The Beast Must Die

by Gav Thorpe

  ‘You mounted a starship cannon on the bastardised remains of my command vehicle?’ Dorr was not sure whether to cry or laugh. He opted for the latter.

  ‘Behold the great device of the Omnissiah’s retribution,’ declared Zhokuv. ‘Witness the power of the Machine-God’s wrath. Pay homage to the mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus! Be in awe of the majesty of Ordinatus Ullanor!’

  At the conclusion of the dominus’ speech, the newly constructed Ordinatus opened fire. A scintillating stream of plasma blasts erupted from its weapon, striking the closest of the mega-gargants menacing the Imperial lines. Energies capable of overloading the defensive screens of voidships burst through the power fields of the gargant in moments. Energy shields parted in a collapsing shower of red lightning and green flares, the layers of fields evaporating in moments. The final blasts of the salvo tore through the gargant’s plated shell – armour a tenth the thickness of a warship’s hull.

  Engines and ammunition detonated inside the brutal machine, scattering tank-sized debris and shrapnel through the mobs of orks marching in its shadow.

  One minute and forty-five seconds later the Ordinatus had recharged, its next target reduced to smoking slag by another fusillade of incendiary blasts.

  ‘I’ll light a hundred votives for the Omnissiah myself,’ Dorr promised the dominus.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ullanor – central Gorkogrod

  What is the point of an ork? What mishap of evolution or derangement of design would bring forth a creature entirely possessed of the need to conquer?

  What purpose can it serve beyond destruction? And in such state it can serve no other purpose but its own eventual destruction.

  Was that... Was there ever any future for us? Were we intended as nothing more than destroyers?

  And at the end I become what I must. A beast to face a beast.

  Blue lightning forked in all directions from the ork battle-tower. The psyker-carrying engine had been brought to a halt by the combined efforts of Rune Priest Thorild and two of his Librarius strike team, but the alien machine was proving difficult to finish off – not least because the background psychic presence of the orks still threatened to overload any human that tried to tap directly into the warp, limiting the psykers’ strength.

  ‘Khofus, draw out its spite,’ the Space Wolf called to his companion from the Excoriators. His next words were directed to Epistolary Conneus of the Ultramarines. ‘Use your power to shield Khofus from the worst. I will target the connection point.’

  So instructed, the Librarians raced into action. Khofus stepped from the ruins and threw another blast of lightning at the weirdtower. Its psychic aura bulged outwards to form a green tentacle that lashed at the Excoriator. Khofus inverted his psychic draw, tapping into the stuff of the ork attack, fixing the lunging protrusion upon himself. As the green energies enveloped Khofus, Conneus threw his psychic might into the mind of his companion, bolstering the defences of his psychic hood to prevent the burning tendrils of orkish energy from burrowing into mind and flesh.

  Thorild charged from cover, pushing his soul-fire into the head of his rune axe. The blade flared with blue light as he leapt up onto the structure of the immobilised tower and swung at the wavering tendrils of energy streaming from it. As the edge of the blade bit he let free his power, allowing it to surge into the ork psychic miasma.

  A shock of feedback ran through him, body and soul, but he fought through the instant of pain and poured forth his rage. He let himself fall to the tossing sea that was the swelling of ork psychic potential into which the battletower tapped. Through that ocean of primal force pushed Thorild, just one of many swirls and counter-currents trying to break the immense tide.

  As he moved against the churn of the current he noticed that all the energy was being drawn inward like an immense maelstrom, converging on a central point that was swelling with obscene power.

  He let his psychic might explode in a devastating blast. His axe hewed through the intangible fabric of the tower’s psychic aura and crashed through physical armour, slicing deep into the black-painted metal. The attack thundered through the machine and he leapt clear as psychic energy erupted with the howling of a wolf, tearing the ork contraption apart from the inside.

  ‘Lord Commander,’ he voxed, the image of the psychic tidal swell throbbing in his thought. ‘Lord Commander!’

  ‘Thorild, what is it?’

  ‘Something is stirring in the palace. The Great Beast, I think. The ork psychic potential is accumulating massively. It will not be long before…’

  Koorland did not catch the end of the message as the Space Wolf’s voice trailed away. Over the jutting ruins, the Lord Commander saw something immense moving up from the centre of the city.

  ‘I see it too, Rune Priest.’

  At first it looked as though the entire palace had risen. After a moment, Koorland realised it was just the central portion, what he and the others had taken to be a temple. It was like the gargants in shape, a bulky, rotund idol, but so much larger in size as to defy belief. Gravitic projectors and thundering jets lifted the edifice above the surrounding buildings. It was so much larger than any war machine the orks had sent before that it defied the senses, blotting out the setting sun with its bulk.

  Guns and rocket batteries studded its surface, alongside dish-shaped gravity weapons and outlandish energy cannons. Fluctuating fields encased the black-and-white behemoth. What appeared to be a dome pushed upwards, revealing itself as a grimacing ork face wrought in plates of riveted metal and smooth stone.

  Buildings crumbled under the wash of energy. The city turned to dust like a bow wave before the advance of the titanic effigy-machine. Thunderhawks, Valkyries and Lightnings swooped and fired, their missiles, shells and bullets coursing across the temple-gargant’s fields, leaving after-sparks of dissipating power but nothing more. Hastily redirected artillery boomed out, rocket batteries and guns throwing their devastating weight against the onslaught of the Great Beast’s mobile fortress. Like the air strikes, they achieved nothing save to engulf the citadel in a curtain of emerald power.

  A few kilometres away, Ordinatus Ullanor roared its anger again. A hail of plasma bolts smashed into the temple-gargant. Fields crackled and spat, but the construct continued to advance unblemished.

  The vox crackled with another transmission from Thorild.

  ‘Lord Commander, I can feel the hate building. I think the temple-gargant is about to unleash s–’

  Again his warning came too late. The eyes of the temple-gargant lit with pale green force. Twin beams of dazzling power lashed across the city, running the length of Ordinatus Ullanor. Plasma chambers exploded, turning the Adeptus Mechanicus engine into an artificial sun that engulfed an area half a kilometre across, turning buildings, men and orks to vapour.

  ‘We can’t stop it,’ Koorland whispered. ‘We have no defence against that kind of power.’

  From amidst a sea of greenskin bodies, Vulkan watched the emergence of the sanity-defying ork engine. The sky burned with the impacts of rockets, shells and las-blasts, surrounding the floating temple with a star-like corona. Its eyes gleamed as the main weapon recharged while torrents of fire streamed down from scores of emplacements and heavy cannons.

  The Great Beast had sent its best and now it had been forced to reveal itself.

  The primarch smiled.

  Soldiers of the Imperium died by the thousand and fled the Great Beast’s wrath in even greater number. Agents and artifices of the Omnissiah were worthless against the might of the orks’ mechanically rendered god. Titans and Knights fell before the crushing power of the temple-gargant. Those Martians and their subject troops with the will to retreat did so. The tech-priests and cybernetica held fast, even against the overwhelming logic of withdrawal, constructed or engineered by choice or intervention to respond only to the commands of their overlords. Dom
inus Zhokuv would see the affront against the Machine-God destroyed or else be destroyed himself in the effort.

  Dorr did his best to maintain a line against the encroachment of the massive war-edifice. His tanks pounded the last of their shells into its armoured belly as it swept overhead, while the infantry battalions left to him battled to resist fresh waves of armoured orks discharged from keeps on its flanks. Having fought so hard to reach the temple, now it came for them and there was nothing they could do but dig in and die fighting.

  The Space Marines attacked.

  Koorland rode with Vulkan in the lead Storm Eagle, along with Thane, Bohemond and their attendant retinues.

  ‘As then, so now,’ said the primarch. If not actually enjoying the blooms of anti-aircraft fire, the clatter of shrapnel on the hull and the whine of air across the cracked canopy, he was certainly invigorated by the circumstances, more focused than at any time since their arrival.

  ‘As when, lord primarch?’ asked Koorland.

  ‘The Great Crusade, of course,’ replied the gene-father of the Salamanders. ‘Or the Heresy Wars. And the Scouring. Not since those days have our brothers been tasked with such a momentous labour, nor responded with such ferocity.’

  ‘Like old times?’ suggested Thane.

  ‘Exactly that.’

  Squadrons of other gunships packed with the surviving warriors of the Adeptus Astartes followed, along with dozens of transports and support craft commandeered from the Imperial Navy and Astra Militarum. Each was filled to capacity with Space Marines. Below them assault troops bounded forward with jump pack-assisted leaps, crashing through the remaining ork resistance. Land Speeders of many patterns with more Space Marines clinging to their sides wove through the desolation. All that had survived the fighting thus far converged on the Great Beast’s last bastion.

  Fists Exemplar, Black Templars, Soul Drinkers, Ultramarines, Executioners, Dark Angels, Crimson Fists, Excoriators, Salamanders, Space Wolves, Blood Angels. And one Imperial Fist.

  In all the panoply of a dozen Chapters, the last three thousand heroes of the Adeptus Astartes launched their final assault.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ullanor – temple-gargant sanctum

  Momentum. Direction. Ruthless aggression. These are the true weapons of the victorious. Hesitation is defeat.

  And we hesitated. When the guns of our brothers roared, shock laid the first blow. We were lax and they were not. The war lasted seven years, but the dream was destroyed in that first second. What was left worth fighting for after? Pride. Foolish pride.

  Caestus assault rams that Koorland had kept in reserve now flew past the lead transports in the final seconds before contact with the objective. Their melta charges and reinforced prows smashed through the walls of the temple-gargant in blasts of super-heated air and vaporised metal. Squads deposited within the structure pushed into the waiting foe with blades, bolters and grenades, forcing beachheads fifty metres into the mechanical behemoth.

  Volleys of fire from the gunships raked across the mobs of orks crowding the surface of the war machine, rockets and bullets flaring up towards them as they descended. A few Imperial Navy fighters and bombers flew final passes above and below the focus of the Space Marine attack, plasma-tipped missiles and heavy bolters incinerating and shredding even more defenders. Turrets spat torrents of shells and las-blasts, exacting a deadly toll for the bravery of the crews.

  In rapid waves the Space Marine gunships despatched their cargoes into the breaches created by the assault rams, while ad hoc transports deposited more squads into the ramparts and walkways of the temple-gargant’s exterior to seize conventional ingress points.

  Koorland kept close to Vulkan. The primarch did not pause for a moment, his hammer in constant motion as he waded into the orks crewing the temple-gargant. Mega-armour shattered under the blows, power claws and energy blasts bouncing from the ancient war-plate forged by his hand.

  Koorland had a little time to take stock of his surroundings, and was surprised by what he saw. He had expected the usual ork technology – clanking pistons and gears, hissing steam pipes, the stench of oil and corroded metal.

  Instead the interior of the temple-gargant was almost pristine. The walls were chrome-like, painted with friezes of simple black and white dags or check patterns. Embossed plates of glyphs marked many doorways and junctions – signs, he realised with some shock. Doors slid open with faint purrs. The lights were a pale blue with barely a flicker of power flow.

  In fact there seemed to be very little in the way of outward energy sources. Everything hummed and gleamed with its own radiant light, the same strange power that fuelled all of the new ork technology.

  He had little enough time to process the importance of this observation. The needs of the mission were far more pressing.

  Hundreds of Space Marines forced their way into the hovering edifice, charging into brutal combat with the Great Beast’s monstrous elite. Terminators and Dreadnoughts led the assault in many places, their heavier armour weathering the fire of the orks to allow their power-armoured brothers to gain a foothold, weapons filling the corridors and chambers with continuous hails of fire.

  There were few foes that survived the charge of Vulkan, but many adjoining corridors and halls spilled forth their own flood of raging greenskins as the primarch thrust fast towards the heart of the impossible war engine. Armed and armoured with the best from the slave-lines of Ullanor’s manufactories, these creatures were as deadly as Esad Wire had warned.

  Yet they were confronted at the fore by seven Chapter Masters and twice as many more Space Marines of high rank and great prowess. Many of Vulkan’s companions carried artefacts dating back to the Heresy Wars and earlier – swords, hammers, maces and shields that first saw battle during the Great Crusade and even the Unification Wars. They cut down the orks with plasma pistols, volkite carbines and thermal blasters forged on Mars before any of their Chapters had been founded. And each warrior was already a renowned hero amongst his brothers, his life a succession of great victories and campaigns that would grace future rolls of honour. Their names and titles would be lauded by generations to come.

  Koorland felt humbled by such company, but in that time of unrelenting madness, a seeming eternity in which he waded into a sea of screaming ork faces, he finally understood the meaning of Vulkan’s assertions.

  He had faith.

  In himself. In the choice of the primarch to take him as his heir-in-command, above all others present.

  And he had faith in his battle-brothers. If ever a band of warriors could triumph against the odds ranged against them, they had been gathered here. If there were any weapon in the armoury of the Imperium that Koorland could choose to wield at that moment, it would be three thousand warriors of the Adeptus Astartes.

  And, lastly but most keenly, he had faith in Vulkan. The primarch was a vital energy every bit as powerful as the one against which they were set. Perhaps it was destiny or some other impulse that drove Vulkan, but whatever the cause he seemed set on a course and knew exactly where to lead them.

  Into the depths of the temple-gargant, racing towards a confrontation with the Great Beast.

  They came upon a large hall at least two hundred metres long and thirty high. Here the lights were dimmed, a respectful ochre that bled orange shadows behind the advancing Space Marines. The greater part of the force had created a cordon and held back the ork counter-attack while Vulkan, Koorland and their companions, accompanied by a mixed-Chapter company two-hundred strong including the cadre of Librarians, pressed ahead for the final assault on the Great Beast.

  The sides of the hall were piled with detritus several metres deep. Tattered cloth, bent metal spars and splintered wooden poles made strange shapes in the gloom. The footfalls of the Space Marines echoed from the metallic walls and ceiling, loud against the backdrop of weapons fire resounding through the cor
ridors behind.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Thane, moving to one of the trash piles. He pulled free a piece of cloth several metres long. He turned it, a richly embroidered sheet slashed and burned, golden thread glimmering in the light. Words were stitched into the design, human words, above a double-headed eagle. ‘It’s the aquila. By the Emperor…’

  All of the rubbish was made of broken standards, torn and hacked and desecrated by the orks. Metal eagles and lightning bolts adorned some of the poles, bent and hammered out of shape.

  ‘From the Triumph,’ growled Vulkan, ripping free a rag of banner. It bore the icon of the Blood Angels Legion.

  ‘I know this design,’ he whispered. ‘It was the personal banner of Captain Nemedeus. I knew him from the Artagean campaign. His whole company died during the Ullanor assault.’

  Valefor rushed forward and laid a hand reverently upon the cloth. ‘One of our greatest sacrifices. I bear his sword still!’

  They continued past the broken, heaped remains of mankind’s last victory over the orks of Ullanor. The far end of the hall was not a wall but two immense doors fashioned from grey and black marble into a grimacing ork face, layered with precious metals studded with gems.

  ‘The breaking of the banners, I understand,’ said Quesadra. ‘But this kind of ornamentation is not in the aesthetic of the orks.’

  ‘Look at the floor,’ added Koorland. ‘It is polished granite.’

  ‘From the parade ground along which the victorious armies of the Emperor marched,’ said Vulkan. He gestured towards the doors as they neared. ‘And doubtless this is from some other structure associated with the Triumph.’

  Koorland thought the primarch sounded wistful.

  ‘The high point of the Great Crusade,’ Vulkan continued. ‘The culmination of decades of war. The beginning of the end, we used to think. But we did not realise what that meant, how true those words would be. Such hope, such greatness, was the height from which we fell. Here we built the tallest pinnacle before the deepest drop. If only the orks knew what ruin they wrought here.’