The Beast Must Die

by Gav Thorpe

  Laurentis had argued, possibly a little too vehemently, that the destruction of the brute-shield was still the paramount objective of the Cult Mechanicus, which was how he found himself tasked with leading an expedition to discover how to do just that. Guarded by maniples of cyber-constructs and several platoons of skitarii, watched over by the Knight Paladin Greyblade, he picked through the remains of an ork tower close to the original line of the shield. Taking pict-captures and data readings, he examined the spread of debris and attempted to divine the purpose of several chambers and broken machines within.

  ‘It is an amplifier,’ he said aloud. He gestured at Jeddaz, a minor tech-priest who had been assigned to him as attendant for some unknown dereliction of duty. Laurentis pointed to the drops of metal on the walls – conduits for something. ‘Here, look. These were a network, melted by whatever blast broke the tower. High-intensity melta residue everywhere, a Knight’s thermal cannon I would say. And these rooms, they housed battery cells of some kind.’

  ‘But there are no conduits or projectors,’ Jeddaz replied with a sigh. He turned over flattened pots and broken furniture with his mechadendrites, what remained of his face curled in a distasteful sneer as though rifling through effluent.

  ‘Magos, I am detecting an aerial approach on an unexpected vector,’ Sir Phaldoron warned from the Greyblade.

  ‘An air raid?’

  ‘A single craft, coming out of the inner city.’

  ‘Is it heading towards us?’

  ‘Its course will bring it close. Anti-air batteries in the main force are preparing to engage.’

  Laurentis shunted the data-stream from the Knight into his cogitator back-ups, thinking to add the information to the vast repository on the orks he already carried. As he did so, he noticed that the flight path of the aircraft was unlike anything he had recorded from the greenskins.

  He tried to quantify what he found. Orks were headlong, instinctual fighters. Their pilots were mostly crazed speed-cultists who valued the thrill of high velocity as much as battle itself. The incoming craft was being… circumspect.

  ‘No!’ shouted Laurentis, jamming the Greyblade’s communications channel with an override signal. He scrambled out of the bunker and up a pile of gore-strewn ruin, his three mechanical legs making hard work of the incline. He searched the skies and saw the blot that was the incoming aircraft.

  ‘Is it broadcasting any signals? Any identifiers?’

  ‘Why would it…’ The Knight Scion trailed off. ‘There is a low-frequency radio transmission, magos.’

  ‘Send it to me.’

  ‘It could be–’

  ‘Send it to me! And tell the anti-air to hold fire!’

  The Knight Scion obeyed, broadcasting the intercepted transmission into the dataflow of Laurentis. The magos opened up the compact data packet and translated it to audio.

  ‘…must not attack. Overwhelming counter-assault is ready. Is anyone listening to this? I am Esad Wire of the Officio Assassinorum, agent of Lord Vangorich. My mission is sanctioned by Inquisitorial representation. I must speak to the Lord Commander and lord primarch immediately! Do not attack the citadel! For the love of the Emperor and Mankind, do not attack!’

  Surrounded by Chapter Masters, the Assassin was certainly not the most intimidating individual gathered in the bombed-out ruin of an ork storehouse. The presence of Vulkan made his lack of size even more apparent. But Assassins did not rely on physique alone. There was a tension in every movement of Esad Wire, an underlying energy about to be unleashed. Koorland recognised it from his own brothers when preparing for battle – the storm beneath a calm sea.

  Esad Wire sat on a broken plinth, his black bodysuit slicked with blood. Most of it was the thick gore of the orks, but some of the Assassin’s own leaked through a number of tears in the synskin suit. His shoulders were hunched with fatigue, a finger tapping on one knee with nervous energy.

  His eyes were hard as flint, pupils glittering with augment systems. Koorland could also smell a trace of biomechanical oil and artificial sanguinary fluids, indicating internal bionics as well. No surprise, of course, given that all Officio Assassinorum personnel were physically boosted in some fashion. The hidden nature of Wire’s augmentations meant that his role was clearly one of disguise and infiltration.

  His breath stank of stimm residue and an aura of antiseptic coagulant surrounded the Assassin. As he shifted, a wound opened under his ribs, a fresh trickle of blood dribbling out onto his synskin sheath. The Assassin didn’t seem to notice. His attention moved from one Space Marine to the next and then on again, constantly scouring his surroundings and their occupants.

  Esad Wire had crash-landed the ork fighter almost on top of the Imperial lines, demanding audience with the commanders. Secured by Crimson Fists, he had said nothing until the representatives of the allied factions had arrived. The scene for the audience was grim – the broken stone underfoot was smeared with the blood of orks, their corpses and body parts still wedged between chunks of rubble. The ceiling had collapsed, letting the mid-afternoon sun lay deep shadows across the proceedings.

  ‘By what right were you sent into our forces?’ demanded Odaenathus.

  ‘Is that really the issue, Chapter Master?’ the Assassin replied. He grimaced and took in a ragged breath. ‘My orders came directly from Lord Vangorich, in concert with members of the Inquisition. Does it matter how or why? I tell you again, I have seen inside the ork city. The force that remains is overwhelming. Stronger than anything you have yet encountered. You cannot attack.’

  ‘Why did you not continue your mission to kill the Great Beast?’ asked Vulkan. ‘Surely that was more important than warning us of any danger. If you killed the target, our losses become inconsequential.’

  ‘I could not reach the Great Beast,’ Esad Wire admitted with a shake of the head. His eyes lost their focus for a few seconds, seeing something that was only memory. ‘I barely breached the outskirts of its sanctum. It was even more luck that I got out again. Tens of thousands of giant orks, armed as well as your elite companies. But that is not the worst. There is more than simply a warlord guiding this force. It is something far grander. A demagogue, a high priest perhaps.’

  ‘An emissary of an ork god?’ Bohemond spat the words, his fingers tight on the hilt of his sword. ‘Folly! Do not attribute the trappings of civilisations to their primitive antics.’

  ‘I have seen their temples and preachers,’ the Assassin replied sharply, his gaze still moving from one Space Marine to the next, never stopping. Koorland noticed his defiant stare did not extend to Vulkan. ‘I have witnessed the ceremonies, the rituals and sermons of their creed. This is holy war to the orks, every bit as zealous as that ill-fated, ridiculous Proletarian Crusade.’

  ‘That changes nothing,’ said Vulkan. ‘If anything, it reinforces the importance of the Great Beast. If we slay the orks’ demigod, we break them.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Wire. ‘But I tell you without a word of a lie that we cannot reach the monster this way.’

  ‘It’s been baiting us the whole time,’ Thane suggested, ‘trying to draw us in at every turn. This last trap might be the final one.’

  ‘It’s an ork, it wants to fight,’ Bohemond interjected. ‘It is a smart ork. But do not give it more credit than that. It simply wants to fight on its own ground, its own terms.’

  ‘We cannot let it,’ said Koorland.

  ‘It offers us no option, Lord Commander.’ Vulkan stood up, as though about to leave. ‘Must I say it yet again, you must have some faith, Koorland. If there is a single lesson I need you to learn, it is that there is no final defeat while you hold true to the service of the Emperor. We cannot give in to despair, no matter what happens. Even when it seemed that Horus could not possibly lose, those of us loyal to the Emperor continued to fight. Even when there was not even a vision of what winning might look like, we refused�
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  Vulkan bowed his head. His voice trailed away, shoulders hunched by some personal, painful memory.

  ‘We cannot out-brute the orks!’ snarled Esad Wire. He lifted his hands imploringly. ‘It is why we have lost every battle so far. It is why we will lose everything if we do not think harder rather than fight harder! Lord Vangorich sent me as his agent. Stop fighting a war and start thinking like Assassins!’

  Bohemond growled something incoherent and Vulkan shook his head in disgust.

  ‘You have a suggestion, Assassin?’ asked Koorland.

  ‘If you cannot get to the target, bring the target to you. Draw it out and then strike.’

  ‘The Great Beast has resisted all military challenge so far,’ said Vulkan, looking back at them. ‘What could possibly draw it out of its fortress that we have not already done?’

  ‘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.

  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 Impe
rial 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.