‘They converged back upon the impact sites?’ Thane asked.
‘Yes, Chapter Master,’ Decarion confirmed. ‘Just as they flood back towards your position. You have little time, my lord.’
Thane nodded. ‘Heavy reinforcements?’
‘Yes, my lord. The heaviest — and in great concentration.’
‘Where are the reinforcements coming from?’ Thane demanded.
‘The fortress precincts about your position,’ the captain told him. ‘Your arrival demolished a large number of factories and fortifications but the largest is seven kilometres to the south.’
‘The target?’
‘Yes, Chapter Master.’
Thane turned to Tychor. ‘We have missed our aim by seven kilometres.’ If the asteroid had struck the hub of Gorkogrod with the Beast within, their mission would already be over.
‘Captain Decarion,’ Thane continued, ‘the Imperial Fists are to attack the palace, at Chapter strength. The assault will be swift and bloody, and the Phalanx will have the honour of lighting our way. Take station above our position and power up your lances.’
‘Yes, Chapter Master,’ Decarion said. ‘We shall carve the Chapter an avenue of destruction.’
Thane realised that the chamber was becoming bathed in an infernal glow. Molten rock was beginning to bubble up through the rocky floor. Upon colliding with Ullanor, both the surface of 44 Thoosa and the landing site had melted with the heat of impact.
‘Captain Storn,’ Thane called. ‘Attend to that, if you please.’
Storn was Captain of the Ninth and a former Iron Knight. Within moments he had directed his Devastators to move into position. The cavern briefly lit up with the launch of missiles. Hitting the rock just above the openings with krak missiles, Storn’s Imperial Fists demolished part of the cavern and buried the magma-bubbling breach in collapsing stone.
‘Captains,’ Thane voxed across the open channel, ‘it is time. The Imperial Fists go to war. Final checks and observances. Ready your companies. Master Vorstecht?’
‘Chapter Master?’
‘Fire the detonators.’
‘Yes, Chapter Master.’
Nine
Maximus Thane stood amongst the rubble of 44 Thoosa.
Charges placed about the asteroid superstructure by the Adeptus Mechanicus at Abythica Prime had allowed the Imperial Fists to choose their exit points. Firing the detonators above the small lake of molten rock in which the wreckage of the asteroid sat, the Chapter prepared to step out onto the doomed surface of Ullanor.
Thane waited as Thunderhawks deposited Land Raiders, Land Speeders and bikes down onto strips of steaming black rock.The devastated land about the mountainous remains of the asteroid was clouded with black dust and glowing with molten rock that bubbled in strips and shallows. From what he could see, it was a landscape of twisted, smouldering devastation. Scorched sand and wildfires. Wreckage. Rubble. Broken bodies.
The Second Company, under the famed former Crimson Fist Konrade Karlito, marched their Centurion Assault squads out onto the wasteland, each step of the mighty warsuits crushing grit and shattering the heat-baked stone. Formations of Stormtalon gunships roared into position above their allocated companies.
As Imperial Fists, in their soot-besmirched plate, moved into formation, Emmerich Berengard came up behind the Chapter Master. The Terminators of the First Company were deploying, their storm shields and thunder hammers held in close. The grizzled Berengard carried a monstrous power sword, which stood almost as tall as the Terminator Space Marine himself.
Lady Brassanas skidded down smouldering scree with a squad of her Sisters of Silence. Between them they dragged one of the ork psykers in chains. The thing roared and clawed at them but the Sisters hauled at it, wrangling the creature back into position.
‘It is the lowest form of life,’ said Berengard, with disgust.
‘It will be even lower when we have done with it,’ Tychor assured him, holding the company standard above the warriors of Thane’s honour guard.
Thane let them have their words. Their genetically bred bravado. It was almost a ritual. Before battle, while Guardsmen cursed and prayed and the servants of the Omnissiah climbed inside their great war machines, the warriors of the Adeptus Astartes talked about what was and what would be. The destruction they would bring to their xenos enemies and the honour of being the Emperor’s Angels.
The shattered rock trembled under the Chapter Master’s boots. From out of the charge-blasted exit stomped a Dreadnought, painted in midnight black. It trailed frayed honours and was draped with chains that jangled with its every thumping step. Strips of vellum hung like a tabard between its heavily armoured legs, while a roaring brazier burned on each shoulder. A cracked and browning skull sat in a hooded socket, each eye aglow, and the gilded wings of the Imperial aquila spread across its battle-plate.
‘The High Chaplain has awoken,’ Captain Berengard announced.
The monstrous machine thundered past the Chapter Master before coming to a stop, its automotive engines rumbling. A living shrine, Chaplain Bachorath had been entombed in his sarcophagal battle-suit for longer than Thane had been alive. While the Chapter had its full complement of company Chaplains, all drawn from the different Successor Chapters, the venerable Bachorath had been given the title of High Chaplain in honour of both his many years of service and the number of foes that had fallen before his hulking form.
When he spoke — a voice that issued from vox-casters and boomed with age, experience and madness — the sound carried across the smoke-wreathed desolation.
‘Where?’
The Chaplain-Dreadnought’s brutal chainfist growled to life, while his twin-linked assault cannons cycled. High Chaplain Bachorath did not know where he was or the year into which he had been awoken. He did not know the nature of the enemy beyond. He did not even seem to care that he was standing among the ranks of the Imperial Fists rather than his own Chapter. All he knew was that he had been called to serve. To kill in his Emperor’s name.
‘Everywhere, High Chaplain,’ Thane told him.
The Chapter Master scanned the swirling black obscurity of the crash site. He peered through the choking dust that glowed an infernal red with the light from the molten surface below. The auto-senses of his Terminator helmet cycled through different spectra before settling on a false-colour filter representing target signatures.
Thane took a moment to absorb what he saw. The horizon was not just blotched with enemies. It positively blazed with approaching targets. Hordes upon hordes of hulking monsters, charging for 44 Thoosa — the mountain that had appeared upon their savage world and levelled forts, workshops and hundreds of thousands of warrior greenskins. Clan kin, whom the barbarian orks of the neighbouring fortress precincts had seen disappear in a thunderous tsunami of dust, flame and unstoppable force.
His vision picked out the serrated outlines of rabid green mobs that stretched as far as his armour’s spirit could see: horned helms, spiked armour, monstrous augmentations, ragged banners and barbed chainswords held high. Thane could see rolling gunfortresses, belching heat and smoke, with warbikes chewing up the rocky ground and surging ahead. Hunchbacked walkers, dragging hydraulic claws and shoulder-mounted artillery, were lost in the shadow of an ork gargant — a towering horror of layered metal and enormous weaponry. Even at such a distance, the thing shook the ground with its hydraulic step. Coming up behind the weaponised effigy, scrambled from some nearby base, Thane could see enemy aircraft thundering in: pot-bellied bombers and junk fighters that were little more than jet engines with wings.