The Last Son of Dorn

by David Guymer

A Chimera ground over the loose earth on rattling metal treads, noisily passing Thane as he ran through a jumble of rockcrete blocks and wire. It had become separated from the rest of its armoured fist squadron by the terrain, slowed, but was steadily growling through the gears as it rumbled over the last of the major blast craters and saw open ground.

  Thane turned and chased it, up a wobbling ramp of metal sheeting and onto the roof of a bunker. The Chimera was just accelerating away as Thane leapt, arms pulling on air as if to drag him forward, and thumped onto its armoured back. His boots made a hollow clang. The vehicle’s acceleration almost pitched him backwards, but he activated maglock to secure himself, swayed, then clumped forwards to grab hold of the handrail that circled the turret cupola. One-handed, he ejected the hot sickle magazine from his bolter and punched the weapon against his ammo-belt to insert a fresh one.

  The Chimera gave a crunching, low-gear roar as it hit the rubbled section of wall, crashed through a metre-thick spit of standing masonry at the summit and then slewed freely, almost sideways, into the palace’s outer bailey. It trembled on its suspensors and then growled forwards in search of a site to unload. Its spotlight blinked on, a high-wattage lumen bulb spearing white light into the murk. Hull-mounted lasguns pivoted and fired. Its turret multi-laser traversed, cables swaying, and split the air with a crackling volley of beams.

  Thane deactivated maglock and jumped down, crunching into gravelly ground as the Chimera reversed its tracks to pivot on the spot, spraying las-beams, and then rumble off in a new direction. He swung up his bolter and started firing.

  Dust hung over everything. Spilled blocks cluttered the ground, a randomised topography of foxholes and trenches through which ork and man waged recreations of greater wars. Shield emitters, torn from the wall, struggling for function, flooded the air with sparks and fire. Landmines geysered tanks and rockcrete high into the air. Unexploded munitions went off. Distant walls, thicker, higher, more heavily defended even than those that had just been broken, echoed to the reports of gunfire.

  Thane drilled an ork through the neck, splattered its blood over a rockcrete block, got another in the knee, stepped on its chest and shot a bolt between its eyes. A roar. An ork ripped through the smog, swinging an axe. Thane sided the blade on his bolter. The weapons came apart with a ring of metal, leaving shocked fingers. The ork blundered through into Thane and knocked them both to the ground. Icons flashed up minor damage; servos whirred and Thane struggled to his feet. The ork smashed into him again, but this time Thane was ready. He brought up his dented bolter and put four rounds point blank into the ork’s chest.

  It exploded, wetly separating legs from head, and Thane thumped the bolter’s heavy stock, a crushed bolt-round spitting from the sickle magazine. Umbra-pattern. Practically indestructible. As close to a Chapter symbol as the Fists Exemplar came.

  Armoured warriors of the Excoriators and Black Templars surged past him, war cries reverberating from helmet vox-casters. Those in ivory and red advanced into ork fire in disciplined lines like one-man tanks, laying down withering volleys as they moved. Their brothers moved in fits and bursts, pausing to hack through ork counters with gladius and power sword before dashing on.

  ‘All units forward!’ Thane yelled, amping his helmet’s vox-caster to maximum and striding up onto the silver-blue carcass of an Imperial Knight for a better view.

  His auto-senses did their best to filter out the interference, figures emerging from the fog like black ghosts in a purgatory of grey, filled in with auspex-generated outlines that struggled to keep up. Assault Marines and Astra Militarum sappers assaulted the walls. He could see the controlled flare of jump packs, the sputter of portable shield racks, the cry and boom of ordnance pouring off the walls. Massed tanks growled together in the lee, recoil rocking them back as they slammed high-explosive shells into the base.

  There was no time to regroup and adopt a more considered approach. They had pushed through the orks, yes, but they had certainly not beaten them. There were millions of fresh fighters out there, caught out of position by Thane’s flank attack, that were probably being piled into trucks and raced into new positions at the army’s rear even now. The only option was to push forward, to break the orks’ second wall before they could be smashed against it.

  It was not war as the doctrines of Dorn or even Guilliman would have it, but it was exhilarating.

  Everyone, Thane decided, should push forcibly against their nature at least once before the finish.

  He turned to look up at the wall itself, just as a lobbed shell, trailing spurts of fire from an overpowered rocket, smashed through the top of a struggling Shadowsword tank and blew it to pieces before its main gun had a chance to fire. Black Templars wearing bulky jump packs held a beachhead on the parapet, backs forced to the rampart by several mobs of huge orks in steam-powered armour suits. As he watched, a boss ork with a shrilling buzz-saw and a pair of dribbling flamers bolted to its gauntlet chewed through a Space Marine’s right-hand jet flue and butted him off the parapet. The warrior broke on the rockcrete lumps below.

  One breach was all they needed. Just one.

  Sub-vocalising to his armour’s simplistic spirit he called up the army’s general channel, to coordinate some of the firepower that was labouring up towards the walls, and winced at the unexpected onslaught of orkish voices that emerged from his earpiece. Blink-scrolling through the frequencies found them all similarly blocked. Thane’s best supposition was the greenskins were using the full wavelength to coordinate their own unruly defense rather than actively blocking the Imperials’ communications. He set his vox to active scan, the exquisite properties of his Lyman’s ear allowing him to filter the overlapping noises into distinct sounds. He could not make out any specific headquarters location from background sounds, not could he understand the language, but there was one voice amongst the profusion that he knew immediately, as though a recognition marker had just flagged it up on his helm display.

  It was guttural, unclean, the loudest and most strident, and also the deepest, as though delivered from a chest wider than the armoured body of a Dreadnought.

  The Beast was near.

  There was a loud roar of freshly gunned engines, and an exuberant hammering of gunfire that chewed into the crumpled shoulder of the Knight that Thane was standing on. Before he could think, battle-bred instincts loosed a four-round trigger-squeeze in the right direction, the bolts spanking off the snarling front radiator of a half-track laden with burly close-assault fighters. A dozen more of the ramshackle vehicles roared up behind it, packed with troops and guns, mouldings plastered with dust, powering up through a sally port under the wall that had been partially blocked with spoil and debris.

  ‘Ork vehicles inbound from a tunnel in grid section epsilon-nine,’ Thane voxed, jumping down from the shoulder of the Knight and pushing his bolter round its chewed-up rear plating, then returning fire. If any of his units were holding open comms under that xenos diatribe, he had no idea, or if they would be able to hear him if they were. But he had little option but to try. ‘Surrounding sections hold and counter. Repeat, hold and counter. Take that tunnel.’

  Concentrated fire drove Thane back into cover. They were not aiming at him, of course. He was one Space Marine sheltering behind a wreck, and a Fist Exemplar, indistinguishable in undecorated ceramite from any battle-brother under his command.

  Sparks rattled across the glacis plate of the drab grey Predator tank that rolled over the tangled rubble at walking speed, keeping step with the combat squad of Fists Exemplar advancing under the cover of its guns. A blast of its twin-linked lascannons slagged a high-sided armoured truck. Return fire cost it its left sponson and a turret antennae cluster. It growled to a stop, the Space Marines taking up positions around its bulk and laying down fire. Thane recognised Kahagnis, Abbas, Agrippus and his autocannon, Thamarius and Xeres. Brother-Apothecary Antonius of the Excoriators knelt by the
Predator’s ruined gun, narthecium buried in the neck of fallen Sardonis, a plasma burn where an arm and a large part of a chest should have been.

  Thane pulled himself in behind the body of the Knight, taking advantage of the cover to pull his mistreated bolter to his chest, eject the sickle magazine and slam in a fresh one with a red strip along the base to indicate that it contained armour-piercing vengeance rounds. He could feel the ding of bullets striking the far side of his cover. He could hear the rumble of engines, getting louder.

  He stepped out of cover, side-on, bolter swinging upwards in one smooth motion in time with the flashed appearance of that overloaded half-track. He prepared to fire, but before he could rake the speeding vehicle’s flank with bolts he felt a hot downwash of air, like a fiery hand pressing down from above, and the half-track drove into a wall of heavy weapons fire. Quad-linked heavy bolters tracked back and forth, shredding the vehicle like paper. Thane dropped to one knee and turned his head away as a quartet of hellstrike missiles dropped from the black-painted Thunderhawk’s underwing hardpoints, flared, and then whistled through the vehicle formation, sending metal plates and smouldering remains billowing skyward.

  Ground dust blew out from the lowering Thunderhawk in ripples, tied to the cycling of its engine fans. It hovered above the height of its landing struts and dropped its doors, squads of Inquisitorial storm troopers in glossy black carapace and visors tramping down the assault ramp and into a covering posture around the gunship. Thane saw another blunt wedge of black armour thunder overhead, strafing the ground with heavy bolters and turbolasers, with flak from wall-mounted air defences lighting up its aerofoil.

  His vox-bead gave a long, power-boosted whine and the orkish voices receded. ‘Lord Thane,’ said a female voice. ‘This is Wienand. Are you hearing me now?’

  ‘I hear you!’ Thane ducked back into cover as a third gunship powered in low, spraying dust and gravel. He did not ask what the inquisitor was doing here when she had been directly instructed to remain behind the lines. She had followed her own counsel as any Fist Exemplar would have. ‘I did not realise we had any kill-teams still airborne.’

  ‘We have some remarkable pilots.’

  ‘The Beast is near, inquisitor. He is directing the defences himself, probably on short-range comms. Do you think your pilots are good enough to get us over the walls?’

  The line went quiet a moment, presumably while the inquisitor conferred with her squad. It crackled back to full, static force.

  ‘Lord Atherias tells me that he’s excited to try.’

  Sixteen

  Ullanor – Gorkogrod, inner palace

  The cartolith still floated on Koorland’s helm display. The icon representing his present coordinates was a heartbleed of gold, nine-tenths of the way down a zig-zagging stair that had multiplied the descent by a factor of twenty or more. Ork design. Two hours and they were still to breach the throne room. But they were close. A doubled stream of mass-reactive shells burned from his storm bolter, ripped open the drab blue and black chest-plate of an ork twice his weight in muscle, and strobed monstrous horned shadows along the walls. Dark gore splattered Koorland’s lenses. In tri-d, it was as though the palace schematic ran with blood.

  ‘One more turn and we are there,’ he called out to the kill-team and the others, his breathing remaining slow and deep even after two hours of intense hand-to-hand combat.

  Blocks of screed and infographics reporting on his armour’s combat systems made fluid passes across his faceplate, kept in constant motion by the targeting reticules that pushed them aside to keep his vision uncluttered.

  Battery reserves low. Ammunition nearly depleted. Armour compromised. No matter.

  They were almost there.

  Bohemond was already at the turn of the stair, surrounded by hulking orks that hacked at him with chainaxes and powered maces: fend, fend, strike, and push forward, nigh-invincibility allied to earth-shattering moments of power, the timeless fighting style of the Cataphractii.

  Tyris was just behind, firing muffled rounds of stalker-variant ammunition into the densely packed mob. Gadreel and Icegrip fought hand-to-hand, servo-arm and frost blade, smiting and hacking. The Ultramarines Simmias and Straton, replacements for Numines and Vega, fallen on Incus Maximal, were a step behind, firing from the chest.

  Brokk had an ork by the throat, ten centimetres off the ground and turning blue. His bicep was a swollen mass of veins and anger, faced creased by gun shadow, caught in a rictus of hatred for the alien. Olug’s ripper gun brought thunder into the confined space, spraying out bullets until the robust weapon clicked empty. The maddened ogryn took the gun two-handed and clubbed the closest ork to the ground with it. In his fury, Koorland saw the common thread that ran through every member of his squad: man, woman, abhuman, Space Marine.

  One Emperor. One Imperium. One mankind.

  ‘Could you please avoid killing so many,’ said Laurentis, modulating his voice to a whining pitch that ogryns and bolter fire could not reach. ‘The weapon requires live Veridi to serve as detonators.’

  Krule rolled his eyes, artfully massaging the selector of a palm-sized executor pistol: bolt-rounds shattered the weak joints between armour plates, needle killshots punctured dense green hide.

  ‘There are plenty more, magos,’ said Koorland.

  Asger’s panting chuckle returned through the shared feed, along with the crack of lightning.

  ‘Take the stairs!’ Koorland bellowed, punching his sword’s blued edge through an ork’s chest-plate and forcing another step towards Bohemond and the others before more orks stepped up to stop him. He snarled.

  Spotting the shift in his tactical display, Koorland glanced left as Kavalanera broke from the rest of her sisters. The women fought in uncanny unison to defend the bound ork psyker. The servitors dragging it along between them were mammoth but ill-suited to combat, though more than a few stray shots bound for the ork psyker smacked into vat-grown, plasteel-reinforced flesh. Drevina and the other Sisters adapted their blade routines to Kavalanera’s absence smoothly. The knight abyssal veered towards the handrail on the left-hand side of the stair and vaulted over it.

  Koorland saw the parchment strips affixed to her armour flutter up as she dropped onto the orks charging up the stairs. Her power blade lashed out in perfect figures of eight, hacking orks limb from limb as they ran at her or past. Every part of her body moved with the minimum of effort and the maximum of effect: grace, poise, a ballet of slaughter performed in absolute quiet but for the howls of dismembered orks. Unnerved by their own brutish sense of the pariah in their midst, the orks began to waver.

  The break in the influx of fresh combatants allowed Koorland to push onto the turn of the stair. Bohemond blink-sent a greeting rune to his helm display. Two walking tanks side-by-side, with relic blade and storm bolter they drove the orks back, round the turn and onto the final flight. Beyond Lady Brassanas, Koorland saw the doors.

  They were large, but by the standards of neither human nor ork were they worthy of a centre of power. They were plain metal, unadorned except for a few furtively scratched glyphs in the frame. A service entrance, for gretchin and slaves.

  For humans.

  Koorland wondered if it was some kind of symbolism as much as its own desire for this confrontation that had led the Beast to direct them along this route. Conquest had never been enough, or the hives of Terra would have been aflame long ago. It was holy war. It wanted mankind’s capitulation, its humiliation. Vulkan had explained to him that when dealing with orks all things came down to dominance. The primarch had also repeatedly impressed on him the need to have faith, in himself, in his brothers, in the spirit of man.

  ‘For Dorn. For Vulkan. For the Golden Throne of Terra!’

  Freed from the immediate fighting, the two ogryns opened up on the uncertain orks. Commissar Goss seared them with bolts of plasma, and Alpha 13-Jzzal joined h
im with raking volleys of his heavier plasma caliver.

  ‘Protect yourself, sister,’ yelled Tyris, as he pulled a clutch of frag grenades from his hip holster. Gadreel and the rest of Kill-Team Stalker did likewise, and Kavalanera plunged her sword into an ork’s chest and then ducked beneath it as it fell.

  The air became metal. The frag blasts were too minor a flurry to inflict anything more than irritation on such armoured behemoths but iron shards were as pernicious as sand and, propelled with force, would work their way into anywhere. They got into eyes, into ammo slits, points of weakness that the orks could have protected, had function been as important to them as effect.

  Humanity was not the only race with weaknesses.

  Koorland raised his sword as an icon of man, as Asger and Bohemond pushed past and battered open the doors.

  Into the chamber of the Beast.

  Ullanor – Gorkogrod, inner palace

  Penitent Wrath looped over the palace rooftops like a seabird with wings full of winter gale. She swung slowly on her axis, round and round, torn electrics spitting from the hole that gaped in her wing, coming in by some miracle on one turbofan and descent thrusters.

  The section of roof high above the throne room of the Beast was flat as a frozen lake, spiralling in panorama across Kjarvik’s view. One black gunship was already down and unloaded, warriors in grey and in ivory and red spreading from it like cracks in the ice. Another burned up in the sky as it flew over, wreckage dropping over the spiked parapet in a death spiral. His vision swung from metal roof to cloudy sky and back again, both the same ruddy umber, fire and ash, one a beaten reflection of the other.

  Kjarvik held onto the assault ramp’s hydraulic supports as centrifugal force tried to throw him out. He looked down. He felt no nausea or disorientation. His physiology was immune to that.

  ‘It is not going to get any closer,’ said Baldarich.

  Kjarvik released his boot maglocks with a snarl. There was no need to jump. The gunship’s spin flung him out from the ramp, arms beating at the air like his namesake crow.