“Damage control!” he bellowed, slamming his fist upon the nearest intercom plate, praying it still functioned. “Damage control to the bridge!” He looked around the nightmarish scene. Thick, black smoke choked the space, sparks spitting from consoles and servitors both, while banks of static-filled data-screens provided the only, flickering, source of illumination.
For an instant, the smoke cleared and Korvane caught sight of the scene through the main viewing port. The Rosetta was listing drastically, and was drifting well out of station. She was moving, he saw with stark horror, right across the bows of the tau vessels. They were supposed to be on the same side, but he was filled with the sudden realisation that the alliance might well have been revoked in the light of his father’s actions against the aliens. Would they respect the pact he had made with Droon?
His answer came an instant later, as the turrets of the nearest of the tau vessels rotated towards the stricken Rosetta. He saw with a rush of elation that, somehow, his vessel’s shields remained raised, and were in fact holding strong at near full capacity. The tau vessel evidently saw this too, for it held fire, not wasting its shots.
Korvane watched in mute fascination as armoured blast doors opened along the tau vessel’s flanks. Silhouetted against the pure, blue light that shone forth from within were rows upon rows of armoured figures.
As the distance between the two vessels closed to less than five hundred metres, the figures leapt into sudden movement, blue jets at their backs and ankles bursting into life and propelling them into space.
Korvane stood transfixed, barely noticing the damage control servitor stomping passed him, great jets of fire retardant gas spraying from the extinguisher units that replaced its arms. As the figures closed, he could see that they were some form of heavily armed and armoured suit, evidently built for extra-vehicular activity. What he could see were essentially torsos occupying the suits’ central masses, small, head-like blocks perched atop them. The arms were great clamps, intended, he saw immediately, to attach themselves to any available structure, and hang on while the two great weapons mounted under each clamp burned through any but the most resistant hull. Upon the suits’ backs were mounted complex manoeuvring jets, smaller clusters of which were also visible at the ankles and shoulders. He had never before seen their like, and two great waves were heading straight for his bridge.
Tracking their inevitable course snapped Korvane out of his shock. Praying that the communications arrays still functioned, he staggered back to the main command lectern, coughing as the powdery spray filling his bridge seared his already damaged lungs. He punched the console, awakening its machine spirit, and scanned the readouts for an open channel. He found one.
“Brielle!” he called, knowing that the ship-to-ship channel was open and that his stepsister’s vessel was nearby. “Listen, Brielle, I need you to—”
“Brielle?” he turned the dial, boosting the signal, and was greeted by an explosion of angry static. “Brielle, if you can hear this transmission, this is Rosetta, Brielle. This is Korvane. I’m crippled, and I have multiple fast moving class nines inbound on my bridge. If you can hear me, Brielle, I need you to close to point defence range… Brielle?”
“Damn it!” he cursed, certain that the channel was open and that his stepsister should have been able to hear his transmission, and to reply to it. He looked once more to the viewer, seeing that the tau suits were half way across the gulf between the two vessels.
Just one chance, he thought, activating the intercom plate. “Torpedo deck, this is your captain. Do you receive?” The intercom hissed and howled for a moment, before a voice replied, “My lord? Yes sir, this is Second Under-Technician Kaerk, sir, the crew chiefs dead sir, but I—”
“Chief Kaerk.” Korvane replied, promoting the man on the spot for his simple act of answering his master’s voice. “Listen to me carefully Kaerk. What is the status of the torpedo?”
“Sir?” the voice replied, the noise of a crash sounding before it returned. “It’s in tube one sir, as it always is. Should I—”
“Good!” replied Korvane, offering a brief but heartfelt prayer of thanks to the God-Emperor of Mankind. “Do you have fire control?”
“Last thing the chief did sir, before he… was awaken the torpedo’s spirit… said it looked like it might finally get its day!”
Thank the Emperor for the non-commissioned ranks, Korvane thought. “Listen Kaerk, I want you to launch the torpedo, on a ten second fuse. That’s all, do you understand?”
“Launch the torpedo sir? Launch ‘The’ torpedo?”
“Yes! Now!”
“But it’s the only one we’ve—”
“Launch it now or Emperor help me I’ll—” the intercom sputtered, an explosion sounding in the distant torpedo deck and cutting the connection dead.
That’s it then, thought Korvane. The torpedo had been his last chance, a last chance that the Rosetta had been hauling around the galaxy for over a decade, and now, he sighed, he would never fire it. He watched as the first of the tau suits closed on the wide viewing port, briefly debating with himself whether to lower the armoured blast shield. Little point, he decided, they’d be through it in seconds, it would only delay the inevitable.
Better to die with his ship, he decided, straightening his jacket and standing proud at the command lectern, as all good captains should.
The first of the tau suits closed on the armoured glass of the viewing port, its mighty clamps attaching themselves to protrusions on the vessel’s outer hull. The under-slung weapons fired into life, blinding white light arcing from the short, rectangular barrel of each.
It began to cut, when Korvane felt the Rosetta lurch violently to starboard, causing him to stumble and grab hold of the lectern to maintain his balance. The movement was not that of the vessel suffering another explosion, but something else entirely, something he had not experienced since he had stood upon the deck of his father’s vessel and watched in childlike wonder as the Oceanid unleashed upon a xenos vessel a fearsome torpedo attack!
The last torpedo in the Arcadius fleet ploughed through the dense formation of tau attackers, sending them scattering in every direction. Korvane barked the laughter of the insane, the laughter of those who know they have won, even as they welcome death. He locked his gaze with the single lens of the tau suit as it cut through the armoured glass, great gobbets of superheated, liquid material splashing across the metal deck of the bridge.
“Five,” he counted, watching the huge form of the torpedo as it dived into space.
“Four.” He saw manoeuvring jets flaring into life across the flank of the tau ship, less than half a kilometre distant.
“Three.” The suits turned, to race for their mother ship. He knew they would never make it.
“Two.” The pressure on the bridge dropped suddenly as the attacker breached the glass.
“One. Emperor bless you, Crew Chief Kaerk.” The torpedo detonated, scouring the space between the Rosetta and the tau vessel, burning the surface of Korvane’s vessel, instantly vaporising every last one of the tau battlesuits, raking the Rosetta with the cleansing fires of oblivion.
“Try again, damn it!” Lucian paced the length of his bridge, desperate for any response from his son’s vessel. His earlier elation at having outwitted Luneberg turning to helplessness as he saw the Rosetta flounder, wracked by internal explosions.
“Helm!” Lucian called. “Bring us alongside the Rosetta. Operations, all available hands prepare to receive survivors.”
The Oceania ploughed on, the helmsman bringing her about to approach the Rosetta from astern. The manoeuvre would bring Lucian’s ship into close proximity with the alien fleet, but he had no choice.
Meanwhile, he looked on as the alien vessels turned their attention from the first of the two Chasmatan cruisers to the Borealis Defensor. Luneberg’s flagship was attempting to escape, but the aliens were evidently not about to let that happen. Four of the five tau vessels began a slow
turn to starboard, their intention obviously to bring their prow-mounted weapons to bear against the Borealis Defensor’s rear section. The fifth alien vessel, Lucian saw, veered off to port, closing on the Rosetta.
“Best speed, Mister Raldi, the Rosetta needs us,” he said, willing, if it were required, to put his own vessel between the tau ship and his son’s. “Port weapons, prepare for firing.”
As the Oceanid closed on the Rosetta, Lucian watched as the four alien ships caught up with Luneberg’s flagship.
Prow turrets spitting blue flame, the invisible, hyper-velocity projectiles lanced across space and slammed through the vessel’s shields. A second salvo tore a ragged line of punctures across her armoured drive section, breaching a secondary plasma conduit at a dozen points, superheated gases venting into space.
The tau vessels closed in for the kill, their turrets locked on their target’s wound. Lucian held his breath, scarcely able to believe the destruction wrought this day.
However, the coup de grace was never delivered.
A searing, white light erupted to the fore of the Rosetta, Lucian throwing his arm across his face before the viewer even reacted by dimming automatically. Cautiously, he lowered his arm, and saw the remnants of a detonation of stunning magnitude, roiling energies spreading out in a searing bow wave.
The Rosetta was scoured by the explosion, the mighty vessel propelled away by the blast wave and spinning slowly clear. The tau vessel too was caught in the explosion, its entire starboard side erupting in secondary explosions as it was pushed by gargantuan energies across space. Lucian watched as the tau vessel spun clean through its four sister ships, each veering desperately to avoid it. At the last, the tau vessel collided with the Borealis Defensor, the two ships grinding inexorable together, twisting and melding together to form a terrible amalgamation of human and tau starship. Incredibly, neither vessel exploded outright, although plasma fires danced crazily across the surface of both, welding them together for all time, making a blackened tomb for thousands of men and aliens even as they perished within.
Lucian wasted no time mourning the xenos tau or the treacherous dogs of Luneberg’s crew. He was more concerned for his son. The Rosetta was drifting, her drives clearly dead, and a hundred fires had erupted across the side of her hull that had borne the brunt of the explosion.
Worse, she was drifting across the bows of the remaining tau vessels. Lucian weighed the odds, immediately deciding upon his course of action.
“Helm, cross the Rosetta’s stern at ninety,” he ordered.
“Aye, sir,” Helmsman Raldi replied, a savage grin on his face, and Lucian saw that his helmsman had understood the order fully.
The Oceanid powered on, Lucian seeing that the remaining tau vessels were coming around for a salvo against the Rosetta’s aft section. Within minutes, his vessel was drawing across the Rosetta’s stern, crossing the T with the other ship’s drive section.
“All stop!” Lucian bellowed. “Starboard batteries, prepare to fire on my order.”
Lucian crossed his hands behind his back, counting off the range to the tau vessels. He knew they would open fire any second.
“Sir!” the helmsman shouted, collision-warning sirens screaming into deafening life across the Oceanid’s bridge. The ship pitched beneath Lucian’s feet, throwing him to one side as he fought to keep his balance.
“Report!” he shouted.
“It’s the Fairlight, sir,” Raldi replied through gritted teeth as he wrestled with the Oceanid’s helm. “She’s crossing our starboard bow.”
Lucian turned to see that the sight of the Fairlight coming alongside, entirely filled the starboard viewing port. He turned, looking to the holograph, to see that the alien fleet was veering off.
Thanks to Brielle’s untimely and inexplicable manoeuvre, the aliens had escaped the wrath of the Oceanid’s broadside. Lucian fumed. His daughter might have thought she was aiding him, but she had cost him the potential opportunity to catch the entire alien fleet in one, devastating volley.
She would have some explaining to do, once he had seen that his son was safe.
“All stop.” Brielle ordered, the Fairlight coming to a stately halt two hundred metres to the Oceanid’s starboard. She stretched, catlike, in her command throne, and turned to the hooded figure standing beside her.
“One good turn deserves another, eh Naal?” she said, crossing her legs across the arm of the throne.
“Indeed, my lady,” the man replied. “My masters will have much for which to repay you.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Shall we, then,” Lucian said, standing centre stage before Droon’s throne, flanked by his son and his daughter “discuss payment?”
“Payment?” replied Imperial Commander Zachary Droon, his courtiers and advisors fussing around him. “I think you will find that the terms of the contractual arrangement between your son and me—”
“I think,” interrupted Lucian, a finger held out before him to silence the Imperial Commander, “that you will find that I have decided to, alter, the terms of that arrangement.”
Droon’s advisors erupted into outraged splutters of indignation, the reason not entirely lost upon Lucian. He chuckled inwardly, savouring the irony that, once again, a partner had altered terms on them.
“Now,” continued Lucian, “this is how we are going to set-de this.” He waited for any sign of dissension from Droon, continuing only when he saw the Imperial commander sit down upon his throne, resignation on his ascetic features.
“My son,” he placed a hand upon Korvane’s shoulder, his son standing to his right, “pledged the service of the Arcadius in the defeat of the traitorous forces of Mundus Chasmata. That pledge has been delivered upon, has it not?”
Droon nodded in reply, Lucian continuing before he could go any further. “For that service alone I judge that you are in my, not inconsiderable, debt. However, there is the matter of the harm done to the person of my son,” he turned to Korvane, whose face and body bore the dreadful wounds done as, Lucian had since discovered, the family torpedo had detonated. Korvane’s wounds would heal, of that Lucian was certain, but they would leave behind severe scarring, even disfigurement. “Not to mention,” he continued, “the large scale damage inflicted upon the Rosetta and the Oceanid during the course of the action.”
“That was hardly…” Droon spoke up, about to object to the fact that the damage to the Rosetta had been self-inflicted, and that done to the Oceanid had been caused in no small part by the weapons of the Mundus Chasmata Primary Orbital.
“Your fault?” Lucian growled. “It was ‘hardly your fault’ that you conspired with xenos to reject the just rule of the Adeptus Terra? It was ‘hardly your fault’ that you did so entirely to settle an ancient grudge with a neighbour with whom you should have been cooperating in harmony?”
“What, then, are your terms?” Droon replied.
“Glad you asked.” Lucian grinned, handing a data-slate to a nearby page, who carried it across to Droon.
Droon read the slate, his eyes widening as he took in the enormity of the figures listed there. The Imperial Commander swallowed, hard, before handing the slate back to the page. “And if I cannot settle on these terms?”
“Well, my dear commander, there are a number of reasons why I really think that you will. For one, my astropath has been monitoring the declarations of independence issued by every world in this region. You have been fooled, Droon: the tau were not fighting for your cause—they were fighting to stir the likes of you to rebellion. I can guarantee you that every other Imperial Commander on every other world in the Timbra Subsector and beyond has been approached, in one way or another, by these aliens’ agents. Evidently, most have fallen to the temptations offered to them. In Luneberg’s case it was exotic goods—his world was crawling with them—and weapons with which to equip his vessels. In your case it was mercenary service.”
“My astropath has picked up a new voice,” Lucian continued. “T
he Imperium, Droon, has already heard of the situation out here.” He paused, allowing that to sink in, gratified that Droon’s entire court had fallen to absolute silence. “On my word, he can inform the very highest of authorities of the part you had to play in all this. You know what will happen then, Droon?”
When Droon did not reply, Lucian went on. “If you are lucky, a Guard army of occupation will arrive and you will be executed quickly. If you are unlucky, it might be the Astartes. They don’t do occupation Droon, they go straight to the head and cut it off. It might even be the Inquisition. If it’s them, you will not be executed quickly. They will execute very slowly, and very painfully.”
“Very well, Lucian Gerrit,” replied Imperial Commander Zachary Droon. “I will have my factors draw the necessary bonds.”
Lucian suppressed a grin, clapping his son’s shoulder, and catching the wry glance cast his way by his daughter. Following her manoeuvre: the manoeuvre that had allowed the tau fleet to escape, he had threatened to ship her off to take control of a grox-lard processing plant on Chogoris in which he owned a controlling interest. I still might, he thought.
The Arcadius had emerged triumphant, and the price he had exacted upon Droon for his not turning the Imperial Commander over to the first Imperial Navy warship he encountered would go a very long way to restoring their fortunes. Yes, Lucian thought, the Arcadius are back.
The Rosetta, restored to a semblance of running order, to the Oceanid’s port and the Fairlight to her starboard, Lucian stood upon the bridge of his vessel. He had been about to issue the order to make warp, when his astropath, Master Karisan, had rushed onto the bridge, breathless, and interrupted him.
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