[Battlefleet Gothic 01] - Execution Hour

by Gordon Rennie - (ebook by Undead)

  Something was wrong, he realised. There was danger close at hand. Perhaps it was out there in the void, or down on the surface of the planet. Or perhaps even closer than that, perhaps even on the Macharius itself.

  Something was definitely wrong.

  EIGHT

  The shuttle flew away from the carrier ship, the waiting trio of Fury fighters breaking off from their holding pattern and peeling away to take up protective positions around the shuttle. Together, the formation of Imperial craft descended from orbit to the surface of planet below.

  Inside the titanium shell of the passenger capsule, through one of the capsule’s small, armoured-glasteel windows, Semper looked back to see the familiar hull-shape of the Macharius as it slowly receded from view.

  It had been months since he had left his ship—months more, even, since he made planetfall anywhere—and he took this rare opportunity to study the lines and shape of the vessel he commanded. At its front the familiar armoured beak common to most Imperial cruisers, many metres thick and composed of strengthened adamantium, the toughest material known to human science. At its rear were the massive array of plasma drive engines, which, together with the generarium reactors and arcane technology of the vessel’s warp drive made up over a third of the Macharius’s mass. In between these two points was the main body of the ship: dozens of decks of gun batteries and magazine arsenals, flight bays and workshops, cargo holds and quartermaster stores, dormitories and infirmaries, chapel shrines and prison brigs.

  Semper’s eye roamed over the sheer sides of the ship’s hull, seeing the often ancient scars of battle that pitted its armoured flanks, evidence of the venerable warship’s long and honourable record of service to the Emperor. No two Imperium vessels—even those of the same class—were identical. Centuries, sometimes even millennia, of modifications and repairs using whatever local construction methods and materials were available in any of the countless different orbital repair yards and forge-world dry-docks maintained throughout the Imperium saw to that, but all followed broadly similar classic lines of design and purpose. Still, Semper was certain that even if the entire armed might of Battlefleet Obscuras itself were lined up before him, he would be able to invariably and instantly pick out his own vessel at a glance, so well did he know its individual lines and signature details.

  More than ten thousand souls, from Semper himself to the lowliest convict rating or servitor drone, lived within its armoured hull. More than ten thousand, a figure greater than the fighting complement of the largest Imperial Guard regiment, and many of that ten thousand-plus doubled as fighting troops, trained to take part in the bloody close-quarters boarding assaults that were a frequent part of space warfare. Indeed, the captain of an Imperial Navy warship commanded destructive capabilities undreamt of by any mere Imperial Guard commander. Its hull-side batteries could raze whole cities with sustained orbital bombardments. Its attack craft—it carried more than a hundred of them—could reach across star systems to strike at enemy targets, while its warp engines carried it across the vast interstellar gulfs to wherever the Emperor’s enemies might be. There was even space within its cargo holds and crew compartments to carry thousands of extra troops—as much as a full Imperial Guard infantry regiment, if need be—from one warzone to another, and with greater speed and safety than any slow and vulnerable troop transport vessel.

  No other Imperial commander had such power at their disposal; no other Imperial commander was entrusted with such a singular instrument of awesome destruction than the master of an Imperial warship. “Like having one foot on the Golden Throne,” were the traditional, only half-joking words that the captains of the Imperial Navy murmured in private and strictly only amongst themselves to describe the awesome power and authority at their direct command.

  Which, Leoten Semper ruefully told himself, made his own current situation of impotent anger all the more galling and difficult to bear.

  He remembered the words of Hyuga when the Departmento Munitorium official arrived aboard the Macharius. “I have been in communication with the governor-regent of Belatis. As an Adept Civitas of planetary overlord rank, he is accorded the right to be given personal safe escort by the ranking member of the naval evacuation force. The governor-regent has so informed me that he wishes to claim this right. Captain Ramas of the Drachenfels is the highest ranking ship’s captain belonging to the evacuation escort force. However, for practical reasons involving Captain Ramas’s battle-wound disabilities, as well as other factors…” Hyuga had paused here, flushing slightly, and Semper had almost smiled as he imagined the idea of the highly irascible and plain-speaking master of the Drachenfels being called upon to carry out any kind of delicate diplomatic duty.

  “As I said, there are factors which regrettably make Captain Ramas unable to carry out this task, therefore the duty falls to the next ranking officer in the chain of command. Which would be you, Captain Semper.”

  There had been an uncomfortable silence in the captain’s private quarters as all three senior officers present—Semper, Ulanti and Commissar Kyogen—stared in angry and unapologetic disbelief at the Munitorium official. Semper, not trusting himself to speak, glanced expectantly at Ulanti. The young aristocratic officer, raised amongst the great noble houses inhabiting the Spire peaks of the Necromundan hives and more familiar with the rituals of diplomatic speaking, took his cue.

  “Honoured Adept Hyuga,” he had said. “We remain at full alert, and will do so until we are safely underway in the warp and with this Emperor-forsaken world far behind us. We are running round-the-clock attack craft missions and we are currently overseeing the final preparations for the evacuation fleet’s imminent departure. There are already several enemy scout vessels probably in hiding within this system, and at any moment a full enemy fleet together with their new and supposedly invincible weapons platform may emerge from the warp to attack us.”

  Ulanti paused, looking directly at Hyuga, his voice taking on a harder and more scathing tone. “And now, in the midst of all this, you come to tell us that Captain Semper must abandon his command responsibilities and instead take part in some needless, trivial etiquette merely to pander to the whims of some local planetary dignitary?”

  Hyuga had glared at Ulanti, drawing himself up to his full, if, unimpressive height. A small, balding and vainglorious man, Hyuga’s responsibilities as an official of the Departmento Munitorium were the organisation and equipping of the Imperium’s armed forces. Members of this powerful wing of the Adeptus Administratum usually either wore adept’s robes or, since many of most senior officials belonged to the great Imperium noble houses, garb appropriate to their high-born social rank. Hyuga, however, was dressed in a gaudy, custom-tailored military uniform which all three naval officers had suspected he had probably designed himself. Rank pips on the over-braided collar and shoulder epaulettes signified that the bureaucrat adept’s position carried with it the honorary rank of a lieutenant-colonel within the Imperial Guard, while his uniform breast was ablaze with ribbons and decorations, none of which any of the naval men recognised, all of them probably awarded for deeds performed far from any battlefield.

  “The House of Sarro has served the Emperor well for centuries,” Hyuga had said. “It is only fitting that they receive their due salute in accordance with Imperial custom as they prepare to give up their faithful custodianship of one of the Emperor’s subject possessions. I have consulted with the Arbites commander on Belatis, and it is his opinion too that we carry out this duty in the interests of proper Imperial protocol.”

  “Very well,” Semper had said, already calculating how much time this pointless and unnecessarily risky diversion from his real duties would take. “Mister Ulanti, you have the bridge, at least until the honoured adept and I return from our trip to the planet’s surface.”

  “You misunderstand, captain,” Hyuga had smiled apologetically. “My own duties take me back to the Graf Orlok as soon as I have finished here. I still have many details to atten
d to before the evacuation can be counted as completed.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” This time it had been Semper’s turn to smile, if only in feigned apology. “This vessel is currently under quarantine, and I cannot allow you to leave it to return to another Imperial Navy ship. I am sure that a vessel commander as prudent and cautious as Captain von Blucher would not wish to risk the danger of bringing any contagion aboard his ship.”

  “Quarantine? Contagion?” Hyuga had stammered, too taken by surprise to pick up on Semper’s subtly scathing reference to von Blucher’s well-known reputation for an over-caution which, in the opinion of some of his brother captains, verged on outright cowardice.

  “An outbreak of plague below decks. Mister Ulanti was just informing me of the problem as you came aboard.”

  “Indeed,” Ulanti had said, smoothly picking up his captain’s intent. “A somewhat virulent strain, one that has so far defied our ship’s surgeon’s efforts to fully contain it. While the risk of infection to you so far is small, the longer you stay aboard the Macharius, the greater the risk must become. And since navy quarantine regulations forbid you returning to the Graf Orlok…”

  “…then it would be to your advantage to accompany me to the surface of Belatis,” Semper had finished. “Not only would I have the honour of accompanying the governor-regent back to orbit, but I would have the privilege and pleasure of knowing that I was also safeguarding your own personal well-being into the bargain.”

  The colour visibly drained from the bureaucrat’s face at the thought of setting foot on the surface of the doomed and Chaos-engulfed world below. Looking round, his panicked gaze fixed on the imposing and so far silent figure of Kyogen.

  “Commissar,” he had bleated, “this is outrageous. I demand at once that you see to it that I am given safe escort off this ship and back to the Graf Orlok!”

  Kyogen, towering over the smaller man, looked down in contempt at the bureaucrat, casting a glance over Hyuga’s rows of Administratum decorations. The Order of the Gothic Star, Battlefleet Gothic’s highest award for valour, hung from his uniform breast, and Semper too wore the same decoration. Neither man wore the medal for reasons of vain pride, merely as simple statements of the personal authority by which they expected their commands to be carried out by other, lesser servants of the Emperor.

  “There is an outbreak of disease, and naval regulations are quite explicit on such matters. It is my duty to see that those regulations are kept to, by force if necessary.” Kyogen stepped forward, leaning down into Hyuga’s face. “Better to take your chances with the captain, honoured adept. Who knows, perhaps you may be able to award yourself a real battle decoration when you return?”

  Semper glanced up, seeing the still white-faced bureaucrat sitting strapped into an acceleration harness across on the other side of the spacious passenger capsule. Hyuga’s two scribe-adept assistants sat beside him, both of them looking just as nervous as their master. The temperature inside the cabin was increasing noticeably and the entire shuttle bucked and shuddered violently on its high-speed descent down the gravity well and into Belatis’s atmosphere. All three Administratum officials looked as if they thought that the shuttle would tear apart around them any second.

  Probably more used to slow, cruising descents aboard luxury Administratum craft than a high-speed navy shuttle drop into a warzone, thought Semper.

  Aside from Semper and the Departmento Munitorium officials, there were four other occupants of the passenger cabin, all of them dressed in dark grey blue uniforms featuring the blue rank sashes of a navy petty officer. Three of them were petty officer class armsmen, Semper’s familiar bodyguard retinue who accompanied the captain wherever he went on the Macharius. Semper often wondered which of these dependable but dull-witted watchdogs was Kyogen’s secret informer, reporting back to the ship’s commissar on the captain’s every move and utterance. Probably Rahn, the least dull-witted of them, Semper thought—or possibly even all three.

  Whichever it was, all three were united in purpose now, staring in sullen and hostile suspicion at the fourth figure slouched in the row of seats across from them. His muscle-bound form squeezed into a petty officer’s uniform, Stranivar underhiver and Lubiyanka prison-gang tattoo markings clearly visible on the exposed parts of his skin at his wrists and neck and with the faint but unmistakeable aroma of chewed tajii root permeating the air around him, Maxim Borasa cut a strange and distinct figure from the other occupants of the shuttle.

  Semper was still unsure why at the last moment he had relented to his second-in-command’s urgings and decided to take the flag-lieutenant’s personal bodyguard with him in addition to his own usual armsmen protectors. The man was a savage thug, little better than the scum of the convict work-gangs that carried out many of the more brutal and menial labour tasks aboard the Macharius. Emperor alone knew how he ever made the rank of petty officer, but there was a predatory danger and intelligence about him that made Semper suspect that Borusa was, as Ulanti had suggested, a good man to have on your side. One of those rare breed of born survivors who always seemed to find a way out of even the most extreme situations, and, if you were lucky and stayed close by him, perhaps might even take you with him while he was about it.

  Semper turned his attention to the view out of the small cabin port-hole. They were deep within the planetary atmosphere now, passing through the thick cloud layer that covered much of Belatis’s equator regions during the planet’s apparently frequent monsoon seasons. Little to nothing was visible for the next few minutes and then, suddenly, they dropped through the bottom of the cloud ceiling and the panoply of Belatis’s capital city of Madina was spread out beneath them.

  Semper saw neatly laid-out hab-zones and commerce districts built in a radial pattern spreading out from the central rocky spire of what must be the planetary governor’s palace. Wide avenues bisected and divided each civic district, but Semper could clearly see the columns of refugees which choked those central thoroughfares, and the barricades and makeshift defence walls that had been placed across many of them to stem the human tide flocking into the stricken city. Even from this height, Semper could discern the tell-tale, swirling patterns of human melee signifying large-scale combat around those barricades. Elsewhere, the scars of anarchy and civil war were evident across the face of the city. Fires burned out of control everywhere, several districts were bombed-out ruins, most of the bridges across the wide river dividing the city had been destroyed and to the north a large industrial area was ablaze, casting a pall of poisonous black vapour across that entire quarter of the city and the suburbs and countryside beyond.

  Looking at the evident chaos and destruction that had engulfed not only Madina but this entire world, Semper felt secret despair rising up within him once more. Despair at the course of the war, at the odds against them and—most secretly of all—at the way it was being conducted by the Imperium forces. After the victory at the Helia system, when the Macharius and its sister ships had repulsed the invasion of Helia IV, he had dared to hope that the Imperium was at last going on the offensive, striking back at the Chaos forces rather than merely holding the line against them. It had been Semper’s recommendation that the remnants of the retreating Chaos warfleet be pursued into the warp and ruthlessly hunted down and destroyed before they could regroup to form the nucleus of another invasion armada. Instead, the Macharius and several of the other ships had been ordered to take part in the evacuation of Belatis, and now, rather than even merely trying to hold the line against the enemy advance, it seemed to be Battlefleet Command’s intention to abandon entire worlds to the wrath of the Despoiler.

  Semper and several of his fellow captains had, in private, railed against this policy, arguing that rather than protecting a planet-wide evacuation effort they should be forming up into battle lines to meet the arrival of the Planet Killer fleet. With whatever support could be spared from other battle-groups, they could mount an effective defence of the Belatis system,
if not defeating and destroying the Planet Killer fleet, then at least driving it back into the warp. The important thing, they argued, was to capitalize on the impetus of the victory at Helia and show the enemy that the forces of His Divine Majesty’s Navy stood ready to meet them wherever and whenever necessary. All Gothic sector lived in fear that one day the shadow of the Planet Killer would fall upon their world. The effects on Imperial morale would be incalculable, Semper and a few brave others argued, if it could be shown that the Despoiler’s terror weapon was not invincible, that the duty and purpose of the ships of Battlefleet Gothic to protect every Imperial world within the Gothic sector still counted for something.

  In all respects, their every argument had been over-ruled.

  There were not sufficient ships to spare to mount a concentrated counter-attack effort against the heavily-armed Planet Killer fleet, they were told. In time, they were told, the Planet Killer would be dealt with, but that time was not yet ready.

  And, in the meantime, Semper thought bitterly to himself, the worlds of the Gothic sector would have to endure taking part in some sick lottery, the rules of which only the strategy planners of Battlefleet Command in Port Maw seemed to understand. Some, like Helia, would be spared, while others such as Belatis would be sacrificed wholesale, vital fleet resources that could be used to defend them instead expended on a cowardly and selective evacuation that, in Semper’s eyes, was tantamount to betrayal of the Emperor’s subjects and surrender to their enemies. How many more worlds do we sacrifice, he asked himself. How many more millions or billions do we betray before we turn and fight?