The Beast Arises

A second sun rose over the pasture desert, white and furious, light burning up the track like a runaway train. Bryce grunted and slid back under the window, but Zerberyn’s auto-senses protectively filmed over a split second ahead of time. He saw the orks on the platform turn in surprise towards the thermonuclear explosion on the horizon, then clutch their eyes and stagger out of their ordered overwatch formation.

‘Now!’

Zerberyn yanked the release cord.

The doors shuddered apart, far enough for him to force his right arm through to the pauldron and open fire. A single mass-reactive explosion ripped the shoulder from a bellowing Bloody Axe. He tracked left, fired again as its fellow brought up its gun blind, and dropped it with a spitting rupture in its chest.

At the same time, Scions in full omnishield glare protection popped the roof escape hatches, swinging up plasma weaponry and hot-shot volleyguns and raking the platform with fire.

Zerberyn got his fingers between his pauldron plate and the doors and pushed them open. He jumped two-footed onto the platform, cracking into it. A Bloody Axe flailed for him with eyes closed. A headshot exploded it, just as the window behind him shattered.

Arriving at his own decision to move now rather than wait for his captain, Columba simply fired through the window on full-auto. Propellant trails criss-crossed the platform. Mass-reactive kill-shots painted it red. With their lighter profiles, the Scions climbed easily though the broken frames. Bryce was first onto the platform, emptying a charge cell into the Bloody Axe boss’ body armour, and then scrambling behind a pillar as the blinded ork let rip with a racketing burst of fire.

Kalkator executed the creature with a single bolt-round between the shoulder blades.

The warsmith stood on the platform by the doors of the rear carriage. He threw a mock salute. The orks at that end of the platform were dead. Traitor Space Marines were disembarking to take up firing positions over the shredded remains while, in a gnarl of corrupted motors, the three Terminators formed up into a line, a wall

, and advanced on the steps up to the flyover. The escalator was a natural choke point and, drawn by the gunfire, orks were already piling bodies and heavy guns up behind the bent crush barrier at the top.

Tactical Dreadnought plate had been built to withstand the worst a hostile galaxy could give out.

It withstood this.

‘Major,’ Zerberyn boomed over the screams and thunder of abused plasteel. ‘Do you know where my cousin is leading us?’

‘Yes, lord — streetside access.’

Zerberyn looked around quickly. The station was a maze of platforms, overpasses and panting locomotives that echoed with bestial shouts and weapons flare. Engines thundered through, not frequently, but at a speed and irregularity that made the tracks a genuine hazard, even for a Space Marine.

‘Do you know an alternate route?’

‘I do, lord.’

‘Then take it. We will force the direct route. Columba, take a five-man combat squad, go with him.’

With a metallic growl, the veteran-sergeant jumped into the tracks in the direction that Bryce and the Tempestus Scions were moving. Donbuss, Borhune, Nalis and Tarsus fell in with him, squeezing off controlled bursts at the orks on the far side whenever the locomotives screeching between them left space for a shot. Zerberyn turned to the Iron Warriors.

The Terminators walked into a gauntlet of missiles, bombs and explosive rounds like a vehicle’s dozer blade churning up a minefield. Kalkator and the Traitor Space Marines moved up behind them, taking snapshots over the massive head and shoulder armour of their Cataphractii brothers.

Zerberyn accorded their efficiency a grudging admiration.

Goaded beyond their febrile discipline, the orks poured over the crush barriers with a roar. Bodies exploded, ripped apart by mass-reactive rounds. The muzzle flashes of rapid-firing combi-bolters strobed in the narrow space. Beasts howled. Piped laughter boomed from helmet speakers.

Tough alien flesh met ceramite composite like knuckles flying into a riot shield. Against men, against lesser orks, the line of Terminators would have been enough, but since the death of Eidolica, Zerberyn had never seen orks like these.

A brute in black-and-white bodyplate, almost of a size with the Terminators, hammered its axe into the lead warrior’s gorget protector and bulled him aside. It roared, axe stuck in the Terminator, heaved a Traitor Space Marine up over its head and hurled him off the stair. It took a combat knife under its armpit, grunted, and elbowed the Iron Warrior so hard his plastron buckled under it. Then, severed fibre bundles sputtering with his armour spirit’s fury, the Terminator came about and pulped the rampaging ork with the crackling discharge from his power fist.

But the line had already given.