The Beast Arises

When Van Auken turned back to the observation port he found Magos Urquidex standing at the armourglass.

‘It seems that a trip to the Eastern Fringe is not required to achieve an audience with the Adeptus Astartes, after all,’ Urquidex said.

‘Keep this one alive,’ Van Auken said coldly, ‘and such a trip might not be necessary.’ With that the artisan-primus departed the observation deck and left Magos Urquidex to his half-priest patient.

FOURTEEN

Undine — submerged

It was all but impossible to find a private space aboard the armed submersible Tiamat. Both space and privacy existed at a premium below the Undinian waves, and never more so than now, following the attack on Hive Pherusa. Commander Lux Allegra knew this better than most, but still managed to find a tiny maintenance alcove in the steam-swathed engineering compartment. A place for kneeling. For gritted teeth. For trembling hands. For tears that would not come.

General Phifer and Admiral Novakovic had ordered the planetary defence fleet to put in at Pherusa for supplies, munitions and manpower. The greenskin invasion force had yet to reach the mercantile hive and the city boasted an impressive harbour. While the freighters and troop carriers took on contingents of Undine Marineers and recruits, sky talons drifted fuel and munitions over to Novakovic’s launch carriers and heavy monitors. By the time the skies darkened to the east, it was already too late. Without orbital augur arrays to warn the defence fleet, Phifer and Novakovic could have little idea what was coming. So much that they had witnessed of the greenskin invasion had been unprecedented. The attack on Pherusa Harbour was no different.

Blotting out the heavens ahead of the storm of raining crash-capsules and rocks was a greenskin wing comprising an assortment of fat aircraft, flying citadels and super-heavy bombers. The colossal junkers had monstrous bellies packed to the rivets with mega-bombs and weapons of mass destruction. Their thunderous engines barely kept the bombers in the air, while their wing expanses formed runways for smaller jets and kamikaze rockets. Their bulbous hulls swarmed with kopters and mounted accreted platforms for fat cannons, launchers and macrostubbers. The bomber wing’s approach was slow and irresistible, eclipsing the sun and casting a great shadow across the ocean.

The admiral’s Avenger formations were swallowed whole by the droning monster. The hive’s turbo weaponry and the defence fleet’s deck-mounted cannons punched holes in the swarm but could do nothing to stop the deluge of greenskin ordnance that dropped from the sky. Monitors and corvettes erupted in cloud-scraping fireballs. Multi-hulled launch carriers were blasted in two. Overcrowded transports went to the bottom of the anchorage, taking thousands of defence force guardsmen with them. Marineers. Mercenaries. Volunteers. Men and women who would have fought for Undine, now dead.

Only the submersibles survived, carrying the decimated armada’s senior officers and staff to the same sheltered depths. When they once again ascended to augur-depth they found a harbour choked with charred hulks and the waters bobbing with bodies. Worse still was Hive Pherusa. Within hours the hive city had been levelled by the greenskins’ barrage of bombs. Now it was just a small mountain of smouldering masonry and wreckage being gradually reclaimed by the waves.

Commander Lux Allegra only knew this because she had been on board the command submersible Tiamat when the attack unfolded. She had been summoned by both General Phifer and Admiral Novakovic, although she suspected that Lord Governor Borghesi’s gratitude had something to do with the order. It turned out to be an earned but impromptu promotion. Lux Allegra was commander no more. She was Captain Allegra now.

She ached to be with her ‘Screeching Eagles’. To tell Gohlandr. But they were gone. By the time she reached the forward airlock, the attack had been under way. Novakovic had given the order for the submersible contingent to dive. Rocked by the hell at surface-level and the vox-reports coming in from sinking ships and vessels aflame, the Tiamat and her consorts sank to safety.

‘Captain Allegra to the conn. Captain Allegra to the conn. Urgent,’ the vox-hailer blared. For the longest time, she couldn’t make herself move. Her stomach was a knot. Her chest was wracked with a paralysing tension. Her boots felt like they had melted to the metal decking. Her mind was a pict-recording set in a loop. An urchin’s existence in the underhive. Gohlandr. Piracy; privateership; recruitment. Gohlandr. Hive Tyche. Gohlandr saving her life. The life inside her that belonged to Lyle Gohlandr. Had belonged to him. Her hand drifted to the flak armour across her belly. She allowed her face to screw up.