The Beast Arises

A cadre of several hundred skitarii — the dominus’ personal guard — held a perimeter just half a kilometre from where Laurentis watched the unfolding battle. Beyond them heavier engines of war waged their own fight — two Warlord Titans of the Legio Ultima had landed close to the crash site, another likely reason for Laurentis’ continued mortal existence. The towering avatars of the Machine-God’s wrath put forth an ear-splitting, blinding storm of fire from their immense rocket launchers, volcano cannon, turbolasers and macro-cannons, reducing clanking ork transports to careening piles of slag, obliterating mobs of aliens in blossoms of immolating fire.

Smaller war machines held the other approaches. Moving between the fume-wreathed remains of the engine decks and the glassy crater that had been a plasma reactor, a Warhound scout-class and two Reaver Battle Titans in the dark green and gold of the War Griffons supported maniples of red-armoured automaton warriors from the Legio Cybernetica. Any orks cunning, persistent or lucky enough to survive the ire of the Titans were hunted down by hulking mechanical brutes, targeted by raging bursts from incendine combustors or crushed with crackling power fists. Volkite blasts and the muzzle flash of macrostubbers added to the hellish glow of the flame-shrouded battle. Tracer rounds left actinic trails against a backdrop of the fading dusk while incendiary missiles burst in blooms of incandescent wrath.

The silhouette of a rare tri-legged Punisher-class Titan blocked out the sky above, standing guard over the upper ranks of Martian nobility with tezlan accelerators gleaming. The containment fields of its underslung plasma annihilator vibrated through the ground, and Laurentis’ bionics, like a heartbeat.

Such protection did not render them immune to harm. Ork heavy guns had started shelling the Cult Mechanicus forces as they had assembled on the site of their fallen commanders. Stray rockets continued to sputter and spit past, detonating against the black metal of the war-forge’s inner sanctum.

His recent near-fatal experiences had inured the magos to any anxiety concerning self-preservation, but he sensed the unease of his companions. He had no doubt that they would have preferred to stay within the armoured shell of the strategium block, but that was impossible. The glitter of las-cutters and corona of phase fields illuminated the interior as a full recovery phalanx attempted to free the dominus from the half-collapsed decks. Monotask servitors with cranes and heavy mechanical lifters pried apart the wreckage, red-robed tech-priests overseeing the oddly brutal-yet-delicate operation.

Delthrak’s transmitter was a constant stream of coded orders, a rat-tat-tat barrage of signals that flitted through a sub-channel of Laurentis’ auditory backups.

‘Please stop that, it is impossible to think with the racket,’ Laurentis told the Barbarian’s Advocate. ‘I am trying to metriculate.’

‘Someone has to coordinate the defence while the dominus is discommoded,’ replied Delthrak.

Laurentis could not see well after his most recent reconstruction, but from what he observed there was nothing to be done that wasn’t already under way.

‘I would also suggest that you cease distracting our line-commanders with this constant inanity,’ the magos continued. ‘They are far more experienced than you or I in these matters.’

‘You have no rank here,’ Delthrak snapped back. ‘In fact, you have become utterly irrelevant.’

A particularly large and multicoloured explosion to their right drew everybody’s attention. Just a few hundred metres away the red-armoured carapaces of several Kataphron warrior-constructs stood out starkly against the white ash and grey dust. Their weapons chattered, muzzle flare visible even at this distance when they engaged another foe, as yet out of sight past the scraps of the forge-ship littering the blasted hillsides. Until large numbers of infantry arrived, there would be gaps in the defensive enclosure — Titans were more properly suited to levelling cities than picking off infantry assaults.

A rocket whined overhead and crashed a few hundred metres away, behind the tech-priests. Another followed, striking closer. The deafening blast of a war-horn from the looming Punisher — the Modus Destructor — warned those below that it was moving. Skitarii squads scattered and the tech-priests moved closer to the inner shell as the gigantic construct stepped forward. The shell of an ork building collapsed under its clawed foot as the Titan settled in its new position.