The Beast Arises

With just a split second to act, Beast Krule leapt. Using the knee of the downed ork as a step, he vaulted over the wounded alien. It snatched at his ankle as he passed, but momentum carried him over its shoulder. Landing heavily, he tumbled to his feet and started running.

Action cleared away his dread. A fresh purpose filled him. Anger at himself for his weakness spurred him to renewed effort. Krule’s mind still burned with what he had seen in the temple-chamber, and with images of what would happen when that army was unleashed against the unsuspecting Space Marines.

They were so close now, Koorland could almost reach out and touch the immense walls of the central citadel. Progress had been slow, tortuous even, every metre gained inside the brute-shield paid for with death and hardship. And the warriors of the Emperor had paid dearly. Of the Space Marines that had survived to reach the surface of Ullanor, a third had been lost. Amongst the ranks of the Astra Militarum the casualty rate was at nearly fifty per cent. Following the psyker-bolstered offensive of the orks, stopped only by Vulkan’s direct intervention, the Adeptus Mechanicus had suffered even more. The host of Mars had been reduced to a handful of Titans and seven fully functional Knights, and these war machines could not pass the brute-shield unmolested.

Countless orks had fallen, their bodies a green carpet under the boots of the Space Marines and the treads of Astra Militarum tanks. Where days before they had clashed over a broken field of rubble, now the Emperor’s servants and the Great Beast’s savages contested for piles of blood and bones, mounds of shattered vehicles and burning gargant wrecks.

If the next kilometre was anything like the last, there would barely be any Imperial force left to break into the citadel proper.

‘Nothing worth fighting for was taken easily,’ Vulkan told him, perhaps sensing his mood. ‘The orks have bled as much as us. More. Much more.’

‘We have been too slow, Lord Vulkan. Too slow.’ Koorland smashed a fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘They are massing behind us. Three landing sites have been overrun. Two more are surrounded.’

‘It was never our intention to leave,’ the primarch reminded him. He seemed more than resigned to this fact. Rejuvenated almost. Vulkan had shown more heart for the fight after the disastrous landing than before. The Lord Commander had suspicions about the primarch’s motives, but his doubts were vague and of no consequence to the immediate future.

Koorland looked up at the forbidding city-palace and the ring of walls, turrets, towers and gatehouses. Idol-statues topped some of the buildings, of polished gold and chrome. Huge standards the equal in size of any Titan kill-banner flapped along the ramparts. And cannons. Cannons by the hundred.

His gaze slid further upwards, to the oppressive, half-seen crackling dome of the brute-shield. The Lord Commander felt claustrophobic looking at it. He could not shake the idea that, like the rest of Ullanor, its intent was not so much to keep attackers out but to trap them within.

Inside with the Great Beast.

The brute-shield had shrunk a few kilometres, its generators overrun by the Imperial advance. But it still protected the inner city from the ships in orbit, as did the massive guns, missiles and energy cannons within.

‘We have to get into the citadel,’ Koorland declared. He selected the channel to address the Chapter Masters and other force commanders. ‘Prepare for the final assault.’

Chapter Fifteen

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

We delude ourselves with promises of a better tomorrow. ‘If only…’ begins the mantra of the weak. We must strive without hope of cessation of effort. We must hold ourselves above ambition, seeking to excel but not to conquer. To build is a fleeting experience, while destruction is eternal. Build not for tomorrow but for today. Fight not for your future, but for the present. The past becomes meaningless in such consideration, but we cannot break free from its shackles.

The universe knows what must happen but panders to whims that wish otherwise. Recognising inevitability is not fatalism. How I loathe this waiting.