The Macharius powered forward, its gargantuan plasma engines spilling out a fire cloud trail in its wake. To its starboard lay the Gothic-class cruiser Drachenfels, an old and dependable comrade vessel, and the Dauntless-class light cruiser Triton. Triton’s sister ship Mannan and the Lunar-class cruiser Graf Orlok, an old but less dependable comrade vessel, were arrayed to the Macharius’s port side, while the Dominator-class cruiser Fearsome flew within the arrow-head formation formed by the other cruisers. It was the clenched fist inside the armoured gauntlet, its deadly prow-mounted nova cannon weapon aimed at the heart of the ork forces. Accompanying it were the escort carriers Vengeance of Belatis and Memory of Briniga, merchantmen transports converted to military use and named after just two of those many Imperial worlds which had been destroyed during the war.
Swarms of close-range attack craft, wide-winged Marauders and vicious little snub-nosed Thunderbolt fighters, surged forth from makeshift launch bays in the carriers’ hulls, forming up into attack formations of their own. Dual squadrons of Cobra destroyers swept out wide along the battle-group’s front, guarding its flanks and extending its firepower all across the enemy’s front.
A significant force, by any measure, but one which Semper wished with all his heart he did not now have to lead into battle here. Battlefleet Gothic’s resources were stretched to breaking point to meet the threat posed by the forces of Abaddon the Despoiler, and each one of these ships gathered here today to deal with the orks meant a ship less elsewhere within the Imperial line of battle, where it was needed most. Semper and his fellow captains would rather be fighting the Despoiler’s warfleets than these greenskin savages, and again he damned the orks to the Eye of Terror and back, and vowed to make the creatures pay for the deadly but very much secondary threat they posed to the Emperor’s forces within the Gothic sector, forcing Lord Ravensburg to deploy much-needed warships away from the war’s main battle fronts.
“All ships forward. Mister Nyder—range to closest target?”
“Torpedo range is good, captain, but they’ve put up a fighter screen in front of them. I wouldn’t trade ten of those greenskin death-trap contraptions they call fighters for one of our Furies, especially with one of my pilots in the cockpit, but they’ve got a hell of a lot of the damnable things. Estimate they’d manage to intercept at least half our fish before they reached their targets, and that’s even before the green-skins bring their defence turrets into play.”
Semper nodded. “Very well. Bring our own fighter wave forward. We’ll dangle some bait in front of their noses, and see what they do then.”
“Storm leader to squadron. Full thrust forward on my lead. Let’s show these animals what proper flying looks like.”
Amic Kaether opened up the power-feed on his Fury’s engine drives, sending the interceptor fighter hurtling towards the ork line. Around him, the other craft of Storm squadron did likewise, forming up around their commander in a perfect and deceptively simple-looking formation. Around and behind Storm, cruising in matching formation patterns, came the craft of Hornet and Hurricane squadrons, while Arrow, the fourth of Macharius’s Fury squadrons, remained on a tight anti-ordnance defensive orbit around the advancing cruisers, ready to intercept any enemy torpedo or bomber craft attacks on the capital ships.
Kaether grinned. Aube Terraco, his counterpart in Arrow, was neither a patient nor an understanding man, and would doubtlessly be chafing in angry frustration at the role assigned to his squadron for this coming battle.
Kaether had more than a hundred enemy kills to his credit, the highest kill count of any of the Macharius’s fighter squadron commanders, but, in a drunken boast one night in the pilots’ mess, Terraco, with just over eighty kills to his tally, had promised to surpass Kaether’s score before the ship put into port for its next scheduled refit. Today, Terraco seemed likely to find little other than some rusty and easily-destroyed greenskin torpedo passing through his Fury’s weapon sights, while Kaether was flying straight into the teeth of the enemy force, and, if he survived, would doubtlessly return to the Macharius with his kill tally further strengthened and his title unchallenged.
Yes, he reminded himself, looking towards the wing formation on his starboard side. Highest-scoring squadron commander, but not the highest-scoring ace aboard the Macharius. No, that honour definitely belonged to another. Almost two hundred confirmed enemy fighter or bomber kills, and Emperor knew how many other lesser targets such as assault craft, torpedoes, mine-bombs, landing pods, orbital lighters or even life rafts.
A glance confirmed that the Macharius’s top fighter ace was there in position on the far starboard side of the formation. It may have been Kaether’s imagination, but it seemed to him that the last Fury in line was slightly further away from his nearest wingman than was customary. If so, it was typical of the attitude of the occupant of the fighter’s cockpit. He never mixed with his fellow pilots. He never visited the pilots’ mess. He never took part in the tight-knit and often raucous camaraderie common amongst the other Fury interceptor pilots, whose life expectancy in front line action during the Gothic War could often be measured in months, and so were granted a grudging amnesty from the generally harsh discipline requirements aboard an Imperial warship. He didn’t even share quarters with the other pilots, his veteran ace status and the unspoken disquiet he caused amongst his squadron comrades allowing him private quarters of his own, away from the others.
Kaether looked again, seeing that his formation’s far starboard linchpin was proceeding as ordered, flying fast and true, predictably taking no part in the nervous and excited pre-battle banter between pilots, which filled the squadron comm-net channel.
Reth Zane. “Zealot” Zane, as they called him. Now, four years after the horrific injuries the pilot has suffered in the aftermath of the events surrounding the evacuation and subsequent destruction of the Imperial world of Belatis, he seemed even more remote and less human than ever.
“Form up,” Kaether commanded over the comm-net. “Be ready to wheel when you hear the word.” Acknowledgment runes flashed across the instrument screen in front of him, one for each of the thirteen pilots under his command.
“Zane?” he added, trying to keep the note of distaste out of his voice. “You’re on the far starboard point, so we’re depending on you to get this right.”
“Ready when you give the word, commander,” came the electronically-modulated voice over the comm-net. Little evidence of humanity remained in Zane’s voice after the tech-priests and ship’s surgeons had done what they could with the charred and ruin-fleshed horror that had been brought to them more dead than alive those four years ago.
The end of Zane’s comm-net reply was obliterated in a heavy spray of static, overlaid with bursts of barking grunts and thick, incomprehensibly guttural voices making words and sounds which no human throat could ever produce.
Ork-talk. The voices of the enemy, broadcast on crude but powerful ship-carried transmitters and now cutting randomly into the Imperial forces’ own separate comm-net channels. In the cockpit space behind him, Kaether knew his tech-adept navigator Manetho would now be altering the squadron’s comm-net frequencies, setting up blocker walls to filter out the enemy interference.
That meant they were close now, Kaether realised. Close enough to have entered the enemy’s own comm-net bubble. Close enough to be beginning to take incoming gunfire as the nearest rok-fortresses’ defence turrets opened up at them with the first bursts of wild-aimed speculative fire.
Kaether’s eyes flickered between the view through his cockpit, as the distant shapes of the ork vessels loomed ever larger before him, and the information scrolling across his instrumentation panel’s surveyor screens as the closing distance to the enemy counted down in kilometres and seconds. They were even closer now, close enough to start picking out details on the thick, rocky hides of the asteroid fortresses, close enough to begin to see the bewildering array of thruster engines, weapon emplacements, airlock entrances, attack craf
t launch bays, observation blisters, torpedo silos and defence turrets which studded their surfaces at seemingly random points. Close enough to see the swarms of fighter-bomber craft which buzzed excitedly in the orbits of the closest roks. As he watched, he saw more and more of them peel away from the main body of ork vessels, unable to resist the challenge of the oncoming Fury squadrons.
Typical greenskins, thought Kaether, confident now that the strategy was indeed going to work. Offer them the chance of a good scrap, and they’ll trample each other into the dust to take you up on your offer.
Kaether counted the passing of several more long and drawn-out seconds, leaving the final moment until as late as he dared, balancing how many more greenskin fighters he could draw off against the likely effective range of the increasing numbers of defence turrets now being aimed in his direction.
“Storm Leader to squadron. Wheel!” ordered Kaether finally, almost shouting into his helmet comm-link. “Zane, show us the road out of here.”
As one, with Zane out on the far starboard wing leading the way, the entire fighter formation pivoted in a wide-arcing 90 degree turn to port, taking them right across the front of the enemy line. They were met by a hail of fire from the nearest rok-fortresses. Explosions filled the void around them, radioactive and more conventional fallout debris buffeting violently against the Furies’ armour. Kaether’s craft rocked violently, caught in the electronic squall from a nearby ork dirty-bomb explosion, and he saw amber warning runes light up across his instrumentation panel. In the rear of the cockpit, Manetho re-calibrated power-feed systems and whispered prayer-words to the fighter’s guiding machine-spirit. A second later, the flashing runes on Kaether’s panel returned to a solid and reassuring green. More runes lit up as the other craft in the formation reported in. Thirteen runes. All of Storm squadron had survived the potentially disastrous manoeuvre intact.
“How’s the view behind us, Manetho?” he asked over the cockpit’s internal comm-channel.
“Busy commander,” came the simple, understated reply.
A glance at the rearward surveyor screen confirmed the tech-priest’s succinct choice of words. Enemy fighter icons crowded across the screen, massing in chaotic and haphazard pursuit of the apparently retreating Imperial fighter wave. Kaether smiled; Manetho had successfully managed to block out the ork comm-net interference, but he could almost imagine the ork warlord commander’s screams of frustrated rage as his protective fighter screen disintegrated before his very eyes, his pilots falling for Captain Semper’s ploy and chasing off in disordered pursuit of the Imperial feint attack.
He activated his comm-link to the carrier vessel’s command deck. “Storm Leader to Macharius. The bait has been taken. The field is yours.”
On the bridge of the Mochdrius, communications officers confirmed the incoming signals from their sister ships.
“Drachenfels ready.”
“Graf Orlok ready.”
“Vanguard squadron ready.”
“Praetorian squadron ready.”
“Macharius ready.”
The last confirmation came from Remus Nyder, the Macharius’s master of ordnance. Semper gestured in acknowledgement and raised his voice, knowing his words would be carried over the comm-net to his brother captains on the bridges of their own vessels.
“Very good, gentlemen. Fire on my mark… Fire!”
Seconds later, a deep shudder ran through the hull of the Macharius, signalling the launch of multiple torpedo missiles and the commencement of the battle in earnest.
“Torpedoes running true,” announced an ordnance officer. “Four gone, two still in the tubes.”
“Understood. Commence ordnance reloading on tubes one to four,” ordered Semper.
The torpedoes rocketed away from the ship, the four fiery contrails of plasma gas from their full-burn engines matched on either side by an equal number of torpedo launches from the two other cruisers in the formation. Twelve torpedoes, with the Cobra destroyer squadrons on the flanks also launching six torpedoes apiece.
A total of twenty-four torpedoes, all converging on the same two targets at the centre front of the rok-cluster.
Ork fighters from what was left of the orks’ defensive fighter screen scrambled to intercept the deadly missile wave.
What the orks lacked in co-ordination and intelligence, they more than compensated for in terms of firepower and sheer bestial determination. Semper watched the bridge surveyor screen calmly as three of the torpedo icons winked out of existence one after the other, blown apart by the formidable weaponry of the ork craft. Moments later the surviving twenty-one torpedoes were through the fighter screen, running the gauntlet of defensive fire from the target roks’ anti-ordnance batteries.
The ork gunners, no doubt urged on by the angry roars of their brutal overseers, threw up a curtain of fire in the torpedo wave’s path, destroying not only torpedoes but also more than a dozen of their own fighters which were still pursuing the missiles.
Semper watched as two more active torpedo icons disappeared from the screen, and then two more. There was a sharp intake of breath from one of the other officers on the deck as yet another icon disappeared off the screen.
Sixteen torpedoes left. Would that be enough to accomplish the desired task?
One of the torpedo icons suddenly flashed red. Then another. And still another. In seconds, the screen filled with red-coloured icons. Red for impact detonation. Fourteen red icons; fourteen hits on target. Two of the icons remained unlit. Two of the torpedoes, malfunctioning or possibly with their machine-mind guidance systems damaged by enemy fire, failed to find their slow-moving, lumbering targets and continued their journey, heading into the heart of the rok cluster where it was entirely possible they still might acquire and damage other enemy targets.
The torpedo wave’s target had been the two largest rok-fortresses in the enemy front line. The roks were massive, one of them easily over eight kilometres from tip to tip, and possibly as many as four kilometres across. Eight torpedoes struck it, the remaining six finding the other one. Normally, it might have taken several dozen torpedo strikes to destroy targets this large. Not today, however. Today, the Imperium warships were using new ordnance: so-called “rock-buster torpedoes”, specially designed for the task in hand.
The torpedoes struck the pitted and cratered surface of the roks, their armoured nose-cones spinning like giant drill-bits and boring into the porous rock. The missiles burrowed deep into the bodies of the asteroids, drilling through hundreds of metres of rock in seconds. When the high-speed drill motor burned itself out at the end of its short lifespan, it triggered the warhead payload. The torpedoes exploded. Their payload was not the conventional plasma-fusion warheads used in normal ship-to-ship actions, designed to melt and destroy ship’s hulls and set their internal compartments ablaze. Instead, the “rock-busters” warheads were packed with high explosive seismic charges, designed to shatter and pulverise rock, setting off a chain reaction of aftershocks within the structure of their asteroid targets far in excess of the pay-load’s explosive yield.
To those watching on the command decks of the Imperial ships, it seemed as if the two massive rok-fortresses simply burst apart from within.
The smaller one went first, the majority of it vaporised in a huge secondary explosion as something inside it—some deep-buried power source or magazine cavern full of unstable high explosive ordnance—detonated under the effects of the torpedo strike. The larger one shook and rumbled, and then, slowly, jagged fiery lines appeared all across its surface. The lines split apart, growing ever wider and revealing huge fires consuming the interior of the thing. Chunks of it broke away and were sent spinning off into space, a prelude to what was about to happen. A second later, the entire rok came apart, disintegrating in a ravenous and fiery explosion. Fragments of it, huge and deadly, hurled out with explosive force, raining meteor destruction amongst the roks nearest to it. From the safety of the bridge, Semper saw one jagged shard larger t
han a frigate strike another rok, piercing it like a dagger and sending it tumbling askew out of the ork formation.
“Two, or maybe even three, down, at least twenty-six more to go,” noted the laconic voice of one of the Macharius’s senior gunnery officers.
Semper grunted in grim humour at the comment. It would indeed be a remarkable achievement if his force managed to destroy all the roks, even assuming they had enough rock-buster torpedoes to accomplish such a task. Which, as everyone on the command deck knew, was certainly not the case. The new experimental ordnance devices were rare and expensive and so far in short supply. Semper had little doubt that, assuming they actually survived the engagement, he and his fellow captains would be recommending that the rock-busters become part of the standard specialist range of torpedoes available to the forces of Battlefleet Gothic, after their first and highly successful testing here today under battlefield conditions.
“Ordnance report, Mister Nyder?” he asked. “How many seismic torpedoes do we have left?”
“The rock-busters? Four, captain. Those shiftless Munitorium heretics were probably too busy chasing young adepts or polishing all that gold braid they give themselves to organise the supply of more than eight per ship to those of us who actually do the fighting in this man’s war.”
“No sense letting them go to waste, then, I imagine. We have a new target laid in?”
Nyder gestured towards the magnified image of one of the roks on the auspex screen before him. “The big one here, the one with what looks like the profile of old Lord Admiral Dardania, Emperor rest his devilish old soul, staring out at us from amongst those rock formations on its starboard flank. We’re doubling up our fire with Drachenfels. They’re reloaded and waiting for the word.”
Semper looked at the auspex-magnified image. Curiously, the jagged rock formation in question truly did resemble the unmistakable and craggy countenance of the former Lord Admiral, one of Battlefleet Gothic’s greatest and most legendary commanders.
[Battlefleet Gothic 02] - Shadow Point Page 8