The Beast Arises

Udo was boiling, good eye bulging, but he had nothing left to say.

‘You are a powerful man by your own reckoning, Udo,’ said Koorland. ‘But to my brothers and I, you are just a man. Stand down. You are done.’

‘I made this council. Lansung? Mesring? I made them.’

‘Provost-Marshal,’ snapped Koorland. ‘Please remove the former Lord Commander.’

With a crack of servo-muscular knuckles and a grin of steel, Zeck stalked forward. Udo drew himself up as if meaning to stare the cyborgised Provost-Marshal down, as he had so many others in his years of rise and rise. Then at the very last, he appeared to wither inside of his plush white admiralty jacket, in his deflation visibly shrinking by half an inch. He dropped his head. Zeck’s augmetised hand clamped over his shoulder, and aside from a whimper of pain he didn’t make another sound as the Provost-Marshal led him from the dais and into the arms of the waiting enforcers.

Koorland held his sword aloft and shouted, cheers beginning to spread through the Great Chamber and into the antechamber beyond as the reality of what the lords had just witnessed or heard sank in.

‘The next time an ork sets foot in this chamber, it will be met by the Last Wall!’

The chamber buzzed with new excitement. Koorland’s twin hearts were thumping.

The fightback began now.

Nineteen

Prax — Princus Praxa

The locomotive rattled along the damaged track, steadily slowing as it curved towards Princus Praxa.

The ork pressed up against the inside of the carriage window squeaked slowly down until Zerberyn arrested it with a firm hand to the back of its neck. A buckled sleeper jarred the carriage and touched acid to the raw tendons in his arm. These orks had been allowed to grow large, as great perhaps as those fought by the primarchs on Ullanor, and the continual buffeting made it feel heavier. With a grunt, he drew the brute back into place just as an ork sentry post flashed across the window.

Scrap metal, painted red. Belt-fed combi-weapons in huge, gauntleted hands. Then columns, bullet-chewed ferrocrete blinking past as the locomotive passed under the terminus’ flat roof. Sunlight receded, replaced by spotty lumens and the drum fires scattered over the platforms and access ramps.

Gangs of gretchin and the occasional leather-clad ork were busily loading and unloading. Zerberyn expected to see human slaves performing the greenskins’ labour, but what few humans he saw were in chained lines being fed out of dusty locomotives and into corrals. Moving in the opposite direction were big industrial storage drums, light weaponry and vehicles, and agricultural machinery. Orks in rugged yellow battlesuits showing off sneering moon glyphs oversaw the import and export with a brutish efficiency that any crude hierarchy would recognise. In another setting, Zerberyn might have been watching Administratum troopers extorting a local militia. Some kind of lumpen, enamelled currency changed hands.

The march of columns slowed as the locomotive squealed towards an empty platform.

A ten-strong mob of orks in thick red bodyplate followed the engine in, streaming down a frozen escalator from a pedestrian flyover. Some kind of boss, broader than the rest by half a metre and as dark as a Predator’s treads, waved a clenched fist for them to spread out and they did. At a barked command, two pairs clattered forwards to cover each of the carriage doors. Half of the mob hung back on overwatch.

It was organised. Professional. Not at all like orks.

Zerberyn drew his bolt pistol carefully. Columba and the rest of Veteran Squad Anatoq prepared themselves, keeping hold of the orks they hid behind with elbows, shoulders, whatever was practical.

The Tempestus Scions crammed into the vestibule and underseat areas out of sight, calmly activated their weapons’ visual augmenter beams, flexing fingers, rolling shoulders, working space enough for each man to move when the moment came. The rising hum of hot-shot packs resonated through the carriage’s metal fittings. Major Bryce angled up the reflective edge of his slate monitorum to the window and grimaced.

‘Bloody Axes,’ he hissed. ‘That’s what we call them, for the symbol on their armour. Always kill them first.’

‘Noted,’ said Zerberyn, disengaging his bolt pistol from its mag-holster.

The locomotive heaved onto its brakes and then cried shrilly to a halt. The Bloody Axes came running in, two by two. Zerberyn checked the countdown timer he had programmed into his helm display. It was locked on 00:00 and had been for half a second.

‘Brother Donbuss, are you sure that the greenskin munitions you recovered were—’