meanwhile, the other tech adepts spread out and lie prone.

My local vox channel beeps and a female voice, with a slight tremor, contacts me.

“Magos, what was that?”

“I’m not certain, Adept Ethne, but I believe that was a shokk attack gun. It fires snotlings, unprotected, through the warp and teleports them inside the target. The only thing that can protect against them is a personal void shield, which none of us have. They are not reliable weapons, and can fail catastrophically, but I don’t want to roll the dice when our lives are on the line. We need to take it out before it can fire again.”

“Can we retreat? How long must we be a distraction for?”

“Ideally, another five hours and forty minutes. That should give enough time for Iron Crane to ignite its thrusters for the first time and assist Distant Sun in pulling the shipyard back into a stable orbit. The sooner we retreat, the more pressure it will put on the Stellar Corps.

“We’re plan A, Stellar Corps is plan B, plan C is we evacuate everyone we can, try and blast the Iron Crane free and pray. At that point we’d be pissing in the wind as it is unlikely we can crumble thirty-six cubic kilometres of rock in eighteen hours, after which the yard will no longer be recoverable.”

“That’s more serious than I thought, Magos,” says Ethne.

“Me too. We’re out of contact as we couldn’t find enough relays in time, so we don’t even know how effective we’re being.”

“Should we have used a few kataphrons, Magos, rather than throwing them all into the fray?”

“Yes, let’s do that now. It really shows this is the first time I’ve boarded a real enemy void ship. In our sims we always practised on imperial ships, as those are all we had plans for, and could piggyback off their vox.”

Ethne folds her arms, “We will know for next time, Magos. With your permission, I’ll send a message back to the fungus room and have them establish a relay and order another twenty-five kataphrons back through the tunnel.”

“Do it. Place another twenty-five on patrols between here and the exit too. Let’s not get flanked. We could even call for reinforcements if Commander Muire can spare any.”

“That will leave us with only ten to guard us. How about requesting the construction servitor reserve? No point throwing real people into this grindfest if we don’t have to, especially as they won’t have teleporter beacons.”

I shake my head, “We’re not that desperate yet, they could replace the kataphrons around the anchors though and send the remaining kataphrons here. Suggest that course of action with the code I’m going to send you attached to the message and request an additional two hundred and fifty kataphrons to standby. Update Commander Muire with what we’re facing and why too.”

“Yes, Magos.”

“Once you’ve done that, continue to work with the other tech-adepts and I will lead a push to take out that gun.”

“May the motive force guide your aim, Magos.”

I cradle my heavy arc rifle and pat the barrel, “That’s the plan!”

Pushing up to the forward position, I assign one thought stream to continuously curse to get it out of my system. The fear doesn’t leave me, but it is satisfying.

“E-SIM, you can see my plans. Do you have any solutions to add?”

++I hesitate to call it a plan, Aldrich, but no, I have nothing to add++

“Excellent.”

I dive into the kataphrons’ networked auspex and use it to supplement my own. I pick out the barely portable shokk attack gun and the surrounding greenskins, then assign four missiles to the gun and another six to the surrounding ten metres: two haywire, two krak, and six high explosive missiles.

Ten micro-missiles are propelled from the launcher on my shoulder and zip through twenty metres of corridor and out into the cavern. They soar over the kataphrons, veer left thirty-four degrees and travel another eighty metres, weaving between the massive vats of fungus brew.

The explosion shakes the cavern, killing over a hundred orks, then the shokk attack gun explodes. An ork fist sized orb appears in its place, sucking down the thin air, body parts, and liquids, absorbing the materials with a woosh, crunch, and splatter.

My auspex reports it will take seventy four seconds for the orb to decay and it is letting off enough radiation to give every organism in the cavern a lethal dose. I’m OK in my power armour, though I will need to go through some serious decontamination and likely replace the outer layers of my armour.

The organic components of the kataphrons, however, will be an unusable mush within the next four to eight hours. Their machine components suffer minor damage, reducing the resolution of their auspex and the speed of their logis engines by an average of three percent.

The orks don’t know they’re dead yet, even as they flee from the strange orb. I take the chance to expand our forward point and lob melta charges at the base of two vats. The charges explode and the air fills with pungent steam.

The two vats topple over and eight kataphrons drive forward and punch their arc claws into the broken vats, then drag them back, adding to the ramshackle cover of my forward point.

With the orks still distracted, I order every plasma culverin to fire at a vat. Blue-white light arcs over the barricade and into the vats, melting fifteen centimetre holes in the metal and boiling the brew.

The light, bubbling, and fumes brings the orks’ attention back to the kataphrons. The orks closest to the radiation orb already have blisters on their skin and I think some of them are blind. They stumble about tripping up the other greenskins or getting in the orks line of fire and die screaming.

I feel a little bad about their grizzly demise. Killing orks feels like executing one’s retarded cockney cousin. A cousin that doesn’t know any better, but is too dangerous to deal with in any other way.

One feels guilty at their joy and relief that they’re no longer a problem and delighted that they had some revenge on the gits, while wondering if that’s a morally acceptable emotion.

Yes, it’s also a brutal battle for the survival of the human species, but some humans behave in as cruel and destructive a manner as orks, even without the influence of chaos. There’s just enough common behaviour patterns between orks and humans that it feels like I’m killing them for the greater good, which is just the worst.

The kataphrons manage to gun down a third of the greenskins as they flee, then rally. Ork reinforcements start to trickle into the cavern and I sigh. I hoped it would happen as it means we’re dragging in orks from other areas. At the same time I am wrapped up in carnage and I really don’t want to be here.

Ten killa kans cluster behind the deff dread, then are shoved in front of the larger walker by the remaining mek boys. More boyz and gretchin gather around the crude walkers then, at some unobserved signal, assault my forward point right in the centre.

The kataphrons focus fire. Many of their attacks are intercepted by reluctant gretchin, who are hurled in the path of the heavy arc rifles and plasma culverins. They boyz and a literal handful of gretchin reach the barricade and last just long enough for the killa kans to slice and push through the wrecked kataphrons with sparking, spinning blades.

They push through into the centre, their proximity making it challenging for the kataphrons shoot them without hitting each other. The killa kans’ saws and blades push back the kataphrons giving space for the deff dread to push into the centre where it hoses down everyone and everything with its big shootas, skorcha, and a pair of power klaws.

We start losing kataphrons rapidly. The deff dread’s armour is thick and I’m not confident my micro-missiles will be enough. I try anyway, launching my three remaining krak-missiles. One hits the centre chassis and fails to penetrate. The other two collide with the deff dread’s skorcha and wreck it.

Shouting through its horrendously loud speakers, the deff dread imparts an unintelligible comment and storms through the melee and into the corridor.

Well, would you look at that?

It’s coming right for us.