After he had learned of the Water Rage curse from the Whisper, though, four nights ago, he had chosen to wear the pendant in honour of his mother and his new title, "Wildwater".

He pressed the pendant to his lips, then let it fall back to his chest. He hoped it would bring them luck. They needed it. 

He glanced at the Orr'un mining next to him - Liijak - and nodded. 'Now,' he whispered.

Liijak nodded his understanding, resting his pickaxe against the cave wall. He stepped backwards, swaying. He shouted, then tripped, landing roughly on the cave floor. Garrun would have been concerned had he not known the young Orr'un was playing a ruse. 

'Help!' Liijak shouted. His face suddenly flushed purple. Liijak had a bizarre skill in faking illnesses and injuries - which he was using to his advantage. 

As predicted, two of the guards watching over the slaves stepped towards Liijak. 'What's the matter?' one of them asked.

As the two guards approached, Garrun glanced at the Orr'un on the other side of Liijak - Vax - and nodded. He and Vax had both been positioned close to Liijak for this plan. The last couple of days, Garrun had been sparring with him and was glad to see, Vax's battle senses were as sharp as they had been in the Gallacag War. The big brute had beaten Garrun in all fields barring one: Mer magic (which Vax was adamant didn't count). 

As the two guards drew close, Vax signalled. Garrun nodded. It was time. 

At once, they span on their heels, swinging their pickaxes. Two sickening thumps echoed through the cave as the pickaxes crashed through the guards' body armour and into the flesh beneath. Garrun span and smashed his pickaxe - with the guard still impaled on it - into the cave wall. The guard whimpered, then collapsed on the rock. Vax opted for a more rugged strategy: pulling his pickaxe out from his victim's belly, he swung again and again into the guard's flesh until at last they fell silent. 

Garrun jerked his head towards the entrance of the cave chamber. The fighting had attracted more armoured guards - who wielded more than just mere pikes. Garrun flinched. He gritted his teeth; he couldn't hesitate now. 

Picking up his fallen foe's pike, he shouted, 'Now! For the Conquest!' 

With a furious chorus of shouts and cheers, the Orr'un slaves turned away from the cave wall, and brandishing three pickaxes a piece, sprinted towards the guards. The dreadful din of the guards' machine-rifles roared through the cave; but even as many Orr'uns fell, the survivors didn't stop their charge. 

Garrun smiled as he watched them. They seemed rejuvenated, renewed. Maybe the Whisper was right. Maybe I can lead the Orr'uns to glory. 

As the Orr'uns charged towards the armoured guards by the entranceentrance, Garrun threw the pike. It struck one of the guards in the chest, taking him to his knees. Vax passed him the other pike, and he threw it through another guard's head. A fountain of blood erupted from the guard's face, and he collapsed on the stone. 

Garrun glanced at Vax, who was brandishing his three pickaxes and staring hungrily at the fighting. 'Come on. Let's join them.'

With a victorious bellow, Vax raced towards the cave entrance, spinning and swinging his pickaxes. He was like a furious pickaxe-hurricane, spinning across the battlelines, impaling heads, chests, arms. Garrun was awe-struck by his fighting prowess. 

And the rest were fighting well, too. While many had been cut down by the machine-rifle fire, those that were left seemed to fight with triple their usual strength. Over the last few days, Garrun had sparred with many of these Orr'uns - but he had never seen them fight with such ferocity and strength before. The Orr'uns were machines built for war, and it was fully on display to him. 

Unsurprisingly, the Orr'un slaves cut through the Vorion guards. In a matter of minutes, all but a few of the guards lay still on the rock floor. They let the survivors go, running off into the caves.

Garrun glanced at Vax, who held two surviving men between his three meaty hands. 'Vax, let them go,' he commanded. 

The big Orr'un frowned. 'Why? We'll need them if we want to infiltrate the fort. Think of the damage we could wreak on the Imperium.'

' "Free them and lead them", those were the Whisper's orders,' Garrun replied, shaking his head. 'My priority is to get us offworld and safe. Once we've rebuilt the Conquest, then we can destroy the Imperium.' 

Vax's face twisted into a snarl. 'What? We can't just let them get away with this!'

'They won't,' said Garrun calmly. 'But we are in no state to try to fight them. Not yet.' He turned back to the others, eyes fixing on the injured. 'Medics, take a look at some of the injuries.' He gestured to the others. 'The rest of you, follow me.' 

With him and Vax at the head of the column, they marched through the cave. Behind them, the medics - two twin brothers, Oji and Doji, and an elderly woman, Oshaaron - hastily tended to the wounded. 

Up ahead lay the entrance to another of the chambers. Garrun spied the guards standing calmly by the entrance in their dark-grey bodysuits, black pikes glistening.

'Quiet!' Garrun hissed at the Orr'uns, who were moving noisily through the cave. He glanced at Vax and nodded. 'Vax, with me. We're going to give them a surprise.'

Vax still looked abashed from Garrun's refusal to attack the Imperium fort. Still, he followed him obediently, creeping quietly along the cave wall. The others lay behind a safe distance away, ready to attack at Garrun's command. 

Garrun and Vax crept closer to the guards, preparing to strike. When they were only a metre or so away, Garrun gave the signal and both he and Vax moved to attack. 

They easily crept behind the first two guards and twisted their necks. The guards let out brief yelps, before falling limp. Unfortunately, the other guards were much more difficult to deal with. They were able to take down one, slicing out his throat, but the others quickly overpowered them, striking their pikes against their backs. Garrun's back burned with pain. 

He shouted for the other Orr'uns to join them, but they were too far, would come to late. Garrun closed his eyes, waiting for the final blow to strike.

But it never did.

Instead, he turned around to see a Orr'un woman with short, silver hair yank the guard's pike from his hands, twist it, and impale it back into him. The guard choked, then collapsed to the floor. All around them, the Orr'un slaves from inside the second chamber ran around, swinging their picks at the guards.

'Took your time, Cayyon,' Garrun remarked, inhaling sharply.

The silver-haired Orr'un woman - Cayyon - smirked. 'I wanted to see you sweat, Wildwater.' Her face gravened. 'I'll be honest, we were struggling to find an opening before you guys got here. Our slave group doesn't have any warriors like you and Vax. I know you trained Guhy and Vero up, but no offence to them, they're hardly comparable to you two.'

Garrun smiled. 'Well, we came, and now you're free. Come on. We need to move quickly.' 

They freed the rest of the slaves in the caves - even the non-Orr'un ones - one chamber at a time. Friends, family, lovers were reunited in freedom. Garrun smiled as he watched Liijak and Vero reunite with their mother and Cayyon reunite with her muscular felinoid boyfriend. 

His eyes caught sight of a small Orr'un girl sprinting into her father's arms. He glanced to his left and saw Vax was watching them too. A flash of pain danced behind the big Orr'un's eyes. 

They were soon joined by the medics and the injured. While their injuries had not been fully treated, they had been patched up enough so they could survive the escape. Another bout of reunions ensued - which Garrun reluctantly cut short.

'There's no time,' he reasoned. 'We need to leave! Arm up,' he said, picking up a pike from a fallen guard. 'I want everyone who can wield them armed with a pike.'

Though there were a fair few of the Orr'uns who looked disgruntled by this, they simply bowed their heads and murmured, 'Yes, Wildwater,' before arming themselves and following him outside. 

They hastily ran down the mountainside, making sure not to lose their footing. The cracked ground threatened to give way at any moment; Garrun only prayed they wouldn't trigger a landslide. The sun beat on their back like a flaming whip, spurring them to speed. 

Garrun eyed the Grey River at the bottom of the mountain and pointed it out. After much runninh and stumbling, they came down onto the river's flat floodplain and were close to the water's edge. As laserfire suddenly rang out from the mountainside, the Orr'uns dropped to the ground. Garrun glanced up at the mountainside to see a stream of Vorion guards approaching, machine-rifles buzzing. 'They took their time,' he muttered, glancing at Vax.

Garrun led them to the edge of the Grey River. He heard lasers strike the rock behind him as he ran, but he refused to look back. 

Reaching the riverbank, he shouted to Cayyon as he passed, 'Stay on the riverbank. I'll tell you when to come in!'

She frowned. 'Whatever you're doing, make it quick!'

He didn't reply, jumping straight into the water. At once, he attuned (it was second-nature by now). He floated to the top of the water and closed his eyes. 

Since the night he had first been given the title "Wildwater", he had been training every night with the Whisper in the Cosmic Plane, refining his skills and becoming further attuned to the water and to his Mer heritage. Now was the time to see if it had paid off; now was his opportunity to live up to his "Wildwater" moniker. 

He closed his eyes and imagined a platform of water rising out of the river. It became increasingly difficult to focus as the buzz of laserfire echoed all around him. He strained, feeling the water's energies coil all around him. The water bubbled and foamed - then suddenly it began to rise. With much difficulty, he stopped it from rising, awaiting the others. 

Keeping his eyes firmly shut, he shouted, 'Cayyon! Get them on!' He heard splashing as the other slaves frantically waded into the water. 

Then he released the water platform. He wasn't sure how high it rose to - he kept his eyes clamped shut - but he knew it would be enough to get them all to safety. The next settlement down the river was Thy, an indigenous Kela settlement the Vorions had yet to discover - at least, that was what he hoped. Garrun had only found the settlement by chance, stumbling across it on one of his unit's many patrols through the Wastes. 

By the whip of a single thought, the water pillar spurred at once into action. It set off down the river, carrying its awe-struck cargo to their destination. The sound of crashing water buffeted Garrun's ears. He finally let himself open his eyes to see the water pillar towering over the river's edge by at least fifty metres as it carried them downstream. He gasped. He'd surprised himself; he'd achieved nothing of the scale as yet in the Cosmic Plane with the Whisper. 

He looked around at the Orr'und and non-Orr'uns. All eyes were wide; all mouths gaped. He exchanged a look with Vax, who nodded back, impressed. 

Keeping his eyes peeled for the telltale signs of the Thy settlement - namely, the huge carved monolith erected to honour one of the indigenous Kela people's mythic deities. When he saw the stone statue, he at once killed the water pillar; it - and the slaves sat upon it - crashed down to the river's surface below. He ordered the slaves to stay on the river's edge while he left to negotiate with the Thy people. What they needed was a ship - something large enough to get them all offworld.