by Andy Hoare
Lucian felt an itch on the back of his neck and looked to the projection, seeing that Luneberg’s fleet had completed its arc and was now pursuing the rogue trader ships, maintaining a range of eighty kilometres and closing.
‘Trim mains by ten,’ he ordered the helm, watching as the Chasmatan fleet closed even further. This was a game of cat and mouse on a grand scale, and by the Emperor, he loved it. ‘Forty to starboard if you please.’
The Oceanid began a graceful turn, Lucian watching the holo as the Chasmatans followed hard on his fleet’s tail. What they did not appear to be paying attention to, as Lucian had counted on them not doing, was the position of the alien fleet.
Lucian let out an exultant whoop as the Oceanid and her attending ships swept across the fore of the tau vessels’ formation. He watched, as they came into visual range, his gaze fixed on their prow-mounted turrets, which turned wildly, seeking to acquire the Oceanid in their sights. They failed; as Lucian had gambled they would, the three rogue trader cruisers passing out of the most deadly portion of the aliens’ field of fire before a single shot could be fired.
As his ship powered away from the tau fleet, he saw the flash Lucian had hoped and prayed would follow his passing. It was, he knew without even looking to the holograph, the aliens opening fire with their prow-mounted weapons, directly at Luneberg’s vessels as they crossed the T with their fleet. Lucian knew that the ships of both fleets were configured in such a manner that such a formation should prove mutually destructive.
He knew he had been correct as he watched a number of the icons representing Luneberg’s escorts fall out of formation. Reams of data scrolled by each, Lucian seeing that the damage wrought upon the smaller ships was such that they would be left dead in space, if their crew were lucky.
Meanwhile, however, the two cruisers of Luneberg’s fleet had reached the optimum point at which to open fire, and did so at exactly the moment the Admiralty Staff textbooks told their captains they should. Lucian watched, his breath caught in his throat, as the moment of truth finally arrived.
Nothing happened.
Lucian slammed both palms down on the arms of his command throne, his laughter filling the bridge. ‘I knew it!’
Brielle smiled demurely to herself as she realised the trick her father had just pulled. He had, she saw, gambled that Luneberg’s vessels were outfitted with weapons provided to them by the tau, as the orbital station at Mundus Chasmata had been. Furthermore, he had surmised, again correctly, that the tau weapons would not fire upon their own, leaving Luneberg’s vessels suddenly helpless at the crucial point in their confrontation.
He was a wily old bastard; she had to give him that, but he hadn’t foreseen this. She tapped a code into the communications readout beside her command throne.
‘This,’ she said aloud, hitting the key labelled ‘Transmit’, ‘is for the greater good.’
Lucian watched from the starboard viewing port as explosions blossomed across the lengths of Luneberg’s two cruisers. He had seen that the Borialis Defensor was equipped with xenos-supplied weapons when he had passed her earlier, and realised instantly that these were the same, high velocity projectile weapons that had been unleashed against him by the Chasmatan orbital. He had gambled upon their not firing on their own, but something else entirely was occurring here.
A dozen points of rapidly expanding orange studded the length of both enemy vessels, the exact locations, he knew, of the alien weaponry. Luneberg had sought to play them all – the rogue traders and the tau both – for suckers, but appeared to have been played himself.
The Borealis Defensor listed to port, her captain, Lucian guessed, attempting desperately to manoeuvre his vessel out of the alien ships’ kill zone. The other cruiser responded by opening up her engines, the enormous power building inexorably to propel her forwards and away from danger.
Neither vessel had even the slightest chance of escape, however, for they were firmly trapped within the aliens’ most deadly fire arc. The multiple, prow-mounted turrets on each of the five vessels turned as one, tracking the nameless cruiser as she attempted in vain to pull away. The muzzle of each spat blue fire, the hyper-velocity projectiles propelled across space in the blink of an eye.
The cruiser was struck to starboard, amidships, a line of explosions blossoming across its spine. Even larger explosions appeared on the vessel’s port flank, the projectiles having passed entirely through its vast bulk.
Lucian stood speechless, too stunned even to order his helmsman to steer away from the almost tragically uneven battle. Violet plasma geysered from the cruiser’s exit wounds, lending it the appearance of some gargantuan sea creature bleeding its guts into the churning ocean. A series of secondary explosions spread within the dying vessel, and its ravaged midsection bowed as fires danced along its length, fed white-hot by the ship’s rapidly escaping air.
The fate of the first cruiser sealed, the tau vessels turned their attention to the Borealis Defensor.
‘Hard to port, full power to mains!’ Lucian snapped out of his trance as the blazing wreck of the first cruiser drifted from his view. With the aliens intent on Luneberg’s flagship, he saw only one way of ending this in anything like a favourable position.
‘Comms!’ he shouted, the interference-laden ship-to-ship channel bursting to life. ‘Fairlight, Rosetta, this is Oceanid!’
‘Go ahead, Father, I read you,’ came back Brielle’s reply.
Then silence.
‘Korvane?’ Lucian said, looking across to the communications servitor. ‘Korvane, do you read me?’
The only answer was the angry howl of the open communications channel.
The Rosetta shook violently beneath Korvane’s feet, the scream of twisting steel audible from somewhere far below decks.
‘What the hell was that? Damage report, now!’ bellowed Korvane, filled with a sudden dread. The sound had come from a part of his ship from which no such sound should ever come, even in the event of major battle damage. His gaze raced across the banks of data-screens clustered around the bridge, each choked with reams of rapidly scrolling figures.
Before he could even begin to decipher the data however, a second explosion sounded from the guts of his vessel, the bridge lights cutting out, leaving only the illumination that came from the static-filled screens.
‘Where’s that report?’ he called, standing, and grabbing the nearest bridge officer, a junior rating, by the collar. ‘You, go find out what’s happening to my ship!’
Another explosion sounded, this time even deeper in the Rosetta’s innards. Korvane knew immediately that it was the drive section and his fears were confirmed a moment later as the ship began to list severely to port.
‘Damage control parties!’ Korvane ordered. ‘Get the secondaries on line, now!’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied a hooded junior tech-adept, hauling open an access hatch in the deck plate, and clambering in to the cable-choked crawlspace.
Korvane experienced a moment of utter helplessness, the worst feeling a captain could ever have. Then, by the grace of the Emperor, the banks of screens flickered, went dead, and then awoke entirely, the machine spirit deep within the Rosetta’s cogitation banks reawakening them.
He strode to the main bank, leaning over the command lectern and gripping its edge hard as he felt the artificial gravity fluctuate. For an instant, he stumbled as the gravitic generators fought to maintain their normal output, their force doubling before returning to something resembling their normal level. He fought to concentrate on the endless figures scrolling across the main screen, suddenly gaining an inkling into what had happened.
Isolating the data committed by the Rosetta’s main bank augur array, Korvane reviewed the minute immediately preceding the explosion. Luneberg’s vessels had closed in on the tau fleet, but their weapons had failed to fire upon their targets, that much was clear. More data scrolled
across the screen, until, there! A signal had burst across local space and Luneberg’s turrets had detonated.
So too had something deep within his own vessel.
‘Sir!’ A shout came from a rating in the bridge pit. ‘Sir, damage control parties report fires on decks seven through nineteen, fore, spreading fast!’
‘Damn it,’ he cursed. ‘Get me–’
Another explosion rocked the Rosetta, the deck plate buckling beneath Korvane’s feet. The force threw him bodily against the main console bank, slamming the breath from his lungs and leaving him winded. He collapsed to the floor, rolling over and gasping to draw breath.
As he did so however, his lungs burst in agony as they drew in hot fumes, the stink of burning cables assaulting his senses. Coughing violently, he looked to the open access hatch in the middle of the bridge, from which a fountain of flames was erupting. He staggered to his feet, crossed the deck and hauled shut the metal blast hatch. His hands were burned as they closed on the superheated metal, but he gritted his teeth and slammed the hatch down, the flames spilling around its base for an instant, before they died.
‘Damage control!’ he bellowed, slamming his fist upon the nearest intercom plate, praying it still functioned. ‘Damage control to the bridge!’ He looked around the nightmarish scene. Thick, black smoke choked the space, sparks spitting from consoles and servitors both, while banks of static-filled data-screens provided the only, flickering, source of illumination.
For an instant, the smoke cleared and Korvane caught sight of the scene through the main viewing port. The Rosetta was listing drastically, and was drifting well out of station. She was moving, he saw with stark horror, right across the bows of the tau vessels. They were supposed to be on the same side, but he was filled with the sudden realisation that the alliance might well have been revoked in the light of his father’s actions against the aliens. Would they respect the pact he had made with Droon?
His answer came an instant later, as the turrets of the nearest of the tau vessels rotated towards the stricken Rosetta. He saw with a rush of elation that, somehow, his vessel’s shields remained raised, and were in fact holding strong at near full capacity. The tau vessel evidently saw this too, for it held fire, not wasting its shots.
Korvane watched in mute fascination as armoured blast doors opened along the tau vessel’s flanks. Silhouetted against the pure, blue light that shone forth from within were rows upon rows of armoured figures.
As the distance between the two vessels closed to less than five hundred metres, the figures leapt into sudden movement, blue jets at their backs and ankles bursting into life and propelling them into space.
Korvane stood transfixed, barely noticing the damage control servitor stomping passed him, great jets of fire retardant gas spraying from the extinguisher units that replaced its arms. As the figures closed, he could see that they were some form of heavily armed and armoured suit, evidently built for extra-vehicular activity. What he could see were essentially torsos occupying the suits’ central masses; small, head-like blocks perched atop them. The arms were great clamps, intended, he saw immediately, to attach themselves to any available structure, and hang on while the two great weapons mounted under each clamp burned through any but the most resistant hull. Upon the suits’ backs were mounted complex manoeuvring jets, smaller clusters of which were also visible at the ankles and shoulders. He had never before seen their like, and two great waves were heading straight for his bridge.
Tracking their inevitable course snapped Korvane out of his shock. Praying that the communications arrays still functioned, he staggered back to the main command lectern, coughing as the powdery spray filling his bridge seared his already damaged lungs. He punched the console, awakening its machine spirit, and scanned the readouts for an open channel. He found one.
‘Brielle!’ he called, knowing that the ship-to-ship channel was open and that his stepsister’s vessel was nearby. ‘Listen, Brielle, I need you to–’
‘Brielle?’ he turned the dial, boosting the signal, and was greeted by an explosion of angry static. ‘Brielle, if you can hear this transmission, this is Rosetta, Brielle. This is Korvane. I’m crippled, and I have multiple fast moving class nines inbound on my bridge. If you can hear me, Brielle, I need you to close to point defence range… Brielle?’
‘Damn it!’ he cursed, certain that the channel was open and that his stepsister should have been able to hear his transmission, and to reply to it. He looked once more to the viewer, seeing that the tau suits were half way across the gulf between the two vessels.
Just one chance, he thought, activating the intercom plate. ‘Torpedo deck, this is your captain. Do you receive?’ The intercom hissed and howled for a moment, before a voice replied, ‘My lord? Yes sir, this is Second Under-Technician Kaerk, sir, the crew chief’s dead sir, but I–’
‘Chief Kaerk,’ Korvane replied, promoting the man on the spot for his simple act of answering his master’s voice. ‘Listen to me carefully Kaerk. What is the status of the torpedo?’
‘Sir?’ the voice replied, the noise of a crash sounding before it returned. ‘It’s in tube one sir, as it always is. Should I–’
‘Good!’ replied Korvane, offering a brief but heartfelt prayer of thanks to the God-Emperor of Mankind. ‘Do you have fire control?’
‘Last thing the chief did sir, before he… was awaken the torpedo’s spirit… said it looked like it might finally get its day!’
Thank the Emperor for the non-commissioned ranks, Korvane thought. ‘Listen Kaerk, I want you to launch the torpedo, on a ten second fuse. That’s all, do you understand?’
‘Launch the torpedo sir? Launch “The” torpedo?’
‘Yes! Now!’
‘But it’s the only one we’ve–’
‘Launch it now or Emperor help me I’ll–’ the intercom sputtered, an explosion sounding in the distant torpedo deck and cutting the connection dead.
That’s it then, thought Korvane. The torpedo had been his last chance, a last chance that the Rosetta had been hauling around the galaxy for over a decade; and now, he sighed, he would never fire it. He watched as the first of the tau suits closed on the wide viewing port, briefly debating with himself whether to lower the armoured blast shield. Little point, he decided, they’d be through it in seconds; it would only delay the inevitable.
Better to die with his ship, he decided, straightening his jacket and standing proud at the command lectern; as all good captains should.
The first of the tau suits closed on the armoured glass of the viewing port, its mighty clamps attaching themselves to protrusions on the vessel’s outer hull. The under-slung weapons fired into life, blinding white light arcing from the short, rectangular barrel of each.
It began to cut, when Korvane felt the Rosetta lurch violently to starboard, causing him to stumble and grab hold of the lectern to maintain his balance. The movement was not that of the vessel suffering another explosion, but something else entirely, something he had not experienced since he had stood upon the deck of his father’s vessel and watched in childlike wonder as the Oceanid unleashed upon a xenos vessel a fearsome torpedo attack!
The last torpedo in the Arcadius fleet ploughed through the dense formation of tau attackers, sending them scattering in every direction. Korvane barked the laughter of the insane, the laughter of those who know they have won, even as they welcome death. He locked his gaze with the single lens of the tau suit as it cut through the armoured glass, great gobbets of superheated, liquid material splashing across the metal deck of the bridge.
‘Five,’ he counted, watching the huge form of the torpedo as it dived into space.
‘Four.’ He saw manoeuvring jets flaring into life across the flank of the tau ship, less than half a kilometre distant.
‘Three.’ The suits turned, to race for their mother ship. He knew they would never make it.
> ‘Two.’ The pressure on the bridge dropped suddenly as the attacker breached the glass.
‘One. Emperor bless you, Crew Chief Kaerk.’
The torpedo detonated, scouring the space between the Rosetta and the tau vessel, burning the surface of Korvane’s vessel, instantly vaporising every last one of the tau battlesuits, raking the Rosetta with the cleansing fires of oblivion.
‘Try again, damn it!’ Lucian paced the length of his bridge, desperate for any response from his son’s vessel. His earlier elation at having outwitted Luneberg turning to helplessness as he saw the Rosetta flounder, wracked by internal explosions.
‘Helm!’ Lucian called. ‘Bring us alongside the Rosetta. Operations, all available hands prepare to receive survivors.’
The Oceanid ploughed on, the helmsman bringing her about to approach the Rosetta from astern. The manoeuvre would bring Lucian’s ship into close proximity with the alien fleet, but he had no choice.
Meanwhile, he looked on as the alien vessels turned their attention from the first of the two Chasmatan cruisers to the Borealis Defensor. Luneberg’s flagship was attempting to escape, but the aliens were evidently not about to let that happen. Four of the five tau vessels began a slow turn to starboard, their intention obviously to bring their prow-mounted weapons to bear against the Borealis Defensor’s rear section. The fifth alien vessel, Lucian saw, veered off to port, closing on the Rosetta.
‘Best speed, Mister Raldi, the Rosetta needs us,’ he said, willing, if it were required, to put his own vessel between the tau ship and his son’s. ‘Port weapons, prepare for firing.’
As the Oceanid closed on the Rosetta, Lucian watched as the four alien ships caught up with Luneberg’s flagship. Prow turrets spitting blue flame, the invisible, hyper-velocity projectiles lanced across space and slammed through the vessel’s shields. A second salvo tore a ragged line of punctures across her armoured drive section, breaching a secondary plasma conduit at a dozen points, superheated gases venting into space.