A House Divided
Act 2 - The Shadow of the Abyss
Chapter 2 - The Battle for Ft. Dorn
Part 1 - Into the Tunnels
Part 1 - Into the Tunnels
The party did not take long to reach a consensus on which of their objectives to pursue first. Time was a critical factor, between the imminent orc assault and the ever-present risk of the discovery of the Gyspy at dock, so they opted to first address the sapper issue beneath the fort. The hope was that, while flushing the menace out, they would possibly discover a way to enter the trench system in order to reclaim the missing cogitator which contained critical decoding programs from ork hands. They had a choice of points by which they could have entered, but chose the tunnels below the main barracks building as the largest subterranean assault on Ft. Dorn had occurred via a breach in the basement wall. While the guard had sealed off the room and placed a machine gun position monitoring it to dissuade the more intrepid gretchins, they did not have the supplies or time to properly wall the breach off, and it yawned at them in gloomy indifference beneath the flickering orange light of a sodium bulb.
The tunnels themselves presented unique hazards. As they pressed forward into the dark they found the going slow, for the gretchins had worked in a characteristically undisciplined and haphazard manner to excavate the network. The tunnels were at least six feet in height, and almost as wide, which would have allowed for a single orc to squeeze through in a low crouch or crawl, but rough and uneven at the best of times. They proceeded forward in a single file manner with Vadik and Merrick taking point, using the Arbiter's servitor hound to sniff ahead of them as it could traverse the difficult spaces with greater freedom than any of them. Grim, who reluctantly had to leave his obedient Muffin back at the entrance due to the servitor's sheer bulk. brought up the rear of the formation with Wu-10. After almost an hour of winding their way through the dank, musty soil and stone they came across the first of several "surprises" the gretchins had left to discourage the Guard from counter-attacking via the tunnels. It was a crude trap, little more than a suspended I-beam rigged to a razorwire trip line hung at roughly neck level. It was easily dismantled between Grim and Aurora as Vadik and Merrick pushed forward.
Suddenly, Wu-10's hound froze in place. It began to transmit a discreet code to his vox indicating that its auditory sensors had picked up evidence of up to four possible hostiles ahead. He drew his stun baton as Merrick slid his suppressed pistol out of its holster, and they inched forward, they wanted to deal with this threat as silently as possible now that they were alone down in the dark. Sure enough, four gretchin were crouch around crates of digging equipment in a rough alcove that was dimly lit be a flickering fire one of the beasts had started. With a silent vox command Vadik set his hound loose. As it streaked across the the alcove and set upon the first gretchin it could reach Merrick stepped into view and sent two others to meet Gork and Mork with unerring shots that occurred in such rapid succession that Cassisu could have sworn he onl;y head one suppressed shot. The last gretchin yelped in stunned surprise, drew a crude choppa, and lept atop the crates in order to avoid the ichor stained maw of Vadik's cyber-hound. Vadik charged the few feet between them and laid the miserable thing to rest with a powerful blow from his stun baton. The first nest in the tunnels had been cleared.
The group's mission in the winding tunnels began to fall into a steady, is paranoia-inducing pattern, Side tunnels would appear, and they stuck to a northeasterly heading through the maze between Grim's onboard geo-auspex and the scent signals processed by Vadik's hound. They would deal with one more patrol of gretchin, this one headed by a single ork warboy, which they easily dispatched via an efficient side tunnel ambush, before they found themselves staring up a steep incline dug from the tunnels. At its top was the dim light of a sodium bulb hung from a concrete bunker roof of Imperial manufacture. They had found the bunker, but from the rough laughter echoing down from above it seemed that the orks were still occupying it. Vadik dared to peek his head above the rim of the tunnel, which had breached into the sleeping quarters, and grimly noted multiple orks which were lounging, sleeping, and gruffly conversing with each other among the carnage and bodies of the humans who had waged their last stand. He crept back down to his comrades and they devised a hasty plan of assault, with Grim delightedly chirping in techna-linguis before informing them that he had just the tool for such an instance. He reached into his robes, produced a thick metal cylinder, and told his friends to ready themselves.
As he had on the train to Ft. Dorn, Grim swiftly set the timer on his lovingly crafted coolant cylinder and used one of his dendrites to carefully toss it up into the room above. A few quizzical grunts came from the yawning mouth as Wu-10 stepped forward to brace his boarding shield against the portal, a loud crack followed as the casing splintered and hundreds of cubit feet of compressed coolant flooded the tiny space. Ice crystals formed intricate patterns on the inside of the Skitarii's shield, but he held it fast for the prescribed 3.752 seconds that Grim had advised him to block the entrance. He heaved himself up into the bunk room, revving his chainsword in anticipation of armed resistance, only to find the frozen faces of orks turned towards the center of the room, their brutish features locked in eternal stares of bewilderment. His comrades quickly joined him as he moved to block one of the two access tunnels leading from the bunk room to the operations center of the bunker complex. No sooner had he and his friends taken position then the orks in the adjoining rooms mounted their counter-attack, streaming down the narrow tunnels which barely held their rage-fueled forms. It was a short, but intense showdown. Twice the orks nearly breached the hasty fatal funnels, but not even the emergence of two orks who had been in the adjoining lavatories to the bunk room could turn the tide against them Imperials.
As the party took stock of their ammunition and wounds a thunderous laugh echoed down the hallways towards them. A gruff, hostile voice boomed with derisive glee. It announced itself as "Boltcutta," and bid the party to join him in the operations center. It would wait, it claimed, to deliver the "'...'Umies..." to their crippled deity, and mocked their attempts to stand before the might of the ork forces on Orion 9. While his comrades seemed concerned that any ork would so brazenly taunt them, given the complete annihilation of his subordinates mere seconds before the usually reserved psyker, Manus, smiled and bid his compatriots to take the ork up on his offer. They deployed smoke grenades and quickly entered to assault points in the corners of the command bunker. As the smoke waned they caught sight of Boltcutta. He was a Mekboy! Massive crude augmetics had replaced his limbs, and serpentine tesla coils arced ominous bolts of electricity between them as he jeered and spread his arms wide to welcome the Imperials to their doom. Manus strode out of the smoke, closed his eyes, and with a strained expression opened himself to the Warp. A Mekboy was a formidable opponent to any standard ground troop, but Manus was by no means standard. With that dismissive gesture he had torn aside the veils of the WAAGH! which protected Bolcutta's mind, and summoned a visage of the fist of Gork descending upon him. The party, tense and ready, could only stare in amazement as the ork gave an scream of rage and attempted to grab its head as it literally came apart in a detonation of green ichor. The Warp was a dangerous tool, but a powerful one in the hands of the initiated.
As Manus sat down on an ammunition crate to calm his mind, the party quickly took stock of the situation. They located the cypher cogitator, disconnected it, and packaged it for delivery to the IG lines. Wu-10, Grim, and Vadik crept out with it into the trenches beyond the command bunker. They sent a brief radio transmission to the command center at Ft. Dorn and arranged to hand-off the valuable device at a hasty barricade that the troopers had erected near the command center after it had fallen. As they did this Merrick, Aurora, and Cassius gathered what ammunition and weapons they could from the IG stockpiles. Merrick, having witnessed the effect of an ork shoota firsthand, chose to replace one of his pistols (which had become ruined due to a misfire in the bunk room) with an ork hand cannon of almost ludicrous size. He, quite cunningly, chose to do this while the Tech-Priest and his Skitarii were delivering the cypher cogitator. Regrouping in the bunk room, the party made their way back into the tunnels. They still had to find the origin point of the gretchin tunnel system and put an end to the sapper's deviance.
Following the same pattern of tunnel navigation they had before, the party made its way back through the dank and claustrophobic maze that the greenskins had excavated. Reports of the battle in the bunker seemed to have also made their way to the orks, for twice they were forced to secret themselves in side passages as the heavy boots of ork reinforcements ran down the tunnels towards the command bunker. Further slowing heir progress were the multiple land mines and traps. Grim, knowing the orks were attracted to battle like moths to a flame, advised that they maintain this cautious approach. It served them well, because in good time they came to the origin of the tunnel system. The gretchin had used the ruined shell of a manufactorum northwest of Ft. Dorn to disguise their operations, tunneling out of its basement over long weeks towards the Imperial fortifications and trench system. The few gretchin guards at the tunnel mouth, like their comrades before, were distracted and silently overwhelmed in seconds. With Grim's insight they quickly deployed theie melta charges to the support columns on the wall, daisy chaining the ork mines to them in order to give the explosion an extra kick. They set the timers for 5 minutes, and hurried back into the tunnels.
Following the same pattern of tunnel navigation they had before, the party made its way back through the dank and claustrophobic maze that the greenskins had excavated. Reports of the battle in the bunker seemed to have also made their way to the orks, for twice they were forced to secret themselves in side passages as the heavy boots of ork reinforcements ran down the tunnels towards the command bunker. Further slowing heir progress were the multiple land mines and traps. Grim, knowing the orks were attracted to battle like moths to a flame, advised that they maintain this cautious approach. It served them well, because in good time they came to the origin of the tunnel system. The gretchin had used the ruined shell of a manufactorum northwest of Ft. Dorn to disguise their operations, tunneling out of its basement over long weeks towards the Imperial fortifications and trench system. The few gretchin guards at the tunnel mouth, like their comrades before, were distracted and silently overwhelmed in seconds. With Grim's insight they quickly deployed theie melta charges to the support columns on the wall, daisy chaining the ork mines to them in order to give the explosion an extra kick. They set the timers for 5 minutes, and hurried back into the tunnels.
They had made good time through the tunnels, but even so the shock wave of the detonation swept dirt and debris past them at hurricane force in the confined space. An ominous roll of thunder followed, raining dirt and debris down onto them from above as the ground beneath them shook in fury. The tunnel was collapsing! Abandoning all caution they hurled themselves forward in a desperate attempt to outrun the cave in. Guided back along their route unfailingly by Vadik's cyber-hound they rounded turns at breakneck speed, headless of whatever orks may still be in the tunnels, gasping for breath and stumbling over themselves when stones from the ceiling clipped them or the ground shifted beneath their feet. The roared became closer, and closer, and closer. The dim light of the entrance into the barracks basement of Ft. Dorn finally shown through the rain of soil and they hurled themselves into a gasping, sweaty pile atop the cool concrete floor as the last of the tunnel finally submitted to the indomitable will of weight above it, covering them all in one last cloud of dust and grime before the tremors finally ceased.
Clambering up the stairs and out into the assembly yard of the fort, they welcomed the feeling of the sun on their faces and feel of cool air filling their lungs before asking to see the commander again. They had briefly contemplated rest, as their ordeal had left them physically and mentally exhausted, but were determined to make the best use of their available time. The Commissar and Colonel were waiting for them in the command center. Colonel Siduran seemed in a celebratory mood, hastily pouring drink after drink of brown liquor into a canteen cup and slamming it back as he professed his thanks to the party for their assistance. The Commissar, pointedly refusing the proffered refreshment of the commander, seemed as unperturbed and dismissive as before. While Siduran was amenable to allowing the party to see the prisoners as a reward, the Commissar insisted that they be allowed to do so only once ALL of their objectives had been met. The conversation turned heated, and it was not until Grim (his patience easily spent with the intransigent man) threatened to convert the man to a servitor for his impertinence that the Colonel finally remembered the duties of his station and intervened. He struck upon a compromise, as the party had achieved two of their assigned tasks they would be allowed to interview two of the soldiers. As they had not completed all of their tasks, they would not be allowed access to the others, and the two they did choose to speak with would remain in custody until all their objectives had been accomplished. The party consented to the compromise, the Commissar merely sniffed in deference to the Colonel and left the room. With a sigh the Colonel slumped back into his chair and informed them that the soldiers they had identified were in adjacent holding cells.
The first of the penal guardsman they interviewed was a slight woman who would possess youthful beauty if not for the haunted look in her eyes as she stared at the strange assortment of personages that entered the room in a mixture of fear and apprehension. Her name was Daria Martin, and she had been the communications officer on-board the Sibelius. Few traces of her discipline or noble bearing as an officer remained, her experiences on Orion 9 had scarred her deeply, and she had developed a chronic tremor as her eyes darting nervously around the room. When the situation concerning her reprieve was explained she stumbled through a recollection of what happened aboard her old ship leading to their apprehension by the Inquisition. She remembered that they had dropped out of Warp routinely for repairs, and that the captain had received an urgent summons to his astropath's quarters. When he reappeared moments later he was visibly shaken, ordered Martin to cut all communications, and then made an emergency Warp jump. Several days later the Sibelius emerged again from the Warp at an unknown point, all Daria could recall was getting a single faint signal from a communications station with an identifier code placing it somewhere in the region of the Koronus Expanse dubbed "Winterscale's Realm." The captain ordered a single torpedo fired at the planet's surface before hastily ordering another jump back into the Warp. Daria swore she could recall no more, but the others sensed there may be more. Cassius, appealing to the disgraced officer's sense of duty to her royal blood, convinced her to see through her fear and recall any other details, at which time she stated that someone on the bridge had commented that they were in orbit of a deathworld after leaving the Warp. Before leaving the interview room, she begged them to ensure that someone named "Singh" not be allowed near her if he was also to be granted a reprieve.
The second guardsmen, Hix Karera, was a hulking man with a shaved head. He was covered in naval tattoos, and seemed more concerned with a persistent itch from the injection ports of the injection collar he wore than any offer of reprieve the party were willing to give. He had been the gunnery commander of the torpedo bay which had fired upon the surface of the deathworld that Daria Martin referenced. Unlike the skittish communications officer, Hix seemed to have resigned himself to his fate in the penal regiment. In exchange for his information he initially insisted only that the party procure a couple hits of Frenzon for him for his next firefight. It took skillful persuasion of the taciturn and irritable man by Vadik and Merrick to convince him that his assistance could see a more bountiful haul of stims than just a couple of measly doses of an aggression enhancer. In the end he related gruffly the events of the torpedo bay. The captain had hurried down to his station and ordered everyone except for Hix and a handful of servitors out, and then he instructed Hix to disarm on of the torpedos by pulling it's initiation system. In its place the captain placed a strange wooden box covered in strange symbols, which Hix drew with his finger in the dust covering the concrete floor. Hix affirmed that this had been the torpedo which had been fired onto the planet, and commented that it had been launched at an oblique angle from which it could feasibly have survived impact with the surface. He also warned the party that if they intended to retrieve whatever was in that torpedo that they should exert extreme caution, as the explosive payload of the torpedo was still present even if the initiator had been removed.
With their interview time concluded, the commissar ordered them out of the detention cells and they convened back at their Taurox. They discussed the risks of each of their remaining objectives, and concluded that with the immediate threat of the gretchin sappers dealt with they should focus their efforts on the artillery guns which had been pounding Ft. Dorn relentlessly. First, though, they needed rest. Their psyker was exhausted from his efforts to subdue Boltcutta, and they had various minor injuries to tend to. Though the clock was ticking on their berthing at Gloriana Spaceport, they chanced taking 12 hours to rest as well as they could. When night came again, they set out north towards the artillery positions. The guns had been captured by the orks months earlier and, figuring that the orks would not have the tactical acumen to reposition them, Grim sifted through the files he had acquired for any intelligence on the layout of the position. If they were where the Imperials had last emplaced them, then the guns were roughly two miles north, upland on a sweeping ridge which overlooked the fort. With the gretchin spotters still calling fire from their manufactorum positions to the west, they opted for a night assault on the objective to reduce the chance of being caught in an artillery barrage in open country. Luckily, the orks had expended munitions so freely that the entire plain north of the fort was a checkered mass of shell holes, some big enough for them to hide the entire Taurox in. After several laborious hours of planning they struck out north from the train gate.
Grim and Cassius had plotted a course two thirds of the way to the fort using the largest of the artillery shell holes as staging point. They would scurry from hole to hole, stage their armored vehicle, and attempt to sneak up to the artillery and catch the orks there off guard. The plan, for the most part, was a success all the way to the staging point. Only twice did the spotters seem to catch sight of something moving in the kill zone, and the party made it all the way to their staging point with only Aurora suffering minor wounds from shrapnel as she tried to call directions through the ruined countryside to Cassius. On foot, however, things were quite different. The Taurox would be too loud to bring for the last mile, so they had to traverse the distance between shell craters on foot. It was slow, and the spotters seemed to suspect that something was amiss and sent a rain of steel upon them relentlessly. After a particularly ferocious barrage which nearly ended half of the party, Vadik and Merrick chose to split from the party and assault the objective from the southwest while their compatriots approached from the southeast. Though they had suffered minor wounds, and the orks on the ridge had been roused by the repeated strikes close to their position, they arrived at their final assault positions at the closest shell craters to the artillery site that offered them concealment.
Vadik and Merrick took up overwatch positions, calling out the patterns of the three pairs of ork sentries who were patrolling the ridge. They still could not see more of the artillery site than the barrels of the massive guns given the uphill approach, so Manus and the other team struck on an audacious plan. Manus would conceal them from the orks with his powers, and they would strike out towards the first fighting position available. Manus had been trained to support IG units, and vaguely recalled the standardized layout for gun and wire emplacements. If they were spotted on approach Vadik and Merrick would attempt to engage and draw off the orks while the other team finished their approach. Manus channeled the Warp, and reached out to the minds of the orks on patrol as he and his friends stepped over the edge of the crater. It was as if their existence was wiped from the orks minds, in their bored state of disinterest they were easily manipulated by the psyker's powers. Sure enough, his recollection had been right. The artillery guns had been arranged in a diamond, huge stacks of ammunition piled beside them haphazardly with almost comically oversized mounds of spent shells to the other side. Surrounding the gun was a rectangle of coiled razor wire supported at four corners by machine gun bunkers. The party reached the first bunker just as Manus' ability to keep their presence hidden from the orks wore too thin to maintain further.
The engagement began with Vadik and Merrick drawing the orks attention downhill, dropping two of the sentries with precise shots. The remaining patrols took off towards the sound of gunfire at a dead sprint, and the artillery position came alive with confused and infuriated shouting. Cassius and Aurora leaned through the portholes of the bunker and quickly dispatched two gretchin within before they could reach their weapons as Grim, Wu-10, and Manus began exchanging fire with the orks manning the artillery pieces. In their confusion the remaining orks did not last long. The patrols were cut apart before they could reach Merrick and Vadik, and the orks manning the artillery lacked the coordination to deal with such a sudden assault in an organized manner. Howling gretchin, gripped by fear, ran about in a uncoordinated frenzy looking for a warboy to guide them. When Grim lined up his Point-to-Point Quantum Entanglement Relay and left three of the four remaining orks a smoking ruin it seemed the day had been won. That was, at least, until they heard an ominous roar cut through the night air from the ragged command tent on the west side of the position.
Ripping out of the side of the tent was the largest ork any of them (even Grim) had ever personally seen, a gargantuan green nightmare of riveted steel and coiled muscle with a shoota the size of an anti-tank rifle in one hand and a cruel bladed pincer claw in place of the other. It was Gron da Urthbreaka, one of the great warbosses of Orion 9, and it stood over ten feet tall and gazed with burning red eyes at them. It a drew a deep breath, and then bellowed for the WAAAGGHH! At once, every remaining ork and gretchin froze, turned towards the humans who had dared to challenge their master, and lurched into action. A wave of gretchin, thirty at least, poured from the command tent and bunkers and clawed over themselves to be the first to sink their blades into pink flesh. Thinking quickly as the horde descended towards the one opening in the mined wire obstacle that surrounded the guns, Manus summoned a blazing wall of Warp fire which cut across the break in the wire. The gretchins, headless of the danger while in the grip of the incandescent fury of the WAAGGH!, flooded into the flames. Two surviving orks from the last artillery piece began to advance towards the back of the command tent, intent on flushing the party out from behind the bunker they were using as cover. Cassius and Aurora easily brought the first low with a pair of shots to the head, but the other seemed immune to the repeated holes the lasguns left in it. And as the last of the gretchin succumbed to the flames, the warboss snorted in derision (at his lackey's stupidity and the ineffectual gun fire of the humans in equal measure) and strode directly towards the wire separating him from his opponents.
Wu-10 saw the beast's intent clearly, and as it bent down and grasped the wire in its claw he grabbed it himself and discharged both of his augmetic shock fists. The output stunned the gargantuan ork, but only for a second. Gritting its tusks and shaking off the shock, it tore the wire from the ground. The emplaced mines detonated as their trembler wires triggered, showering the party in shrapnel and earth. With the wire gone, Gron resumed his inexorable advance. It walked almost dismissively through a withering hail of las fire and small arms shots, disdainful in its pride for the meager attempts of the party to bring him low. Sensing his master was in danger Muffin, the hulking combat servitor, strode from Grim's side towards the warboss and began to hammer at its plated surface with its reinforced fists. The servitor looked like a child trying to fight off an angry parent, and the warboss thrust its massive pincer claw at the servitor's neck with the intent of severing it clean from its shoulders. To everyone's surprise, especially Gron, Muffin caught the blades of the pincer in mid-air, exerting all of it's pneumatic supports and vat-grown muscle to hold the weapon fast before it. Gron, infuriated by the impudence of the servitor, drove forward to finish the blow so strongly that the massive servitor's feet dug furrows in the ground beneath him as he was driven back..
Vadik and Merrick bounded forward, the former dropping to a knee to send an AP round screaming from his rifle into the monster's side. The latter was less fortunate, as Merrick pulled the trigger on the ork shoota he had commandeered his grip slipped and the intense recoil blew the bulky pistol clear out of his hand as a bone in his wrist cracked audibly. Aurora punded shot after shot into the orks head while he was held fast, but could not seem to do more than char the armor surrounding it's horrific visage. Wu-10, however, noticed something. While the majority of the ork warboss was sheathed in rough plates of thick metal, its elbow joint above the claw was unprotected. He bounded forward, slammed the blade of his chainsword against the exposed green flesh, and drove the chewing teeth deep into the joint. The ork howled in pain and rage, and his advance stopped dead. Grim, seeing his Skitarii's insightful tactic, sent his remaining self-guided munitions streaking into the elbow joint, where they detonated with muffled crumps that opened channels through which Wu-10's blade bit even deeper. With a quick blurt of binary Grim relayed a single command to Muffin, and the servitor braced himself before twisting and tearing back on the claw. With a snap of tendons and torn green flesh the claw was torn away from the warboss' elbow entirely.
If such a grievous injury was expected to subdue him, Gron would not oblige the party. Instead of clutching the ragged stump or staring in disbelief, the hulk became even more enraged. He spun at blinding speed, set the barrel of his shoota at point blank range against Wu-10's storm shield, and sent a hardened round the size of a grown man's fist screaming through both the shield and cyborg behind it. The Skitarii's body was blown back over ten feet, finally rolling to a stop in a ruined heap of exposed wires and red flesh. Muffin dropped the claw and clumsily struck again at the ork, this time his flailing, quite luckily, deflecting the barrel of the shootah as it spun towards him. The round flew off between Aurora and Cassius, passing so close that the displaced air from its passage buffeted them like a hurricane wind as the deadly steel screamed past. The party, however, regrouped at the sight of their fallen comrade. Cassius finally brought the last ork gunner low, amazed at the sheer fury which seemed to keep it alive as he emptied half of a magazine into it. Turning to the warboss he and his friends knew that with a weakness exposed they could bring the creature low. They collectively hammered shot after shot into the exposed gaps in its armor, punching a dozen rounds or more deep into its flesh as it struggled bring its remaining weapon to bear around the windmilling servitor. Finally, after Aurora managed to blow off it's protective face shielding, Vadik saw his chance. He wound the sling of his rifle tightly around his arm, blew out all of his breath, and set his sights on Gron's temple as his finger pulled the trigger steadily backwards and sent a round spiraling through the mass of green ichor it called a brain.
The warboss did not so much die as simply stop moving. It gave no final cry of hate, or curse them with its last breath. The fire in its eyes simply died, and it slumped in its carriage of riveted steel and stood there as the warm summer breeze shifted the grass around it. Oddly, the weight of the armor itself kept the monster's form upright, and it seemed to all the world to simply have fallen asleep standing up. With their hearts still pounding in the chests, and the pain of their wounds finally creeping through the adrenaline, the party spared one moment of relief at their victory before recalling the fate of their fallen comrade. Aurora rushed over, using her narthecium gauntlet to punch an injection of sanguine stabilizer through the Wu-10's subdermal armor. He was alive, but unconscious and critically wounded. She cried out for her friends to help her as the first faint trace of dawn began to light the horizon.
The second guardsmen, Hix Karera, was a hulking man with a shaved head. He was covered in naval tattoos, and seemed more concerned with a persistent itch from the injection ports of the injection collar he wore than any offer of reprieve the party were willing to give. He had been the gunnery commander of the torpedo bay which had fired upon the surface of the deathworld that Daria Martin referenced. Unlike the skittish communications officer, Hix seemed to have resigned himself to his fate in the penal regiment. In exchange for his information he initially insisted only that the party procure a couple hits of Frenzon for him for his next firefight. It took skillful persuasion of the taciturn and irritable man by Vadik and Merrick to convince him that his assistance could see a more bountiful haul of stims than just a couple of measly doses of an aggression enhancer. In the end he related gruffly the events of the torpedo bay. The captain had hurried down to his station and ordered everyone except for Hix and a handful of servitors out, and then he instructed Hix to disarm on of the torpedos by pulling it's initiation system. In its place the captain placed a strange wooden box covered in strange symbols, which Hix drew with his finger in the dust covering the concrete floor. Hix affirmed that this had been the torpedo which had been fired onto the planet, and commented that it had been launched at an oblique angle from which it could feasibly have survived impact with the surface. He also warned the party that if they intended to retrieve whatever was in that torpedo that they should exert extreme caution, as the explosive payload of the torpedo was still present even if the initiator had been removed.
With their interview time concluded, the commissar ordered them out of the detention cells and they convened back at their Taurox. They discussed the risks of each of their remaining objectives, and concluded that with the immediate threat of the gretchin sappers dealt with they should focus their efforts on the artillery guns which had been pounding Ft. Dorn relentlessly. First, though, they needed rest. Their psyker was exhausted from his efforts to subdue Boltcutta, and they had various minor injuries to tend to. Though the clock was ticking on their berthing at Gloriana Spaceport, they chanced taking 12 hours to rest as well as they could. When night came again, they set out north towards the artillery positions. The guns had been captured by the orks months earlier and, figuring that the orks would not have the tactical acumen to reposition them, Grim sifted through the files he had acquired for any intelligence on the layout of the position. If they were where the Imperials had last emplaced them, then the guns were roughly two miles north, upland on a sweeping ridge which overlooked the fort. With the gretchin spotters still calling fire from their manufactorum positions to the west, they opted for a night assault on the objective to reduce the chance of being caught in an artillery barrage in open country. Luckily, the orks had expended munitions so freely that the entire plain north of the fort was a checkered mass of shell holes, some big enough for them to hide the entire Taurox in. After several laborious hours of planning they struck out north from the train gate.
Part 2 - The Guns of Ft. Dorn
Grim and Cassius had plotted a course two thirds of the way to the fort using the largest of the artillery shell holes as staging point. They would scurry from hole to hole, stage their armored vehicle, and attempt to sneak up to the artillery and catch the orks there off guard. The plan, for the most part, was a success all the way to the staging point. Only twice did the spotters seem to catch sight of something moving in the kill zone, and the party made it all the way to their staging point with only Aurora suffering minor wounds from shrapnel as she tried to call directions through the ruined countryside to Cassius. On foot, however, things were quite different. The Taurox would be too loud to bring for the last mile, so they had to traverse the distance between shell craters on foot. It was slow, and the spotters seemed to suspect that something was amiss and sent a rain of steel upon them relentlessly. After a particularly ferocious barrage which nearly ended half of the party, Vadik and Merrick chose to split from the party and assault the objective from the southwest while their compatriots approached from the southeast. Though they had suffered minor wounds, and the orks on the ridge had been roused by the repeated strikes close to their position, they arrived at their final assault positions at the closest shell craters to the artillery site that offered them concealment.
Vadik and Merrick took up overwatch positions, calling out the patterns of the three pairs of ork sentries who were patrolling the ridge. They still could not see more of the artillery site than the barrels of the massive guns given the uphill approach, so Manus and the other team struck on an audacious plan. Manus would conceal them from the orks with his powers, and they would strike out towards the first fighting position available. Manus had been trained to support IG units, and vaguely recalled the standardized layout for gun and wire emplacements. If they were spotted on approach Vadik and Merrick would attempt to engage and draw off the orks while the other team finished their approach. Manus channeled the Warp, and reached out to the minds of the orks on patrol as he and his friends stepped over the edge of the crater. It was as if their existence was wiped from the orks minds, in their bored state of disinterest they were easily manipulated by the psyker's powers. Sure enough, his recollection had been right. The artillery guns had been arranged in a diamond, huge stacks of ammunition piled beside them haphazardly with almost comically oversized mounds of spent shells to the other side. Surrounding the gun was a rectangle of coiled razor wire supported at four corners by machine gun bunkers. The party reached the first bunker just as Manus' ability to keep their presence hidden from the orks wore too thin to maintain further.
The engagement began with Vadik and Merrick drawing the orks attention downhill, dropping two of the sentries with precise shots. The remaining patrols took off towards the sound of gunfire at a dead sprint, and the artillery position came alive with confused and infuriated shouting. Cassius and Aurora leaned through the portholes of the bunker and quickly dispatched two gretchin within before they could reach their weapons as Grim, Wu-10, and Manus began exchanging fire with the orks manning the artillery pieces. In their confusion the remaining orks did not last long. The patrols were cut apart before they could reach Merrick and Vadik, and the orks manning the artillery lacked the coordination to deal with such a sudden assault in an organized manner. Howling gretchin, gripped by fear, ran about in a uncoordinated frenzy looking for a warboy to guide them. When Grim lined up his Point-to-Point Quantum Entanglement Relay and left three of the four remaining orks a smoking ruin it seemed the day had been won. That was, at least, until they heard an ominous roar cut through the night air from the ragged command tent on the west side of the position.
Ripping out of the side of the tent was the largest ork any of them (even Grim) had ever personally seen, a gargantuan green nightmare of riveted steel and coiled muscle with a shoota the size of an anti-tank rifle in one hand and a cruel bladed pincer claw in place of the other. It was Gron da Urthbreaka, one of the great warbosses of Orion 9, and it stood over ten feet tall and gazed with burning red eyes at them. It a drew a deep breath, and then bellowed for the WAAAGGHH! At once, every remaining ork and gretchin froze, turned towards the humans who had dared to challenge their master, and lurched into action. A wave of gretchin, thirty at least, poured from the command tent and bunkers and clawed over themselves to be the first to sink their blades into pink flesh. Thinking quickly as the horde descended towards the one opening in the mined wire obstacle that surrounded the guns, Manus summoned a blazing wall of Warp fire which cut across the break in the wire. The gretchins, headless of the danger while in the grip of the incandescent fury of the WAAGGH!, flooded into the flames. Two surviving orks from the last artillery piece began to advance towards the back of the command tent, intent on flushing the party out from behind the bunker they were using as cover. Cassius and Aurora easily brought the first low with a pair of shots to the head, but the other seemed immune to the repeated holes the lasguns left in it. And as the last of the gretchin succumbed to the flames, the warboss snorted in derision (at his lackey's stupidity and the ineffectual gun fire of the humans in equal measure) and strode directly towards the wire separating him from his opponents.
Wu-10 saw the beast's intent clearly, and as it bent down and grasped the wire in its claw he grabbed it himself and discharged both of his augmetic shock fists. The output stunned the gargantuan ork, but only for a second. Gritting its tusks and shaking off the shock, it tore the wire from the ground. The emplaced mines detonated as their trembler wires triggered, showering the party in shrapnel and earth. With the wire gone, Gron resumed his inexorable advance. It walked almost dismissively through a withering hail of las fire and small arms shots, disdainful in its pride for the meager attempts of the party to bring him low. Sensing his master was in danger Muffin, the hulking combat servitor, strode from Grim's side towards the warboss and began to hammer at its plated surface with its reinforced fists. The servitor looked like a child trying to fight off an angry parent, and the warboss thrust its massive pincer claw at the servitor's neck with the intent of severing it clean from its shoulders. To everyone's surprise, especially Gron, Muffin caught the blades of the pincer in mid-air, exerting all of it's pneumatic supports and vat-grown muscle to hold the weapon fast before it. Gron, infuriated by the impudence of the servitor, drove forward to finish the blow so strongly that the massive servitor's feet dug furrows in the ground beneath him as he was driven back..
Vadik and Merrick bounded forward, the former dropping to a knee to send an AP round screaming from his rifle into the monster's side. The latter was less fortunate, as Merrick pulled the trigger on the ork shoota he had commandeered his grip slipped and the intense recoil blew the bulky pistol clear out of his hand as a bone in his wrist cracked audibly. Aurora punded shot after shot into the orks head while he was held fast, but could not seem to do more than char the armor surrounding it's horrific visage. Wu-10, however, noticed something. While the majority of the ork warboss was sheathed in rough plates of thick metal, its elbow joint above the claw was unprotected. He bounded forward, slammed the blade of his chainsword against the exposed green flesh, and drove the chewing teeth deep into the joint. The ork howled in pain and rage, and his advance stopped dead. Grim, seeing his Skitarii's insightful tactic, sent his remaining self-guided munitions streaking into the elbow joint, where they detonated with muffled crumps that opened channels through which Wu-10's blade bit even deeper. With a quick blurt of binary Grim relayed a single command to Muffin, and the servitor braced himself before twisting and tearing back on the claw. With a snap of tendons and torn green flesh the claw was torn away from the warboss' elbow entirely.
If such a grievous injury was expected to subdue him, Gron would not oblige the party. Instead of clutching the ragged stump or staring in disbelief, the hulk became even more enraged. He spun at blinding speed, set the barrel of his shoota at point blank range against Wu-10's storm shield, and sent a hardened round the size of a grown man's fist screaming through both the shield and cyborg behind it. The Skitarii's body was blown back over ten feet, finally rolling to a stop in a ruined heap of exposed wires and red flesh. Muffin dropped the claw and clumsily struck again at the ork, this time his flailing, quite luckily, deflecting the barrel of the shootah as it spun towards him. The round flew off between Aurora and Cassius, passing so close that the displaced air from its passage buffeted them like a hurricane wind as the deadly steel screamed past. The party, however, regrouped at the sight of their fallen comrade. Cassius finally brought the last ork gunner low, amazed at the sheer fury which seemed to keep it alive as he emptied half of a magazine into it. Turning to the warboss he and his friends knew that with a weakness exposed they could bring the creature low. They collectively hammered shot after shot into the exposed gaps in its armor, punching a dozen rounds or more deep into its flesh as it struggled bring its remaining weapon to bear around the windmilling servitor. Finally, after Aurora managed to blow off it's protective face shielding, Vadik saw his chance. He wound the sling of his rifle tightly around his arm, blew out all of his breath, and set his sights on Gron's temple as his finger pulled the trigger steadily backwards and sent a round spiraling through the mass of green ichor it called a brain.
The warboss did not so much die as simply stop moving. It gave no final cry of hate, or curse them with its last breath. The fire in its eyes simply died, and it slumped in its carriage of riveted steel and stood there as the warm summer breeze shifted the grass around it. Oddly, the weight of the armor itself kept the monster's form upright, and it seemed to all the world to simply have fallen asleep standing up. With their hearts still pounding in the chests, and the pain of their wounds finally creeping through the adrenaline, the party spared one moment of relief at their victory before recalling the fate of their fallen comrade. Aurora rushed over, using her narthecium gauntlet to punch an injection of sanguine stabilizer through the Wu-10's subdermal armor. He was alive, but unconscious and critically wounded. She cried out for her friends to help her as the first faint trace of dawn began to light the horizon.