The Beast Arises

Esad Wire, known to a few by the title of Beast Krule, let the body of the greenskin slip to the ground, its throat crushed. His synskin suit was hidden beneath a few scraps of clothes and armour he had looted from other targets. The silhouette they gave him was more of a disguise than the shifting cameleoline, though he could not hope to look like an ork. He had smeared a little of their filthy blood and spoor over himself to cover his own scent, having been briefed on orks from the Officio Assassinorum’s mission data repositories. Despite its limits, his rough silhouette had confused the greenskins he had encountered long enough to get in range with weighted fists or needle pistol.

Grand Master Vangorich had expressed the uniqueness of the mission — rarely was an operative of the Assassins despatched to slay a non-human target. Their purview was far more concentrated on the rogues and rebellions within the Imperium.

In fact there was almost nothing about the orks at all in the archives, and Vangorich had drawn in favours from the Inquisition to supplement their records.

Krule stepped over a corpse, past two other dead orks that had been lounging by their armoured wagon. The complacency of the aliens — the sheer casualness they showed in the face of a massed human attack — worried him as he pulled himself up into the driver’s position. Settling into the bucket seat, he looked over the crude pedals and controls, working out where throttle and gearing systems were located.

He heard a dull, distant thunder that he instantly recognised as the retort of a large cannon. It continued for some time, many guns firing not quite in unison. He waited to hear the corresponding explosions in the city but nothing came, yet the fusillade continued.

Perplexed, he stood up, the better to see over the corrugated iron and broken plastek rookeries of the ork shanty piled up on the foot of the mountain that was Gorkogrod. The haze of the force dome gave everything beyond the city’s borders a greenish cast. Streaks of shells disappeared into the cloud. Looking left and right the Assassin saw the flashes of other weapons — beams and blasts and oscillating green waves from emplacements somewhere beyond the city’s semi-derelict outskirts.

He had seen drop-ships descending all afternoon, accompanied by the occasional shower of artificial meteors when the Adeptus Astartes had made secondary drops. The Assassin had paid it no mind. He had been expecting floods of alien warriors to pour from Gorkogrod to fend off the attacks, and had hoped to use such activity and confusion to slip through the ork city. Now the lack of response from the orks was explained. He had seen no defences as he had brought his commandeered aircraft down, but could see that the firepower being unleashed into the sky and towards orbit was devastating.

Dropping down into the seat, Krule started the engine. Its throaty roar accompanied a cough of oily smoke from the pierced exhausts flanking the machine. He slammed his foot onto the throttle pedal and sped out of the courtyard and into the street beyond, crashing through a crowd of greenskins that had emerged from their hovels to stare at the anti-orbital attacks. One bounced from the large iron buffer on the front of the battlewagon; another went jolting under a wheel.

Ignoring their death-cries, Krule powered the vehicle uphill, heading as fast as he could towards the inner city.

Chapter Nine

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

I dared what others could not. I knew what awaited me in the inferno and I stepped willingly into the flames. No other could. As above, so below, the fight without and the battle within. Endless torment, unending perseverance. Not one of my brothers could have done it, in body or in mind. It was my agony alone to suffer.

For what? For maggots to erupt from the corpse of greatness, devouring blindly the very thing that sustains them, consuming all until is spent. The Imperium is a husk; even the rot has eaten itself.

The city was ringed with fire. Devastation caused by crashing ships and burning debris spread far into the wastelands that surrounded the ork capital — wastelands that had not been empty of life, but concealed a profusion of orks beneath rock and ash.