I am Slaughter Page 18

  On the starboard side of the Thunderhawk, the tank was closing in. It had been slowed by the other White Scars, but they hadn’t been able to cripple it. The ship was surrounded by orks racing with each other to claim the prize.

  Ghazan had the jump pack on now. ‘Pull back,’ he voxed to the squad. ‘I have this.’

  He dropped into the cockpit. Despite the damage, the control surfaces were still more or less intact. He drove his fist into the panelling until he had punched a hole through, then peeled the metal back, exposing the wiring. He was no Techmarine, but he murmured a prayer of apology to the ship’s mortally wounded machine-spirit. He asked it to accept what he was about to do, and act as he hoped it would.

  The orks were on top of the nose now. Two were fighting with each other over which would have the privilege of entering the cockpit first. Ghazan shot them both. He grabbed the shattered windshield frame and hauled himself out. He looked down at the wiring, fixed its position in his mind, and triggered the jump pack. He shot into the air as the tank drew up beside the Furious Lightning. He kept looking downwards, visualising the cockpit, as he reached out once more to the elements.

  He was a seer of storms. He would share his vision with the orks below.

  The moon responded to him. The land was outraged by the presence of the greenskins. It was eager for retribution. It gave Ghazan its lightning. His staff crackled electrical silver along its entire length, and then the blast, a sear in the night, struck the cockpit of the Thunderhawk.

  With a roar of final rage and triumph, the Furious Lightning embraced its namesake and found its vengeance. All its weapons systems fired at once. Its remaining Hellstrike missiles launched straight into the ground. Explosions grew from explosions as the fuel and ammunition ignited. The gunship disappeared in an earth-shaking blast. The fire swallowed the tank, and then it too added to the holocaust. The fireball rose to meet Ghazan, and the jump pack barely kept him from the hunger of the spreading destruction. Successive booms built on each other. They were a symphony of ending. They were the sound of the entire centre of the ork army gone in a second, incinerated at the moment of their celebration.

  On the descending arc of his jump, Ghazan saw the lights of the two bikes streaking away from the fire, still cutting their way through the greenskins. As he landed just beyond the periphery of the blasts, he saw the last tank come apart in flames too, brought down by Temur’s bike squad.

  Ghazan hit the ground with his bolt pistol drawn. He marched forwards, staff high, putting shells in the skulls of the nearest orks. A few fired back at him, but they were not attacking. The remaining force was in disarray, panicked by the massive, sudden losses of infantry and all their heavy support.

  No other tanks appeared. The orks were retreating.

  ‘We have a respite,’ Temur said. ‘I don’t expect it to be long, and it was dearly bought. I have no intention of sacrificing our remaining Thunderhawk to gain us another breathing spell, and I dislike sieges. I dislike them intensely.’

  The Fifth Brotherhood had regrouped in the bastion. The khan was speaking to his sergeants in the command block. Colonel Gregor Meixner of the Mordian Iron Guard was present, but standing to one side, remaining silent with good grace while Temur paced. Meixner struck Ghazan as an officer with a finely developed sense of the possible and the political. The 64th was a justifiably proud regiment, but Meixner knew that he and his men were present in this engagement in a supporting role. They would assist the White Scars as they could, but it was the Fifth Brotherhood that would stab the ork operations on this moon through the heart.

  Ghazan was impressed by Meixner’s good-natured calm as he listened to Temur. The Iron Guard on this day had wound up being little more than bait. As Ghazan turned over in his mind what must happen next, he realised that the men would continue in this role. They were the inviting target that would keep the main body of the ork army focused on this spot, distracted from protecting its own base.

  He doubted that Temur would be as sanguine when the same happened to him. But that was what the scenario he was outlining would be.

  ‘Our choices are limited,’ Temur said. ‘We will not give up our foothold on this moon, and we cannot attack a target whose location is unknown to us.’ He grunted, as if the reality of his situation just now fully registered. His scars, in the pattern of the claw marks of a berkul, darkened as his frustration shaded towards anger. ‘We will have to hold this position until we know where to strike.’ He turned to Sergeant Kusala, who led the Scout squad. ‘Brother-sergeant,’ said the khan, ‘I believe it is clear what we need you and your men to do.’

  Kusala nodded. ‘It is, my khan,’ he said. He had lived long enough that his hair, tied back following tradition in a horse’s tail, was grey. Though Ghazan was younger, his hair was white. It had been since the night of his first vision, when his fated role as zadyin arga had been made manifest. ‘We will find the greenskins’ manufactorum for you,’ Kusala went on.

  ‘Good. And when you do, we shall fall on it like the worst of gales.’ To Meixner, Temur said, ‘When that moment comes, we will move to destroy the manufactorum, regardless of the situation on the ground here. That may well mean abandoning you to face another siege like we saw today. Quite possibly a worse one.’

  ‘We will do our duty,’ Meixner said. ‘We will hold.’

  Temur grunted again, this time more satisfied. ‘I look forward to your being put to the test, colonel. We cannot afford to let this mission drag on too long. Neither can the Raven Guard on Lepidus Prime.’ Temur stopped pacing. He had barely glanced at the tacticarium table behind him. Not that it was proving useful. They all knew the lie of the land around the bastion. Northwards, where the target lay, was mostly conjecture. The difficulty was not in knowing the terrain of the moon. The problem lay in how the orks had transformed the surface since their arrival. None of the lithographs produced by orbiting augur arrays were helpful. The only way to find the site of the orks’ heavy armour production would be to find it on the ground.

  All the same, Ghazan found himself looking past Temur at the table. The lithograph of the regions north of the bastion seemed to look back at him. The longer he stared at the image of the terrain, the more he felt the fraying vibration around the contours of reality that preceded his visions. Destiny tugged at him. The being he would fight awaited him there.

  ‘I will accompany the Scouts,’ he said.

  Temur’s pacing stopped dead. He gave Ghazan a sharp look, but didn’t respond to him. He spoke instead to Kusala again. ‘When will you be ready to leave?’

  ‘Within the hour, khan.’

  ‘Good. Make ready, then.’

  Kusala saluted and left. To the rest of the sergeants, Temur said, ‘We will make what repairs we can to the bikes and Land Speeders. We will have constant, rotating patrols out there. We know the orks are coming back. I would have us hit them before they get so close again.’ He glanced at Meixner and visibly stopped short of issuing commands to the colonel.

  If Meixner noticed the near slight, he didn’t show it. ‘We will be ready as well,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, colonel.’ To the White Scars he said, ‘To war, then. For the Khan and the Emperor!’

  The war cry was echoed, and the sergeants left the command room, as did Meixner. Temur made no move to go. He stood beside the tacticarium table, as still as he had been restless a few minutes before. Ghazan remained where he was. The two of them waited until they were alone.

  ‘You are needed here, zadyin arga,’ Temur said. ‘On the front lines.’

  ‘Perhaps. But this is where I cannot be. I am fated to be elsewhere.’

  Temur’s scars darkened again. ‘You saw what we were up against. Your presence tonight was the difference between our provisional triumph and disaster.’

  ‘That is not a certainty.’

  ‘The certainty is that our losses wo
uld have been much greater.’

  Ghazan inclined his head once, conceding the point. He said nothing.

  Temur began to pace again. As he did, he tapped a finger against the surface of the table. He struck it with the rigid tak, tak, tak of a march. ‘You arrived on my ship without any notice, at the last moment before the commencement of the mission,’ he said.

  Again, Ghazan bowed his head. What the khan said was true. Ghazan saw no need to expand on that truth.

  Temur moved to the far side of the table. The tapping continued. He seemed to be expecting more of an answer. When he received none, he said, ‘I received you with, I believe, the respect due to your office.’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘Yet you will not do me the courtesy of telling me why you are here.’

  ‘I do not intend to be cryptic, khan. The full contours of my fate here are hidden to me. I have come to do battle with a powerful enemy. That is the full truth.’

  ‘And you don’t know who or what or where this enemy is?’

  ‘No.’ Ghazan gestured at the tacticarium table. ‘But my sense is that it waits for me in the north.’

  ‘Has it not occurred to you that this enemy might be drawn to the battlefield here? I have a great respect for the visions of Stormseers, Ghazan, but are they not open to different interpretations? You just admitted that the details are hidden from you.’

  Though his soul already knew the answer to the khan’s question, Ghazan did not dismiss it. He considered it long enough to confirm his certainty that he was choosing the right path. ‘No,’ he said. ‘This foe will not come to me.’

  ‘Then let the Scouts do their work, and in the meantime, fight where you are needed.’

  ‘I am needed in the north. With the Scouts.’

  ‘You are wrong. Your destiny may be pulling you there, but that is not where you should be at this time.’

  Ghazan was silent for a moment. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you, Temur Khan. But fate is not subject to pragmatism. I have no choice.’ He said the last sentence as if to speak it were to cast aside all doubt. He brought his arms to his chest in the sign of the aquila and left before Temur could answer.

  He did pause in the corridor outside the command centre. He understood Temur’s growing anger. His actions would appear, from the outside, to be selfish and quite possibly foolish. He removed his left gauntlet and held his staff with his bare hand. He felt the ridges of the protective sigils. He closed his eyes and opened himself up to the warp.

  The tug was there immediately. The chains of destiny were pulling at him with even more insistence. At their end, the figure of the foe awaited. The shape was no clearer than it had been before. But what it radiated had come into focus: triumph, bestial delight, destructive hunger. And power. Power that somehow was not entirely inherent to the foe itself. Power that was being fed, and was growing. Power that Ghazan must extinguish or die trying.

  The Stormseer opened his eyes. Temur was right to think that the White Scars had little time before the war became entirely a defensive one and was lost. But the key was in the north. That was where time was slipping away. Time for the White Scars, time for Lepidus. Time for many systems beyond.

  Click here to buy Overfiend.

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  First published in Great Britain in 2015

  This eBook edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,

  Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

  Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

  The Beast Arises: I am Slaughter © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2015. The Beast Arises: I am Slaughter, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.

  All Rights Reserved.

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-78251-307-0

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  See Black Library on the internet at

  blacklibrary.com

  Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at

  games-workshop.com

  eBook license

  This license is made between:

  Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

  (2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

  (jointly, “the parties”)

  These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

  * 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

  o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

  o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

  * 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

  * 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

  o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

  o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

  o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

  o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

  * 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

  * 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

  * 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

  * 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

  * 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

  * 9. If any part of this license is illegal,
or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

  * 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.