Thane couldn’t tear his eyes from the spectacle. The planet even seemed to call to him. Across the frozen silence of space, he fancied he heard the raving ferocity of the orks. A rising cacophony of snaggle-tusked fury and bloodlust unbound, coming together in a mind-splitting roar, Thane once again heard the Beast. Like a beacon of infectious, alien insanity, the Beast’s furious presence seemed to reach out from Ullanor.
Thane closed his eyes and blinked both the spectacle and the Beast’s monstrous roar from his thoughts. He did so because he was a Space Marine and he could. He was engineered to be stronger in both body and mind. The Beast had infected entire worlds with his alien madness, however, and commissars on board fleet carriers had reported hundreds of Guardsmen from scores of different regiments lost to such insanity. Chief Librarian Azmachai had reasoned that it was a psychic expression of the Beast’s barbaric desire to conquer the galaxy, a territorial advertisement, wielded — like all things by the orks — as a weapon. The Chief Librarian knew not, however, how to combat such a potent phenomenon.
Faith, Thane had told him, ordering his company Chaplains to conduct battle blessings on the sons of Dorn as the asteroid approached.
‘Look at what we have done,’ Thane said, half to himself.
‘We did not do this,’ Tychor replied, before the crackling hololithic image of Azmachai could speak. ‘The orks need no assistance in polluting the dark reaches of the galaxy. They are the plague, we are but the cure.’
‘Brave words, brother,’ Thane said, ‘and worthy of a Chapter standard bearer. I fear they have been here spoken before, however. By our father… and our father’s father.’
‘You blame them?’
‘If they were here, to see this,’ Thane said, ‘knowing that the claws of these beasts are slick with the blood of the Imperial Fists? I think that they would blame themselves.’
‘You are here,’ Tychor said, ‘seeing this. Living this. What do you think?’
‘I think that we are being punished for our lack of vigilance,’ Thane said. ‘I think it has happened before and will happen again. The galaxy is vast and deep but it belongs to humanity. It is our responsibility. Our burden. We cannot afford to be complacent.’
Cycling through the hololithic visual feeds, Thane saw the vessels of the two attack groups rocketing up behind. With engine columns blazing, the Imperial ships kept pace with the asteroid and held a defensive formation. Admiral Napier and Captain Decarion had formed two lines of battle with the majestic battleships, grand cruisers and Adeptus Mechanicus ark ships under their command. While the Admiral led one column with the Master of Mankind, Decarion led the other with the monstrous Phalanx. Between them, the vessels offered protection to the convoy of bloated troop carriers, skitarii ark freighters and mass conveyors that the warships were escorting.
The fleet was like a colossal fortification moving through the void, vessels ancient and indomitable presenting towering walls of titanic gunnery. Boasting Guardsmen, cybernetic soldiers and combat servitors numbering in the millions, as well as the apocalyptic engines of war, it should have been more than a match for the enemies of humanity. Faced with Ullanor itself, however, with its nebulous blizzard of ships and continent-swallowing hordes, it didn’t seem enough. Not nearly enough.
While 44 Thoosa in itself raised neither suspicion or alarm amongst the orks — the system being used to its fair share of comets and meteorite storms — the trailing formations of Imperial warships were another matter entirely. Drawn to them like predators to a game trail, ork attack craft swarmed the capital ships, attempting to match their reinforced hull plating against Imperial firepower. Crash-capsules and rocks rolled through turret fire, while hammerheaded battle cruisers attempted to plough on through lance beams and cannon blasts. The disciplined broadsides of the Navy warships washed the orks back in a tsunami of light and heat, but the junkers just kept coming.
As the 44 Thoosa tumbled on through the ork system, Thane watched the other asteroids ahead of them closing in on the ork planet. The smallest of them struck an attack moon on its way in-system, resulting in a blinding light of impact that faded to the molten glow of scarred rock. The destruction was horrifying. While the asteroid survived, it had been deflected and Thane estimated that it would barely graze the atmosphere of the target planet. His blood chilled at the prospect of 44 Thoosa doing the same in the crowded system. He didn’t need Chief Librarian Azmachai to tell him of the hell-storm of rock and debris that the asteroid must have been shedding, straight into the path of the fleet.
The Chapter Master marvelled at the sight of the other asteroids and the technological ingenuity it must have taken Artisan Van Auken to put them on such a course. As the leading pair spun through the void, they were followed by a third, as ugly a piece of rock as ever graced the galaxy. Monstrously bulbous and irregular, it was also the largest of the asteroids that the priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus had gravitationally propelled towards Ullanor. The massive rock piled on through flotillas of ork attack vessels, decimating stationed terror ships and crashing through star forts.
Thane and Tychor watched the pair of vanguard asteroids strike the planet. The Chapter Master’s hearts thumped in his chest and his spirit soared as the two bodies, so graceful in their approach, smacked into Ullanor like a pugilist delivering an almighty left-and-right. The planet trembled and the points of impact glowed hot with tectonic fires. Blast waves rippled out, turning the swarms of attack ships into tangled wrecks. As the skies rained debris and shattered gun platforms, waves of corpses, broken and aflame, were blasted back across the land. Within horrific moments it was over, the impact sites ablaze with melted rock and devastation. The ugly rock that followed struck the planet only just behind, and bathed the ork world in a corona of destruction.
‘Burn,’ Thane hissed through his helmet grille. Fleets annihilated. Imperial worlds torn apart. Populations enslaved. He felt all such atrocities in his chest and yearned for vengeance. ‘Burn, you monsters.’
He watched, chafing for action, as Ullanor grew before him. 44 Thoosa would be the next to smash into the greenskin world, right on top of the palace stronghold of Gorkogrod. Intelligence gathered upon the two doomed previous attacks told the Chapter Master that the Beast’s lair spanned a small continent. It was all colossal fortifications and monstrous architecture, as alien as it was formidable. Within the walls were precincts kilometres across, choked with weapons factories, titanic workshops, fungus plantations, holdings of greenskin livestock and encampments for vast hordes of ork warriors. Of the destruction wrought by the previous two attacks, however, there was no sign. The orks had rebuilt their monstrous fortifications. Colossal alien giga-weaponry and vast factory complexes were everywhere.
‘Time?’ Tychor asked.
‘It’s time,’ Thane answered.
The Chapter Master was beginning to feel the slight drag of planetary gravity on his suit. He reached down with the toe of his armoured boot. It crunched into the grit of the chamber floor as his own weight began to reassert itself.
Above, the ceiling of the chamber was ablaze with coruscating bolts of psychic power. The three cages could barely be seen through the otherworldly energies. Lady Brassanas and her Sisters slowly descended with the effect of gravity.
‘Lady Brassanas, get your Sisters to their landing cradles,’ Thane told her as he strode towards the communications station. ‘Brother Zoldt, general order — all attack groups to take station above impact site. Orbital strikes and Aeronautica to secure landing zones towards the site perimeters. Have Captain Decarion launch his Thunderhawk Transporters with armour payloads. I want our Land Raiders and gunships on the ground following our landing, followed by drop-ships to deploy Astra Militarum and skitarii troops. A foothold must be established before we can bring down the heavy armour and Titans.’