Mixed contingents of Astra Militarum from scores of shattered regiments were pushing on through wall-to-wall orks. Shock troops took districts building by building, while storm troopers and airborne companies rappelled to roofs from hovering Valkyries. Battle-automata stomped alongside skitarii soldiers who crackled with radioactivity. Sentinels stalked through the carnage while Leman Russ tank companies rolled up through the dragways, demolishing ork junkers and fortifications. Frater militia mobs swarmed creature after creature, bludgeoning and burning the xenos while Vindicare Assassins moved across the roofs of grand alien architecture, blasting huge holes through warlords and mega-bosses with their Exitus rifles.
Feral world scouts scalped the aliens with their knives, while the blue-blooded officers of spireborn regiments directed tracked mortars, bombards, Marauder airstrikes and orbital fire from the sky in an effort to pound the way ahead into cataclysmic ruin before the arrival of vanguard troops. All the while, Thane’s bloody and battered companies advanced along the rough tunnels and cave systems of the sewer.
Liquid filth moved slowly down excavated channels, carried onward by a downhill incline and great water wheels. It seemed few orks were interested in frequenting the sewer system. Those that did were ragged ferals, who, while still hulking in size, fell easily before the chainswords and bolt pistols of Chaplain Ishcarion’s Assault squads. The river of filth was, however, choked with alien fungus and swarming with tiny greenskin runts whose eyes glinted in the darkness. Terrified of the approaching Space Marines, they fled before them, shrieking in alarm. Little ammunition was wasted on these wretches but Thane had no doubt that the miserable creatures would quickly carry news of their presence to their larger cousins.
Thane ordered his men on at double time, still hoping to retain the element of surprise. The Space Marines left the rumble of battle above them behind, drawn on instead by the regular pounding of the palace’s mighty cannons. Like a beacon, the boom of the gargantuan alien weaponry told the Imperial Fists where they needed to be.
When they were right underneath the thunder, Thane directed the last of Captain Karlito’s Assault Centurions to lead the way, boring their way into the bowels of the palace with their siege drills. Here, they ran into heavily armed orks, plated in slablike armour and wielding monstrous heavy weapons. Working around, Thane directed the Eighth Company Assault squads to flank the monsters and enter the bloody fighting while the Chapter Master led the rest of his force up through the rough-hewn levels of the palace-fortress.
With boltguns clunking empty and battle-brothers of all companies forced into close combat with the hulking monsters of the palace, Thane’s Space Marines fought their way up staircases, through gauntlets and chambers crowded with the most monstrous of orks. There was no time — for thought, for action or to catch one’s breath. Orders were monosyllabic and roared across the vox amid the thunder of battle. The palace halls were packed wall-to-wall with frothing orks, and these were not even the towering monsters the Adeptus Astartes had met offworld, despatched by the Beast to bring death and destruction to every corner of the Imperium. These were greater yet: warrior greenskins, minor warlords in their own right, who by virtue of their monstrous size and savagery had earned a place at the side of the Beast. They were creatures of hulking green brawn and the scars of myriad wars fought across scores of conquered systems, and there were thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands. Their fangs were sharp and their tusks were long. Their flesh was tattooed and dyed with clan colours, their frames — that dwarfed even Space Marines — were draped in thick and ugly plate, bristling with spikes. Helms were extravagantly horned and weaponry was obscene in its size and brute design. The creatures bawled their barbarian rage from the black holes of their open mouths, and their beady red eyes burned with territorial fury.
Leading from the front, Thane was the battering ram that smashed through gargantuan doors and armoured sentries. Crushing skulls in the clasp of his mighty black fists, he knocked hulking orks back through walls with a single strike. He smashed snaggle-tusked chieftains into the ground and swung wide, knocking ugly heads clean off shoulders. The storm bolters of the First Company veterans thundered about him, forcing the attacking orks back away from their Chapter Master. Captain Berengard carved a path of destruction through the brutes with his power sword, while battle-brothers forsook their empty boltguns to team up on the towering monsters, slashing and stabbing desperately at green flesh with their combat blades. As ork Dreadnoughts and heavily armed walkers stomped into battle, guns wildly blazing, Storn’s Devastators answered the call, blasting them back with missiles and blinding fury from their lascannons and heavy plasma guns.
Thane’s mind was nothing but ork monsters and the deaths he foresaw for them. Swinging the crackling doom of his power fists, the Chapter Master made such imaginings reality, punching and smashing his way through the Beast’s palace guardians. He broke monsters and buried killsaw-wielding creatures in the fortress floor.
Thane killed without thinking. Like the orks, the Imperial Fists were now acting on primitive instinct. The instinct to survive and see their enemies sundered. Bolt-rounds hammered into the iron-hard hides of alien creatures at point-blank range. Pistols were emptied at tusk-filled faces. Heavy weapons lit up the claustrophobic havoc with the flash and thunder of Imperial Fists Devastators. Powered plate showered with sparks as the wild fire of greenskin guns sent torrents of slugs at the Space Marines. The proud yellow of Imperial Fists plate soon became a soot-streaked, blood smeared camouflage pattern of craters where ork lead had burrowed into ceramite.
All the Chapter Master could hear was death. The mindless fury of towering orks running straight into the blasts of heavy flamers. The screams of his battle-brothers across vox-channels that sizzled with suffering. The thud of butchers’ blades chopping down through plate and genhanced flesh. Thane’s captains led their companies through the labyrinth of tribal halls and antechambers. Each pushed his men on to find routes through the carnage, clearing gauntlets and blasting through walls. As each company found bloody success, the others would follow, funnelling through body-lined archways before spreading out again through the gunfire-crashing, axe-swinging pandemonium.
Orks burst from doorways about the vanguard companies, roaring their delight as they blasted at the Imperial Fists with their belt-fed weaponry. Some even attempted to barge through the Space Marines with their monstrous bulk and huge serrated blades. All they found was death. As the orks ran at their attackers, the chests of Centurions blazed with the hurricane bolters set about their chestplates. Within moments, bounding, blade-wielding warriors were turned to bloody mulch. It didn’t stop the orks, however. Driven on by primal instinct and the thrill of combat, the hulking monsters just kept on coming. Stamping through the remains of unfortunates who had fallen before them, they charged the Space Marines.
The chaos and confusion had been Thane’s world for hours. He fought for his life and the lives of his brothers and sisters about him, all of them lost in a deluge of greenskin barbarity.
Then suddenly, there were no more foes to fight. Breaking through the back of their ranks, Thane found himself where he had never thought to be: the throne room of Gorkogrod. The very centre of the ork empire. The cavernous chamber was still. Six thrones towered above Thane, facing outward in a circle from their places on a great dais. Like the galleries opposite each one, they were decorated with rough banners and standards, each stone throne augmented with metal plating and serrations. Each was carved with its own glyphs and sigils, presumably marking out different clans and tribes.