From the corner of his eye, Karif caught Stavin staring at him and turned to face the boy. “What
would you have had me do? It was an act of kindness, by Terra. Could you have saved him from his
agony?”
Stavin shook his head in silence.
“Then cover my back, damn you. We move up as the sergeant suggested.”
Karif turned from his adjutant and started moving through the trees, pacing himself with the
Firstborn around him. The light of day was getting stronger, but the clouds were heavy and black,
and the shadows beneath the snow covered branches of the trees were thick. Still, the Vostroyans
knew better than to give their positions away with lamps. The sounds of battle could still be heard
from beyond the treeline.
Captain Sebastev’s voice broke through the static in Karif’s ear, calling to Second Platoon.
“Sergeant Basch, where are you? Have you flanked those damned rocket launchers yet?”
“Were working on it, sir,” replied Basch. “Had some trouble with squigs.”
“Understood, sergeant. “Same on this side of the road. But you have to get moving. Captain
Chelnikov’s men are in trouble. They’re pinned down. You need to draw ork fire away from them
so they can get to the trees.”
Karif could see open snow between the dark trunks up ahead. Sergeant Basch was the first to the
treeline and gestured for his men to take cover at the base of the thickest trunks. Karif and Stavin
hurried forward to join the sergeant.
Out in the open, in the middle of the road, a Vostroyan Chimera lay overturned. Black smoke
billowed into the air from its rear hatch and firing ports. A large ork, its silhouette a confused mass
of cables and squared edges, tore at the bared underside of the vehicle with some kind of massive
augmetic claw. Vostroyan las-beams blazed out at it from a shallow bank at the side of the road.
Karif thought that must be where Chelnikov’s men were trapped.
“Who’s firing on that ork mech?” barked Captain Sebastev over the vox. “You’re wasting your
damned time. Lasfire won’t penetrate armour that thick. I want a heavy bolter on him, now. Where
the hell is Kashr?”
“Here, sir,” growled a deep voice on Karif’s right. “I’m with Sergeant Basch in the trees to the
east of you.”
Karif looked over at Trooper Avram Kashr. He was a huge Vostroyan, so large that he looked
ready to burst out of his bronze-coloured cuirass. The fabric of his greatcoat was stretched tight over
arms swollen with muscle. As the big trooper hefted his heavy bolter in readiness to fire on the
augmetic ork, Karif could see just how he’d built such a massive physique. The oversized gun was
usually fielded by a two-man team. Kashr wielded it alone.
“I have the shot, sir,” voxed Kashr.
“Take it,” voxed Captain Sebastev.
“Cover your ears, Stavin,” said Karif.
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As Kashr opened fire, the thunderous noise of the heavy bolter shook snow from the laden
branches overhead. The gun’s muzzle flame lit the woods in every direction.
Karif watched intently from cover. He saw the big augmetic ork shudder as bolt after bolt struck
its armour plates. Blue sparks flashed into life with each impact, vanishing just as quickly. Then the
stream of bolts found a weak point — the armour was thinnest on the monster’s sides. The ork
began roaring and howling as explosive rounds punched through metal and deep into the green flesh
beneath, detonating within and causing massive internal damage.
Kashr stopped firing. The ork looked down at its tattered torso in apparent disbelief for a
moment before tumbling forwards from the top of the ruined Chimera onto the snow below.
“Well done, that man,” voxed Captain Chelnikov. “You just took out the leader of this damned
mob. That should make the others easier to deal with.”
“I still need Second Platoon to move up and flank those ork launchers,” voxed Captain Sebastev.
“Are you listening, Basch?”
“I’m on it, captain,” replied the sergeant. “Second Platoon, forward at once!”
Karif and Stavin rose and raced forward with the soldiers of Second Platoon, making for the
incline at the side of the snow-covered road. Up ahead, several bizarre ork machines — shoddylooking
red trucks that were difficult to classify until one noticed the launchers mounted on top —
fired occasional rockets towards the cover that protected Captain Chelnikov’s men.
“We’re behind their launchers now, captain,” voxed Basch.
Commissar Karif could see gretchin crews manning the vehicles, working in teams to lift more
heavy rockets into the launch slings. Among them, small mad figures leapt and chattered excitedly,
apparently eager to climb onto the backs of the rockets and launch themselves to an explosive death.
Do not attempt to understand the mind of the alien, he thought to himself, quoting a section he
recalled from the Tactica Imperialis. Let your curiosity perish in the blazing light of your
unquestioning faith.
He turned to Sergeant Basch and said, “How do you plan to take them out, sergeant?”
“Explosives, commissar,” said Basch. Something in the man’s voice suggested to Karif that he
was grinning beneath his scarf. “I think it’s time we blew these mindless bags of filth into the next
life, don’t you?” He turned to his men. “How many of you dogs are carrying demo charges?”
Five responded in the affirmative and moved up beside their sergeant.
“Five charges, four ork launchers. That’s good. Krotzkin, you stay back here as a reserve. You
others, set your timers to five seconds. The moment you slap your charges on the back of those
heaps out there, I want you to sprint back to the cover of this incline at full speed. Is that
understood? Don’t stop to engage the enemy. The rest of us will lay down a covering barrage. Your
job is to plant the charges and run like khek.”
“Aye, sir,” answered the four men charged with the attack.
With the attention of the orks held by a continuous stream of fire from the Firstborn on the other
side of the pass, Second Platoon readied for their attack on the launchers.
“Now!” barked Sergeant Basch. Four Firstborn raced off over the crest of the rise at a full sprint.
Each man had been assigned a specific launcher to target. Karif watched without blinking as each of
the Vostroyans slapped their charges against the sides of the launchers, hit the arming switches and
bolted straight back to cover. The gretchin crews, alerted by the clang of metal on metal, turned and
opened fire with their crude pistols as the men ran back to the cover of the slope.
“Open fire,” yelled Basch. His troopers loosed a blazing volley of las-bolts that cut half of the
wicked-faced green-skins down. One gretchin managed to shoot the last of the returning troopers in
the leg and the man went down screaming just a few metres in front of Karif.
Karif didn’t hesitate. He leapt out from cover and grabbed the wounded man by the collar of his
greatcoat, hauling him back towards the others. The gretchin turned their pistols on him. Shells
struck the ground around him, sending up white puffs of snow. The trooper Karif was trying to help
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cried out as a number of shots found their mark. He saw the man’s eyes roll up into his head. There
was no point helping him now.
He turned to leap back behind the cover of the slope, but at that moment, the demolition charges
went off with a deafening boom. For a second, the world disappeared in an almighty white flash. He
threw himself face down onto the snow as the heat from the exploding launchers flashed past him.
A moment later, hands grasped his coat and pulled him back into cover. It was Stavin. “Are you
all right, sir?”
Karif shook himself. “I’m fine. Thank you, Stavin.”
Captain Sebastev was shouting orders to his Firstborn over the vox. “Move in, now. Basch’s
squad, flank them from the rear. Use the smoke from those burning wrecks to cover your advance. I
want all other squads ready to close in.”
Karif scrambled to his feet and took position with Stavin among the men of Sergeant Basch’s
squad. He drew his chainsword from its scabbard.
“The Emperor protects,” he told his adjutant.
Stavin gripped his lasgun tight. “The Emperor protects, sir,” he replied.
“Firstborn, charge!” shouted Sergeant Basch.
The orks faltered at first, surprised by the assault on their rear, but that didn’t last long. They turned
at once to engage the Vostroyans who charged through the smoke of the burning vehicles.
As soon as the orks turned to engage Basch’s men, Captain Chelnikov of the Thirty-fifth
Regiment’s Second Platoon ordered his men up and into a full charge at the ork flanks. Colonel
Kabanov ordered the rest of Fifth Company forward at the same moment, sure that their best hope of
a swift victory lay in surrounding the orks on all sides and throwing everything at them. There was
no time for anything else. Every second wasted brought Fifth Company closer to being stranded
behind enemy lines.
If the Vostroyans had thought their earlier elimination of the augmetic ork leader would
hamstring the orks in some way, they quickly found out just how wrong they were. The fighting was
close-quarters and intense. At such close range, the orks didn’t need accuracy to score with their
oversized pistols and stubbers. Vostroyan men were blasted backwards as they tried to move in,
their chests smashed open by the impact of the massive ork slugs.
All too quickly, the Vostroyan attempt to surround the orks degenerated into a chaotic melee as
the orks surged forward to meet their attackers. The orks threw empty pistols aside to engage the
Firstborn with cleavers, axes and clubs. The Vostroyans fought back, slipping under the ork blades
to stab at them with bayonets. The Vostroyan officers carved their way through the orks with
glowing power sabres. Each Firstborn had been trained well in the ossbohk-vyar, and their skills at
hand-to-hand combat were outstanding, but the sheer power of the orks couldn’t be denied. Where
the crude ork weapons connected with flesh, men fell dead to the ground, their bodies broken open,
spilling hot blood over the snow.
Commissar Karif’s voice sounded over the vox, pouring words of inspiration into the ear of
every man as he fought, inuring them to fear and panic with words from the Treatis Elatii. Even so,
despite the Vostroyan prowess with blades, the orks were impossibly strong. The Vostroyan body
count was rising at an unacceptable rate.
It was Father Olov, gripped by a berserker rage, who turned the tide of battle. He ran forward
with the men of Lieutenant Vassilo’s First Platoon the moment Colonel Kabanov ordered the
charge. The priest swung his mighty eviscerator chainsword in broad circles above his head and it
quickly became necessary for Vassilo’s troopers to move away from him, leaving him to stand
somewhat isolated against the orks that charged towards him. Olov laughed and his eyes took on a
thousand-metre stare as he walked forward to meet his enemies. When he reached the press of ork
bodies, he attacked with a savagery that rivalled that of the greenskins.
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Again and again the purring eviscerator chewed its way through ork flesh and bone, sending
massive bodies to the ground in so many pieces. Occasionally, the teeth of the blade bit into plates
of ork armour and Olov had to physically wrestle the sword free, but his powerful body was more
than up to the task. He forced his way forward, carving a wide channel through the greenskin mass.
The orks fought back with everything they had, but Olov’s kills tipped the balance heavily
against them. The greenskin numbers dropped rapidly. The Firstborn saw this and rallied behind
Olov, surging forward in his wake, hewing orks apart with their bayonets.
“Keep the pressure up,” voxed Colonel Kabanov. “We’re breaking them.”
Sebastev stayed close to Colonel Kabanov throughout the fighting, eager to protect him should he
tire and falter, but it never happened. The colonel charged forward with the rest of the men,
determined to fight by their side and urge them to a swift victory. Perhaps it was adrenaline, or
perhaps it was zeal, but the colonel fought with a skill and speed that surprised Sebastev. In the heat
of combat, he seemed not to have aged at all.
When the battle was won, however, Colonel Kabanov’s age and condition settled back onto him
with a vengeance. His breath rasped in his lungs and he was forced to excuse himself, moving back
to the trees where Lieutenant Maro waited with his laspistol pressed to the head of the Danikkin
prisoner.
Kabanov ordered Sebastev to take temporary command of the situation. It was imperative that
everyone return to the vehicles as quickly as possible. Fifth Company had to be under way.
On the road, the last of the orks fell, hacked apart by three troopers from First Platoon, one of
whom Sebastev recognised as Aronov.
“Good to see you’re still with us, scout, thought Sebastev.
“Captain?” said a voice at Sebastev’s shoulder.
He turned and greeted Captain Chelnikov. The man was younger than Sebastev by a good few
years. He was taller, too, but his body was lean and his cheeks were sallow. He looked as tired as
Sebastev felt.
Of course he’s tired, thought Sebastev. What must Grazzen be like right now?
Commissar Karif strode across the snow towards them, wiping the links of his chainsword on a
rag and sheathing it in the ornate scabbard at his waist. The commissar’s adjutant followed a few
steps behind.
“The last ork is down,” said the commissar, “and the men are trying to calm Father Olov. By the
Throne, what a fighter!”
“Aye, commissar,” said Sebastev. “Olov’s mother should have borne him first. This, by the way,
is Captain Chelnikov. He was sent to guide us into Grazzen.”
Commissar Karif acknowledged the man with a smile and a short bow. “Then we’d best be on
our way as soon as possible. What’s the situation in Grazzen?”
The polite smile fell from Chelnikov’s face as he said, “Not good, commissar. When we left a
few hours ago, the entire length of our defences was under heavy siege. I’m not talking about the
usual rabble, either. This is the most organised attack I’ve ever seen from greenskins. They’re
clearly following a pre-established strategy.”
“What do you mean?” asked Sebastev.
“Well, captain, they began by launching a systematic series of probing assaults along our
defensive line, fielding just enough of their force to make us reveal the extent of our strength at each
