Old Earth

by Nick Kyme

  Nuros had already drawn out two, leaving the Saurod exposed in the process.

  ‘They are bringing broadsides to bear,’ Mechosa murmured. He half turned to the Warleader. ‘Can it take that kind of punishment?’

  Meduson’s gaze never left the oculus.

  ‘We are about to find out.’

  The Saurod rocked with thunderous impacts that sent warning alerts across every vox-speaker and console.

  Nuros watched the damage reports on his helm display, calm and quiet as he sat in the hold of the assault craft. An all-clear signal flashed up across his right retinal lens from the shipmaster, prompting Nuros to issue the launch order to all pilots.

  Across the deck, maintenance crews scattered into shielded observation blisters or behind blast barriers. Inside the hold, an icon flared from red to green as the launch tubes irised open and thrusters burned in throaty concert across the four gunships.

  Nuros engaged the vox, switching the channel to address all hands in the assault party.

  ‘Remember our blood, red and thick on the sand,’ he said, provoking a chorus of thudding sword hilts and stamping boots against the deck. ‘Remember their traitor’s blades in our backs.’

  One Salamander bellowed a wordless oath of revenge. Another pressed his forehead to his sword in silent avowal. Across the holds of all four ships, fingers already grasping weapons tightened further.

  ‘Whatever alliance you once knew with any of these bastards is dead. It died with your brothers. It died with Vulkan, and with ­Ferrus Manus. We go to fight our enemies. Let’s kill them.’

  The pilot voxed a commencement warning. Grav-harnesses descended and warriors leaned back to accept them, mag-locking boots and weapons.

  Nuros closed his eyes, smiling darkly at the thought of what was to come. A chance to vent his hatred.

  The thrusters kicked, jolting the gunship forwards at speed. For a few seconds as they hurtled through the launch tube, a fist of pressure slammed Nuros against the back of the grav-bench, until they cleared the Saurod and speared out into the void.

  The gunships flew in a loose formation, keeping beneath the ­Saurod and using the lee of its ventral aspect as cover. The larger ship surged towards the light cruiser before them, its armoured prow soaking up every pounding broadside. Almost all power had been diverted to main engines, its plasma drives white-hot with effort, its cowlings turned soot-black. A furtive lance strike from the ­Saurod flashed silently across the void, sending magnesium-bright light arcing through viewslits.

  Several thousand kilometres of space, threaded with the beams of laser batteries and torpedo discharge, gaped between the two ships. The equivalent of close quarters combat in void-war terms.

  The Saurod intended to get closer still and took a blistering amount of punishment doing so. Ablative armour sloughed off its prow like shed skin. Some of it drifted into the ironclad’s wake forcing its diminutive fighters into evasive manoeuvres.

  Nuros felt the pitch and yaw inside the hold as their pilot made rapid course adjustments. Something struck the hull, a glancing blow that sent the gunship spiralling. Its airframe groaned in protest, struts bent to breaking point, but eventually the gunship straightened out again.

  Two destroyers loomed out of the void dark, shark-like, hungry. Faster than the light cruiser by degrees, they had pulled ahead of the larger ship and come to engage the ironclad.

  Prow-lances seared through cold space, sawing at the Saurod’s armour.

  The destroyers roamed on alternate flanks, enfilading beams spearing from both port and starboard. They drove ahead of the ironclad’s prow to avoid the thickest armour and instead cut at its more vulnerable belly. Ventral cannons trembled with muted roars, spitting out immense shells that chased the hunting pair but failed to connect.

  As one of the destroyers came in close, Nuros saw its pitted hull through a viewslit. Less than two kilometres long, it was a sleek and angular predator.

  It saw them too, still over a thousand kilometres away, and lit its deck guns. A desultory barrage would tear the gunships apart.

  Nuros dared not blink. He gripped the hilt of his sword, for a warrior should always die with a weapon in his hand, and mouthed a silent oath.

  Vulkan lives.

  The icons on the hololith had closed so that they almost overlapped.

  The Saurod had the bulk and the endurance, but against three vessels she was outmatched.

  But Meduson watched the darkness below the engagement, an apparently empty tract of void space. And as the coreward end of the flotilla began to react to the ambusher in their midst, the Warleader’s fists clenched.

  ‘Do it now,’ he ordered.

  The first destroyer came apart in a spectacular explosion moments before it could unleash its guns and wipe out Nuros and his fighters. A spread of torpedoes struck it amidships. A first salvo overloaded the shields. A second, delivered in rapid succession, cored the vessel and inflicted catastrophic damage upon its engines. The resulting chain reaction tore the destroyer apart.

  If its twin reacted, it did so too slowly. A lance beam speared into its prow. Stricken, unable to immediately retaliate and unsure from where the attack had originated, the destroyer began to retreat and come about. A second lance salvo, more ferocious than the first, disabled its plasma drives and put paid to its shields for good.

  Streams of coolant and fuel spilled from a ragged wound in its hull. Under reserve engine power, it tried to limp from the engagement sphere, a former predator now become prey.

  Dalcoth chose this moment to pounce, the sleek black contours of the Stormcrow emerging from the void darkness. Nigh invisible to augur, defying all but the most diligent sensor sweep, the frigate loomed into the crippled destroyer’s battlesphere and applied the killing blow.

  Nuros laughed out loud when he saw it, relief and vindication coursing through his blood.

  Nuros lives, he thought and watched the Saurod drive inexorably towards its prey.

  He wanted to praise Dalcoth, but knew the ship had muted all vox. Instead, he reached over and rapped his knuckles fraternally against Norn’s shoulder guard.

  Ever reserved, the Apothecary did concede the triumph by tapping the white raven emblazoned on his breastplate.

  ‘That’ll do, Norn,’ said Nuros, boisterous. ‘That’ll do just fine.’

  ‘The gauntlet is far from run yet,’ Norn replied.

  Nuros laughed, thick and hearty, the fire in his belly unquenchable.

  ‘Now there’s the bleak-hearted Kiavahran I know.’

  But despite his good humour, Nuros understood the son of Corax was right.

  A relentless fusillade from the Cthonic Blood’s laser batteries ­hammered the Saurod. For the cruiser’s crew, desperation had set in with the chilling certainty that the hulking Salamanders vessel would not stop.

  Nuros felt his gunship’s engines slacken off, their speed decreasing as the formation rapidly fell back behind the Saurod. The ironclad braced to ram the Cthonic Blood, weathering a storm of fire from every weapon its enemy could bring to bear.

  A lance strike raked the Cthonic Blood’s exposed flank, stripping shields in a succession of blistering iridescent energy blooms. Less than a thousand kilometres stood between the two ships now, quickly diminishing thanks to the Saurod’s ruthless engine burn.

  At last the ironclad’s scarred prow, a piercing draconic snout, touched the Cthonic Blood’s already weakened defences. The cruiser’s­ shields gave out in a silent flare of failing power, unravelling across the vessel’s port side like dry parchment devoured by fire.

  No time remained to reignite them. Its lances still firing, tearing apart gun ports and shredding armour, the Saurod struck the Cthonic Blood like an impaling spear and kept going.

  Nuros had seen void ships collide before, most memorably at Isstvan. Across the entire u
pper atmosphere, cruisers and frigates had run into one another as all efforts towards a coordinated withdrawal had broken down. Even transhuman composure could not entirely subsume panic when given a choice between escape and annihilation.

  Great warships had broken apart as a rash of noiseless detonations erupted throughout the tangled fleet. Some vessels fell with slow inevitability, trailing gas, vapour and flash-frozen corpses. Others disintegrated as their reactors blew, turning the void into a radiation-choked debris field, swallowing smaller escorts in their violent death throes. Severed and bleeding, entire decks cleaved off and spinning, their screaming crews trapped within, the ships of the loyalist fleet had been so densely arrayed that they had wrought much of their own destruction.

  The mauling of the Cthonic Blood proved no less devastating to the flotilla.

  A gouge had been carved in its flanks, void ice rapidly coating the ragged tear, and men and materiel spilled out like seeds cast for harvest. The only reaper here, though, was death.

  Secondary explosions erupted along the seam of the vessel’s hull as munitions and combustibles cooked off after the collision.

  The Saurod had come to a stop, bleeding too, its prow badly damaged and its forward lances inoperable. It had cast the spear, transfixing its prey, but now it had to withdraw. Engine burn lit the viewslits in Nuros’ gunship, as the Saurod engaged its reverse thrusters.

  It slowly pulled back but did so messily, wrenching chunks of the enemy ship with it.

  With the Saurod’s brutal withdrawal, the four gunships that had sat patiently in its shadow surged forwards, arrowing through the debris field and straight for the gap in the Cthonic Blood’s abused flank.

  A battery of nose-mounted heavy bolters scythed a path into the ship, despatching defenders summoned to repel boarders. They fought in a sea of floating bodies, amongst the dead who had not been violently ejected into space when the ship’s atmospheric integrity was breached.

  Some of the defenders wore flimsy atmosphere suits and rebreathers, mortal armsmen with ineffective lascarbines. Other had power armour, legionaries with heavier weapons that posed a genuine threat. One of the gunships was winged, its left engine flaring as it careened into the side of the Cthonic Blood before it could right itself.

  Nuros scowled as a host of icons on his helm display lit up amber then red.

  The other three ships forced a landing, killing the last elements of defiance with punitive bursts from their forward-mounted cannons. Ramps slammed down, silent, aggressive, and a boarding party of angry Salamanders and one Raven Guard charged out.

  Nuros quickly established a perimeter, glancing at the chrono in his helm as he signalled a squad to remain behind and secure their landing zone. The rest, he urged forwards.

  Bulkheads had come down in the wake of the attack, sealing off the other parts of the ship not gutted by the Saurod’s prow ram, but Nuros sent two of his warriors to breach them with charges.

  Paired melta bombs detonated in eerie silence, turning a blast door to molten slag. Answering gunfire came through the breach, the edges still red-hot but cooling rapidly.

  Nuros descended into a thicket of las-beams, flanked by the two legionaries with breacher shields. Two ranks of carbines, one line standing and the other crouched, opposed them, the mortals firing sustained bursts. The shields took the worst of it, before volkites and bolters issued a devastating return volley. Blood, ash and bone painted the walls in grim silhouettes, matter flash-seared into the metal.

  The defenders clung on for a few more seconds before being overwhelmed.

  Taking the corridor, the Salamanders sealed an inner door behind them. With re-pressurisation, atmosphere and gravity returned too. Breaching the next door, Nuros led the Drakes inwards and beckoned the Pyroclasts into the vanguard.

  The Cthonic Blood’s defenders had reacted with impressive speed considering the blow they had sustained. Barricades had been set, choke points established and heavier cannons brought to bear. As a body stricken by illness musters white blood cells to root out and eliminate infection, so too did the Cthonic Blood respond to the interlopers at large on her decks.

  Determined as they were, mortal armsmen could not resist legionaries for long. Six well-defended and well-armoured barricades each fell in seconds, scorched to ruin. Norn tended to what few injuries had been sustained but they were minor and did not reduce the efficacy of the boarders or their martial strength.

  The first blow had been to grab attention; the second was the killing thrust. Nuros and his warriors had but to apply it.

  The Salamander checked his chrono. An approximation of the ship’s layout tracked across the same retinal display, rendered as a flat technical schematic.

  Proximate to the Salamanders’ position were the aft munitions stores and the ship’s main armoury. They would be well defended, and as Nuros gave the signal to advance he saw familiar bio-signatures via his auto-senses.

  ‘They’re coming,’ he murmured over the vox, shouldering his caliver, eager for the attention of old allies. He drew his blade instead. ‘They’re coming…’

  Ten

  Iron and fire, as one

  ‘The Saurod withdraws,’ intoned Jebez Aug, a silent partner on the bridge of the Iron Heart until that moment.

  Meduson nodded, restive. Even from the rudimentary description afforded by the hololith, he could see the tactical landscape changing. With the annihilation of the two destroyers, another two ships from the flotilla had altered course, coming about to engage the retreating Saurod and the smaller but no less deadly Stormcrow.

  ‘Nuros and Dalcoth will be on the run now,’ said Mechosa, as intent on the battle display as his Warleader. ‘Do we intercede?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Meduson said quickly, shaking his head.

  Frenetic spools of data fed across the hololith. A broken line mani­fested across the display.

  ‘They are range-finding,’ said Aug in a hushed voice.

  Since its triumphs, the Stormcrow had successfully disengaged from the battlesphere but had begun to turn to help defend the wounded ironclad.

  ‘We hold,’ said Meduson. ‘Those are Sons of Horus ships. I won’t commit until they are severely disadvantaged.’

  ‘And Nuros and Dalcoth?’ asked Aug.

  Mechosa’s studied silence suggested he had the same question in his mind but chose not to voice it.

  Meduson looked sidelong at the Iron Father.

  ‘No plan is without risk. We cannot act until they are separated. Are the other Fraters in position?’

  ‘They await your signal, Warleader.’

  ‘Including Mor?’

  Aug scowled. ‘The Red Talon and his other ships are still with us.’

  ‘There is something more?’ asked Meduson.

  ‘Lumak thinks he’s waiting to see if you’re killed during the battle so he can assume command.’

  Meduson laughed without mirth.

  ‘The Avernii see treachery everywhere they look, even amongst allies.’

  ‘Don’t you too, Warleader?’

  ‘Of course, but I don’t plan on dying during this battle either. Mor need only do his part. I hope he joins us, but if he has his own plans then so be it. For now, he serves the mutual good, so let’s put that dread reputation of his to use. I will not eschew any weapon in my arsenal. I cannot.’

  ‘Even if that blade has a double edge?’

  Meduson nodded, acknowledging the risk, but remained unmoved. ‘I will simply keep it at arm’s length.’

  A third vessel broke off from the flotilla, effectively splitting the Sons of Horus into two smaller formations. Two more destroyers, the last of the complement, came with it, scenting revenge.

  ‘The Sixteenth are excellent warriors, and do not underestimate how difficult it was for me to say that, but they are also prideful,’ said Meduson. ‘M
echosa, give the signal. The vanguard shall engage.’

  Mechosa saluted and went to his orders.

  ‘And the Fraters?’ Aug asked.

  ‘Await second signal. And that includes Mor. We have to cut them in half, Aug, then attack when they are in disarray.’

  ‘I have never known one of the Sixteenth to be in disarray.’

  ‘Then we shall educate them,’ Meduson replied, before raising his voice to the bridge. ‘Battle stations, all hands!’

  Lurking at the edge of augur range, running silent, the Iron Heart and its fellow ships of the vanguard began to move. Lurching from engines almost cold to full burn put significant strain on the flagship, the pain of which resonated throughout its hull.

  The bridge was still shuddering, awash with crimson light, as the Iron Heart and the rest of the vanguard emerged from the radiation well of a dying star field to launch torpedoes.

  ‘Aug?’ asked Meduson as the missiles streaked into the void, tiny thrusters blazing.

  ‘The Unyielding Glory, Ferrum Unbowed and Gorgon’s Will have all launched.’

  That was Arkul Theld, Jakkus and Lumak.

  Across the hololith, a myriad of small markers designated the three torpedo spreads.

  The ships segregated from the Sons of Horus flotilla increased power to their shields, the telltale energy flare registering on the Iron Heart’s sensors.

  ‘We have their attention, Warleader,’ said Mechosa.

  Meduson nodded, calculating as the tactical situation evolved before his eyes.

  ‘Enemy fighters inbound,’ added the Sorrgol captain.