Grey Knights: Sons of Titan by David Annandale

Author:David Annandale
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2015-09-08T16:13:46+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

ARRIVALS

The orks had boarding torpedoes. They were crude devices. Three of them hit the outer hull of the landing bay like rockets. They punched ragged holes in the ship, and it was the Scouring Light’s own defences that spread foam sealant over the tears, keeping the atmosphere from howling out into the void. The nose of one of the torpedoes was crushed by the impact. No orks emerged. The other two disgorged forty of the brutes into the landing bay.

Brauner had thought he was done with the greenskins when the Stormraven took him away from Squire’s Rest. He had been in a kind of limbo since arriving on the Scouring Light, bereft of official duty, help­ing with the maintenance in the launch bay, waiting for the unknowable warriors to decide his fate. Now it turned out that the orks were not done with him. It seemed they missed him. That was what he told himself, a bad joke to boost his bravado as war came for him again.

Brauner was in the bay with a few dozen of Orbiana’s warrior acolytes. The Grey Knights had taken the weapons and armour they had brought over from the Tyndaris and were stationed on the bridge. One of their number, Warheit, had taken the Harrower out of the Scouring Light to harry the ork ships that tried to close with the sloop.

These were good measures. But they would not be enough. Brauner didn’t know how many vessels the orks had brought to the battle. He didn’t have to. The orks always came in numbers. They would overwhelm the defences, and they would be in the ship. There was no way of defending every point of entry. The Space Marines had the ship’s most vital point. The landing bay also had strategic value.

The Inquisition forces were better armed than the settlers. They had armour. They had youth. They had training and fanaticism. Any one of them might, in time, become as formidable as Orbiana. Brauner didn’t think they would last more than a few minutes. The one thing they didn’t have was leadership. No one knew where either inquisitor was. Orbiana’s absence hurt the morale of her troops.

He couldn’t understand why they were making a stand. Defeat was inevitable. If the Grey Knights and the Inquisition wanted the Scouring Light to survive, they should be racing for the system’s Man­deville point.

The decision wasn’t his; his decision was the duty to fight for as long as he could. So he fought. Solid barricades had been set up between the outer doors and the exit to the rest of the ship. Brauner rested the barrel of his lasrifle on the top of the barricade and fired. He had been offered one of the kroot long guns and had refused, preferring the sanctity of Imperial workmanship.

He and the acolytes hit the orks with a concentrated barrage. They took down the first few to emerge from the torpedoes. The others came running. Brauner saw the distance between the barricades and the orks diminish with every pull of the trigger.

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