The Beast Arises

‘Lord Garthas was inspecting the dead and voxing new orders for Captain Xontague and his Fists,’ the Honour Guard Space Marine said. ‘One of the savages — a boarder, a hull breacher — still breathed in the First Captain’s presence. It was alive when its injuries dictated it should not be.’

‘Continue, Brother Zerberyn.’

‘It detonated the hull-cracking breach charge it carried, taking Lord Garthas and his honour guard with it,’ the honorarius said. ‘Their plate could not protect them from such a charge. Lord Garthas was found, but the Chief Apothecary said he could not be saved.’

Thane stared bitterly out across the churning ocean of greenskin savagery that continued to roll up across the shattered void plating of the Alcazar Astra. Despite a full Eidolican night of fighting, despite the taking of life in ghastly swathes and the mettle of Dorn’s sons being put sorely to the test, the green invader came still. The attack moon had blanket-bombed the Eidolican dark side with rocks and crash transports. Hulks and landers still rocketed into the black desert-world dunes, vomiting forth alien barbarians — their brief thunderbolt transit rattling and shaking them into a bottomless fury. No matter how many enemy lives the Fists Exemplar took in the name of their dead Chapter Masters and primarch, the ork attack moon supplied more.

Master Aloysian had been as good as his word. Despite his doubts, the Master of the Forge had used his skills and prayers to bring the star fort’s only operational plasma drive to explosive life. The mighty engine column, that as one of four would have helped transport and manoeuvre the mighty Alcazar Astra in-system, blasted the fortress-monastery from its sandy foundations, turning the black desert to obsidian about it. As Master Aloysian had faithfully predicted, the star fort did not ascend. It inclined.

Rising on the Transept East engine column, everything not mag-locked to the gore-slick void plating began to slip and tumble away. Fifth Captain Tyrian watched as thousands of greenskin savages fell away from the edge of the void hull and down into the plasma-drive-roasted sands. Creatures skidded and slid towards the company’s chainblades and boltguns, allowing the Adeptus Astartes to end them with ease. With their boots firmly locked to the metal deck, Xontague, captain of the Eighth, and his company cut through the monstrosities roaring and clawing uselessly past them. Captain Kastril and his Scout Marines secured themselves to the gargoylesque architecture of Fortress-Monastery North. When the deck began to rumble and tilt, the scouts picked off beasts from the plummeting masses with their sniper rifles over the pauldrons of their Ninth Company brothers.

For Thane and the Second Company, the sea of green receded at the captain’s command. One moment Thane and Apothecary Reoch were back-to-back, carving and blasting pieces off gargantuan alien thugs; the next the deck was empty but for the dripping statues of Fists Exemplar, splattered in alien gore and mag-locked to the inclining deck. Monsters scraped, scrambled and scratched at the hull plating and each other, furious that gravity should drag them away from their quarry. Claws and weapons failed to provide purchase when sunk into the blood-smeared armour plating, and those monsters desperate and fast enough to grab something and hold on were swiftly blasted from their ledges by nearby Space Marines. As soon as the guns on the void ramparts re-established their firing protocols and the Thunderhawks assumed a similar suppression role above the helmets of the Fists Exemplar, Thane ordered Master Aloysian to gently reduce thrust and allow the plasma engine to take them back to the sands.

The strategy had succeeded. Despite shattering the fortress-monastery’s superstructure further and rending great rifts in its void plating and architecture, the star fort had been denied to the greenskin invader. Both Space Marines and deck guns were replenished with precious ammunition from the fort’s armoury vaults and for the hours of darkness that followed, the innumerable invaders were kept at murderous ballistic range. Chapter serfs returned to the ramparts with ammunition and supplies, while Apothecary Reoch took the opportunity to down the chainblade that had wreaked such horrific wounds on others and look instead to the wounds that had been visited on his brothers by the enemy.