D
ak'ir cradled the
bolter in his gauntleted hands, feeling its heft and running his fingers down its stock. He muttered litanies of accuracy under his breath as he familiarised himself with the holy weapon.
The
carried several additional Astartes armoriums aboard. It was well stocked with surplus bolters, ammunition and other materiel in the event that the company should require it. During his scout training, when he was just a neophyte and not part of the 7th Company, Dak'ir had been instructed in the use of the bolter by the stern-faced Master of Recruits. Old Zen'de was dead now but the lessons he had imparted upon Dak'ir lived on.
All of the Salamanders crouched in the shallow depression, the rocky outcrop to their fore, advancing orks glimpsed over the jagged tips of these crags, had a bolter slung to their sides. Bursts of sporadic fire, at range, were intended to attract the attention of the onrushing greenskin vanguard. The squad would then stay visible but hunkered down so as not to present an easy target. Only Ba'ken and Emek, bearing their flamers, wouldn't be so armed.
Dak'ir's five had also become six with the addition of Pyriel. He too hefted a bolter, his force sword and pistol remaining sheathed for now. The Librarian had not been swayed by Sergeant Agatone's arguments when he had insisted he stay with the main force. His talents, he surmised with a tone that brooked no further discussion, would be best served aiding Dak'ir.
Illiad was another matter, of course. With no time to explain what had occurred beneath the surface right now, Dak'ir had merely expressed how important the human was to them and that if they survived the fight with the greenskins, Illiad would need to be brought before N'keln immediately. As it was, the leader of the settlers was determined he would stand with his distant Nocturnean kin and so joined one of the battalions. The human could fight and had his own lasgun, so Agatone saw no reason to oppose him. Dak'ir would see him protected, of course, but supposed that standing shoulder-to-shoulder with fifty other armed men was about as safe as it got right now.
'A thousand metres,' Apion reported, keeping sentry on the orks' approach with a pair of magnoculars.
'Weapons ready,' snapped Dak'ir. His tone was clipped and precise as he brought up his bolter. Each Salamander occupied a section of the outcrop, snug in makeshift firing lips rendered by the natural permutations in the rocks. A staccato of arming sounds disturbed the heavy silence before the air was still again.
'Eight hundred…'
Dak'ir sighted down the bolter's targeter.
'Seven hundred…'
Dull percussions from the Thunderfire cannon salvo were rippling across the dunes. Clustered explosions plumed in fiery grey, slowly pushing the greenskin vanguard together. 'Six hundred…'
'In Vulkan's name!' Dak'ir roared and the bolters roared with him.
Muzzle flares ripped into the darkness followed by the flash of explosive rounds tearing up the leaders of the motorised ork vanguard. Bikes spun front over end, chewed up by the brutal fusillade coming from the Space Marines. Trucks flipped as their fuel tanks ignited, turning them into rolling fireballs. Spitting shrapnel shredded those outside the heart of the bolter storm, forcing bikes to slew into others and trucks to veer widely and crash as their drivers were cut to pieces.
The frenzied ork advance slowed momentarily as the ones that followed on picked their way through flaming wreckage, and as the greenskins at the periphery were forced into a cordon by the distant bombardment of the Thunderfire cannons.
Bellowing curses like wielded blades, the orks regrouped and found a focus for their anger - the six Salamanders blazing away at them from an outcrop of rocks. Like a hot spear-tip the orks came together. In truth, the bolter fire had barely scratched them, but the bloody nose they'd received was stinging.
Errant bullets from the greenskins' chainguns and solid-shot cannons chipped at the rock wall. A shard
against Dak'ir's pauldron but he barely felt it. The spatial display on his right helmet lens told him the orks were just three hundred and sixty-five point three metres away.
In less than a minute they'd be hitting the grenade line. Then there would be two hundred metres between them and the horde.
'Reloading,' shouted Dak'ir, ducking back behind the rocks to expel the partially spent magazine and ram home another one. The process took less than three seconds. As he returned to the firing lip to resume the fusillade, Brother Apion ducked back in his sergeant's stead, cycling through the ammo replenishment strategy Dak'ir had devised. This way, the Salamanders could maintain a barrage of uninterrupted bolter fire with little deterioration in intensity between reloads.
At the head of the greenskin pack, a howling ork biker was suddenly kicked up into the air, riding a blossoming fireball. It tore out the vehicle's undercarriage, blasting off its rugged wheels, as well as shredding the ork's legs and abdomen. The beast was still raging until it struck the ground with a wet crunch. Others followed it, shooting up into the air in a macabre, pseudo-pyrotechnic display. Explosions from the grenade line churned up ash in a dense cloud, causing further carnage and confusion. Riderless bikes trundled through the fog aflame, slowly succumbing to inertia without their throttles opened up. A truck barrel rolled out of the murk, its hapless passengers battered to death as they thrashed continuously against the ground. It settled into a mangled heap, a pair of ork bikers blinded by their ash-smeared goggles, colliding into it and exploding after the impact.
The damage was horrendous, the densely-packed greenskins, precisely corralled by the Thunderfire cannons and impelled by Dak'ir's ''bait'' squad, suffering badly in the grenade field. Momentum carried the greenskins behind into deadly debris and the remnants of the sunken grenades yet to be disturbed. They couldn't stop; their maddened fervour, coupled with the undeniable instinct to go faster, wouldn't let them. The orks piled on through and kept on dying.
Two hundred metres became a hundred and fifty in Dak'ir's helmet lens. With so many orks in the vanguard, it was inevitable that some would make it through. But the brother-sergeant had made contingency for that too.
Raking a slide of his bolter, he switched the gun to rapid fire. They'd burn through ammunition much faster this way, but the punishing effects of such a salvo would be irresistible. Loosing his fury, Dak'ir saw the muzzle flare at the end of the bolter expand into a knife-edged star of fire. The oncoming orks became a haze before it, rendered into steaming flesh and bent metal.
The orks, more tenacious than a plague, rolled on into the firing line, scarcely fifty left in the vanguard from the five hundred who had broken off from the slower element of the splinter horde.
Solid shot struck his elbow, finding a spot between the plates, and bit. Dak'ir grimaced, another deflecting off his left pauldron as the orks got close enough to be partially accurate with their return fire.
Ignoring the bullets skimming off his power armour, some punching small holes but stopping at the layered ceramite, Dak'ir rose to his feet. His brothers followed him.
'Purify!' roared the sergeant and the flamers opened up at last.
A curtain of fire swept over the last of the orks. Superheated promethium cooked engines and melted tyres to rubberised slag. The greenskins bayed as they burned, crumpling down as they were engulfed by the intense wave.
Caught between the twin storms of bolters and flamers, barely a score of orks remained. Roughly half staggered, bereft of their vehicles, dazed and enraged to within a few metres of the
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