The Beast Arises

Wind buffeted the canyon. The banners of the regiments and of the Imperium flapped. Their ragged state only made their pride the fiercer. They flew high, and they were saluted by the full-throated roar of armoured fury. Leman Russ battle cannons, Taurox autocannons, Chimera multi-lasers and heavy bolters blasted the enemy infantry to shreds. Trucks and battlewagons exploded before they could turn. Rather than a walking barrage, Imren had ordered targets over a wide range, as far as the tanks could fire with enough accuracy that they would not cause critical damage to the facility. Geysers of fire and shattered bodies erupted across the canyon-filling mob. Confusion and rage rippled out of the impacts.

Columns of infantry charged into the orks, stabbing with bayonets even as they burned with las. Thousands of men and women howled. Driven by repeated retreats, defeats and the festering humiliation of the Proletarian Crusade, they were starved for revenge. In their anger, they were as savage as the orks. No urging was needed from the commissars. Every trooper was on a personal vendetta.

In the foe’s chaotic response, Imren saw contradictory orders. The facility was under attack from the north, the south and in the centre. The threats were everywhere, the priority targets unclear.

‘Choose us, xenos filth!’ Imren shouted at the burning night. ‘We are your doom! We are the great danger to your machine!’

As if they heard her over her cannons and their snarls, the orks reversed course. The tidal wave came for the Astra Militarum. It boiled through the passages between conduits rising from the ground and the generators. It flowed around the columns of Imperial infantry. It rushed to all sides of the armour. Carried in the current, rocking as they ran over the slower brutes, the battlewagons rumbled forward, their guns firing with greater abandon the closer they came.

Imren was yelling with her troops. Her throat was scraped raw. She could not hear herself over the ecstatic clamour of war. She could find no words for her rage. She gave herself over to the possession of fury. But her thoughts were clear. They were a prayer to the Emperor. As the vortex enveloped her, she thought, again and again, let this have meaning. Let this have meaning.

Let us have meaning.

‘No,’ said Alquist Arouar. Along the east edge of the Ascia Rift, skitarii and electro-priests paused in their tasks. ‘Physical connections must remain pending. Complete operations until that stage. Proceed no further until confirmation of the primarch’s success.’

He moved back from the cliff edge, tracing the web of cables running from the ork energy coil to the Mechanicus assembly. The control mechanism was large. It had taken four heavy transport vehicles to haul its components to this position, and three others had carried the means of conjunction. Kilometres of metre-thick cable spread out from the assembly, reaching out to four of the coils. Each of the ork structures was the height of a Warhound-class Titan. Each released enough excess energy to incinerate a division of infantry. The four Arouar was going to tap into were only a fraction of the total number. He extrapolated that their interconnection through the larger system would make them act in concert once he had control. Whether seizing four would be enough was the question to be tested.

He looked back at the coil, and at the network of coruscating light in the depths of the canyon. The moment was extraordinary. His multiplicity of sensors struggled to keep up with the wave of data. To be this close to the ork technology, to have the opportunity to put the theoretical work done on Mars during the war to work — to have access to the coveted machinery itself — was beyond price.

The flood of data had an undertow. In the terms of the flesh, it was temptation. It invited Arouar to submerge his consciousness in the study of the machine. If that was the final act of his being, and the data he processed made its way back to Mars, that would be a worthy form of worship of the Omnissiah.

Princeps Tynora 7-Galliax moved into his field of view, and recalled him to the necessities of the present. Her heavily armoured form was more massive than Arouar’s and more compact, its mechadendrites smaller and withdrawn within the armour’s shell. Her form had been forged for war at the expense of almost all exploratory function.

She was the reminder. The Mechanicus was at war. The Fabricator General had been explicit: the orks must be defeated. Terra must be saved. Data collection was a secondary priority. Koorland was Lord Commander of the Imperium, and his orders were to be followed.

7-Galliax gazed over Arouar’s shoulder at the assembled control machinery. ‘What is our probability of error?’ she asked.