The Beast Arises

‘Sir…’ Galtan’s hand tugged at the field-legatus’ brocaded sleeve. ‘You have to come to the gyro. I’ve ordered full staff council evacuation.’

‘You’ve ordered…?’

‘My prerogative, field-legatus.’ The junior officer signalled to a stern-faced commissar standing by the stairwell that led up to the flight platform atop the command vehicle. ‘Strechan will look after you.’

‘Come with me, sir.’ Strechan’s tone suggested he would brook no argument. His hand on the butt of a shock maul indicated he was also willing to take physical measures to ensure the field-legatus’ safety.

Dorr allowed himself to be hurried up the stairs. Emerging onto the flight platform he saw that the Capitol Imperialis had heeled over almost twenty degrees. The recon gyro — a four-rotored flyer capable of carrying five men in addition to the pilot — was still tightly gripped by landing claws.

‘What is happening?’ Dorr demanded, stepping away from the gaggle of officers surging up the stairs behind him.

Strechan looked as though he might intervene but stopped as the field-legatus directed a glare at him.

‘You may have the authority to detain me, commissar, but I would think twice about exercising it.’

The towering rock plateaus were falling to pieces, revealing glinting metal beneath. Like petals unfolding, huge plates hinged down, unleashing crushing deluges of rock onto the men and tanks between. Looking behind, Dorr could see one of the massive structures fully opened. Where there had been a mesa of solid stone — so he had thought — he could see a pointed dome at least a hundred metres across. It was painted in huge checks of red and black.

‘Is that…?’

‘Yessir,’ Galtan said hurriedly, seizing hold of the stunned field-legatus’ belt to drag him towards the open doors of the gyro. The blades started to spin, the whine of motors almost lost under the tumult of falling rocks and the shrieks of pulverised tank armour. The cacophony swallowed the screams of the dying, their last cries passing unheard forty metres below.

Bundled into the gyro, Dorr had not even strapped on his safety harness when the engines pitched to a shriek and he felt the craft lift away. Already at an awkward angle, the gyro sheared sideways towards the grey-and-black avalanche, until the pilot heaved the flyer into a swift climb. A cloud of choking ash and dust mixed with exhaust smoke swept through the still-open door of the compartment, coating uniforms, lips and skin with powdery residue. The updraught shook the gyro, its rotors rattling through stone splinters.

The field-legatus shouldered past Galtan, noting that Commissar Strechan had remained behind on the stricken Capitol Imperialis. Through the murk, wiping grit from his eyes, Dorr looked out of the ascending gyro, able to see across the expanse of the landing zone.

He could not credit his own senses at first, but the impossible forced its way into recognition. Where there had been rock and wilderness, now Dorr watched eight missiles push up from their silos, each defying sanity with their size.

‘We have to warn the others,’ he croaked, swallowing dust.

A captain manning the vox-station looked at him, the blood drained from his face. He was holding the speaker-piece against his ear to listen over the continuing storm of noise.

‘They already know, sir. By the Throne, they already know…’

Like a cornered animal, Ullanor bared its fangs.

Years of psychodoctrination meant that Captain Valefor could not panic. Vigorous mental conditioning and genetic therapy had eliminated biological fear. Even so, as a cocktail of hormones and stimulants raced through his bloodstream, as twin hearts thundered into accelerated life and his tertiary lung inflated to flood his system with oxygen, the biological call to action that seared through his body and thoughts came very close.

The desert had swallowed six Astra Militarum drop-craft already, the yawning chasm that had split the basin still widening. Dust and ash flowed like water into the breach, dragging tanks and men with it. Ruddy light, the gleam of the abyss itself, burned from the new crevasse, and with it came an ear-piercing screech of tortured metal.

The plain was shifting under his feet, toppling columns of soldiers that had been advancing from the landing barges. He could feel himself moving slowly to the right without taking a step. He watched as a Leman Russ tank tilted, trapped against a boulder. Hatches slammed open as the crew tried to scramble to safety. Too late, too slow, they fell into the gaping rift with their vehicle.

The vox was a thrum of meaningless noise, every general channel and frequency overloaded. He shut down all but the Adeptus Astartes feeds. The garbled bursts were replaced by clipped, efficient reports and unruffled commands. The relative quiet allowed him to focus on the immediate situation.