The Beast Arises

As Maximus Thane ducked and weaved, kicked and blasted, he felt like the fortress-monastery was sinking. Not below the sands, but below the great number of the enemy. There was green everywhere. Savage after savage came at him and the Space Marines of his honoured company. Inside his helmet it was no better. There too he was drowning in reports and requests, his suit filtering vox-transmissions from his own desperate men over a cacophony of communications coming from Fists Exemplar brothers holding the rest of the fort’s perimeter. It seemed that the alien brutes were pressing the defenders from all sides simultaneously, with muscle to spare and a constant stream of reinforcements.

Hugging his Umbra-pattern boltgun close into his shoulder, Thane felt the kick of the honourable weapon. Like a beast of burden thrashing and bucking its way to freedom, it wanted to be let loose on the enemy, but ammunition was precious. No battle-brother could know for how long he or his bolter would be needed. It was better to conserve the blessed shells than bury them in alien cadavers already finding their way to the ground.

With his elbows out and boltgun tucked in close to his plate, the captain smashed his way through the walls of alien meat. Blood and snaggle-teeth flew from where Thane buried the elbow couter-joints of his suit into snarling green faces. Guts spilled from towering behemoths whose swollen bellies came in line with the squat barrel of his gun. A beast came at him from the left, a hydraulically augmented nightmare from the right. An axe of some brute description sang off his pauldron. A hulking greenskin, struggling to bring its steaming rotor cannon under control, managed to sink lead into the flesh of the mongrel-monsters attempting to tackle Thane to the ground. The captain’s plate registered the impact of several glancing rotor shells before swiftly reporting an update of full suit integrity in his visor display. Thane brought his boltgun up.

Unlike the rotor-gunning greenskin, he did not miss his target. A judicious staccato of shells opened the beast’s skull up like an oasis fruit. With vicious momentum, the captain smashed the orks coming at him from the side back into their ranks. The first was trampled under the boots of its gore-hungry comrades. The second soaked up several suit-augmented impacts before Thane’s elbow broke through its helmet, hydraulics and skull.

Between the split-second ducking, dodging and evasive footwork — and when he wasn’t forced to end some mindless, oncoming brute — the captain attempted to cast his gaze about the swarming transept. Several battle-brothers had gone down. He’d seen Brothers Vaux and Martegan both murdered by the same power-clawed monstrosity.

‘Sergeant Hoque,’ Thane voxed. ‘Get those battle-brothers back on the ramparts.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Hoque voxed back, the ferocious chatter of his bolter in the background.

‘A step back towards the hangar bays is a step in retreat,’ the captain called. ‘Let that be on the conscience of any battle-brother indulging such a notion.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Hoque returned, his voice once again lost in desperate bolt fire.

Thane took the heads off three advancing creatures with his boltgun while a fourth sprayed the Fists Exemplar with lead from its own crude automatic weapon.

‘Brother Aquino,’ Thane said. ‘Stop playing with that thing and end it swiftly. The enemy are pushing through.’

‘Yes, captain.’

Sparks rained off the captain’s plate as the lead-sprayer closed. Smashing the weapon aside with his own, Thane found that the primitive death-dealer came apart with relative ease. Trusting in the craftsmanship of his own weapon, the captain stabbed its muzzle into the creature’s jaw, taking out a lump of flesh. Momentarily dazed, the monster reached for another weapon from its sagging belt. Its claw never got there, however. Thane had shot it through the eye and was pushing past it before the greenskin’s carcass hit the hull.

‘Squad Autolycon, Squad Lucifus, close that gap!’ the captain bawled across the vox-channel. ‘You could get a Land Raider through there.’

‘We could use a Land Raider up here,’ a battle-brother voxed between sword-swinging exertions.

‘Secure your mouth, brother,’ Sergeant Hoque bit back. ‘Keep your mind on your work and follow your captain’s commands.’

As Thane blasted through two more greenskin savages, he was forced to admit that the battle-brother was right. Chapter Land Raiders would have done a nice job of breaking up the greenskin swarms on the dunes. Their heavy bolters would have crashed through the monstrous lines. Their lascannons would have cut through the dense formations. Their tracks would have mulched the green invader into the black Eidolican sands. They would have created an advancing line of rally points, allowing the Fists Exemplar to push the enemy vanguard back.