Chapter 20: Ork Elite — The Nob
Twenty minutes later.
Alpha group had ambushed two small greenskin patrols at separate corridor junctions, killing three Ork Boyz and more than thirty Gretchin between them.
Bravo group had skirted around the march route of a large Ork warband and stripped a derelict mechanical maintenance dock of a substantial haul of scrap metal.
Charlie group — Rosen's group — was pushing slowly along a main corridor on Deck Seventy-Four.
Then a signal came through Shared Awareness that stopped Rosen mid-step.
Number 3, from Bravo group. A warning.
Number 3's perspective opened in Rosen's mind.
On a secondary corridor of Deck Seventy-Three, Number 3 and Number 4 were lying flat on a thick structural crossbeam, looking down at the passage below.
Something was walking through it.
Not an ordinary Ork Boy.
It stood close to two and a half metres tall — at least thirty centimetres above a standard Ork Boy's head. Its armour was a multi-layered construction of welded metal plate, coverage and quality far beyond the wire-and-rivet scrap most greenskins wore. Heavy iron plate protected the chest, abdomen, and thighs. The shoulder guards were two armour panels stripped from an Imperial armoured vehicle, bolted directly onto the frame with oversized fasteners.
The armour was painted in thick, deep red.
In greenskin society, only those who had established dominance with their fists and blades had the right to wear red.
In its right hand, it carried a massive cleaver nearly as long as a human adult was tall. The blade had a crude power field generator fitted along its edge.
A Nob. The Ork elite caste.
Rosen ran a fast assessment. A mature Nob could trade blows with an Astartes for dozens of exchanges without going down. The Imperial threat evaluation handbook recommended a minimum of one Astra Militarum platoon — thirty soldiers — applying concentrated fire to bring one down.
He had nine people.
But his people were not Astra Militarum.
"All groups converge on Number 3's position."
Rosen pushed the order simultaneously to Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie through Shared Awareness.
Nine Catachans assembled above the secondary corridor on Deck Seventy-Three.
The Nob was still moving below, apparently running a patrol of its territory. Behind it, a dozen or so Gretchin followed at a respectful distance — any one of them that drifted inside five metres risked getting casually kicked across the corridor.
Rosen's tactical assessment ran in seconds.
The Nob's heavy armour made standard las-fire and frontal bolt fire poor options. But every armour configuration had structural gaps.
The knee joints.
The elbow joints.
The back of the neck. No matter how much plate covered the rest of the body, the junction between the rear neck guard and the helmet always required a gap for range of motion.
"Alpha group, set an intercept position thirty metres ahead down the corridor. Clear the Gretchin. Don't let them interfere with the main engagement."
"Bravo group, flank left. Be ready to cut in from the left side when it passes through the T-junction below."
"Charlie group, with me. We drop from above."
Rosen drew a steady breath.
"Number 5, on my command, use the power shield to take its first strike. Just the first one."
Number 5 acknowledged with a raised hand.
"Number 1, Number 3 — the instant Number 5 has it blocked, concentrated fire on both knees. Boltguns. The knee armour is the thinnest point on the plate. Two bolts overlapping should punch through."
"I drop from above and put a plasma round through the back of the neck."
Everyone knew their position and their job.
Rosen waited until the Nob reached the centre of the T-junction.
"Execute."
Alpha group fired first.
Number 7 and Number 8 swept their lasguns across the Gretchin behind the Nob. The red beams carved carbonised furrows through the cluster of small greenskins. Six Gretchin went down in the opening burst. The rest scattered, shrieking in every direction.
The Nob's reaction was faster than Rosen had anticipated. Within half a second of the first shot it had already completed its turn.
"Waaaaaagh!"
The bellow set the metal walls resonating. It raised the power cleaver and came forward.
At that moment, Number 5 cut in from the front at an angle.
The power shield's force field flared to life in a hard burst of blue light.
Number 5 didn't try to absorb the Nob's swing head-on. That would have been fatal. Instead he angled the shield in front of him and drove it into the side of the descending power cleaver at a precise deflection angle.
The force field's redirecting effect combined with the angled surface pushed the blow upward by roughly thirty degrees — a stroke that would have split the roof off an armoured vehicle glanced off and continued skyward.
Boom.
The power cleaver's blade scraped past Number 5's head and buried itself in the metal wall beside him, cutting a notch twenty centimetres deep.
But it was stuck for a moment.
Less than one second.
One second was enough.
Bang. Bang.
Number 1 and Number 3 fired simultaneously from the flanking position Bravo group had moved into.
Two .75-calibre rounds struck the Nob's left knee joint almost simultaneously.
The overlapping penetration blew through the iron plate, and then the mass-reactive detonation happened inside the joint itself.
The Nob's left knee came apart.
It let out a scream that had nothing reserved about it and went down on one knee.
Even kneeling, it was close to two metres tall.
It braced its free left hand on the deck, wrenched the power cleaver free from the wall with its right, and swept it laterally at Number 5.
Number 5 rolled backward.
The power cleaver's edge passed across his back, shearing off a section of the chainsword handle he was carrying.
At that moment, Rosen dropped from the overhead pipe and beam structure above.
He caught a hanging cable with his left hand to kill his speed, and by the time he let go the plasma pistol was already in his right hand and levelled.
A bolt of superheated plasma burned through the eight-centimetre gap at the back of the Nob's neck.
It punched a fist-sized hole through the neck.
The Nob did not go down.
It kept fighting. It pushed against the floor with its intact right leg, power cleaver swinging without any particular direction, working entirely on aggression.
Rosen landed and stepped clear of a wild lateral sweep.
"Damn thing just won't die."
An ordinary Ork Boy with a plasma round through its spine would have been on the ground already. But a Nob's nervous system had redundancy that its lower-ranking kin lacked. Even with partial spinal cord damage, the secondary nerve clusters distributed throughout its body kept the limbs responding.
It used the last of its strength to push its upper body upright. It opened its jaw — a full rack of tusks — and forced out one final hoarse battle cry in the direction of Rosen.
"Waa... agh..."
Rosen walked up to it.
He turned the Catachan Fang in his hand, point down.
He set the tip against the crown of the Nob's massive skull, the spot that the greenskins themselves called the thinking-bone.
"The Emperor won't take your soul," Rosen said, his voice even. "But I'll take your Life Points."
The Catachan Fang went through the top of the Nob's skull.
The body shuddered once and went still. When it hit the deck, the floor shook from the weight.
The system chimed: raw soul energy 38 points, reduced to 25 Life Points after purification against elevated Chaos frenzy contamination.
More than three times the yield of a standard Ork Boy.
The pattern held. The stronger the enemy, the higher the return.