Of Lions and Beasts
Part I
By author Perfidious Albion
The Phantalus system, the Balurcia Sector, on the frontier of the Naranjomundan Worlds
The year 959 of the 30th millennium
The blow would have severed José's throat. He ducked under the sweeping blade, then lashed out with his own, aiming at the joint between the rerebrace and vambrace of his foe's right arm. His enemy parried in a clash of chainswords. For a second, the two chainswords locked, their teeth biting and snapping at each other. Then José barrelled into his foe.
The sheer bodyweight of a Power-Armoured Space Marine knocked the enemy off his feet. José did not hesitate to take advantage. He grappled with his foe, knocking the chainsword out of his hand. At this close range, his own chainsword was too large and unwieldy a weapon, and his enemy was able to return the favour.
Weaponless, the two struggled against one another with a series of brutal punches from heavy gauntleted fists. Blow after blow was struck. Both drew combat knives and sought out the joints in each other's armour. At last, José managed to pin his enemy down, but his enemy brought up his knee between the fork of José's legs. Agony exploded through him. His enemy jabbed a knife under the helmet towards José's throat…
…and held it. "Dead." Francisco de Deshea withdrew the knife. "Well fought, Brother-Brigadier."
"Well fought, Brother-Commander." Brother-Brigadier José de Carval rose to his feet, helping de Deshea to his feet as he did so. "You deserved the victory."
"A dishonourable trick," protested Hector de Vijal, one of José's men in the 24th Brigade. "You were the better swordsman."
José silenced him with a glance. "This is practice for war, not sport, Brother-Sergeant. It doesn't matter how you win a fight, as long as you can finish it." José pulled a bottle of water from his belt, handed it to de Deshea and turned his back on him to let him drink it. "My water is yours," he said.
It was an old custom from Naranjomundo, the homeworld of the King of Lions. Naranjomundo had been a world rich in water but poor in clean, drinkable water, which had been the single most important resource on the planet. To give your water to another man and look away was a sign of supreme trust.
These days, of course, Naranjomundo was not impoverished anymore, thanks to the wise leadership of its king. Even the poorest peasant did not lack for water. The custom still endured, though. It was often used among the Conquerors after friendly duels, to reaffirm that the duel was indeed friendly. No grudge was held, nor resentment. They were still brothers. They trusted each other with their lives.
"Thanks be for water."
Francisco de Deshea handed José back his water bottle. He had drunk nothing but a sip. With it, de Deshea handed another water bottle, this from his own belt.
"My water is yours," Brother-Commander de Deshea said, and turned his back as José drank a sip.
José echoed: "Thanks be for water."
It was telling, José thought, that de Deshea should know this custom. Like every Conqueror officer worth his salt, José had familiarised himself with the personnel files and origins of every officer in the Legion of the rank of Commander or above. Aristocrats keep track of each other's pedigree. And so he knew that de Deshea was not of Naranjomundan birth. He was from the planet Nuceria, which had been brought into Imperial Compliance by the great Rodrigo de Vaca—then a Brother-Brigadier, now a Brother-Marshal—a year before de Deshea was born. Francisco's parents had given him a Naranjomundan name, however, and they had changed their surname to 'de' name-of-house, the Naranjomundan nobility's form. De Deshea practised Naranjomundo's customs, and he spoke Naranjomundan fluently, as his mother tongue. (Naranjomundan, not the Terran tongues of High and Low Gothic.) As on every Naranjomundan World, all the proud and ambitious among the highborn families of Nuceria were abandoning old languages and old customs and adapting to the new reality they found themselves in. And in that new reality, the way to succeed was to be part of the culture of the Naranjomundan Worlds. The parents of Francisco de Deshea hadn't been Naranjomundans. They had made sure their son would be. Pale-skinned and red-haired as de Deshea may be, José de Carval nonetheless considered him every bit as Naranjomundan as himself. And José was a bronze-skinned, black-haired man born on Naranjomundo.
It was just more proof of the wisdom of Hernan de Leon. The King of Lions was gathering up the scattered shards of mankind and reforging them back into a whole. Ties of shared language and custom would bind the human species back together.
José said, "Walk with me."
De Deshea did not disobey him. They were not equal in rank. The bronzed Brother-Brigadier and pale Brother-Commander strode side-by-side through the muddy fields of the war-camp. Servants and encomendados paused and bowed and other Conquerors saluted as the two high officers passed them.
"You did fight well. I'm impressed," José said, breaking the silence at last, after several minutes. "More experience?"
"You could say that." De Deshea grimaced. "It was a hard campaign."
"So you did see it." José pounced on that.
De Deshea shot him a wry look. José knew that de Deshea had known exactly why he was talking with him from the beginning. That did not deter José from pressing, of course.
"Yes, we saw it," he said. "4th Chapter of 19th Brigade, that's mine, and right now, our brigade's in the Second March. The whole of our march saw combat against these new Orks before Brother-Marshal de Loragro called on the rest of the Legion. Trust me, Brother-Brigadier, he didn't want to have to do that. He knows how bad it looks. It was needed."
"I trust you," José said, unhesitating. José thought himself a decent judge of the character of men. De Deshea seemed like a good officer. "Still… That bad? Against just Greenskins? What was it: sheer numbers of them?"
"It's not my place to say," said de Deshea. "You'll be at Court soon anyway. I'm sure you'll hear it there."
A Conqueror officer did not pout. José wished one did, though. He wanted to know now. "Is there anything you can tell me?"
"Suffice to say, there's good reason Brother-Marshal de Loragro called the king," de Deshea said grimly. "If I can ask you one thing, one officer to another?"
"Name it," said José.
"Listen to him. Don't judge 'til you've heard the lot. Listen to him—to all of us from the Second March, honestly. I know it sounds insane. But trust us. This is real."
Brother-Brigadier José de Carval absorbed that solemnly. "You have my word, Brother-Commander."
De Deshea exhaled. "Thank you."
The vox in José's ear spoke soon after that. He was called to Court—the Court of Conquerors, where every man in the V Legion ranking Brother-Brigadier or above was summoned to plan strategy with their gene-sire. With a few exceptions in case of attack, of course. The Conquerors were not stupid. Luckily, this time José was not one of the exceptions. He was to be at Court in two hours.
On his way to the spaceport, José de Carval walked past a series of Land Raider tanks on manoeuvres. With a faint flush of pride, he noted the crest of the House de Macalon engraved on the chassis of the tanks: a Naranjomundan house. These Land Raiders had been made on Naranjomundo. Hernan de Leon in his wisdom had always distrusted the idiotic, superstitious Mechanicum and sought some measure of independence from them, but since the Mechanicum's perfidy, when they had treacherously cut off supply to the Conquerors to extort planets from them, that mistrust had risen to outright isolation. These days, every bolter, every chainsword, every vehicle of the V Legion was made on Naranjomundo. Even the starships were built in zero gravity in the Coronal Starshipyards, the great starshipyards in the Naranjomundo system. A Gloriana-class battleship was being built there today. The Conquerors would soon be the first Space Marine Legion to have more than one of them. Now the Naranjomundan Worlds were a self-sufficient polity. The Mechanicum Forge Worlds that had been stolen from the Conquerors had to sell their wares to planets thousands of light-years away and buy food from the same, because not a single Naranjomundan World would trade with them. This was unecomonic. The Mechanicum was pouring more wealth into those planets than it was getting out of them. It must be only the Mechanicum's stubbornness that prevented the foolish, superstitious tech-adepts of Mars from simply doing the right thing: returning the stolen planets to the Conquerors, who had fought and bled to bring those worlds into the Imperium.
His sojourn at the spaceport was brief. A Stormbird aerospacecraft picked him up and brought him into orbit. In its vid-caster—the Stormbird had no glass viewport—he saw the enormous form of the Claw of de Leon come ever-closer into view.
The great Gloriana-class battleship was bristling with Lance batteries, which sent beams of coherent light that could melt continents down to the bedrock, and Thunderbolt Cannons, relativistic weapons which hurled bits of rock at 90% of the speed of light. Her central nuclear fusion reactor—well protected by her several layers of overlapping Void Shields and thick adamantium armour—produced more energy every second than the power output of most planets. To do that, she burnt tonnes upon tonnes of hydrogen, and she spewed out corresponding tonnes of helium as reaction-mass for her exhaust.
The Claw of de Leon was a starship of the Conquerors, highborn, cultured and refined, so of course she had artistry as well as sheer energy firepower. She had figureheads sculpted into beautiful human figures, lions, Aquilas and thunderbolts—the symbols of the Imperium and the Legion alike—and her armour-skin was engraved with exquisite patterns of gold filigree.
For all that, she was a starship of the Wall-of-Battle, as only a fool would forget. The golden artistry was a light, thin surface-layer. The adamantium underneath was tens of metres thick.
José's Stormbird landed in her docking bay, which was so cavernous it could fit a theatre with tens of thousands to watch a play. He made his way swiftly to the strategium. There he found dozens of other Conquerors—armoured Space Marines in yellow with red trim, red gauntlets, and red helmets in the shape of snarling lions. They all wore armour. Most had their helmets off in the crooks of their arms. José followed their example.
Helmetless, it was easy to tell the men of the Second March from everyone else. They were weary and grim-faced, and their armour bore more scratches. That was not to say the men of the First and Third Marches looked parade-ground fresh. They too had seen their fair share of action. It was clear, though, where the toughest fighting must have been.
José had been prompt. He had been one of the first here. He was pleased to see that his commanding officer, Brother-Marshal Diego de Uragon, was not there before him. Despite its high ordinal number, the 24th Brigade under Brother-Brigadier José de Carval had been part of the First March of the Conquerors for the past twenty-seven years, under de Uragon's command. José respected his Brother-Marshal, but he was a haughty man, demanding and uncompromising. He couldn't honestly say he liked him.
In time, more Conquerors arrived. They held their breath. They waited…
In strode His Exalted Magnificence Hernan de Leon, King of All Naranjomundo, son of the Emperor of Mankind and Primarch of the Conquerors.
The King of Lions was tall, dark and handsome. Locks of wavy black hair framed an elegant face so perfectly formed in every feature that it would make sculptors weep to see, for the greatest of their art could not compare to the reality of him. He had sunbronzed skin, high cheekbones, and dark brown eyes the shape of almonds that shared with his upturned lips his charming smile. It was said that Hernan de Leon looked more alike to the Emperor than any other Primarch, and José could well believe that his gene-sire resembled the master of mankind. Here was perfection in the form of a man.
All of the Conquerors fell to their knees. They chorused: "Your Exalted Magnificence."
"Rise," smiled the king, "my sons."
With the ceramite CLANK of Power-Armoured boots on the strategium floor, the Astartes clambered back to standing.
"We are gathered here today by the summons of Marshal de Loragro of the Second March," said the king. "It is right, then, that the good marshal be given the chance to speak. Tell us of what you have seen."
"My thanks, Magnificence," de Loragro said with a deep bow. Brother-Marshal Alejandro de Loragro had the look of a classic Naranjomundan aristocrat, thin by Astartes standards, with a hawklike nose, an aquiline face, bronzed skin, dark eyes and raven-black hair kept cropped military short. "Two years ago, I received a report from the 11th Brigade about concerning happenings in the Alpariso Cluster. Compliant worlds were suffering slave-raids by Orks. Bigger, nastier, and better-equipped than before. The encomendado armies weren't working, so the Viceroys called the 11th for backup. The 11th got there, repelled a raid, and slew the raiding force. Every Ork of them."
Here de Loragro nodded respectfully to a tall, bald, muscular Astartes with skin as dark as chocolate. That had to be Brother-Brigadier Joaquin de Ulacas, the commanding officer of the 11th.
"They didn't come back—daunted, it appears, by the strength of the Conquerors' resistance." A frisson of pride ran through the gathered Conquerors at that. "I'd have thought it a local matter, and indeed I did, until I started getting similar reports from the 3rd, 16th and 21st. Then, with the 18th Brigade, my own command formation, I brought a world into Compliance called Monusca VII. I tell you, brothers, Your Exalted Magnificence, I've never seen a planet so happy to see us. They practically begged for Compliance. Orkish raids have hit them four times in the last three years, blasting their infrastructure, and taking away millions of able-bodied men. We asked them to describe the Orks. They sounded just like Brother-Brigadier de Ulacas's.
"The Monusca system is three-thousand light-years north of the Alpariso Cluster." De Loragro paused to let that sink in. "This is no small WAAAAGH!, brothers. This is the biggest Orkish empire I've ever seen."
"So take your Legion and smash through it," said Brother-Marshal de Vaca contemptuously. "They're only Orks. Why the whole Legion? Are you scared of them?"
De Lorago bristled. José was inclined to sigh. De Vaca, clearly, had not had a conversation like what José had had with Brother-Commander de Deshea. Legend though he may be, with an impressive record of quick victories and Compliances, José thought that the tact of Rodrigo de Vaca was less than exemplary.
In other times, Brother-Marshal de Loragro might have retorted. He was, after all, of equal rank to de Vaca, and older and more experienced. But this was the Conquerors. Strength mattered. By seeking aid, de Loragro had made himself look weak; he had placed himself in the position of supplicant. De Vaca dared more than he would have dared in other times.
"These are no ordinary Greenskins." Gabriel de Torinedo, Brother-Brigadier of the 18th Brigade, leapt in to defend his Brother-Marshal's honour. "My word on it, you've never fought an Ork like this before. Here—look." De Torinedo thrust out a dataslate. "Exalted Magnificence, your permission."
"You have it," said Hernan de Leon, leaning forward.
A vid-cast started to play. A huge Greenskin in well-fitting armour brandishing a scimitar-like sword towered over a squad of encomendados. To their credit, José thought, the encomendados did not flee. They took cover behind crates and fired their lasguns at the Greenskin. The red lasgun blasts—enough to turn a man's leg to single-molecule vapour in a single hit, if he were not wearing Power Armour—did to the Ork nothing at all. The Ork charged at the helpless-seeming encomendados. For the first time José saw how big an Ork it was. He had to be twice their height…
One of the encomendados, a fuzzy-cheeked young man of perhaps sixteen, took out a melta grenade in shaking hands and thrust it at the Ork. For a moment, the giant Ork looked surprised. Then there was a flash of heat and light. For a moment, the dataslate turned entirely white. When it cleared, the great Greenskin was nothing but chunks of charred flesh.
Was that a Warboss? José wondered. The average Ork was two and a half metres tall, similar to a Space Marine. Warbosses tended to be bigger. The higher-ranking the Ork, the bigger they were. That was the general rule. That monster had been more like three and a half metres. And his armour looked one hell of a lot better than that of the average Ork. That had looked almost like Power Armour. That encomendado had done well, to slay such a foe as an Orkish Warboss. José hoped a posthumous commendation would be passed to his mother and father.
But the vid-cast was not over. A grunt was heard, then a bestial cry: "'EY! BOYZ! YOU 'EAR DAT?" Then ten more Orks charged in after their slain comrade. Every single one of them was just as tall as he was, just as heavily armoured, just as strong.
José's blood ran cold.
The men in the vid-cast were predictably massacred. The Orks roared their "WAAAAGH!"-cries of vengeance and rage. Or probably just rage. Orks did not care about each other enough to feel vengeance.
The vid-cast ended.
The Conquerors were silent.
" 'They're only Orks'," Brother-Brigadier de Torinedo said quietly, echoing Rodrigo de Vaca's words back to him. De Vaca turned red from the mockery, but he had the sense not to reply.
"Every one of those Orks was like that," said Brother-Marshal de Loragro. "Three to three and a half metres tall. Bigger than an Astartes. Stronger than us, too—though their Power Armour isn't as good as ours, which helps a lot with getting a sword through the vulnerable joints. The Warbosses are even bigger. I slew an Ork that stood five metres tall and took out four whole squads by himself until I killed him. Look at this."
A pict-cast appeared on the same dataslate. It was de Loragro, grinning tiredly, his hand resting on an enormous, tusked Orkish skull, every bit as large as he had said.
"And, brothers, Exalted Magnificence, I hope you all looked closely at that vid-cast," said de Loragro. "See, the stocks of their rifles are at a jaunty angle. Standard Orkish poor craftsmanship, you would have thought. But every stock is at the same angle. This isn't a bunch of Meks working alone as they normally have. They have a production line."
"These are no Orks like the Orks we've seen," said de Ulacas. "It's as if they're changing to a higher form."
"A higher form of Ork."
All the Astartes stopped speaking at the sound of that voice. The King of Lions was resting his head on a gauntleted hand. His voice was musing, his eyes far away, his tone thoughtful, curious.
"You know of such a thing, Magnificence?" de Loragro said cautiously.
"I do," said the king. "A century ago, when I was new to the Imperium, my father told me why he launched the Great Crusade when he did, as fast as he did."
José's jaw dropped. The Emperor. Why the Emperor launched the Great Crusade. This was information of a kind he had never dreamt of. He was not sure that he ought to hear.
"The Orkish species is a living weapon, my father told me, wrought to fight a war long past, millions of years before mankind existed," de Leon said. "The Orks of today are a degenerated form of that bioweapon, purged countless times by the Eldar to keep them from growing out of control. Given time, though, they will rise to what they once were. The Eldar are no longer there to purge them; so we must." The Primarch paused. "Make no mistake, my sons. This is why my father insists we cannot be slow in this Great Crusade of ours. Mankind must conquer the galaxy now. Now, not in a hundred years. The Orks if not destroyed will grow back to a higher form. Grow too strong, in the end, for mankind to oppose."
"Then there is no time to lose," declared Juan de Leon, the Primarch's Equerry, kin to his adopted family. "By the words of His Exalted Magnificence and of the Emperor, beloved by all, we must crush these Orks before they can rise any higher. The whole species is relying on us."
"It is," said the king.
"We shall not fail," vowed Diego de Uragon, Brother-Marshal of the First March; and all the others echoed him.
"I know." The King of Lions gave them a smile. "My sons, you never fail me."
That smile lit the strategium like a sun. Glowing with pride, José basked in the warmth of his gene-sire's regard.
De Loragro said, "I'm glad. Magnificence, if I may say one thing more?"
"Of course you may," said de Leon.
"This hasn't been normal Orkish behaviour," said de Loragro. "For thousands of light-years, all along the Imperium's eastern frontier as far as we man it, they've been attacking worlds. Not for a fight, not to destroy—they have been leaving worlds relatively intact—but to take slaves. Able-bodied slaves, taken away… where? And for what? Remember, these Orks have production lines. They have industry. They are building something. Something enormous."
"Higher form or no, we all know Orks," de Ulacas said. "Does anybody want to bet that what they're building is not for war?"
"No-one will take that bet, Brother-Brigadier," said de Vaca lightly. De Ulacas barked a laugh. It gladdened José's heart to hear it. Knowing the seriousness of the situation, the acrimony among brothers had proven short-lived.
"That's why we had to call the whole Legion," said Brother-Brigadier de Torinedo. "Not just to kill the Orks we saw. We can do that. But to break whatever monstrosity they're building."
"And break it we shall," said Hernan de Leon. He rose, and all his sons stood up with him. "Come with me, my sons. It is time to go to war."
United as a Legion, the Conquerors flew across the void to a star-system called GH-2040783, whose only planet was an Ocean World by the name of Talassar with just a single continent, a small one nested in a great sea. This was where the Second March, who had most experience with these new Orks, believed they would strike next to sate their insatiable hunger for slaves. They were right.
The attack was not long in coming. A WAAAAGH! of Orks burst out of the Warp in a great starship the size of a battleship, only to be surprised by the full might of the V Legion.
The battle, such as it was, was vicious and short. Led by the mighty Claw of de Leon, the starships of the Conquerors broke their foes. Truth be told, the battle could have been won by her alone. The Orks had no answer to the firepower of a Gloriana-class battleship. Conquerors starships used their superior speed to close in on the enemy, all the while soaking up a great weight of fire from the Orkish starships. (Though José was disturbed to note that they were indeed Orkish-built starships. Even the battleship was plainly of Orkish construction, not a Space Hulk.)
The Conquerors deployed Caestus assault rams—squat, fast-paced aerospacecraft with sculpted noses that could smash their way into a starship and deploy Astartes within. Following the Bringers of Light's example, the Conquerors had plenty of false assault rams: cheap, solid projectiles which contained no real Astartes but were outwardly indistinguishable from the real thing. The Orkish starships' anti-aerospacecraft turrets shot down countless false assault rams and had little attention left for the true ones.
Out from their assault rams the Conquerors burst, with José among them. There were no encomendados. Mortal humans could not survive the force of an assault ram's collision. It would turn them to paste. The reinforced skeletons of Space Marines could. Boarding actions were not the Conquerors' forte—confined space, no encomendados, poor for ranged weapons, when the Conquerors favoured to fight at range. They were still Astartes, however; still the Emperor's Space Marines, still the sons of de Leon, still Conquerors; and there was no foe they would not conquer. Disdaining their favoured jetbikes and Power Lances, useless in these close confines, for chainswords, the Conquerors surged through the Orkish starships. The tall new breed of Orks fought fiercely and fought hard, José had to admit. But they were up against an entire Legion of Space Marines. It was only going to end one way.
In strength, the Conquerors descended on the Orkish raiders and destroyed them. They earned laurels of victory. The difficulty came afterward.
The Conquerors had hoped to operate the cogitators of the captured Orkish starships from the failed slave-raid to find out where they had come from. This, it turned out, was impossible. The Orks' cogitators were crude, ramshackle machines that should not have been working in the first place. The Conquerors' best Tech-Marines could not operate them. Not because they were poor Tech-Marines. They were very good indeed, for they were untainted by the superstitions of the Mechanicum with its ridiculous Machine God, and they had inherited something of the facility of their Primarch, Hernan de Leon, himself one of the Primarchs' greatest engineers. But the Orkish machines smouldered and burst into flame when operated by anyone who was not an Ork. It appeared that they had been held together by the power of faith alone—which was somewhat more literal than José would have liked to admit, given what the Librarians had explained to him of the truth of the Orks' psychic field. Without Orks and their faith to sustain them, the malfunctioning cogitators became what they always should have been: scrap.
This sparked much argument among the Astartes officers of the V Legion. Some felt outraged at the Tech-Marines' incompetence. Others argued in their defence. Some thought that they should head to another world and try again. Others that the starships' cogitators may yet yield their secrets, with a bit more time.
They tried the latter. The Orkish cogitators did not yield any secrets. So they tried heading to another world. Every time the Conquerors repelled the raids, but no captured starships yielded anything useful.
It was Rodrigo de Vaca, in the end, who made the radical suggestion. "We cannot follow them when they're dead," he said. "We have to follow them while they're alive."
"As if they'd let us," grumbled de Loragro. "They fight to the death no matter the odds against them. They're Orks. It's not as if they'll flee."
"They won't fight us if they don't know we're there," said de Vaca with that dangerous smile.
The others took a moment to get what Brother-Marshal de Vaca was proposing.
"You can't be serious," spluttered de Uragon. "We can't just let them raid a world." For once, José had to agree with his commanding officer.
"And why not?"
"These are our worlds! Our people! The people we are sworn to protect!"
"And how do we protect them?" de Vaca demanded. "Sitting here, always on the defensive, swatting at minor Orkish thrusts like flies? We'll never stop the Orks that way. We'll never even find the bulk of their strength."
"We could look…" said de Loragro.
"How? Scout-ships?" de Vaca said contemptuously. "Search the galaxy with a fine-toothed comb? It's a galaxy! There are a million uninhabited star-systems for every inhabited star-system! It would take aeons to search it all!"
"We have to protect our people!" cried de Uragon.
"How do we best protect our people? Sitting here? Or letting some fall, so we can follow the monster back to its lair and kill it, so it cannot hurt the rest?"
"What, and just sacrifice the chosen few?" said de Uragon with an aristocrat's contempt. "We are honour-bound to their protection. Are you a lord of Naranjomundo or a mercenary?"
De Uragon and de Vaca almost came to blows. The King of Lions himself had to separate the Brother-Marshals of his First and Third Marches from a duel.
In the end, loath as they were to do it, they took de Vaca's advice. They had little choice. Maybe, with the Legion splintered into cohorts, they could bat away every thrust along the Imperium's entire far eastern frontier. But with the whole Legion gathered in one place, they could not. They were simply too many Orkish thrusts at once, simultaneously, tens of thousands of light-years apart. The Conquerors could not be everywhere.
Therefore, on one luckless planet, a Space Marine Strike Cruiser of the V Legion left a series of spy pict-casters and auspices concealed on the rocky surfaces of asteroids tumbling through the void. Then the cruiser retreated. When the Orks came to ravage a Naranjomundan World, she did not interfere.
It went against José's every instinct as a Conqueror officer to let the Greenskins rampage as they wished. He was a man of aristocratic blood of the Naranjomundan Worlds. It was the lower classes' lot to serve their social superiors. In return, it was the upper classes' lot to protect them.
José knew well the harsh necessity that had forced the King of Lions to take this course. It would serve the people better, in the long term, for the Conquerors to follow the Orks home, so that they could destroy their base, wipe them out, and thus stop them from launching attacks in the future. Even so, every fibre of his being demanded that he mount his jetbike, take up his bolter and Power Lance, and ride down the Orks until none remained to lay their filthy green hands on the people he was sworn to protect.
He knew his duty, however. Bitter as it was, he did not move. In his mind, he swore a bloody oath to the people he and his brothers were letting down. They would be liberated from the Orks. Or, if they could not be liberated, they would be avenged.
Rodrigo de Vaca's tactic indeed bore fruit. The Conquerors followed the Orkish slave-raiders back to their base: a star-system which was not marked on any Imperial charts as inhabited, two-thousand light-years beyond the frontier of the Imperium.
The entire war-fleet of the Conquerors dropped out of Warp far from the star, in the system's distant Kuiper Belt, six-hundred Astronomical Units away, so as to avoid detection. On-board the starship which José de Carval travelled on in ordinary times—the Battle Barge Lionlance, not the Claw of de Leon—the sensorium reported back from the starship's telescopes that there were no rocky planets in this star-system, just a bunch of gas giants. The closest-in gas giant was one Astronomical Unit from the star, that is, the same distance as Terra's orbit from Sol. The furthest-out was thirty Astronomical Units, thrice as far as Saturn, or six times the orbit of Jupiter. The four gas giant planets had some moons, but the auspices had done transmission spectroscopy and identified that none of the moons had an atmosphere, so they obviously could not be inhabited.
The vile Orks were not dissimilar to humans in some ways, much as any Space Marine would loathe to admit it. The Greenskins did, at least, require rocky planets with breathable air. They could not walk on gas giants.
So where were they?
"I still don't see where the Greenskins are bringing all these slaves they've been taking," grumbled Brother-Commander Mateo de Almagro, who commanded the 2nd Chapter of José's 24th Brigade. "Are we sure we've got the right system?"
"It would be quite something if de Vaca's damn fool plan betrayed our people all for nothing," said Brother-Commander Hernan de Bivandas, with a scowl.
Personally, José shared de Bivandas's sentiment, but did not say it aloud. As commanding officer, he felt, he ought to set an example.
"They're here," said Brother-Commander José de Osilla confidently. 'Little José', the men called him, which was unfair—he was actually taller than José de Carval, he was just lower in rank. "The Claw of de Leon's sensorium is better than ours. They might have seen something we didn't."
"Or they might not," said de Bivandas.
"Trust in the king," said Little José. "He wouldn't have agreed to this if it wasn't going to work. He's never led us wrong before."
"Of course I trust the king," said de Bivandas. "I just don't trust that slime de Vaca who's been misleading him."
"My lords—"
"Oh, and you think our gene-sire is easily led, do you?" said Little José, purpling. "The King of Lions, a son of the Emperor, beloved by all, is just a plaything in de Vaca's hands?"
"My lords!"
They stopped. Everyone turned to look at the one who had spoken. The man—a mortal man in his sixties with a grizzled beard, the very image of an old spaceman—was undaunted by dozens of transhuman Space Marines' attention. José knew him: Lieutenant Roberto Fuentes, chief auspex officer, head of the starship's sensorium. He had seen him a thousand time before. He had never heard him sound as frazzled as this.
"Forgive the interruption, my lords," said Lieutenant Fuentes. "Gonzalez, magnify the vid-cast from Lens 3-2-A." Gonzalez, a young spaceman who could not have been over twenty, looked a little confused. Fuentes added, kindly: "That's the one of the Lionlance's exterior lenses pointing at the furthest-out gas giant."
Gonzalez obeyed. The vid-cast of the largest gas giant planet and its moons grew bigger. The moons were big ones, each a few hundred kilometres across. They were dwarfed by the planet itself: a great yellow world, twice the mass of Jupiter, and with glorious rings.
Fuentes pointed. "Focus on that moon."
The vid-cast grew still bigger, and bigger, and bigger.
Fuentes's voice was shaking. "That's no moon."