Another ork, its face dyed crimson, swung at him. Slaughter ducked the blow, got his sword in, and cut the creature wide open. It fell back into the wet, sheeting water up as it landed.
The Imperial Fist reached the blisternest outlets. He saw a man just inside, lying where he had fallen, cut through the spine and the hip.
‘Brother!’
The dying Fist looked up. Severance, of Lotus Gate Wall.
‘Slaughter,’ he wheezed.
Slaughter tried to lift him, to patch him, but there was far too much damage, far more than even the accelerated biology of a transhuman could repair.
‘All gone,’ murmured Severance. ‘All gone.’
‘Stay with me!’ Slaughter growled.
Severance shook his head.
‘Too late for me,’ he said. He unfixed the battered teleport locator from his harness. The power light was still on.
‘Take this.’
‘It doesn’t work,’ said Slaughter.
‘Not for me. No use to me. But take it. All the while there’s hope.’
Slaughter took the locator and clipped it to his belt.
‘Thank you for the thought, brother,’ he said, ‘but I fear we are all past saving.’
Severance didn’t reply. Death had taken him.
Slaughter could hear more of the greenskins closing in. He moved on down the tunnel. Two found him there in the alien darkness, and he killed them both with his sword. Then he heard las-shots and a terrible scream.
A human scream.
The chamber used by the magos biologis was awash with blood. Major Nyman was dead, split in half by an ork’s sword. Laurentis, stabbed in the gut but not yet dead, had fallen across the precious apparatus, smashing most of it.
The ork warrior turned as Slaughter entered. It swung its sword, but Slaughter parried, deflected, and sliced the greenskin’s face off. It pitched forwards, issuing a ghastly, frothing squeal, and Slaughter finished it with a beheading cut.
Laurentis had only a few sucking breaths left in him.
‘Finished now,’ he whispered. ‘The vox just went dead and the link failed. That means the Azimuth has gone. The flagship. Lord Heth. All of them.’
‘Just us,’ said Slaughter.
‘Just you, really,’ replied the magos biologis. His breathing was very shallow.
‘We can still get out, if…’
Laurentis laughed.
‘Still trying to make light of it?’ he asked weakly. ‘We really are in trouble.’
Slaughter nodded.
Laurentis managed a half-smile. Then he closed his eyes and died.
Slaughter rose to his feet and turned, his broadsword in his fist. Orks loomed in the doorway, sniffing and growling… two of them, four, six, more…
‘Who’s first?’ asked Slaughter. ‘There’s enough for all of you bastards.’
Thirty-Four
‘This statement must necessarily be brief,’ the recording continued. The pict quality was not sharp. It had been subjected to extreme astrotelepathic transfer and encryption, and there was a lot of distortion. It was just possible to make out the face of Lord Commander Militant Heth. There were other figures around him, though they were indistinct, and behind them, what appeared to be the bridge of a starship. The recording source kept jarring and vibrating.
‘The ork “attack moon” that I described has immense capabilities and possibly almost limitless resources. As we have no hope of outrunning the greenskin fleet, Admiral Kiran, whom I commend utterly, has taken this ship in close. We have attempted to damage the so-called attack moon with primary weapons, to no avail. It is both armoured and shielded, possibly by some form of gravitically manipulated field. It is bombarding us with crude but effective rock-mass projectiles. Our scans reveal that the moon is partly hollow, and — internally — not a sphere at all. The attack moon is simply the physical end in this location of the orks’ subspace tunnel. It is the mouth of a corridor, a conduit through which they can transport potentially unlimited reinforcements and vessels.’
On screen, Heth looked up briefly as the ship he was aboard shook wildly. The pict image blinked off for a second and then restored.
‘With the very little time and limited resources available to us, we have attempted a rapid transliteration of the broadcasts being made by the attack moon. Magos Biologis Laurentis, whom I also commend without reservation, has devised some translations which seem reliable. They are all statements issued by the apparent warboss of the ork horde. All recorded transmissions from the ork vessel, along with all of Magos Laurentis’s notes and ciphers, are attached to this communication in compressed data form. We have deduced that the orks refer to their subspace tunnel as a Waaagh! Gate. That is a reasonably close translation. The warboss refers to himself by a name that is harder to find a single, specific translation for. Depending on nuance, it seems to be “beast” or “slaughter”, or “lord that will make great slaughter”. I don’t think it matters. His intent is obvious and—’
The image blanked again. This time it took longer to return.
‘Time’s almost gone,’ said Heth when he reappeared. He had been cut by something, probably flying glass. He looked straight into the recorder source. ‘Study the files I’ve sent. Study the damned data. For the love of Terra. You need to understand. You need to be ready. The Imperial Fists are gone. They’ve wiped them out. The entire damned Chapter. We are finished here and unless you prepare yourselves you—’
The screen went blank.
‘The communique ends there, sir,’ said the aide.
Lansung nodded. He sat back and thought for a long while.
‘Send a message directly to Lord Udo. Tell him we require an emergency sitting of the High Lords immediately. Immediately.’
‘Yes, sir. Is that the whole of the Senatorum, my lord?’
‘No,’ said Lansung. ‘Just the High Lords. Just the rest of the Twelve. No others.’
‘Study the files I’ve sent,’ the uneven image of Heth was saying. ‘Study the damned data. For the love of Terra. You need to understand. You need to be ready. The Imperial Fists are gone. They’ve wiped them out. The entire damned Chapter. We are finished here and unless you prepare yourselves you—’
The screen went blank.
‘Lights up,’ Wienand said. She rose from her seat as the light levels in her private chamber intensified. She looked at her silent circle of interrogators. Despite their novitiate robes, some were far more senior than they appeared.
‘That was the latest intercept,’ she said. ‘It went directly to the Admiralty via a secure beacon, but we extracted the data-copy thanks to well-placed friends in the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. Lansung will present it, or redacted highlights of it at least, to the High Twelve in the next hour.’
She paused.
‘I think three things are self evident. One, we must act and act now, without hesitation. The crisis is as bad as anything we feared and predicted. Two, the public must not be informed of the extinction of the Imperial Fists. That is a priority matter of morale. Three, we must raise our game. There is no more time for subtlety. We knew what was coming in more detail than the Navy or any other body. We did not share that knowledge with the High Twelve because we knew that Lansung’s power bloc would make it impossible for us to direct the correct and appropriate policy. Traditional and hidebound military dogmas would have hamstrung us and delayed our ability to react. We must determine policy from this point on. We must be the actual and real root of power during this crisis and beyond, or the Imperium will not survive.’