‘What about upper-orbital enemy attack ships and gun platforms?’ the Epistolary asked.
‘All vessels will have to engage while offering orbital support fire and deploying ground troops,’ Thane growled with some annoyance. ‘Tell the captains they will not have the luxury of ordered engagement here. The orks won’t wait on protocols and I won’t wait on the orks. Their first priority is to get troops and war machines down on the ground. Make sure that all attack group commanders understand.’
‘Yes, Chapter Master.’
‘Open vox-channel,’ Thane commanded. ‘All Imperial Fists.’
‘You’re patched through,’ Zoldt confirmed.
‘Brothers,’ Thane began, ‘we have arrived in deep, in the embrace of the enemy’s stronghold world. We are not the first to make this attack but for good or ill, we shall be the last. The enemy is expecting us. Their warriors will be hungry for our blood. Their weapons will be loaded to bursting and their great blades serrated and sharpened. Their world-spanning fortifications will be ready for our coming.
‘Have no doubts. We will lose ships, we will lose armour; we will lose valiant men and women, loyal servants of the Emperor. And yes, we will even lose our own brothers. There is no other path open to us. But the Imperial Fists will endure, as we always have. The paint on our plate is honourable and fresh. Below us on Ullanor is a green inferno. A baptism of fire. And we shall endure the horror. We shall survive this xenos apocalypse. We shall carve a victory as yet unwritten into the flesh of our foe with bolt and blade. We shall find and destroy the Beast, this thing whose every breath mocks us, and burn his home world, as he has done to so many of humanity’s own. For the second time, Ullanor shall be cleansed of alien taint. Like the Imperial Fists, this planet will be delivered and reborn. As your Chapter Master, in word this is my decree. Now in action I command you to prosecute it.’
‘For the glory of Dorn!’ Tychor roared across the channel, clenching his gauntlet into a fist and hammering it against his breastplate. Company upon company of Space Marines did the same, the vox-channel crackling with the thunder of a thousand Imperial Fists returning the standard bearer’s call.
Tychor and Thane took to their cradles with the rest of the Chapter Master’s honour guard, their powered armourlocked in a standing position. Behind them was Emmerich Berengard, Captain of the First, and Eckhart, the veteran sergeant who led his command squad. The First Company was mostly made up of former Black Templars, like Berengard himself. They stood in grim silence behind their captain and Chapter Master.
‘Ready for the fight of your life, First Captain?’ Thane asked across the vox.
‘It has been my life’s work to purge this galaxy of the alien, Chapter Master,’ Berengard said. ‘Live or die, I could wish for no better reward for my service.’
It was a suitably grim response from a grim man. Berengard’s plate gleamed golden yellow just like the rest of his brothers, but beneath it the captain was nothing but scar tissue. Having been burned from head to toe in the Promethium Wars, Berengard had lost his skin and any last vestiges of good humour.
‘Master Vorstecht,’ Thane called across the vox, ‘report. Are we ready for impact?’
‘Yes, Chapter Master,’ the Master of the Forge told him. ‘All battle-brothers, with weapons and plate, caged in their cradles.’
‘Very good,’ the Chapter Master returned. ‘Prime the detonators.’
A sound rumbled through 44 Thoosa — the excruciating fracturing of rock. Going from the deep cold of space to the friction of atmospheric entry, the surface of the asteroid was heating. Thane’s plate detected the first indications of moving air and a rising temperature. Wind howled through the hollows and tunnel-riddled interior of the asteroid.
‘Stand by,’ Thane snapped into the vox as rock trembled beneath the anchorage of his cradle. Dust rained down from the Nexus ceiling and the walls of the cavern shook. The gravitational forces of Ullanor tore at 44 Thoosa as the asteroid plummeted towards the surface.
The Chapter Master prepared himself for impact. The Adeptus Mechanicus at Abythica Prime had done what they could to counter the dreadful forces at work. The cavern reinforcements. The cradles. Field generators. Anti-gravity technologies designed to cushion the inner core and Nexus from the planetary collision wracking the asteroid’s rocky shell. Even the launching of 44 Thoosa had been calibrated to make the landing survivable. Artisan Van Auken aimed to have the asteroid retain its structural integrity upon impact, unlike the other asteroids which had been launched at Ullanor at maximum velocity.
Such considerations should have offered reassurances to Thane, but plunging towards the planet surface, all he could think of was the fate of his new Chapter. It would be a cruel fate indeed if the Imperial Fists were to burn in the baptism of their first engagement. He shouted further assurances to his battle-brothers, but his words were lost to the roar of atmospheric friction.
Impact.
For a minute — several minutes — Thane could not speak.
His body had been engineered to take all that the galaxy could throw at him, but this was something else entirely. As 44 Thoosa hit the surface of Ullanor, the cavern shook and cracks ripped through the rock. Support struts were torn out of their foundations. Grit rained from the ceiling, pitter-patting across the surface of the Chapter Master’s plate. Dust choked the air and lamps died, plunging the Nexus into darkness. Even the ork prisoners had been knocked semi-senseless within their cages, abruptly ending the psychic lightstorm above the heads of the Imperial Fists.
Every bone in Thane’s body reverberated with the asteroid’s sudden impact, as he was flung back against his supporting cradle by the unimaginable forces of the graceless landing. Blinking sense back into his jarred mind, the Chapter Master found his honoured plate to be urgently reporting a deluge of data. Environmental warnings, integrity assessments and damage reports, mostly. His Tactical Dreadnought armour sparked, while the landing cradle was a ruin about him.
Getting the thumbs of his gleaming black power fists beneath the frame, Thane heaved. The cradle had nothing left and broke away in his grip, allowing him to stumble forward. The floor felt different beneath his boots, tilted at a strange angle. Based upon the weight distribution of 44 Thoosa, Artisan Van Auken had made an estimate regarding the orientation it would assume as soon as it was in the embrace of Ullanor’s powerful gravity. It had only been an estimate, however, and the asteroid seemed to have settled upon an incline.
‘Tychor,’ Thane called through the darkness. ‘Report. Can you hear me?’
‘Barely, my lord,’ the standard bearer replied, his voice cracked across the vox.
‘First Captain?’ Thane said. ‘Come in.’
‘To the end,’ Berengard growled, shaking off his own injuries and rising from his cradle.
‘Suit lamps,’ Thane ordered. At once, the Nexus was criss-crossed with beams that cut through the murk of the cavern. With light, Thane could make out a collapse, where both the cavern wall and adamantium supports had given way. ‘Zoldt?’ When the Epistolary didn’t answer, the Chapter Master repeated his call.
‘My lord,’ Zoldt managed.
‘Communications?’
‘The station is shattered, my lord,’ Zoldt reported.
‘We will have to rely upon suit arrays,’ Thane said. ‘When the Phalanx achieves high orbit, I want a vox-channel through to Captain Decarion as soon as possible. This is imperative, do you hear me, brother?’
‘Acknowledged, my lord,’ the Epistolary voxed back.
The Chapter Master shook his head within his helm and blinked the last of the disorientation away. They were there, on Ullanor. In the midst of a raging nest of greenskin barbarity, at the heart of an alien empire. They would need to act fast. They would need to be resolute. Everything relied upon their indomitable spirit and the tradition of victory on which the reputation of the Imperial Fists was built.