The impact came three seconds too early.
Not that anyone aboard the drop pod had been counting down. Troubax had sung out the landing coordinates—something between an Imperial hymn and a drinking song that existed in no known musical key—and Maddog had eventually stopped listening and started stroking his flamethrower instead. But even by the generous standards of the Dumbhammers, it was obvious: this was not the planned landing zone.
The pod bored through something that sounded like metal, then something that sounded like wood, then something that squeaked, and finally came to a jolting stop that tore Captain Ace from his restraints and hurled him across the interior. Two hundred twenty centimeters of ceramite armor slammed into the opposite wall. The wall lost.
“Contact,” Logen said dryly.
Ace hauled himself upright. His helmet had a new dent to go with the seventeen old ones. “Where are we?”
Troubax opened his mouth.
“Don’t sing,” four voices said at once.
Troubax closed his mouth. Then he opened it again, visibly straining to speak the words instead of singing them. “According to the coordinates... uh... thirteen kilometers north of the target zone.”
“Thirteen kilometers,” Ace repeated.
“Give or take.”
Maddog brushed dust from his shoulder armor and peered through the crack in the outer hull. For a moment, he said nothing. Then he turned around, wearing an expression Logen would have classified as diagnostically concerning if he hadn’t known him so well. It was joy.
“Boys,” Maddog said. “We landed right in the middle of an Ork base.”
Silence.
Max reflexively reached for a grenade. Six hands grabbed his arm.
“Keep. The grenade. In its place,” Athras hissed.
“I was just—”
“No.”
Ace shoved past Maddog and looked through the crack. Outside lay an Ork base straight out of a textbook—if there were textbooks about Ork bases, and if Orks could read. Scrap barricades, welded-together vehicles, junk watchtowers, and everywhere—in heaps, in pits, on platforms, beneath overturned tanks—Orks. Hundreds of them. Maybe a thousand.
They were asleep.
The snoring was a deep, collective rumble that made the ground vibrate. Here and there, a green hand twitched. One Ork rolled over in his sleep and smacked another in the face. The other grunted but didn’t wake up.
“They’re asleep,” News whispered. His gaze was already sweeping over the base, cataloging, evaluating, estimating. “Is that a battle tank over there? Looks like it used to belong to the Astra Militarum. They probably don’t need it anymore.”
“News.”
“I’m just saying.”
Logen stepped beside Ace and studied the scene with the clinical calm of a man who had stopped being surprised by anything. “We crashed a drop pod through the roof of an Ork base, and nobody woke up.”
“Orks sleep deeply,” Ace said.
“Not that deeply.”
“Apparently they do.”
A faint metallic whir sounded behind them. Rick unfolded himself from the corner of the pod where he had endured the landing without moving. Two hundred eighty centimeters of living metal, green eyes glowing in the darkness, and a Gauss weapon humming softly as if it were looking forward to something.
“Rick,” Ace said. “Quiet.”
The hum grew quieter. Not silent, but quieter. Rick understood orders. Usually. In his own way.
“So,” Maddog said, loading his flamethrower. The click was as loud as a gunshot in the silence. Everyone flinched. Outside, an Ork grunted, rolled over, and went back to sleep. “Cookout?”
“Not yet,” Ace said. He looked around. Seven Space Marines and a Necron in a wrecked drop pod, right in the middle of an Ork base, surrounded by a sleeping army. No contact with the ship. No retreat plan. No reinforcements.
A normal captain would have analyzed the situation, planned a tactical withdrawal, and set priorities.
Ace was not a normal captain.
“Don’t ask,” he said, drawing his weapon. “Start shooting.”
Troubax hummed the opening bars of something that was supposed to be a battle hymn. Logen put a hand over his mouth. Maddog grinned. Max reached for a grenade, and this time nobody stopped him because they were all too busy forcing the hatches open.
Athras paused. “Are there civilians here?”
“It’s an Ork base, Athras.”
“You never know.”
Ace kicked the hatch open. The metal shrieked. Somewhere in the base, an Ork lifted his head.
And then everything kicked off.