Throneworld

by Guy Haley

  The gate itself was made up of three metal horns, as tall as Titans, curving up from a crudely made platform suspended some metres above the cavern floor. Steel hawsers, chains and ungainly clamps held them in place. They wobbled even so, perturbed by the energies they contained. Constant, dancing light jumped at the centre. Every few minutes, the light shone brighter, almost whiting out the pict, and yet another mob of thick-shouldered, tusked greenskins stomped out onto the platform, hefting their weapons, eager to fight.

  ‘The moons. They are not simple spacecraft as we assumed,’ said Koorland. ‘They are bridgeheads. It is no wonder the planets attacked have been so easily overwhelmed.’

  ‘Where have they learned technology of this power?’ said Bohemond. ‘With each encounter we uncover further disquieting information. Is there no limit to their ingenuity?’

  ‘We have not seen this before,’ said Thane. ‘What has changed?’

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Kant. ‘Their mastery of the gravitic sciences must be connected with this. There is potential here. It is said the eldar possess something similar, a sub-spatial network that enables communication between their ­scattered worlds.’

  ‘Such an ability in the hands of the orks is an unwelcome proposition,’ said Koorland. ‘This must be what Kubik was so keen to secure.’

  ‘I concur with his desire,’ said Kant. ‘The orks are epidemic. These machines can only make that situation worse. This is surely the reason for the Beast’s success. We must capture it, study it. Then we might counter it.’

  They watched as another rabble of orks marched out of the flashing tunnel of light.

  ‘While they keep their tunnel open, we cannot defeat them,’ said Thane. ‘Terra will become an eternal battleground. The orks will replenish their numbers as ours dwindle. The gate must close, the moon must fall.’

  ‘It can be done,’ said Bohemond. ‘If that sybaritic coward Lansung can best one, then it should be a small matter for us.’

  ‘The agreement with Mars was that the moon must be taken,’ said Kant. ‘This gate is the greatest prize of all.’

  ‘No,’ said Koorland. ‘The gate must be destroyed.’

  ‘We shall see to it,’ said Bohemond.

  Kant agreed dolefully. ‘It saddens me, but I can only concur. Maybe some knowledge might be gleaned from the wreckage.’

  ‘I suggest massed Terminator assault,’ said Bohemond. ‘Only by meeting them with the First Companies and Sword Brethren of our orders can we hope to prevail. Once we attack the gate, the orks will be stirred to heights of fury. We might fight our way there, but escape? Teleportation will be the only viable means of extraction.’

  ‘Thane?’ asked Koorland.

  ‘There are multiple plans that would result in the destruction of the gate, but I cannot conceive of another that would not result in an unacceptable toll of gene-seed and life. Teleportation through so much mass and shielding as the moon possesses can only be realistically achieved by those in Terminator plate. We would lose many power-armoured brothers. Bohemond’s suggestion has great merit.’

  ‘What is your proposition, High Marshal?’ said Koorland. ‘Form a cordon, fight our way in?’

  ‘From multiple directions,’ said Bohemond. He called up a wireframe diagrammatic of the moon, displacing the pict feed from their augur screen. Much of the ork satellite had been mapped by deep auspex, but there were large areas shaded in red, lacking detail. ‘Our Chapters hold large parts of the moon. The ork reinforcements must be using these tunnels here to come to their fellows’ aid direct from the gate.’ He indicated three straight tunnels, wide as highways, that led from the gate chamber to the surface, where they exited from the apertures of the moon’s giant ork face. Dozens of lesser ways threaded from them, riddling the crust and deeper interior.

  ‘We must divert their attention,’ said Thane. ‘These orks are strange, and apt to use many unusual technologies, but look at them. Projected from the other side of the galaxy, they come out roaring and snorting, hungry for war. Whatever new tricks these beasts have mastered, they remain orks.’

  ‘Orks cannot resist a direct challenge,’ said Bohemond. ‘Provoke them, and we may direct their fury as we might. Let us send word to the fleet and land our armoured vehicles. Deploy them in the tunnels – that is a lure no ork could resist. They will die before the guns of our tanks while we attack from the rear.’

  A taskforce-wide vox-blurt signalled the beginning of the attack. Across the main triple highway into the core the massed tanks of five Chapters advanced. In the subsidiary tunnels to the sides, hundreds of Space Marines fanned out to stop any orks who might choose an alternative route around the advancing Land Raiders, Razorbacks and Predators. The moon rumbled with new detonations as vital passageways were brought down, blocked with millions of tons of rock and metal. At the peripheries of the territories held by the Chapters, Space Marines prepared for the moment the orkish reinforcements would be cut off. Thereafter they were to drive forward, trapping the remaining greenskins.

  There would be slaughter, Koorland was sure, but the cost in gene-forged blood would be high.

  The Terminators worked their way into position around the gate as the orks took the bait, advancing up the main tunnels where they hurled themselves at the advancing Space Marine tanks. The armour worked its way forward purposefully, slowly, the tunnel resonating with the reports of their weapons and the howling of orks.

  Koorland fought alongside Thane and his bodyguard of Terminators. Through a labyrinth they proceeded, slaughtering orks wherever they found them. The corridors rarely ran straight, and where battle was met it was a vicious, close-quarters affair. Koorland’s freshly painted armour was soon a mess of nicks and scratches, the bright yellow stained dark red. His sword was caked from tip to pommel in blood baked black by its power field.

  ‘This feels good,’ grunted Thane, smashing an ork’s head deep into its shoulders with his power maul. ‘On Eidolica, we kept them back as long as we could, slaying them with our guns. Tactically proper, but where vengeance is involved, I prefer to see my enemy’s face close.’ He let out a shout as he smashed another ork down. Koorland cut the hands from his own opponent with a single well-placed blow. The ork roared its anger and battered at him with bloody wrists. Koorland spared a single round from his storm bolter to end it.

  ‘Close-quarter melee conserves our ammunition,’ said Thane at the sound of the gun. ‘We are going to need it.’

  They rounded a corner. The corridor opened up onto the floor of the gate chamber. Thousands of orks were pouring from the flaring mechanism.

  ‘There are so many. It is as Eidolica was,’ said Thane.

  ‘So it was on Ardamantua also,’ said Koorland. ‘An endless tide. Let us stop it up. Time to announce ourselves!’

  Thane strode into the chamber, selected a tall crackling machine for his ire, and smashed its casing with his power maul. Sheet metal caved in, exposing the flashing innards. Another blow arrested its processes explosively. Fire belched from the array of pipes on the top, followed by a greasy cough of smoke.

  ‘Destroy the machines! Destroy them all!’ roared Thane.

  ‘Interrupt the power supply,’ said Koorland. ‘Close the gate.’

  Five more machines died before the orks noticed their attackers. Piggish, ugly faces turned at the sound of the destruction. Without breaking stride, a portion of the orks streaming from the gate up the tunnels changed direction, and charged at the new threat.

  ‘Now is the proper time for the expenditure of ammunition,’ shouted Thane. ‘First Company, fire!’

  Forty of Thane’s Terminators formed a bowed line centred on him, while the others fanned out and destroyed the machines. Their guns spoke with one booming voice. Storm bolters on full automatic blazed a streaking hail of fiery darts. Assault cannons spun up to firing speed, spitting out a torrent of bullets. Where b
olts met orkish flesh, they penetrated and exploded. Orks staggered on with horrendous injuries. Many required two or three further shots to down. Where they encountered the furious sweep of the assault cannons, they were cut in half. The orks stumbled and fell, or were blown backwards in bloody chunks. Stacks of supply crates were shredded. Munitions within them detonated. Shoulder-launched cyclone missiles exploded in tight clusters, tearing red holes in the ork hordes. The enemy tumbled over the corpses of their fellows, piled high by their own momentum, a line of ruined flesh at the edge of the Space Marines’ range. Still they came.

  All over the cavern, explosions roared upward as other Terminator groups entered the hall and set to work. Koorland headed implacably towards the nearest of the gate horns. He smashed down an ork that had made its way through the torrent of fire. An electric fizzling crackled across the chamber as a tall, horizontal wheel covered in bronze balls came off its mountings. Green lightning jagged out into walls, floor and machinery. Another huge boom, and another. Gouts of fire rolled upward.

  ‘Company, change ranks!’ yelled Thane. His first line, their ammunition exhausted, stepped back, smoothly changing places with another line that stepped forward, storm bolters already chattering. There was no interruption to the wall of death the Fists Exemplar dealt out.

  Koorland and his entourage were beyond the edge of the firing line, and the orks came more thickly. They brought them down, smashing their way towards the horn. Koorland cut the cables running along the floor. Fires blazed everywhere, tinged with green, choking black smoke billowing from them, moving strangely in the erratic artificial gravity of the gate room. The gate stuttered, its light and its buzzing interrupted. Orks passing through during this intermission were torn in half.

  ‘Press on, press on!’ roared Koorland. The flow of orks lessened. The gate blinked off again, longer this time. Koorland emptied his magazine into an important-looking machine, blasting it to bits.

  The gate went out. The orks roared as one. All around the chamber they were facing lines of Space Marine Terminators. At measured pace, the Space Marine lines converged, trapping the orks between them. The sons of Dorn suffered their losses, but for every champion of humanity that fell, twenty orks died. The orks flooding up the tunnel towards the tank line milled about, unsure which enemy to engage. They surged back and forth, before finally switching direction and running towards the Terminators.

  At Thane’s position the guns of the second line clicked empty. No third line existed to replace them. The orks clambered over their heaped dead, and charged into the Space Marine ranks.

  A cacophony of weapons hitting thick battleplate announced the meeting of orks and Space Marines, followed by the banging of matter annihilated by disruption fields as the Adeptus Astartes swung their power fists.

  ‘Onward, to the gate horn!’ ordered Koorland. Orks pulled at his arms, thick green fingers slipping from his gory armour. He shook them off. The horn towered over him. He pulled out the melta bomb maglocked to his thigh, twisted the flask handle, and slapped it into place. Two more Terminators followed, attaching their own bombs. Across the smoking, empty platform, Koorland saw Bohemond and Issachar’s warriors doing the same, Malfons himself attaching his bomb to the third horn.

  ‘Charges placed,’ voxed the lord of the Iron Knights.

  ‘Withdraw,’ voxed Koorland. ‘Prepare for extraction. Our work here is over for today. Initiate teleport countdown.’

  On his chronometer, five minutes flashed up, and began to tick down.

  ‘Terminator groups, withdraw to predesignated teleport coordinates.’

  All around the chamber, the Terminators backed away, always facing the enemy. The orks were greatly reduced in number, but thousands remained, and their fury only grew as their ranks were further thinned.

  At three minutes, ten seconds until teleport the gate flared again. Through the flickering light stepped the largest ork Koorland had ever seen. Not even the warlords of the great tribal migrations he had fought against compared with it. It was taller than a Space Marine Dreadnought, an axe as big as a Rhino’s side in its hand. Red eyes glowed with feral intelligence above a row of close-packed teeth as long as sabres. Upon its head was a thick helmet, adorned with a spread of horns as long as power swords. Around it were thirty or so other orks, smaller than their leader but every one a terrible warrior in its own right.

  The giant ork shouted out an incomprehensible stream of xenos words, and the orks fighting the Space Marines began to rally themselves, pulling back into better order, firing their guns at the Terminators.

  ‘What by the Emperor is that thing?’ voxed Malfons. ‘Is it the Beast itself?’

  ‘Whatever it is, it is a worthy foe,’ said Bohemond.

  The orks redoubled their attack as their master stepped off the gateway platform. Its monstrous bodyguard swaggered after it, wargear and weaponry uniform only in their brutality. As they stepped down, more orks were revealed behind. Some bore banner poles of iron fists clutching spanner icons. All of them wore harnesses and aprons stuffed full of tools, and their weapons were bizarre combinations of heavy axes and wrenches. These ran across the platform, jumping off the sides. They headed for the wrecked machines, dozens of slave assistants rushing after them. The leader beast roared and gesticulated, pointing to the worst damage. Now some of the orks retreated, forming a cordon, blocking the Terminators’ way to the specialists. Behind a line of warriors twenty deep, the mechanicians set to work. The rest of the orks roared and charged. The two lines of Space Marines met, and smoothly reformed into a circle.

  ‘They are repairing the machines,’ said Malfons.

  ‘Ignore them!’ ordered Koorland. ‘They have not seen the melta charges. When they do, they will not have time to disarm them. Teleport in two minutes, twenty seconds. We must prevail until then!’ Koorland swept his power sword across the front rank of orks, cutting several in two with one swipe. The rest surged on over the toppling bodies of their friends, driven on by the crowd behind and their own insatiable battle lust.

  ‘Hold them back! Hold them back!’ roared Koorland.

  Two minutes to teleport.

  The circle of Space Marines shrank. For all the thickness of their armour, they were heavily outnumbered.

  The great beast lofted its axe, and brought it down with a powerful swing to point at Koorland. Shouting more orders, it bore down on the last of the Imperial Fists with a plodding charge, head down, its bodyguard forming an arrowhead behind it.

  Koorland slew his last opponent, and prepared to meet it.

  Those Space Marines still possessing ammunition opened fire. For a few vital seconds mass-reactives shattered thick armour plates, blew divots of green flesh from massive muscles, then the ork charge hit home. The orks towered over the Space Marine elite, and knocked them staggering. Chainaxes rose and fell, hacking through reinforced adamantium and ceramite by dint of raw orkish strength. Boxy power klaw blades squealed through hardened metal, snipping off heads and limbs. The Space Marines fought back, smashing the orks with their power fists, caving in their ribs and crushing their faces into bloody mist.

  The leader came at Koorland, and the Imperial Fist had the fight of his life on his hands.

  Thirty seconds to teleport.

  The ork was twice Koorland’s height, broader than a battle tank. Koorland sidestepped its lowered head, but was caught upon the thing’s shoulder and sent stumbling backwards. His armour’s gyroscopic stabilisation systems protested as they fought to keep him upright. The ork recovered swiftly, swinging its massive axe out and across at Koorland’s chest height. It hit his plastron, the impact of the blow shaking him inside his armour. The eagle upon his chest was wrecked, the metal detail pressed and smashed into itself as if it had been crafted from soft lead. The ork reared up, raising its axe before Koorland could react. The weapon hurtled down, fast as a comet. Koorland pivoted awkwardly, pus
hing the mobility of his armour to its limit to raise his sword in an overhead parry.

  His weapon met the cruel head of the axe with a titanic boom. The axe head exploded into spinning, white-hot shrapnel. The force of the blow was such that Koorland was driven to his knee. When he lumbered back upright, he found his own blade was a blackened shard. He had no time to order his armour to disconnect the power feed and discard it. The beast was on him again, its skin studded with the smoking remains of its axe.

  Twenty seconds to teleport.

  The ork reached down, grabbing both of Koorland’s arms in its gargantuan fists. It lifted him up, armour and all, pulling his arms apart. Koorland’s armour sang a litany of alarms. Red flashed all over his helm display. Metal groaned, and hot pain stabbed into his wrists, elbows and shoulders as the joints began to part.

  The cavern filled with golden light as the melta bombs went off in stepped detonations, micro-fusion devices slagging wide rings of the left gate horn. Sectioned into pieces, the device slid apart, spraying gobbets of molten metal into the orks around the teleport gate. Then the second fell, and the third, tearing metal shrieking, severed power lines lashing back and forth with frantic energies.

  The pressure slackened as the leader ork looked back at the ruin of the gate. Suddenly Malfons was there, greatsword blurring through the air. The Chapter Master moved with an agility in his Terminator armour that Koorland had never witnessed before. The ork dropped Koorland and kicked at Malfons, knocking the Chapter Master backwards, and snatched a fresh axe from its belt. It followed up with a power­ful blow at Malfons.

  The axe was of simple metal, but the strength of the ork was such that it bit deep into the ceramite cladding of Malfons’ pauldron. The Chapter Master shouldered the ork aside, weathered a second strike, and swung his blade hard. The weapon cleft the ork’s chest armour, slicing deep into muscle. With a howl of fury, the ork backhanded Malfons before he could attack again. Helm lenses shattered, Malfons faltered. An instant was all he gave the ork, but the creature grabbed it. The ork stamped down on Malfons’ leg, pinning his foot in place, then it reached forward and clamped its fist around the Chapter Master’s head.