Chapter 6: Astra Militarum Elite

"Sneaky Boss, we’z gotta move! Let’z go krump dem Humies 'fore da uvver Boyz grab all da loot!" Smarty shrieked, tugging frantically at Darrius’s arm with infectious, wide-eyed fervor.

Darrius looked down at Smarty with the weary expression of someone trying to explain calculus to a brick wall. He was beginning to realize that Orkish logic was a binary state: they were either terrifyingly cunning or as thick as a reinforced bulkhead.

Seeing the rest of the mob reaching a fever pitch and his own personal guard thinning out as they joined the fray, Darrius gave in. To hell with it. I’m an Ork now. Might as well Waaagh! like one.

He let out a chest-rattling roar, gathered the biggest, meanest Boyz left around him, and signaled the Killa Kans. Together, they charged into the central corridor, the one where the shouting was loudest.

Kukka the Weirdboy had somehow procured a massive, slavering Squig and was bouncing along behind them, perched precariously atop the beast.

Perhaps Gork and Mork truly were watching over them, for Darrius’s path led straight into the teeth of the human defense.

Hundreds of elite Imperial soldiers, clad in reinforced flak and carrying heavy power packs for their Hot-shot Lasguns, had dug in behind heavy metal barricades. Supported by heavy weapons teams, they turned the corridor into a kill zone.

The Orks didn't care if this was the power room or a laundry room. If there were "Humies" to fight, they were in the right place.

The narrowness of the corridor, however, was a problem. It stripped the Orks of their greatest advantage: overwhelming numbers.

The Hot-shot Lasguns were a far cry from the "flashlights" Darrius remembered from the games. Their stopping power was immense. Where a standard lasgun might take a dozen hits to drop a Boy, these high-energy variants were punching through Orkish skulls in a single shot.

A simple mob of Choppa-wielding Boyz would have been turned into a pile of cooling meat, but the teeth Darrius had spent earlier now paid dividends. His Boyz were armed to the teeth with Shootas and Big Shootas. They hunkered down, roaring and hosing the Imperial barricades with lead, refusing to yield an inch.

Despite the cover of their fortifications, the humans were losing the war of attrition. Orks are notoriously difficult to kill, and for every greenskin that fell, two more seemed to crawl out of the shadows, drawn by the irresistible magnetic pull of a good scrap.

After thirty minutes of grueling firefight, the Imperial casualties were nearing thirty percent. Only their two heavy weapons teams, manning twin-linked Multi-lasers, kept the Green Tide at bay.

In any era, high-rate-of-fire weaponry is the bane of infantry. In the 41st Millennium, these Multi-lasers were monsters of efficiency. Their barrels spun with a mechanical hum reminiscent of an ancient GAU-8 Avenger, spitting out a horizontal hailstorm of red light that vaporized anything it touched.

Positioned at opposite angles of the corridor, they created a lethal crossfire. Sixty percent of Darrius’s casualties were pinned to these two guns.

The prolonged suppression drove the Orks into a frenzy. One Boy, his chest draped in a bandolier of Stikkbombs, hoisted a thick slab of scavenged hull plating as a makeshift shield.

With a defiant "WAAAGH!", the armored Boy charged. Both Multi-lasers swiveled instantly. A cyclone of red energy engulfed him. He held on for nearly fifteen seconds, a testament to Orkish constitution, before the concentrated heat melted through his shield and ignited his payload. He vanished in a miniature mushroom cloud, scattering Orkish spores into the smoky air.

Taking advantage of the visual chaos caused by the blast, the other Orks redoubled their fire, hosing the Imperial line with everything they had.

It was a stalemate of blood and iron, until Darrius decided to change the math.

Having observed the rhythm of the battle, Darrius raised his customized plasma gun. Bracing himself in a jagged corner of the bulkhead, he sighted the first Multi-laser nest. Blue light began to coil and hiss within the barrel, the weapon groaning under the strain of Smartnog’s "improvements."

Please don't explode in my hand, Darrius thought, his finger tightening on the oversized trigger.

A bolt of blinding cerulean lightning shrieked from the muzzle, clearing the haze of the corridor in a heartbeat.

The plasma blast detonated with the fury of a dying star. It didn't just kill the crew; it vaporized the entire gun emplacement, turning sandbags and ceramite into a hissing crater of molten slag.

Stunning. Even Darrius was shocked. One shot from this thing could likely core a Leman Russ Battle Tank.

The Imperial soldiers were disciplined, however. They didn't break. Seeing their heavy support erased, they immediately shifted fire toward Darrius’s position. Three shoulder-mounted Krak Missiles streaked through the air, trailing plumes of black smoke. They were designed to crack tanks, and they were all aimed at Darrius.

"Boss! Duck! Get down!" Smarty’s face turned a darker shade of green.

Darrius froze. The missiles were moving too fast. He tried to dive, hoping to minimize the blast radius, but he knew he was too slow.

Suddenly, a surge of emerald light flickered. Like a psychic whip, a lash of Waaagh! energy intercepted the three missiles in mid-air. With a violent jerk of his staff, Kukka the Weirdboy redirected the projectiles. They spun back toward the Imperial line, detonating in the heart of their defense and shattering the remaining barricades.

Darrius didn't waste the opening. He leveled his plasma gun again and sent a second sun screaming into the remaining Multi-laser nest, melting it into a pool of glowing iron.

"Lads! Dere’s a hole! Charge it! WAAAGH!"

Darrius holstered the scorching-hot plasma gun and drew his Big Shoota, spraying the Imperial line to keep their heads down.

The Boyz might look like brutes, but their instinct for a kill-shot was razor-sharp. They surged upward, a wall of green muscle and rusted iron, hurling Stikkbombs and emptying their magazines as they closed the distance.

Flame and shrapnel tore through the Imperial ranks. The defenders were dying in droves, but they held the line with a grim, suicidal tenacity that Darrius hadn't seen in the previous humans.

Just as the Orks reached the breach, a series of hidden landmines and frag-grenades detonated, tossing the lead Boyz backward in a spray of gore. The humans were still fighting. They were refusing to break.

Then, the floor began to vibrate.

The rhythmic, grinding whine of gears and the high-pitched snarl of buzzsaws cut through the din of battle. Emerging from the smoke with a heavy, lurching gait, the two Killa Kans appeared like metal nightmares. Their torso-mounted Big Shootas spat fire, and their hydraulic claws snapped with predatory hunger.

"WAAAGH!" Inside the iron coffins, the Grot pilots had finally found their joy.