Thousands of orks boarded the Plagueclaw in an attempt to seize the Death Guard ship.

There is no peace among the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter and the laughter of thirsting gods.

* * *

The Plagueclaw
Aroria System
6 231 744.M41

Vraxos-Kam took his time with the last living ork. The dismembered xeno roared his defiance, hate, and frustration as the Death Guard warrior used his chainsword to shave off another few centimeters off what remained of his bloody stub of a left arm.

With luck, the traitor Astartes thought, he could make the greenskin suffer for at least another hour.

The ork boarding action had been a bloody affair. The orks had been lying in wait on the far side of the planet when the Plagueclaw, a Murder-class cruiser of the Plague Fleet of Typhus, had entered orbit.

Vraxos-Kam had been told the Plagueclaw  would provision on Aroria II, an isolated agri-world whose planetary defenses would prove no obstacle to the two companies of Death Gaurd warriors aboard.

As it turned out, however, the orks already had attacked the world, slaughtering much of its population and taking away whatever plunder that’d caught the xenos’ eyes.

When the orks turned their attention to the Plagueclaw, the traitor vessel was not caught entirely by surprise. The ship’s shields were up, and its weapons batteries primed, when the ship entered orbit. As the orks’ Kill Kroozer swept over the planet’s horizon, the Plagueclaw quickly opened fire to devastating effect—and it was said that the ship’s captain had laughed at the slaughter about to come.

The entire starboard side of the Plagueclaw was struck by boarding torpedoes.

Collision

And slaughter there was. Just not exactly how the captain had imagined.

For the Kill Kroozer, a ramshackle excuse of a warship, ignored the Death Guard’s fire. Parts of the Kroozer’s outer hull were blasted away by the Plagueclaw‘s weapons batteries, and torpedoes pitted the greenskin hull with massive holes. Yet still, the xeno warship kept coming.

Indeed, the Kill Kroozer accelerated. The accuracy of its weapons batteries were pathetic; the Plagueclaw  was not severely damaged. But the geenskin warship kept getting closer.

Vraxos-Kam did not understand how his ship failed to avoid the subsequent collision. What he did know was that the force of the Kroozer ramming his vessel was beyond anything he’d experienced in millennia of void battle.

The ship’s inertia dampeners must have failed, for he was thrown across the corridor where he was running—he nearly lost consciousness as he struck the corridor’s far wall.

When his head cleared, he looked around and saw the corpses of at least a dozen slave crew members, their bodies crushed to a pulp when they’d been flung into the wall.

Vraxos-Kam (bottom right) prepares to climb to an upper gantry to assess the tactical situation.

Boarding Action

Pulling himself off the floor, he heard the ship klaxons blaring the signal to repel boarders. That was sobering. But also pleasing. Vraxos-Kam pulled his bolt pistol from its holster and began to run toward the ship’s starboard hull. That was where the blow of the collision had struck home.

It took him three-point-two minutes to navigate twisting passages and collapsed corridors and cross the three kilometers to the outer hull of the ship. There was still an atmosphere in these corridors, and it carried the faint sound of weapons fire to his left.

Hurrying to the sounds of battle, he entered a half-empty storage chamber to find several of his fellow Death Guard warriors engaged with a mob of greenskins. The fighting was chaotic, with some warriors locked in melee while others ran past and disappeared into the shadows of the dimly lit chamber.

Vraxos-Kam loved a good fight. But he preferred some sense of tactics. To determine what exactly was going on, he scrambled up an industrial ladder to an overhead gantry. The high ground would be useful.

It was. Small bands were fighting everyone across the chamber, and there was no obvious way to organize the troops at the moment.

A single ork ran across the open deck below. It did not see him. Without a thought, Vraxos-Kam fired, and the greenskin fell heavily to the deck.

During the confused fighting, two Death Guard warriors were ambushed by orks that had taken a position above them.

Body Count

Below and to his left, Vraxos-Kam saw two Death Guard warriors firing up at a handful of greenskins on an upper gantry. The orks returned fire and managed to bring down one of the traitor Astartes.

The other staggered as if wounded, but he had the good sense to step through a nearby hatch opening. Standing in the cover of the plasteel hatch, he continued to fire back at the xenos.

Vraxos-Kam added his own fire to the fighting. The orks’ backs were turned to him, as the greenskins were focused on the wounded Astartes. Taking aim, he put a bolter shell through the back of one ork’s skull.

The sound of heavy footsteps sounded below him. Looking down, he saw several orks running his way. One stopped and opened fire with a shoota, and a shell clipped the Death Guard’s shoulder pad.

Before he ducked for cover, he saw two of the orks run to his left, while two more went to the right and disappeared behind a corridor wall.

His helm auspex displayed a scan of the area. A Death Guard warrior was firing from a position below and to his left. Vraxos-Kam would leave the two orks running in that direction to his comrade.

To his right, his display revealed a map of the corridor where the other two orks had disappeared, and there was a ladder there that would lead up to him.

Good, he thought. Dealing with two orks would be a satisfying little fight.

Click here for battle’s conclusion.

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The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our gaming adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.