by Ben Counter
‘At your command, admiral,’ came the clipped response from Master of Ordnance Castellan, who snapped a curt salute before the screen blanked.
CESTUS WATCHED AS the organised chaos of battle stations unfolded. Every crewman on the bridge had his own role to play, relaying orders, monitoring sensorium and viewscreens, or making minute adjustments to the ship’s course. One of the tables on the bridge unfolded into a stellar map where holographic simulacra were moved around to represent the relative positions of the ships in the fleet.
‘Traitorous whoresons,’ snarled Brynngar, ‘it’ll be Lorgar’s head for this.’
Cestus could see the hairs on the back of the Space Wolf’s neck rise. In this fell mood and with the dimmed battle stations gloom, he took on a feral aspect.
‘Scuttle her and I’ll lead the sons of Russ aboard,’ he growled darkly. ‘Let the wolves of Fenris gut her and I’ll tear out the beating heart myself.’
Brynngar hawked and spat a gobbet of phlegm onto the deck as if what was transpiring in the void had left a bitter taste. There were a few raised eyebrows, but the Wolf Guard paid them no heed.
Cestus’s reply was terse. ‘You’ll get your chance.’
Brynngar roared, baring his fangs.
‘I can no longer sit idle,’ he snapped savagely, turning on his heel. ‘The warriors of Russ will make ready at the boarding torpedoes. Do not make us wait long.’
Cestus couldn’t be certain if the last part was a request or a threat, but he was, for once, glad of the Wolf Guard’s departure. His mood, since they’d hit the void and encountered the Word Bearers had grown increasingly erratic and belligerent. The Ultramarine sensed that the wolves of Russ did not relish such encounters. The fact that Brynngar was so eager to spill the blood of fellow Astartes only caused Cestus greater discomfort.
At war with our Legion brothers, the very idea scarcely seemed possible, yet it was happening.
Cestus watched the space battle unfold with curious detachment and felt his sense of foreboding grow.
THE WANING MOON had burned its retro engines to kill its speed, and fired all thrusters on its underside to twist upwards and present its armoured flank to a second torpedo volley shimmering towards it.
The first torpedoes missed high, spiralling past the ship to be lost in the void.
A handful detonated early, riddled with massive-calibre fragmentation shells from the defence turrets mounted along the flank of the Waning Moon.
Several found their mark just below the stern. Another streaked in with violent force, and then two more amidships. Useless energy shields flared black over the impact points as hull segments spun away from the ship, the torpedoes gouging their way through the outer armour.
‘Damage report!’ shouted Mhotep above the din of the bridge.
‘Negligible, sire,’ Officer Ammon answered from the engineering helm. ‘What?’
‘Minimal hull fractures, my Lord Mhotep.’
‘Sensorium definitely read four impacts,’ confirmed Helms-mate Ramket watching over the readouts.
Embedded deep in the hull of the Waning Moon, the outer casing of each torpedo split with a super-heated incendiary and six smaller missiles drilled out from their parent casing. They were ringed with metallic teeth and bored through the superstructure of the strike cruiser as they spun. Drilling through the last vestiges of hull armour, the missiles emerged into the belly of the vessel and detonated with a powerful explosive charge. With a deafening thoom-woosh of concussive heat pressure, the gun decks were ruined. Ratings and indentured workers died in droves, burned by the intense conflagration. Heaps of shells exploded in the firestorm, throwing lashes of flame and chunks of spiralling shrapnel through the decks. Master Gunner Kytan was decapitated in the initial barrage, and dozens of gunnery crew met a similar fate as they scrambled for cover as the gun-decks became little more than an abattoir of charred corpses and hellish screaming.
THE WANING MOON shuddered as explosions tore through its insides. A destructive chain reaction boiled through the upper decks and into crew quarters. Stern-wards, detonations ripped into engineering sections, normally well shielded from direct hits, and ripped plasma conduits free to spew superheated fluid through access tunnels and coolant ducts.
Damage control crews, waiting at their muster points to douse fires and seal breaches, were torn asunder by the resultant carnage from amidships. Orderlies at triage posts barely had time to register the pandemonium on the gun decks before the blunt bullet of a warhead thundered through into the medicae deck and annihilated them in a flash of light and terror.
Chains of explosions ripped huge chunks out of the Waning Moon’s insides. Like massive charred bite marks, whole sections were reduced to smouldering metal and hundreds of crewmen were lost to the cold of the void as the vessel’s structural integrity broke down.
‘REPORT THAT!’ ORDERED Mhotep, clinging to his command throne on the bridge as sections of the ship collapsed around him, revealing bare metal and sparking circuitry. The lights around the bridge were stuttered intermittently as the Waning registered power loss and damage across all decks. Mhotep’s crew were doing their best to marshal some semblance of order, but the attack had been swift and far-reaching.
‘Massive internal and secondary explosions,’ replied Officer Ammon, struggling to keep pace with the warning runes dancing madly over the engineering helm, and snapping off further reports. ‘Plasma venting from reactor seven, gun crews non-responsive and medicae has taken severe damage.’
‘Tertiary shielding is breached,’ said Mhotep as the ship-to-ship vox crackled into life.
‘Mhotep, report your status at once! This is Captain Cestus.’ The impacts had shaken the vox array and the Ultramarine’s voice was distorted with static.
‘We are wounded, captain,’ said Mhotep grimly. ‘Some kind of Mechanicum tech that I have never seen before burned our insides.’
‘Our lances are firing,’ Cestus informed him. ‘Can you stay engaged?’
‘Aye, son of Macragge, we’re not done yet.’
A further crackle of static and the vox went dead.
The bridge of the Waning Moon was alive with transmissions from the rest of the ship: some calm, reporting peripheral damage to minor systems; others frantic, from plasma reactor seven and the gun decks, and there were those that were unintelligible through raging fire and screaming: the last words of men and women dying agonising deaths.
‘Be advised, captain, they are coming about.’ Principal Navigator Cronos was eerily calm as his voice came through the internal vox array. Mhotep scrutinised the tactical holo-display above the command console. The Furious Abyss was changing course. It was suffering lance imparts from the Wrathful and was turning to present its heavily armoured prow to the aggressors.
‘What folly from this Bearer of his Word,’ Mhotep intoned. ‘He thinks we will flee like the jackal, but his only victory is in raising the ire of Prospero! Mister Cronos, bring us across his bow. Gun decks port and starboard, prepare for a rolling broadside!’
THE WANING MOON rotated grandly, as if standing on end in front of the Furious Abyss. The Word Bearer vessel had not reacted, and its blunt prow faced the damaged strike cruiser.
Deep scores, like illegible signatures, were seared into the prow armour of the traitors’ ship by the Wrathful’s laser batteries. An insane crosshatch of crimson lance beams erupted between the two vessels with pyrotechnic intensity as they traded blows, silent shield flares indicating absorbed impacts.
Errant bursts glittered past the Waning Moon as it opened up its gun ports and the snouts of massive ship-to-ship cannon emerged. Behind them, sweat-drenched ratings toiled to load the enormous guns and avenge their dead. They chanted in gun-cant to keep their rhythm strong, one refrain for hauling shells out of the hoppers behind them, another for ramming it home, and yet another for hauling the breech closed.
The signal to fire reached them from the bridge. The rating gang leaders brought hammers d
own on firing pins and inside the ship, thunder screamed through the decks.
Outside, jets of propellant and debris leapt the gap between the two ships. A split second later the shells impacted, explosive charges blasting deep craters into the enemy vessel.
THE BRIDGE OF the Furious Abyss stayed calm.
Zadkiel was pleased. His ship, the city over which he ruled, was not governed by panic.
‘My lord, should we retaliate?’ asked Helms-mate Sarkorov.
‘For now, we wait,’ said Zadkiel, content to absorb the punishment as he sat back on the command throne watching images of the Waning Moon’s assault on the viewscreens above him. ‘There is nothing they can do to us.’
‘You would have us sit here and take this?’ snarled Reskiel at his master’s side.
‘We will prevail,’ said Zadkiel, unperturbed.
Dozens of new contacts flared on the viewscreens, streaking from the launch bays of a ship identified as the Boundless.
‘Assault boats, sire,’ Sarkorov informed him, monitoring the same feed. ‘Escorts are closing.’
Zadkiel pored over the hololithic display.
‘They intend to attack from all angles and confuse us, and while we weather this storm, their assault boats and escorts will pick us apart.’ Zadkiel provided the curt tactical analysis coldly, his face aglow in the display.
‘What is our response?’ asked Reskiel.
‘We wait.’
‘That’s it?’
‘We wait,’ repeated Zadkiel, his voice like iron. ‘Trust in the Word.’
Reskiel stood back, watching the fire hammering in from the Waning Moon, and listening to the dull thuds of explosions from within the Furious’s prow.
THE ATTACK CRAFT wing of the Boundless swept in tight formation through the veil of debris building up from the damage to the two ships ahead of them. The Waning Moon and the Furious Abyss were locked in the Spiral Dance: the long, painful embrace that saw one ship circle another pumping broadsides into the enemy as it spun. Like everything else in space the Spiral Dance had its own mythology, and to a lifelong pilot of the Saturnine Fleet it meant inevitable doom and the spite of one ship lashing out at the enemy in its death throes. It was desperation and tragedy, like a dying romance or a last stand against vast odds.
The fighters, ten-man craft loaded with short-range rockets and cannon, streaked past the Waning Moon, the pilots saluting their fellow ship as custom dictated. They locked on to the Furious Abyss, the squadron leaders marking out targets on the immense dark red hull already pocked with lance scars and broadside craters from the battering the Wrathful had given it. Shield housings, sensor clusters and exhaust vents all lit up on the tactical display in a backwash of emerald light. Targeting cogitators locked on and burned red.
Silver Three, flown by Pilot Second-Class Carnagan Thaal, matched assigned approach vectors and built to full attack run speed. Through the shallow forward viewscreen, Thaal could see the Furious Abyss crisscrossed by laser battery barrage, its prow a flickering mass of smouldering metal.
He ordered his weapons officers to lock on to their target, a stretch of gun turrets along the Furious’s dorsal spine. The port guns obeyed, the lascannon mounts swivelling into position.
The starboard guns did not move.
Pilot Thaal repeated his order through the ship’s vox. His co-pilot, Rugel, checked the array, but found nothing amiss.
‘Rugel, go down to the armaments deck and align those guns,’ Thaal ordered, deciding there was enough time before they hit their final approach vector.
The co-pilot nodded and tore out the wires attaching him to his seat and the console in front of him, and swung around in his chair.
‘Scell, what are you doing?’ Thaal heard his co-pilot ask and turned to get a good look at what was going on.
He started when he saw Weapons Officer Carina Scell standing there with her autopistol in her hand. Thaal was about to tell her to get back to her post and get the damn cannons locked on when Scell shot him in the face.
She took Rugel in the chest, stepping forward to deliver the shot point-blank. Bleeding badly, the copilot scrabbled to get his sidearm out of its holster.
‘It is written,’ Scell said, and shot him twice more in the head.
Silver Three continued on its attack vector. Scell headed below decks to finish her work.
‘SILVER THREE’S DOWN,’ said Officer Artemis on the fighter control deck of the Boundless. The deck ran almost a third of the length of the Boundless to accommodate the numerous tactical consoles.
Captain Vorlov, his face awash in the reflected ochre glow of datascreens, paid it little heed as he prowled the ranks of fighter controllers. Attack craft were always lost. It was the way of the void.
Vorlov continued his tour, preferring to witness firsthand the actions of his fighters rather than make do with the fragmented reports filtering through to the bridge. The Boundless was a dedicated carrier for attack craft and his duties were here, listening to the fates of his fighter wings. His helms-mate was perfectly capable of keeping the ship running in his absence.
‘Any defensive fire?’ asked Vorlov of the nearest control overseer.
‘None yet,’ said the overseer, whose shaved scalp was festooned with wires feeding information from each controller into her brain.
‘But we’re in range of their countermeasures,’ said Vorlov, a thought occurring to him. ‘You! What took down Silver Three?’
The controller looked up from his screen. ‘Unknown. The pilot went off my screen. Possible crew casualties.’
‘Non-standard transmissions from Gold Nine,’ said another controller hunched over his screen. He held one of his earphones tight against his head and winced as he tried to hear more clearly. ‘Some kind of commotion aboard ship, sire. They’re not responding to protocols.’
‘Bring them in. The rest of you, report any further anomalies!’ Vorlov harrumphed in annoyance and leaned forward on his cane. The Saturnine Fleet had the best small craft pilots this side of the galactic centre. They didn’t just flake out during a firefight.
‘Gold Nine is lost, captain,’ reported the controller. ‘I detected small-arms fire in the cockpit.’
‘Get me word on what the hell’s going on or I’ll have your commission,’ barked Vorlov at the overseer.
‘Yes, captain.’
‘Fragmented reports are coming in from Silver Prime,’ interrupted yet another controller. ‘They say they’ve lost control of the engine crew.’
‘Get all this on air!’ shouted Vorlov. The overseer fiddled with a couple of settings and cockpit transmissions crackled through the deck’s vox-caster.
‘…gone insane! He’s barricaded himself in the aft quarters. Esau’s dead and he’s venting the bloody air. I’m pulling out from attack vectors and going down there to shoot him.’
‘I am the light that shines always. I am the lord of the dawn. I am the beginning and the end. I am the Word.’
‘Agh, I’m… I’m bleeding out… Heral’s dead, but I’m not going to make it.’
‘Gold Twelve just opened fire on us! We’re hit aft-wards, pulling back and venting engine three.’
Vorlov was assailed by the desperate voices and distorted screams, dozens of them, all from experienced assault pilots, all tinged with fear or disbelief, or pain. Reports of colleagues sabotaging engines or murdering crew, ranting paranoia and delusion spewed forth from the vox. Vorlov couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His wings were in total disarray and the glorious attack run he had envisaged had failed utterly without the enemy firing off a shot. He had never even read about such a thing in the histories of the Saturnine Fleet.
‘It’s as if they’re going mad, captain,’ said the overseer, struggling to keep her voice level, ‘every one of them.’
‘Abort!’ shouted Vorlov. ‘All wings! Abort attack run and return to the Boundless!’
‘WE ARE SUCCESSFUL, lord,’ the sibilant voice of Chaplain Ikthalon said t
hrough the vox array. ‘The supplicants have effectively neutralised their fighter assault.’
‘You are to be commended, chaplain. Ours is a divine purpose and you have ensured your name will be remembered in the scriptures of Lorgar,’ Zadkiel replied coldly from the command throne, before turning to address Helms-mate Sarkorov.
‘Let the escort craft close and then open the book.’
‘Yes, my lord.’ Sarkorov relayed the order at once.
Zadkiel watched a close-up of the sector of space through which the Boundless’s attack wings were flying. Fighters were already tumbling, glittering short-lived explosions as their colleagues shot them down. Others were spiralling off-course. The pathetic assault was in ruins.
‘Behold,’ Zadkiel said to his second standing alongside him, ‘the power of the Word, Reskiel.’
‘It is indeed humbling,’ Reskiel replied, bowing deeply to his lord.
Zadkiel found the obvious toadying distasteful. Even so, this was a great moment, and he allowed himself to bask in it before returning to the vox.
‘Ikthalon, how many supplicants did we lose?’
‘Three, Lord Zadkiel,’ the chaplain replied. ‘The weakest.’
‘Keep me appraised.’
‘As you wish.’ Ikthalon said, and terminated the link.
Zadkiel ignored the impudence and sat back in his command throne to watch the damage control reports flicker by. The prow was mangled, chewed up by the Waning Moon’s broadsides and torn by the lances of the Wrathful, but the prow was merely armour plating and empty space. It didn’t matter. It could soak up everything they could throw at it for hours before the shells penetrated live decks. Even then, only Legion menials would perish, the unaugmented humans pledged to die for Lorgar.
‘This is the Fireblade,’ came the transmission intercepted by the Furious Abyss’s advanced sensorium from one of the approaching escort ships. ‘We’ve got a clear run. Lances to full.’
‘On your tail, Fireblade,’ came the reply from a second frigate.
‘Master Malforian, bring turrets to bear and reload ordnance,’ said Zadkiel. He followed the blips of the escorts as they negotiated the graveyard of fighter craft, intent on helping the Waning Moon finish off the Furious.