The Beast Arises

An electric buzzing supplanted Koorland’s senses as his substance was projected through the warp. His body diffused, becoming a tingling sensation and little else. Thought fled as his consciousness momentarily disconnected from reality, but it did not cease — rather his sense of self became something else, a raw awareness without thought, a thing of feeling. Rationality was inconceivable. Time was irrelevant. There was only being, nothing else.

A wall of pain interrupted his contemplations. His body passed out of the warp, his wargear and flesh rearranging themselves into solid forms. A blaze of light and rush of vapour, and he was striding forward, gun raised, into a roughly hewn chamber cluttered with ramshackle machinery and orks. A subsidiary power nexus for the surface energy weapons, its destruction would knock out several dozen energy cannons, or so their Adeptus Mechanicus allies had informed them.

The xenos recovered quickly from their surprise at Koorland appearing in their midst, abandoning the tasks they were about at the machines, and launched themselves at the Space Marine with a ferocious roaring. Their weapons rebounded from his Terminator armour without effect. Koorland gunned them down with his storm bolter, blasting them into bouncing pieces. Ork slave creatures squealed and ran from him. Rushing air behind him signalled other successful teleports. The sensorium of his borrowed suit pinged into life, triangulating his location, linking up with the auspex suites of his ad hoc squad.

‘Teleport successful. Target achieved. Strike Team Slaughter, respond,’ he voxed. He could not turn easily in the massive armoured suit, not without presenting his back to the doorway.

‘Moscht here,’ spoke a voice into his helm. The Space Marines sounded off, their squad icons and vital signs flicking into life upon Koorland’s helm display.

‘Ulferic here.’

‘Donafen here.’

‘Arbalt here.’

‘Holde here.’

Two Black Templars, a brother of the Fists Exemplar, an Excoriator, and an Iron Knight made up his small command.

‘Zero casualties,’ said Koorland.

‘Praise be,’ said Ulferic and Arbalt.

Koorland ignored their odd expression of piety. ‘Thus far, our Adeptus Mechanicus allies have been proven correct. According to their information, the primary target is this way — power generators for the ork gravity weapons. Let us ensure they never fire again. Move out and engage.’

Koorland went first, the others close behind. The combat chatter of other Terminator squads crackled in his ears. Three hundred Terminators worked their way through the tunnels. The moon shook with impacts from the surface, shortly joined by the detonation of demolition charges nearer to hand. Data-screed and vox-reports kept Koorland abreast of the battle, so much information it took the superior mind of a Space Marine to comprehend.

‘Target Gamma destroyed.’

‘Report heavy fire, sector nineteen forty-three.’

‘Target Zeta damaged and on fire. Proceeding to secondary objectives.’

Koorland’s squad stamped through corridors carved from grey stone, primitive deck plating buckling under the weight of their armour. Squads of orks burst from doorways, weapons blazing. Their large-calibre bullets ricocheted from the thick plates of the Terminator suits in showers of hot sparks. Return fire cut them down. As they passed each rathole and stinking entrance, Holde of the Iron Knights poked the nozzle of his heavy flamer down it and sent a jet of shrieking promethium inside. Burning ork slave creatures ran out, screaming. Soon the twisting corridors were choked with smoke, and the Space Marines switched to artificially enhanced views of their environs.

They approached their target. The corridor widened into a cavern, floored erratically with platforms of poorly cut metal. Rough doors as numerous as maggot holes in a corpse riddled the chamber sides. A four-storey-tall machine buzzed and crackled in the middle of the cavern, topped by a rotating arrangement of three glass balls as big as light tanks whose innards writhed with peculiar energies.

‘Our primary target is ahead of us,’ voxed Koorland. ‘Destroy it.’

‘First, a little bladeplay,’ said Arbalt, pointing across the uneven cavern floor.

From an entrance on the far side, hundreds of orks pelted into the room, howling guttural xenos war cries, each one desperate to be the first to kill. Gunfire hammered down at the Space Marines from the tiered galleries ranged up the walls.

Koorland raised his gun and his power sword in salute. ‘For the Emperor,’ he said.

The Terminators opened fire.