The Beast Arises

A fireball lit off under the truck’s rear exhaust, flipping the vehicle over and into a roll that ended with it on its side and white with dust.

‘Beautiful,’ said Columba, drilling a dazed-looking gretchin that staggered from the up-ended rear compartment with a bolt-round.

Zerberyn shot his gaze back towards the silos and the unexpected aid streaming from them. An officer and his bodyguard were running towards Zerberyn’s position, heads down, while the remaining troopers laid down suppressive fire.

On approaching the towering Fists Exemplar captain, the officer pulled himself straight, transferred the second of the two hellpistols he was carrying to his off-hand, and threw a sharp salute. Half the fingers of his hand had been replaced with augmetics. The horror of burned flesh that had cost him that side of his face and eyesight was old enough to have scarred and yet looked to have received little or no medicae attention.

‘Major Dannat Bryce. Seventeenth Gammic Dragoons.’ He spoke in an easy yell that carried his voice over the explosive chatter of gunfire. His damaged face glowed, flushed with supreme self-righteousness and the Emperor’s love. ‘And as pleased as you might expect to see you here, my lord.’

‘Astra Militarum?’ asked Zerberyn.

Bryce gave what was, by its own unfortunate necessity, a crooked smile. ‘You have something that needs doing, you call on the Astra Militarum. You have something that needs done then you call for the Seventeenth.’

‘Militarum Tempestus,’ muttered Columba. ‘Scions. There was a battalion of them deployed to the compliance campaign on Crantar Seven.’

‘We spotted two more gunships, one from another Chapter,’ said one of the major’s guards earnestly. A big man, only a foot or so shorter than Zerberyn, and from the weight of his gear some kind of mission specialist. Zerberyn guessed ordnance. ‘Are they hitting other targets? When can we expect the rest of the liberation fleet?’

‘You’re out of line, sergeant,’ snapped Bryce, then turned to Zerberyn with an apologetic shrug. ‘We’ve been a long time outside of chain of command, my lord.’

‘How long?’

‘I lose track. Several months. We’re here on a Commissariat Special Objective — slow the orks down in whatever way we can and prepare the ground for reconquest. Weren’t you informed?’

‘Months?’ said Zerberyn, ignoring the question. ‘Then you can tell us about the orks’ activities here.’

‘We could. Do you have time for a detour?’

‘We have time.’

‘Then we can show you. There’s an orbital command substation twelve hours east of here as you head towards Princus Praxa.’

‘Advise that we explain on the way,’ barked a female trooper with the coarse voice of a lho-stick lifer and the frosty exterior of an ice world. She was looking at the slate monitorum set into the back of her left gauntlet. It showed what appeared to be heat sources over a grid. A solid mass of them were congregating directly ahead, while still more continued to spill in from the edges. ‘The orks are regrouping inside the agri-plex, and Sergeant Cullen reports two vehicle squadrons inbound with flyer support.’

Bryce turned questioningly to Zerberyn, who nodded. They could spare another twelve hours. And he could already hear the sound of approaching engines. He doubted whether they could all be extracted by air before ork reinforcements arrived, and he would be loath to leave a useful force of Imperial soldiery to the captivity of the greenskins. The human chattel currently held within the agri-plex were another matter. They were, he had concluded, a neutral variable, neither an asset to the success of his mission nor a hindrance, and could thus most usefully be ignored.

‘Antille,’ Zerberyn voxed. ‘Contact Kalkator and inform him of the change in plan. Tell him to be quick, we have ork aircraft inbound.’

‘As you say, brother.’

Zerberyn removed his helmet with a hiss of demagnetisation and focused his hearing on the incoming petrochem growl, his Lyman’s ear isolating it from the din and sharpening it.

It was the distant but rapidly closing roar of a Thunderhawk’s combat engines.

Zerberyn looked up at the moment that the Iron Warriors gunship Meratara came down behind the line of wind turbines, losing itself in the dust thrown up by its underwing exhausts. The bi-blades spun until they blurred, droning, superfast, chips of metallic debris spanking off the blades. Turbofans angling to hover, the gunship’s box jaw pivoted towards the agri-plex and opened up with its full forward arsenal.

Zerberyn cursed, shoved Bryce to the ground and crouched over him.

‘Defend the Apothecary!’