"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" 

The cry was followed by harsh, guttural xenos words roared with inhumanely deep voices drowned out the cries of the men, even silencing them into a hush through sheer power. It only lasted until the brutes dispensed with roars and made good on what Orks were good at. The front Nob raised an axe that looked like a swathe of sharpened scrap steel strapped to the support beam of an engine. Behind him, orks nearly as large streamed in from the outside, choppas and shootas gleaming in rusted steel. They reached the first ranks of frightened soldiers, cutting off limbs, impaling men, and breaking their bodies with horrifying ease. Even so, the brave soldiers of the 207th and 208th Temperarius battalions fought like cornered animals, and Emperor knew that's what they were. 

Zeb was mesmerized by the blood spray for a brief second, unable to look away until he took hold of his courage and wit. Hundreds of men still scrambled for their lasguns, and those that had them were fixing bayonets or looking for a clean shot they just couldn't get through the mass of men. Zeb saw a group of men, likely friends, traveling across the wake of officers behind him. He stopped their run with a shout, telling them of the racks of shotguns twelve meters behind them. 

"Sir, those are for officers of your rank..." One of them hesitantly began, and the objection was very obviously a poor attempt at trying not to be recruited for a suicide mission.

"You'll get them and you'll follow me or we're all dead." Zeb ordered, holding his modified lasgun at the hip. He didn't raise it to be antagonistic, but the group of guardsmen saw the barrel vaguely pointed their way. That coupled with the death stare on Zeb's face made them not hesitate much longer, rushing over and grabbing the pump actions. Zeb didn't wait for them, knowing any second of delay sent another dozen men to meet the God Emperor. Reaching to his belt, he pulled out one of his krak grenades. Some might argue a frag was better against orks, and it was true the Krak was meant for anti-armor operations, but Zeb wanted to do the maximum amount of damage within a short blast radius, for the opportunity of Orks streaming in through the rampway of the shuttle. 

"Move! Move!" He roared, shouldering through frightened troopers, shoving himself closer to the front. 

"Sir, they're slaughtering us!" A blonde guardsmen cried, losing all dignity in his frightened state. 

"For the Emperor!" Another screamed, hefting a lasgun above his peers, eyes wild. 

"EMPEROR!" Zebulon roared, pulling the pin out of his grenade and pulling his hand back. A man was tossed into the air by an Ork's backhand, Zeb ducking under flailing limbs. Had he been struck, he might have been thrown to the ground and had the grenade detonate in the midst of them, but luckily Zeb had good reflexes. He lowered his head in a boxer's weave and then threw the krak grenade as far as he could. The heavy, handheld bomb arced through the air, spinning like an old terran football. Zeb watched as it hit an Ork on the head, the xenos showing a complete stupid bewilderment like a younger brother getting socked by an older one. It didn't have the time to be embarrassed or enraged. Less than a moment after it bounced off its thick skull, the krak grenade detonated. 

A low, ear shattering 'thump' shot across the shuttle. Ork flesh incinerated and bones shattered, blowing the ones out of the blast radius onto their knees or on their backs. Very little shrapnel flew, but the concussive force was significant. The Orks went quiet just as the men had when the xenos had begun their bloody assault. The two sides seemed to be undecided as of what to do, and it was Zeb that broke the silence. 

"Forward! Cut them down!" His voice rang, and the men at the front ran forward in a wave, the odd lasbolt flying into the disoriented Orks as the unarmed men picked up what choppas they could handle the weights of and charged with thew makeshift melee weapons. Zeb made it to the front, lasgun firing with a loud continuous 'crack' as he unleashed the full-auto of the weapon, the gun barrel barking as it singed green flesh and pierced Ork eyes and extremities. Two of the brutes regained their wits and stampeded toward Zeb, pig eyed and spittle flying from their frothing mouths. Zeb hefted his lasgun and obliterated one of the dreaded aliens, simultaneously cauterizing and puncturing their skull. The other was nearly on him, and he leaped back to get some room, but a thundering boom rent the air and blood splattered from the Ork's chest. It staggered but didn't go down. Two more shots were fired, crippling it by caving in its knee before the second ripped through its neck. Zeb turned and saw the group he had commandeered pump their shotguns and press forward. Another sergeant lead an assault on the left, flanked by three squadrons of guardsmen. Three men fell from shoota bullets, the large slugs shattering bones, one tearing through a man's skull until it was naught but a cave that drooled blood.

Every second, more men were armed and outfitted. The Orks that were still alive leaped at the guardsmen with wild abandon, taking out three men or more for every one of their number lost in such close quarters. But they were pushed back, more grenades being thrown into the bottleneck, shrapnel and explosive force tearing into the greenskin tide. Suddenly, multiple explosions rang out, the Orks crying out in fear as the 'thumps' grew louder and tore into their ranks from the outside. They exploded in a manner Zeb imagined a psyker would use, but there were none there he knew of. The men looked to one another confused, and all Zeb could guess was they had attempted to bring in grenadier orks themselves, but the explosives thrown from the guardsmen had detonated the leading booma orks and set a chain reaction down the line. The men were halted by shouting officers, letting the orks finish themselves off, firing at any survivors that got off the ground or stumbled in sight through the fog of debris.  

The guardsmen took this time to order themselves, forming ranks and making sure no one's hands were without a weapon. Gingerly they marched forward, Zeb at the vanguard that stepped into the haze. He didn't know what to expect, but it did his heart well to hear the distant thumping of basilisk artillery gun batteries. There were slight tremors that accompanied the booms, making good on the name 'earthshakers.' Zeb heard a groan to his right, seeing an ork with muscled arms pushing itself off its face and shaking his head, before looking up at Zeb stupidly. 

Zeb shouldered his lasgun and fired through the brute's mouth, tearing into its insides and ending its life. Even its eyes blistered from the intense heat of the lasbolt. It's body fell forward onto the dirt again, Zeb spitting on the corpse. Katia had an ancestral grudge against the xenos, but Zeb had firsthand experience that fueled his disgust for the beasts. The WAAAGH he campaigned against on Lorn V would forever be etched into his memories.  

"Sir!" Zeb heard from his left. He turned and saw corporal Hagman. Finally, someone he recognized! It was weird for Hagman to call him sir, but in front of the other men... 

"Report, Hag." He said. 

"Du-retour should be less than a score of Kilometers to the northeast. If we hurry and don't run into another warband, we could make it there before nightfall." 

Zeb nodded, satisfied at that if need be, but he still had the will to get there quicker somehow. He turned to the group of soldiers that had followed him. The shotgunners and a few squads of other guardsmen, every man looking his way or at the ground. He turned towards the smog that was now lifting, showing a lightly obscured countryside, well manicured and organized trees amongst rolling hills of rich farmland, now scarred and sliced by war. Even with the damage, it was grand to look upon. In the air, bright projectiles flitted across the cloudy sky as more shuttled floated from the heavens in the distant horizon. Even as he watched, another shuttle was burning, flying across the sky towards the planet like an asteroid.

"Everyone who wants to follow me, I'll be marching east to find some vehicles. I have a mission to get to Commissar Katia. Every man that wants to stay with the main body, leave now. Where I'm going, we won't get the support you'll need." 

Not a man refused him. He didn't know why, but somehow, they wanted to follow him.