The Beast Arises

‘I’ve seen inside the palace.’ The Assassin spoke quietly and quickly. ‘Ullanor cannot sustain itself. If you think we must fight time as much as the enemy, the orks have it worse. They may have driven us from orbit, but not a single supply ship has landed in days. You see no sign of it here, but the warehouses, the great stores of the palace are virtually empty. Not even fresh water. Their supplies are so low, the orks are cannibalising each other. They’ve eaten all of the human slaves and started on their own. I saw the remains. The weak link in the chain is the need for support from the tribute worlds in the surrounding systems. Ullanor’s air and water are polluted, its food resources scarce.’

‘Blockade is not an option, we need a swift victory too,’ said Koorland. ‘The ork relief armies will be upon us in three days at the most.’

‘Then bring them to their knees in one,’ said Esad Wire. ‘Find the remaining stores and break them, whatever the cost.’

Vulkan returned, nodding. His demeanour had changed again, once more the resolute, proud warrior.

‘Yes, that would work. Draw out the Great Beast and then we strike with everything.’

Koorland knew that it really would not be so simple, and was sure that the primarch was not naive either. But faith required a plan, no matter how hopeless.

A scrape of metal on stone and the hiss of pneumatics drew everyone’s attention to the Cult Mechanicus representative — Magos Laurentis. The bizarre-looking tech-priest had listened to the exchanges without comment, but now stepped forward, limping slightly.

‘If I might make a suggestion, commanders…’

Chapter Sixteen

Ullanor — high orbit

Thane strode off the ramp of the Thunderhawk, glad to feel the deck of the Alcazar Remembered beneath his boots again despite the grim circumstances and his immediate prospects of survival. Laurentis scuttled after him, chattering to himself in an irritating mix of Gothic and lingua-technis. The magos had expounded at length on the flight up to high orbit, regaling Thane with his outlandish theories on the brute-shield, the Great Beast and orkdom in general.

The Chapter Master was pleased to see Weylon Kale waiting for him beyond the opening flight deck doors.

‘Shipmaster, please assimilate the targeting data carried by my companion and disperse the firing solutions through the fleet as itemised in the attendant records.’ Thane waved Laurentis forward and the magos proffered a coil of cogitator tape which Kale took without comment. ‘The fleet has manoeuvred as ordered?’

‘It has, Chapter Master,’ Kale replied, falling in beside his commander, jogging to keep up with Thane’s long strides. Laurentis clanked and clicked behind them, his head rotating rapidly from left to right and back as he took in his surroundings. ‘But I do not understand. All scans show that the defensive field is still operational. If we move into attack range the orks will open fire, but the city is still protected.’

‘Fluctuations, shipmaster,’ said Laurentis. He accelerated to come alongside the officer. The tech-priest’s head turned ninety degrees to regard Kale with his remaining eye. ‘Study of the field when the first attack occurred has revealed that in order for weapons within the city limit to open fire, the field had to drop. It is not a one-way barrier! With the damage inflicted on the orks’ capabilities, and further targeted strikes during the first window of opportunity, we have hypothesised that we can return fire within the temporal lapse of the protective layer.’

‘Return fire?’ Kale sounded dubious. ‘We have to let them shoot at us first, Chapter Master? This is an untested hypothesis?’

‘Yes,’ said Thane. They reached a conveyor port and stopped. He looked at Kale, understanding the man’s reluctance but in no mood for explanations or speeches. ‘We cannot bring the field down in its entirety but we can do a lot of damage. As well as brute-shield projection sites and weapon positions, we will destroy much of the city’s storage facilities, pipelines and energy grid. We will drive the orks out, even if it costs the fleet to do so.’

Kale said nothing else as they rode to the command bridge. He headed directly to the weapons consoles and then the vox-officers, handing over the carefully constructed attack solution prepared by Dominus Zhokuv and his best strategos. It maximised the amount of fire the ships would be able to pour down onto the city in the shortest time possible.

‘We’re ready, Chapter Master,’ announced Kale. ‘Commands have been transmitted and acknowledged.’

‘Commence the attack, shipmaster,’ Thane replied quietly.