Deathfire

by Nick Kyme

  With Numeon and most of his warriors in the void, she had to hold the attention of the two enemy vessels. She did so first by focusing the Charybdis’s not inconsiderable strength against the smaller ship, which had moved closer to attain a better firing solution.

  ‘Target the Monarchia,’ she said. ‘Full broadside.’

  As the order came down, the Charybdis’s guns were rolled out and primed.

  After a matter of seconds, the guns sounded, their vibrations felt all the way up in the bridge. Esenzi watched the discharge register on her schematic display with grim satisfaction.

  The sheer force of the blow smashed the smaller cruiser’s voids like a wrecking ball.

  ‘Again,’ ordered Esenzi as damage alarums cut the air and infiltration markers from their boarders flashed up red on the display. Orders were given to armsmen squads to intercept. She could see the Salamanders wanted to join the fray, but they were disciplined enough to hold to their posts.

  A second salvo tore from the broadsides, filling the void with the silent flash of the Charybdis’s devastating bombardment cannons.

  ‘Torpedoes, full spread,’ she bellowed, having to shout above the shriek of the alarums, grasping the arms of the command throne as the bridge shuddered with the impact of the enemy guns.

  The launch was good, and the deadly payload from the ship’s torpedo tubes raced across the void.

  More icons flashed on the schematic as the enemy boarders ripped through the inner hull and breached the ship proper. Vox-traffic choked the ship-wide feed as several engagements began at once. Esenzi shut her mind off to the gunfire and the screaming.

  Her attention flicked to the tactical feed, one of several hololithic representations she had before her. This one showed the second broadside finish what remained of the Monarchia’s port-side void shields. A few moments later, the torpedo payload struck.

  Silent blooms of fire, like lightning without thunder, erupted in night-black space.

  A good hit. An armour-breaking hit. Though she was too far away to see it, Esenzi imagined scads of plates fluttering off into the void like leaves.

  ‘Hit them again, full broadsides and another spread. Give the aft starboard-side engines full thrust. I want to turn. Bring us in close.’

  The legionaries on board the Charybdis had broken through sixteen choke points already. Vox-comms from the beleaguered defenders marked their progress through the decks, as it spread like a wildfire.

  Only it wasn’t wild, it was purposeful and headed for the bridge.

  ‘My noble lords,’ said Esenzi, though her primary focus was still on the raging vessel-to-vessel combat.

  Mu’garna and Baduk were already moving. They had passed through the blast doors to the bridge and sealed them behind them when the second broadside struck.

  Damage reports were flooding the data screed, as the Charybdis slowly succumbed to death by increments.

  It was nothing compared to the catastrophic blow they dealt the Monarchia. What few shields the cruiser had restored were overloaded by the barrage. Huge explosions ripped soundlessly into the darkness, throwing light across the ravaged hull of the Word Bearers ship. Bodies were spilling into the void, frozen in an instant. Some were consumed in the ephemeral fires that lived and died in an eye blink.

  Chunks of debris, large deck sections, the baroque arch of a cathedral tower, were already breaking loose in a mass diaspora when the torpedoes struck.

  Esenzi rose from her seat when one of the Monarchia’s critical systems overloaded and a newborn sun blazed into being to fill the vast oculus view.

  Ship death. The bow wake crashed into the Charybdis as far away as they were. It took under a minute and hammered the battle-barge’s hull.

  Esenzi was thrown back down. Fires broke out and servitors were quickly tasked with their suppression. All too audible explosions resounded across the bridge and the decks below as the Charybdis began to bleed in earnest.

  ‘How much longer can we hold, shipmistress?’ asked the Chaplain. He had remained behind facing the blast doors, though he had no eyes to see what might be coming through them.

  Eight more choke points had fallen. The mortal defenders had almost spent their last.

  ‘Shipmistress,’ urged the Chaplain, snapping Esenzi free of her grim strategising for a few seconds.

  ‘They are two decks below us. Although a force has headed to the cargo bay.’

  The Chaplain smiled.

  ‘They still think he’s on board,’ said Esenzi.

  ‘Numeon’s life and that of all my brothers aboard that gunship depend on our enemy believing that for a little longer.’

  ‘I can focus their attention,’ Esenzi declared, noting the Charybdis had almost come about. She turned her gaze on the ensign at the helm. ‘Full power to the plasma drives.’

  A field of wreckage lingered after the Monarchia’s demise, only detectable now the electromagnetic flare from its capitulating warp drives had faded.

  Esenzi meant to batter her way right through it and into the vessel looming beyond.

  She glanced at the schematic display and the aggressive boarding troops she had been tracking.

  ‘One more deck and they will be upon us.’ She said it half to herself, but the Chaplain overheard.

  A crackle of energy flared from the haft of his dragon-headed mace.

  The few armsmen left on the bridge set up firing positions beside him, their weapons aimed at the blast doors.

  ‘Then we had better be swift, shipmistress,’ said the Chaplain.

  ‘How can you fight them?’ Esenzi asked, as the dorsal-mounted bombardment cannons were swung around to their next target and torpedo bays were restocked for launch.

  ‘With my fire-born belief, shipmistress,’ he answered, devoutly. ‘I need nothing more than that.’

  ‘Lord Var’kir…’ Esenzi began, needing to say something to mark these final moments.

  ‘You have earned the right to use my given name,’ he said. ‘I am Phaestus.’

  ‘Lyssa Esenzi.’

  Var’kir smiled ruefully. ‘You will always be shipmistress to me.’

  Alert sirens sounded, ending their moment. A gauge on the schematic feed relayed the strain currently being exerted on the plasma drives. They were already damaged, now pushing beyond acceptable tolerances and red-lining. The engine quake could be felt on the bridge and small fissures had opened up in the vaulted ceiling and walls.

  Not long now.

  As the dorsal cannons began to roar, Esenzi clasped the aquila around her neck and murmured a prayer for Numeon.

  Pieces of shrapnel rattled the outer hull of the gunship as it drove beneath the wake of the Monarchia’s destruction.

  Though the flame-scorched and ragged carcass of the dead cruiser was little impediment to a vessel like the Charybdis, it presented a serious danger to the smaller transport trying to weave through its remains.

  The Monarchia had broken into several pieces when it was destroyed. Some of those pieces were large and had been catapulted across the void, into the gunship’s path.

  A heavy rain battered the hull now, but all too quickly it could turn into an unendurable storm.

  Close by, an explosion flared brightly through one of the sealed vision slits, heralding the destruction of a saviour pod. The Salamanders rode in silence amongst the swarm of empty vessels, just another ship amongst many, their heads bowed and their eyes on the recumbent form of their father.

  Only one amongst them spoke, and he uttered a name beneath his cinder breath.

  ‘Vulkan…’ murmured Numeon, the sigil clenched in one gauntleted fist.

  Sixty-One

  A final reckoning

  Battle-barge Charybdis, cargo hold

  Once they had breached the hull, Degat made for the lower decks. The sanctuary was here, a
nd he was leading a cadre of nine other legionaries to it. Four of his Word Bearers and five of the savage Death Guard. So far they had met no resistance, which had slowed the hunting party to a wary advance instead of the aggressive charge of the warriors trying to storm the bridge above.

  Ingress into the ship had not been smooth, although it soon became obvious that the Charybdis had few warriors to defend it. Several of the decks had been flooded with coolant or promethium overspill from the various generators and semi-redundant systems.

  As soon as any breach was made beyond the outer hull and into the ship proper, the chemical reservoirs inundating those decks were auto-ignited. Legionaries were blasted from their ingress points, back into the void with their armour split and vulnerable. Others were cooked alive.

  It damaged the vessel almost irreparably, but then Degat assumed they knew this was their end and had chosen to fight with every iota of desperation they had left. He could respect that, even if it meant little.

  ‘Here,’ he said to the others, finding a long arterial corridor, strewn with wreckage but leading to the sanctum. Attempts had been made to clear a path. Degat was about to take them through it when the warrior in charge of the Death Guard, a sergeant called Ukteg, shouldered him aside.

  ‘Laestygon wants the body,’ growled Ukteg, his uncultured Barbaran accent making Degat clench his teeth.

  The Word Bearer stepped aside, denying his warrior’s instincts. He wanted something else, someone else and he wasn’t here. His eyes met that of his kin as they allowed the Death Guard to take the lead. They moved slowly and carefully, watching the shadows, vigilant for an ambush, but none came.

  Reaching the end of the corridor, they saw why.

  ‘He isn’t here,’ snarled Ukteg, about to raise Laestygon on the vox when a length of Colchisian steel through his gullet stopped him.

  His allies were slow to react. Degat killed a second with a point-blank mass-reactive bolt to the warrior’s faceplate, and his brothers gunned down and gutted the rest.

  Five stinking Death Guard corpses littered the deck in front of the empty sanctum. Degat put a bolt shell into the heads and chests of each one to make sure they stayed down. Stories of Barbaran endurance might be exaggerated but he saw no reason to take chances.

  ‘Join the others in taking the bridge,’ he told his warriors. ‘I am going hunting. He’s down here somewhere – I can smell the taint of his cowardice and heresy.’

  The Word Bearers nodded, almost as eager as Degat for Narek’s blood but wise enough not to cross him. They departed as ordered, leaving Degat alone in the shadows of the labyrinthine cargo hold.

  He had known the Salamanders would flee with their lord. These were the concerns of the Death Guard and even the Preacher; they were not what mattered to him.

  ‘Announce yourself at least, craven,’ he challenged the darkness, steadily moving back down the arterial corridor and into the warren of the cargo hold proper.

  No answer came, but it was too quiet. A sort of unearthly empti­ness that revealed the presence of another in relative proximity.

  ‘You are here, turncoat. Let me see you. I shall end the pain of your dissension.’

  Still no answer came, but Degat’s instincts were well honed. He felt someone close by, a sensation akin to that feeling of being watched. He kept low and to the walls, using every scrap of available cover. He knew Narek as a marksman, a warrior who preferred to wage war from a distance. Degat only ever killed up close so he could see his enemy’s life fade before him rather than remotely through a sniper scope.

  He went deeper, trawling through scattered crates and broken munitions. Lighting overhead flickered and the deck underfoot trembled as the Charybdis sustained hit after hit.

  The Reaper’s Shroud would be pulling its punches. As soon as Laestygon realised Vulkan was no longer aboard, that restraint would end. Degat needed to find Narek before that happened. Nothing would deny him. Not Quor Gallek, not the Death Guard, nothing.

  Almost at the next junction, blade and bolt pistol held low and ready, Degat tried a final goad.

  ‘I am your reckoning, Narek. Face me and remove some of the stain from your honour.’

  ‘He’s not here,’ uttered a deep but powerful voice from the darkness at the end of the next corridor. ‘But I am.’

  Degat slowed and then stopped, eyes narrowed as he pierced the shadows.

  ‘Drake? Is that you?’

  They were at least a hundred paces away from each other. Degat kept a loose grip on his pistol as the Salamander emerged from the shadows.

  ‘Not moving so well, are you?’

  Degat smiled, glancing down at the patched up greave clasped around his leg.

  ‘Are you warrior enough to face me hand-to-hand, drake?’

  The sound of a blade being drawn from its scabbard was all the answer Degat required.

  He holstered his pistol and took a two-handed grip of his chainsword.

  Then the two warriors advanced.

  ‘Not fleeing with your lord?’ asked Degat.

  ‘I was looking for someone.’

  ‘Huh, so am I.’

  Halfway to the Salamander, spurred on by his bravado, Degat realised his mistake.

  He stopped, but did not bother to turn.

  ‘We have found him,’ he said to the Salamander, who looked confused until a small targeting bead flashed in the darkness.

  ‘Greetings, brother,’ Narek uttered in a low, regretful voice. ‘You are somewhat noisier than when we last met.’

  Degat looked down at his wounded leg then back up again.

  ‘Live bait,’ he said, nodding, and simultaneously reached for his bolt pistol and lowered his haunches just a fraction in preparation to turn. ‘I’m impress–’

  The bolt-round burst through the front of the Word Bearer’s skull, taking his rebreather and part of his helm with it. Degat sank to his knees as the weight of his body dragged at him, and fell forwards.

  Xathen hadn’t moved, the targeting reticule now aligned over his centre mass. He could just about make out the sniper nest Narek had made for himself in the cargo hold’s vaults.

  ‘Get it done, Word Bearer. My death is long overdue.’

  The reticule lingered for a few more seconds then blinked out.

  Xathen unhitched his bolter from his back, hunkering down and dropping to one knee to aim in one fluid motion, but Narek was already gone.

  Sixty-Two

  One last time

  Grand cruiser Reaper’s Shroud, bridge

  Laestygon had been deceived. What he believed at first to be a desperate exodus had, in truth, been a subtle camouflage. So intent had he been on the Charybdis that he had failed to realise it, but now he saw the gunship amidst the saviour pods cascading down towards Nocturne.

  ‘They have him,’ he murmured, raising his voice to speak to Rack. ‘Annihilate the Charybdis. All weapons.’

  Rack hesitated, daring to say, ‘Our warriors are still aboard, commander.’

  Laestygon rounded on him, surging up from his throne to loom over his terrified shipmaster. ‘Destroy it! Before it destroys us. And send fighters to bring that gunship down.’

  ‘Over Nocturnean soil?’ asked Quor Gallek, still trying to hold back the anger at his own ship’s recent callous destruction. Laestygon had thrown it against the ire of the battered but much larger battle-barge to give his legionaries more time to secure his prize.

  ‘Over any soil. The Eighteenth are but scraps, preacher. We saw to that on Isstvan. I want Vulkan’s head, you want the fulgurite. There is nothing further to discuss.’

  ‘Attacking a Legion world is tantamount to suicide, Laestygon.’

  ‘No, it is not. I will conquer Nocturne or raze it to ash. Either way, the skull of Vulkan shall be mine.’

  Rack relayed the order, and the gun
s fired up as a fleet of fighters spewed from their launch bays on the hunt.

  ‘Bring them down,’ Laestygon rasped, returning to his seat. ‘Bring them both down.’

  A fusillade of such strength struck the Charybdis that the bridge crew were thrown off their feet. Even Var’kir could not stay standing and he heard the crack of the ship’s superstructure breaking apart around them. He smelt smoke and felt the heat of burning.

  ‘Shipmistress?’ he called out to Esenzi, who answered groggily.

  ‘I’m here. Still alive.’

  Noises of combat filtered through the blast doors as Mu’garna and Baduk fought to keep the boarders at bay. They lasted much longer than the strangled vox reports of the armsmen and the other indentured mortal defenders before their resistance ended with silence, just like the rest.

  ‘No more defences,’ said Esenzi.

  Var’kir heard her leave her command throne. The ship was taking serious damage now. Entire decks and hundreds of crew had been lost. Their shields were down, their armour almost depleted. Even their weapons had been neutralised.

  ‘Are you standing with me, shipmistress?’ he asked, but heard Esenzi prime her sidearm before she answered.

  ‘There is little else for it now.’

  The engines were burning into overdrive, their constant shuddering refrain abusing the hull almost as badly as the punitive barrages now hailing from the Reaper’s Shroud.

  The crackle and hiss of plasma-cutters burning through the blast doors heralded the end. Var’kir knew as soon as the enemy legionaries got inside it was over.

  It didn’t matter how many they faced. A squad could usurp command now and slaughter every Imperial servant on the bridge.

  Var’kir heard the doors slowly shriek open; their locking mechanism had been cut but, bereft of power, they still needed to be levered apart.

  ‘Fire!’

  He had barely spoken when the firing squad of armsmen unleashed their guns, Esenzi too.

  Though he couldn’t see the effect, he knew it would be superficial at best. No mortal armsmen were ever meant to fight the Legiones Astartes. It had simply never been considered they would ever need to.