The Beast Arises

Two warbikes still raced around the Space Marines, their autocannons blazing, chased by a storm of bolter flares from the encircled Black Templars. Large humanoid shapes appeared from the murk — more orks, piloting Dreadnought-like walkers with heavy weapons and pincer-clawed arms. One strode past Brother Sigurd, brushing the Space Marine aside with a back-handed blow. While bolts sparked from its armour the walker swiped at Bohemond, trying to seize hold of his arm. He dodged the clumsy attack and, sword in both hands, set about hacking away the offending limb.

‘Signal Dorr,’ he barked at Clermont. ‘We need that flying column of tanks he promised us. Without air or war machine support inside the shield, we cannot hold.’

The High Marshal rolled aside as the ork walker tried to shred him with a point-blank burst of weapons fire. He cut the cables of its legs, pinning it in place with a spray of dark hydraulic fluids.

‘Retreat, High Marshal?’ Clermont sounded incredulous. ‘What about taking not one step back?’

‘Sometimes, castellan…’ Bohemond paused while he rammed the full length of his sword between two armoured plates, piercing the walker with a metre and a half of power-field-encased blade. Something shrieked inside the machine and its metal limbs rattled with sympathetic death throes. Bohemond dragged out the sword, blood hissing from its field.

‘Sometimes, castellan,’ he started again, ‘you need to take a step back to get a proper swing.’

Galtan continued to read from the list scrolling across the face of his data-slate, rocked left and right as the Dorn’s Ire swayed and lurched over hills made of levelled buildings.

‘Twenty-three aircraft remaining, including four strategic bombers. Tech-priests are working as fast as possible to bring the Scornful back to battle-readiness. We really could do with that Stormblade at the moment.’

‘That’s enough of what we have, or rather don’t have. What about the enemy?’ said Dorr. He swung his chair towards the plate of the cartolith, its surface flickering with tiny holograms of runes depicting the latest dispositional data.

The gunners in the secondary sponsons opened fire. On external pict-feed displays Dorr saw that they were raking the burning wreckage of several ork heavy transports, ensuring nothing had survived the battlecannon blasts that had destroyed them a few minutes earlier. Galtan waited patiently for the din of their fire to stop.

‘Super-heavy tanks and walkers… nothing Titan-class as yet, field-legatus,’ he replied between bursts of dual heavy bolters. ‘A surprising lack of air power, but more than compensated for by a plethora of anti-aircraft rocket batteries and self-propelled guns.’

‘And the brute-shield,’ one of the subalterns added with a grimace.

‘Yes, best not to forget that,’ said Dorr. He returned his attention to Galtan. ‘What about infantry?’

‘In all honesty, we’re outclassed, field-legatus. We lost half our companies in the orbital strike. Starting from such a poor base, we could never match the orks’ numbers. Without the Space Marines we would never have reached this far.’

Dorr absorbed this brutal assessment in silence, rubbing his whiskered chin. His valet and personal kit had been lost with the Praetor Fidelis, along with a company of his best storm troopers and the majority of his logistical and strategos teams.

‘On the other hand,’ Galtan added with forced cheerfulness, ‘if it wasn’t for us, the Space Marines would have been overrun within hours.’

‘We’re stretched too thin,’ the field-legatus remarked, waving a hand towards the strategic display. ‘This was supposed to be a concentrated thrust into the city. The ork attacks have dragged us out to the flanks, pulling us away from the Space Marines.’

‘A quirk of the city’s layout, field-legatus,’ said Galtan.

‘Yes, I know that!’ snapped the field-legatus, banging a fist on the console panel. He drew in a breath, shaking his head. ‘This city is not as ramshackle and anarchic as it looks, is it? Kill-channels, underground supply routes, layered defences. A well-planned structure hiding under hovels and scrapyards!’

‘We believe we have engaged a significant part of the ork forces, field-legatus,’ said another subaltern — one with curly hair and bright blue eyes, called Festria or Fenestris or something like that. ‘Far more than we should have been able to, considering our deplorable state at the outset. The Adeptus Mechanicus have been making far swifter progress.’

‘Yes, Zhokuv’s latest communiqué suggested as much,’ said Dorr. He leaned his chair back, crossing his arms. ‘Perhaps they could have spared us a Knight or two, maybe even a Titan.’ He sighed. ‘There’s nothing more to be done, except press on where we can and hold ground where we cannot.’

And hope the warlords of Mars can bring down the field before we are destroyed, he added to himself.

Chapter Thirteen

Ullanor — outer Gorkogrod