C. Goto - Dawn of War

As the orks closed, Guardsman Larius could see the hungry saliva dripping between the monstrous teeth of the orks. He could see their tiny, beady red eyes burning with a deep, thirsty malice. And he could smell the gallons of toxic sweat and fresh blood that poured off the huge beasts as they rumbled unstoppably forward.

Larius looked down at the rifle in his hands and then along the line of his fellow Guardsmen, each with their lasguns at their waists sending delicate javelins of fire into the rampaging advance. He looked back up at the thundering figures of the orks, as they snarled and wailed towards him.

“Hold the line!” came Brom’s voice from behind him. “In the name of the Emperor, you will not falter!”

Another weak cheer arose from the line of Guardsmen and an auto-cannon team opened up with a volley of heavy fire, shredding a knot of orks as they leapt the final few metres that separated them from their prey.

Larius turned away from the orks and ran. He ran like he had never run before, driven on by abject terror. He threw his rifle aside and pumped frantically with his arms, trying to drive himself faster and faster through sheer will power.

A faint piercing pain brought him up sharply, skidding to a halt on the rockcrete deck. His hand clutched at his chest in a reflex action and he looked down. Blood seeped out from around his fingers, trickling down over the blues and blacks of his uniform. He carefully lifted his hand away and looked at the gaping wound with something approaching puzzlement. As his legs gave way, he slumped down onto his knees, noticing the polished boots that stood in front of him for the first time. With the last of his strength, he looked up at the hardened face of Colonel Brom whose pistol was still smoking. The last words that Guardsman Larius heard in this world were spat at him by his commanding officer.

“Coward.”

“Cowards!” yelled Carus Brom as a series of Guardsmen peeled away from the front line and ran. He fired some carefully placed rounds into the backs of the traitors as they fled. They flung up their arms and crashed into the hard-deck, skidding into death on their knees like the grovelling worms that they were.

“You will fight and die, or you will just die. It’s up to you,” he shouted at a group of men who had turned away from the fighting just in front of him. Wild panic danced across their faces as they struggled to understand their options. They twitched and hesitated, terrified of the horrors behind them but deeply shamed by the man before them.

“You are Tartarans, damn you! Turn and fight!”

One of the men, Guardsman Ckrius, suddenly snapped to attention and threw a crisp salute to Brom. Then he racked his shotgun and turned, screaming and firing madly into the fray. The rest of the group followed suit, inspired by the reckless bravery of their comrade and the steely gaze of their colonel.

But Brom couldn’t hold the line together by himself and he was not willing to spend all of his ammunition killing Guardsmen when there were orks to slay. Clutches of Tartarans turned and fled back into the relative safety of the spaceport, which was now spotted with mortar fire from hastily erected ork emplacements in the combat line.

Stepping up alongside Ckrius, Brom threw his officer’s pistol to the ground and snatched up a fallen hellgun that must have fallen from the hands of one of the ill-fated storm troopers that had tried to secure this position on their own. Damn glory boys, cursed Brom.

“For Tartarus and the Emperor!” he yelled as he sprayed las-blasts out into the wave of snarling green that roared straight towards him.

“WAAAAAAGH!” bellowed Orkamungus from the rear of the attack, slapping Gruntz across the jaw and knocking him clear of the wartrukk. The warboss pointed up at the sky over the spaceport and roared again, reaching down from his command post and grabbing Gruntz around the neck. The kommando thrashed in resistance, scraping at the warboss with his claws and hissing into his face. But Orkamungus shook him violently by the neck, beating him against the side of the wartrukk until he stopped kicking. Then he lifted Gruntz into the air with one immense arm, stuffing his snarling face towards the sky above the battle for the spaceport.

Crumpling to the ground with a resounding crash, Gruntz muttered under his breath, spitting globules of saliva and blood from his jagged mouth. “You’ze da boss,” he spluttered, pulling himself to his feet and thudding off to join the rest of his kommandos.

Sergeant Katrn was sprinting across the spaceport, flanked on both sides by members of his Armoured Fists squad-a Tartarans team usually based in a Chimera transport. They had broken away from the fighting line when an ork had smashed down through their mortar emplacement with its axe and then ripped the weapon’s crew into pieces with its power claw. Colonel Brom had been nowhere to be seen, and so Katrn had bolted, bringing the remnants of his squad with him.

The Armoured Fists ducked and wove their way through the hail of ork bombs and mortar shells, striving to reach the flimsy cover of the spaceport’s buildings. Ordnance pounded into the ground all around them, blasting craters into the hard-deck and spraying lethal shards of rockcrete through the fleeing troopers. As one, they dived for the temporary cover of a gaping crater, rolling into a false sense of relief and security. Impacts rained down all around them, shaking the ground itself.

Katrn peered over the edge of the crater, back towards the chaotic scenes on the front line. The Tartarans were holding their ground, fighting with frantic desperation against the pressing, green muscle of the ork rampage. The greenskins were on top of the infantry now, hacking indiscriminately with their brute choppas, slashing in every direction and pounding the wounded under foot. The infantry were struggling with their bayonets and swords, thrusting at the immense creatures without much hope but with insane determination. Banks of hardened veterans had formed disciplined firing lines, sending salvoes of las-fire punching into knots of orks.

A squad of enormous, overly-muscled ogryns was pouring out of a Chimera transport and laying into the orks with their ripper guns and then using them as clubs to smash the greenskins when the range closed.

Striding out of one of the hangars on the far side of the spaceport came Mavo’s Sentinel squadron. Sergeant Mavo took the lead, stamping down with the huge legs of the armoured bipedal walker, squashing an ork instantly, and then opening up with the nose-mounted autocannon. He was supported on both sides by Catachan-pattern Sentinels that spewed chemical fire from their heavy flamers as they stalked into the mist of the battle.

Tucked away in relative safety at the rear of the ork rampage, Orkamungus cackled an inchoate noise to Fartzek and the stormboyz. He was jumping up and down and pointing towards the three large metal stomping machines that were laying into the orks at the front of the crowd. Under his immense feet, the wartrukk was gradually crumpling, and one of the axles snapped. Two stompers were spilling fire over groups of shoota boyz, and one of them was rattling cannon shells across the battle field, shredding the stikk bommas in the heart of the gaggle.

A glut of activity surrounded Fartzek as his mob responded to the cries from their warboss. Four of them held him down while another strapped a large rocket to his back. They snarled and slapped at him as a mekboy riveted the fixings into his leathery skin.

When they were done, Fartzek climbed clumsily to his feet, threw a thunderous punch into the face of the mekboy, and then fired the rocket. The ignition incinerated a gretchin that was creeping away from the mob under cover of the flight preparations. It squealed briefly and then collapsed into a pile of ashes.