Above the mine entrance, the Scyllax Guardian Automata had formed a ragged metal line across the hillside, chain swords grinding through everything that pushed against them. David's six-armed Terminator frame stood at the center of the line, the servo arms spread wide, all four of them active: the storm bolters cycling through their magazines in continuous bursts, the Gauss blasters tracking and firing on high-value targets with the patience of a machine that did not need to breathe between shots. The five Fortis Intelligent Control Mechs had adjusted their lascannon angles to cover the forward approach, and the beams they put out cut through the Ork density in long, burning lines.
On the Lamenters' defensive position, someone had noticed.
"Captain! We have support from friendly forces!"
The Astartes who shouted it was covered in green blood from collar to boot, and the excitement in his voice was unmistakable. The Lamenters had been fighting on a diminishing margin for long enough that the appearance of anything on their side of the engagement registered as something close to disbelief before it registered as relief.
Chapter Master Malakin Foros took in the situation without moving from his position at the line. The Intelligent Control Corps and the two unidentified Astartes were a fact that required processing later. What mattered now was what they were doing.
"First Company Captain," Foros said, loud enough to carry to the veteran beside him. "Take your battle brothers and drive a corridor outward. Buy breathing room for those friendly forces. The Lamenters do not let allies die in front of them."
The First Company Captain raised one ceramite palm and pointed into the green tide.
"Chapter Master," he said, with the particular tone of a man delivering information he did not entirely believe himself. "I think that battle brother may not need us."
Nolan had already put the Frost Fang and the Antarctic vibranium power sword away.
The melee reach on both weapons was too short for what the situation required. The Warscythe stayed on the back rack as well. He raised both vibranium arms and shook them outward with a sharp motion of his wrists.
The ten rings left his arms.
They spread into a wide orbit around his body, moving fast, the purple light streaking in overlapping circles. The material that had stopped the Warscythe cold found no similar resistance in Ork flesh and bone. The rings cut through the packed bodies around him in continuous sweeping passes, and the ground within a radius of dozens of meters became something that had very recently been a large number of Orks and was now not.
Nolan did not move toward the Lamenters' line. He stood in the space he had cleared and directed the rings outward, looking through the eyepiece for something specific in the mass of the horde: a concentration of larger bodies, a point of local authority, the particular social hierarchy that Ork armies organized around whether they intended to or not.
The horde answered his question before he finished asking it.
The Orks between him and the answer stepped aside. Not in retreat, in the particular Ork manner of clearing a lane because something larger was coming through and they wanted to watch. Heavy footsteps shook the ground through the soles of his magnetic boots, and two killing machines more than three meters tall rolled out of the parted crowd, their cylindrical metal bodies already building momentum into a charge directly at him.
Nolan ran at them.
He pulled the rings back with a sharp gesture, letting them accumulate, and then drove them forward in a focused mass the instant the range was right. The rings hit the leading machine's front armor with a series of impacts that rang across the hillside and left deep depressions across the plating. They did not penetrate. They did not need to. The machine's charge faltered under the sequential impacts, its momentum disrupted, and Nolan was already inside its effective range.
The Warscythe came off the back rack.
He swept it low, targeting the short support limbs beneath the first machine's body. The green-lit blade went through them cleanly, and the machine dropped its full weight onto the ground with a crash that shook the hillside.
The second machine had been tracking his position through all of this. One of its oversized limbs came around with a circular saw spinning at full speed and hit Nolan across the shoulder armor.
Sparks cascaded across the vibranium shell in a continuous shower. He did not move his feet.
He recalled the rings with a pull of his attention and set them against the second machine's limbs in repeated targeted strikes, each ring drawing its own arc before looping back and striking again. The machine's structure failed under the accumulation, and it went down.
Nolan drove the Warscythe into the first machine's top armor before it could make use of its remaining limbs. The blade found the operator through the plating. A short, undignified sound from within the hull, and the machine stopped.
He pulled the Warscythe free and nailed it through the second machine's hull as it tried to push itself upright.
Then he straightened, the Warscythe in one hand, the rings resuming their orbit around him, and turned back toward the horde.
The Orks pressing inward had adjusted their approach. The ones at the front had their big shootas up and were firing continuously, keeping the barrels aimed in his direction. Their choppas stayed on their backs. Charging something that had just knocked down two killing machines on its own was a calculation that even Ork instinct could perform.
Nolan walked toward them anyway, the rings cutting ahead of him and the Warscythe sweeping the ones the rings left standing, and the Orks continued to shoot rather than charge, which was the correct tactical decision and also a completely insufficient one.
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