Faris climbed painfully onto the command deck of the overlord. The ladder was short but difficult with the injuries he had sustained. The dash to the sanctuary of the gunship had cost him dearly. The augmetic that replaced his right leg was now a mangled mess of machine parts from an Ork bolt round. His pistol was lost, a heavy stubber taking it along with most of the hand that held it. He had lost count of the minor wounds he had taken after they hit thirty. His left pauldron was all but gone, the ceremite and plasteel taking the brunt of a grenade at the cost of the armour’s integrity. Shards of it were still embedded in his helm, crazing the optics with cracks and static. He released it with his good hand and dropped it to the deck. He fell heavily into a command throne and began the initiation rituals for the defensive systems. The staccato tattoo of weapons impacts on the hull stopped abruptly as the shields sprang into life. Through the canopy,the energy field was a riot of colours as Ork weaponry impacted and was dispersed. 

Faris breathed deeply for a moment, letting his armour’s pharmacopoeia dispense combat drugs into his system, speeding repairs to his wounded body. He closed his eyes.

His respite was short-lived, as a clamouring on the hull alerted him to the presence of the greenskins. The energy field that had stopped the ballistic weapons had not been tuned to prevent the passing of the slower moving Orks. They scrambled around the hull, searching for points of ingress or for anything they could smash. Faris scanned the console and located the point defence weaponry. Saying a silent prayer to the Emperor and the Omnissiah, Faris depressed the activation rune and was rewarded with the whine and clank of ammunition hoppers loading. Moments later the sponson mounted heavy bolters opened up, automatically targeting any greenskins within their field of fire. The effect was immediate and devastating. The Orks unlucky enough to be caught in the open were shredded. Green flesh, blood and viscera exploding into chaff where the mass-reactives detonated. A few made to run, but were cut down in seconds. A grenade arced up onto the canopy, bounced, and then settled on an armoured stanchion before exploding. The armourglass cracked but held. A hush fell over the battlefield then the Orks began to chant.

‘Gorka! Morka! Gorka! Morka!’

Faris risked a glance through the fractured glass. The faint haze of the energy field still held, light blue in the darkness but tinted purple in places where the protection was weakened by damaged emitters. Further out he could see the Orks, a great mass of green as far as the eye could see. Weapons raised above their heads. Back towards the canyon, past the shattered perimeter wall, he could see the throng beginning to part as something massive waddled into view. A vast pot-bellied construction, fashioned in the image of whatever passed for a greenskin deity. Bristling with enormous weapons it stomped clumsily, crushing Orks or their ragtag vehicles alike if they failed to move out of its way quickly enough. A cannon on its left shoulder spoke and a fuel dump a hundred metres to Faris’s right exploded. The greenskins roared their approval. A clutch of rockets launched from a rack on the construct’s back, corkscrewing wildly into the night air. One smashed into the canyon wall, showering Orks with stone shrapnel. Another fell into a close pressed group, distributing them messily among their luckier fellows. The last flew into a perfect parabola and Faris watched in horror as it peaked and then fell directly at the Overlord. He braced himself. The world shook violently and he was pitched about the cabin knocking his head hard against the control panel.

When Faris came to he felt cool air on his face, the smell of fire and fyceline filled his nostrils. The cabin was full of smoke from a fire somewhere in the main decks below. It was exiting through the now open canopy, shards of armourglass all that remained of the panels. The whole ship was listing at an angle and Faris struggled to right himself back into the throne. He assessed the systems quickly, most were showing fatal damage, whatever ordinance the Orks had loaded into the rocket had been hugely powerful. The engines remained dead, main reactor idling, most point defence weapons destroyed. He risked a glance out of the remains of the canopy and saw the Stompa drawing ever closer. The shields were gone, the telltale blue sheen nowhere to be seen. He ducked back and assessed his options. The only weapons that he possessed that might take out the greenskin behemoth were the Desolator Lascannons mounted on the wingtips. He checked the system runes. The right was inactive, obviously destroyed by the impact of the rocket. The left remained operational but was now canted skywards. He would have to wait until they were nearly on top of him to fire. He just hoped they had the patience to delay their attack until then.