766960.M41 / The Bridge. Revenge, Pythos blockade, Pandorax System
Through the occulus, Kranswar witnessed the trio of explosions, each blue halo of rapidly dissipating warp energy signalling the demise of one of his ships.
‘We’ve just lost the Inviolate, Banshee and Light of Faith,’ confirmed a helmsman, removing three ship markers from a parchment starchart spread out in front of him.
With these new losses, Kranswar’s fleet was down to almost a third of the number of ships he’d had under him when they struck out for Pandorax. The losses of Imperial Guard war machines and personnel were not insubstantial either, and the Lord Admiral was beginning to wonder whether, if they did break through to Pythos, they would have enough manpower to liberate the world. If he and every crewmember on board his ships had to pick up a lasrifle and take the fight down to the planet, he would give the order in an instant if that’s what it would take.
‘Admiral Blaise wishes to speak with you, Lord Admiral,’ called out the vox officer, the single cup of the headset still pressed to his ear.
‘Put it over the speakers, Uldar,’ Kranswar said, rising from the command throne. The fury in Blaise’s voice when it boomed over the vox caused him to sit back down again.
‘What in the Emperor’s name are you playing at, Kranswar?’ the thickly accented voice rang out. Even in the midst of battle, it was delivered with such venom that every man and woman on the bridge of the Revenge froze. ‘It’s a massacre out there. Swallow your pride, you stubborn bastard. Recall the fleet while you still have a fleet to recall.’
All eyes were on the Lord Admiral. He stared off into the distance, out through the occulus. Another explosion ripped noiselessly through the dark. The helmsman removed another piece from the starchart.
‘You sent your ships into battle with talk of history ringing in the fleet’s ears,’ Blaise continued. ‘If you don’t get those ships back here now and regroup, how do you think history will remember you?’ The vox-feed cut out abruptly. Whether by accident or design, nobody on board the Revenge could tell.
‘He’s right,’ Kranswar said quietly. The entire bridge crew were still fixated on him, the next words from his mouth were potentially the most important he would ever speak. ‘Recall the fleet.’
The glacier of inactivity melted and the volume on the bridge rose as new orders were relayed to the few surviving ships of Battlefleet Demeter. Calculus logi and real space navigators plotted escape vectors for the larger vessels, while the flight decks were told to prepare for returning assault craft. Gunnery stations were put on alert to deal with any of the Chaos ships that had the temerity to follow them back to Gaea.
Kranswar sunk back onto his throne, deflated but not defeated.
‘For what it’s worth, sir,’ said Lieutenant Faisal handing him a sheaf of casualty reports, ‘I think you’re doing the right thing.’
The Lord Admiral smiled weakly. ‘Sometimes, even the right decisions can be made too late,’ he said grimly.
‘Lord Admiral. We’re picking up a new contact. Another ship has just translated in-system and is heading towards our position at speed. It’s broadcasting an Imperium identification code, outdated but confirmed,’ an ensign said from over near the auspex array. Several of the bridge officers moved to join him.
Kranswar’s heart leapt. Reinforcements. Perhaps the day could yet be won. His newfound optimism did not last long.
‘It’s the Might of Huron, sir,’ the ensign said dejectedly.
To a man, every member of Battlefleet Demeter knew of the Might of Huron and the reputation of its piratical captain, Huron Blackheart. Many of the worlds under its protection had suffered at the hands of the Red Corsairs and scores of its ships had been lost to the renegade Chapter. Most had been destroyed outright, but those unfortunate enough to be captured were pressed into service under new, traitorous colours. Twice before the Revenge had engaged Huron Blackheart’s flagship and twice before they’d fought each other to a stalemate. On both occasions, the Imperial vessel had needed to undergo months of repairs before it was starworthy again.
The mere mention of his old adversary seemed to breathe new life into Kranswar, his hunger for battle returning at the sound of Huron Blackheart’s name. ‘Where is it? I don’t have visual confirmation.’ Through the occulus, all he could see were the ships of his fleet performing painfully slow turning manoeuvres, harried the entire way by lances of weapons fire.
‘It’s approaching us from the rear,’ replied the ensign. ‘Transferring pict feed now.’ A previously dark bank of screens strobed into life and a grainy sepia-toned image gradually resolved itself, turning to colour as valves and transistors worked themselves up to operational temperature. The prow of a Slaughter-class cruiser grew ever larger on the monitors, haloed by a rough circle of textured grey.
‘What is that?’ asked Faisal, furrowing his brow in confusion.
‘It looks like it’s towing something,’ offered another lieutenant.
As the huddle of bridge crew looked on, the image changed and the rapidly moving spacecraft dropped suddenly out of the picture, leaving only the strange spheroid to crowd the visual field. Realisation washed over the crew of the Revenge like a tsunami. Mouths hung open in horror and awe at what was about to happen.
His spirit utterly broken, Kranswar dropped to his knees before the image unfolding in front of him. ‘Sweet Emperor on the Throne of Terra,’ he wept. ‘It’s an asteroid. The lunatic is going to ram us with an asteroid.’
Chapter Eight
766960.M41 / Revenge, Pythos blockade, Pandorax System
From the instant the weaponised asteroid crashed into the aft of the Revenge, reality became something very different for those on board.
On the crew levels, the handful of personnel fortunate enough to be granted rest during battle footing were flung rudely from their cots, bones shattering and skulls splitting. Those who died from the impact were the fortunate ones, the survivors suffering a drawn-out and lingering death at the tendrils of warp apparitions that bled through the hull of the ship and devoured their souls.
In one of the many galleys on board, a cook who had taken the Emperor’s coin to serve on board the Revenge by way of escaping justice for the string of murders he had committed on his home world, found himself reshaped and repurposed as a tool of Chaos. Flensed and torn apart by paring knives and cleavers, his muscle and bone were restitched by foul magicks, his skinless body compelled to hunt the corridors of the ship, claiming new victims with the blades he now found in place of fingers.
In the officers’ chapel, not a hundred metres from the bridge, a young preacher hung herself with her own robes, unable to cope with the voices of the two children she had not carried to term whispering to her from beyond. Upon finding her body, a fellow ecclesiarch defiled the limp corpse with his own hands, carving blasphemous sigils upon her flesh with his fingernails before ripping out his own eyes and slicing his jugular.
Imperial Guard regiments billeted in the cargo holds like cattle were slaughtered by lesser daemons who materialised in their midst, hundreds of men dead before a weapon was raised in retaliation. Larger, more hideous, entities stalked the lower decks, by now a morass of body parts and otherworldly substances oozing from the very fabric of the ship. In those sections of the ship gouged open by the asteroid, confused accounts of Traitor Astartes boarding parties were exchanged over vox-channels but none were confirmed, communications abruptly ceasing after the initial reports.
The only place where the malign influence of the Archenemy was yet to instil itself on board the Revenge was the bridge, but from the anarchic scenes taking place there, it was difficult to tell.
Helmsmen and officers alike ran from console to console, checking the distorted returns from auspexes and sensor arrays, while vox-operators tried in vain to make contact with other sections of the ship. Calculus logi spat endless reams of parchment from their portable cogitators, the tacky black ink denoting only nonsen
se in confused strings of random symbols.
Through the hubbub, Kranswar made out snatches of conversation, all of it insane.
‘…turned on each other. Less than twenty of them survived and most of those are…’
‘…grew teeth and began chewing away at the bulkhead…’
‘…Corsairs boarding parties have breached Stalwart. Might of Huron moving to…’
‘…off his own arm and beat himself to death with it…’
‘…says they’re in the air filtration pipes. Pink things with…’
Lieutenant Faisal shook Kranswar by the shoulder to get his attention. Ordinarily, that sort of behaviour would have been met with a rebuke, time in the brig and a possible demotion. Right now, none of that seemed to matter.
‘Sir, we’ve lost the lower twenty-seven decks.’ The young officer’s voice was hoarse. A slick of sweat coated his face and darkened the fabric of his tunic below the armpits.
The Lord Admiral was momentarily confused. The entire ship was going to hell in a tramp freighter and he was being bothered with this?
‘Well, have the naval militia or one of the Imperial Guard regiments go and retake them,’ he bellowed in irritation.
‘No, sir. You misunderstand me,’ Faisal replied, confident rather than confrontational. ‘We’ve literally lost the lower twenty-seven decks. They’re… they’re just not there any more.’
Kranswar had no time to process the information, as one of the vox-operators called out to him.
‘Lord Admiral. One of the Guard regiments has made contact. Their commander says he wants to speak to you.’
He bounded over from the throne dais and snatched the headset from the woman, speaking into it before he had even put it on properly.
‘This is Kranswar. Go ahead.’
‘Dashed good fortune you not letting us off the ship,’ said the most overtly aristocratic voice the Lord Admiral had ever heard. ‘To be absolutely frank, I did consider coming up there and throttling you myself when you refused my request but good job you did, old bean, otherwise you’d be up shit creek without a paddle right about now.’
It was the Vostroyan brigadier. Kranswar involuntarily let out a nervous laugh, partly out of the ridiculousness of the man’s turn of phrase, partly out of relief that there were still other survivors on board.
‘Good to hear your voice, brigadier. I was beginning to think we were on our own up here,’ Kranswar said.
‘You almost are, I’m afraid. Bad scene down here, old chap. The Cadians tore each other apart at the first sign of trouble, and the Godesian and Asamantrite regiments are floating past the portholes at the moment, poor bastards.’ The brigadier’s tone was one of genuine sadness. ‘Just us Vostroyans left to mount the counter-attack. Provided you’ll let us deploy on board your ship, of course, admiral.’
‘Permission granted,’ Kranswar said without giving it any thought. ‘But I’m not sure how long you’ll last out of your tanks.’
It was the brigadier’s turn to laugh now, hearty and with more than a hint of relish. ‘That’s what I’m asking your permission for, old boy. I want to roll my armour out and take the fight right to whatever it is that’s tearing your ship apart.’
Kranswar took it in his stride. On a day when an asteroid had been smashed into the back of the Revenge, the denizens of the warp had decided to make his lower decks their temporary home and Traitor Legionaries were possibly on their way to take control of his bridge, a titled and overbearing Vostroyan brigadier asking to fight a tank battle on the decks of an Imperial Navy battleship sounded like the sanest idea anybody had ever had in the history of the Imperium.
‘Permission granted,’ Kranswar said, again without giving it any thought.
766960.M41 / Red Wing. Pythos blockade, Pandorax System
Jinking to avoid the razor-sharp tip of the Heldrake’s wing, Shira let rip with two pulses from her lascannon. At point-blank range it was impossible to miss the creature, but its thick metal hide merely repelled her shots as if they were pellets from a child’s catapult. In her wake, Hyke attempted the same but met with the same results.
‘The armour’s too thick. It’ll take hellstrikes to even scratch it,’ Shira voxed in frustration.
‘Let’s get the fleet back to Gaea first, then we’ll rearm and come back for this thing. Until then, keep it occupied and away from the big ships but do not attempt to engage it,’ Hyke broadcast over the general channel.
Though only two of Red Wing remained, pilots from other Kestrel wings belonging to the Revenge were still operational, along with scattered remnants of the Fury squadrons launched from the Stalwart. Believing himself to be the highest ranking pilot still flying, Hyke had assumed leadership of the screening mission to cover the fleet’s retreat. Imperial losses had been heavy but the casualties inflicted on the Chaos interceptors were just as brutal and the Navy flyers maintained a numerical advantage over the enemy. There were close to two hundred Kestrels and Furies still involved in the battle by Shira’s estimation, but communication between them was almost non-existent thanks to incompatible vox-units and the sorcerous interference.
Oblivious to Hyke’s order, a brave, or possibly foolish, Fury crew ran the gauntlet of Chaos interceptors to get in close to the Heldrake. Bigger but carrying the same weapons fit as the single-man Kestrel, the Fury opened up with its wing-mounted lascannons, its complement of missiles already spent earlier in the battle. The rapid fusillade met with predictable results and as the craft spun away to regroup with the rest of the Imperial fighters, the Heldrake thrust out its neck with preternatural quickness, grasping the Fury’s tail section between its gargantuan jaws. Exhaling derisorily, it washed the stricken fighter in a stream of baleflame before relinquishing its grip and allowing the blackened shell to drift forever lifeless among the stars.
Emboldened by the presence of the daemonic flyer, the Chaos pilots renewed their assault on the fleeing frigates, destroyers and cruisers. Bereft of missiles, they too were reduced to las and solid shot weapons, seeking to exploit ruptures in the shells of vessels whose shields had failed. Pursued all the way by three Kestrels from Yellow Wing, the double axe-head shape of a Hell Talon got in close to the Scion of Ultima, a Sword-class frigate with almost two millennia of service, and set off a ripple of explosions along its quarterdeck, a well-placed shot taking out a tertiary generator used for powering the ship’s lighting systems. Larger holes opened up in the hull and, though the culprit was quickly punished by the guns of Yellow Wing, yet more Chaos fighters swarmed the stricken frigate. At the rear of their formation, the Heldrake swerved among them, seeking to reach the head of the pack and claim the kill as its own. Just as it got within range to issue forth its daemonic flame, a dark shape jetted past, missing it by barely a metre and spoiling its aim. Leaving the Scion of Ultima to the predation of the Hell Talons, the Heldrake struck out to chase its new target.
‘You stay with the fleet,’ Shira voxed to Hyke, gunning her Kestrel’s engines for all they were worth. ‘I’ll draw that thing off.’
‘Be careful, Shira,’ Hyke voxed back, his voice faint. ‘There’s a round of drinks with your name on it as soon as you’re out of the brig.’
‘Careful?’ she said, dipping the nose of her Kestrel to narrowly avoid an intense burst from the Heldrake’s baleflamer. The temperature in the cockpit rose suddenly and patches of her flight suit ignited, forcing Shira to operate the control stick with one hand while she used the other to pat out the flames. She heaved as the smell of her scorched flesh mingled with the stench of drying vomit.
‘I’m always careful,’ Shira concluded, not entirely believing her own words.
766960.M41 / Revenge, Pythos blockade, Pandorax System
‘They’re dead, sir,’ the vox-operator reported solemnly. ‘All of them dead.’
The already melancholy atmosphere on the bridge became even more sombre as the fate of the Vostroyan armoured brigade became clear. The initial euphoria at a meaningf
ul fightback had soon given way to anguish as the screams of dying gunners and drivers rang out over the intra-ship vox-network, and all-out despair had taken hold once contact had been lost entirely. Determined to ascertain whether the Imperial Guardsmen had fallen or whether the lack of communication was more Archenemy foul play, Kranswar had deployed a squad of ship militia to get eyes-on confirmation.
‘The passageways are littered with wrecks. Tanks torn open by duh… daemons.’ Barely into his twenties, the comms man struggled to get the words out. ‘Bodies dragged out and – oh, Throne – smeared all over the…’ The sentence unfinished, he closed his eyes and issued a plaintive wail.
Since they had last slept, the crew of the Revenge had endured more than most citizens of the Imperium, even those pressed into military service, suffered in an entire lifetime. They had met those challenges head-on and despite showing the basic human emotions that come to the fore under periods of extreme duress, they had tempered it with stoicism and grit, never allowing hope to elude them.
Now, even that was gone.
Staring at the faces of his crew, many tear-streaked and sullen, he realised that they were looking to him to give them leadership, to show them light in this time of darkness. Despite leading them to their inevitable deaths, they were offering him a chance at redemption. Clearing his throat, he seized the opportunity.
‘The enemy has taken almost everything from us. Comrades, friends, lovers. All now lie dead at their hands. Beyond our hull, the wrecks of almost three-quarters of Battlefleet Demeter are destined to drift eternally, escorted in their silent repose by the ruined frames of Kestrels and Furies, their pilots having laid down their lives so that others had a better chance to survive. Beneath our very feet, dark agents are abroad, slaying with impunity those few brave souls who have found it deep within them to resist, however futile that resistance may be.
‘Though the blood of those who served the Imperium so valiantly still drips from the blades and teeth of the servants of the Ruinous Powers, an equal portion of that blood is on my hands too. It was my mistakes that led us to this point, my errors of judgement that have put us in a position where, short of a miracle, victory is now impossible. That miracle will not be coming, for I have not earned it and for that, and for all my errors, I truly apologise.’
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 325