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Iron Inferno - CL Werner

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Iron Inferno

C. L. Werner

The sky was a livid bruise of ochre and mauve, what little daylight filtering through the murk turned a sickly yellow by the thick layers of dust polluting the atmosphere. Izanagi was a wounded world, maimed and mutilated by an assault from the stars. The shrieking winds that churned the dust clouds were like the pained wail of the planet, crying out in agony to an uncaring universe and an impotent Imperium.

Lord General Ro Nagashima wiped the grit of dust from his goggles and glared at the murky sky. The Prefect-Governor of Izanagi had assured him the astropaths had sent a psychic alarm into the aethyr. It was small consolation. Even if the psionic cry was heard, even if a relief fleet was mobilised, the vagaries of travel through the interstellar warp meant it could be years before help arrived. By that time, Izanagi might be far worse than wounded.

General Nagashima sighed into the rebreather mask that straddled his face, his breath echoing back into the comm-filters of his helmet as a harsh metallic wheeze. His gloved fingers brushed against the row of campaign medals sewn into the breast of his tunic. The tactile feel of old glories brought a bitter smile to his face. Annihilating the pirates of the Oni Cluster, bringing to heel the serf uprising on Tetso, defeating the renegade House Carcalla and their mercenaries, all of these had been wars he had fought in the further reaches of the Yamato System. There had been honour and grandeur in those battles. They had been a furnace that had forged him from a fragile man of flesh and fear into a warrior of steel and valour.

The general looked again at the ugly, dust-choked sky. This war was different. This was not some backwards corner of the system, some scraggly planetoid overrun by rebels or some pirate-infested asteroid. This was Izanagi, the jewel of the Yamato System. This was his planet. This was his home.

It had started without warning, a chunk of space rock vomited from the warp, hurtling directly towards Izanagi. Terror had gripped the world, every calculation of the observators of the Divisio Astrologicus came to the same result: Izanagi was doomed. The impact of such an immense meteor would kill the world and everything on it. There was no time to evacuate, only to kneel before the God-Emperor and make peace with Him before the end.

The impact of the immense meteor was felt across the planet, sending earth tremors that resonated across each continent. A great plume of dust billowed into the atmosphere, wrapping Izanagi in a mantle of darkness. Yet, it seemed, the Emperor had answered the prayers of His subjects. Impossibly, the immense space rock had reduced its velocity as it entered the gravity pull of Izanagi. True, it had struck with enough force to gouge a hundred-metre-deep crater in the lush forests of Kazi Basin, but even such a devastating impact was far from the planet-killing blow predicted by the arcane science of the tech-priests.

Even as the people of Izanagi celebrated their deliverance, the real danger began to make itself known. The thick layers of dust swirling in the atmosphere blinded the satellite surveillance systems of the prefecture and the agri-combines. Aircraft found it impossible to operate in the choking, gritty clouds, dust quickly clogging intakes and exhausts and reducing visibility to a few metres. Only by travelling directly overland was it possible for expeditions to reach the crater and investigate the strange space rock, a difficult journey of some hundreds of kilometres from the nearest settlements.

At first, the silence of the expeditions was blamed on the interference of the atmospheric dust on vox traffic. Then small settlements began to fall silent. Within a week of the meteor’s impact, a chilling hypothesis was proposed by the observators. The meteor had not crashed into Izanagi. It had landed, been directed at their world by some manner of intelligence. Worse, the tech-priests of the Divisio Biologis were certain they knew what creatures had piloted the meteor into Izanagi. They called the object a rok and said that from its innards it had infected their world with the most persistent xenos threat in the universe.

General Nagashima shuddered as he thought about that moment when he had stood in a terracrete bunker and watched as the tech-priests dissected one of the specimens collected by their skitarii scouts from the Silent Zone. He had seen pict-casts of the aliens before, read of them in histories, but nothing prepared him for the shock of that moment.

Ro Nagashima staring into the dead eyes of an ork.

To call it man-like would have been sardonic and insulting to the grace of human physiology. It was a squat, four-limbed beast, its limbs swollen with grotesque masses of muscle, its ugly skull jutting out from its broad shoulders on the merest stump of a neck. Its skin was like old leather, green where it had not been blackened by the plasma guns of the skitarii. Huge fangs jutted from its lantern-jaw, beady red eyes glared from either side of its ape-like nose. There didn’t seem to be room for a spoonful of brains in its thick, sloped skull, yet the ork had been carrying a bulky, ramshackle weapon that had the tech-priests scratching their shaven pates in confusion and muttering cantrips against the heresies of xenos technology.

This, then, was the enemy.

With orbital and aerial observation impossible, the human defenders of Izanagi could only monitor the advance of the orks by the expansion of the Silent Zone. When settlements went quiet, they knew that the aliens were on the move.

General Nagashima clenched his fist as he remembered those long, frustrating weeks, watching the steady advance of the orks on his maps like a surgeon watching the spread of some malignant disease. Eventually, the officers of Izanagi’s Planetary Defence Forces detected a pattern to the alien attacks. Knowing where the orks had been, they felt safe predicting where they would go. Studying his maps, Nagashima decided where they would cut out the disease threatening his world.

The general rubbed the fog of dust from his goggles and stared at the wind-swept hills all around him. The crop of boden-fruit was lost, the dead vines shivering in the breeze, but they would still serve Nagashima’s plans. The boden-fruit required a careful mix of altitude and shade in which to flourish, and this had led to their cultivation on small, man-made hills. Vast plantations dedicated to the raising of boden-fruit peppered Izanagi, creating artificial landscapes of maze-like valleys.

This was where the ork rampage would end.

Nagashima was using those valleys now, hiding his PDF troops behind the hills. A paved service road cut through the hills, used by the serfs to gather the crops. It formed a direct route to Ko, one of Izanagi’s hive-cities and the nearest processing plant for boden-fruit. The general smiled as he gazed down at the tempting stretch of road. Built wide and rugged to accommodate the hulks of the harvest machines, the road was ready-made for movements of armour. Along its length for a distance of seventy kilometres, his engineers had set their minefields. At the mouth of the road, where it entered the valleys from the plain beyond, Nagashima had buried hundreds of aerial bombs, each of which could be detonated remotely when the ork column drove over them. The aliens would be caught between the buried bombs and the mines. It was then he would give the order for his troops to emerge from concealment in the hills and cut down the orks from either side.

He could almost find it in himself to pity the stupid brutes.

The general turned and stared out across the plain. Every trap needed bait, and Nagashima had provided the orks with a very good reason to cling to the apparently safe hills and valleys when they made their advance. Dominating the plain was a low mesa. He could see the imposing structure sprawled about its summit, the plasteel and ferrocrete immensity of the maintenance complex for the boden-fruit harvesters. It was an awesome structure, rising several hundred metres over the plain, dwarfing even the mesa it stood upon. Around this formidable complex, Nagashima’s troops had dug a vast system of trenchworks, erected a jungle of chain-wire, constructed a nest of minefields and tank-traps. Behind these, a system of bunkers burrowed into the base of the mesa. Immense gun emplacements jutted from platforms in the sides and on the roof of the complex. Howitzers and siege mortars gaped from caves gouged into the face of the mesa, their steel mouths waiting to explode with fire and death.

General Nagashima could imagine the effect the mesa would have on the orks. Even their brute brains would recognise the horrible firepower arrayed against them. They would seek to bypass the fortifications and circle around it under cover of the hills.

The orks would not know that the entire complex was an illusion. Less than five per cent of the guns were real, just enough to give the impression of full batteries when they fired. The rest of the artillery was simply stretches of pipe welded together and painted to resemble the muzzles of cannon. Most of the bunkers were simply tarps riveted into the walls of the mesa. The minefields around the complex were really only a few metres deep, the chain-wire only active and lethal for a small stretch before giving way to normal stretches of chain strung between iron posts. Many of the tank-traps were simply wooden beams nailed together and painted to look like metal.

A token force manned the perimeter of the fortification, there to give the illusion that they were the vanguard of an entire army. If the orks sent scouts to investigate the defences, the custodian force was to punish them relentlessly, each platoon tasked to give the impression of a company, each company that of a battalion. At the same time, any scouts who entered the hills would find no trace of human occupation.

General Nagashima smiled beneath the mask of his rebreather.

Yes, he almost felt sorry for the filthy xenos scum.

The brown skies of Izanagi smouldered into complete blackness with the onset of night. Neither moon nor star could penetrate the dust-filled murk of the atmosphere.

Kaptain Grimruk Badtoof pressed the magnoculars against his face, the human-built instrument looking like a tiny toy in the ork’s immense hand. Grimruk scrunched his scarred face into a scowl and squinted through one of the lenses of the magnoculars. A thick finger pawed awkwardly at the modulator controls set into the side of the instrument. Guttural snarls rumbled through the ork’s fanged mouth as he thumbed past the setting he wanted. It was with difficulty that he resisted the urge to dash the magnoculars to the ground and stomp them beneath his steel-shod boots.

Finally, the ork kaptain found the setting he wanted. The black world around him leapt into vibrant hues of green as the night-vision mechanisms became active. Grimruk always thought it was an appropriate thing, the way the human device made things green. It was almost as if the humans who made them had understood that the night belonged to the orks.

A low, bestial grunt trespassed into Grimruk’s thoughts, asking him what he saw.

Grimruk didn’t look to see which of his warriors had asked the question. With his free hand he simply struck out and swatted the speaker. There was a satisfying crunch of gristle and a truculent yelp of pain. The question wasn’t repeated. He’d given his mob strict orders to keep their gobs shut. The last thing he needed was for one of them getting gabby and giving the humans warning.

Grimruk stared through the magnoculars, passing them across the bristling defences of the human position. He studied the lines of wire, the fortified bunkers and complex trench works. The ork grunted in appreciation as he passed his gaze over the artillery pieces poking out from the structure on top of the mesa. Those were some big guns, the kind of thing the mekboyz could really put to good use.

The ork’s leathery features twisted in a brutish smile as he watched the figures of sentries moving through the wire. Grimruk paid careful attention to where they stepped, what they touched and what they didn’t. When he wanted to, the ork could remember things with photographic detail. It was one of the benefits of having half his skull replaced by a painboy’s experiment.

The kaptain watched the soldiers make their way back into the trenches, then followed them until they disappeared into one of the bunkers. With a satisfied grunt, Grimruk lowered the magnoculars, shoving them into the scrawny arms of Wizgrot. The thin, emaciated creature was much smaller than the hulking ork, though it shared the same leathery green hide. Where the ork’s bulk was suggestive of awesome brute strength, that of Wizgrot was lean and sneaky.

The gretchin orderly took Grimruk’s magnoculars and replaced them into the steel case he carried. Grimruk scowled at Wizgrot. Shivering, the gretchin sketched a salute and snapped his heels together. Grimruk cuffed him anyway, sending the orderly’s spiked helm rolling through the dust. Wizgrot scrambled after the helmet, bringing barks of harsh laughter from the orks watching him.

Grimruk rounded on his troops, glaring at them with his good eye. The other, lost along with the better part of his skull, had been replaced by a crude electrical device, a scanner light that simply bounced from side to side in the pit of his empty eye socket. The rest of the ork’s face on that side of his head was simply a mass of rusty steel plates bolted to his skull. Grimruk scratched at the line of scar tissue that marked the join between flesh and metal.

He reached a decision, one that brought a smile of sadistic amusement across his face. Grimruk settled his attention on Gobsnot, one of his lieutenants. Gobsnot was just stupid enough to make a good diversion. The ork kaptain grabbed hold of his underling’s tunic, dragging him close so he could grumble new orders into the nob’s ear.

Gobsnot turned away from Grimruk. Growling at the mob milling around listening to the exchange, he called out a few comrades. When the detail was mustered, the orks loped off into the darkness in the direction Grimruk had pointed.

Grimruk watched them vanish into the gloom, a cunning light in his eye. He reached to his belt and pulled a tattered mass of fabric and leather from where it had been tucked beneath it. His clumsy hands tugged and teased the worn, tortured material into a crude approximation of shape. Straightening himself to his full height of two and a half metres, the ork kaptain scrunched the battered hat onto his misshapen head. It was ludicrously small, barely covering the top of the brute’s scalp. It wasn’t the fit that concerned Grimruk, however. It was the message behind the hat. He’d torn it from the body of a boss human in the ruins of Vervunhive, one of the black-clad officers who kept their soldiers in line by shooting the ones that tried to weasel out of a fight. Grimruk smiled as he saw that his own troops understood that same message.

The kaptain studied his warriors, watching the eagerness building up inside them. He needed to squelch that right away. His hand closed about the heft of the immense chainaxe he carried. He thumbed the activation stud, grinning as the steel teeth of the weapon shuddered into life, whirring like lightning as they screeched along the edge of the axe.

Grimruk turned, his long coat whipping about him in the biting Izanagian wind. He didn’t look back to see if his troops were following him. They were the best kommandos in the clan, the hardest fighters the Blood Axes could provide. They weren’t afraid of anything. They’d follow him into Gork’s mouth if he told them to.

Besides, if any of them did try to run out on him, they knew he wouldn’t stop looking for them. He had a long memory for a kaptain. It was another side effect of having half his skull replaced by a painboy.

They made good time even when they did reach the wire. Grimruk placed the credit for that on his foresight. He’d kitted his troops with red boots before setting out on their scouting mission. Even the lowest grot knew red ones were faster than others.

The massive ork kaptain crouched down beside the barbed fencing, his eye watching the terrain around him. He could just faintly see the flickering lights of the bunkers, sometimes the dim gleam of a soldier’s lho-stick as he drew smoke into his lungs to fend off the cold of night. The sight gave Grimruk an idea. He snapped his fingers at Wizgrot. The weedy gretchin fumbled about among his many packs and belts until he found what his boss wanted. Grimruk stuffed the thick cigar into the corner of his fanged maw, clamping down on it with his heavy teeth.

Another snap of his fingers and Wizgrot was straining on tiptoe to light the ugly smelling rolls of dried squig-sinew. Grimruk drew a lungful of the filth into his chest and grunted. Now if any of the sentries did spot movement in the wire, they would see the gleam of his cigar and think it was just one of their patrols coming back. The size discrepancy between ork and human was a minor detail the kaptain chose to dismiss.

Besides, Grimruk considered as he took another drag, pretty soon the soldiers would have other things on their minds. The kaptain stared out at the darkness, wondering how far Gobsnot and his boyz had gone. They should be just about into the wire by now. Watching the way the human patrols had avoided that stretch of the perimeter, Grimruk was pretty certain there was something nasty waiting there for Gobsnot.

The deafening boom of explosives thundered through the night. Grimruk’s grin broadened. It seemed Gobsnot’s boyz had found some mines.

Instantly the trenchworks ahead of the orks burst into activity. Soldiers scrambled along the line, racing to positions closest to the disturbed minefield. The darkness evaporated as heavy floodlamps sparked into life, as the sizzling beams of lasguns slashed through the gloom. The barking chatter of a heavy bolter snarled into action while the dull crump of mortars and light artillery pounded the earth. More mines exploded as Gobsnot’s embattled kommandos tried to retreat from the withering fire trained upon them.

Grimruk roared, slashing his chainaxe through the wire. Alarms wailed as the strands of barbed wire snapped beneath the chewing teeth of the axe. The kaptain just grunted in amusement. The humans had already deployed themselves to deal with Gobsnot’s mob. It would take them time to train their guns in his direction. Time the soldiers didn’t have.

Grimruk gestured with the churning edge of his axe at the trenchline, snarling at his warriors, inciting the maddened orks, fanning their eagerness for battle into bloodthirsty fury. Almost, the kaptain forgot to impress upon his warriors the strategy behind their mission. They weren’t here just to kill things. The warboss wanted intelligence about the human strongpoint, intelligence the kommandos were to bring back to him.

The orks behind Grimruk lifted their weapons in the air, a chatter of boltguns, stubbers and combi-weapons barking into the night. Even the bark of their weapons was almost drowned out by the deep bellowing war cry of their owners.

‘Waaaaaggggh!’

Like rabid beasts, the orks swept past Grimruk, dashing for the human defences. The kaptain saw the closest bunkers turn their weapons on the rushing kommandos. The first bursts of bolter fire were high, aimed at pre-selected targets at the edge of the wire. It took time to correct their aim, to swing the heavy weapons down and rake the oncoming rush of alien killers. By then, dozens of the orks were already pouring into the trenches. Those at the rear were ripped apart by the downturned bolters in the bunkers, their hulking shapes jerking and twisting as the explosive rounds shredded them, but it was too little to save the few soldiers detailed to remain at their posts during the slaughter of Gobsnot’s mob.

Grimruk dropped down into the trench just as the heavy bolters began to find their range. A human soldier rushed at him, firing his rifle at the towering ork. Grimruk felt the las-bolt sizzle through his arm, the wound cauterising instantly behind the searing beam of light. Barely cognisant of the injury, Grimruk seized the soldier by the front of his tunic. The man screamed, trying to smash the ork’s face with the plasteel stock of his weapon.

The lasgun smacked uselessly against the steel plates bolted to the ork’s skull. Grimruk scowled at the panicked human, turning his head as the soldier tried to hit him again. Annoyed, the kaptain pulled the man into the whirring teeth of his axe. The soldier’s body jumped and convulsed as the chainaxe chewed through him. Grimruk let the shredded mess tumble to the ground, then wiped some of the spattered gore from his coat.

Grimruk turned away from the mangled mess of his foe, his eye studying the battle unfolding around him. Wherever his kommandos had entered the trenches, they had seized control of them. The butchered remains of humans were strewn across the earthworks, a few battered survivors fleeing over open ground to reach the protection of their bunkers.

Further away, however, Grimruk could see a different story unfolding. Soldiers were pouring from the higher bunkers, others were racing back from the farther trenches and the fire line they had formed to deal with Gobsnot’s mob. The kommandos controlled their section, but the kaptain knew they could not do so for long.

The ork kaptain gestured with his chainaxe at the bunker and roared. He could see a few of the closest orks acknowledge his order. They stopped attacking the escaping soldiers and took off at a lope for the closest bunker. Other orks, noticing the action of their comrades, gave off their own bloodthirsty pursuit and moved to support the bunker attack. The kaptain gave a satisfied grunt. That was what set his boyz apart from most of the horde. The kommandos understood the need to get a job done even if it meant pulling out of a scrap.

Grimruk snapped his fingers and pointed at the carcass of the soldier he had killed. Wizgrot leaned over the body and tore a ragged strip of cloth from the front of its tunic. The kaptain waited until his orderly stuffed the scrap of cloth into one of the bags the grot carried. Then he lunged at the wall of the trench. The ork’s powerful arms had no trouble pulling his bulk up from the pit. Grimruk snapped a command over his shoulder to Wizgrot and hurried to join the rush on the bunker.

Wizgrot cursed and mumbled under his breath as he struggled to climb out of the trench and follow the lead of his kaptain. The short gretchin didn’t try too hard, though. The possibility that the fighting would be over by the time he reached the bunker limited the enthusiasm of his efforts.

The bunker was a big blockhouse of ferrocrete and plasteel. The humans inside were armed with at least two heavy bolters and had gutted three of Grimruk’s kommandos in the first rush. The reminder that the soldiers had weapons more formidable than the lasguns of the trench defenders had curbed some of the enthusiasm for the attack. By the time Grimruk joined his troops, the orks were sheltered behind several tank-traps, leaning out from their cover to deliver ineffectual potshots at the fortified position.

Grimruk growled at the other orks as he joined them behind their scanty cover. He could hear the ferocity of the fighting down in the trenches. The humans were bringing up reinforcements to contain the incursion into their lines. Some of his kommandos might not appreciate it, but it wouldn’t take too many humans to overwhelm them. Sure, they’d get a good scrap out of it, but the Blood Axe clan was built on the idea that there was more to winning than getting yourself killed in a big fight. If they were going to get what they needed and bring the information back to the warboss, then they had to move and move fast.

Grimruk bellowed at one of the kommandos near him. A huge-shouldered ork wearing a set of thick goggles over his eyes and lugging a giant metal barrel on his back turned and stared suspiciously at the kaptain.

The kaptain barked at the ork, a brute named Skorchslag. He motioned with his fist, ordering the commando to attack the bunker with his flame-spewing burner.

Skorchslag raised one of his singed fingers by way of reply.

Roaring back at him, Grimruk made a string of increasingly violent threats against Skorchslag if he didn’t follow orders. The big ork still looked unimpressed, but when Grimruk drew the pistol from his holster, it seemed to convince Skorchslag he might do worse than follow orders. The kommando hefted his burner, the muzzle of the weapon dripping liquid fire. With a last look around, Skorchslag sprinted towards a tank-trap closer to the bunker. Instantly, both of the heavy bolters inside the bunker began to fire on the ork with the deadly flamethrower.

Grimruk slapped the shoulder of the kommando sheltering beside him, gesturing for him to rush the bunker from the other side while the soldiers were distracted by Skorchslag. The kommando seemed just as reluctant to break from cover. Snarling his annoyance, Grimruk pushed the other ork from cover, waited a moment to see if the soldiers in the bunker noticed him, then followed.

The two orks rushed across the killing zone in front of the bunker, diving against the thick wall of the fortification. They reached the safety of the wall an instant before the bolters tore through the tank lashed across Skorchslag’s back. The kommando vanished in an explosion of liquid fire, transformed into a screaming, staggering torch. Another burst of fire from the bunker put the blazing ork down.

Grimruk ripped a wood-handle stikkbomb from his belt, nodding for the kommando with him to do the same. The two orks smacked the heads of the grenades against the wall of the bunker, then cast the activated explosives through the firing slits for the bolters.

The walls of the bunker failed to restrain the fury of the blast. In a shower of flame and debris, the bunker virtually collapsed in upon itself. The two orks who had attacked the fortification were thrown like rag dolls, smashing into the ground a dozen metres away.

Grimruk painfully lifted himself back onto his feet, one arm hanging limp and broken at his side. The kommando with him had fared even worse, the force of the explosion impaling his body on one of the tank-traps. The kaptain glowered at the mutilated ork, then scowled at the smoking wreckage of the bunker. He’d need to talk to the mekboyz about how much punch they packed into their stikkbombz.

Grimruk shook his head to clear the ringing from his ears. He stared at the ground, looking for the peaked cap that had been blown off by the explosion. He stopped looking when Wizgrot appeared beside him, timidly handing the battered hat to the ork. Grimruk snatched the hat from the gretchin and stomped towards the wrecked bunker. Now that the heavy bolters were quiet, other kommandos were breaking cover to close upon the destroyed objective. Grimruk pushed his way through the press of orks, determined to be the first to see whatever was left.

The bunker was a shambles, twisted supports protruding at crazy angles from shattered blocks of processed stone. Here and there the mangled wreck of a soldier jutted out from the jumbled mess. Grimruk snorted contemptuously as he looked at the walls. The stikkbombz had blasted them to bits, like they were nothing but paper. Maybe he’d suggest the mekboyz keep making the grenades the way they were. Provided of course that they let him know first.

The kaptain scratched at his scar and listened to the sounds of fighting elsewhere. The ground trembled as mortars began to shell the captured stretch of trench. Grimruk grunted in annoyance. It would be the height of satisfaction to climb up there and feed the humans their blasted mortars, but he knew he had bigger squigs to catch. He had to get information for the warboss, let him know how tough this human position was.

Grimruk glanced at the kommandos with him, then nodded at the rubble. The orks shouldered their weapons and began to dig, exhuming the torn bodies of the soldiers. Each time one of the corpses was exposed, the orks tore at the front of their uniforms, ripping apart the cloth. As they collected scraps of uniform, the kommandos cast aside the bodies of their enemies like so much refuse. Soon, even Grimruk was satisfied that they had exposed everything there was to find in the rubble.

Wailing sirens shrieked across the battlefield. In the distance, Grimruk could see some of his kommandos retreating through the wire. Howitzers shelled the ground as the orks fled. Squinting, Grimruk could see the reason for their withdrawal. A pair of big armoured vehicles had lumbered into view, their guns blazing as they mowed down orks. The appearance of tanks made it clear to even the most stubborn of the kommandos that they wouldn’t be able to hold the trench.

Wizgrot pulled at Grimruk’s coat. The orderly’s scrawny arms were filled with the scraps of cloth the kommandos had collected. Grimruk took them from the gretchin and stared at the bloodied strips of uniform. It was a habit of humans to wear the colour of their mob on the collars of their uniforms. Grimruk had learned some time ago that the easiest way to tell how many humans were gathered in one spot was to see how many different glyphs they wore on their collars.

The other kommandos were under strict orders to collect collar tabs from every human they killed. Grimruk should have quite a collection when the survivors of his mission returned to the horde’s encampment. Then the kaptain would be able to study them at leisure. The warboss would be pleased to know how strong the human presence was around the mesa, and it was always a good thing to be thick with the warboss.

Grimruk barked the order to withdraw to his troops. They had done what they had set out to do. They had tested the strength of the human positions and they had secured intelligence about how great their numbers were. That was what the warboss had demanded of them.

Lord General Ro Nagashima smiled beneath the mask of his rebreather as he read the reports from the mesa. During the night, ork scouts had tried to infiltrate the lines. The defenders had allowed the aliens to penetrate deep enough to get a full taste of what the position had to offer, to see the fake bunkers and siege guns. They had allowed survivors to escape back through the defences, to take word of what they had seen back to their army.

There was one curious thing in the reports. The orks had torn the collar tabs from the soldiers they had killed. Nagashima was puzzled by this. Was it possible the brutes were trying to recognise which units were stationed on the mesa? Nagashima chuckled at the thought. If the aliens were that clever, then they would fall even more deeply into his trap. Elements from a dozen different regiments had been detached for duty in the custodian force. Should the orks understand the importance of insignia, then the xenos vermin would think there was an entire army group stationed up there!

Nagashima’s PDF troops stood at the ready. If the orks were going to strike the hive-city of Ko, then they would come over the plain. To avoid the seemingly formidable mesa, they would need to move into the hills. Once they did that, the PDF would cut the orks to pieces.

The boom of artillery snapped General Nagashima from his thoughts. A furious barrage thundered from the plain. He turned his head as he heard excited vox-chatter erupt from the communications terminals arrayed about his command centre. Beneath his mask, he turned pale as the importance of the frantic voices shrieking from the vox-casters impressed him.

Orks, tens of thousands of them, an entire army. They had boiled down into the plain in a moving ocean of warbikes and battlewagons, of crudely cobbled-together tanks and lumbering, titanic Stompas. The aliens surged down onto the plain in a tidal wave of destruction. But they did not turn from the mesa. Their ramshackle guns and missile launchers sent barrage after barrage into the mesa, blasting apart the faux-defences erected by Nagashima’s troops, obliterating the illusion of an impregnable bastion.

General Nagashima lifted his eyes, watching as a black pillar of smoke began to crawl into the dust-ridden sky above the mesa. Horror churned in his gut.

It was impossible! Everything had fallen into place! There was no way the orks could have guessed the mesa was a trick! Everything had been done to make the orks believe the mesa was a fortress manned by an army of Izanagi’s PDF. The orks had taken the bait. Reason dictated that they would avoid the mesa, take the shelter of the hills and bypass the fortress as they made their way to the hive-city.

Instead, the orks had advanced directly upon the fortress, despite every appearance that it was here Nagashima had concentrated his forces.

Instead, or because? The sickening thought made Nagashima’s knees turn to jelly. The horrified general sank into a campaign chair, his head sinking against his chest.

The orks were not human. It had been idiocy for him to expect the xenos to act like men. They had bought his deception. They did think the mesa was where he had concentrated his forces. But instead of scaring them off, the imagined strength of the position had drawn them in. The orks, spoiling for a real fight after weeks of ransacking isolated settlements, hadn’t tried to avoid the fortress. They had come straight on, eager to slake their lust for battle.

General Nagashima listened to the panicked voices on the vox-casters. Gradually the chatter died away as the positions were overrun. The officers under Nagashima were already shouting commands to their staff, trying to remobilise their entrenched positions.

It would be too late to save the troops trapped on the mesa. And once the orks finished swatting aside Nagashima’s mock defences there was nothing to stand between them and the billion inhabitants of Ko.

Nothing but the regret and shame of the general who had failed them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

C. L. Werner was a diseased servant of the Horned Rat long before his first story in Inferno! magazine. His Black Library credits include the Chaos Wastes books Palace of the Plague Lord and Blood for the Blood God. He is also the author of Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang and the Brunner the Bounty Hunter trilogy. Currently living in the American South-West, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the Warhammer World.

Visit the author's website at www.vermintime.com

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2010 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Cover illustration by Clint Langley

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ISBN 978-0-85787-354-5

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