‘Keep firing,’ I roared, loud as any ork. If the greenskins got to grips with these lads it would be all over for us. ‘You stop and I’ll stick this shotgun up your arse and pull the trigger myself!’
They kept shooting but the orks kept coming, covering the distance faster than you would believe of creatures so big and awkward-looking. I found myself ducking the power axe of a monster almost the size of an ogryn, backing away as fast as I could. It took another swipe at me. I felt a wall against my spine and knew I could retreat no further. The axe passed so close I could feel the vibration its blades left in the air. I ducked down beneath the arc of the swing and brought the shotgun butt forwards, aiming for the knee. More by luck than judgement I hit. The ork grunted and fell, kneecap shattered. It still held on to the axe though and tried to hit me with it. I stepped away and shot again. The force of the blast took the creature to the ground.
I glanced around. It was not going well. The orks had got to grips with my lads, and were tearing through them like a chainsword through a gangrenous leg. I pumped the shotgun and put down another ork but that just got the attention of the remainder.
The distraction seemed to do something though. One or two of the boys with fitted bayonets tore into the orks with the desperate fury of men who know they are going to die anyway and want to drag something down into the grave with them.
One ork got stabbed five or six times before it realised what was happening. It bellowed in rage and fury before it fell to be stamped and trampled on. A few more orks poured into the room, slithering and tripping on the corpses and entrails of their kin. I noticed, and not for the first time, that ork blood was greenish and smelled like mushroom steaks back on Belial. I lobbed another grenade into the doorway, just to keep them busy. It took down another group of them.
The room seethed with violence. It was complete chaos with no way to tell what was going on. Smoke filled the air, and the smell of chemical explosive and ripped flesh. Las-bolts winked in the gloom. The air seemed to vibrate with the bull-bellow of orks and the roar of their chain-bladed axes. A head rolled along the floor towards me trailing droplets of blood. Andropov would not be struggling with his boots any more.
I strode forwards, shouting, ‘Rally to me, men of the Seventh!’ An ork stood in front of me. I smashed it in the mouth with the butt of the shotgun. It spat teeth and made to bring its weapon to bear. Two men leapt on it, clubbing and stabbing. It went down, a huge hand clutching one man’s neck and snapping it. It thrashed around and I noticed the combat knife sticking out of its neck. It kept moving, wrestling with another of my men. I moved around it, unable to shoot without hitting Rostoky. Suddenly it reared up, throwing him to one side as casually as I might have thrown a rucksack. It gave me a clean shot. The shotgun roared. It went down again.
Suddenly, in one of those strange turnarounds you get in battle, I realised there were only a few orks left standing. No more of the greenskins were flooding into the room. There had not been so many of them as fear had made it seem. I knew then that we might actually be able to beat the bastards, if we were quick and held our nerve. Of course, no one had told the orks that. They fought on as if determined to kill and eat the lot of us, and as if we had no say in the matter.
‘Stand your ground, you dozy bastards!’ I yelled. ‘There’s only three of them.’
In point of fact there were five but why make the odds any bigger than I needed to. ‘You’re killing them.’
It gave the lads heart. Las-bolts flickered all around and took down another ork. A group of Guardsmen dog-piled onto one of the remaining greenskins and practically carved it to pieces. Suddenly there really were only three. I reduced the number to two with a quick blast from the shotgun.
The orks stood their ground though, roaring and lashing out with their blades. One of them took out some sort of autogun and snapped off a shot in my direction. I only avoided it by throwing myself flat. When I looked up again, I saw it had taken a bayonet through the neck. I launched myself at it, smashing it in the stomach with the barrel of the shotgun and then bringing the butt into contact with the hinge of its jaw, breaking it. A few heartbeats later it was dragged to the ground and finished by our boys. In another few seconds the fight was over and much to my surprise we had won.
‘Well done, lads,’ I said. ‘That’s how orks die!’
Afterwards we counted the cost. It seemed of the original twenty men who had been with me, more than half were dead and several of those who were left were dying. We patched the wounds of those that we could and the rest we covered with whatever sheets or sacking were available. Most of the time it was with blankets taken from the packs of the dead men themselves. The worst of it was sitting with those who were so badly hurt that they were almost gone.
‘Is it true that you were once with Macharius?’ Davis asked. His voice was weak and his brow was feverish. His skin had the unnatural greyish pallor of a man who has lost too much blood. ‘Is it true, sergeant?’
He was from Dannerheim, one of the worlds that joined Macharius late in his great Reconquest. I suppose you could say that we conquered it although actually what we really did was bring it back into the Light of the Emperor of Mankind.
I was just sitting with him waiting for him to go, a duty I have performed many times and on many worlds with many soldiers, some of whom were my friends. I could see that he was looking up at the campaign badges on my tunic. They were all there – Teradon and Karsk IV and Lucifer and all those other places that we had followed the Lord High Commander through. I had a badge for all of them. I wish sometimes that I had back the blood and flesh I’d left on their surfaces. He reached out and grabbed my hand. He pressed it so tight that I thought perhaps he was gone but he looked up at me with feverish eyes and said, ‘Is it true?’
I don’t know why it was so important to him. Perhaps he just wanted to know that he was dying for something, that he was playing some part in the epic of Imperial history. Maybe at that moment in time he saw me as a link to that Great Crusade across the stars that Macharius had led. Maybe he was just in pain and wanted something to distract him through those last few seconds before everything went dark and he walked into the Light of the Emperor or whatever waits for us beyond death.
‘Yes, son, it’s true,’ I said. ‘I was with him on Karsk IV and I was with him on Demetrius and I was with him in a dozen different places.’
‘Was he what they said he was? Was he a saint? Was he the chosen of the Light?’
I laughed. It was either that or cry. He looked up at me with such pain in his eyes that I stopped.
‘Why did you laugh?’ There was an intense edge to his voice now and I could tell that he was close to passing.
‘No,’ I said. ‘He was not a saint. He was a man – a very great man and in some ways a very wicked one.’
His face twisted. I could tell that this was not what he wanted to hear. But what else was I going to say? It was the truth, and one of those things that Macharius always demanded was that we speak the truth to him and of him. Of course, like every other man, he often did not want to hear that truth when it was spoken but one of the things that made him what he was was the fact that he asked that it be done at all.
The boy looked disappointed and I cannot really blame him for that, because I was denying him his last wish, an affirmation of his belief in saints. Once they may have walked the world, once they may have stood by the side of the Emperor, perhaps out there in the darkness between the stars some of them still exist. The universe is vast and contains many strange things and I have not seen everything.