‘Vulkan was with you?’ said Drevina.
‘Fought?’ said Brassanas, emphasising the past tense.
Wienand nodded. ‘He died fighting the orks on Ullanor.’
A gasp rippled through the theatre.
‘Vulkan is dead,’ Drevina said, and her whisper was a mourning cry.
‘Vulkan is dead,’ the other Sisters repeated. ‘Vulkan is dead.’ The words tolled. The echoes grieved.
‘Ullanor,’ Brassanas said, sounding the word slowly. ‘The orks have returned to Ullanor. Then perhaps the end has truly come.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Wienand. ‘But Vulkan fought it.’
Brassanas said nothing.
‘If the Imperium falls, if Terra falls,’ Wienand pursued, ‘what of the Golden Throne?’
Still nothing.
‘What of your vow to the Emperor? And is this to be your legacy? The destruction of everything the Sisters of Silence have fought so hard to protect? Because you refused to help when you possess the key to defeating the orks?’
‘We possess the key?’ said Brassanas. ‘Explain yourself.’
‘The ork witches,’ Wienand said. ‘Destroy them, and we destroy the Beast.’
Brassanas stared at her for several long moments. Then she said, ‘We will deliberate. You will be taken to the lower gates to await our decision.’
‘No!’ Wienand shouted. There could be no deliberation. There was no choice. There was only duty. ‘How long will you deliberate? Until the orks tear down your gates?’
Brassanas watched her.
‘I too have been betrayed,’ Wienand said. ‘I have seen the corruption first-hand. I know exactly what it is I am defending. And I will defend it to my last breath. I will not let the Imperium fall into silence.’
‘Sacred or profane,’ Drevina said to Brassanas. ‘We must choose our silence.’
Brassanas nodded. She threw her cloak back over her shoulders, revealing the power claw on her left arm.
Now there were other echoes in the hall. They were the ratcheting clanks of magazines slammed home, and the impact of boot heels on stone. One by one, the unforgiving saints of the Imperium began their preparations for war.
The ork engineer’s gun unleashed a torrent of energy. The coruscating beam struck Thane, surrounded him, and lifted him from the deck. It threw him back between two immense spinning columns. Each was ten metres in diameter, and grooved. They moved back and forth along a horizontal slot in the deck, grinding together, then pulling back. Thane bounced off the pillar to his left, then fell into the ragged tear in the deck. He clung to the edge. Below him, the darkness shrieked with massive, incomprehensible machinery. If he fell, he would be reduced to pulp and splinters of ceramite in moments.
On either side, the spinning pillars closed in. The residual energy from the gun’s strike pulsed and jittered through his armour, and it would not obey his muscles’ commands. He held on to the ledge, but he couldn’t move.
The columns spun nearer.
There were three ork engineers in the control centre of the Titan. Abathar’s speculation had proven correct. He had led Squad Gladius upwards through the ork Titan’s head, winding through corridors tangled with power conduits and clanging with exposed gears to this point, just above the energy-cannon eye.
A hatch opened in the forehead of the Titan to reveal the land below and the mountain ahead. The space was vast yet crowded, a maze of pistons and chains, of machinery that spread like a cancer, yet somehow moved the Titan forward and directed the aim of its weapons. The engineers laboured in a multi-levelled nest of levers and arcing power sources. Each ork worked at its level, but when Gladius attacked, two of the engineers retaliated with energy weapons. The third clambered up and down the control levels, frantically throwing switches and working the dark machinic sorcery that kept the Titan advancing.
The force field protecting the engineers held back Straton’s shells. Warfist raced through the chamber, gutting the greenskins commanded by the engineers and slicing cabling in half. The second engineer hit Abathar with his beam weapon. The Techmarine was seized by a gravity whip, and the ork propelled him out of the hatch. The claw of his servo-arm clamped around a thick cable as he flew, and he hung on. The ork held the trigger down, its weapon glowing with heat. It shook Abathar back and forth, trying to dislodge his grip and send him falling far to the ground below.
A score of orks had rushed Forcas, overwhelming him with sheer mass, pushing him into machinery where he had no leverage. As Thane struggled to pull himself up, he heard a feral roar. Greenskins staggered back. The Blood Angel tore through them with his chainsword and a howling fury Thane had sensed just beneath the surface of his rigid, pious calm. His face was covered in the enemy’s blood. He raised a fist surrounded by a halo of scarlet warp energy. Both ork engineers trained their weapons in his direction. They fired at the same moment he unleashed his incinerating blast. The two forces collided halfway across the chamber. The explosion was blinding.
The Titan tilted violently to one side. The deck slanted. It was enough for Thane to push himself out of the trap. The columns clashed together behind him and the space marine rounded on them, facing a wall of grinding, whirling metal. He threw a melta bomb at the intersection of the pillars and thumbed the detonator at the same moment. The explosive went off before it could be sucked into the vortex. There was another dazzling flash.
Thane stumbled away, regaining control of his limbs. The columns spun into the melting heat of the explosive. They fused with each other, and their huge mass pulled them in the opposite directions of their spin. A huge, shuddering jolt ran through the Titan. From the decks below came the sounds of screams and the vibration of blasts.
The warring lightning faded between Forcas and the orks. The Blood Angel was still standing, but his armour was badly scorched. His face was a mass of burned meat. He staggered forward, still snarling. One of the engineers had fallen, smoke rising from its blackened corpse.
Abathar pulled himself back inside the Titan’s head. He charged the engineers’ nest and swung his power axe at the straining shield. Warfist looped around and rammed his shoulder into the field at the same moment. Straton’s shells never let up. The two remaining greenskin engineers had just enough time to know what was coming and roar a brutish denial.
They were dead moments later.
The molten bedlam of the columns screamed. Its fire spread along the cables. They melted. They convulsed like maddened serpents. Electrical fury lanced through the space and the fused columns spun still faster as they shattered restraints. The whirl reached beyond them. It took the chamber. It seized the Titan. Thane felt a world roar into a vortex.
The ork Titan was going mad.
The entrance behind Thane, the one through which Squad Gladius had entered the control hall, had been destroyed by the maelstrom of the columns. There was another one in the far wall. ‘Seal the door!’ Thane shouted into the vox. There would be no chance for any ork to attempt to regain control of the Titan.
Straton and Abathar ran through the monstrous clamour of the growing destruction. Abathar melted the door along its seams while Straton placed charges across the ceiling. Thane and Warfist turned to Forcas. The Blood Angel’s snarls were inaudible in the thunder of disintegrating metal. His movements were sluggish. They guided him towards the hatch.
The door burst open, the crush of orks overwhelming the seals before Abathar could complete them. He turned plasma cutter and power axe against the horde. He was surrounded by a flood of blood and greenskin muscle.
‘Do it now!’ Thane heard him vox Straton.