This was the ork that had fought Vulkan.
Koorland cursed himself for not seeing it, but then why should he? How could he have reasoned that there could have been more than one Beast?
The how of it did not matter.
He was an Imperial Fist — he should have considered everything.
‘Defend your Lord Commander!’ Bohemond roared, and Kill-Team Stalker opened fire at the same instant, shooting from the chest as they moved at a steady walk to intercept. Bolt-rounds scattered off the prime-ork’s shields. Melta beams and plasma bolts from combi-attachments sizzled across them.
Kavalanera and her three sisters that remained able swiftly overtook Bohemond’s thumping progress. Olug and Brokk bellowed, not far behind. The women flowed across the ogryns and each other, crimson and black, like streams of coloured plasma under the fluctuating control of a multivariate magnetic field, but the prime-ork ignored their power blades as though they were insect stings. Olug barrelled into the great ork’s chest and bounced off. The prime-ork simply walked through him, breaking the ogryn’s hip under its boot, then swatted Brokk contemptuously aside on the edge of its gauntlet. Kavalanera continued to harry. With a growl, the prime-ork drew its gauntlets apart, the fires burning white-green and high, and then thumped them together. There was an implosive clap and a wave of force washed out and knocked the lightly armoured Sisters down.
Koorland heard the change in the thunder of bolter fire. It was missing, cracking along the wall above Koorland’s head. He saw one strike a bracket. The metal plate blew out and the stanchion buckled. The last holding up the gallery.
The whole structure fell away from the wall with a crunch of broken stone.
Bohemond drew sharply up. Asger, too, converging from another angle.
The prime-ork looked up, and the dropped gallery cracked in half over its helmet. Its force field flashed out with a burned stink of ozone and it sank under several tonnes of rock and iron and greenskin dead. Koorland saw the veiled threat of a humanoid shape sprint up one half of the gallery floor and vault up to the prime-ork’s shoulder. Krule. Koorland’s auto-senses were dead, and if they had been unable to track the Assassin before then his eyes had no chance now.
Krule appeared to have a sword in his hand, a long blade that phased in and out of material reality. With silent efficiency, the Assassin buried the weapon in the prime-ork’s neck. The phase blade passed through the prime-ork’s armour as though it just wasn’t there, but either lacked the length to do the same to the greenskin’s throat or found its flesh a tougher prospect.
The prime-ork began to rise, rubble tipping from its shoulders in almighty crashes. It was coated with powder. Bolt-rounds from the kill-team spanked off its unshielded armour.
A vicious twist of the neck sent Krule flying.
The Assassin twisted like an aerial gyro, landed in a roll, drew his executioner pistol and squeezed off bolt-rounds even as he spun. Their effect was no different to those of the Deathwatch.
It was impervious, imperious, and it continued towards Koorland and its beaten brother like an armoured locomotive.
‘Wither before the Emperor’s light, abhorrent,’ cried Bohemond. His ponderous stride bore him into the prime-ork’s path. Tactical Dreadnought armour weighed several tonnes. The vectoral force of a charging Space Marine Terminator was equivalent to being struck by a moving tank, but the prime-ork shunted him aside as though the battleplate was a hollow practice cast.
Asger Warfist slashed across the back of the prime-ork’s legs with similar luck. An up-clip of the giant’s spiked heel left the Wolf Lord on his back.
The last of the Imperial Fists squared himself defiantly. One leg was fully armoured, the other just a knee joint and a boot with some fluid-hydraulic wiring connecting the two to his hip. His torso was a patchwork of missing plates, his gorget ring mangled into a grimace of tortured adamantium. His gun was gone, the arm that would have wielded it useless anyway.
‘Daylight Wall stands forever.’
He lunged for the prime-ork’s groin with his sword. The disruption field was stuttering, caused by power outages from near continuous use, but come the final reckoning that did not matter. The prime-ork took the blow blade-on to its gauntlet palm and trapped it. The monster yanked the relic blade from Koorland’s grip with a strength that was simply irresistible and then, holding it by the blade, struck the grip across its thigh plate. The metal shattered into a dozen pieces.
With a grunt of satisfaction, it cast the last piece aside, planted its boot heel into Koorland’s chest, and shoved him to the floor.
It ground its boot in. Koorland’s solid rib-plate cracked under the weight. His vision turned spotty and black, but his hearing remained sharp.
Its voice was like death from orbit.
‘I am Slaughter.’
After murdering a path through several flights of stairs to reach the broad stone block corridor, Kjarvik’s vox-link with Kill-Team Stalker came back. They were close. He knew that because contact with Clermont, the fleet, or with Thane was still out. At first, his snarled demands for an update were looped back in a growl of static-chopped voices. Then buzzarding cries, barely human in their grief or their anger or both. The second thing Kjarvik knew was that they had failed.
The reasons for that were obvious.
Orks of an especially large breed blocked Umbra’s run on the vast arched gateway at the end of the corridor. They were bulked out in black and white megaplate, appropriately armed for urban combat with powered battle-saws, flamers, and high-volume stubbers.
Under other circumstances, Kjarvik might have doubted his ability to break through such heavy brutes in such numbers, but for once, the luck-spinners spared the Stormcrow a rare smile. The orks had been marching on the gate themselves, too hemmed in now to properly turn and fight the force that struck at their backs.
A blow from Kjarvik’s power fist obliterated a mega-armoured boss from waist to neck. A full magazine of vengeance rounds slowed down another. Blood matted his beard. His braids stuck to his head. Zarrael’s eviscerator was a near-constant meat shriek, white noise above the grunts and the howls and the thunder of heavy firepower. Baldarich’s sword made ribboning flurries of gore. Bohr murdered orks by the dozen with plasma and flame. Phareous’ shield was slick, his bolter still firing. The Iron Snake advanced in a crouch, Atherias walking behind and blazing over his head with bolter and servo-harness. The weapons flashes caused the brilliant purple and gold of his pauldron plate to shine. The Inquisitorial storm troopers made their contribution, pinpoint flurries of las hosing the inevitable gaps that Baldarich and Zarrael’s savagery left behind. Raznick came just behind them, shielding Inquisitor Wienand with his body, whatever neuro-enhancements he had been given allowing him to fire his brace of pistols entirely independently and with astonishing accuracy.
What all of that splendid slaughter told Kjarvik was that they had failed.
The psyker bomb had not worked.
The howl he gave was that of a wolf for its master, and burned his throat like a jawful of winter. He was unsurprised to hear the cries of lamentation from those around him.
‘Push through to the throne room,’ urged Wienand, covering her vox-bead with one hand whilst shooting with her laspistol. ‘Something has gone wrong. I have to see.’
Kjarvik did not need to see. He could already smell the red snow.
With a frenzied gargle, Zarrael tore out an ork’s throat with his bare teeth, dissolved the face of another with a gob of Betcher’s acid, and kicked himself a path to the gate. It was thirty metres high, as dense with imagery as any cave wall on Fenris, but the Flesh Tearer’s wrath cowed its grandeur. It was what lay beyond that put fire under them all.