The Beast Arises

Why wouldn’t they? Kalkator thought through his rage. The orks were bringing down a compounded humiliation on the Great Company. They attacked with overwhelming numbers, unstoppable armament, and then outmanoeuvred the Iron Warriors. In the gap between realising the doom of Klostra and bringing his blade down on still another ork skull, he understood that the orks were sending a message. They were speaking through the language of annihilation, and what they said was, Behold what we can do. We are more powerful and more clever than you. You are nothing.

If hate alone were a force, he would have incinerated the planet in that moment.

‘Pull back,’ he ordered.

‘Where to?’ Caesax asked.

‘The mountains.’

‘Towards an orbital bombardment?’

‘It will be finished by the time we get there,’ he snarled.

They retreated towards oblivion.

Deep into the remains of the settlement, tens of thousands of blackened mortal corpses on all sides, the vox came alive with the first extra-planetary contact since the ork moon tore through space into Klostra’s orbit. It came from the strike cruisers Palimodes and Scythe of Schravaan

. The gravity storms had destroyed all of the company’s fleet at anchor. The two cruisers had been at the Ostrom outpost, and had been silent since the initial vox-failure on Klostra. They had not been recalled. Kalkator didn’t know why they had returned. He didn’t care.

He interrupted the torrent of shouted questions from the bridges. ‘I want the full complement of Thunderhawks planetside for immediate evacuation of all forces.’ He gave coordinates for a position just south of the settlement.

‘That moon—’ Attonax, on the Palimodes, began.

‘Do not engage!’ Kalkator shouted. The words were toxic. They were echoes of the foulest days of the Iron Warriors’ past.

‘Enemy launches detected,’ Attonax said.

Kalkator roared at the enemy, and the orks roared back. The laughter grew louder. It seemed to him that there was mockery in every attack. Every ork that he cut down died with the belief that it, and not he, was victorious. The giant ork machines heaved into sight over the ruined wall. They were on the plateau. The company moved faster than the ork super-heavies, but the infantry was on all sides, slowing them down. The ork Battlewagons kept pace, pounding the retreating Iron Warriors. The Pyres of Olympia

, the Barban Falk and the Araakite Doom moved backwards, keeping their Demolishers trained on the foe. Bolter, cannon and magma cutter tore swaths through infantry and smashed more tanks open. But the waves of the green tide closed over the gaps. And the fire from the ork guns grew more intense.

Brothers died. Kalkator felt no regret when he saw them fall, but he did feel frustration. The orks were eroding his combat strength bit by bit.

There were no gaps in the enemy barrage now. Kalkator could see little but flame and eruptions on all sides. The Araakite Doom exploded, and then there were two tanks. ‘Palimodes, Scythe of Schravaan

, where is our extraction?’ the warsmith demanded.

‘Right above you,’ came the reply.

Kalkator couldn’t see the Thunderhawks in the midst of the ork fire, but his Lyman’s ear was able now to distinguish their engines from the din of the enemy machines. A few seconds later, Hellstrike missiles screamed onto the ork tanks, followed by the hard rain of multiple heavy bolters. For several seconds, the world vanished completely. There was fire, and there was nothing else, and Kalkator grinned, because the flames were on the orks now, and they were learning the price of their arrogance.

He allowed himself that burst of savage pleasure. It lasted as long as the initial flash of the explosions. Then he faced again the reality of defeat, of humiliation, and of the fact that this was not a tide that could be turned by even a hundred Thunderhawks.

The rate of the ork fire dropped. Four more Battlewagons were burning shells.

The Vindicators were moving more and more slowly, providing cover for the battle-brothers on foot. They no longer had their flank escorts. A group of massive orks evaded the sponson fire of the Olympia and scrambled up onto the roof to Kalkator’s left. Before he could turn, one of them grabbed his left arm with a power claw. It squeezed, cracking the ceramite, crushing servo-motors. It would have broken his arm, had it still been flesh.