its finger on the trigger, and the spot she'd been standing on abruptly became a hole in the deck and a blizzard of razor-edged metal shards. Even if she could have prised the ork's hand open, a dubious proposition at the best of times, grabbing the gun wouldn't have helped her much in any case: she'd have had trouble even lifting the thing, and any attempt to fire it would simply have dumped her on her well-padded aristocratic arse, probably breaking her arm in the process[65]. Now was hardly the time to be explaining all this, though, so I simply pointed at the howling, frenzied mob of greenskins fighting one other to get through the gap in the wall, while the brighter ones began to dismember their erstwhile comrade in an attempt to get past the obstructing corpse to reach us. 'Run!'
Stubborn and argumentative she may have been, but Mira was no fool. She was hard on my heels as I pelted along the corridor, intent on nothing more than opening up as big a lead as I could before the orks could force their way past the cadaver, and one another. A brief burst of gunfire behind us spurred me on, indicating as it did that the question of precedence had now been settled in the traditional orkish fashion, and that the vanguard was probably already in pursuit.
'What's your plan?' she panted.
'Don't get eaten,' I said. I'd be the first to admit it wasn't much of one, but it had always worked up until now. I activated my comm-bead. 'Cain to bridge, contact confirmed, hostiles engaged.' (Which I thought sounded a lot better than ''run away from after a lucky hit''.)
'Oh, and the Viridian envoy's still with me.'
'Acknowledged.' The Astartes captain sounded a little distracted, even given the current emergency. As he paused, the faint sounds of combat drifted through the tiny vox receiver in my ear. It seemed the orks were assaulting the bridge, just as I'd feared, but had yet to break through the defences I'd seen being erected on my way out[66]. 'All units are currently engaged.' In other words, good luck, you're on your own.
'May the Emperor protect,' I said as I signed off, which he was welcome to interpret as encouragement if he liked. I had someone a little closer in mind for His attention, and couldn't help wishing He'd had a few spare Astartes to make the job easier.
'I'm on my way, commissar,' a new voice cut in, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit to feeling a sudden surge of relief at the familiar sound of Jurgen's phlegm-thickened tones. Here, at least, was aid I knew I could rely on, even if it was going to take a while to get here.
'We'll save a few greenskins for you,' I assured him. No Valhallan Guardsman would relish sitting on the sidelines while there were orks to be shot, and I was certain he'd been chafing under my orders to remain where he was. 'Any sign of them down there?'
'Not even the sniff of one,' Jurgen said, his faintly resentful tone confirming my guess.
'Then we'll meet you halfway,' I told him. It appeared I'd been right about the guest quarters being as close to a safe refuge as anyone could find aboard the Revenant under the circumstances, so it seemed a pity not to take advantage of the fact. Jurgen may have lacked my affinity for three-dimensional mazes, but his straightforward mental processes would more than make up for that. I'd have bet my pension (which, like every other commissar in the field, I never really expected to be claiming in any case) that he'd simply head for K fifteen by the shortest possible route, and Mork[67] help any greenskin standing in his way.
'Meet who, halfway to where?' Mira demanded, only having heard one side of the conversation, and I filled her in as rapidly as I could.
'Jurgen, the guest quarters. There's fighting going on all over the ship, so it seems the best place to keep you safe.' There were always the saviour pods, of course, but taking to them would definitely be the last resort: our chances of surviving in a system crawling with orks were negligible. The Revenant, on the other hand, was our home ground, albeit infested with greenskins. If they weren't reinforced again too quickly, we might yet turn the tide.
As if to mock my hopes, the voice of the auspex operator rang in my comm-bead almost as soon as I'd completed the thought. 'Incoming torpedo volley. Stand by to repel more boarders.'
'Like we're just going to ignore them,' I muttered irritably, receiving a sharp look from Mira, who probably wondered if I was finally cracking under the strain. Before she could distil her disquiet into a typically acidic comment, however, the rather more welcome voice of Drumon crackled in my ear.
'Enginarium purged. Transiting now.'
Hardly had he finished speaking than the synapse-wrenching sensation which usually accompanied entry to the warp swept over me, more strongly than I could recall ever having felt it before; clearly, whatever the Techmarine had done, he'd done in a hurry, without time to complete all the necessary rituals. As the wave of nausea pounded through my body, I still found it in me to thank the Emperor that he'd managed it. The wave of reinforcements the auspex op had just detected would be passing harmlessly through empty space by now[68], instead of injecting another dose of poison into our reeling vessel, and the balance of the battle had just tipped decisively in our favour. Now it would just be a matter of tracking down the ones who'd already made it aboard, and eliminating them.
'What the hell was that?' Mira asked, her face preternaturally pale after depositing her supper on the deck plates.
Checking the impulse to respond 'Looks like it used to be florn cakes,' I shrugged. 'We're back in the warp. Drumon got us out in the nick of time.'
'Well he could have been a bit more careful,' Mira shot back. 'I feel awful.'
'You'd have felt a lot worse with another wave of greenskins rampaging through the ship,' I pointed out, perhaps not as tactfully as I might have done, but I still wasn't feeling too good myself, don't forget. Hardly had the words left my mouth than a bellow of triumphant rage behind us reminded me that there were still more than enough orks aboard to be going on with. 'Run!'
'Run? I can hardly walk!' Mira snapped back, clearly well on the road to recovery. She turned her head, and apparently decided she could run quite well after all, as she caught sight of the mob of orks rounding the last turn we'd taken in the corridor. There were five of them, the two in front filling the passageway from side to side, all brandishing shootas[69] like the one I'd dissuaded Mira from picking up in one hand, and equally crude axes in the other.
The one in front had a metal jaw, which I'm bound to say hardly improved his appearance, and more scar tissue than Gries. Clearly the most dangerous, and therefore the new leader. The rest were little better, particularly the one who seemed to have taken a bath in acid some time in the past, who glared at the world through a single, red-rimmed augmetic eye, and whose stance at Metaljaw's shoulder was enough to tell me that the two of them had fought together long enough to watch each other's backs as effectively as a greenskin could.
Before I could get a decent look at the rest, bolts and solid slugs began making a mess of the wall near where we stood, but fortunately they appeared to be no better shots than most of their kind. It could only be a matter of time before they got lucky, though, so I ducked down the nearest cross passage, Mira at my heels.
'Why didn't you shoot back?' she demanded, with a single glance over her shoulder to see if the greenskins had reached the junction yet. I didn't bother, secure in the knowledge that a renewed fusillade would announce their presence as soon as they could see us again, and turned into the first cross corridor which would take us back towards our original route. The last thing I needed now was Jurgen missing us because of the impromptu diversion.
'Because I'd have to be damn lucky to bring one down, and the rest would be on us by the time I did,' I explained, reminding myself that she'd never seen the creatures before, so she wouldn't have anything like the hard-won appreciation I did for their resilience and ferocity.
No doubt recalling the exaggerated stories she'd heard about my exploits on Perlia, Mira nodded briskly. 'Can we outrun them, then?' she asked.
'I doubt it,' I said. We might stay ahead of them for a while, but their superior strength and endurance would tell against us in the end.
'Then we need an edge.' She slowed, and looked speculatively at the nearest of the ubiquitous access panels, to which a prayer slip had been affixed by a wax seal, the freshness of both mute testament to the diligence of the Revenant's enginseers. 'Can you get one of these open?'
By way of an answer, I swung my chainsword, chewing through the thin metal in seconds and a shower of
