‘Chapter Master,’ the Chief Librarian said. ‘I have much to report.’
‘Proceed, old friend.’
‘Attack Group Perditor has had their force bolstered by a reserve flotilla under Commodore Beauchamp,’ Azmachai said.
‘I get the feeling that is the only good news you have for me, Librarian.’
‘Indeed, Chapter Master,’ Azmachai said. ‘Perditor has run afoul of an attack moon on their approach through the outer systems. They have experienced heavy loses, including the capital ships Rex Resurgam and Voidhammer.’
‘Admiral Lumaresq is lost?’
‘Flag Captain Emes now commands, Chapter Master,’ Azmachai told him.
‘What of Attack Groups Idas and Verita?’
‘Idas is coming up through the Acheronias,’ the Chief Librarian told him. ‘Dominus Zhokuv has sent word that the systems there are decimated. Charted worlds are gone with only a debris field remaining. He suspects that the Acheronias region might have been used as a testing ground for the ork gravitational weaponry.’
‘Can they make it through?’ Thane asked.
‘They endeavour to do so, my lord.’
‘And Verita?’
‘Sporadic contacts with enemy flotillas in the Scorpicon Nebula,’ Azmachai said. ‘Several escorts have become separated from the main fleet in the dust clouds.’
‘Have Watch Commander Warfist and the Deathwatch leave them,’ Thane ordered. ‘We cannot afford to slow our approach. Out here, hesitation is death. The commanders of those vessels will have to act under their own initiative. Now tell me: have we had any further contact with Attack Group Phaethon?’
‘Nothing, my lord,’ Azmachai told him. ‘Group Phaethon’s approach lay through some of Ullanor’s satellite and stronghold systems. Last reports were of the destruction of a number of troop carriers. I regret to inform you that the 3001st Arphistran Rifles, the Varsine Dragoons 3rd Battalion and the Ypresian Free Companies are all lost to us. Commodore Tregorran identified an ork vessel on the Sartovian Drift,’ Azmachai said, ‘last seen at the Battle of the Hartzhaven. A space hulk mounting experimental weaponry, codenamed Green Herald. Since Tregorran’s identification of the vessel, I have heard nothing from the commodore or his captains.’
‘Bohemond?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Keep trying,’ Thane urged the Chief Librarian.
‘Of course,’ Azmachai said. ‘I do, though, have reports for you from your own group.’
‘Proceed.’
‘The troop carrier Pronteus has been boarded,’ the Chief Librarian reported. ‘The orks are employing long-range teleporter technology. The 3rd Royal Vortiga carry a contingent of abhuman auxilia that have proved successful in keeping the enemy from the bridge. The carrier is managing to keep pace.’
‘Any losses?’
‘We lost the bulk freighter Bellico and the three Titans it was carrying to a ramming action, while the battle-damaged frigate Duke Castagir detonated her engines, clearing our rearguard of attack ships. The sacrifice was a noble one but the enemy still pursues, however, and in growing number.’
‘And Attack Group Sisyphax?’
‘I am happy to report that the Phalanx and Fleet Sisyphax have fallen in behind you, Chapter Master,’ the Chief Librarian said. ‘Captain Decarion has asked me to pass on his assurances. She has not a scratch and he intends to keep our fortress-monastery that way. He has had occasion to exercise the gun crews, however, and sent three ork battle cruisers into the asteroid surface.’
‘We felt the impact detonations,’ Thane confirmed.
‘Several cruisers have broken off from the attack, following the mauling,’ Azmachai told him. ‘The Lord Admiral’s captains are requesting permission to pursue.’
‘Absolutely denied,’ Thane said. He knew it went against an officer’s every instinct to watch an enemy all but destroyed limp away to safety, but he could not allow a few hothead captains and commanders to break formation and threaten the integrity of a coordinated attack.
‘No vessel is to break off from the fleet — and that goes for all other attack groups also. We are to be the hammer’s swing: unswerving and true.’ Thane looked out across the hundreds of Imperial Fists in the chamber, each waiting for an opportunity to prove himself to his Chapter Master, to honour the noble yellow of his plate and his Chapter’s history.
‘When we strike, we strike together — and when we do, we shall shatter this barbarian empire. Only then will the galaxy ring with our victory.’
Eight
Impacts upon the surface of 44 Thoosa had become increasingly regular as the colossal rock rolled through the void, ever closer to the stronghold world of the monstrous Beast. Ork attack ships, brute cruisers and great carriers of the greenskin horde were smashed into oblivion as the asteroid ploughed through the swarming system.
When Chief Librarian Azmachai announced that they were entering the Ullanor System, Thane decided that he needed to see it for himself. Having visual feed signals transmitted from the Phalanx and vanguard vessels of the fleet, he watched their approach on the hololithic projector.
The darkness of space was tinged green with the grotesque presence of the invader. The Chapter Master felt his jaw clench behind his faceplate. The scale of the xenos contamination was appalling. Here, within the borders of the God-Emperor’s Imperium, Ullanor had festered like an old wound. What had once been lauded as one of the greatest engagements of the Great Crusade advertised itself to the galaxy as a failure. The orks had not been wiped out on Ullanor. They had not been defeated. Like a fever untreated, they had returned with a vengeance. Each planet and moon of the system was a blot, a swarming miasma of monstrous craft. Rust-buckets of ungainly accretion, boasting bulbous engines and bristling with weaponry. Bastardised warships, cobbled together from the wrecks of Imperial vessels. Weaponised chunks of rock and debris.
The crowning glory of the madness was Ullanor itself. A beast of a planet, it sat like a barbarian warlord among satellite supporters. A place that burned the eye with its xenos taint and ached with the mindless violence of alien brutality. Thane forced himself to stare at its horror. Beneath the impenetrable haze of craft and orbital detritus that buzzed about the planet like angry insects swarming, the Chapter Master knew what was waiting for them. A writhing carpet of green. A planetary horde of savage abominations. Pole to pole orks, their brute workshops and the heretical technologies they spawned.
Their target, however, or certainly the general target that Artisan Van Auken had aimed 44 Thoosa for with his mind-bending calculations, was the city named Gorkogrod: the stronghold of the Beast. An equatorial fortress-palace the size of a small continent, it was the alien warlord’s seat of power and savage authority in a contested galaxy. It was from this monstrous stronghold that the Beast advertised his presence and supremacy. Technological abominations had been perfected in his barbaric honour. Trillions of orks had converged upon the system in their hulks and attack ships, augmenting the billions teleported there and those spawned under the Beast’s own banners. The doom of his psychic invitation even reached out to humans on Imperial worlds. Citizens, local flotillas and Astra Militarum garrisons went mad and defected to the orks before their hulks and derelicts even broke system, before ending up as slaves in a growing alien empire.