The Beast Arises

‘Switch to infrared, brothers,’ Second Captain Maximus Thane ordered. With Chapter Master Alameda lost to the first enemy wave and First Captain Garthas coordinating defences from the tactical oratorium, Thane was the ranking Fists Exemplar officer on the bastion. As his auto-senses responded and a thermal filter dropped across his optics, the absolute darkness of the Eidolican night was transformed. Instead of the freezing blackness of the desert, Thane could spectro-differentiate the deeper blues of the dune horizon and the starless void above. The captain knew that distant stellar pinpricks were lost to the ugly irregularity of the attack moon hovering directly overhead. Cast in total ecliptic shadow by the Space Marine home world, the only evidence that the monstrous planetoid was there were the descent streaks of xenos-infested meteorites and thunderbolting assault boats.

That was, until the first wave of attacks.

Red dots of alien fervour appeared on the contrast line of the horizon. Isolated heat signatures marking the storming advance of vanguard hulks soon became a polychromatic nightmare that swallowed the false-colour cobalt of the desert. Even Thane and his Space Marine brothers — accustomed to the grandeur of the galaxy and a life of war — were surprised at the sheer number of invaders. The night desert was awash with xenos foebreeds: a deluge of enemy targets that confounded auspex and targeters with their swarming magnitude.

The Adeptus Astartes on the ramparts stood in stoic silence as the enemy rampaged across the Akbar promethium fields. The orks smashed through radiance harvesters and enclosures of photovoltaic cells. They thundered through township after township, flattening worksteads, generatoria and battery silos before destroying the promethium wells. Through their optics, the Space Marines watched columns of white flame jet into the dark skies. The towers of fiery fury and the saturation of the sand with the drizzle of crude promethium did little to slow the alien monsters.

The captain heard the clunk of armoured boots on the hull plating behind him and turned to see Mendel Reoch, Apothecary of the Second Company. On the blasted hull of the star fort and amongst the scorched ceramite of his brothers, the white paint of the Apothecary’s plate advertised itself like a dare to the enemy. Unlike the captain, the Apothecary had braved the Eidolican night without his helmet. What was left of a ruined mouth and jaw had long been fused into the ugly grille of a half-helm. A pair of bionoptics peered over the grille, glowing darkly like a pair of colour-tinted spectacles.

‘Won’t the chief need you in the Apothecarion?’ Thane asked his old friend.

‘If the Emperor’s work is accomplished out here,’ Reoch grizzled back through the vox-modulated grille, ‘then I shan’t be needed anywhere. Wouldn’t that be a treat?’

‘Not afraid of a little real work, are you, Apothecary?’ Thane teased grimly.

Reoch drew his bolt pistol and looked down its sights at the deck.

‘There are labours,’ the Apothecary replied, ‘and there are labours of love. If you’re asking if I’d rather be in the Apothecarion sewing our brothers back together or taking the enemy apart out here, I shouldn’t have to answer you that.’

‘Both your knowledge and skill are welcome here, brother,’ Thane told him honestly. ‘Our guests, less so.’

Reoch looked up from his pistol. The glow of his implant optics intensified as he seemed to see for the first time the advancing tide of targets washing up against the void bastion. The Apothecary grunted, as though disgusted at the inconvenience.

‘Don’t be discourteous now, brother,’ Reoch returned. ‘They’ll get the same welcome as any other species trespassing within the borders of the Emperor’s Holy Imperium: they’ll be shot.’

A small cluster of Apothecarion serfs had followed their master out onto the bastion in their plain white robes. Reoch handed the lead servant the weighty pistol. ‘These sights need realigning,’ the Apothecary told him. ‘See to it, and this time do it properly. These damned creatures could have done a better job. Have no less respect for the instruments that take life in the field than those that preserve it on the apothecarion slab. I pray for your sake that you have brought my reserve.’

Another serf handed his master a second bolt pistol. Reoch fell to examining the reserve instrument before telling the servants: ‘Well, it will have to do, won’t it? It’s not as though the enemy will wait the time it will take you to perfect your duties. I will devise your corrections later — if I am alive to do so.’

‘Will you be needing us, Master Reoch?’ one of the serfs mustered the courage to ask. Beneath their hoods the servants had all been watching the darkness and listening to the cacophony of the monsters beyond.