The Beast Arises

In seconds the implosion raced back to the temple-gargant, scouring clear everything that had been encompassed in its girth, ripping Gorkogrod down to the foundations and swallowing the pinnacle of the mountain with its ravening energy.

The temple-gargant split asunder, crashing into the scourged ground spouting pillars of green fire and storms of jade lightning, breaking apart into hundreds of hab-block sized chunks, scattering masonry and metal.

Just before the Thunderhawk passed into the cloud cover, Koorland could see the ork armies amassing around the capital, a ring of smoke and darkness several kilometres deep. Millions of orks from across Ullanor, poised just half a day from pouring into Gorkogrod. There was no chance of going back.

‘Is it dead?’ asked Thane, leaning around the Lord Commander to look at the devastation wrought by the temple-gargant’s destruction. ‘Did Vulkan kill it?’

‘Have faith,’ replied Koorland.

Epilogue

Terra — outer system

Koorland was in the strategium when the Alcazar Remembered broke warp back in the Sol System. Transit back to the Terran system had been swift, the warp-roar of the orks momentarily quelled. A few hundred Space Marines had made the journey with him. Perhaps ten times that number from the Astra Militarum, Imperial Navy and Cult Mechanicus had been lifted from the city before the orks had reclaimed it.

Nobody had felt like celebrating a victory.

The strategium was tense. There had been no confirmed contact with Terra. It was impossible to know whether the strike had been in time. Were they simply returning to the ashes of the Throneworld?

Koorland did not think so. When the time came, the Great Beast would have led the attack. He had learnt as much from the actions of Vulkan.

‘Any transmissions?’ he asked Kale.

The shipmaster shook his head.

Thane was with him. So many were not. The Exemplar remarked as much.

‘They will be honoured, each one,’ the last of the Imperial Fists replied. ‘They were all heroes of the Imperium, from the mighty such as Odaenathus who fell against the Great Beast itself to the first Guardsman who died in the planetstrike. And Vulkan, his passing shall be mourned for millennia. Without each and every one of them we could not have prevailed. It is our duty that their deaths are not squandered. We have shown what we can do, when united in ambition, and led with purpose. The orks have shown us how broken we had become. The wounds are still raw but it is not too late to tend them, brother.’

‘Lord Commander, I am detecting a powerful transmission,’ one of the deck officers announced. ‘Source origin is Terran orbit. Looped signal. All major channels. I’m going to—’

The officer stood up straight, face ashen, headset falling to his console. His terrified gaze moved to Koorland while his mouth continued to work silently, unable to form the words needed.

‘On audible,’ the Lord Commander snapped. The officer’s trembling finger activated a rune.

The speakers crackled into life, and from them issued a deep, grating voice, slowly repeating the same words.

‘I am Slaughter! I am Slaughter! I am Slaughter! I am Slaughter!’

David Annandale Watchers in death

To be added.

David Guymer The Last son of Dorn

To be added.

Rob Sanders Shadow of Ulanor

To be added.

Guy Haley The beheading

To be added.