The Beast Arises

Vulkan swung his hammer. Each blow was a meteor impact. The night flashed with the weapon’s wrath. The earth trembled before its power. Braced now, Koorland kept his footing. The orks struggled forwards but were swept back again and again, and each time their ranks thinned. The terrain itself began to change. The battle shattered hard ridges to dust. Rivers of blood poured over arid stone. The softer lines of broken bodies covered the jagged shapes of rock. The stench of death, burned and wet, reached through Koorland’s grille. His frame vibrated with the pounding beat of the hammer. His blood rejoiced, caught by the rhythm of righteous annihilation.

‘More!’ Vulkan bellowed at the orks. ‘Send more! Still more! Will you never be enough?’

The strength of twenty Space Marines and a single primarch shattered the orks’ assault. The force that had remained to fight Vulkan had contained him, but no more. The orks had been unable to achieve victory. Now they could not avoid defeat. As the infantry numbers diminished, the greenskins tried to conquer through swiftness. The vehicles had more room to move. They could pick up speed, or as much as the rough terrain would allow.

They died all the more quickly.

Squads of bikers roared by in strafing runs. Koorland and the Last Wall lowered their aim, stitching the sides of the bikes with shells. They blasted through wheels, exploded fuel tanks. They turned the bikes into somersaulting death traps. Rolling balls of steel and fire collided with other drivers. It was destruction built on destruction. Vulkan swung his hammer sideways. The blow went through a bike and its rider without stopping. The ork machine might have been made of air.

To Koorland’s astonishment, mortals joined in the fight. They were a small group, no more than a score. They wore ragged mining clothes and wielded lasrifles. They used the folds in the earth as cover, ducking down each time the hammer came down. They clutched the ground, weathering the wind and the shockwave, then popped up again to shoot at the orks. The few greenskins they brought down had no impact on the struggle. Their presence and their survival was a miracle. They fought for their planet when the only hope of victory lay in the hands of others.

They were a wonder.

Koorland looked at them with a kind of joy.

Four battlewagons circled the fight. Then they converged, riding over the ridges at such speed they almost overturned. Their turrets blazed at Vulkan. They were in each other’s line of fire, and stray shells fountained earth before them. Two of them were burning as they closed in. Koorland pulled a krak grenade from his belt. He turned his attention from the slaughtered infantry to assist, but the tanks were already there.

Vulkan disappeared in the nexus of shell bursts. The glare faded, revealing his massive form leaping at the nearest battlewagon. A mountain sailed through the air. He landed on the front of the tank and his boots drove through its armour. The vehicle veered to the left. Vulkan raised his hammer over his head with both hands and brought it down, crushing the upper turret. The shockwave made Koorland’s head ring. Metal cried in agony, and Vulkan was already charging at the next tank as the first exploded.

Koorland fought. He brought the enemy down. He was not distracted by Vulkan’s actions. Yet he bore witness. And afterwards, when he thought of the battle, he could barely remember his own role. There was room in his memories only for the sight of a primarch’s wrath.

Vulkan ran into a battlewagon at full speed. The impact halted the tank and its forward hull crumpled. The giant of myth took the vehicle apart with two blows, and their thunder was so huge, the ammunition blasts that followed were mere echoes.

The orks did not retreat. The last two battlewagons hurled themselves at the legend, and to oblivion. The legend was indestructible. The legend was bedrock and magma. He was tectonic strength and tectonic fury. Koorland had a vision of this world having given birth to its champion, of Caldera itself striking back at the orks in retaliation for the wounds it had suffered at their hands.

The storm passed. The enemy lay dead. The rounded, wide peak of the hill and the slopes on all sides were a vast open tomb. For the first time since the war began, Koorland looked upon defeated orks. The first small measure of justice for his slaughtered brothers had been exacted. Shattered and broken bones, all burned black, blended with each other in twists of pain. The flames in the corpses of vehicles burned low. Night returned, but not full dark. With the glare of war gone, a dimmer, more diffuse glow asserted itself. It came from the clouds. They reflected the glower from the craters of the volcanoes to the north.