The Beast Arises

Turbo-lasers, heavy bolters and lascannons chewed through the structure with a sound like a woodsaw biting on steel. Men and transhumans alike broke from combat and threw themselves down as a quartet of hellstrike missiles whistled from the Thunderhawk’s underwing hardpoints and into the agri-plex. Explosions blossomed along the building’s width, spread low like demolition charges rigged, primed and detonated in sequence, triggering a chain collapse that brought its metal walls crashing into dust and fire.

Zerberyn, still crouched protectively over the lightly concussed Tempestus Scions commander, turned his face into the heat storm. Bits of metal and burning cinders streamed down like a scene from the last days of the Siege. Massive warriors, veterans in ornate gunmetal and bronze, moved through the pyroclastic rain and brought bolters to bear.

‘Arise, little cousin,’ said Kalkator.

The warsmith’s deep voice resonated harshly from the glowing vox-grille of his horned helmet. His baroque Mark III power armour was embellished with hooks strung with barbed wire, weird devices, and campaign citations from a hundred worlds rendered lifeless by war a millennium before Zerberyn had been born. His left arm was a bionic of superb integration and design, the product of a craft lost to all but a few.

Dazed, Bryce looked from one Space Marine to the other, his mouth making confused, soundless shapes.

The twin barrels of Kalkator’s combi-bolter were trained between Zerberyn’s eyes.

‘My gunship has room enough for your squad. Take what you came for and leave before the orks come back for vengeance.’

‘You are a soulless traitor, Kalkator. There were people in there.’

‘It is a war of survival we fight. I wage it as though it is one I intend to win. We received your update, were you not about to abandon them?’

‘There is a difference. Your own survival, I am convinced you treasure. But not mine, nor theirs.’

Zerberyn pointed to the Scions scattered about. A good number had gone to ground amongst the battered silos as soon as the agri-plex had gone up and most of them had visual augmenter beams dancing over the Iron Warrior’s armour. Had the Imperium seen fit to educate even its best with a fuller knowledge of its history and its foes, then things would have become very ugly very fast.

‘Truer words were never uttered by a bastard of Dorn,’ said Kalkator. ‘But at this moment my fate is dependent on yours.’

‘Our mission is unfinished. These men speak of an operation of some kind being conducted on the surface nearby, a data trove of the orks’ activities that is within our grasp if we can move faster than word of our presence here.’

‘Arise,’ Kalkator growled again. His gauntlet finger slid across his combi-bolter’s trigger like a whetstone over a sickle. ‘I will kill these men before they can lead you to your death.’

‘You would have to kill me to do it.’

‘Do you think you would be the first?’

Zerberyn met the ruby glare of the warsmith’s gaze without fear.

The Iron Warrior grunted with frustration and lowered his weapon. Even for a near-immortal, transhuman monster like Kalkator, time was finite and precious — as rare as an ally.

‘The gods curse you, you and the stubbornness of your stock. Very well, we will go with you one step further. Apothecary,’ he barked at Reoch. ‘You may keep your cargo aboard my gunship for safekeeping.’

Zerberyn’s triumphant smile faded.

Through the dust sent rolling out from underneath the Thunderhawk’s idling turbofans, there came the rolling snarl of engines. Headlamps pierced the cloud, and for a heart-stilling moment Zerberyn thought that the orks’ relief force was on them already, but then the slab-sided gunmetal shapes of a squadron of Iron Warriors bikers drove snarling through the murk. Wide rubber tyres with deep, spiked treads chewed the loose ground as they took position by the wind turbines.

Behind them marched a second ten-man squad, who fanned out, adopting a staggered firing line of bolters and siege weaponry, shielding the ponderous advance of a final three Iron Warriors behind them. They were huge, armoured like tanks, and bound in razor wire. Terminators. The colossi stomped into position behind the Traitor Space Marines, Tactical Dreadnought suits purring and belching black smoke as they redressed the aim of their combi-bolters towards the Militarum Tempestus men.

Zerberyn’s smile returned as he found himself oddly pleased by this restoration of a cosmic truth.

‘One squad each, is it?’

‘As your precious Codex tells you, little cousin: if your enemy has one squad, bring two.’

Sixteen

Mars — Pavonis Mons