Elsewhere. Far from the screaming ice of Meighen Island. Far from blood-soaked stones and dead gods. But not far from madness.
Because war is madness. And madness always finds a way.
---
The wind hit like it hated him.
It came in dry, sharp bursts, stinking of rusted oil, burned sand, and something else—something older. Something Cain couldn't name but had smelled on a hundred battlefields. The stink of expectation.
He squinted into the heat haze curling up from the canyon floor, the sweat already burning in the corners of his eyes. The horizon wavered, bent by the sun's fury. Beyond it, something moved.
Not yet visible.
But coming.
The cracked metal beneath his boots groaned slightly, and Cain shifted his weight, one hand resting on the pommel of his chainsword. Not drawn. Not yet.
He didn't need to swing it just to feel ready.
He just needed it close.
Too quiet.
The kind of quiet that presses into your ears like altitude. No shouting. No engines. Just the faint tick of heat warping metal and the hiss of air vents trying to keep up.
And the birds.
High above, black-winged specks turned slow circles in the dry sky. Vultures, or something like them. Native carrion-feeders. Smart. Patient.
They knew better than to wait on the ground.
Cain let his eyes follow them for a moment. He didn't envy them—but he did understand them.
They didn't fight.
They just waited.
His gaze dropped back to the canyon. The Valley of Daemons, they called it. Probably had a proper name once—before it became a trench of bones and ash and things with too many teeth.
The canyon yawned beneath the dam, a broken scar carved out of the desert by water and time and too many orbital barrages. Its edges were jagged, steep, scattered with debris from a dozen failed defenses, collapsed shrines, and rust-choked pipeline ruins. He could see wreckage still poking through the dust—twisted girders, prayer-banners, half-buried transport hulls. Most of it had burned long ago.
A graveyard.
And now, another one.
He wasn't afraid.
He'd passed fear a long time ago.
What he felt now was… pressure. That slow squeeze in the chest that never quite went away when you knew the odds and chose to stay anyway. The knowledge that his bones might be all that was left in an hour, crushed beneath wreckage or buried in flood silt.
No legacy.
No memorial.
Just another name scratched off a field report that might never get filed.
He wasn't telling this story.
He was inside it.
And it didn't care who he was.
A bead of sweat slid down his spine.
He shifted his stance again, one boot on the rust-line of the overlook, looking down into the canyon's throat. It was empty now, dust swirling in lazy currents—but that wouldn't last.
He could feel it.
The storm was coming, and it would break here.
Already, the wind hissed as it passed over the cracked lip of the overlook. Cain squinted into the haze.
The Valley of Daemons.
The name wasn't official. But it stuck.
It always did, when too many men had died in one place and not enough prayers had made a difference.
He scanned the canyon below, eyes narrowing as he studied the terrain like a gambler eyeing a loaded dice.
The valley ran maybe six hundred meters across at its widest, narrowing down to a kill funnel of just over sixty meters at the dam's base. The natural choke point was why he'd chosen this site. Why anyone would. The rocks were too steep on either side, sheer and jagged. Trying to go around would mean climbing broken cliff faces under fire, or circling wide through desert flatlands while exposed to airstrikes—if they had any.
The Orks wouldn't do that.
They never did.
Not when charging straight through the front door gave them more things to kill.
And they'd come in numbers.
A full Waaagh, by the look of the dust cloud on the horizon. That meant thousands. Tens of thousands, maybe. Cain didn't need a rangefinder to know the narrowest stretch of the canyon could only hold about a hundred bodies across, maybe two dozen vehicles side-by-side at full tilt.
That was the good news.
The bad news?
They'd fit plenty enough.
He shifted his weight slightly, boots creaking on sun-buckled metal, and let his eyes roam up the canyon walls again. Climbing the dam itself was possible—technically. There were access ladders, maintenance shafts, the occasional exposed support strut. But climbing under fire?
Not likely. Not without flight packs.
Then again, Orks weren't exactly known for respecting gravity.
He made a mental note to double-check the skyward firing angles.
Just in case.
The only true access was straight up the valley floor, right into the main defensive line—which meant everything was going to come down to whether they could hold the center long enough to either win by miracle…
…or blow the whole bloody dam and drown the bastards.
Cain sighed.
"Could be worse," he muttered to himself. "Could be raining."
That was when he heard the boots behind him.
"Sir," came the voice—low, nasal, carrying a stink that hit before the man did.
Jurgen.
Cain didn't turn. "Tell me the gods have decided to sit this one out."
Jurgen came up beside him and rested his melta on the railing like he was setting down a loaf of bread. The metal hissed slightly against the scorched steel.
"They sent Tayber instead," he said.
Cain arched an eyebrow. "Do I owe her money?"
"Not that I know of."
"Small mercy."
A second later, Felicia Tayber arrived—quick steps, hair cinched tight under a half-melted helmet, and a dataslate tucked under her arm. She wore her uniform like a battlefield bandage, each piece barely holding together. But her voice was steady.
"Commissar."
Cain nodded.
"Report."
She didn't look at the slate.
"We've got one Russ parked at Delta-Three, locked into the canyon throat. Best line of fire for their lead vehicles. It's solid for about twenty seconds of glory."
"After that?"
"We pray the turret holds together longer than the crew."
She pointed down the dam length.
"Three stubber nests up front. One rigged with twin barrels by someone who either hated recoil or loved chaos. They're manned by PDF—young, scared, but upright. Two dozen conscripts behind them, staggered in squads. Some local militia behind that—miners, factory workers, two priests with a chainsword between them."
Cain grunted. "Sounds like a cathedral built out of kindling."
Tayber gave a thin smile. "You'd be surprised how long kindling can burn."
"What about the eastern ridge?"
She hesitated.
"Sniper team. Two factory workers with longlas scopes welded onto mining rifles. They insisted."
Cain glanced over his shoulder. "And the west?"
"We set det-charges into the pipeline. If the Orks try to flank low, we light them up. Problem is, the blast might collapse the upper scaffolds."
"Will it kill Orks?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then I don't care."
She paused. "Sir, I know we're not exactly in a position to—"
"Lie to me?"
"No, sir. Just trying to sound like I'm not terrified."
Cain gave her a long look.
"You're doing better than most."
Behind them, the dam buzzed with preparation. PDF squads moved like nervous insects—checking power packs, rerouting damaged cables, propping up sandbags with scavenged pipes. Civilians reloaded borrowed autoguns with shaking hands. Someone was praying in High Gothic near the shrine alcove.
No one cried.
They were past crying.
Jurgen sniffed once.
"Smells like they'll be here in under an hour."
Cain looked toward the dust cloud now boiling on the far side of the valley.
"More like thirty minutes."
He adjusted his coat, ran a thumb across the ignition rune of his chainsword.
Then nodded once, to no one in particular.
"Let's get this over with."
They stood in silence for a moment longer, watching the canyon stir.
The dust cloud in the distance was thicker now. Broader. Pulsing with movement. A boiling smear of filth and noise.
They were coming.
Tayber adjusted the strap on her helmet. Her knuckles were white.
Cain gave her a sideways glance. "Keep the left flank alive."
"I'll try," she said, then looked him in the eye. "You keep the rest breathing."
He didn't smile, but there was something like it in the corner of his mouth.
Then she turned and walked off into the smoke, shouting orders as she went, already half-lost among the shifting forms of the defenders.
Jurgen remained, melta resting across his shoulder.
He sniffed.
"Feels like a bad one, sir."
Cain nodded.
"They're all bad."
Jurgen shrugged. "Still better than freezing on Voltoris."
Cain snorted. "That was a vacation compared to this."
A beat passed. Then Jurgen straightened slightly.
"If you go down first," he said, "I'll make it quick."
Cain blinked. "That's disturbingly touching."
Jurgen looked at him, utterly deadpan. "It's not meant to be."
Cain sighed. "Get to your post, Jurgen. Burn anything that looks too happy to be here."
Jurgen nodded once, turned, and limped into the gathering smoke.
Cain was alone again.
The wind picked up.
The drums began.
Low, distant, like war-thunder from the belly of the earth.
And then—
He stepped forward onto the upper gantry, where the last survivors of Perlia—PDF, militia, civilians—were staring into the rising chaos.
He activated the vox amplifier with a flick of his gloved hand.
It crackled, buzzed, screamed once—
Then his voice rang out, sharp as a blade across the dam.
"Soldiers of the Imperium."
"The enemy is here. And they think they've already won."
"They think we'll break. That we'll run. That we'll die screaming in the mud."
He looked over the rows of hollow eyes, trembling hands, soot-stained faces.
Then he leaned in.
"Let's disappoint them."
The wind tore across the ridge.
The Orks were howling now—chanting, screaming, revving engines and firing wildly into the air. Their warpaint smeared the sky. Their banners waved like death's laundry.
Cain didn't flinch.
"Enemies of the Imperium—hear me!"
"You've come here to die."
"We are the Emperor's wrath. We are the blade in His hand. And we will break you."
"Your machines will burn. Your mobs will fall. And this dam—this patch of dust and rust and fire—will be your grave."
He stepped back from the mic.
A long pause.
Then a murmur.
Then a cheer.
It wasn't loud.
It wasn't brave.
But it was something.
And in this hell?
Something was enough.
The ground beneath Cain's boots trembled.
Not from tectonics.
From engines.
From Waaagh!
Down in the canyon, the first wave of Ork trukks and warbuggies tore through the dust like demented battering rams. They howled across the cracked terrain, weapons firing blindly into the air, their drivers laughing as if they'd already won.
One of the trukks—a rusted heap of scrap metal painted blood red and mounted with skulls—slammed full-force into the face of the dam. The steel wall groaned, but didn't budge.
The trukk crumpled like paper.
The Orks inside?
They cheered louder.
More vehicles followed, each smashing into the lower wall at insane angles, mangling themselves into explosive wreckage. A few burst into flame. One cartwheeled, flipped, and landed upside-down, still revving.
Cain leaned out from the battlement, the railing hot under his gloves, and looked straight down.
They were already climbing.
Dozens of them.
Using the wreckage of their own vehicles as ladders. Grappling onto exposed pipes, rusted reinforcement beams, ancient maintenance ladders. Some scaled the damn wall with nothing but their hands and boots, jamming cleavers into seams in the metal, clawing upward like ants on a corpse.
A massive Nob drove twin climbing picks into the concrete and hauled himself up with one arm—howling "WAAAGH!" the entire way.
The wall wasn't just a structure now.
It was a siege ladder.
Cain didn't hesitate.
He hit his vox-bead.
"All units—primary fire on the wall! Repeat, suppress climbers! If they crest the top, it's over!"
The defenders obeyed with a vengeance.
Stubber nests pivoted down, chattering like mechanical fury. Heavy rounds slammed into the rising tide of green muscle, bursting bodies apart and turning the dam's lower face into a red waterfall.
Lasfire lit the sky in a storm of crisscrossing beams. Dozens of Orks fell—screaming, burning, tumbling down the slope like meat sacks.
But more came.
Cain heard boots pounding behind him as a PDF squad sprinted to reinforce the edge. Factory workers and militia leaned over the wall, firing autoguns until the barrels glowed.
A woman next to him—her apron still crusted with mining grease—screamed and fired a stub revolver until the hammer clicked dry.
One Ork reached the edge—an armoured brute with a rocket-pack still hissing from its half-burned fuel. He grabbed the edge of the parapet with one clawed gauntlet, pulled himself up—
Cain was already moving.
He thumbed his chainsword ignition rune.
The blade roared to life.
He stepped forward and drove it straight into the Ork's face.
Teeth. Bone. Helmet. Gone in a shriek of sparks and blood.
The body dropped like a sack of meat, bouncing back into the chaos below.
Cain stepped back.
Breathed once.
Then turned to the next defender.
"You see one crest the wall, you don't hesitate. Shoot, stab, shove—it doesn't matter. Just keep them off this dam."
A boy nodded—maybe seventeen, hands shaking, eyes wide with shock.
Cain grabbed his collar and hauled him close.
"No hesitation. Do it or die."
The boy nodded again, faster now.
Cain let him go.
Below, the Orks howled louder.
The air was filled with smoke, fire, and the smell of blood cooking on steel.
And they were still coming.
"Emperor, help us," Cain muttered.
And for once, he meant it.
Elsewhere, the vox bead in Jurgen's ear crackled to life.
"Jurgen, report."
Felicia Tayber's voice. Tense. Clipped. Shot through with background gunfire and the distant crackle of lasblasts. She sounded like someone trying to juggle a war with one hand and a bleeding artery with the other.
Jurgen didn't flinch.
He adjusted the shoulder strap of his melta gun and glanced down the ridge where he'd taken position—a reinforced overlook halfway between the main gantry and the west tower. From here, he had a clean angle on the canyon below.
The Valley of Daemons wasn't a battlefield anymore.
It was a flesh tide.
Thousands—tens of thousands—of Orks surged forward. Shoulder to shoulder. Shoulder to head. Shoulder to ass. There wasn't a flat patch of dust left. Just a moving carpet of green skin, rusted metal, and randomly discharging firearms.
Some of them were shooting at the dam. Some were shooting at birds. Some were shooting into the air, at each other, or just because they liked the sound.
The whole canyon echoed with the clatter of heavy-caliber fire and the hysterical laughter of creatures too stupid to know fear.
Jurgen adjusted his aim.
Spotted a group of Nobz trying to stack wrecked trukks and corpses into a crude ramp along the dam's base.
It was working.
Slowly.
Stupidly.
But working.
One trukk on its side. Three bodies stacked like firewood. Another Ork climbed over the mound and started to pull chains up behind him—setting anchors into the dam wall with what looked like a sharpened crowbar and spite.
Jurgen didn't sigh.
He just flipped the melta's primary capacitor switch and squeezed the trigger.
The weapon screamed.
A beam of white-hot energy surged forward, lancing through the stack. The trukk ignited, the corpses vaporized, and the climber disintegrated mid-roar—leaving behind a wet, sizzling stain and a pair of boots.
"Target neutralized," Jurgen said over the vox.
Tayber responded instantly.
"That was mine."
Jurgen blinked. "Didn't see your name on it."
"I was tracking the one with the chains."
Another pause.
Jurgen tracked a Grot squad scuttling behind a looted buggy, tossed a krak grenade into their path, and turned them into red mist.
"Tracked another."
Tayber growled softly.
"We're holding east, barely. Stubbers are red-hot, and the PDF boys keep checking their safety switches like they're trying to lose fingers. You?"
Jurgen watched as three Orks began scaling a collapsed scaffold near the pipeline. One pulled a lasgun off a corpse and tried to fire it backward.
He fired again.
The melta beam hit the scaffold and melted half of it into slag. The Orks fell, shrieking, bodies flailing like dropped dolls before vanishing into the green ocean below.
"Still holding," Jurgen said.
Another pause.
"How bad does it look from your side?" Tayber asked.
Jurgen sniffed.
Paused.
Then: "Like someone poured ten thousand angry snotlings into a tin can, shook it, and dumped it on fire."
Tayber didn't laugh.
But she snorted. That was close enough.
"Copy that."
Across the dam, the Orks pressed harder.
They were building their own siege works out of corpses and wreckage, stacking trucks two-high in some places, jamming metal beams into the dam face to act as ladders. One Nob hauled up an entire motorcycle and used it as a battering ram against a rusted support pipe, trying to pry his way upward.
The PDF gunners lit them up—beams and bullets raining down—but the greenskins just kept coming.
Some of them used dead Boyz as shields. Others grabbed half-dead Grots and threw them upward like living grappling hooks.
Jurgen ducked as a round ricocheted off the railing near his position. A big one—probably from one of those stub-cannons the Orks welded to anything with wheels.
He didn't flinch.
Just swung the melta again and found another target.
Cain was right.
This wasn't going to hold forever, but for now the lines were holding.
Against all logic, all odds, and the Emperor's cruel sense of humor, they were holding.
Cain leaned over the southern battlement again, eyes scanning the wall below. The Orks were still climbing—scrabbling over burning wrecks, scrambling up pipes and bodies, trying to reach the top. A few had made it, only to be shot, stabbed, or kicked back down.
The Leman Russ was still firing—its plasma shells lighting up the canyon like twin suns, each blast vaporizing a mob at a time. The stubbers were glowing red, crews rotating out in shifts to avoid burnout. Even the civilians had found their rhythm—reloading and rearming like they'd been born in the Guard.
It was working.
Cain could feel it.
They were bleeding the horde dry.
And when the dam broke—when the water came roaring down the canyon—it would finish the job.
He tapped his vox bead.
"Tayber. Status on the east."
Her voice came back ragged, but clear.
"Still holding. Sniper team's down to bricks and bravado. I've got one heavy stubber still firing, one melted, and one jammed permanently. Casualties minimal."
Cain nodded.
"Jurgen?"
The reply was slower.
"We're burning them. But they're still coming."
"Of course they are," Cain muttered.
The pressure was building. He could feel it in the way the walls vibrated beneath his boots. The dam was rigged. The charges were primed. He just needed to give the word.
Wait longer…
Let more Orks into the canyon.
Trap them all.
Then detonate.
Maximum efficiency.
He was just about to call for Tayber again when the sky screamed.
A low, rising whine—like a tortured sawblade being dragged across iron.
Cain looked up.
His stomach dropped.
They came out of the clouds like monsters given wings.
Six of them—maybe more—Dakkajets and Fighta-Bommers, painted in garish red and yellow, their engines oversized, smoking, barely stable. They weren't flying in formation. They weren't flying right. They didn't have to.
They just dived.
Guns blazing.
The first salvo ripped across the central deck—exploding sandbags, shredding PDF troops, flipping gun crews like toys. Lasgun fire lanced back upward, but it was too late. The Orks had air superiority now.
The killing zone was no longer safe.
A Valhallan heavy team evaporated in a gout of flame as a bommer stitched its position with high-caliber rounds. The autocannon jammed. Then it exploded. A crewman's body hit the dam wall and stayed there, steaming.
Cain dove behind a ruined bulkhead, vox crackling in his ear.
"Sir—skyfire! Ork aircraft inbound! I repeat, aircraft—!"
"They're everywhere!"
"Pullback—pullback—!"
Smoke filled the air. Screaming. Burning. A civilian ran past Cain missing an arm, still clutching a lasgun in the other.
Jurgen's voice cut in—calm and brutal.
"Sir. We can't hold if they land troops."
Cain stood.
Looked out.
Orks were still pouring into the canyon.
And now?
They were winning.
He had two choices.
Run now—detonate the charges, flood the valley, save what was left of his people.
Or wait.
Let more of the Orks in.
Trap the whole damned Waaagh.
And maybe never leave.
His thumb hovered over the vox switch.
His eyes swept the battlefield.
He sighed.
Of course it had to be like this.
Cain swore under his breath.
It wasn't working anymore.
Not really.
The stubbers were still firing. The PDF still held their line. Jurgen's melta was still screaming death from the west flank. Tayber was somehow still coordinating fire missions on the east.
But now the sky was screaming.
Ork aircraft—six, maybe more—tore back and forth overhead, strafing everything with autocannons the size of chimneys. Barricades were shredded. Crews were vaporized mid-sentence. One bomber clipped a tower and spun into the cliffside, taking three dozen Orks with it.
Didn't matter.
There were still thousands.
And now…
They were climbing.
They were everywhere.
And Cain knew it.
He tapped his vox bead.
"Tayber."
"Still here," came the answer, between gunfire. "East is collapsing. I've got stragglers falling back in clusters. Half the wall's on fire."
"Good. Pull back. Get everyone you can to the inner blast corridor. Five minutes."
"Sir, that's—"
"I know what it is. Just move."
He cut the line before she could argue.
Then he hit the next channel.
"Jurgen."
"Sir."
"Get to the west charges. Prep them. No detonation yet. Just be ready."
"Copy."
Cain took a breath.
Then stepped out from cover and screamed.
"Retreat! All squads, fall back to secondary positions! I want demolition teams moving now! Move! Move! Move!"
The line didn't shatter.
It peeled—like a wound opening in slow motion. The defenders didn't break, not yet, but the center was already collapsing under the pressure. Lasguns cracked. Men screamed. Someone fired a flare into the sky.
And then—it got worse.
From the far side of the canyon came a new sound.
A shriek.
Not of aircraft.
Of rockets.
Cain turned, confused—then horrified.
A new wave of Orks had arrived.
These weren't climbing. They weren't charging.
They were flying.
Dozens of trukks, mounted with makeshift rocket ramps, launched armored Nobz into the sky like living artillery. Their jetpacks hissed and screamed—most held together with scrap metal, chainmail, and the Emperor's own bad luck.
They arced straight at the dam wall.
One hit a barricade and exploded—flinging corpses and sandbags in all directions.
Another smashed into the south tower, detonating on impact and knocking a dozen defenders off their feet.
A third hit the upper deck like a meteor, sliding across the plasteel and colliding with a gun nest—ripping it apart with its own body.
The Nobz that survived the impact?
They stood up.
Laughing.
Weapons raised.
And charged.
"Jurgen, we've got jumpers!" Cain snapped into the vox. "Delay the blast—but not long."
Jurgen's reply was muffled by melta fire. "Understood."
Cain turned to run.
He made it ten steps before a Nob vaulted over a barricade in front of him—an axe already mid-swing.
Cain ducked low, rolled forward, and came up with his chainsword already roaring. The blade caught the Ork across the gut. Metal shrieked. The Nob staggered, snarled, raised its weapon—
Gunfire ripped through its skull.
Cain turned.
Felicia Tayber stood behind him, sidearm in both hands, hair soaked in sweat and blood.
"Sir, move."
"Agreed."
They ran.
All around them, the dam was imploding.
More rocket-Nobz landed. More aircraft swooped low, crashing into the dam's upper deck, taking out Orks and humans alike in flaming suicide arcs. The wall had become a butcher's floor.
And still, Cain did what he always did.
He stayed a little behind.
Shouting orders.
Covering stragglers.
Making sure someone got out.
It wasn't heroic.
It was just habit.
Cain raised the vox to his lips one last time.
"All units—fall back. I repeat, fall back to the blast corridor. Full retreat."
No one argued. No one hesitated.
They were already running.
PDF squads, limping and bleeding, pulled each other from the line. Civilians staggered down stairwells and across catwalks, dragging wounded and weapons. Tayber fired one last shot from her sidearm, then turned and barked at a half-conscious trooper to move his arse or lose it.
Jurgen was already at the blast junction, one hand on the detonator box, the melta across his back hissing smoke. He met Cain's eye from thirty meters away.
Waiting.
Always waiting.
Cain stayed.
Of course he did.
The last few defenders were falling back in clusters—slow, scattered, one or two at a time. Cain covered them, chainsword roaring, yelling threats and orders, firing a laspistol taken from a dead man when his own ran dry.
The dam's upper deck was hell.
Smoke thick as oil.
Corpses. Craters. Fire and Orks in every direction.
But Cain still held.
Just a little longer.
And then—
The wind changed.
He felt it.
The scream.
The thundercrack of something massive.
Cain looked up—
—and saw the shadow falling.
It came like a meteor made of hate and iron.
Launched from the far side of the canyon by a rocket-trukk three stories tall, the shape hurtled through the sky—howling, trailing fire, belching smoke from a set of stolen Imperial jump-jets and Ork booster rockets duct-taped to its frame.
The payload?
Gargash Korbul.
The Warlord of the Waaagh.
A mountain of muscle and scrap armor, with a power klaw the size of a man and a jaw wired shut from old wounds. Across his chest, skulls of former commanders were bolted like medals.
He hit the dam with a sound like God kicking down a door.
The impact threw Cain off his feet. The shockwave cracked the upper deck. Sections of railing and wall crumbled into the gorge below.
When Cain rolled to his feet, two PDF troopers were already screaming. One tried to run. Korbul swatted him with his klaw—cut him in half like wet paper. The second got a shot off.
It bounced off the Warlord's chest.
Korbul turned, laughed like thunder, and crushed him underfoot.
Cain stood.
The chainsword hummed in his grip.
Korbul saw him.
Grinned.
"I'Z FOUND YA, LITTLE UMIE!" the Warlord bellowed, stepping forward, klaw opening and closing with a hungry snarl. "DIS DAM'S MINE NOW!"
Cain didn't run.
He stepped in front of the last fleeing squad—blocking the Warlord's path.
He squared his shoulders.
Raised the blade.
And said:
"You'll have to kill me first."
Korbul's grin split wider, teeth grinding together like millstones.
"DAT'S DA PLAN!"
Then they charged.
They met in the center of the dam like two storms colliding.
Cain's chainsword roared as he lunged forward, blade slicing a wide arc. The Warlord answered with a thunderous laugh, raising his klaw and slamming it down like a thunder hammer.
Steel screamed.
The blades missed.
The impact didn't.
Cain stumbled back as the concrete under his boots cracked from the Warlord's strike. The shock of it reverberated up his spine.
Korbul charged again, swinging the massive klaw in a wide, crushing sweep.
Cain ducked under it—barely—feeling the wind of it tug at his coat as it passed. He countered with a rising slash, the chainsword carving deep into Korbul's thigh armor with a scream of metal and a splash of black-green blood.
Korbul didn't flinch.
He grinned wider.
"YA GOT TEETH, UMIE!"
Cain said nothing.
He moved—fast, feinting left, then spinning right, jabbing low. The chainsword bit into the Warlord's flank, chewing through layers of iron and muscle. Korbul howled—then caught Cain with a backhand like a tank's tread.
Cain flew.
He hit the deck hard, rolling to bleed off the momentum, ribs flaring with pain. His vision flickered. His mouth filled with the taste of blood and smoke.
But he got up.
He always got up.
Korbul stalked forward, leaking blood, dragging the klaw along the ground where it carved a trench into the plasteel.
"YER DEAD, COMMISSAR!"
"Get in line," Cain muttered.
He leapt forward again, chainsword raised, slamming it down toward the Warlord's head. Korbul raised the klaw to block, and the teeth bit in—sparks flew, metal shrieked, but the klaw held.
Korbul shoved him back with a roar, swiping again.
This one connected.
The edge of the klaw clipped Cain's shoulder. The impact spun him around, coat tearing, armor cracking. He collapsed to one knee, gasping, blood running hot down his side.
Korbul loomed over him now.
Towering.
Triumphant.
"Y'Z GUNNA LOOK GOOD ON ME WALL, UMIE!"
Cain stared up, his chainsword buzzing in a loose grip.
Then he smiled.
"Still gotta catch me first."
He surged up, ramming the chainsword straight into Korbul's chest.
The teeth screamed as they dug in—through armor, through bone, through rage. Korbul bellowed, staggered, tried to swat Cain aside, but the blade was too deep. Cain twisted it—hard.
Black blood sprayed.
Korbul dropped to one knee.
For a second—just one—Cain thought he'd won.
And then the sky exploded.
A roar split the heavens.
One of the crippled Dakkajets, trailing fire and smoke, spiraled out of the clouds. It wasn't flying anymore.
It was falling.
Cain turned his head just in time to see it plummet—spinning, burning, a flaming wreck of glyphs and twisted steel.
It slammed into the dam behind them.
The impact shook the world.
The shockwave hurled Cain forward. His chainsword was torn from his grip. He hit the ground hard, his ears ringing, blood streaming from his nose and ears.
He barely heard the detonation.
But he saw it.
A light bloomed from beneath the dam. Not the fire of a jet—the fire of the charges.
They'd gone off.
Maybe Jurgen had pulled the trigger.
Maybe the bomber had hit the fail-safes.
It didn't matter.
The deck beneath them cracked, groaned, then collapsed.
Cain rolled, grabbed for the railing, missed—
And the world fell with him.
Felicia Tayber stood at the cliff's edge, just north of the dam.
Her ears were ringing.
Her hands were shaking.
Smoke curled around her like incense from a broken altar. The wind dragged grit across her skin. Somewhere behind her, wounded PDF were moaning, civilians coughing, someone whispering prayers to a god who wasn't listening.
And below—
The dam exploded.
Not in parts.
Not in segments.
The whole structure detonated at once, from the core out—charges layered deep into its spine, placed by the engineers Cain had tasked with rigging it days ago.
The center vanished in a bloom of light and force. Steel and stone erupted upward like teeth from a breaking jaw. The roar hit a second later—a wall of noise so loud it knocked Felicia to her knees.
Beside her, Jurgen didn't fall.
He stood, soot-stained and bleeding, his melta still slung over his back, his uniform blackened, one eye swollen shut. His other eye was locked on the ruins.
He didn't say anything.
He just stared.
From the broken heart of the dam, the flood surged.
Black water, thick with ash and engine oil, poured into the canyon like divine retribution. It swept through the Ork horde with indifference—drowning them by the thousands. Trukks were flipped. Nobz were crushed. Grots were simply erased.
The Waaagh ended in a single, impossible instant.
No retreat.
No glory.
Just obliteration.
Felicia staggered back to her feet.
Her legs barely held.
She looked down again, heart in her throat, scanning the shattered wreckage of the upper deck, now buried under collapsing scaffolds and curling plumes of steam.
No sign of Cain.
No movement.
No chance.
She opened her vox.
"Commissar… do you read?"
Static.
Nothing else.
Jurgen finally spoke.
His voice was hoarse. Quiet.
"He stayed too long."
Felicia looked at him.
"You think he made it out?"
Jurgen shook his head.
Slow.
Final.
"No."
She turned back to the canyon.
To the ruin.
To the silence.
Then, very quietly, she whispered:
"Emperor… he did it."