[Battlefleet Gothic 01] - Execution Hour

by Gordon Rennie - (ebook by Undead)

  “Graf Orlok to battlegroup… Torment’s gone. We’re out here alone on the port flank and taking heavy fire. Requesting permission to withdraw and recharge void shield generators.”

  “Von Blucher, you yellow bastard! I don’t care how high your blueblood family connections in Battlefleet Command go,” replied an angry voice over the comm-net channel, momentarily drowning out all the other radio traffic. “You withdraw from action now and I’ll personally take great pleasure in hunting down and destroying both you and that junker heap you call a warship!”

  Semper recognised the voice of Erwin Ramas, captain of the Gothic class cruiser Drachenfels. Even over the comm-net static, the mechanical rasp in Ramas’s voice was still clearly detectable. Ramas was a Battlefleet Gothic legend, the sole survivor of an eldar pirate torpedo attack that wiped out his entire command deck crew. His crippled body maintained by Adeptus Mechanicus cyber-devices, what was left of Ramas was confined within an armoured strategium shell somewhere deep within his ship. However, despite the damage to his body, the wily old veteran’s command abilities and taste for the thrill of battle clearly remained undiminished.

  Semper suppressed an inappropriate smile, not wishing to be seen to laugh openly at a brother captain in front of the Macharius’s bridge crew. That said, Titus von Blucher was a notoriously vainglorious fool who owed his captaincy of the Graf Orlok solely to the fact that he belonged to one of the lesser branches of the Ravensburg family line and was hence a distant but acknowledged relative of Lord Admiral Cornelius Ravensburg, commander of Battlefleet Gothic. Only Ramas, a battlefleet legend with forty years experience in the captain’s chair, could speak like that to one of the Lord Admiral’s relatives and hope to escape free from any kind of censure afterwards.

  “Drachenfels to Macharius,” called Ramas. “What do you say, Semper? Shall we show this faint-hearted blueblood how a true captain in His Divine Majesty’s Imperial Navy behaves?”

  “Lead the way, Drachenfels. Macharius will join you,” replied Semper, looking expectantly towards his helm crew, catching the nervous and apprehensive glances that passed between many of his junior officers. Hito Ulanti stepped forward, adding his voice to that of his captain’s, and daring any of the doubters on the command deck to challenge their dual authority. After all, if a vessel’s rightful, Emperor-chosen captain gave an order, and his second-in-command concurred with that order, then what reason would any loyal servant of the Emperor have to argue otherwise, no matter how near-suicidal that order might seem? Ulanti’s hand rested on the hilt of his sheathed sabre, and, nearby, the giant, thuggish-looking petty officer that Ulanti seemed to have adopted as his personal bodyguard stiffened to attention, alert to any potential threat against his patron officer.

  “Helm—continue full ahead. Match and meet the current speed and course of the Drachenfels,” ordered Ulanti in his characteristic clipped hiveworld aristocracy accent. “Generarium-channel all available power to the forward void shields. Gunnery control—prepare to fire twin broadsides as soon as we are in range of any available enemy target. Ordnance—the captain wants a full torpedo spread loaded and ready to launch, and he wants them now.”

  The young flag-lieutenant stepped back, watching alertly as he ensured that his captain’s orders were being correctly carried out. Semper studied the sharp-minded and keenly ambitious Necromundan noble, becoming increasingly aware of just how able an officer Ulanti was. He knew that Ulanti would go far, and was willing to stake the Order of the Gothic Star cluster pinned to the breast of his own tunic front that Ulanti would finish this war with a captaincy of his own.

  Assuming he or any of us survive that long, he reminded himself, thinking of the grim news of the latest tallies of losses, defeats and hard-fought and narrowly-won holding actions that arrived almost daily from all points throughout the sector.

  Assuming any of us even live through the next hour or so, he thought further, looking out the viewing bay at the scene beyond, as the awkward but impressive bulk of the Drachenfels thundered ahead towards the enemy battle line. A second later, Semper felt the increased vibration of his own vessel’s engines as they pushed the Macharius forward to join its sister ship.

  Together, the two cruisers rumbled forwards into the face of the enemy’s guns, renewing the impetus of the faltering Imperial attack and leading the formation straight towards the centre of the Chaos fleet.

  Kaether cut the power flow to his Interceptor’s engines, depending on instinct and manoeuvring thrusters as he cruised through the midst of the Chaos fleet, making the small and nimble fighter craft an even more difficult target for the enemy weapon targeters to lock on to. Something flickered on the edge of his vision and he hit his starboard thrusters, rolling the fighter to port and triggering his lascannons as he did so. The Swiftdeath that had passed momentarily across his cockpit’s vision field was instantly transfixed in a stream of azure energy lines, las-bolts hammering into it, ripping through black glass armour plating. One wing-mounted engine thruster exploded, and Kaether saw fused melt-holes punctured along the length of its fuselage. The Swiftdeath tumbled out of control, seconds later exploding apart as a second, deadly accurate stream of lascannon fire found and vaporised it, Kaether’s port wingman Altomare finishing the task begun by his squadron commander.

  “Fine shooting, Storm Three,” Kaether signalled over the squadron comm-net. “We’ll dice for who claims the kill back aboard the Macharius.”

  “That’s if we make it back aboard,” sounded the quiet voice of Vale, flying on Kaether’s starboard wing. “And that’s if the Macharius itself is still there, even if we do make it out of here in one piece.” It was only a few minutes since Cippola’s Fury had been destroyed—ripped apart by a flechette burst of millions of monofilament micro-shards—by a random, unexpected strike from a nearby enemy vessel’s anti-ordnance defences, but none of the other pilots would have considered Vale’s joking words inappropriate. For the Fury pilots, death, shocking and violent, was a constant and ever-present possibility. “My wingman on my port side, the Emperor on my starboard and Death on my tail, breathing in my engine wash,” as the old navy pilot phrase put it. Death could come for them at any time in space combat, and always it would be sudden and instantaneous. They joked about it now, here in the heat of battle even as friends and comrades died around them, but later, back aboard the safety of the Macharius, they would grieve together in their own solemn and private ways.

  Four craft left in his wing; nine more in the two other wings, which he had assigned to escorting the first bomber wave following on close behind. Their firepower, combined with that of the Starhawks’ own turret guns, proving more than enough to fight off any marauding enemy fighters. Kaether’s wing flew pathfinder through the Chaos fleet, dodging in and out amongst the strange, warp-altered shapes of the enemy vessels. Deadly to other attack craft, the Fury’s banks of lascannon and wing-mounted missiles would be less than pinpricks against the thick, armoured hulls of the massive Chaos warships, but the Furies could still bring harm to them in other ways. From the cramped cockpit space behind him came a low-voiced litany of telemetry data and gunnery target co-ordinates as Manetho, Kaether’s Adeptus Mechanicus navigator and rear gunner, relayed detailed and close-range observation intelligence on the enemy fleet back to his tech-priest brethren aboard the Macharius. Much to Kaether’s satisfaction, Manetho had directed the Imperial gunners in on the enemy ship that had destroyed the Cippola, and moments later the gunsights of the mighty Drachenfels had zeroed in on the enemy destroyer, cutting it in half with one sweep of its port-side lance batteries.

  Kaether’s wing had swept a path through for the bomber wave, encountering and destroying six more Swiftdeaths along the way. With the Lord Seth no longer a threat—Kaether had seen it take three more torpedo hits in the last few minutes—the only enemy carrier ship still in operation was the Pluton, and most of its attack craft strength seemed to be bomber squadrons. What few enemy fighters they had encountered wer
e lone stragglers recalled from the invasion beachhead, their power reserves depleted by extended operation in a planetary atmosphere and the long, hard climb up from Helia’s gravity well to rejoin the new orbital battle. Those not returning to the Pluton for rearming and refuelling fell easy victim to the veteran pilots of Storm squadron’s elite command wing.

  Ahead, Kaether could see the squat, ugly shapes of the troop transports, their launch bay doors open to reveal the cavernous interiors of their holds. Inside, row upon row of drop-pods were stacked in tiered launch cradles, swarms of them dropping in sequence from the underbellies of each transport. Kaether scanned his surveyor screen, satisfying himself one last time that there were no enemy fighters protecting the transports. He keyed a series of rune signs into his comm-net panel, sending a pre-arranged code signal back to the Macharius and the bomber wave close behind his pathfinder flight. Seconds later, the answering series of code-marks appeared across his data-screen.

  “Storm Leader to squadron. Bombers have their targets. Break off and stand by.”

  “What targets now, commander?”

  Throne of Earth, I’ve known servitors that sounded more human than that, thought Kaether, recognising the familiar, blank-toned voice that sounded over the comm-net.

  It was Zane—Zealot Zane, as the other members of the squadron called him, even though none of them would ever question the misfit pilot’s reputation as the best fighter ace aboard the Macharius, with the highest kill tally to prove it.

  “Commander?” asked Zane again, his tone patient but expectant.

  Kaether paused, considering. His orders were to circle in search of any remaining fighter targets and then escort the Starhawk wave back to the Macharius after the completion of their bombing mission. On his long-range scope, he could see the Pluton launching bomber craft, and there were reports of more Swiftdeaths on their way back up from the planet’s surface to rejoin the fray.

  Kaether glanced again at the spread formation of troop transports, seeing the continuing rain of invasion force drop-pods falling from their open underbellies. Fifty to a hundred enemy troops packed like so much cattle into each drop-pod; several hundred drop-pods to each transport, dozens more of them being released from orbit with every passing every minute. Even with several transports already destroyed, the Chaos armada was still in the process of deploying a considerable invasion force on Helia. Kaether knew that every drop-pod destroyed increased the odds in favour of the Imperial forces now fighting on the planet’s surface, and the point of the entire battle was to defy the enemy’s attack on Helia, wasn’t it? Swiftly, he came to a decision, knowing he might have to answer for it later.

  That’s if any of us survive that long, he reminded himself, thinking of Vale’s traditional pessimistic fighter pilot riposte to any mention of the future.

  “Storm Leader to squadron. We’ll leave the nursemaid duties to those greenhorns in Hornet squadron. New target priority—form up into wingman teams and target those drop-pods. They won’t add anything to your kill tallies, but you’ll be giving those ground-pounders on Helia a better fighting chance. And Emperor knows they need it, especially since they’re unfortunate enough not be part of His Divine Majesty’s Imperial Navy!”

  A loyal chorus of laughs at the traditional and well-worn naval joke sounded over the comm-net as, one by one, the pilots of Storm squadron sent their fighters rolling off into deep attack dives targeted at the lines of falling drop-pods.

  The Starhawks launched their payload from near point-blank range, sending a wave of high-explosive warhead missiles streaming into the open, vulnerable underbelly bays of their troop transport targets. Fire from the transports’ anti-ordnance defences was sporadic and desultory—the vessels were under-armed and their turret crews under-trained—damaging only one Starhawk and destroying virtually none of the incoming missile wave. Multiple explosions tore through the bellies of each of the three target transports, destroying row upon row of drop-pods as they sat stacked in their launch cradles. Others, ripped from their moorings by the force of the blasts, fell free, tumbling down towards the planet below, their crude flight systems unable to bring them under control and dooming those inside them to a terrible, fiery death as the pods burned up in the upper atmosphere of Helia.

  One of the transports blew up entirely, the explosions that had gutted its belly hold spreading into its reactor system, enveloping the vessel in a sudden and spectacular fireball, throwing out wreckage to smash into other surrounding transports and their closely-packed launch lines of falling drop-pods. Peeling away at the end of its attack run, one of the Starhawks—Goschen’s craft, Caparan saw, the same one that had been damaged by turret fire—was caught and consumed by the fringes of the blast. One bomber was a small price to pay for the destruction of three enemy transports and the thousands of troops and vehicles aboard them, Caparan knew, but, such cold strategic equations did not make the loss of any of those under his command any easier to bear.

  “Nemesis to Macharius,” he signalled. “Payload expended, targets well struck. Awaiting further orders.”

  “Fine hunting, Milos,” came the reply, the familiar voice of Remus Nyder crackling over the long-range comm-net frequency. “Rendezvous with fighter escorts and return home, Nemesis. Macharius looks forward to welcoming you back aboard her once more.”

  “Emperor’s oath, Zane. Pull up! Your outer hull is starting to burn!”

  Reth Zane flicked a switch on his comm-net panel, cutting off the warning voice of his wingman. Altomare was a good pilot, he knew, but his brother Fury pilot had little in the way of faith. And, faith, Zane knew, was the greatest weapon of all. Alarm chimes sounded from his instrumentation panel, warning him of the mounting temperature of his craft’s outer skin. Zane ignored them, reciting the words of the 58th Incantation of Inner Peace to himself, looping his own voice through his helmet speakers, so that all he heard were the calming words of the holy text.

  The Emperor is my Guardian, my Shield and my Protector.

  While he watches over me, I shall fear no enemy.

  The Heretic, the Daemon, the Abomination have no hold over me.

  He recited the words to himself as his fighter fell headlong down the gravity well, ghostly flames dancing around its wing tips as it cut a fiery trail through the upper strata of the planet’s atmosphere. His fingers connected with the control stick’s firing triggers, releasing short, stabbing bursts of las-energy from his nose cannons.

  Once. Twice. Three times.

  His lascannon power cells were almost depleted, but he had already realized just how vulnerable and poorly-armoured the drop-pod targets were. The first lascannon volley caught the nearest drop-pod on its underside, blowing off pieces of its glowing heat shield and destroying its retro-thrusters. Even if the drop-pod somehow survived atmospheric entry with a damaged heat shield, it would still be unable to slow down its speed of descent, and would plough into the ground of its intended landing site with meteoric force.

  Zane’s next volley ripped away the side of the second drop-pod, causing catastrophic decompression and sucking the pod’s screaming occupants out into the void.

  His third burst missed the last pod in the chain. Zane paused and recited the lines of the incantation to himself again, his face glowing in the reflected light from his instrumentation panel as series after series of crimson flashing runes lit up in urgent warning. The sound of alert chimes filled the cockpit, and from somewhere came the faint but distinct smell of burning wiring and plastics. Even the ever-silent servitor drone manning the fighter’s cockpit rear turret gun seemed agitated.

  Zane opened his eyes, fixed on his target and fired. The last drop-pod exploded apart as the line of las-blasts tore through it.

  Zane took tight hold of the control stick, pulling back hard and feeding power through to the thrusters. The Fury shook violently, its engines whining in protest as they struggled against the seemingly irresistible pull of Helia’s gravity. And then the Fury was rising
again, pulling out of the high orbital dive, its scorched underbelly riding a cushion of fire as it skimmed across the top of the upper atmospheric envelope. Most of the status runes on his instrumentation panel returned to a reassuring green or at least a non-urgent amber again, but several remained crimson. Zane ignored them, already seeking out the next line of targets as he rose to rejoin his wingman. He and Altomare had followed that last line of drop-pods down together, jointly destroying the first six of them before Altomare gave up the chase, turning back to avoid burning up in Helia’s atmosphere. Zane had gone on to destroy the remaining five drop-pods in the chain, pushing his Fury Interceptor to levels beyond its supposed tolerance limits, although Zane knew that he would come to no harm. Not with the Emperor watching over him and guiding him in his holy work.

  “I am his Sword of Retribution, I am his Vessel of Wrath. Though I am but weak and mortal flesh, the spirit of his Divine Will fills and strengthens me,” Zane murmured to himself, reciting the 13th Canticle of Divine Retribution, remembering the first time he had seen those words, carved, along with thousands of other sacred text lines, into the floor of the great Ecclesiarch cathedral on the shrine-world of Sacra Evangelista. Remembering kneeling as a young novice just recently taken Holy Orders and running his fingers in wonder over the ancient, time-worn letters painstakingly etched into the stonework of the floor.

  Remembering how, that very night, the visions of the blessed Sororitas warrior angel had come to him as he knelt praying in his cell, telling him that his destiny in the service of the Master of Mankind lay elsewhere: that he was to become an Avenging Fury, the scourge of the Emperor’s enemies.

  Remembering how he had gone to the father-confessor with the news of his visions, and remembering too the subsequent agonies and ordeals as the truth of his visions was examined by an Ecclesiarchy court of inquiry and he himself was rigorously tested physically and mentally for evidence of heretical falsehood. His visions finally verified by the court, he was released from his vows as a Ministorum adept and allowed to pursue his service to the Emperor elsewhere within the mighty Imperium of Mankind.