The Ork boyz were carrying all kinds of heavy choppas and shootas, and the scrap-plate armor on their bodies screeched with metallic friction as they moved.
Through Shared Awareness, Lawson ordered everyone to hold position.
The gretchin scouts had already passed the trap without noticing a thing.
Their footsteps were too light. At under forty jin apiece, they could not even meet the minimum trigger threshold on the firing line.
The trap had never been meant for gretchin.
The main body of Ork boyz behind them came stomping forward on heavy feet.
The one in the lead was especially massive. Every step it took made the metal deck hum, and the gretchin behind it were jostled off balance by the vibration of its stride.
"Five meters... three..."
Lawson counted down in his mind.
They stepped on it.
Boom! Boom! Boom boom!
The linked grenades detonated almost simultaneously.
Inside a sealed corridor, a blast of that magnitude produced a shockwave and fragmentation storm equivalent to setting off a miniature rocket inside a steel can.
The five Ork boyz at the front took the full force head-on.
The fragments fanned out through the passage in a wide cone. In less than three-tenths of a second, several hundred high-velocity metal shards raked those five Ork boyz from head to toe.
Two died on the spot.
The other three went down heavily wounded, their bodies studded with metal fragments.
The gretchin mob behind them suffered even worse.
More than twenty gretchin were smashed directly into the corridor walls by the shockwave. Green-and-red pulp and splintered bone were plastered across the metal like paint.
Then—
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The linked high-explosive grenades fixed to the ceiling were triggered by the first wave's shockwave and detonated in sequence.
The following Ork boyz that had escaped the first blast looked up just in time to receive the second wave of destruction from above.
The explosions tore a three-meter section of load-bearing pipe loose from the ceiling. That iron cylinder, half a meter in diameter and weighing several tons, dropped straight into the greenskin crowd.
System notifications poured down like rain, and the Life Point total surged.
But there were simply too many greenskins. The two waves of explosions had chewed through a large portion of the front ranks, yet more Ork boyz and gretchin continued flooding out of the depths of the corridor.
Those creatures trampled over the corpses of their own kind as they came. In greenskin logic, the death of an ally only meant one thing:
There was a fight ahead.
"Open fire!"
Lawson pulled the trigger on the heavy bolter.
At the main firing position on the right, Number One and Number Three opened up with their boltguns as well. The overlapping fields of fire turned the corridor into a killing lane.
Number Five stood diagonally in front of Lawson with the power shield raised. The field around the shield kept flashing blue-white as stray fragments and random rounds from greenskin shootas slammed into it.
A blood-drenched Ork boy charged over the bodies of its comrades and made it to within ten meters of Lawson.
Its left arm had already been blown off by grenade fragments, but its right hand still gripped a massive cleaver. Green froth sprayed from its mouth as it rasped out a hoarse "Waaagh."
Lawson changed weapons.
He passed the heavy bolter to Number Five for the moment, drew the Fang of Catachan in his right hand, and pulled the chainsword from his belt with his left.
The moment he thumbed the activator, the tightly packed teeth lining the blade began spinning madly at several thousand revolutions per minute.
BZZZZZZZZ!
The Ork boy reached him.
Lawson twisted aside, letting the full sweep of the giant blade miss by less than five centimeters.
Then he cut inward along the Ork's right side.
The Fang of Catachan struck first.
The broad serrated blade slipped into the gap beneath the Ork's right armpit at an angle precise to the millimeter, a structural blind spot no armor could truly cover.
The blade sank into flesh, severing the brachial artery and the attachment point of the deltoid.
Then the chainsword followed from the left.
The instant the high-speed teeth bit into the skin of the Ork's neck, the air filled with an agonizing shredding noise and a spray of green blood mist.
A chainsword did not kill by cutting.
It killed by mulching.
The whirling teeth bit deep into thick neck muscle and vertebrae, reducing tissue into microscopic shreds at insane speed.
In less than a second, the Ork's neck had been gouged into a trench that nearly passed all the way through.
"Useful."
Against thick-skinned targets, it was at least thirty percent more efficient than the Fang of Catachan.
But a chainsword weighed five to seven kilograms, and the gyroscopic pull from the spinning chain made long-term use exhausting. It was a weapon for decisive moments, not a mainstay.
The battle went on.
Three more Ork boyz broke through the fire lane.
"Fall back to the second firing line!"
Lawson withdrew with Number Five. Numbers One and Three fell back in sync, alternating cover fire as they moved.
At the second firing line, Numbers Two and Four took over the shooting. Red las-beams carved burning trajectories through the smoke-clogged corridor.
The last three Ork boyz to break through were cut down one by one under the crossing fire.
At last, the corridor went quiet.
Lawson swept his gaze over the battlefield, tallying losses and gains.
No Deathsworn had been killed.
The power field on Number Five's shield had consumed about a third of its charge.
Number Two's left arm had been grazed by a stray greenskin round from a shoota.
Just a flesh wound. Lawson did not waste Life Points healing it.
Life Points and adamant steel both climbed again in the post-battle scavenging.
Lawson opened the Deathsworn page.
"Exchange."
[Consumed: 300 Life Points, 3 cubic meters of adamant steel.]
[Exchange Sequence: Catachan Jungle Fighters x3.]
Three visible distortions in space appeared before Lawson one after another.
Three Catachan brutes, each one meter ninety-five tall, solidified in sequence and pressed their right hands to their chests.
"Loyalty!"
"Numbers Seven, Eight, and Nine."
Lawson pulled three lasguns, three Fangs of Catachan, and the appropriate magazines from the Armory space and handed them to the newly created Deathsworn.
"Replenish with chainswords and grenades from the armory. Full loadout for everyone."
Eight fully armed Catachan Jungle Fighters.
And with Number Six still at the armory, Lawson now commanded nine Deathsworn in total.
He divided the nine men, including himself, into three combat teams.
"Numbers One, Seven, and Eight. Team Alpha. Push back along the route that greenskin mob came from. Set ambush points as you go. If you encounter isolated greenskin squads, eat them."
"Numbers Three, Four, and Nine. Team Beta. Infiltrate toward the starboard-side decks. Gather adamant steel. If you encounter enemies, retreat first. Do not engage head-on."
"Numbers Two and Five stay with me. Team Gamma. We push forward and scout the terrain."
The three teams moved out simultaneously.
Inside Lawson's mind, the Shared Awareness network wove itself into a delicate sensory web.
The sight, hearing, and touch of nine Deathsworn poured into him at once, like nine surveillance screens playing in perfect sync within the depths of his consciousness.
He was long accustomed to that level of data load.
To him, nine perspectives were nothing more than nine strings being played at once.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, you like the story? Wow, who knew. Go ahead, drop a review and throw some power stones maybe I'll be motivated to keep going.
Want to stay ahead of the game? Advanced chapters are up on my Patron. If you're enjoying the ride, swing by and check them out.
[email protected]/_theon
Change @ to "a"