Thane lay there for a moment, blinking himself back to his senses. His leg hurt. One of his optic helm displays was alerting him to a hundred different problems, while the other was dead. Hooking the thumbs of his power fists under the great piece of rock laying across him, Thane heaved the boulder off him. With an effort, he got himself to his feet — not easy in Terminator plate. A pauldron of his suit had been stove in by falling rock, his helm was cracked — including a shattered lens — and the hydraulics of his leg sparked with damage. As he limped about he found himself surrounded by ghosts in the dust and haze. Suit lamps picked out groups of Imperial Fists heaving stone and vehicle parts off the trapped bodies of their brothers.
As his honour guard located and surrounded him, the Chapter Master saw Captain Berengard and members of the First Company digging High Chaplain Bachorath out of the rubble. Lady Brassanas and her Sisters of Silence were struggling with one rabid ork psyker attempting to make an escape. The second was dead, having been crushed beneath huge pieces of shattered masonry.
Soot-stained Apothecaries moved among the battle-brothers, rendering succour to the wounded and removing the gene-seed from the dead. Thane crunched through the collapse, helping to right Terminators and Centurions whose thick armour had allowed them to survive the fall.
Through the thick dust and darkness the Chapter Master saw Tychor helping a battle-brother up a rubble incline, heading towards him. In his gauntlet he clutched the standard, the banner hanging miserably from its broken crossbar. As the two Space Marines got closer, he recognised the second as Epistolary Zoldt.
Thane shook grit from his plate as the dust settled. He stood in a rock-strewn depression. It looked as if a section of the outer palace grounds and sub-level foundations had collapsed under the force of the underground explosion. Thane and his battle-brothers, picking themselves up out of the rubble, found themselves in what remained of a tunnel that ran beneath the palace. Shattered rock and smashed vehicles sat like small islands in a river of filth that had burst its banks. The surface of the foetid liquid had crusted over with dust and the heat of the firestorm that had swirled down the tunnel, but the waters were rising where the rubble had created a dam.
He heard his battle-brothers calling to each other and their captains across the vox. Whereas much of what remained of the First and Second Company were down in the pit with him along with Brassanas’ shattered Sisters, the one remaining ork psyker, and Chaplain Ishcarion’s Assault squads, Storn’s Devastators were above them, gathering about the lip of the crater with Uzziah and Valdanor’s men.
Thane stood on the shoreline of a tide of rising filth. They were in some kind of primitive sewer — a network of rough-hewn tunnels that made use of existing cave systems and caverns that ran under the core palace and central precincts. Looking up through the shattered foundations of the palace wall, he could see the thick armour plating, bolted to the exterior, still glowing with the heat. Both the wall and floor of the precinct had suffered from the chain reaction of the lance strike, detonating mines and subterranean explosion. Blackened and blistering stone cracked and crumbled as acrid smoke billowed from the fortifications.
Thane marvelled that the palace-fortress had sustained so little damage as a result of the lance strike. While it was huge, the stronghold looked like a nightmare of armour-plating, jagged accretions and rough masonry — not unlike the mighty space hulks the orks used to move from system to system, and like the hulks, Gorkogrod was a great deal more resilient than it looked. But with a hole blasted into the subterranean tunnel network, Thane and his men now had another way in.
‘Captain Berengard,’ Thane called. Through the dust, the former Black Templar appeared, splashing through the stinking shallows in his Terminator plate.
‘What is your assessment?’ asked Thane, indicating the dark, gaping entrance before them.
‘These tunnels are oriented towards the palace,’ the First Company captain said, ‘radiating outwards under the precincts. This could work in our favour. We should take advantage of this good fortune.’
‘Zoldt?’ Thane called. ‘Report.’
‘Captain Decarion and our fleets have been reinforced, my lord,’ the Epistolary said.
‘Bohemond…’ Thane said, looking at Berengard. He gave the First Captain a slow nod. ‘Our Black Templar brothers have arrived.’
‘In orbit and aboard the Phalanx,’ Zoldt said. ‘Caught between the sons of Dorn, the enemy boarders have been annihilated.’
It was the stroke of good fortune they had been hoping for. Reinforcement from above and an opening below.
‘Inform the commanders at the landing site,’ Thane said, ‘that we have created a breach. I am ordering all Attack Group Guard regiments, skitarii legions, automata — any fighting man, woman or construct — into the palace. Once unloaded, have the Titans of Legio Intrafex secure both the landing site and the route to the palace. They are to exterminate enemy reinforcements from surrounding precincts and supply convoys bound for the palace hub.’
‘Chapter Master, they report gargant formations closing in from the southern precincts,’ Zoldt said.
‘Then they’re going to have to deal with them as well,’ Thane answered. ‘Navy bomber wings to support.’
‘Yes, Chapter Master.’
Thane looked up through the clearing fug at the Imperial Fists righting themselves in the rubble and gathering above on the crater lip. He could see Captains Storn, Valdanor, Uzziah and Gortez looking down at him.
‘Whether we survive this dreadful day or not, the Beast must die,’ the Chapter Master told them. ‘By our fire from the sky or the cold steel of our blades, the Beast must die. Brothers, we must be as one. One mission. One Chapter. One empire — the Imperium of Mankind. Second Company to lead, advance with Centurions and armour. The Attack Group will need an entry point. Something we can hold and advance from. Brothers, let us be the adamantium fist that punches straight through these walls, these walls behind which our craven enemy hides. Let us drag him into the light and destroy him for all the galaxy to see.
‘We shall take the low road, brothers, and rise up like vengeance from beneath. This Beast thinks he is safe behind his walls and shielding. We shall show him how wrong he is. Our mighty guns shall pound this fortress from above while the sons of Dorn shall shake its very foundations with their fury. Beasts rise and they shall fall, but the Imperium of Mankind is forever.’
Ten
Maximus Thane had experienced a lifetime of war. He had lived the blood-splattered insanity of battle. The hum of powered armour. The crash of boltguns. The ugly sound of enemies coming apart. He had gone toe to chainsword-wielding toe with Ezrah Geddon, Arch-Heretic of Praetis-Prandia. He had blasted his way through the deviants and piratical raiders of the fallen eldar at the Ferrospire. He had slaughtered the greenskin invader on the hallowed sands of his own homeworld of Eidolica and on Ullanor’s cursed earth. Little could have prepared him for the carnage that took place during the fight to gain entrance to the orks’ palace.
As the Imperial Fists made their way along the subterranean tunnels, Thane had initially found the darkness and quietude unsettling. The battle above them was a distant, muffled afterthought. Deathwatch Space Marines and descending Black Templars fought side by side, their shared hatred of the alien like a torch leading them through the gargantuan architecture of Gorkogrod’s inner precincts.