Koorland’s mind flashed back to Ardamantua and the powerful warrior forms that had torn from the ground in swarms when their principal nests had been threatened.
These orks were their warrior forms. Their Daylight Wall.
Their Adeptus Custodes.
The mosaic floor shuddered as the Beast took a step off the dais. It was titanic, three times Koorland’s size, and Asger and Bohemond seemed to shrink in accordance with its bulk. Koorland’s biology had passed far beyond the grasp of fear, but he comprehended the enormity of his task.
Here was the Great Beast. The ork that had contested Vulkan in single combat and survived the primarch’s end.
What chance did Koorland have?
The Beast grunted something orkish to the bound psyker, then passed its gaze over the three Terminators. It settled on Koorland, the instinctual recognition of one apex beast for another. Its eyes were like red suns caged. Its voice was the shattering of worlds.
‘Slaughter.’
Seventeen
Koorland stepped forward. An uncommon thrill of anticipation passed through him, an electric shiver, as if his body had been conditioning itself these past weeks and months to the cocktail of emotions that the moment of triumph would bring. Koorland’s gene-heritage would not let his face show it. He could not in fact remember the last time he had truly laughed or even smiled from his heart, though he assumed that he had, once. Even on frozen death worlds, mortal children still laughed. And as the Emperor’s distant light was his judge and witness, they always would.
Bohemond moved across his path, a pace ahead, sword raised as if to bar Koorland from the Beast and vice versa with his body and with his blade.
‘You would be my champion now as well?’ said Koorland on a private channel. ‘I am Lord Commander. It is my right to face the Beast alone.’
With a gruff murmur of assent, Bohemond ponderously backed up and lowered his blade until the tip scraped the mosaic tiles in front of him. Koorland watched him go, nodded his gratitude though no one could see it behind his fixed helm and gorget, and caught Kavalanera’s gesture.
‘Now?’
Koorland could guess that the Beast had some understanding of Low Gothic, but he doubted the greenskins were familiar with Adeptus Astartes battle-sign. He moved his hugely armoured fingers in reply.
‘Not yet.’
It was as complex a message as sign language could convey while wearing Terminator armour, but the knight abyssal signalled her understanding. She gestured to Laurentis. The ork psyker thrashed against the armoury servitors as Laurentis scuttled warily through with a stimm dose slurping into a hypodermic appendage.
At the door, Alpha 13-Jzzal and the ogryns were still battling to hold the orks back.
The harder we hit them, Koorland thought, the stronger the psychic field becomes.
The harder we hit them…
‘I am Slaughter,’ said Koorland, turning to the Beast. ‘I am the Lord Commander of the Imperium of Man, and I have come to kill you.’
The Beast did not laugh. It should have done, but it did not.
It swung up its arm.
An impossible array of firepower had been assembled into a triple-tiered gantry around its wrist. Two bolted-together battlecannons formed the mainstay. That twin-link was surrounded by autocannons, heavy flamers, rocket launchers, and multi-barrelled weapons of ork make that Koorland had never seen on any battlefield and could not identify. Ammo-belts and power hoses swung side to side as it took aim. It barely had to. In its open gauntlet was a pulsing trigger switch, onmi-linked to that awesome battery.
It clenched its fist.
Thunder struck. A star was born. Worlds collided.
Asger’s emergency vox blinked up an unnecessary warning on Koorland’s helm display, the same moment he felt Bohemond’s shoulder guard barge him out of the way.
The firestorm that engulfed the Black Templar would have rivalled a super-heavy tank squadron. Koorland did not see it fall. He was already stumbling away under Bohemond’s shove, the blast that struck still mighty enough to throw him down and shatter the lens of his right eye. Power failed to numerous systems and was rerouted. Servos whirred as Fidus Bellator aided its wearer in driving their mammoth weight back up. He looked back.
Bohemond was broken, leaking sealant. The mosaic he covered was pulverised. His rune in Koorland’s fractured visor was a warning amber.
The orks looking on bellowed thunderous approval, stamped their feet, beat their fists on the iron handrails. The galleries trembled, but the engineering expertise on display was sound and there was no danger of their stanchions buckling.
Asger flourished his lightning claws and howled back at them. Krule was more forthright. The Assassin lifted his executioner pistol and drilled a mass-reactive round through an ork’s head. The explosive bolt burst through the back of its skull, and the ork pitched over the rail and thumped into the floor.
For half a second the jeering stopped.
Then the Beast gave a roar that could have cracked armourglass and, as though it were the blow that shattered the dam, the ork elites began pounding down the stairs.
Koorland gave a tight little smile.
Yes. Hit them harder.
The Beast clanked through the pall of its own almighty weapons discharge. Auto-loaders clicked and whirred. Barrels spun off heat. Drum hoppers chewed through belts. Little hatches opened up in the brute’s armour, rubber conveyors porting heavier ordnance towards the battlecannons and rocket launchers. Koorland emptied his storm bolter’s clip into the gantry, seeing a weak spot in the array of loader mechanisms, but the mass-reactive explosions rippled purple-green across an energy field about a metre ahead of the great ork’s armour. The effect rose diagonally along the Beast’s chest as Koorland traversed his aim and moved ponderously aside.
Keep moving.
Fidus Bellator had kept him alive this long, but it was a millstone now, denying him the one advantage that might have bought him as much time as he needed — manoeuvrability.
The Beast opened up as it closed the distance. Auto-rounds and stabbing bolts of green energy mauled the tiles around Koorland’s boots and burst against his armour. The Beast broke into a thumping run, hollering even as its wrist-battery kicked out a storm of abuse, muzzle flare lighting up its face like a tusked horror from a nightmare. Koorland aimed the last round in his magazine and fired, aiming for the eye. The mass-reactive burned up in a vibrant death against the energy shield. Koorland backed ponderously, to mitigate what he could of the Great Beast’s forward momentum. He brought his power sword to a position of guard.
As it had been for Vulkan, so too then for him.
The fate of mankind would be decided hand-to-hand.
The ork swung up its combat weapon. It was a spiked vibro-mace, its head the size of a Space Marine. The haft was twice as long as Koorland. The arm added half that length again. All of it swung at Koorland with primarch-killing force. He was too slow to avoid it, and he knew without needing to try that a parry would not even be worth the attempt.
He was not a primarch.
The mace struck him in the shoulder and launched him across the chamber like a kicked stone. The vibro-blast was a parting gift, an extra metre or so of lift and a drilling numbness down the arm before he smashed into the wall. He fell to the floor on hands and knees, dust crumbling over his shoulders. Targeting reticules spilled over the spidery cracks in his faceplate as they sought locks. His armour emitted a complaining whine as he struggled to get himself back up.