The Beast Arises

Thane’s data-display screamed an alert as an immense gravity spike crunched through Unbroken. The command deck shook, like a bomb shelter under sustained shelling. It was smoke and klaxons, shouts, squeals of metal pushed to the limits of tolerance. The main viewer crackled with static, showing ships and ordnance and flying debris screwing off-course and spraying out in all directions. Dutiful was snatched in by the pull of Unbroken’s suddenly swollen mass and slingshotted back. Following in on maximum drive, there was nothing that the cruiser Bastion of Arete could do to avoid her. Destruction was instantaneous and total.

‘Starboard void banks nearing saturation,’ said Weylon Kale, not shouting — never shouting — but terminally close. His voice was hoarse from breathing smoke and his eyes were raw. The old shipmaster had slotted in at the strategium to replace the section liaison, who lay spread out on the deck under a fire blanket, only hands and third-degree burns showing.

‘Increasing capacity with backup generators,’ the serf beside him screamed back.

Kale turned to Thane.

‘They’ll hold a few minutes more, but against a shot from that…’

‘The Fists Exemplar do not leave their own behind.’

‘My lord, at what cost?’

Thane stood tall as the deck around him trembled. It was a sense of duty, the stubborn grit that was so much a part of him, that stayed his course. Could anyone but a son of Dorn feel that overriding sense of obligation that the gene-seed of their primarch-progenitor imparted? The noble Ultramarines? The Dark Angels? Could they even understand it?

Thane doubted it. He doubted it.

‘We are the Last Wall. There is no further to fall back.’

‘Still no response from Obsidian Sky,’ said Teal, voice wavering up and down with the hits to the shields and the shaking of the deck.

‘Keep sending.’

‘Aye. Lord, the Iron Warriors ship, Palimodes, is signalling. They’re expressing their… gratitude.’

Thane gripped a little more fiercely to the handrail than the shaking of the command deck made necessary. ‘Acknowledge it. Order them to decelerate and come about on our heading. They can draw some of the fire off our flanks while we move in to recover the Obsidian Sky.’

The subaltern keyed in the message and hit transmit. There was a tense pause.

‘Response,’ snapped Teal. Her face went pale, her eyes moving as though scanning a large block of text. She swallowed. ‘They respectfully say no.’

‘No?’

‘The essence of it, lord.’

Thane mastered the tic of annoyance that threatened to break the resolute set of his jaw. ‘Then let them go. Any word from Zerberyn?’

‘No, lord, but Auspectoria reports Dantalion and a number of vessels breaking off and heading for the Mandeville point.’

‘Chapter Master. Come and take a look at this.’ Kale called Thane over to the strategium and directed his attention to the analytics at his station screen. The information was similar to that displayed in hololith over the chart desk, but more readily formatted into digestible data-scales, while the two-dimensional output was easier on unaugmented eyes. As of right then, it showed a fuzzy black cross surrounded by ship debris and power signatures denotive of bording torpedoes, updated every few seconds by a sonar-like sweep of code. ‘We’re approaching Obsidian Sky.’

‘Good. Now get these orks off my viewscreen and show me.’

The viewer blinked from split-screen to a single image of the bloated mass carrier. The sweep of its upper and aft sections were edged red, the sun eclipsed, its dark side lit by the fires and weapon lights of the dwarfed capital-class ships in its shadow. From the speed and angle of drift, it was clear that the image was unaugmented real-time. Rolling with the hits to his shields, Thane made his way back to the command throne and punched up a magnification of Obsidian Sky

.

The screen changed, zoomed, and suddenly there she was, gliding like a disguised backhand knife under the carrier’s side. Collision course.

‘Raise Magneric,’ Thane roared, voice-amplification pushing maximum and whining with feedback. ‘Now!’

‘No response,’ Teal cried back.

‘Cut power to main drive. Thrusters, full reverse.’

Wordlessly, Kale carried out the command, liver-spotted old hands fluttering over the array of controls. Thane felt a g-force surge run through the already straining ship, but it was too late.

Not with all the legendary stubbornness of Rogal Dorn himself could he fail to see what was to come next.