The Beast Arises

The Alcazar Remembered powered on with the other surviving ships, a makeshift flotilla of Space Marine battle-barges and strike cruisers, Navy battleships, frigates and destroyers, Martian hemiolia and penteres. Several minutes passed before the Fists Exemplar flagship passed the invisible boundary that took them into range of the surface weapons. Another thirty seconds later and the call came from the augur array technicians.

‘Targeting signals detected, Chapter Master. Multiple surface sources.’

‘Ork void assets are incoming, Chapter Master,’ another officer reported.

‘Signal Admiral Acharya, he needs to keep those orks off our backs, whatever it takes,’ replied Thane. ‘All crew to firing stations, prepare for surface bombardment.’

He heard Kale mutter to himself as the shipmaster flexed his fingers into the sign of the aquila.

‘Emperor protect us from the schemes of tech-priests…’

Chapter Seventeen

Ullanor — Gorkogrod

The growl and grumble of hundreds of engines shook dust from the ruins. Exhaust fumes from the assembled tanks of the Astra Militarum swathed the rubble of Gorkogrod with an oily mist. Close to the front of the three columns of fighting vehicles — not right at the front, Field-Legatus Dorr knew well his place within the grander scheme of the plan — Dorn’s Ire rumbled forward, accompanied by Leman Russ battle tanks, Chimera transports and Demolisher siegebreakers.

The deep red livery of Martian command vehicles broke the camouflage and grey of the Astra Militarum. Through the gloom strode the remaining Knights, ion fields gleaming, the rubble shifting and shuddering under their tread.

And last came the Titans, ponderous and magnificent, dwarfing even the war machines of the Knight Houses, their lamps shining like beacons in the pre-dusk gloom. The two Warlords led, followed by the Executor, flanked by the smaller Titans moving in echelon to the right.

War-horns sounded the challenge to the orks, a wave of sound that eclipsed all others for several seconds, shattering the last pieces of glass in broken windows, causing debris dunes to shift and tremble.

Dorr, sitting in the open hatch of the main turret to watch the awesome engines, covered his ears. He marvelled that he could feel the ground shake with each tread even through the bulk and vibration of the Baneblade.

Zhokuv advanced alongside the super-heavy tank, his piston-legged battle-rig carrying him easily over the broken ground. Further into the smog the remaining infantry forged through the broken city, some twenty-two thousand Imperial Guardsmen, skitarii, Space Marines and cybernetica. Dorr could see nothing of them, but knew they were there from the murmur of Galtan and the subalterns passing updates to each other on the command deck below.

Behind and above, the last few squadrons of Valkyries and Vultures, Lightnings, Thunderhawks, Marauders and other aircraft loitered just outside the range of the anti-air weapons that ringed the central citadel.

All was poised, the giant many-limbed and multi-headed creature that was the Emperor’s war machine waiting for the moment to pounce.

‘You know, for the first time since arriving on Ullanor, I actually think I know what we’re doing,’ Dorr confessed to Zhokuv. ‘That we’re all moving towards the same purpose now.’

No answer was forthcoming from Zhokuv. The dominus’ reply was forestalled by a sudden flicker in the smog ahead. Green lightning raced across the clouds, illuminating the ruins with a jade glow. Watching this, Dorr’s heart raced. Had the tech-priests’ assertions been right?

With a last crackle of emerald fire, the brute-shield dropped.

Seconds later, before even a cry of triumph had left Dorr’s lips, the sky erupted with missiles, las and coruscating blasts of energy racing up towards the void.

‘Sound the charge!’ Dorr dropped down into the turret, slamming the hatch closed. He wriggled past the gunners and through the accessway to the command deck.

‘I’m glad I was never a tanker,’ he muttered when he emerged into the space beyond, already nearly full with staff officers.

He almost fell into his chair as the Dorn’s Ire gathered speed, the acceleration unexpected rather than rapid. The vox was alive with confirmations of the advance commencing, the voices of tank commanders and platoon officers, Titan Princeps and Knight Scions overlapping and competing. The surge of noise from the Baneblade’s engines and the feeling of motion and power filled Dorr with urgent excitement.

‘One way or another, by nightfall we’ll know,’ he told the others.

‘Know what, field-legatus?’ asked a subaltern.

‘Whether we actually have a chance at killing the Great Beast.’

Valefor and his Blood Angels formed a red tip to the spear of the Imperial attack. Through circumstance and fortune, the warriors of Baal Secundus had suffered the least in the preceding battles, though they had still lost a quarter of the Space Marines that had arrived at Ullanor six days earlier.