The Beast Arises

Such a sight, such a vivid display of an alien ecology, even one so damaged and desecrated, should have filled Magos Biologis Laurentis with total fascination. His life had been dedicated to the study of xenoforms, and it was very rare, even for a man as distinguished and respected as he was, to see such a spectacle first hand. Usually, the only traces of hostile xenoforms and their habitats that magi biologis got to inspect were burned scraps and fused tissue residues brought back by undertaking fleets.

However, his enthusiasm for his research, and the alien specimens spread out before him awaiting his probes and scalpels, was muted. The sound had bothered him, and he knew exactly why.

A total of four noise bursts, each of progressively longer duration, occurred in the following ninety minutes. After the fourth, Chapter Master Cassus Mirhen walked slowly and thoughtfully across the gleaming bridge space of the battle-barge Lanxium, took his seat on the great steel throne, and gestured to the vox-servitor that had been waiting patiently for almost two hours.

The command crew and the bridge officers watched the Chapter Master anxiously. He was a great man, arguably the greatest warrior alive in the Imperium. His deeds and achievements were recognised on an honour roll that was the envy of all other Chapter Masters. He was commander of the Imperial Fists, and the living embodiment of Dorn himself.

But he had a temper, oh yes indeed…

Since the latest phase of the attack had begun in the early part of the day, Mirhen had been on his feet in the ship’s strategium, watching every last scrap of data as it came through from air and ground forces, and taking personal control of every tactical nuance. Defence was the Imperial Fists’ greatest skill, and even in attack, the Chapter’s strategy was reflective and complex. Nothing was left to chance. Nothing was over-extended or risked. Leave the headlong insanity of assault to the likes of the Fenrisian Wolves or the White Scars. The Imperial Fists were the Imperium’s finest military technicians, and even the most fluid plans of assault were made with the same precision reserved for indefatigable defence. It was often repeated that the Lion had once scoffed at Dorn’s precision thinking, remarking that ‘no plan ever survives contact with the enemy,’ to which Dorn had retorted, ‘Then you’re not making the right plans.’

Indeed, Imperial Fists methodology, the methodology that had saved Terra in its darkest hour, the methodology espoused by Rogal Dorn and inherited by Mirhen, seldom used the word ‘plan’. Mirhen prided himself on ‘schemes of attack’, whereby layers of careful, preconsidered variables could be stripped back as necessary. Every step of combat — that most chaotic and mercurial of all circumstances in the galaxy — gave way to multiple possibilities. Some warriors, especially the noble Ultramarines, reacted intuitively to such possibilities as they occurred.

An Imperial Fist identified and prepared for all of them, and simply diverted to the part of the scheme that was most appropriate.

Most believed that Mirhen’s presence in the strategium, and his hands-on approach to the Ardamantua Undertaking, was typical of this obsessive precision thinking. In truth, Mirhen liked the challenge. War did not come often enough for him. It was a test, a game, an exercise, a trial. He wanted to be involved, entirely involved; he wanted to push himself.

War was fading away in the Imperium of Mankind. The purposes for which the likes of the Adeptus Astartes had been engineered were dying out. They had done their job. Peace prevailed across a billion worlds. Only distant skirmishes and half-hearted wars boiled along the hem of the frontier, most of them the endless campaigns of suppression against the ubiquitous greenskins. The orks never went away. They menaced and harried the edges of the Imperium like packs of feral dogs, and every now and then broke in through the metaphorical fence and got at the metaphorical livestock. Once or twice every few centuries, a new and potent bestial warboss arose, their numbers multiplied in response, and another of their mass onslaughts was unleashed. Mirhen knew from intelligence briefings that the greenskins were currently enjoying one of these periodic revivals, and that for the last few decades some of the frontier wars had been especially hot. But even so, they were exactly that — frontier wars. They were very far away, far too far to act as effective demonstrations of Imperial might to the population of the Terran Core. And the orks had not been a serious, palpable threat since they had been stopped at Ullanor by the beloved Emperor Himself.