Dawn Of War II

by Chris Roberson

  CAPTAIN THULE TIGHTENED his grip on the hilt of Wisdom, as energy coruscated down the length of the power sword's blade. He stood with Sergeants Cyrus and Avitus atop the battlements at the south-eastern corner of the Argus city walls, looking out over the field of battle stretching before them.

  'Here comes another,' Cyrus said, his hair whipping around his head in the hot desert winds.

  Avitus hefted his heavy bolter. 'I've got this one…'

  'No,' Thule said, shaking his head. He raised Wisdom once more, waiting for the moment to strike.

  The captain had joined his sergeants on the battlements to survey the battle, but before he'd had time to as much as glance at the field, the feral orks had unveiled their newest innovation. The day before, they had taken to stacking the bodies of the living, dead and dying to act as makeshift siege engines. Only a prodigious amount of firepower and the careful attention of Cyrus's Scouts and Avitus's Devastator squad had kept the greenskins from successfully scaling the walls and taking the city.

  Now, the orks had hit upon a new strategy. Using long planks of sturdy material, perhaps ripped from the remains of one of the smaller townships that dotted the far edge of the desert, and which the orks had doubtless already overran, the greenskins had constructed a sort of seesaw, with a pile of dead bodies acting as the fulcrum, set far to one end of the plank.

  One of their number - living, of course, and heavily armed - would stand on the end closest to the fulcrum, the other end of the plank rising in the air as his weight pressed his end down. Then, after a brief countdown, a dozen or more of his brethren would jump together onto the other end of the plank, and as their combined weight brought that end quickly down to earth, the end upon which the heavily armed ork stood was thrust suddenly upwards. More often than not, the ork thus catapulted skywards merely flailed back to earth atop his own brothers, precision and aim being beyond the orks' conception. But when the makeshift contraption functioned as intended - as it had just done once more - then the now skywards-streaking ork would arc up and over the city walls of Argus, a living missile.

  Had any of the orks succeeded in landing within the walls of Argus, they could play havoc, killing the native refugees indiscriminately until the Blood Ravens were able to stop them. Even now, Sergeant Aramus and his squad were involved in a race against time to find any potential recruits among the refugees, but so far had only managed to find a bare handful. Fortunately, the orks had so far managed to catapult one of their number in the correct direction, and with the appropriate height and velocity, only a scant few times, and in each instance the Blood Ravens had ended the catapulted ork's life before he even touched down. The deadweight of the orks' bodies plummeting to earth had caused more than a few injuries to the refugees upon which the bodies landed, but these losses were inconsequential when compared to the damage a living ork could do if successfully catapulted in.

  Under other circumstances, it might have been an enjoyable diversion, picking errant orks out of the sky with bolter and melta fire, almost a kind of sport. But Thule and his men had more serious matters on their mind than a tally of who had hit the most airborne orks, and the consequences of a miss were too grave to allow any levity.

  Thule raised Wisdom, the blade coursing with energy.

  'I tire of this,' Thule said, as the ork catapulted through the sky towards him, an axe in either hand and an inhuman war cry on its rubbery lips.

  The ork's trajectory carried it down towards the city, its path passing less than a metre from where Thule and the others stood.

  Thule scarcely grunted as he swept Wisdom up and out, the blade biting through the top of the ork's skull and continuing on through its massive body, splitting it in half lengthwise.

  'Now, where were we?' Thule said, as the severed halves of the catapulted ork continued on their downward trajectory towards the streets below.

  'Troop movements, captain,' Cyrus answered.

  From the streets below a wailing cry rose up, shouts of grief and dismay as yet another ork fell from the sky and crushed the life out of some hapless refugee.

  'Precisely,' Thule answered, paying the cries of grief no mind. 'So, the First and Seventh are still in the field. Now, what have they learned about these new ork forces?'

  THERE WAS, IN fact, very little that the many humans knew about orks - whether feral, developed, or otherwise. Over the millennia many a magos biologis of the Adeptus Mechanicus had devoted their lives to the study of the greenskins, motivated by a desire to understand and comprehend the enemy, and thus be better positioned to defeat him. With their reverence for wisdom and knowledge, this was of course a strategy that the Blood Ravens could well appreciate. After all, since the days of the Great Father himself, Azariah Vidya, the Blood Ravens Chapter had always believed that knowledge, alongside faith of course, was the greatest weapon available in the fight against the Emperor's enemies. To defeat an enemy, one had first to understand them.

  But how could a human mind - whether a supremely trained tactician like Thule and his fellow Blood Ravens, or a psyker like Librarian Niven and the other servants of the Librarium, or even an augmented consciousness like a magos of the Adeptus Biologis - ever hope to comprehend the crude, base motivations that drove an inhuman monster like an ork? The human heretic could be understood at least in the light of his madness, and a xenos like an eldar or a tau could be comprehended if one took the trouble of studying his culture and history enough to grasp his psychology. But an ork was merely one step up from animal, driven by primitive appetites and raw desires, seeking only combat and conquest. Perhaps only the tyranids, unstoppable and innumerable offspring of the Great Devourer, were less comprehensible to humans than the mind of the ork.

  It would not be until much later, long after the information would be of any use to Captain Thule and his party, that it would be discovered that the developed orks who had appeared on Calderis were under the command of Warlord Zagmor Gorgrim, whose name in Low Gothic would translate into something roughly equivalent to Wild-Lightning Bloodface.

  Once a warboss in the Waaagh! of the Arch-Arsonist of Charadon, Gorgrim had gained in power and prestige as he led his warband to victory after victory. In time, Gorgrim had splintered his warband off from the forces of the Arch-Arsonist, commandeering a massive space hulk of his own and leading his warband to new systems and unspoiled territories.

  Gorgrim had hit upon an innovation in the waging of war, a rare thing in a species born with skills and knowledge already encoded into their genetic strand. Having perhaps a few hundred fully-grown orks in his warband at the point that he struck out on his own, when Gorgrim's space hulk chanced upon a world inhabited by feral orks, he saw the advantage in recruitment. Taking his warband to the surface, he bested the local warlord in single combat, and then declared that all of the planet's inhabitants were henceforth to consider themselves part of Gorgrim's horde. But that only a select few would be allowed to leave on board Gorgrim's space hulk, and the rest left behind to die as Gorgrim unleashed an orbital bombardment that would wipe clean the surface of the planet of any life.

  Understandably motivated, the feral orks on the planet quickly turned against one another in mortal combat, lashing out with swords, clubs, fists, and teeth to claim their place among Gorgrim's horde.

  In the end, some few thousand feral orks survived the ensuing melee, and accompanied Gorgrim and his warband back up to the space hulk that hung in orbit above the world. And then Gorgrim set off in search of other contests, other conquests.

  And so Gorgrim's horde continued through the stars for years upon years. When it fell upon a world inhabited by any species other than orks, such as humans, they would wage Waaagh!, wiping the world clean of the human stain in the name of their terrible gods, Gork and Mork. And if they came upon any world on which feral orks dwelt, then Gorgrim would best their strongest warrior in personal combat, claim the rest of the ork population as his own, and then issue the challenge - prove yourself worthy to joi
n the horde, or stay behind and die. And if feral orks shared a world with another species, then Gorgrim would goad them to first eradicate all non-ork life from the world, and only then fight for the privilege of joining the horde.

  Warlord Gorgrim and his horde had arrived on Calderis some months before the arrival of Captain Thule and his recruitment party, and Gorgrim had goaded the countless numbers of feral orks on the western hemisphere into savage combat, demanding that they prove their worth in order to join his horde. First the orks would eradicate the humans from the far side of the planet, and then they would turn against one another. When only a handful of feral orks remained, they would leave the planet with Gorgrim's horde, returning to the space hulk which even now drifted at anchor above Calderis's lone moon, before Gorgrim bombarded the planet from orbit, killing all who remained.

  What Gorgrim had not taken into account, that about which he could not have known, was the presence of Captain Thule and his Blood Ravens on the desert world, on a recruitment mission of their own.

  It was, perhaps, a dark irony that both Gorgrim's horde and Thule's Blood Ravens came to the desert world of Calderis seeking new recruits, and each might have successfully completed their recruitment search without incident had it not been for the other.

  But when the orks of Gorgrim's horde finally came into contact with the Blood Ravens of Captain Thule, it was clear that matters had grown far, far more complicated than any simple search for recruits.

  THE SQUAD HAD spread out so wide that Sergeant Merrik had lost sight of the nearest of the others, keeping track of them on his visor's display. He knew that the odds were against them, but he was a Blood Raven, and would not give up without a fight. He fired his bolter at the ork bike slewing his way, then leapt to one side just in time to avoid a blow from the massive battleaxe the biker wielded.

  'Knowledge is power!' Merrik shouted, calling out the battle cry of the Blood Ravens Chapter. 'Guard it well!'

  The ork biker was coming around for another run. A cloud of greasy smoke billowed from the exhausts of the warbike, and as the ork brought his forks back around to face Merrik once more, the warbiker opened fire with the twin-linked guns mounted beneath the handlebars. The guns were heavy calibre, but poorly balanced, so that when they were fired the bike bucked and spun wildly out of control. Even so, the sands at Merrik's feet kicked up in sprays wherever the shots hit home, and were even a scant handful of them to find their mark on Merrik's body, even his ceramite power armour may not be enough to protect him.

  Merrik was a trained Adeptus Astartes with long years of experience, and he had an advantage that the orks did not - the ability to strategise beyond the immediate moment. Orks were vicious fighters, but largely creatures of instinct, and seldom thought beyond the next exchange in any confrontation.

  As the warbike roared and rumbled its way towards him, Merrik caught sight of a warbuggy heading in the opposite direction only a few dozen metres away. On the rear of the warbuggy was a pintle-mounted flamethrower, fuelled by the same promethium tank that powered the vehicle's engine. The ork manning the flamethrower was sending gouts of flame indiscriminately into the melee around him, while the warbuggy's driver careened on in search of fresh targets.

  Firing a few more rounds from his bolter towards the onrushing warbiker, Merrik feigned as if to flee, turning and running away at an angle from the war-bike's trajectory. Merrik didn't have to glance back to imagine the grin of vicious triumph on the war-biker's face; the sprays of sand kicking up all around Merrik's pounding feet were enough evidence that the warbike was changing course to follow him.

  Merrik continued on, looking for all the world like he had lost all courage and was fleeing the field of battle, but as he heard the rumbling sound of the warbike closing at his heels, he suddenly jinked to the left and then lunged back in the opposite direction.

  Through the corner of his eye Merrik could see the warbiker looking at him with bewildered confusion, but the warbiker didn't have long to be confused. In the next instant, the flamethrowing warbuggy careened into the warbiker's path, both of them moving much too fast to turn away from the collision, much less stop. As the warbike and warbuggy collided at high speed, the promethium tanks fuelling the flamethrower were sparked into a conflagration, and bike, buggy, and the three orks who manned them were caught in a fiery holocaust that engulfed them entirely, hot enough to reduce metal to slag and flesh to dust and ash.

  Merrik didn't have the luxury of basking in his victory, he knew. He spun around, raising his bolter, looking for the next target.

  But it was too late. Before Merrik saw it coming, he could hear the thunderous sound of its approaching footfalls and the clanking of its joints. By the time he caught sight of the enormous monstrosity, the massive mechanized walker was already bearing down on him, opening fire with bunker-busting rounds that hammered into his power armour, knocking him to the ground.

  Merrik moaned, struggling to regain his footing before the walker opened fire again. He only needed a moment's grace. But seeing the walker take another lumbering step forward, its massive guns trained on his supine form, Merrik knew that he didn't have a moment.

  'Knowledge is…' Merrik began, and then the thunderous roar of the walker's guns sounded again.

  IN THE MAKESHIFT headquarters of the shipping depot, Apothecary Gordian at last whispered the words of auto-suggestion into the ear of the sleeping Librarian, the final signal to his suspended mind.

  In the next instant, Librarian Niven lurched up into a sitting position, eyes wide and wild.

  'It comes!' Niven shouted, disoriented and all but incoherent.

  Gordian put a hand on Niven's shoulders, attempting to calm him. The transition from suspended animation to full wakefulness was often a disorienting one, and Astartes who woke after long periods of suspension often took time to come to their complete senses.

  'Rest easy, Librarian,' Gordian said in reassuring tones. 'Your body is mended, and now there is work for you to do.'

  'No!' Niven wheeled around and grabbed hold of Gordian's arm in a vice-like grip. 'You don't understand. It comes!'

  Gordian pried Niven's hand from his arm, trying to remain patient. 'What comes, Librarian?' The Apothecary paused, eyes narrowing. 'What is it you see?'

  Niven struggled to climb to his feet, but failed.

  'The Great Devourer!' the Librarian shouted, saliva flecking the corners of his mouth. 'It comes!'

  'SERGEANT ARAMUS?' BROTHER Voire called from the entrance to the warehouse. They'd nearly completed their sweep of this part of Argus Township, and once they searched the last few buildings in the area for any huddled refugees, they would be finished with their search.

  'What is it, Voire?' Aramus called from the street outside.

  'There's something in here I think you'll want to see,' Voire said, his tone dark and foreboding.

  Aramus voxed to Sergeant Tarkus and Battle-Brother Cirrac to have their teams continue their searches of the surrounding buildings, and then went to join Voire in the warehouse.

  From the rolling door at the entrance, the warehouse looked no different from any one of a dozen similar structures they'd searched in the previous day. Having begun their quest for potential aspirants at the north end of the township, they'd worked their way east, and then south, before finally returning to the west. So it was that they were now checking the buildings closest to the space port, and to the warehouse in which Thule had established his headquarters.

  Brother Voire was standing near an overturned crate, with markings in Low Gothic stamped on the sides. Within the crate was something that, in the low light that filtered through the open door, seemed strangely pearlescent, its shape rounded and bulbous.

  'What do you make of it?' Voire asked. Aramus crouched down, and prodded at the contents of the crate with the point of his combat knife. 'It appears to be xenos.' He straightened, lips drawn into a line. 'And it looks like something has hatched out of it.'

  CHAPTER SI
X

  'THERE IS NO doubt about it,' Captain Thule said, standing over the crate and examining the remains of the object within. 'It is definitely xenos.'

  Sergeant Aramus stood at the captain's side, his bolter in hand and ready to fire, eyes scanning the darkened warehouse around them. 'It has a tyranid look to it,' the sergeant offered.

  Thule nodded. 'That it does.' He glanced in Aramus's direction. 'And your squad found this while searching for candidates?'

  'Yes, captain,' Aramus answered. The rest of the squad was still engaged in the search, in fact. On finding the xenos object, only recently broken open, though, Aramus had made the decision that it should be brought to the captain's attention, and so gone to fetch Thule from the barricades.

  Thule shook his head in disbelief. 'And yet, how did it come to be here? In a shipping container, no less?'

  As soon as Sergeant Tarkus and the rest of Aramus's Third Squad completed their search of the remaining refugees for any potential aspirants, Thule's orders were for the surviving Blood Ravens to withdraw to the extraction point for immediate departure. Already the trio of Thunderhawks were prepared and ready for takeoff on the landing pad of the space port.

  Beyond the walls of the warehouse could be heard the faint din of the battle being waged against the orks to the north, east, and south, a constant susurration of noise like the endless beating of waves against a rocky shores. From time to time the background noise was punctuated by the sound of powerful engines firing, as ships lifted off from the spaceport to the west, Navy and merchant ships alike carrying those with the influence and means away from the threat to the safety of the vessels waiting in orbit above.

  Aramus indicated the Low Gothic writing stencilled on the side of the crate. 'It would appear that the container originated on another world in the Aurelia sub-sector. The jungle world of Typhon Primaris, whose system neighbours Calderis.'

  'Brought from Typhon Primaris,' Thule repeated with incredulity. 'And brought to Calderis.' He looked from the egg within the crate to Aramus and back again. 'By what madness would someone bring a xenos organism to an inhabited world?'