Chapter 6: Running Into Trouble Around the Corner
Three Ork Boyz were down before they knew what hit them.
Rosen and Number 1 maintained constant Shared Awareness throughout.
[Keep going.]
[I take left, you take right.]
[Pull back in three seconds.]
Rosen squeezed the trigger on the Locke-pattern boltgun.
Bang!
The .75 calibre round hit the left-side Ork Boy squarely in the left side of the neck.
Green blood and fragments of bone sprayed outward.
[Extracting base soul energy: 10 points.]
[Initiating deep law purification... complete.]
[Actual Life Points gained: 7.]
Almost simultaneously, Number 1's lasgun hit the right-side Ork Boy in the left eye.
Ork Boy skulls were extremely thick. A frontal shot usually needed two or three hits before it achieved meaningful penetration, but the eye socket was the exception, the one soft point on the entire face with no heavy bone behind it.
Both Ork Boyz went down almost at the same moment.
"Humies up there! Waaagh! Smash them!"
The remaining Ork Boyz finally reacted, tilting their heads back and roaring as they raised every calibre of weapon they had toward the duct opening.
Rosen pressed himself flat against the pipe wall and pulled back. Number 1 pulled back in sync.
The gunfire erupted right where they had been a moment before.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Crash!
The section of duct behind them collapsed. Metal fragments and ceramic dust filled the space where they had been lying.
Half a second later and he'd already be fragments.
Using the mental map Number 1 had built during his earlier scouting, Rosen turned right, moved through a narrower connecting pipe section, and dropped at the third branch point, landing at the second pre-planned position.
Number 1 landed right behind him.
The Orks below showed no sign of letting up.
Losing two of their number wasn't a reason for greenskins to back off. It was quite the opposite. The concept of retreat simply did not exist anywhere in an Ork's thinking. The remaining Ork Boyz and Gretchin charged toward the duct entrance with an enthusiasm that no rational species could make sense of.
They had no climbing equipment.
That didn't matter. Ork Boyz had brute strength instead.
The largest one stepped on two Gretchin as footholds, dug its fingers into the corroded pits on the outer pipe wall, and hauled itself up. Its feet caved in the ribs of both Gretchin it was standing on during the climb, but that was of no consequence. Gretchin existed to be stepped on.
It forced its bulk into the ventilation duct and then found what Rosen had left waiting for it.
A pipe section with over a dozen notches cut into it. The structural integrity had been reduced to a breaking point. Anything over one hundred and fifty kilograms stepping on it would cause it to give way completely.
An Ork Boy weighed upward of four hundred kilograms.
Crack, crash!
The pipe section gave way under the Ork Boy's weight and it dropped in an unplanned direction, hitting the bottom of a deep vertical shaft somewhere in the dark below with a dull thud.
[Life Point +7]
"After them! That way!"
The sound of greenskin boots surged again.
The second positional trap was set at the right-side corner off the main corridor.
Number 1 had left a temporary tripwire there, the other end attached to a thick steel bar suspended from the overhead pipes at a geometrically precise angle.
Bang! Crash!
The sound of breaking bones mixed with the Gretchin screaming abuse at each other.
[Life Point +1]
[Life Point +1]
[Life Point +1]
Three Gretchin were swept off their feet by the steel bar and hit the bulkhead walls in various directions.
But the Ork Boy at the front took the bar full in the chest, swayed slightly, looked down at it, then batted it aside and kept walking.
Green blood ran down its split abdomen. It grabbed the torn skin with its free hand, pinched the wound shut, and kept moving.
Rosen watched the whole thing from behind a barricade further down the corridor. The corner of his mouth twitched.
That was the real problem.
Ork Boy durability was never about how much blood they had left. This was a species that would pick up its own severed arm and beat you with it.
Rosen issued the order through Shared Awareness. "I take the front. You take the back."
[Confirmed.]
Both fired at the same moment.
The mass-reactive round entered through the Ork Boy's nose bridge and expanded inside the skull cavity.
Green brain matter sprayed two metres.
[Life Point +7]
Number 1 put the second, third, and fourth lasgun shots into the neck of the Ork Boy beside it, the one bending down to pick up a weapon. Three overlapping heat impacts carbonised the neck tissue and it toppled sideways.
[Life Point +7]
A few iron chunks were sitting in the corridor nearby. Number 1 absorbed them without breaking stride.
[Refined Steel Reserves: +0.4 cubic metres]
With that done, Rosen and Number 1 turned left and moved through a relatively intact section of compartment corridor.
They needed to move fast. The pursuers were closing.
But this galaxy had never once cooperated with anyone's plans.
Just as the two of them were approaching the far end of the corridor and about to round a ninety-degree bend, a piercing Waaagh war cry and a chaotic mess of footsteps came rushing at them from the other side.
They ran headlong into another greenskin warband that had been wandering the hulk.
Over a dozen fully armed Ork Boyz, with a hundred or more Gretchin behind them, coming the other way and carrying crude scavenged goods.
Enemies ahead. Pursuers behind.
"Push through."
Rosen had the Catachan Fang in his right hand and the boltgun raised in his left. In half a step he executed a precise sidestep, clearing the coverage arc of the large Ork Boy directly in front, and simultaneously pressed the boltgun barrel up under the jaw of an Ork Boy on the left.
Bang!
Shooting at point-blank range and shooting at mid-range were two entirely different situations.
At that distance, the bolt detonated almost entirely inside the target's skull cavity.
The Ork Boy's head came apart. The remaining body was launched backward by the force and knocked over two Gretchin behind it.
Rosen's momentum was already carrying him right from the sidestep. The Catachan Fang rotated in his right hand, coming upward from low, and took the right-side Ork Boy's gun arm off at the wrist as it was raising a weapon.
The Ork Boy's scream was deafening, but Rosen had already moved on.
He didn't slow down. His left boot landed on the fallen Ork Boy's body and he launched off it, going airborne, completing a short, hard downward lunge that drove the Catachan Fang straight down into the top of the large Ork Boy's skull.
The blade stopped at the edge of the cranium. It hadn't gone through.
The big one's skull was thicker than he had expected.
"Hah!"
The large Ork Boy didn't step back. It snapped its head up hard. The massive chain-toothed warhammer swept across in a wide arc. Rosen abandoned the Catachan Fang and threw himself backward. The thick iron shaft passed within three centimetres of his midsection and dragged a rush of air with it.
The instant his feet touched down, the boltgun was already shifted to a new grip. Rosen fired twice at the large Ork Boy's eye socket.
Bang! Bang!
The first shot pulled wide, grazed the cheekbone, and took most of the ear with it.
The second shot went into the eye socket.
[Life Point +7]
The large Ork Boy's chain warhammer swung once more on pure reflex, without any mind behind it, and crashed into a cluster of panicked Gretchin nearby, taking three of them down at once.
The body hit the deck. The floor shook.