The Beast Arises

‘Fellow Lords, members of the Senatorum, citizens of Terra. We stand together in a moment of great peril and greater pride. A very short time ago, I asked for your help. You answered. You answered in such numbers and with such fervour that, did they but deserve it, I would pity the orks.’

That was how she began. She spoke for fifteen minutes. She spoke of the bravery of the individual, of the power of the many. She spoke of humility and pride. By the end, she thundered, promising that legendary doom was coming to the orks.

It was a fine speech. It addressed the fears of the populace, and sought to calm them. It articulated their hopes, and sought to stoke them. It was the greatest work of a politician who knew that oratory was an art form, and whose mastery of the medium was unchallenged.

Juskina Tull’s speech was written to shape the departure of the Armada into an event whose celebration would shake the heavens with its fervour. Was it not, when all was said and done, Terra’s last chance for hope?

When Tull spoke, her intent was to ignite rapture.

Seated on the central dais of the Great Chamber, Vangorich admired Tull’s artistry. Even he was stirred by the words, though their very potency filled him with dread. They were words of enormous meaning. Hearing them meant that the Proletarian Crusade had begun. Its consequences would be coming soon.

Lord High Admiral Lansung heard the speech from the bridge of the Autocephalax Eternal. He had come to his flagship directly from Tull’s quarters. He had no intention of being in her sight at her moment of triumph, and giving her even more reason to gloat. He was here too because of his own dread. He counted Vangorich as an enemy, but the old assassin was right — the Crusade would end in disaster. However, as he listened to the speech he found himself hoping that he was wrong. He had no wish to face the reality of attempting the defence of Terra with just the flagship and its escort. He knew how that would end.

With every word Tull spoke, Lansung’s throat dried. The conviction grew that he would see his great fear realised.

In the Fields of Winged Victory, hundreds of thousands watched the pict feed of Tull. They listened with the hunger of the starving. When she finished her speech, and the underbelly of the low, toxic clouds over the Imperial Palace lit up with a fireworks display worthy of the victory at Ullanor, the people roared. The roar was as loud as on the day Tull had announced the crusade, but it was not the same kind of cheer at all. That moment had been the rebirth of hope when all had seemed lost. This moment was when the dream of the Crusade became real. The Merchants’ Armada carried all hope with it. It was the last chance. It was the last wall. In the soul of every human on Terra, regardless of belief, was the hard knowledge of how fragile the last wall was.

The roar was painful. It made throats ragged. It was the refusal to fall into a final night, and it was the fear that the end was inevitable. It was the holding on to a belief with a fatal, slippery grasp.

It was, in a word, desperation.

The people cheered, and they kept cheering. Many of them were weeping. Some wished they were on the ships, heading for battle, but there was no more room. Others were relieved to be where they were, and cheered because doing so held off, for a little bit longer, the awful experience of waiting that would follow next.

The masses in the Fields of Winged Victory tried to draw strength from their numbers, and from the volume of their shout. But the sky had cleared again towards the end of Tull’s speech, and they could see the stars, and the lights of the fleet, and they could see the ork moon, and they felt the awful hollowness of hope. So they shouted even louder, shouted until they were hoarse, shouted until they fell to their knees, gagging over the pain of a simple breath. They did not find strength in each other. They saw and heard and felt only their own fear reflected back at them a hundred thousand times. They shouted as if that might help them stay afloat in the wave of desperation.

But they sank. And they drowned.

In the shadow of the Tower of the Hegemon; in the corridors of the administrative complex, larger than a nation state, of the Estates Imperium; in the tangled warrens of the Opifex hive districts, where the uncountable legions of architects, stonemasons and other Palace artisans dwelt; half a world away, at the base of the Eternity Gate; across the millions of square kilometres of the Imperial Palace, the people stopped in their tasks and their prayers and their tears and listened. On the other side of the globe, in the vastness of the Ecclesiarchal Palace, they listened. Even in the Inquisitorial Fortress, Tull was heard and seen. In every corner of Holy Terra, singly or in groups, the people sought comfort in the words and in Tull’s magisterial, triumphal bearing. Singly or in groups, they came face to face with their desperation.