On his chronometer, five minutes flashed up, and began to tick down.
‘Terminator groups, withdraw to predesignated teleport coordinates.’
All around the chamber, the Terminators backed away, always facing the enemy. The orks were greatly reduced in number, but thousands remained, and their fury only grew as their ranks were further thinned.
At three minutes, ten seconds until teleport the gate flared again. Through the flickering light stepped the largest ork Koorland had ever seen. Not even the warlords of the great tribal migrations he had fought against compared with it. It was taller than a Space Marine Dreadnought, an axe as big as a Rhino’s side in its hand. Red eyes glowed with feral intelligence above a row of close-packed teeth as long as sabres. Upon its head was a thick helmet, adorned with a spread of horns as long as power swords. Around it were thirty or so other orks, smaller than their leader but every one a terrible warrior in its own right.
The giant ork shouted out an incomprehensible stream of xenos words, and the orks fighting the Space Marines began to rally themselves, pulling back into better order, firing their guns at the Terminators.
‘What by the Emperor is that thing?’ voxed Malfons. ‘Is it the Beast itself?’
‘Whatever it is, it is a worthy foe,’ said Bohemond.
The orks redoubled their attack as their master stepped off the gateway platform. Its monstrous bodyguard swaggered after it, wargear and weaponry uniform only in their brutality. As they stepped down, more orks were revealed behind. Some bore banner poles of iron fists clutching spanner icons. All of them wore harnesses and aprons stuffed full of tools, and their weapons were bizarre combinations of heavy axes and wrenches. These ran across the platform, jumping off the sides. They headed for the wrecked machines, dozens of slave assistants rushing after them. The leader beast roared and gesticulated, pointing to the worst damage. Now some of the orks retreated, forming a cordon, blocking the Terminators’ way to the specialists. Behind a line of warriors twenty deep, the mechanicians set to work. The rest of the orks roared and charged. The two lines of Space Marines met, and smoothly reformed into a circle.
‘They are repairing the machines,’ said Malfons.
‘Ignore them!’ ordered Koorland. ‘They have not seen the melta charges. When they do, they will not have time to disarm them. Teleport in two minutes, twenty seconds. We must prevail until then!’ Koorland swept his power sword across the front rank of orks, cutting several in two with one swipe. The rest surged on over the toppling bodies of their friends, driven on by the crowd behind and their own insatiable battle lust.
‘Hold them back! Hold them back!’ roared Koorland.
Two minutes to teleport.
The circle of Space Marines shrank. For all the thickness of their armour, they were heavily outnumbered.
The great beast lofted its axe, and brought it down with a powerful swing to point at Koorland. Shouting more orders, it bore down on the last of the Imperial Fists with a plodding charge, head down, its bodyguard forming an arrowhead behind it.
Koorland slew his last opponent, and prepared to meet it.
Those Space Marines still possessing ammunition opened fire. For a few vital seconds mass-reactives shattered thick armour plates, blew divots of green flesh from massive muscles, then the ork charge hit home. The orks towered over the Space Marine elite, and knocked them staggering. Chainaxes rose and fell, hacking through reinforced adamantium and ceramite by dint of raw orkish strength. Boxy power klaw blades squealed through hardened metal, snipping off heads and limbs. The Space Marines fought back, smashing the orks with their power fists, caving in their ribs and crushing their faces into bloody mist.
The leader came at Koorland, and the Imperial Fist had the fight of his life on his hands.
Thirty seconds to teleport.
The ork was twice Koorland’s height, broader than a battle tank. Koorland sidestepped its lowered head, but was caught upon the thing’s shoulder and sent stumbling backwards. His armour’s gyroscopic stabilisation systems protested as they fought to keep him upright. The ork recovered swiftly, swinging its massive axe out and across at Koorland’s chest height. It hit his plastron, the impact of the blow shaking him inside his armour. The eagle upon his chest was wrecked, the metal detail pressed and smashed into itself as if it had been crafted from soft lead. The ork reared up, raising its axe before Koorland could react. The weapon hurtled down, fast as a comet. Koorland pivoted awkwardly, pushing the mobility of his armour to its limit to raise his sword in an overhead parry.
His weapon met the cruel head of the axe with a titanic boom. The axe head exploded into spinning, white-hot shrapnel. The force of the blow was such that Koorland was driven to his knee. When he lumbered back upright, he found his own blade was a blackened shard. He had no time to order his armour to disconnect the power feed and discard it. The beast was on him again, its skin studded with the smoking remains of its axe.
Twenty seconds to teleport.
The ork reached down, grabbing both of Koorland’s arms in its gargantuan fists. It lifted him up, armour and all, pulling his arms apart. Koorland’s armour sang a litany of alarms. Red flashed all over his helm display. Metal groaned, and hot pain stabbed into his wrists, elbows and shoulders as the joints began to part.
The cavern filled with golden light as the melta bombs went off in stepped detonations, micro-fusion devices slagging wide rings of the left gate horn. Sectioned into pieces, the device slid apart, spraying gobbets of molten metal into the orks around the teleport gate. Then the second fell, and the third, tearing metal shrieking, severed power lines lashing back and forth with frantic energies.
The pressure slackened as the leader ork looked back at the ruin of the gate. Suddenly Malfons was there, greatsword blurring through the air. The Chapter Master moved with an agility in his Terminator armour that Koorland had never witnessed before. The ork dropped Koorland and kicked at Malfons, knocking the Chapter Master backwards, and snatched a fresh axe from its belt. It followed up with a powerful blow at Malfons.
The axe was of simple metal, but the strength of the ork was such that it bit deep into the ceramite cladding of Malfons’ pauldron. The Chapter Master shouldered the ork aside, weathered a second strike, and swung his blade hard. The weapon cleft the ork’s chest armour, slicing deep into muscle. With a howl of fury, the ork backhanded Malfons before he could attack again. Helm lenses shattered, Malfons faltered. An instant was all he gave the ork, but the creature grabbed it. The ork stamped down on Malfons’ leg, pinning his foot in place, then it reached forward and clamped its fist around the Chapter Master’s head.
As teleport blur smeared his sight, Koorland saw the ork rip Malfons’ head free with one mighty wrench. Then he was in the blacklight glare of a teleport chamber, gas gushing all over him from the internal piping, and in his helm a voice announced, ‘Teleport successful.’
The doors opened, and he clumped out. All around the deck, Black Templars emerged from other chambers. In several, dead warriors lay slumped in armour summoned back by the undeniable call of the Abhorrence’s machine-spirits.
‘Bohemond, Thane, Issachar, Quesadra,’ voxed Koorland. ‘Malfons is dead.’
Twelve
In pursuit of vengeance
The Black Templars cruiser Obsidian Sky shook as it came out of the warp, realspace engine stacks already burning bright. Five hundred metres of burnished black metal trailing the dying energies of the empyrean, it accelerated before the rift had closed, waiting on no nicety of post-transit protocols.