Legends of the dark ange.., p.42
Legends Of The Dark Angels, page 42
Naaman saw the gretchin come around the corner of the building, a stout blunderbuss-like shotgun over its shoulder. He caught the strange, mouldy whiff of the greenskin as it sat down on a broken lump of masonry and pulled something from the pocket of its ragged jerkin. Something squirmed in its bony fingers before being popped into a fanged mouth. The sounds of loud chewing broke the stillness.
The gretchin was looking in Naaman’s direction. He lay absolutely still, bolt pistol sighted on the creature’s chest. Finishing its snack, the gretchin stood up and continued to wander on, passing a few metres in front of the prone Space Marine.
As soon as the gretchin had passed, Naaman surged to his feet, slipping his combat knife from his belt with his left hand. Two swift steps brought him up behind the creature. Hearing the quiet thud of Naaman’s boots, the gretchin started to turn, but was far too slow. Naaman hooked his arm over the gretchin’s shoulder and plunged the knife upwards into its throat, puncturing the windpipe. The sentry spasmed limply in Naaman’s grasp, burbling blood as the Space Marine quickly sawed the knife out of the gretchin’s throat, slicing through muscle and veins.
It fell limp in his grasp. Glancing around to assure himself he had not been seen, Naaman sheathed his knife and hefted the small creature under his arm. A few dozen strides brought him to the shelter of the ruin, where he laid the body down in a corner of the broken walls. Naaman passed through the roofless rooms until he came to the eastern side of the building. Crouched beneath the sill of a glassless window, he stopped again and watched the orks around the northern campfire.
As he waited, Naaman’s attention was drawn to his right by a high-pitched wail, which suddenly fell silent. One of the gretchin had spotted the Scouts!
Suddenly the air was split by the thumping detonations of Luthor’s heavy bolter. Naaman heard the shrieks of dying gretchin and the angry bellows of the orks. The greenskins in front of him roused slowly, startled by the sudden attack. There were more shouts and fire from the south where the orks ahead of Naaman grabbed their weapons and loped away from their camp.
Naaman unhooked his chainsword but did not start up the motor. His cloak flapping behind him, the sergeant vaulted through the window, heading directly for the campfire. The orks were completely unaware of his presence as they rushed to the aid of their companions. Less than twenty metres from the greenskins, Naaman opened fire. Silenced bolts ripped through the back of the rearmost ork, chewing through muscle and vertebrae. One of the other orks noticed its demise and swung around to see what had happened; by the time the creature looked in his direction Naaman was already in the shelter of a tall rock, cameleoline swathing his form. As soon as the ork’s red eyes roved elsewhere, Naaman rose up and fired three bolts into the creature’s face and chest, felling it instantly.
There were five more orks to deal with. Naaman broke from cover at a sprint, rushing up behind the greenskins as they lumbered towards the fighting at the other fire. Catching up with the orks, Naaman swung his chainsword at the neck of the closest, thumbing the starter mid-blow. Growling teeth sheared halfway into the ork’s neck before jamming on its thick spinal column. With a grunt, Naaman wrenched the blade free and fired his bolt pistol into the back of the creature’s head as it collapsed sideways.
Taken off guard by the deadly shadow charging into their midst, the orks were thrown into confusion. The pale rays of the moon shimmering from his cameleoline, Naaman ducked beneath the hasty swing of an axe and brought the throbbing chainsword up into the ork’s gut, ramming it point first through the stomach and into the chest cavity. The creature shuddered with the vibrations of the weapon, spittle flying from its thick lips.
A grunt of effort to Naaman’s right warned him of imminent attack and he ducked as he pulled his chainsword free, a cleaver-like blade cutting the corner from the sergeant’s swirling cloak. Naaman kicked the creature’s legs from under it as he spun beneath the swinging weapon. A second ork leapt to the attack, a heavy, serrated sword aimed at Naaman. He smashed aside the blade with his chainsword; at the same time he fired a bolt into the face of the downed ork, its brains splashing out across the cracked stone underfoot.
The roar of the heavy bolter sounded closer and the ork with the serrated sword was hurled away from Naaman by multiple explosions across its chest and shoulders, ragged remains slapping into one of its companions. Naaman used the distraction to chop at the disorientated ork’s arm, hacking the limb away below the shoulder. Out of instinct, the alien tried to throw a punch with the bloody stump. It stared at the ragged wound in amazement when the expected blow failed to appear. Naaman shattered its knee with a bolt and brought his sword down on its back as it fell forwards, hacking several times into the creature’s green flesh until the spine finally snapped.
Having dealt with the other camp, Damas and his squad arrived, falling upon the orks with bolt pistol, chainsword and monomolecular-edged combat knives. Confused and partly blinded by the dark, the orks died swiftly, cut down in a few savage seconds.
After the clamour of battle, silence descended again, broken by the sighing of the wind and the crackle of the fires. The whole fight had taken less than twenty seconds, from the first cry of the sentry to the choking death-rattle of the last ork.
‘Casualties?’ Naaman demanded, glancing at the others.
‘None, brother,’ Damas replied. The sergeant turned to his squad with a proud smile. ‘Not so much as a scratch. The advantage of surprise is the deadliest weapon in our arsenal.’
‘That is good,’ said Naaman.
He flicked blood from his chainsword and wiped the weapon clean on the jacket of a dead ork. He checked his chronometer. There were two and a half hours until dawn and still many kilometres to cover before they reached the ridge overlooking the geothermal station.
‘Hide the bodies in the ruins, douse the fires,’ Damas told his squad as Naaman pulled out his monocular and looked to the east. He could see a stretch of two or three kilometres up the slope before there were more campfires. They could cover the next leg at a comfortable run.
‘Belay that,’ snapped Naaman. The Scouts dropped the ork bodies they had picked up and looked at him. ‘By the time the orks find them, if they ever do, we’ll be far away from here. We have to keep moving.’
‘As you say,’ said Damas, choosing not to argue the point. ‘Let’s get into our observation position before dawn.’
Reloading their weapons, checking their cloaks, the Scouts ghosted into the night.
Naaman kept the squad angling slightly to the south, avoiding the bulk of the camps ahead. Throughout the night Naaman could see mobs of greenskins and hear their vehicles, gathering north of the East Barrens station. For all their numbers, Naaman was surprised that there were not more greenskins. Certainly the forces he had seen advancing while he had retreated the day before had not been all accounted for by the assault on Koth Ridge. The orks were definitely on the move again, but it was impossible for Naaman to judge where they were heading.
The Scouts made good time, eating up the kilometres at a tireless half-run. Though the location of the ork camps had forced him further south than he had originally hoped, Naaman was pleased when they finally crested the ridge above the geothermal station. The plant itself was about a kilometre to the east.
Using the thermal setting of his monocular, Naaman examined the compound of buildings clustered around the angular bulk of the geothermal generator. He could see lots of heat, most of it coming from the plant itself, but there were also dozens if not hundreds of orks down there. He spent several minutes looking but could see nothing in range that looked remotely like a spaceship. Even further out into the Barrens, the plains stretched on without a break.
There was only one conclusion that sprang to Naaman’s mind. Ork technology was unfathomable, often crudely made but highly effective. The only possible explanation for the absence of a landed ship would be that the orks had managed to hide it with some kind of camouflage field. It had to be here somewhere, Naaman reasoned: orks didn’t simply pop out of thin air.
He hoped that dawn would literally shed more light on the answers and he ordered the squad to head northwards for a better view of the sprawling ork encampment at the base of the ridge. When they had found a good spot to observe the orks whilst keeping out of sight, the squad settled down to another tense time of waiting and keeping watch.
Slowly dawn’s ruddy fingers gripped the eastern skies. Naaman waited expectantly, scouring the plains for some telltale shimmer or reflection that might betray the location of a shield-screened vessel. As the minutes skipped past, his anxiety to find the ship grew. In the growing light, he returned his attention to the power plant to see if more had been revealed of the orks’ numbers and the layout of their defences.
The monocular almost fell from his fingers in surprise. Naaman stared dumbfounded at the ork encampment, lost for words.
‘What is it?’ asked Damas from behind Naaman, sensing the veteran sergeant’s shock.
‘By the Lion’s shade, I’ve never seen anything like it,’ exclaimed Naaman.
Still astounded by what he had seen, Naaman fumbled for the long-range comm handset and opened up the command frequency that would put him directly in touch with Master Belial. Raising the monocular he checked again to make sure he wasn’t imagining what he had thought he had seen.
‘This is Master Belial. Make your report, brother-sergeant.’
Naaman wasn’t quite sure what his report was. How did he explain what he was looking at?
‘Naaman? What is happening?’
‘Sorry, brother-captain,’ Naaman managed when he had mustered his thoughts. ‘I know how the orks are getting to Piscina.’
THE TALE OF NAAMAN
REVELATIONS
It was Naaman’s incredulity that made it so difficult to describe what he could see to Master Belial. Never before had the Scout-sergeant doubted the evidence of his own eyes, but as he stared through the monocular it was hard for him to comprehend what he was looking at.
‘The orks have taken possession of the geothermal station,’ he reported, choosing to concentrate on things that did not invite speculation. ‘There are several hundred of them. Composition of the force is in line with what we have already encountered: mostly infantry and a few smaller vehicles and field pieces.
‘The power plant has been adapted; I can see strange machinery and energy relays of ork design. The major alteration is the addition of a large disc, like a communications transmitter, although I can see energy waves crackling over its surface. There are sporadic bursts of energy that appear to be a result of the generator systems suffering from an overload of capacity.’
‘Are they using it to supplement the power of their ship, brother?’ asked Belial.
‘There is no ship, brother-captain,’ Naaman replied.
He looked again at the ork camp. No more than two hundred metres from the geothermal station was an upright disc of pure darkness, its edges crackling with energy. The surface of the disc had a strange oily sheen, glimmering with distorted reflections of the surrounding terrain. The disc oscillated, growing and shrinking by small increments that matched the erratic pulses of lightning flaring across the geothermal relays.
‘I see some kind of energy screen, no more than five metres in diameter,’ Naaman said. ‘Wait, something is happening.’
The rim of the disc became a solid blaze of power while the generators of the power plant erupted with fountains of sparks and electricity. The haze around the transmitter disc deepened into a greenish glow, shimmering upwards into the sky.
The disc blinked out of existence, leaving only the crackling halo of energy. Within its circumference it was if a window had been opened. Rather than the grasslands of the East Barrens, Naaman could see a dark hall, criss-crossed with metal beams receding into the distance. Colourful banners decorated with large glyphs hung from the ceiling, and what he could see of the walls were painted with more orkish designs.
He took all of this in at a glance but his attention was fixed upon the occupants of the hall. A sea of green faces leered out of the opening: thousands of orks clustered around more bikes and buggies, all swathed in the shadow of enormous war engines.
Orks poured towards the opening… and stepped through! A mob of a dozen greenskins emerged onto the Kadillus hillside, tendrils of green power lapping at them, flickering across the portal. As each alien passed through, the halo of energy flickered, dimming and then returning with less brilliance. When the thirteenth ork crossed the threshold the halo flared violently, sending blue and purple sparks cascading down onto the new arrivals. A companion detonation flared across the energy relay on the power plant. The haze from the disc also vanished. As instantly as it had disappeared, the black disc came back, closing the pathway.
‘It’s a teleporter!’ Naaman announced. ‘The orks are teleporting directly to the surface.’
‘That cannot be correct,’ replied Belial. ‘Close orbital sweeps have revealed no ork ship in proximity to Piscina. Perhaps they are teleporting from their ship further out into the East Barrens?’
‘That seems unlikely, brother-captain,’ said Naaman. ‘It appears the orks are siphoning off power from the geothermal plant, and it is definitely being sent starwards, not across the plains. The connection seems to be intermittent. I saw inside the ork base, or ship, or whatever it is. They have Titan-class war engines, but they have not brought them through. It seems that the teleporter is severely restricted at present.’
‘This is highly speculative, brother-sergeant,’ said Belial. ‘I need confirmation and solid data for the Techmarines to analyse if we are to determine the exact nature of this device.’
‘I understand, brother-captain. The orks are dispersing and moving westwards to a staging point on the other side of the ridge. It will be possible to get closer to the power station and take energy readings.’
As Naaman watched, the portal burst into life once more, existing long enough for three buggies to race through before collapsing again.
‘Consider that to be your mission, brother-sergeant,’ said Belial. ‘Take measurements of the energy levels, timing and reinforcement rate and report directly to me.’
‘Confirm, brother-captain,’ said Naaman. ‘We will approach as swiftly as possible.’
Naaman severed the comm-link and turned to the Scouts.
‘We have to get a lot closer,’ he told them. ‘Follow me.’
The squad carefully picked their way down the eastern side of the ridge, keeping at least a kilometre from the ork camp. The greenskins appeared to regard their position as safe behind the encampments further west and had posted no patrols or sentries that Naaman could see. Though the Scouts said nothing of the extraordinary sight of the ork teleporter, Naaman could sense their amazement, and an undercurrent of unease at the implications it presented.
For the moment, Naaman concentrated solely on approaching the geothermal station undetected. He could leap at guesses regarding the teleporter’s function, but such speculation was pointless without solid facts to inform it. As they reached the level of the East Barrens plains, the veteran sergeant was sure of only one thing: the teleporter presented an unquantifiable threat to the defenders of Kadillus. If the orks were somehow able to sustain the portal and bring through their larger war machines, there was little the Dark Angels or Free Militia had to combat them. Naaman was pleased that Belial had possessed the foresight to send a warning to the Dark Angels Chapter, even if they only arrived in time to avenge the fallen of the 3rd Company.
A steady but slow flow of reinforcements continued to emerge from the portal. These freshly arrived orks pressed westwards to join the others, so Naaman led the squad on a circuitous routing, coming at the power plant from the north-west, almost behind the ork camp. The geothermal station covered a roughly square area half a kilometre wide on each side; the central power station dominated much of this, surrounded by small clusters of maintenance buildings and dilapidated monitoring installations. There was no sign of the tech-priests and several dozen men who had worked here before the orks’ arrival; Naaman presumed that they were all dead, taken by surprise by the greenskins’ arrival, however that had come about.
The slope of the ridge overlooked the whole compound, which was built across three shallow hills. The portal occupied the crest of one hill, while another was crowned with a thick crop of trees, rocks and bushes, providing the perfect cover to approach. Naaman was grateful that dawn had been accompanied by a layer of thick, low cloud, increasing the early morning gloom.
Ever alert to the few orks wandering around the camp, the Scouts pressed closer, slipping into the concealing foliage of the nearby hill while Naaman took stock of the situation. Damas joined Naaman and both of them wriggled through the bushes to the southern slope of the hill, from where they could see more of the ork camp.
Naaman pulled out his auspex and set it for a wide-spectrum scan. Other than the energy spike from the power plant and the readings from the orks, the scanner provided no new information.
‘We will have to close the range,’ said Naaman, stowing the auspex.
‘What about that outhouse just west of the plant?’ suggested Damas, pointing to a half-ruined plascrete building twenty metres from the main generator complex.
