The Beast Arises

‘Considerable,’ said Arouar. The precise calculation changed moment to moment as he observed and evaluated the behaviour of the installation. ‘Our mimicry of the ork technology is approximate in its effects. In terms of power, greatly lacking. Interface between xenos work and our own is a fraught procedure. Contamination and failure are inherent risks.’ He paused, looking over his shoulder to consider the progress of the work behind him. The assembly was complete. Its core was a based on a teleporter control, surrounded by giant capacitors and convertors. It had no power source of its own. It would use that of the weapon itself when connected, as long as there was no countervailing force still functioning.

‘What is the most favourable evaluation?’

‘A crude form of control. And a brief one.’ Even that, though, would be an immense victory. The data collected from that action alone could be the greatest achievement of the war this far.

7-Galliax nodded. She returned to the edge of the cliff. Below, battle raged. Energy flares mixed with the flashes of cannon fire and detonations, and the burning streaks of las. Arouar’s auditory receptors processed vast movement, analogous to clashing waves. The pulsations from the control nexus intensified. They became angry, their rhythm irregular. Deep, geologic vibrations travelled up from the centre of the rift. Puffs of dust rose from the ground. The edge of the cliff crumbled. The great coil trembled, its crackling bursts lashing out like the strike of a serpent.

‘Stand by,’ Arouar commanded his forces. ‘The moment of action or of defeat approaches.’ He advanced towards the core of his control assembly. It was inert but filled with gigantic potential. He settled into the throne, mechadendrites locking into place along its back and arms, fusing him with the machine. He observed the violent aurora of the canyon. He waited for its convulsions to reveal triumph or disaster.

Up. Down. Up. Down. The gravity fist turning Vulkan into the clapper of a bell, the impacts more and more ferocious. The ork engineer showing no care for the integrity of the structure. The gigantic force turned to the single task of destroying one warrior.

This is still not enough, he thought.

The enemy fears you.

The thought emerged from his deepest core. Beneath the battering pain, the constriction, and the confusion of the senses, was the immovable, the implacable, and the calm. Vulkan pulled his consciousness down into his absolute centre. There he had the patience and the resolution of mountains. He shut out damage and suffering. In the stony dark of that calm, he regained the coherence of his thoughts.

The enemy fears you.

You are a threat.

The assault grows more desperate.

Desperation is weakness.

Strike it.

Not the clapper of a bell, then. He was the hammer against the anvil. His core turned molten. The calm of the mountain became the anger of the volcano.

Erupt.

His consciousness exploded back into the full awareness of his body, and then transcended it. He observed his arc against the wall, and saw not the wound inflicted but the action he must take. And when the engineer hurled him to the floor again, he moved. He did not struggle against gravity. He acted in concert with it. He turned it into his own weapon. He punched forward with his left hand, hitting the floor, and drove his arm deep into the stone. He took root. He held Caldera. It held him back.

When gravity reversed, he remained in place.

The agony was a revelation. Forces sought to rip his body apart. He defied them. The ork had ceased to laugh, and now it froze. It stared at him, hands hovering uncertainly over its controls.

Tempered by the pain, guided by magmatic anger, Vulkan raised Doomtremor. The hammer’s wrath lit up the interior of the nexus with the blaze of a sun. Thunderhead, Dawnbringer, weapons long lost, were present to his spirit in that which he now held aloft. Their terrible strength demanded Vulkan rise. And with the reversed gravity, but against its current, he threw the hammer.

Its flight was true. A comet roared across the space between Vulkan and the pillar. It struck the platform, the impact released the energy of the throw, of the hammer, and of gravity itself. The explosion swallowed the top half of the pillar. The gravitic fist released him. He stood, and marched through a vortex of howling, chaotic lightning to retrieve Doomtremor.

The pillar ended in a jagged stump. The control mechanism was gone, vaporised along with its master. Around Vulkan, surviving orks ran in panic as their great mechanism lost all direction. The ground heaved and cracked.

Vulkan moved through a gathering storm. He picked up his hammer, braced his stance, and waited, fighting the instinct to destroy the abomination around him. If it did not find a new master within the next few moments, the storm would rip the planet open.

The shaking built.