by Rob Sanders
As the cultists tried to climb out through the bay door, the grenades detonated, turning the interior into a thunderous bloodbath. Running towards a second lighter with two more grenades, Verletz found that the crazed troops within had cut the hydraulics and forced the bay door down with a crash. Rolling the grenades across the deck, however, the palatine blasted the charging cultists to a storm of shrapnel-mauled flesh.
Within the attack craft, striding through the meatshield of cultists, Verletz saw towering armoured forms. Nightmares in filthy red plate, bearing sigils that ached with the corruptive powers of the Maelstrom. For the Battle Sisters it was like being bathed in the malevolence of some unholy relic. Adepts and deck crew, meanwhile, were driven to distraction in the fearful presence of the traitors.
Bolt blasts stuttered from the interior of the attack craft, the expert aim of renegade Adeptus Astartes tearing Pontificals and their cover apart.
‘Send them back to oblivion!’ Verletz ordered, prompting Sisters of the Ebon Chalice to launch fiery streams into the attack craft from their heavy flamers. As Red Corsairs staggered from the inferno, writhed in flame, Verletz drew her pistols and blasted at the Chaos Space Marines, sending bolts through the sides of warped helms.
With more attack ships coming in to land, Lieutenant Nugent and his Pontificals seared a storm of las-beams into opening compartments. Those heretics that had escaped being cut to pieces ran at the Black Ship’s security forces like rabid animals. Running up the sides of cargo piles, the cultists leapt at the black-robed soldiers with wicked blades and improvised metal claws. Beating them back with the butts of their hellguns, the Pontificals turned their weapons back on the heretics and burned holes straight through chests and bellies. The charge had moved the storm troopers out into open ground again, however, a fact not lost on the emerging Red Corsairs, whose cursed bolts took helms from shoulders and blasted robed Pontificals back over the cargo.
Under Sister Superior Desiree’s instruction, Retributors moved up with heavy bolters and multi-meltas. With superheated blasts of energy, the Sisters obliterated plate and corrupted flesh to nothingness. Heavy bolt-rounds chewed through roaring renegades as they answered in kind with their belt-fed boltguns.
Suddenly a filthy red gauntlet grabbed Verletz by her vestments. Several renegade Space Marines advanced along the blasted remains of an attack ship to set upon the palatine. As Battle Sisters immediately ran to her rescue, two of the Red Corsairs put them down with savage blasts from their boltguns.
Verletz felt herself hauled up by the towering traitor. His plate wore the faded glory of an officer, while his helmless head was pallid, warped and withered. His lips were lined with hooks, while a tongue like a skinned snake writhed from the opening. It reached out for Verletz but the Battle Sister smacked it aside with disgust, the fingers of her gauntlet desperately going to work on slamming another magazine into the breach of a bolt pistol. With a grunt, the renegade smashed the palatine into the scorched side of an attack craft, knocking her senseless. The bolt pistol fell from her grip.
Nastasia Desiree came at the Red Corsairs, flanked by two Sisters Retributor armed with heavy boltguns. As the first renegade was blown back, his chest a mess of bloody impacts, the second took aim over the officer’s pauldron and blew the two Sisters away from their master. They could not save him from Sister Desiree, however, who swung for the Red Corsair as he aimed his bolt pistol at her. Smashing the heretic’s weapon to pieces with the short, falchion-like blade of her power sword, Desiree positioned herself for a back slash. The renegade looked down at his gauntlet, his tongue thrashing about. Black blood slurped to the deck where the Sister Superior had taken off a couple of digits. Launching himself forward, the renegade stamped the sole of his boot against Desiree’s chest, crunching her breastplate and sending the Battle Sister sliding across the deck.
‘Sargel, I presume,’ Adrianna Verletz said, coming back to her senses, her voice thick with disgust.
Sargel smashed the palatine back into the attack ship’s hull once more before tossing her across the platform. Sailing across several pallets of cargo, Verletz hit the side of an Adeptus Astra Telepathica security transport with merciless force.
Pushing herself up off the floor, she grimaced. The impact had stove in the side of her plate and broken several ribs. As Sargel the Sojourner strode across the deck towards Verletz, intent on finishing her off, the Red Corsair suddenly noticed the pin of a krak grenade that she was holding in the fingers of her gauntlet. He looked down to see the primed grenade she had mag-locked to his belt, but was too late to save himself. The renegade exploded, his plate and the decking shattered by the sharp detonation.
Pieces of him and his armour flew across the hangar, slapping against the side of orbital transports. Close enough to lose an arm and half his face, Sargel’s Red Corsairs compatriot was blasted off his feet.
Verletz cast her gaze across the hangar. Attack ships were still crashing to a stop, disgorging cultist mobs and heretic Space Marines. The enemy were trying desperately to push beyond the hangar, but the disciplined fire of the 133rd Pontificals held them back. Lighting up the hangar, converging streams of energy turned Red Corsairs into smouldering silhouettes. As they crashed to their knees, Preacher Langella swept forth with his Eviscerator blade, taking helms off shoulders with barbed sweeps of the weapon and stabbing it into armoured chests.
Nastasia Desiree, back on her feet, was ordering her Sisters Retributor back. Engulfing heretic mobs in walls of flame and hammering the armoured advance of Red Corsairs back with their heavy weapons, the Sisters backed through the hangar. While their defence was resolute, more attack ships arrived every minute, bolstering the numbers of the corrupt besiegers. It was only a matter of time before they were overwhelmed.
Picking her bolt pistol back up off the deck, Verletz saw a small mob of cultists swamp Lieutenant Nugent. Despite dropping three of the heretics in quick succession with point-blank blasts of his hellgun, the storm trooper officer went down under the weight of the assault. Hacking into his carapace with their cruel blades and hooking into his flesh with their metal claws, the cultists dragged him down into their madness. Blasting bolt after bolt into the mob from the recovered pistol, Verletz blew limbs from joints, and craters in the heretics’ chests. As the deck bucked beneath her, throwing her forward, the final bolt missed its mark and sparked off the hull of a landing Red Corsairs attack ship.
The palatine locked gazes with Sister Superior Desiree. The deck rumbled again and again. The Divine Imperative was being fired upon repeatedly, but this time the Black Ship wasn’t being mauled with cannon fire or lance streams.
‘Inquisitor?’ Verletz said over the vox, clutching her side. Over the channel she could hear the havoc on the bridge. ‘Inquisitor?’
‘The Slaughterfest,’ the inquisitor managed back down the vox. ‘She’s launched boarding torpedoes – port side aft.’
‘Palatine,’ Shipmaster Tyacke interrupted. ‘The ship is surrounded on all sides. The boarding actions seem concentrated on the lower decks.’
‘What the shipmaster means to say, Sister,’ Quant said, ‘is that they seem focused on the containment holds. We believe that they are intent on acquiring our precious cargo.’
Verletz’s inked lips curled into a snarl. She was not going to let that happen.
‘Preacher!’ she called across the gunfire of the hangar. ‘Take charge here.’
Preacher Langella acknowledged the palatine by pointing the gore-dripping chainblade of his Eviscerator at her. About him, Pontificals laid down a withering stream of supercharged las-beams at the arriving attack ships, cutting storming cultists to shreds. The Sisters of the Ebon Chalice meanwhile turned their multi-meltas upon the enemy arrivals, transforming heretics into a haze of liquefied flesh and Red Corsairs into mounds of smouldering slag. Where the fighting was up close it was bloody and merciless. The Tyrant’s heretic mob
s swarmed isolated Pontificals and tore them limb from limb, while the Chaos Space Marines smashed both Sisters and storm troopers into the deck with superhuman strength.
‘Sister Superior,’ Verletz called to Nastasia Desiree as she turned to leave. ‘Bring two squads – with me.’
Verletz dared not take too many Battle Sisters from the hangar defence. Sargel the Sojourner might have been dead but his followers kept coming and their feverish madness continued to unfold on the hangar deck. As Verletz, Desiree and the Battle Sisters jogged through the containment decks and down through the levels, the lamps bathing them in emergency red, storm trooper sentinels and Sisters on the station volunteered to accompany them. The palatine refused them all. The containment decks, with their cells and captive psykers, had to be secured. Besides, with Red Corsairs coming at them from every direction, it would not be long before such sentry points turned into gauntlets and bottlenecks for swarming cultists and the armoured renegades who loomed over them.
‘Pattern de-Lys,’ Desiree ordered as the Battle Sisters made their way portwards. Leaning their shoulders into heavy bolters, multi-meltas and heavy flamers, the Sisters Retributor filed at speed along the passageways. Adrianna Verletz reloaded her pistols while the Sister Superior led the way with her short, crackling blade. In aft sections, the Sisters could hear the shriek of chainswords, the crash of Adeptus Astartes bolt pistols and the whoosh of hellguns.
‘Security forces,’ Verletz called across the vox. ‘Report contacts.’
The palatine waited but all she could hear was the incessant sear of las-beams across the channels. As Desiree opened a bulkhead, debris from the corridor flew past them. Verletz felt the tug of the void as escaping air howled about them.
‘We have a hull breach,’ Desiree told her as the Sisters fell to a crouching halt. Beyond, venting pipes had their steam stolen by the purging atmosphere screaming by. It seemed not enough to endanger the ship, but still made Verletz feel lightheaded. Electrics showered sparks. The deck superstructure was mangled and in place of the corridor end hull section was the crumpled nose cone of a boarding torpedo. It was splattered red with paint and rust, its battered exterior decorated with fell sigils and skull symbols scratched into the surface.
‘Be ready,’ Sister Superior Desiree said to her Sisters as she advanced. With a suddenness that made the heart miss a beat, a renegade Space Marine launched himself at them. His gore-encrusted chainsword roared to a thrashing blur. The sound of the idling weapon had been hidden in the howl of escaping air. Wielded with blinding reflexes and power-armoured strength, the barbed weapon cleaved straight down through Nastasia Desiree, the chainsword cutting through the Sister Superior from the shoulder to the hip. One half of the Battle Sister sloughed messily away from the other, clattering to the floor in shredded plate.
The Red Corsair responsible for the butchery came forth through the bloody haze. His plate was a mottled pattern of old blood and the darkness of flaking red paint. Skulls clinked where they dangled on chains from his belt. His suit was covered in needle spikes and hooks fused to the plate, while symbols of ruinous reverence had been unceremoniously covered with the Tyrant’s mark. Two more renegade Space Marines rounded the corner and aimed fat bolt pistols down the corridor. Before the Retributors knew it, the Red Corsairs had blasted two of their Sisters back through their number.
‘Let them feel the Emperor’s judgement,’ Verletz ordered.
Heavy bolt-rounds from several weapons tore through the first of the Red Corsairs that had fired upon them. Recoiling from the impacts, the renegade’s desecrated plate was rapidly turned into a mangled mess. The second caught the sub-atomic stream vomited forth from a multi-melta and turned into a liquefied splatter of flesh and ceramite that became one with the corridor wall.
As the chainsword-wielding heretic swung for Verletz, the palatine ducked and rolled across her pauldron. Sparks showered about her as the chainsword chewed through the wall. As she rolled back to her footing, she clutched Nastasia Desiree’s power sword in her gauntlet. Rearing up, she brought the crackling weapon back to life and buried it in the renegade’s power pack. The foetid power systems of the Red Corsair’s suit began to die. He swung the thrashing blade of his chainsword back at Verletz but without power to his suit, the attack was clumsy and desperate. As the turn carried him round, the palatine’s bolt pistols had cleared their holsters. Hammering the Fleshmonger back with round after round, Verletz blasted bolts through the renegade’s heretic hearts.
A sudden impact threw the palatine forward towards the toppling Red Corsair. Another boarding torpedo had struck the Divine Imperative. Beyond, Verletz could hear the crash of the Black Ship’s gunnery. While the vessel was crippled, she was still giving a good account of herself against the closing enemy.
‘Back!’ the palatine commanded. Her voice was almost lost in the whoosh of flame unleashed by Sisters Retributor as she retreated through their number. ‘Back!’
The mangled compartment beyond was flooded with the spiked shapes of renegade Space Marines. Boarding torpedoes launched from the Slaughterfest were bringing only more. As Red Corsairs stomped forward, their chainswords shrieking, Verletz sent alternating blasts from her pistols at the enemy – backing towards her Battle Sisters.
‘Fall back through the containment decks,’ Verletz ordered. Her Sisters and the Black Ship’s security forces could not hold back the weight of three attacking forces simultaneously. Not in the exterior sections, anyway. Verletz needed the advantage of the narrow corridors and security bulkheads of the dungeon-decks.
The containment decks swiftly became a nightmare of thundering flame and bolt streams that tore up the darkness of the decking. The Pontificals did their best to hold strongpoints and security stations, turning besieging giants in blood-red plate into a nimbus of light with their hellguns. Flooding the tight corridors with rabid cultists, the Red Corsairs pushed on into the lightless dungeon-decks. While their heretic meatshield soaked up the worst the storm troopers had to offer, the renegade Space Marines cleaved through cultists and security forces alike with chainblades and axes.
The Sisters Retributor gave the Red Corsairs more reason to fear them, turning corridors and antechambers into fiery hell storms and shooting galleries for the long range of their barking heavy bolters. The Sisters of the Ebon Chalice allowed the Emperor’s peace into their hearts. Through gritted teeth, they fought hard and met the enemy and their ends with absolute duty. With the canticles of faith on bloodied lips and smoke streaming from the burning barrels of their weapons, they obliterated heretics and monstrous traitors.
One by one, Adrianna Verletz’s Sisters died about her, swallowed by the sea of murderous cultists flooding through the containment decks. They were blasted apart by the relentless onslaught of cursed bolts and cut down in the barbed blur of raging chainswords. In the smoke, the bloody havoc and confusion, however, the Red Corsairs were in their element. While the initial attack and ambush had been well coordinated, in the heat of battle the renegade contingents and their commanders began exchanging fire with each other. Sargel the Sojourner’s deviants fought spiked Fleshmongers, while the Red Corsairs of Nassial Voightek – the First Among Equals – flooded the Divine Imperative with his own armoured hordes.
With Verletz and her Sisters tactically retreating, the Tyrant’s traitors fought for the right to pursue and annihilate them. Each armoured monster wanted the dark honour for himself and savagely unleashed bolt-fire into mobs of opposing cultists.
As territorial savagery gave way to a competitive desire to see the Tyrant’s work done, the Battle Sisters holding the containment decks were butchered. Warped flesh, predatory instincts and superhuman endurance proved unstoppable, with each doomed Sister buying a precious few seconds with her death.
As heavy bolters chuntered to a stop and the flasks of multi-meltas and heavy flamers ran dry about her, the palatine found herself in the darkened
bowels of the ship. Behind her lay the maximum-security dungeon in which Xenobia Nox was kept bridled and contained. Up the smoke-choked length of the corridor, she could see the silhouettes of Red Corsairs advancing, stepping over the mauled bodies of Battle Sisters.
‘Fall back to the cell!’ Verletz called to the Retributor next to her, only for a burst of bolt rounds to cut the Sister in half.
As the few remaining Battle Sisters retreated, abandoning their empty weapons, the palatine sent the last of her bolts at the Red Corsairs and watched them spark uselessly off their plate. The pistol clunked empty. Verletz snarled. She had nothing left to throw at the heretic. Slowing to a stop – bolt-rounds crashing down the corridor at her. She voxed Quant.
‘Inquisitor,’ she called.
‘Sister?’ the inquisitor replied over the crackling channel. The bridge of the crippled vessel was ominously quiet in the background.
‘I need you to do something for me.’
‘Yes,’ the inquisitor said.
‘Tell Shipmaster Tyacke to shut down the psychic shielding on the containment decks.’
‘But, palatine…’
Verletz held a gauntlet up in front of her face to protect herself from the sparks showering off the bolt-mauled wall.
‘We can talk or we can do, inquisitor,’ Verletz said. ‘We can do the Emperor’s good work with whatever tools we have at our disposal.’
‘Do it,’ she heard Orsino Quant command, silencing Shipmaster Tyacke’s protests. ‘Have the adepts shut down the occluding sphere. The prisoners are to be unleashed.’
As Verletz backed towards the dungeon door of Xenobia Nox’s cell, she saw the spiky outline of Fleshmongers and the armoured deviants of Sargel the Sojourner part to admit more heavily armed Red Corsairs. Their dark red plate was cracked and cratered by countless piratical engagements. Their pauldrons were studded and their helmets horned. Through them advanced their monstrous leader – shaking the deck with his captain’s plate. Nassial Voightek – the First Among Equals – had silenced the renegade infighting on the containment decks. Voightek’s rank, his bloodline and the superior number of his Corsairs had decided the day. As he advanced, Verletz saw that he held a pair of lightning claws at his sides, the wicked tips of which crackled with dark energies. Half of his face was missing, having been replaced with baroque bionics and the searing red lens of an optic. He gave Verletz a wolfish half smile.