Involuntarily, Torghun’s mind shot back to Luna, to the transfer hangars, then to his first glimpse of the V Legion troop-lifter that would take him out of the Solar System for good. He remembered catching sight of the lightning-strike sigil, and how juvenile it had looked to him then – gold, white and red. Childish colours.
‘They believe in fate,’ said Torghun. ‘All of them, preached at by the weather-magicians. The pattern of time, the will of heaven. They would walk into damnation happily if one of them commanded it. That is what I will never understand. Do you know we are laughed at by the other Legions? Laughed at.’ He shook his head. ‘It needs to change, brother. It can be changed, but only if the Warmaster–’
‘Hush,’ said Hibou, holding a warning finger up. ‘Not here, not outside the lodge.’ He drew in a deep, weary breath. ‘We will wait for the Khagan’s ruling. He will either go after Russ or play for time here.’
‘And what of the Alpha Legion?’
Hibou snorted. ‘Who knows? They’re up to something, but there’s such a thing as being too obscure.’
Torghun’s helm-display suddenly flashed with a priority order-burst. From Hibou’s silence he could tell that the other khan had also received it.
Zao-pattern fleet movement, enact in T-minus four. Take stations. Go swiftly, go surely, for the Warhawk and the Emperor.
They looked at one another.
‘Seems the Khagan agrees with you,’ said Torghun, moving quickly towards the door.
‘Indeed,’ said Hibou, following him. ‘The Alpha Legion. I wonder if they know what’s about to hit them.’
Torghun laughed hollowly. There were some things that he could appreciate in his Legion brothers – he’d never doubted their ferocity, their velocity, their flamboyance once given their head. He remembered how Shiban had been in the canyons of Chondax. For all his irritation at the Chogorian khan’s constant pulling ahead, he’d been a little envious of his joy in battle.
Laugh when you are killing.
Torghun had told him that. The advice had been out of character but sincere enough. He wondered where Shiban was now, and what part he would play in the coming manoeuvre.
‘Well, if they don’t,’ Torghun said, moving quickly down the corridor and towards his station, ‘they’re about to find out.’
Every starship in the service of the Imperium was different. The secrets hidden within their reactor hearts were jealously guarded by the lords of the Red Planet and shared with no one outside the privileged circles of the elect. Only the Legions’ Techmarines had any profound understanding of the processes that propelled the vessels and kept them from disintegrating into the void, and even they were not made privy to the deepest secrets. Thus was the dominion of Mars over its creations assured.
That did not mean, though, that each Legion became powerless occupants of ships over which they had no control. Every primarch asserted various preferences during construction: Corax had worked obsessively to make his vessels as stealthy as possible, Vulkan to make them durable and Fulgrim to make them beautiful. Primarchs had ways of circumventing standard Imperial command structures – they could bend rules, uncover hidden datacores and suborn Mechanicum magi. So it was, as the Great Crusade progressed, that each Legion fleet slowly took on the character of its master through an endless programme of refits, retrofits and base modifications.
In the case of the White Scars, only one change was ever requested and only one metric was ever improved upon.
Speed.
V Legion Techmarines spent decades boosting reactor power-feeds and finding ways to hone manoeuvrability far beyond the tolerances that each standard ship class had been designed for. The endless pursuit of velocity came with its costs: gunnery captains had been heard to complain of reduced lance range, and it was well known that a White Scars ship would not carry as many troops or drop-ships as the equivalent vessel in a standard fleet, but such factors carried little weight in a Legion drenched in the wild-riding tradition of the Chogorian plains.
Under standing orders from the Khagan, the Legion had never shown off its drives’ modified capabilities outside of active warzones. Since so few of the other Legions had ever fought alongside the White Scars this specialism had not become widely known, except for a few speculative reports here and there of strangely elongated engine-housings, extravagant thruster formations and oversized fuel lines.
It all made for a ferociously fast set of warships, from the largest behemoths to the most slender of system-runners.
The Kaljian was no exception.
The destroyer gradually picked up momentum, coasting out towards the screen of waiting Alpha Legion escorts.
‘This is a standard zao,’ Shiban reminded the bridge from the command throne. ‘Full-fleet, enacted on a single command from the Swordstorm. You have your vectors and know your craft – do not disappoint me, brothers.’
He caught the expectant happiness on the faces of those working at their stations. The taut atmosphere of guess and counter-guess had been banished, replaced by a more familiar pleasure in doing what they were good at.
It was infectious, and Shiban found himself smiling. The White Scars had always been a harmonious Legion, free of the mordant temper of some of their counterparts; low spirits did not suit them.
‘And do not outpace the leaders,’ he warned.
All across the vast battlefront, White Scars escort craft moved as one, sweeping towards the encircling Alpha Legion forces in a unified screen. Inter-fleet communications were shut down and incoming bursts blocked – the enemy had had their chance to make themselves understood. Anything that they said now would be disregarded.
Behind the first wave came the cruisers, shining pure-white against the well of the void, their huge engines already burning hot. They pulled together, forming a tight battlesphere in the wake of the more strung-out vanguard. Shiban watched as one by one they raised their forward void shields, making the space around them glisten and blur.
Still far ahead of the Kaljian’s position, the Alpha Legion reacted. They maintained the integrity of the cordon, warding the routes to the nearest suitable jump-points and keeping the White Scars corralled within the vicinity of Chondax. As they had done ever since arriving, each ship of the blockade matched the movements of its White Scars counterpart, maintaining a gigantic mirror-image across space.
Shiban studied the tactical data watchfully. The two fleets were evenly matched – the Alpha Legion had clearly known just how many ships to bring to achieve their purpose. That alone was cause for some suspicion, especially if rumours of them taking on the Wolves were true. Just how many battleships did they possess? Had they been poised all the while for this, waiting for the veil to lift?
He remembered Phemus. The medal. The bodies.
His helm-display suddenly glowed with fresh orders.
‘Begin first phase.’
The Kaljian picked up speed, shunting power to its main lance and withdrawing it from the rear voids. On either flank of the vanguard, other ships did the same.
Shiban felt his primary heart begin to beat harder, just as it would have done if he were in the saddle, sighting his prey.
‘That’s the target,’ he ordered, isolating a counterpart Alpha Legion destroyer on the forward scopes and marking it with an engagement rune.
The gap between the fleets closed. The Alpha Legion formation reacted just as a blockade ought to react, maintaining a rigid web across the widest area of space, each node backed up by a second rank of warships held in reserve. Their movements remained cagey, as if they wished to do nothing more than hold the impasse for as long as possible.
Shiban admired the discipline of the formation. They were well drilled.
It won’t help you.
The two vanguards closed to within lance-range. For the first time Shiban noticed incoming vox-requests from the enemy on the sensorium array, and ignored them.
It was too late now.
The first stabs of lasb
eams flickered out, initially along the Chondax-trailing edge, then rapidly spreading down the line.
‘Open fire,’ ordered Shiban calmly.
The Kaljian’s forward lance opened up, spitting a beam of coruscation directly at the target. The enemy void shields splashed with a corona pattern of static, and the ship reacted, ducking out of line, rolling away and returning a volley of broadside lasbeams. Spearing bursts peppered the Kaljian’s dorsal void shields as the Alpha Legion ship thrust round to bring its own lance to bear.
‘Fire again, then pull away to four-five-two,’ ordered Shiban, giving it no time to gain a clear shot. He felt a faint tremble of deck-strain as the Kaljian came about.
All along the front, similar battles broke out – White Scars ships probing the line and Alpha Legion ships resisting them. It was a classic containment pattern, designed to hem the V Legion formation in and prevent isolated ships from running the cordon. The standard breakout response was a full-scale assault on the containment net, aiming to drive it back through a massed volume of concentrated ship-to-ship fire. Such an order was not taken lightly – the result would be ruinous for both sides, and only hotheads like Russ or Angron enjoyed taking such risks.
The Alpha Legion clearly judged that the Khan was not so cavalier. In this, of course, they were entirely correct.
Shiban’s helm-display updated again. ‘Second phase.’
The White Scars vanguard began to drift spinwards, pulling clear of their jump-point trajectory and dragging the centre of the engagement back towards Chondax’s gravity well. It looked almost careless, as if aimless commanders had launched a half-hearted breakout without the commitment to see it through.
‘Not too quickly,’ warned Shiban, watching closely as his crew let the Kaljian’s focus drift a little too low of the combat-plane. It had to look lazy, but taking a critical hit now would cause him problems.
The intensity of las-fire picked up. The Xo-Jia took a heavy blow to its shield generators and had to compensate with a ferocious return thicket of las-fire. An Alpha Legion corvette with the marker Beta-Kalaphon misjudged a forward move and blundered into a wall of plasma, shattering half its void shield coverage.
For all that, the engagements were muted, probing, restrained. No torpedoes were launched, no gunship wings were unleashed. The two walls of minor warships grappled in a bizarre half-embrace of limited ferocity.
‘Third phase.’
The drift became more pronounced.
‘I think we can afford to move a little faster,’ observed Shiban, watching with satisfaction as the White Scars line began to crumple inwards. Seven fast-attack frigates withdrew completely, slipping out of contention with their prows charred and their void-cover flickering.
All across the engagement zone, V Legion positions began to collapse, withering in the face of steady, professional pressure from the enemy. White Scars vessels dropped formation, protecting their own flanks and leaving holes in the offensive wall. As if fighting a strong headwind out on the Altak, the vanguard’s momentum faltered.
Shiban stared at the forward scope intently, watching for the Alpha Legion response. They brought their capital ships up in support of the first wave, prudently applying pressure where they saw weakness. The net closed tighter, pulling together a little more. In doing so they brought more guns into range, but their rigidity began to suffer: they were cautious, but not too cautious.
The Kaljian bucked as it took a direct hit, the void shields flexing like drum skins before the energy was absorbed.
‘Return fire?’ came the query from the gunnery station. ‘I have a lock.’
‘I think not,’ said Shiban, holding for the next order phase. ‘Just run us back, and rotate to give them a new face. Maintain las-volleys, but make it look sloppy.’
As the Kaljian rolled backwards, veering away from the bulk of the incoming fire like a poorly crewed smuggler’s rig, Shiban couldn’t help wondering what Torghun was making of it. Back on Chondax, the Terran khan had hated feigned retreats, never adopting them while in command of his own Brotherhood. He had been a strange one, Torghun, uneasy with the things that made being a warrior of the V Legion the finest, most profound joy in the galaxy. Shiban, for all he had tried, had never really understood him – he briefly considered where Torghun might be now, and–
His helm-display suddenly gained another rune, immediately blink-clicked into a time-stamped order activation.
Shiban felt a spike of adrenaline, coupled with a rush of pure pleasure. The zao was under way.
Here we go.
‘Stand by for fleet-wide switch,’ he commanded, priming the bridge for action.
The chrono started to tick.
Ilya could hardly believe what she was seeing. She and Halji had been suffered to remain on the Swordstorm’s command bridge but soon found themselves shunted to the margins as the Khan’s retinue had taken their spaces around the throne.
She looked over to where the primarch sat, surrounded by luminous hololith projections, his austere face locked in concentration. None of those around him – the huge warriors of his keshig, the ship commanders, the strategeos and zadyin arga – gave away the slightest discomfort at the mauling their fleet was taking.
‘What’s going on?’ she hissed to Halji.
Her adjutant turned to look at her, his expression hidden behind a blank ivory facemask. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Has everything I’ve been doing here been wasted?’ she asked, consumed with frustration at the prospect. ‘The supply process was perfect this time. We had everything assembled ahead of schedule – we could have held them off indefinitely, and now… this. You convinced me, Halji, that your people knew void-craft.’
‘We do.’
‘You’ve got a strange way of showing it.’
‘Are you watching carefully, szu? Do you see what he does?’
‘I see him throwing away a tactical position and getting his ships killed.’
‘Have not lost one yet.’
‘Damn you, you will soon.’ Ilya felt like rushing up and hammering her fists on his thick helm to knock some sense into him. ‘Does he not care? Is this just one more game to you all?’
Halji remained good-naturedly unmoving. ‘Everything is game. But no, he cares very much. Keep watching.’
Ilya turned back to the projected tactical image. It looked terrible – the half-hearted engagement was drifting into incoherence as the first wave of V Legion vessels was forced back in upon itself. Any structure to the advance had dissolved, lost in a maze of confused withdrawal lines. The Alpha Legion cordon, represented on the hololith by a bleak front of stolidly spaced blue lights, pushed back remorselessly.
She felt her pulse-rate quickening with anger. She had worked so hard to instil some sense of discipline into them – to make them take their logistic responsibilities seriously, to ensure that every warship they possessed was properly equipped and knew its function.
It was a shambles. She shuddered to think what would have happened if the enemy out there had been something properly terrifying. Like the Wolves.
‘I see noth–’
Before she had finished speaking, the Khan issued a command at last.
‘Now,’ he said simply. Even on a bridge crowded with warriors and busy with a hundred different activities, his low voice somehow carried to all corners. ‘Five second mark.’
Ilya saw the order-burst go out to every warship in the fleet, transmitted directly to the ship commanders’ helm-displays. Above her, suspended on bronze chains, a pict screen switched over to a countdown timer.
5… 4…
‘What was that command?’ asked Ilya.
3… 2…
‘Is important that this is synchronised,’ said Halji. ‘You should hang on to something.’
1.
There was no time. The deck suddenly kicked violently, as if something huge had detonated somewhere deep in the Swordstorm’s immense hull, and a roar filled the bridge’
s airspace. Ilya staggered, clattering into Halji’s immobile armour and banging her forehead painfully against the ceramite.
He reached down to steady her, and she pushed him away, embarrassed. ‘We’re… racing,’ she noted, shocked, watching the fleet-spread suddenly contract. ‘Throne of Terra.’
The Swordstorm had kicked into full attack speed. The acceleration was incredible, an almost instant switch from dawdling quarter-power to a thunderous, booming, barnstorming charge. It should have been impossible – it should have taken whole minutes to key the main drives up.
‘As I said, szu,’ said Halji. ‘Keep watching.’
Ilya found her feet clumsily, grabbing hold of the edge of a balcony railing and forcing herself to look up at the tactical hololiths.
Everything had changed. The fleet’s formation had morphed in an instant, suddenly switching from an aimless drift-pattern into an arrowhead shock assault of astonishing precision.
Every ship had moved. Every one of them, all at the same time. They were now in new trajectories and in perfect concert, suddenly leaping from semi-committed holding patterns into a single attack vector.
Ilya felt her mouth begin to hang open and snapped it closed. She had never seen shipmastery like it. The Imperial Navy could not have performed such a manoeuvre in less than five minutes, and it would have required hundreds of course-correction warnings and hours of preparation to bring off.
The White Scars had done it, as one – with no extraneous prompting – in five seconds.
By then, Halji was laughing. ‘We call this zao,’ he told her. ‘The Chisel. It is... invigorating.’
Ilya stared up at the real-view ports, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
The White Scars deployment was now a single spearhead. Escorts shot out, pulling together into a single mass and punching a hole through the cordon. Their sudden burst of speed and concentrated lance-strikes wrong-footed the Alpha Legion vessels in their path, and three bronze-prowed destroyers were overwhelmed almost immediately, lost amidst a whirlwind of plasma and exploding torpedo trails.
Other enemy ships reacted, swinging about to plug the gap, but all too slowly. It took precious seconds to swing their lances around and push power to their idling engines, by which time the big V Legion bruisers – the Tchin-Zar, the Lance of Heaven, the Qo-Fian – had charged into the fray, thundering up the line forged by the runners and flooding the area with a blistering circlet of destructive las-power.
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