The Beast Arises

The corridor beyond was wider, an antechamber to a larger hall perhaps. It was also bathed in light, and three-quarters full of sand. He raised his bolter and carefully covered the room. The ceiling was cracked from side to side by a wide crevasse that evidently reached the surface, for daylight penetrated all the way into the complex here, and dust whispered down in sheets. The door on the far side was buried in it.

‘I cannot proceed further, the roof is breached and the corridor blocked with sand. It would take a day or more to dig through. No sign of supplies here.’

The vox crackled in response. ‘Return to the hangar, brother.’

‘Confirmed, sergeant,’ said Collustrax. He keyed his vox off. ‘A waste of time going further.’

He turned about and headed back the way he had come, deeper into the base. Doors he had opened before in his sweep hung wide. Most rooms were empty, those that were not held nothing useful to the Iron Warriors. Corpses, paper that fell to pieces when disturbed, dead cogitators.

He strode on with purpose, making no attempt to go quietly. There was no one to hear him.

Suddenly he stopped and backed up. He looked down, the lights attached to his suit bathing the floor in wan yellow light. The dust was scuffed by his passage, but there was something else.

Another set of footprints overlaid his own.

He shut his light off, brought up a thermal overlay on his helm display. The corridor reappeared as a grainy pict of false colour. His own footprints were a dull blue against the near black of the floor. The interloper’s were a fading green, more recent.

‘Sergeant Ostrakam. Collustrax. I’ve found something.’

‘Report.’

‘There’s something in here with us. Footprints. Booted, large.’

The second line of footprints went into a room Collustrax had investigated on the way up. He moved against the wall, and leaned in, bolter first.

‘Nothing there.’ He stood back again. ‘I will—’

A ringing blow against his helmet sent him sprawling into the wall. A blackened knife blade skidded off the metal. Collustrax jerked his shoulder back, meeting a solid body that barely gave. He swung around, but a meaty hand grabbed his pauldron and hurled him against the opposite wall. A huge ork stood over him, a pair of primitive light-intensification goggles strapped over its eyes. With calm efficiency Collustrax brought his bolter up to blow out its heart and lungs, but his assailant grabbed it and ripped it out of his hand with amazing strength, stamping Collustrax into the ground as he sought to rise.

‘Orks! There are orks in the complex. There are—’

The ork drove down with its knife, a piece of metal as long as a man’s torso and thick as three fingers. For all its unwieldiness the ork used it deftly, and the ridiculous breadth of it was ground down on one side to a wicked edge.

The point caught in the seal where his helmet joined his breastplate and was driven through it by brute strength, into the space behind Collustrax’s collarbone. The ork threw itself forward with its full weight, pushing the sword-length knife in with both hands so that it pierced both the Iron Warrior’s hearts.

For Collustrax, the Long War was over.

Sergeant Ostrakam saluted Kalkator. ‘My lord Kalkator, Brother Collustrax is slain by orks. The complex is compromised.’

Kalkator regarded the emptying hangar. They had recovered perhaps half of the supplies, armour spares, bolt-rounds, weapons. Most of it was sealed in oil-filled containers, and perfectly serviceable. Kalkator tallied what they had recovered mentally, deciding if they could afford to leave the remaining supplies.

‘Any word from the Palimodes?’ he called to his master vox-operator. ‘What news from orbit?’

‘I cannot raise the ship, my lord.’

Why would this be easy? One cruiser lost, two outposts, half his Great Company. Kalkator’s week had been disastrous.

‘Caesax! Take half the company, secure the hangar rear. Derruo, take four squads outside. Shift the landing site ten kilometres out, somewhere clear where we can’t be ambushed. Meratara will ferry the supplies, let the others take them to orbit. Unloading and reloading will take extra time, but we cannot risk the gunships, and a few more crates of supplies is better than no more. As soon as you raise him, have Attonax send down more servitors and brothers to speed the extraction, both here and at site beta. Ostrakam, what indication of numbers?’

‘None, my lord. None of the other scouts report anything. It will not be alone.’

‘They never are,’ said Kalkator. ‘We have no indication of an infestation of the planet. It may be a scouting group. Send my order to Attonax. Intensify scans of the surrounding void. If there’s a ship out there, we must find it. In the meantime, redouble our efforts. I want every scrap of usable materiel stripped from this depot and aboard the Palimodes before they find us.’

‘Too late, my lord! I have Attonax.’

‘Patch his vox-feed through to me.’

‘Yes, my lord.’