The Beast Arises

Above the ghost of the falling hive a new moon had risen over the ocean hive-world of Undine, a black and impossible thing that held its ugly station above the planet. Its cratered surface made it appear as though it had a misshapen face: two eyes, one larger than the other, and a crooked valley-fracture for a nose. Its southern hemisphere was delineated by the iron glint of a colossal metal jaw fixed to the moon’s circumference. Allegra had seen alien brutes wear such contraptions in place of jaws torn from their monstrous faces. Terrified hivers were calling it the trap-jaw moon.

‘Commander…’

As suggested by the flooded underhive, sea levels had risen with the gravitic perversions. The hive’s island foundations had been buried beneath the chemical cocktail that was Undine’s oceans, and the pontoon shanties — smashed and tangled with weed — had risen to cluster-shunt about the hive walls. Beyond, the meteorites were hammering the ocean surface. Great eruptions of water and spray marked their landings before their great weight contributed to their continued descent.

Watching several of the nearest splash-impacts, the commander came to realise that they weren’t all streaming rocks. Some were armour-plated pods and capsules. An invasion had begun in overwhelming earnest. Without great Undine herself inviting the alien savages into her dark ocean-world depths, the monsters would already have swamped the planet. Allegra watched as the engine-mounted asteroids and junker pods carried their raging xenos payloads down below the waves.

‘Commander!’

Stumbling around and looking up the shell-face of the hive, Allegra saw that the spire had been demolished. Feathered sea-raptors swooped and dived in search of their missing nests. Allegra turned again, and then she saw them.

Scrambling out of the shallows in a constant stream, like the unkillable bastards they were, were thousands of hulking orks. Their skin glistened wet over their fearful brawn and their beady eyes were red with unreasoning alien rage. Like the starved vermin of the stars, they clambered and swarmed. The greenskin beasts hauled themselves up the tottering architecture and busy accretia of the city’s shell. They scrambled over each other — the mass of claws, arms and jaws snapping and scraping its way upwards like a living geyser of green flesh, gushing its way up the hive wall. Greater beasts still mounted the writhing column of muscle, climbing monstrously over their xenos kin. Beetle-backed landers, belching black smoke, hovered at the cavernous mouths of rocket-mauled entry points. There they delivered further mobs of monstrous brutality and ork chieftains buried in exoskeletal suits of plate and piston. They could smell the herds of terror-stricken humanity hiding within the byzantine dereliction of the hive. They climbed. They roared. The Beast bawled its fury through the combined thunder of their barrel chests.

‘Lux!’ Chief Gohlandr shouted. The intimacy of first names brought the commander back from the breathtaking dread of the spectacle.

‘Chief,’ Allegra barked back. ‘Establish a perimeter — our backs to the wall.’

She looked to the dribble of minor aristocrats and hangers-on stumbling out into the daylight. There were no words to describe the horror on their powdered faces. As members of the Undine 41st Maritine splashed down into the shallows at the chief’s bawling order, Allegra called out, ‘Gunner DuDeq!’

The gunner fell out of line, his lasrifle snug at his chin, his eye staring down his sights at the greenskin hordes about them. Holding her pistol upright, Allegra stepped behind the gunner and cranked the master-vox that DuDeq was humping on his back. Snatching an ear-horn and hailer from the pack, she shouted above the roar of the beasts and waves. ‘Capricorn-Six, Capricorn-Six — this is Commander Allegra, respond.’

Allegra waited as Lyle Gohlandr splashed forwards with his gunners, assuming positions about the commander and Lord Governor amongst the wet and busy architecture. ‘Capricorn-Six,’ she persisted, ‘this is Commander Allegra with the Undine Forty-First, “Screeching Eagles”. ’

The xenos were everywhere. Allegra watched as monstrous multitudes emerged from the water, hauling themselves up out of waves. ‘We have acquired our target and are awaiting evacuation. Our position is three fifty-four fifty-two fifty-six: Primus north by north-east. Do you read, Capricorn?’

The green bastards swarming all over the architecture could see them. Allegra felt their blood-vision, their appetite, their need to smash and kill. Like rivers diverting and changing direction, the hordes came for them: hundreds upon hundreds of leathery beasts thundering up through the surf, rounding an artificial headland created by the domed roof of a freight-barbican and skidding down through the grotesques and gargoyles of shell-stone decoration. They ran at them like things of madness, all bared tooth and tusk.