The Beast Arises

The planet resounded with a cry as fierce, as expressive of the collective pain as the scream that had greeted the arrival of the star fortress. This was not terror, but it was the fear of terror’s return. It was the dying patient’s clutch at the chimera of a cure. It was the shout that would serve as battle cry for all the billions who would not be in the war until the war came for them.

It was desperation.

It was sinking.

It was drowning.

On the thousands of ships that made up the Merchants’ Armada, the crews and volunteers and Astra Militarum heard the speech too. They did not pay it quite as much heed. They had other matters to draw their attention.

The ships were moving. They were powering up engines. They were leaving anchor. They moved in a rough formation. They were heading into battle. For the volunteers, the reality of their choice had come. Many of them experienced the vertiginous sensation of running off a precipice, and feeling the sudden absence of firm ground beneath their feet. Some of them were sick.

In the Militant Fire’s observation dome, Galatea Haas looked out into the void as vessels beyond counting began to travel in concert. The ork moon was straight ahead. It was not drawing closer yet. Even so, it seemed larger. She looked at its surface, and pictured fighting there. She tried to will the Fire

past the ork defences to the commencement of the invasion. Until moonfall, there was no action she could take that would at least give her the illusion of mastery over her fate. For now, she had to wait, and place her life in the hands of Narkissos and his crew.

There was no sign of Kord. He had barely set foot out of the cargo bay since their arrival. Haas exchanged a look with the soldiers a few paces to her right. They wore the mustard uniform and red sash of the Jupiter Storm. Beneath her armour, so did she. All the Crusaders aboard the Militant Fire had been inducted into that regiment. Braylon Gattan was a captain in the 546th Jupiter Storm, and the lone officer of that rank on the Fire. Beside him was his commissar, Deklan Sever, quite a bit older. They nodded to her. They were feeling the same hard impatience. At least she was here, she thought, on this ship. At least she was part of a massive move against the orks. She was glad. She had no regrets.

Behind her, the speech continued. Tull built to a crescendo of fervour. The ship moved faster, as if it too were responding to her words. The Armada, brought into being by the determination of the Speaker for the Chartist Captains, gathered momentum. Its formation became more and more defined. It was no longer a confusing cluster of disparate vessels. It took on the shape of a wide spearhead. The ships became the components of the great weapon.

‘The strength of Terra approaches the enemy, carrying dread before it,’ said Tull.

It left dread behind it, too.

On Terra, the people knew that many, perhaps most (but by the Throne, please, not all) of the heroes of the Proletarian Crusade would die. But if those deaths were exchanged for an end to the hellish moon, then they would be celebrated. It was not the deaths that were dreaded. It was their futility.

The fleet did not carry dread within it. There was too much determination.

But it did carry desperation.

Desperation given the shape of metal, given power, given impetus, given speed — but little armour and few weapons — the Armada moved away from its orbital position. The greatest civilian mobilisation in Terra’s history swept towards the orks.

Fourteen

Terra — the Inquisitorial Fortress

Wienand and Rendenstein approached the main gates, striding along the centre of the Sigillite’s March. The time for secrecy was past. Even if their arrival was not expected, trying to gain access to the Inquisitorial Fortress by any means other than the direct one would be suicidal. What was more, Wienand was clear on the message she wanted to send. She had nothing to hide. She was not a fugitive. She, and no one else, was the Inquisitorial Representative to the Senatorum, and it was in that capacity that she was here, beneath the polar ice cap, in the vast caverns that housed the concentrated might of the Inquisition.

The March ran in a straight line through a cave big enough to swallow a battleship. They were too far underground for the endless cold of the surface to reach them. Even so, the air in the cavern was icy. Wienand’s breath misted. The sound of her boot heels was hollow with chill.