I've been meaning to ask. How did the Marines do that? Can we have actual quotes to ensure this isn't hyperbole? Was this meant to be a Thermopylae-esque stand against the Krork, where they couldn't bring their weapons to bear, and basically had to sit there and get sythed down by a lascannon, or was it something less believable?
I'm 90% certain Dan Abnett had been watching 300, because its basically a line of marines with lances and boltguns, with chapter serfs handing them reloads, mulching a load of Orks, and reflects the slightly ludicrous kill count and feats of the film, even for Space Marines.
Spoilers for Brothers of the Snake obviously.
Pg 243
" apart from those men who bore specialised weapons, every warrior carried a bolter and a combat shield, as well as a sheathed warblade. The teams of armourers and attendants, all in loose light armour, waited behind the line with munition reloads and bundles of sea lances sharpened for war"
" Five proud double-snakes glittered in the sunlight "
Thats five squads of Iron snakes, with Librarian Petrok in command, plus the serfs.
pg 245
"In their beringed fists, cleavers and axes, pikes and halberds, mauls and bitten blades..crude bolters and broad nosed cannon"
Attacking orks equipment
The Iron Snakes wait until the orks reach ten meters away, then let rip with bolters, plasma guns and flamers.
The Iron snakes butcher the Orks at point blank with gunfire until they are climbing/hacking their way through piles of blasted orkish bodies, reloading several times until "centimeter by centimeter" the orks get too close, then the Iron snakes pull out some spears and other close combat weapons and pretend that they are Spear infantry, while the serfs reload bolters.
Interestingly, theres a few sentances describing the marines fighting, targetting orks with guns first over orks with axes right in front of them etc.
" visor displays selected and prioritised targets, flickering and switching."
As the Orks falter,the Iron snakes grab their bolters and chew em up again for a bit, then spend the next half an hour basically chewing up the Orks, mainly in close quarters.
" Behind them, for a distance of about three acres, the earth was piled size or seven deep with the enemy dead, stinking slopes and mounts of carrion, gurlging as waste and fluid leaked out and turned the ground beneath into a quagmire."
"...not a single man in the five squads had fallen"
The reason for this tactic, which deviates slightly from the Iron Snakes previous engagements appears to be that there a fucking loads of orks, enough to have surrounded and almost overwhelmed 250 marines led by the Chapter master.
And these orks are fucking huge, one is described as "three times the mass of a space marine" and its just one of the the Ladz.
The "Swineguard" bodyguard were the size of Warbosses and had heavy bolters in one hand, chainblades in the others, although I suppose it isn't really surprising as apparently there are millions invading the planet, they lose "tens of thousands" to the 300 space marines in the final fighting retreat.
The marines loose 60 marines out of the 300 deploy on the planet, and pretty much get their arses kicked off by the Orks.
So assuming 20k Orks died in the entire planetary assault, thats one dead marine for every 330 odd dead orks.
But the Orks win, because they've got millions.
