The Beast Arises полностью

Grind and rumble and screams torn apart by the edges of splintering bones. The sound of an ocean snapping into shards. The blood surged. Torrent became deluge, became tidal wave. It lifted her up. She tumbled in the flow, gagging and choking. Her vision became a whirl of jagged horrors, the darkness of the blood tide giving way to the momentary sight of what lay behind, of the climbing swell of bodies rising to the heavens, millions of people fused into a mass of broken dolls. A flash of Sever disappearing beneath the blood. Up and down, over and over, tossed by the pressurised current, battered by the flotsam of bones. She lost her weapons. She tried to swim, but she was an insect in the clutches of the moon’s fist. Drowning, soul blasted by the hell-vision, she had no thoughts, no hope, no awareness at all. She had only her last instinct, the bodily drive to struggle, even when all point had been lost.

The world was nightmare. The world was speed and pain and the warm choking in her lungs and the towering shadows finally meeting. She hit something very large and solid. She started to black out. Then she was moving down, and still down, and the violence of the torrent faded.

Behind and above, a great, final, echoing boom. The blood released her.

She gagged, vomited blood. She wiped the gore from her eyes. She was lying on a slope, surrounded by red light pulsing green. On either side were moving pistons like great towers, gears the size of cathedrals. Below, she heard the stir of an uncountable army, of a strength in weapons and ships that denied all measure.

She was inside the moon.

Narkissos and Kondos watched the mountains come together from the ramp leading to the Militant Fire’s primary cargo bay. Narkissos felt a jolt up his spine, and realised he had sat down. His legs refused to hold him. Kondos remained standing, motionless, as if the sight had turned her to stone.

In the first seconds of the trap’s activation, Narkissos had thought the chains in their entirety were moving. They were not. The orks had constructed them in sections. Only the region of the plain where the Crusaders marched was sealed between the towering walls. The landing zone was untouched.

Kondos whispered something.

‘What did you say?’ Narkissos asked. He couldn’t hear her over the fading echoes of the metallic death of hope.

‘They never bombed us,’ she repeated.

‘No, they didn’t.’ He struggled to his feet and wobbled down the rest of the ramp. There wasn’t much left to do. A shedding of denial, a full acknowledgement of the scale of defeat, was perhaps the only trace of heroism that could still be claimed. He turned around, looking at the plain, at the hundreds of ships that had reached the star fortress. The fleet that the orks had allowed to come this far.

He looked up. There were great vessels at low anchor. He could see their lights. Two of those would be the ork cruisers. The others were the spoils of war, boarded and captured by the orks. Narkissos understood that the Militant Fire’s heroic run through the gauntlet had been a farce. The orks had boarded only those vessels which would not be able to make moonfall. They had let the others deliver themselves into their hands, and had destroyed the ones not worth their bother.

We gave them the Armada, he thought.

Stretching almost to the horizon, with only skeleton crews remaining, the ships waited for the conquerors to arrive.

They came while Narkissos stood there. Around the periphery of the plain, at the base of the metal mountains, the great doors opened, releasing the green tide.

Narkissos walked back to the ramp. He joined Kondos, and together they re-entered the ship. They closed her down, and retreated to the bridge, along with what crew remained. They armed themselves.

The struggle would be brief and futile, Narkissos knew. But he would die fighting. He wanted his life to have had that much meaning, at least.

The pounding began.

There was no scream. No cry. Now the time of the great silence had come. The eyes of the people of Terra had been on the ork moon. No one had expected to see the Crusade, though the collective imagination of the Emperor’s subjects had landed with the Armada.

All who were watching saw the end of the Crusade. The movement of the mountains was visible from Terra. It looked like an eye closing, a wink, a mockery directed at its hapless prey.

Vangorich saw it happen from the Cerebrium. He was alone. The other High Lords were in session. They had remained in the Great Chamber for the length of the Crusade. The effort had been less heroic than they had expected. The war had lasted less than a day.