The Beast Arises

And then, one by one, he felt the guns about him thunder to emptiness. Almost immediately the routine of reloading began but in the calmness that followed, with the chatter of the guns still carried distantly on the breeze, Thane had opportunity to witness the xenos recovery. Holes in the vanguard closed rapidly, with beasts almost crawling over each other to be at the forefront of the slaughter. They stamped through the demolished carcasses of their fallen and howled their alien derision and delight. Within seconds, the impact of the barrage was imperceptible.

‘Well, isn’t that a thing,’ Reoch said.

‘Are you seeing this?’ Maximus Thane voxed through to the tactical oratorium.

‘I am,’ First Captain Garthas responded grimly. Thane heard him speak to an oratorium officer. ‘Launch the gunships.’

As the mega-bolters and gatling blasters resumed the futility of defensive fire protocols, Thane’s plate registered the heatwash of afterburners as Thunderhawks and Storm Eagle gunships blasted from the unsealing launch bays behind them. As the craft screamed their fury above, Brother Aquino’s banner thrashed and twirled. Thane watched the Fists Exemplar craft blaze away, the cool blue of their armoured hull plating bright against the deeper blue-black of the Eidolican skies. Only their triple engines glowed searing white and left a chromatic scale in the trail of their afterburners.

The formations streaked away: bomb-laden Thunderhawks flanked by lower, strafing Storm Eagle gunships. The screaming spectacle was met with celebratory gunfire from the savages. They couldn’t see the aircraft, but they could hear them. Unleashing their brute weaponry at the heavens, the beasts raged at the approaching thunder. They were rewarded with swooping passes from the Storm Eagles, who cut through the bestial throngs with vapour blasts from their prow multi-meltas and thick beams of searing light from wing-mounted lascannons. As the gunships weaved and strafed clear, the Thunderhawk formations dropped their incendiary bomb payloads. The desert-world night seared with blinding explosions that turned swarms of monstrous xenos into fields of death.

While even the most sizeable monsters were vaporised at the heart of the detonations, many thousands of surrounding beasts were set alight. This was exacerbated by the promethium that had drizzled over everything from the ruptured wells. Soon the dark desert sands were a dance of blinding colour and it was difficult to make out the enemy from the inferno that had engulfed them.

Switching from infrared back to regular spectra, Maximus Thane saw the midnight dunes lit up in a sea of flame. Against another enemy such a devastating strategy would have been a game changer. There were few species that were not susceptible to violent changes in temperature. Most forms of flesh in the galaxy burned in the fires of battle, and ork flesh should have been no different. But as Thane watched the beasts storm towards him, illuminated by the flames snaking about their scraps of armour and brute forms, it seemed to make little difference.

Apart from in size, the greenskins didn’t seem any different in physiology than other savage clanbreeds the captain had fought. Perhaps it was size alone that made the difference, Thane mused. As great, hulking monsters sculpted from leathery skin, gnarled bone and muscle, the Fists Exemplar captain reasoned that perhaps there was less need than usual in this sub-species for a complex nervous system and a brain that could interpret the intense agonies of being burned alive.

Stampeding through the flames, the enemy charged on. Fear didn’t slow their advance. Pain didn’t show on their snaggle-tusk faces. Death was an end beyond the simple imaginings of such creatures. They swarmed and they stormed the Alcazar Astra. The desert roared with flame. Alien war cries filled the air. The void bastion crashed with the fire of gatling blasters. Among the pure havoc of battle, with the fortress-monastery’s crooked spires reaching up beyond the ring of fire and the sea of thundering green flesh beyond, Second Captain Maximus Thane and his Fists Exemplar stood as calm, still and impassive as the decorative gargoyles about them. The statues would do little to ward off the evil approaching the Alcazar Astra today.

‘You’ve studied xenos physiology. Any advice?’ Thane put to his friend. ‘I’m opening a channel.’

The Apothecary angled his bone-white helmet to one side. ‘If you must,’ Reoch replied with little appetite for the duty.

‘Second Company,’ Thane called across an open vox-channel, ‘stand by for the Apothecary’s observations.’

‘On average,’ Reoch broadcast, ‘the enemy appears larger than the feral specimens we exterminated on Borksworld. Those on Konrax were mere runts to these monsters.’

‘And?’ the captain asked as Reoch’s enthusiasm for the task trailed off further.