The Beast Arises

Zerberyn killed two orks with two shots. Neat. Perfect. A third he demolished with a hammer blow. Tosque and Reoch closed in alongside. Too close for bolter work, the veteran-brothers made a wall of their knives.

‘Break them,’ barked Kalkator. His chainsword chewed messily through an ork’s leg while the full-sized bolter held steady in his bionic grip kicked out bursts of semi-automatic fire into the pack. ‘Would you have our cousins think us weak?’

Growling their rancour, the Terminators slammed back into line and pushed on with visceral determination. In a blizzard of bolter fire they took the crush barrier. Traitor Space Marines spread out onto the walled flyover in both directions and immediately started firing.

‘Brother Karva, rearguard,’ said Zerberyn.

Restricted in the use of his heavy flamer by the close fighting, Karva had held back on the platform until then. Antille came up with him, firing from the chest.

‘Agreed, brother-captain.’

‘Cataphractii forward. Brothers to the flanks. Grind them under your heels.’

‘Iron within!’ blurted a heavily augmented warrior of the Chosen.

‘Iron without!’ came the return, and a shiver ran down Zerberyn’s spine.

They started forwards, like a phalanx from the Age of Bronze re-enacted from a treatise on ancient tactica. Shields forward, shields side, spears up, advancing as one.

As Guilliman had once written: man never changes, so war never changes.

Cutting themselves a path with bolter and power fist, the Iron Warriors and Fists Exemplar ground through the walkway and spilled out onto a pillared concourse of polished stone. A painted fresco showing the IV Legion liberating a verdant world lit the ceiling with vivid metallics. Engaged columns, rounded in the classical High Crusade style and carved in the likeness of unhelmed Legiones Astartes, looked in from the walls. A huge baroque timepiece hung from the ceiling’s central vault. It was broken, too badly shot up even to make out the time of death.

Orks were pouring in through the large streetside doors ahead, as well as from subway accesses and smashed-up refectory rooms to either side. The space was too open for the Space Marines to take them as they had before and so they charged for the doors, firing from the hip as they ran. Sluggers and bolters chewed old stone pillars to the bone and blasted them apart.

Zerberyn and Kalkator moved together into a storm of lead so intense it was like pushing against a falling wall. Where one was forced to let up to slam a clip into his bolter, the other emptied his to cover him. Where one engaged with thunder hammer or chainsword, the other was there at his side.

It was as the Iron Warrior had said: together, they were invincible.

Zerberyn cleared the doors with a thunderstrike of his hammer and chased Kalkator into the street, pistol tracking like a restless auto-targeter.

The grand old buildings were grizzled by gunfire, their ornate blackwork twisted, pierced and scarred. The road, wide enough in this world’s heyday for a squadron of Leman Russ tanks, was filled with vehicle wrecks and blockaded at either end with garishly painted trucks and stacks of burning tyres. A fine red rain fell, gelid and horrible. He had expected it to be warm, but it wasn’t. He looked up. Blood vapour and chemicals pumped from the city’s rendering plants hazed high above street level, obscuring the chimneys and the higher rooftops. Over the rumble of running engines, he could hear a frenzied, guttural chant. He focused his Lyman’s ear, cutting away the immediacy of combat.

He had heard it before, splitting the skies of Eidolica like thunder.

The Beast.

It was everywhere, booming through some kind of public address system rigged up all over the surrounding streets. Another transmitted recording no doubt, but the thought that the ork could be near filled Zerberyn’s chest with fury.

‘This way, little cousin.’

Hugging the station’s columned frontage, Kalkator turned right and kept running. Iron Warriors and Fists Exemplar followed in ones and twos, staccato bursts of bolter fire stippling the walls and barricades.

The warsmith dropped down by the rear of an agricultural sixteen-wheeler that was blocking the way. A mob of orks fired down from its iron roof, laughing, grisly by firelight. Space Marines stepped up and raked the truck in turn.

Heedless of the firefight, Kalkator closed his bionic fingers around the truck’s rear bar and strained. The massive vehicle began to tilt. The gunfire abruptly ceased as eight of the transport’s wheels were pulled away from the ground. A metallic growl strained through the warsmith’s helmet grille as he heaved the truck over and onto its side.