Of Lions and Beasts

Part III

By author Perfidious Albion

Buried deep down in the World-Doom, two superhuman figures faced off. One was a tall handsome man of heroic build and lordly bearing, his face hidden behind a red helm in the shape of a roaring lion. His enemy was even taller, seven metres high against three and a quarter: a gargantuan, tusked monster in Power Armour of green and bronze, every bit as masterful and hand-made as the Power Armour of the man. The King of Lions, Fifth Primarch of the Imperium of Man, faced off against the greatest Ork he had ever faced: Barzum Shrakuluk, Warlord of the World-Doom, the colossal planet-smashing battle-station in which they now stood.

The giant Ork lifted his weapon, a Power Axe as tall as two Primarchs dripping with the blood of thousands of de Leon's sons. Then he swept it to one side, to hold one-armed and pointing skyward in his right hand, as if in invitation:

You want to kill me? Here I am. Come, then, if you are not too scared.

Hernan de Leon answered the challenge. Man and Ork began the duel that would decide the battle of the World-Doom.

With a cry of rage for his slain sons, the King of Lions sent forth an enormous blast of scorching plasma at the giant Ork. Long ago, he had converted the entire right arm of his suit of Power Armour into a massive plasma cannon. The price was high: as long as he was armoured, that arm would never hold a blade. De Leon paid that price willingly for the gain in firepower. He used that firepower now. A normal plasma cannon would roast a tank. This plasma cannon was several times the size and wrought by the Primarch's own hands. It could melt its way through two fortified walls, one after the other.

The burst of plasma struck Shrakuluk straight in the chest. De Leon's aim was perfect. The great Ork hurtled off his feet and vanished from sight in a fiery explosion. De Leon smiled, satisfied.

…briefly.

Dozens of metres behind, a towering figure stood up. The giant Ork's armour was singed. Some of the chest plate was melted. That was all. It would take more than this to kill the Warlord of the World-Doom.

Frowning, de Leon fired again. Barzum Shrakuluk dodged the blow. For such an enormous Ork he moved with surprising grace and speed. Ducking and twirling around plasma blasts, the huge Ork Warlord wove his way back towards de Leon. He was aided by the fact that their duel was happening in the midst of a cavernous theatre-like chamber consumed in battle between Shrakuluk's Orks and the Conquerors. Plenty of obstacles were getting in the way.

The Ork's strategy was able. The Primarch was no fool to fail to counter it. Seeing this, and recognising the disadvantage with which it presented him, de Leon backed out from the great chamber where he and his Conquerors had been lured into this trap with the false appearance of a coolant pipe worth sabotaging. In an open space, de Leon hoped, his plasma cannon would be more useful.

Shrakuluk, undeterred, pursued him. De Leon did not know what to think of the fact that his mighty opponent was utterly unafraid.

Out in a corridor of the World-Doom, Primarch and Ork Warlord clashed once more. De Leon fired. Shrakuluk lifted his Power Axe and interposed it between himself and the plasma cannon's barrel. The plasma blast struck the hissing, crackling Power Field around the axe-head… and faded in a burst of intense heat, without striking Shrakuluk.

De Leon paled. Shrakuluk grinned. Now it was the Ork's turn to go on the offensive.

With a roar, Shrakuluk leapt forward, propelled by massive muscular legs longer than a Primarch was tall. In a single mighty leap, in less than a second he crossed the forty-metre distance between himself and de Leon. Two-handed, the giant Ork brought down his Power Axe in a blow of such strength it would have split the Primarch in two pieces.

De Leon danced aside, just in time, as the Power Axe slashed down through the corridor's floor and out the other side. That elegant twist bought de Leon the moment he needed. The plasma cannon of his right arm fired a shot which Shrakuluk dodged. At the same time he hefted Kingslance, the Power Lance in his left hand, and scored a blow on Shrakuluk's left arm.

The giant Ork hissed with pain. First blood went to Hernan de Leon.

But Shrakuluk was not defeated. His master-crafted armour protected him from the worst of the blow. De Leon had only been able to cut into his elbow, at the joint between the armour-plates of upper and lower arm, and quite shallowly. It had taken exquisite speed of arm and mental calculation, of the sort that only a Primarch was capable of, to do even that much.

Snarling, the giant Ork twisted aside from another plasma shot at the same moment as he kicked out at de Leon. From this close, it was impossible to dodge. The force of the kick from a gigantically muscular, seven-metre-tall Ork Warlord took de Leon off his feet and tossed him back aside—a Primarch treated like a toy thrown by an angry child.

De Leon hit the ground, hard. He spat blood. His belly, where he had been struck, was ablaze with pain. He had fought and bested many enemies. None of them had hurt like the strength of the giant Ork Warlord's armoured kick to the stomach. Were it not for his Power Armour, he knew, son of the Emperor or not, the force of that kick would have torn him in two.

Second blood went to Barzum Shrakuluk.

With true killer's instinct, the Ork Warlord did not hesitate to take advantage of his position. Before de Leon even hit the ground, he wrenched his Power Axe out from the floor it had driven straight through and leapt towards the still-in-midair Primarch. After hitting the ground since suffering that tremendous kick, Hernan de Leon had less than a second to catch his breath before a giant Ork was hurtling towards him, Power Axe bared.

He was too far away for Kingslance to be within reach. Even in melee, the King of Lions preferred to fight from range, hence his preference for Power Lances; but against the Power Axe of the giant Ork Warlord, even Kingslance seemed short. De Leon could not out-range an opponent more than twice his height. His enemy's weapon had greater reach than his own. Nor could he shoot Shrakuluk with the plasma cannon. The Ork held his weapon in front of him, Power Field ready to block it.

Both de Leon's weapons were ineffective. If de Leon did not think of a solution in that one second, he was going to die.

Thinking quickly in spite of his pain, de Leon fired his plasma cannon, not at Shrakuluk but at a point on the wall of the corridor between them. A burst of light and vaporised metal filled the air. It did not harm Shrakuluk, of course. It would not have hurt de Leon either. He barely felt a tingle of heat on his arm. And he had no doubt that the Ork's Power Armour would be thicker than his. But the eruption of shards, droplets and gaseous metal got in Shrakuluk's eyes for milliseconds. The Primarch's superhuman intellect ran the calculation swiftly, precisely targeting the shot so as to harm Shrakuluk's vision at just the right moment to let de Leon—still winded from the kick—clamber out of the way. Without de Leon in the way, the momentum of Shrakuluk's great leap continued to carry him a hundred metres further down the corridor.

De Leon seized his opportunity. Standing up, he coolly levelled his plasma cannon and fired one, two, three shots at the Ork Warlord, who now had his back to him.

Shrakuluk roared with pain. The first shot made contact. So did the second. The third shot might have melted all the way through the thick plate of Power Armour on the giant Ork's back. It did not get the chance. Despite his pain, Shrakuluk managed to twist away from the shot, flinging himself to the floor and then launching himself back up with the jawdropping strength of his arms. With a bellow of rage, he was back on his feet and sprinting towards de Leon.

How he ran! The giant Ork's running was impressive beyond spectacle. The best mortal sprinters could run a hundred metres in ten seconds; an Astartes, perhaps half that; a Primarch, half again, maybe two seconds from a perfect starting position. The giant Ork dwarfed a Primarch. From a start face-down on the ground, he crossed a hundred metres in a second and a half. De Leon fired his plasma cannon. Shrakuluk blocked it with his Power Axe's head. De Leon fired. Shrakuluk blocked it again. No matter where de Leon pointed the gun, however swift and unpredictable he tried to be, Shrakuluk's reflexes were just too good. He could always bring his weapon to the right spot to block it.

Somehow, on his final shot, de Leon managed to get past the Power Axe with a sudden twist that almost wrenched his arm off. As ever, the Primarch's aim was preternaturally true. The giant Ork spun backwards, pinwheeling in the air, and struck a wall and smashed right through it. But soon the Ork was back on his feet and charging with death on his mind.

Thus they fought for an hour, the Warlord of the World-Doom and the King of Lions. De Leon sought to fight from a distance; Shrakuluk sought to fight close.

Like all things, it did not and could not last forever.

Eventually Barzum Shrakuluk's axe struck a little wide as Hernan de Leon cunningly contorted his body out of the way. The Power Axe sank into the wall. De Leon seized it in one hand before Shrakuluk could and tossed it aside, as far as he could. The axe was twice as tall as de Leon was, but he was a son of the Emperor, a creature of the Warp as all Primarchs are. His strength was far beyond what the mere size of his body implied. The great Power Axe flew hundreds of metres down the corridor and out of sight.

Now the King of Lions held the advantage. With Kingslance in hand, he struck at the right knee of the Warlord of the World-Doom. At the same time, his right arm plasma cannon aimed at Shrakuluk's chest. He knew that Shrakuluk would move his torso to dodge the plasma blast, as he had many times before in this fight, and that would leave him perfectly positioned for Kingslance to pierce deep into his knee, all but severing the lower leg.

Only he did not.

Warlord Shrakuluk did not dodge the plasma blast. He did not even try. He dodged Kingslance instead, twisting his body to shift his right side forward so that his right arm could lunge forward as far as it could. Shrakuluk's huge, tree-trunk-like right arm grasped the handle of Kingslance. That meant he could not dodge the plasma cannon's blast. He let it hit him. When it did, the handle of Kingslance was gripped by two warriors: a Primarch and a seven-metre-tall Ork Warlord with strength beyond the strongest of Primarchs. Shrakuluk won.

Shrakuluk went flying back, scorched and thrown off his feet by the plasma blast; and Kingslance went flying with him, in his grip.

Fear, then, took Hernan de Leon. He fired his plasma cannon again. Again. Again, and again, and again. The Warlord lifted de Leon's own Power Lance. Its Power Field interfered with blasts of hot plasma as well as Shrakuluk's axe's did. In under a second, he closed in on de Leon and used de Leon's own lance to stab him in the shoulder.

De Leon cried out. Kingslance bit deep into his shoulder, exploiting the weakness of the joint between pauldron and rerebrace. The weapon he had made by his own hands was every whit as good as it always had been. His left arm hung uselessly at his side. He could not control it anymore.

De Leon pointed his right arm to fire; but now Barzum Shrakuluk was too close.

One punch from the giant Ork's gauntleted fist took de Leon in the face, smashing the king's teeth and the roaring lion face of his helmet. A punch from the other fist threw the plasma cannon off from its aim.

And the giant Ork seized de Leon's right arm in both hands, and with a mighty heave he ripped it off the shoulder.

Hernan de Leon screamed, screamed like he had never screamed before, not even when he had been bested by the Emperor. His arm was gone. Not just the massive plasma cannon that was his only weapon left, but the arm he had built it around, torn away by the sheer brute strength of the seven-metre-tall Ork Warlord.

Even now, with his weapons gone, one arm useless, one arm severed and in agony, Hernan de Leon tried to fight back, for the King of Lions was no coward. It was not enough. No Primarch could out-wrestle Barzum Shrakuluk, an Ork of twice Primarchical height and every bit as strong as was implied by that. The great Ork overpowered de Leon's legs, the only weapons he had yet remaining, and sat down, whistling.

"If you mean to kill me," de Leon spat at him, "get on with it."

"You do tempt me," Shrakuluk observed mildly. De Leon would never get over hearing an Ork talk in such a civilised voice… though the effect was ruined by the fact that Shrakuluk's whole body was spattered red with Primarchical blood. "But no, I think not."

"Not?" de Leon asked in confusion.

"You gave me a fight," said the Warlord of the World-Doom. "A fairly bad one, but a fight nonetheless, which is something I am unaccustomed to. Before you, I had yet to see any non-Ork offer me such pleasant occupation of my time. To be perfectly honest, you do not impress me much. Considering the capabilities of your body and mind, you could be greatly better than you are. The one who created you, on the other hand… he impresses me. Yes. He impresses very much."

"You know of the Emperor?"

Dozens, then hundreds of Conquerors ran around the corner. It must have taken them a while to catch up with their king's duel, for the Primarch and the Warlord both moved quickly. For a brief moment de Leon's heart soared, hoping for escape. Then he saw the higher-form Orks moving with them, outnumbering them dozens to one and led by a huge, grinning five-metre-tall Ork dripping with Astartes blood who must be a Warboss of the higher form. His heart sank down again. No wonder they had taken a while to reach him. They had been waging a running battle the whole time they sought him out.

De Leon's sons gasped with horror when they saw their mighty gene-sire bereft of weapons and with a severed arm. But there were too many Orks here. The Conquerors had not the strength to stage a rescue.

"Of course I know of your Emperor. I have been taking slaves from the worlds of your pitiful little species for years—Orks just don't like dull manual labour, you know, and someone has to do it for the World-Doom to be built. Not all of them were illiterate peasants. I know of your Emperor, I know of your Imperium, I know that if I let you go you'll run back to them like a whipped Gretchin. I know it all. In fact… I am counting on it."

The huge Ork lowered his faceplate and smiled. It was a ghastly, toothy grin.

"Run back to your father, boy. Go crying for his aid like the weakling you are. You were a disappointment. Others, made the same way as you, might not be. If I kill you now, they will never know that I exist. So I'll send you back, and let you raise the alarm that will make them come and fight me. I am going to invade your Naranjomundan Worlds. I would at least like to see some worthy enemies arrive before I finish winning. Bring me your brothers and sisters. It might be more of a challenge killing them than it would be, killing you."

The Ork Warlord laughed, and the Orks laughed with him. Shrakuluk's rich, aristocratic voice, shockingly humanlike except that it was too deep and strong to be human, melded with the snorting, bestial cackles of his underlings. Tears of hatred and humiliation pricked at de Leon's eyes. He fought them back. He would not show weakness, not ever, especially not now.

"You have not defeated us," said Hernan de Leon, bravely spitting defiance at the monster that held him in its power. "Maybe I will die today—" he tried to ignore the way his sons cried out in denial and expectant grief at that— "but my Legion will survive, and they will destroy this wretched battle-station."

"Will they?" Barzum Shrakuluk smiled his ghastly smile. He reached to his hip and took a small holographic projector. "Observe."

Icons popped up, showing recordings of the void battle outside from the World-Doom's perspective. The King of Lions was pleased at first, seeing his starships destroy the Orkish war-fleet and batter the World-Doom.

Then the Star-Torch finished charging. It fired. In a single shot, the Claw of de Leon was scorched out of the sky. In a millisecond, the lives of all of the hundred-thousand men and women aboard were ended.

De Leon felt the knowledge of his people's deaths like a physical blow. The word came involuntarily from the Primarch's lips. "No…"

"Oh yes," Shrakuluk breathed, savouring the moment. "That is only the beginning. Now witness the true firepower of the Star-Torch of the World-Doom. Behold my great creation."

The holographic projection went on. The Conquerors' war-fleet fled. The World-Doom pursued them. They reached the seeming safety of the moon; de Leon winced, instantly deducing what was coming, for he knew the Orkish runes that named this device, and he also knew that Shrakuluk would not be still showing him the recording if it ended happily for his people. Then the moon blew up in a spectacular fiery explosion, the likes of which the galaxy had not seen since the last great Eldar-Orkish wars before mankind even evolved.

A moon. A moon the size of Terra, obliterated in a single blow.

Truly, the full power of the Star-Torch of the World-Doom was terrible to behold.

" 'You have not defeated us'," the giant Ork quoted. He did not comment further. The mockery was obvious enough.

De Leon did not honour that with a reply. "You are a fool to let me go," he said instead. "The Imperium will reinforce me. Yes, my brothers and sisters will come. And we will crush you and your empire in the dirt where you xenos beasts belong."

"My empire? Oh, you flatter me." The Warlord laughed again. "I do not rule the Empire of Ullanor. That would be Urrlak Urruk, our esteemed Overlord, to whom all Ullanor Orks owe allegiance, myself included. He is the mightiest Ork in a million years, as far beyond me as your Emperor is beyond you. You Primarchs are not a match for me. You do not even begin to be a match for him."

"Then if he is the ruler of you higher-form Orks… Ullanor Orks… how can you…?"

"I am no slave of the Overlord as you humans are slaves of your Emperor," Barzum Shrakuluk snapped. "I am Warlord, master of Warbosses, lord of fifty-billion Orks. The Overlord is strongest. The Warlords defer when we must. That is all. I am nonetheless a ruler in my own right. I am wholly capable of declaring and waging war upon your Imperium, myself and my Orks. The Overlord is not involved. Not unless he chooses to be."

De Leon realised he had hit a sore spot. Shrakuluk clearly resented his subordination to this Urrlak Urruk, though equally clearly he was too afraid of him to fight back against it.

Still, he was pleased at what he had found out. If Warlord Shrakuluk and his sub-empire of Ullanor Orks were capable of waging war against the Imperium without the whole Empire of Ullanor being drawn in, that was a good thing. The Warlord of the World-Doom alone was bad enough. If the entire empire attacked at once, he feared, the Imperium would have no chance of survival.

Shrakuluk collected himself back to calmness. "Run back to your Imperium," he sneered. "Let us see whether your brothers and sisters are less weaklings than yourself. But I don't want you running amok on my battle-station on your way out, so…"

Shrakuluk picked him up, chest and belly in his grip like adamantium, and twisted.

Hernan de Leon's back snapped like a twig.

"Go, then," sneered the Warlord of the World-Doom, tossing the screaming Primarch to his sons as easily as a child would throw a toy that they no longer found entertaining. "Get out of my sight, you little worm. Go and bring me my war."

Sombrely, the high officers of the V Legion gathered aboard the Battle Barge Nobleman's Duty. She was a mere ordinary Battle Barge twelve kilometres long, no fitting flagship for a Space Marine Legion. But with the Gloriana-class Claw of de Leon fallen, and many other of the Legion's great battleships besides, she was the best left. More than half of the V Legion's vessels that could be classed as battleships—starships fit for fighting in the Wall-of-Battle—had perished in the fires of the Star-Torch, that impossible weapon for which there was no defence and no answer.

One-hundred and thirty-thousand Conquerors had ventured out to fight the Ullanor Orks (as they were now known to be called). Fifty-thousand Conquerors had returned. Among the encomendados the numbers were even worse: of more than a billion, barely a hundred-million had come back alive. Even they had survived only because the Orks had withdrawn, at Warlord Shrakuluk's command, to enable their retreat. The Orks had not fired a single shot at the aerospacecraft which had been carrying the retreating Conquerors and their serf-soldiers away from the World-Doom. By then, all of those losses had happened already. In the encomendados' case, most of the deaths had happened before they even landed on the World-Doom.

The King of Lions was here, back among his sons, but unconscious. He had passed out from shock and blood loss shortly after the monster broke his back. He had lost an arm too, after all, severed by the same monster. Even a Primarch, a superhuman child of the immortal Emperor of Mankind, could only take so much.

Two thirds of an Astartes Legion dead. Hundreds of millions of dead encomendados. The majority of the Legion's battleships destroyed. A Gloriana-class battleship obliterated in a single shot. The human slaves not rescued, not even one. Complete failure to achieve the objective. A Primarch, bested in battle by a single foe, mutilated, nearly killed, and only alive because the enemy chose to let him.

Their gene-father had promised them that this would be the moment they gained the glory long denied, the moment they proved wrong all those naysayers who spoke ill of their Legion. He had told them: "But take heart, my sons! I have absolute faith in your will to conquer, to seize victory. We are the Conquerors. All we see, we conquer. These higher Orks will not be the end of that. We, yes we the Conquerors, shall defeat the greatest ever enemy of the Imperium! We shall win glory beyond imagining, and prove to all our naysayers that there are none—none!—who are alike in might to the Fifth Legion!"

Instead, they had just suffered the worst defeat in the history of the Imperium. By a million light-years. It was not even close.

Every Conqueror left alive was shell-shocked by the experience.

"We have to bring other Legions. The Astropaths. Send a signal," said Diego de Uragon. In the Primarch's unconsciousness, the Brother-Marshal of the First March had taken charge. Still, he spoke faintly, and notably not in imperative. He was as shell-shocked as everyone else.

"Which Legions?" asked Brother-Marshal de Loragro.

"All the Legions," said de Uragon. "And Terra, and Mars. The Mechanicum, the Titan Legions, the War Council, Imperial Army High Command, the Emperor. The entire Imperium must know. This will be war like nothing mankind has ever seen."