The Beast Arises

The moon ceased shuddering. The fleet’s efforts to strip the weaponry from the surface were concluded, but throughout the interior Space Marines fought desperate close battles against hordes of green monsters, protecting Adeptus Mechanicus salvage teams and xenologists while they stripped whole caverns of machinery. The orks, though contained, did not diminish in number.

The woman Haas had been correct. Through a grainy pict image relayed from the eyes of a servo-skull probe to a portable augur station, Koorland, Bohemond and Thane saw the orkish gate in operation. The skull looked down from a ledge high overhead. The angle was odd, the picture a striated, brown monochrome, but the poor quality of the image could not disguise the scale of what they witnessed. The orks had carved a chamber four kilometres across to house it. Bizarre machines crowded the walls, crackling with potent energies. Within the circle of the machines, piles of crates, scrap, lesser machines and weapons occupied the flat, gravelly floor. Fat cables snaked away through the materiel crowding the chamber, plugging the gate into the machines.

The gate itself was made up of three metal horns, as tall as Titans, curving up from a crudely made platform suspended some metres above the cavern floor. Steel hawsers, chains and ungainly clamps held them in place. They wobbled even so, perturbed by the energies they contained. Constant, dancing light jumped at the centre. Every few minutes, the light shone brighter, almost whiting out the pict, and yet another mob of thick-shouldered, tusked greenskins stomped out onto the platform, hefting their weapons, eager to fight.

‘The moons. They are not simple spacecraft as we assumed,’ said Koorland. ‘They are bridgeheads. It is no wonder the planets attacked have been so easily overwhelmed.’

‘Where have they learned technology of this power?’ said Bohemond. ‘With each encounter we uncover further disquieting information. Is there no limit to their ingenuity?’

‘We have not seen this before,’ said Thane. ‘What has changed?’

‘Fascinating,’ said Kant. ‘Their mastery of the gravitic sciences must be connected with this. There is potential here. It is said the eldar possess something similar, a sub-spatial network that enables communication between their scattered worlds.’

‘Such an ability in the hands of the orks is an unwelcome proposition,’ said Koorland. ‘This must be what Kubik was so keen to secure.’

‘I concur with his desire,’ said Kant. ‘The orks are epidemic. These machines can only make that situation worse. This is surely the reason for the Beast’s success. We must capture it, study it. Then we might counter it.’

They watched as another rabble of orks marched out of the flashing tunnel of light.

‘While they keep their tunnel open, we cannot defeat them,’ said Thane. ‘Terra will become an eternal battleground. The orks will replenish their numbers as ours dwindle. The gate must close, the moon must fall.’

‘It can be done,’ said Bohemond. ‘If that sybaritic coward Lansung can best one, then it should be a small matter for us.’

‘The agreement with Mars was that the moon must be taken,’ said Kant. ‘This gate is the greatest prize of all.’

‘No,’ said Koorland. ‘The gate must be destroyed.’

‘We shall see to it,’ said Bohemond.

Kant agreed dolefully. ‘It saddens me, but I can only concur. Maybe some knowledge might be gleaned from the wreckage.’

‘I suggest massed Terminator assault,’ said Bohemond. ‘Only by meeting them with the First Companies and Sword Brethren of our orders can we hope to prevail. Once we attack the gate, the orks will be stirred to heights of fury. We might fight our way there, but escape? Teleportation will be the only viable means of extraction.’

‘Thane?’ asked Koorland.

‘There are multiple plans that would result in the destruction of the gate, but I cannot conceive of another that would not result in an unacceptable toll of gene-seed and life. Teleportation through so much mass and shielding as the moon possesses can only be realistically achieved by those in Terminator plate. We would lose many power-armoured brothers. Bohemond’s suggestion has great merit.’

‘What is your proposition, High Marshal?’ said Koorland. ‘Form a cordon, fight our way in?’

‘From multiple directions,’ said Bohemond. He called up a wireframe diagrammatic of the moon, displacing the pict feed from their augur screen. Much of the ork satellite had been mapped by deep auspex, but there were large areas shaded in red, lacking detail. ‘Our Chapters hold large parts of the moon. The ork reinforcements must be using these tunnels here to come to their fellows’ aid direct from the gate.’ He indicated three straight tunnels, wide as highways, that led from the gate chamber to the surface, where they exited from the apertures of the moon’s giant ork face. Dozens of lesser ways threaded from them, riddling the crust and deeper interior.