“Fall back to the Hydra, we’re gonna blast ‘em!”, commanded Stag as he lightly shoved Corporal Vengur, to gesture him towards the vehicle and the relay tower in the middle of the clearing. The other men in the squad began to pull back, the sergeant fired a quick burst of suppressing fire before starting away with them. Three of the squad’s men had already taken wounds, and were being hauled over to the relative cover of the relay by their comrades. Corporal Vengur himself took three shots from the Ork weapons, two of which squarely hit his flak vest, averting some of the damage, though it knocked the wind out of him and sent him flying into the ashen dirt of the clearing. The third was a particularly well-placed shot that flew through Vengur’s upper right arm. The shot penetrated the arm’s flesh, smashed through the bone, and ripped out the other side, leaving the limb dangling by strands of mangled flesh as Vengur slammed into the dirt before Charr’s eyes.

Charr grabbed the injured corporal and slung him over his shoulders and sprinted towards the Hydra, barking at the other guardsmen to pick up the pace. Vengur’s wound was bleeding profusely across Charr’s back, he could feel the hot blood trickling down his own spine. Between the running and the Ork firepower a good amount of ash had been kicked into the air, and as Charr reached the rest of the squad another volley of slugga fired ripped out from the dense forest, hitting the ground, the Hydra, and the relay tower around them, but thankfully causing no other casualties. Charr signalled one of the second squad privates to staunch Corporal Vengur’s arm wound until the squad’s medicae could seal up his arm wound. Four of the second squad’s twelve men were badly wounded, and one had died during the retreat, an alarming ratio for what Ork accuracy usually was.

Charr circled to the Hydra’s gunner platform and banged on the floor plating to get the crew’s attention, “We’re all clear! Sweep left to right across the treeline in front of us, set the det range to minimum, and blow the greenskins to hell!”

The sergeant surveyed the situation briefly before running off to meet up with the third squad, and noticed the techpriests cowering behind their servitors, which were heedless of the incoming hail of lead. At the very least they had gathered up the servitors to form something of a human wall and they were making as effective of cover as they could from the oblivious constructs.

“...and make sure that the techpriests don’t get offed, will yah?”, he said haltingly, to Lance Corporal Callum. The lance corporal almost looked at him quizzically for a moment before deciding better of it.

With the sound of the Hydra’s turret whirring into action Charr sprinted across the clearing to the third squad on the far side of the clearing as the heavy, rhythmic thud of the Hydra’s guns shook the air with each shot. As he breached the eastern part of the clearing’s treeline he found the third squad’s men right where he knew they’d be. Corporal Killman wasn’t one to wait out in the open when the shots started flying.

“We’re gonna circle ‘round the clearing edge towards the Orks, and once the Hydra’s dry we’re gonna flank ‘em and finish off the stragglers, ” Charr ordered as he was clearing the terrain to catch up with the squad. “You, and you,” he said, pointing at two random guardsmen, “Go and get the Chimeras, tell one of ‘em to set up on the west side of the clearing, and get one on the east side for backup for us. GO!”

Killman smirked, scratching some of the stubble on his face, “We had the same idea, I was gonna run up and get ‘em in the side when the Hydra was reloadin’.”

“Alright, let’s hurry then, I don’t wanna be late.” Charr took off through the underbrush of the thick jungle, with the rest of the third squad, less the two men sent to summon the vehicle crews, falling in behind him.

***

The two Catachans hurtled through the thick underbrush and over the raised roots of the gnarled trees that separated the trio of Chimeras and their crews from the incinerated area that was cleared for the relay. The bulky armoured vehicles soon came into view, and Private Andarr, just ahead of Adil, started waving his arms and yelling at the crewmen to begin the process of moving the Chimeras into place. The two vehicles belonging to the Imperial Guard were sat side by side, with a third one, used by the Mechanicum and their attendant servants, behind them. As Private Adil caught up with Andarr she circled around the side of the left most of the Chimeras, banging on the armoured vehicle to get attention. The driver’s hatch had been left open and no one was in the vehicle.

Adil rounded the corner of the vehicle’s hull to come to its right side and gave a breathless curse at the sight that awaited her. The crew of the Chimera were present after all, but quite dead. As Adil looked them over, they each seemed to have been murdered efficiently, and then strewn on the ground out of immediate sight. Two of them had had their necks crumpled into a ruin of bruised, broken flesh, while the other, presumably the driver, no longer had a head left to his corpse, with only a ragged, torn stump left atop his shoulders. Having seen enough, Adil fell back around the way she came, regrouping with Andarr.

“Them too?”

Andarr nodded grimly, his eyes fixed on the corner around which another group of bodies surely lay, “Let’s get the Chimeras up to the clearing, we can deal with the dead later.”

Before they could set about the Rites of Activation the guardsmen jumped at a heavy thump behind them, each readying their lasgun and looking wild-eyed towards the rear of the vehicles. The rear-most vehicle, a Chimera adorned in the livery of forge world Metalica, was moving out, around the two inactive ones, towards the clearing.

Adil readily hopped into the driver’s hatch of the Chimera she had inspected and was activating the machine, “Don’t let the cogheads show us up!”

***

The second squad of the Catachans had congregated about the Hydra as the heavy autocannons blew the forest in front of it to flinders and ruin. However, even with the relentless outpour of cannon fire, the enemy was still present, either having maneuvered out of the Hydra’s field of fire, or else having had much greater numbers than expected. The Orks were being unusually evasive, with what seemed to be only a few stragglers and grots making suicidal charges at the guardsmen before being easily gunned down by massed lasbolts.

The rest of their numbers seemed to be content with lurking and hurling slugga and shoota fire at the position around the relay, in a rather un-Ork-like manner of engagement. The source of alien weapon fire had now spread out from the northern copse in the midst of the clearing’s upwards-facing crescent shape to now also be coming from just beyond the northwest part of the glade. This was not a particularly advantageous maneuver, but could easily become a flanking enfilade of fire if not mitigated soon.

The Hydra made one final sweep with its weapons as the autocannons ran dry, the weapon’s empty maws clacking angrily. As if on queue a dull thud followed by a piercing scream erupted from the treeline where the Hydra’s now useless weapons pointed. A crude projectile, followed by a greasy trail of smoke, corkscrewed its way towards the relay, deflecting off a support strut and summarily flying directly into the ground behind Rileigh. The warhead erupted, with most of its explosive force absorbed by the blackened soil. This spared further casualties, thankfully, but threw up a cloud of dirt, smoke, and rocky shrapnel, obscuring the position from within and without.

Rileigh was panicking, and desperately trying to regain control of her nerves. Everywhere she looked there were wounded men, flying projectiles, explosions, and constant gunfire, from both the Orks and the guardsmen at her side. One projectile had grazed her bionic arm, denting the previously pristine titanium. This brush with death had been the final straw and she was still reeling from that when the rokkit blew up behind her. She fell to the ground and her vocal implant gave a piercing shriek, not unlike that of a tortured brake system. Rileigh crawled back behind the relative safety of the labour servitors, using her lengthy power axe to lift herself up to a standing position. A few of the labour servitors had taken stray shots, and one had had its cranium destroyed beyond repair, but more pressingly the relay was taking fire, with fire from the Ork’s weapons chipping away at its exterior plating and structure. Thankfully, the more sensitive parts of the relay had not yet been placed upon its structure, and were safe in armoured cases behind the augur relay’s bulky form.

The labour servitors were useless in this firefight as much else besides cover. Even then, shots were ricocheting off them, and they had little ability to protect their masters. Draykon was just as nervous as RIleigh was, but he was able to hide more effectively behind the bulky cyber-constructs with his diminutive size. The young tech-adept looked up at Rileigh, seeking some form of reassurance from the senior techpriest. Rileigh’s optic sensors met Draykon’s and the panic she had felt was overwhelmed by a sense of responsibility as she looked upon the young Mechanicum from her home world.

With the sound of splintering wood the forest to the south of the relay broke apart, with the heraldry of the Mechanicus parting the greenery as their Chimera trundled forwards, followed directly by the Guard’s two Chimeras, piloted by Private Andar and Adil. The Metalican Chimera stopped beside the congregated servitors, while the others came to rest behind the guardsmen. The guardsmen soon swarmed over the vehicle, hauling injured men inside, manning the vehicles weapons, and using them as cover. The Imperial Guard Chimeras then rolled over to the spots designated by Sergeant Stag, readying themselves to vanquish the Orks that lay in wait.

Rileigh watched for but a moment before ushering the servitors towards the rear door of their Chimera. Speaking swiftly in the tongue of the Machine God she organized the labour servitors and began equipping them with weapons that had been stowed in the vehicle for such an occasion. Draykon and the vehicle’s crewmen, three tech-thralls, assisted with the arming, obediently following each step intoned by the techpriest as the eight still-functioning servitors were provided with Metalica-pattern shotguns. The weapons fit clumsily in the servitors hands, and without direct control they would be entirely useless. After this Rileigh marched the group of servitors in lock-step, two ranks deep, around the side of the Chimera, commanding the vehicle’s tech-thrall crew to use the heavy bolter mounted on the front of the vehicle to support them.

The hull-mounted flamer on the Hydra roared as it shot wide gouts of flame into the devastated treeline, the broken timber and ruined greenery taking light quite quickly. The battle was going better with the armoured support provided by the Imperial Guard’s Chimeras, and the third squad, led by a frenzied Sergeant Stag, charged into the newly aflame forest before the Hydra. As Rileigh watched Charr charge into the emerging mass of flaming Orks she hoped it wouldn’t be the last time she would see him. Rileigh paused, she didn’t know exactly why she had thought something as irrational as that.

Returning her focus to the command of her “troops” she ordered them into a rough firing line, four of the armed servitors kneeling before the other four who stayed standing. They were rallied to the vehicle’s right hand side, with the unfinished relay to their immediate right, with the two Chimeras beyond that, flanking either side of the Hydra. The few guardsmen still capable of fighting, and not manning the vehicle’s weapons, were taking cover beside the armoured vehicles, keeping their heads down and only making opportune shots at Orks that fled or charged out from the conflagration before them.

It looked like the fight was dying down to Rileigh, with Stag and the third squad most likely finishing off the stragglers within the depths of the conflagrated jungle. This hypothesis was proven incorrect quite immediately as, from deeper in the jungle’s depths a cry went up, echoed by dozens of alien throats, which screamed a single word in unison.

“WAAAAAGH!!!”

Greenskins erupted from the treeline before the Mechanicus transport, some 50 meters northwest of the relay. Each one was running full tilt towards the position, a crude weapon clutched in hand and a wild scream erupting from a maw lined with fangs and great tusks. Some even had the presence of mind to fire their slugga pistols while running, though most of them were fired wildly into the air instead of at any visible target. The fierce display terrified Rileigh, and she rapidly began giving the order to fire to her servitors and the tech-thrall manning the heavy bolter. The guardsmen manning the Chimeras similarly opened fire, the vehicle’s multi-lasers and heavy bolters opening up a stream of fire that scythed through the Ork ranks. For their part, the guardsmen were far more accurate than the Mechanicum, with the systems of the tech-thralls and servitors being ill-suited for fighting.

This wave of firepower would have blunted the Ork charge but for their momentum and numbers. Many scores of Orks were in the throng that was charging, and the numbers that were taken down by bolter shells and lasbolts were quickly trod over in the onslaught of the frenzied xenos. As they closed the murderous intent of the Orks became unfocused as they spread out to encircle the Mechanicum and guardsmen alike. When the red of the alien’s eyes was visible a few of the smarter ones threw stikkbombs at the vehicles and infantry. Most of these were unaimed and exploded on the side of the vehicles or off the augur relay harmlessly, but one exploded in front of a Chimera, throwing back, and likely maiming, two of the guardsmen taking cover beside it.

Even worse, though, was the horrendously well-placed stikkbomb that exploded upon the front of the Hydra. By some terrible stroke of misfortune the detonation threw shrapnel in such a way that the hull gunner took a faceful of flying metal through his vision slit, and the heavy flamer mounted there was blown apart, its fuel instantly igniting and exploding, making the hull gunner very dead, and the driver along with the cockpit of the Hydra itself now very much so on fire. The driver hurtled out of the vehicle, aflame, into the eager arms of the bloodthristy Orks, who gladly cut him down as he unknowingly threw himself upon them.

Rileigh barely noticed the grim spectacle that was recorded by her optic mechadendrite as the Orks were pressing in on their position. The servitor’s shotguns were keeping the Orks back, somewhat, but the more heedless of their number were getting braver, and their shells (too many expended earlier when the Orks first revealed themselves), were running out. Draykon was making a valiant attempt at keeping the servitor’s weapons loaded, but at a certain point he had given it up and was doing his best to support their fire with a shotgun he had procured for himself when the servitors were being armed. This was helping, but it would not be enough. One servitor had jammed its shotgun, and another was brought low by a particularly motivated Ork, its upper torso obliterated by a powerful choppa strike.

As the servitors ran out of ammo Rileigh and Draykon were getting desperate. The fire of the heavy bolter soon died out as well. Whether it would reload or not the techpriest did not know, and she was unwilling to tempt fate by waiting.

“Keep them back!”, she yelled at Draykon, as the tech-adept desperately shoved shells into a magazine.

Rileigh quickly sidestepped her formation of servitors, taking a steadying stance as she raised her power axe aloft before the mass of Orks. The Orks hadn’t quite realized that the servitors were lacking ammunition, and with Draykon firing upon them rapidly, they were mildly cowed back, and most of them seemed to be focused on fighting the Catachans and their Chimeras. Holding the power axe high in both hands like a standard she began chanting invocations of electromantic congregation.

The holy words voiced in Techna Lingua called upon the power of the Motive Force, and the bulky potentia coil upon her back was quickly brought to overheating as her internal reservoir could not possibly keep up with the amount of energy she was calling upon. Arcs of electric power began sparking off of the techpriest’s form, jumping to the relay’s structure, the servitors about her, and the spent casings and dropped weapons on the ground around her. Rileigh continued chanting, and the electrical charge within her grew with each verse. Black smoke billowed out of her exhaust stack from the strain put upon it, and the smell of burning wiring filled the air about her. This growing disturbance became unignorable to both the Orks and guardsmen as Rileigh continued shouting the mantra over the loud cracks of the electricity wreathing her.

With grand finality the techpriest levelled the head of her power axe towards the foremost Orks that menaced the Mechanicum and screamed the final invocations of the rite, her voice heavily distorted by the localized electrical disturbance affecting her vocal implant. A still moment occurred, as though the eye of the storm had passed overhead before an enormous thundercrack erupted around Rileigh, an immeasurably bright strike of lightning coursing forth from her power axe as the bolt struck the closest Ork, and spread through him to Orks close to him, and from there into yet more of their nearby allies.

Those first hit by the blast of electricity were burned to a crisp instantly, their hides and extremities split and crisped, while their eyes were melted to bloody slime. Leaping from these first victims to the next nearest Orks the electrical current stopped hearts instantly, stunned the aliens senseless, or merely scorched them horrendously. Aside from simple bodily harm, Rileigh’s bolt of luminen energy also struck the crude armour and weapons wielded by the Orks, causing powder-blackened casings and entire magazines to detonate. Subsequently, those unfortunate enough to be struck while bearing explosives suffered an even more dire fate as these too exploded.

Unsurprisingly this violent series of explosions immediately threw the Ork horde into disarray, allowing the third squad, with a blood and soot-covered Sergeant Stag at their fore, to leap forward in a wave of violence. Their fighting spirit broken, the Orks became quite helpless before the bloodthirsty frenzy of Catachan steel. Cries of alien pain and fear wrang out from the opposite side of the Ork mob, as they were cut down in their attempt to flee back into the treeline. No small number of the greenskins managed to get out of reach of the guardsmen, but many who did were cut down by lasweapon fire. Draykon managed to pepper a few Orks with enough shot to aid in bringing them down, even scoring himself a killing blow upon an Ork limping away with a mangled leg. All told, only about a dozen of the xenos escaped into the depths of the forest. Too many, by any reckoning, but the platoon was hardly in any shape to pursue them further.

Rileigh watched the purgation of the Orks wearily. She was leaning heavily on her power axe, breathing heavily as her ears, organic and bionic, rung and the visual feed of her bionic eyes faltered. Spots played about her natural vision, and the after-image of the electromantic surge was seared into her eye, making it even harder for her to stay vigilant. Rileigh could only smell the powerful ozone reek left behind by the luminen strike, and, as much as she tried to blink to clear it, her vision was unwilling to become any clearer. Still, there is much to do in the name of the Omnissiah, I must… she trailed off as she watched Draykon drop his weapon and run towards her, and caught what she swore was a look of concern from Sergeant Stag as he looked up from his bloody work of finishing off the injured Orks. The whole world tumbled before her and she got a close up view of the charred earth she had stood upon a moment ago that suddenly became darkness.