Warfist punched through the shocks and flame and jammed his lightning claws through his opponent’s throat. Before the third ork could attack either Space Marine, Abathar entered the control centre and hit the beast with his power axe. Two energy fields collided. The interior of the centre blazed with their fury, then the axe blade broke through. It severed the largest of the ork’s energy coils. The harness exploded, consuming the ork and hurling Abathar back out of the entrance. He was back in the next breath.
Outside, Forcas and Straton held off the orks seeking to retake the centre. The speed of the counter-attack did not concern Thane. He had expected such a response as soon as Gladius had attacked. What worried him was its strength. The orks already numbered more than a hundred. The choke point of the ramp and the lack of shelter gave the Deathwatch an advantage, but two defenders would not be able to hold off the horde for long. Warfist lunged out of the doorway to join them.
Koorland’s report came over the vox.
‘Sword is ready,’ Thane told Abathar. The Techmarine nodded and approached the control surfaces of the centre. They were crude and massive, like everything else fashioned by orkish hands, but Thane regarded them with more wariness than contempt. The power the orks wielded belied the rough construction.
There is technology here that is beyond our own, he reminded himself. The controls were a conglomeration of huge, clumsy levers, switches and buttons. They flashed with bursts of energy. Thane could not tell if the flares were overloads, short circuits, or if they were deliberate. Since the giant coils at each corner of the centre gave off so much excess, it was as if the centre were caught in a perpetual storm. Thane had no way to guess if the small blasts from the controls were by design or not.
Beyond the control surfaces, there was no wall. The centre was perched on the very edge of the promontory. Thane had a perspective of the entire power plant, of kilometres of colossal, linked generators. From this height, he felt as if he were looking into a cauldron of lightning. He could see no order to the construction. It seemed to be haphazard, machines piled atop machines, connections as superfluous as they were dangerous.
How were these beings a threat? he wondered. How had they not destroyed themselves? How could any of this work? How had it not blown up the instant it was activated?
The questions multiplied, though he knew there would be no answers. The Mechanicus might know them. Perhaps not. The answers did not matter. The action did.
Seconds had passed since the death of the ork engineers. Thane contained his impatience as Abathar examined the controls. The seconds were precious. Yet a mistake would be catastrophic.
Abathar was cautious. His helmet moved back and forth as he scanned the controls. He touched nothing, though Thane sensed the speed of his evaluation. After a few moments, his attention focused on a section of the controls to the far left. He looked back and forth between the cavern and the technological jumble before him. ‘There,’ he said. He pointed to flames at the extreme left of the cavern. ‘That is a true fire.’
Thane looked. Abathar was right. The flickering light also suggested flames close to the ground. All the other flashes Thane could see came from no lower than the cables, midway up the flanks of the generators.
‘A generator in distress,’ Abathar said. He moved his hand to a switch. Just above it, sparks flew with a surprisingly steady rhythm. ‘That,’ the Dark Angel said, ‘is what passes for a remote alarm with these brutes.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘As sure as I must be.’ He flipped the switch.
The sparks ceased. Exposed wiring glowed red, then went dark.
‘Sword, this is Gladius,’ Thane voxed. ‘We believe we have cut the power to your generator. Please confirm.’
‘Confirmed,’ Koorland said after a moment. ‘Splicing in.’
Thane turned to Abathar. ‘And the gate?’ he asked.
The Techmarine had already moved to the other end of the control banks. ‘The machines grow brighter towards the right,’ he said. ‘There is a higher intensity of power gathering there. We must seek the greatest current.’
Thane looked off to the right, following the pattern of light. The flares converged at a blinding point that pulsed in and out of existence. ‘I see it,’ he said.
‘As do I.’
‘But it is not damaged.’
‘There appears to be a rough concordance between the position of the generators and their controls here. A crude organisation, perfect for these brutes.’
These brutes who perform wonders we cannot hope to emulate, Thane thought. Even so, Abathar’s logic was sound. The orks combined brutishness and ingenuity in a manner that defied comprehension. It was necessary simply to accept the fusion and attempt to counter its effects.
Abathar wrapped his gauntlet around a lever the size of a bolter. He nodded at Thane.
‘Crozius,’ Thane voxed, ‘we are attempting to cut the power to the gate.’
‘We are ready,’ said Iairos.
Abathar pulled the lever. It moved with a foul metallic grinding, as if the end of the shaft went all the way to the core of the attack moon. An ear-shattering klaxon sounded. Scores of crackling warning flares shot up from the consoles around the lever.
‘You have angered the ork machines,’ said Thane.
‘Good.’
In the distance, the searing point dimmed to an ember, then went out.
‘The gate is closed!’ Iairos shouted, triumphant. ‘The gate is closed!’
Thane grinned. He imagined he could hear a howl coming from the throat of every ork on the moon as their device ceased to respond to their commands. He checked the clip on his bolter. ‘Now we wait on the others,’ he said.
‘I’m sure you can convince the orks to have patience,’ said Abathar. He unshouldered the teleport homer and extended its mechadendrites. His servo-arm’s plasma cutter sliced open a portion of the control surface, exposing a madness that Thane could barely qualify as technological. Abathar began linking the homer to the madness.
‘On what basis can we expect that to work?’ Thane asked.
‘On faith,’ Abathar answered. ‘The Mechanicus has made this a human device, but the taint of the xenos remains. On this day, that taint is necessary. It will permit the union of the homer to the greenskin network.’
‘Then you have my faith and my hope,’ Thane said. ‘The Emperor protects.’
‘The Emperor protects.’
Thane clapped Abathar on the pauldron and made for the door.
Outside the control centre, a green wave surged towards the ramp.
Iairos fired his bolter in a wide, repeating arc. Greenskin chests and skulls burst apart. Bodies fell on bodies. A mound of corpses grew. He timed his kills carefully. Theoreticaclass="underline" each foe killed at the right moment becomes a new obstacle to the others. Already he had created a protective wall of flesh taller than a man, blocking the left-hand and forward approaches to Squad Crozius’ position.
Behind him, Gadreel had cut into the housing of the giant cable. Where it began its branching into the smaller lines, he was connecting the mechadendrites of the modified teleport homer. The device would draw upon multiple branches of power.
‘How long?’ Iairos called out.
‘Nearly there.’
On the right, Vehuel and Eligos added to the wall of bodies. Skyclaw stood atop the mound, the centre of a shrieking storm. Winds flattened the orks as they struggled to close with the kill-team. Lightning struck them down when they dared to attack the Rune Priest. His axe blade shone a brilliant, frigid blue. Ice flew on the wind, sharp as steel, lacerating flesh, slashing faces. Orks staggered on the top of the mound, blinded by ice shards. They screamed, holding their eyes. Blood poured from between their fingers. Iairos did not waste shells putting those brutes down. When they came within Skyclaw’s reach, he decapitated them with a single, wrathful stroke of his runic axe.