‘All vessels. Make for the Adamantium Fields. We’re retreating to Pythos,’ he voxed to the fleet. If he could salvage some of the Black Legion ships, perhaps it would put Abaddon in a more forgiving mood. If not, at least he would still be alive to barter for his life.
Without question, the bridge crew ran through the drill of turning the huge craft around. Agonisingly slowly, kilometres of captured Imperial vessel swung around in a wide arc, its prow eventually pointing towards Pythos. As the Dark Angels fleet converged on the handful of surviving traitor ships, Malgar ordered full speed ahead, punching towards the sanctuary of the asteroid field.
‘Lord Irongrasp. It’s the other vessels in the fleet. They’re breaking formation,’ said a crewman seated before an auspex. His big eyes were completely jet black, giving the impression of his pupils having swallowed both iris and white. Malgar strode from the rail before the occulus, eager to see for himself. At the centre of the auspex sat the rune denoting the Merciless Death, its course a straight line headed directly for the Adamantium Fields. Either side of it, multiple smaller icons headed off at diagonals in all directions. At the fringes of the display sat the ominous red markers of enemy vessels.
‘Raise the Helspite. I want to speak to Shangsiao Zurmgren. Now,’ Irongrasp spat.
‘They’re refusing all hails, lord,’ said the vox-operator after several attempts to raise the fleeing heavy cruiser. The Helspite’s rune flickered before disappearing from the auspex.
‘Helspite has just made warp translation,’ said the dark-eyed crewman. More icons pulsed and vanished in quick succession until the Merciless Death was the only friendly vessel remaining.
‘They’ve abandoned us. The cowards have fled and abandoned us,’ Malgar said, bile rising in his throat. With the other ships gone, the already stricken Merciless Death had no escort and the Space Marine vessels would be on her in minutes. ‘Launch all fighter wings. Suicide protocols. If any of them try to return to this ship before we are within the asteroid field, you have my permission to shoot them down.’
Moments later the auspex lit up with hundreds of tiny dots, racing towards the edge of the screen. In response, hundreds more in hostile colours swarmed in from the edge, the Imperial fleet scrambling its own fighters to counter the threat. Through the occulus, the Adamantium Fields grew ever closer.
Further explosions rocked the Chaos ship as the swifter Space Marine vessels drew within weapons range. Unimpeded by the suicide pilots now engaged by Imperial Navy fighters, they opened up with prow lances, scorching the Merciless Death’s flanks with glancing blows. Irongrasp knew they were not warning shots across his bow; the gunnery teams were finding their range and their next volleys would be deadly.
‘Hard to port!’ Malgar yelled at the steersman. The mutated brute, more beast than man, pulled the ancient wheel hard to the left and the ship followed suit. Bridge crew grasped for anything to steady themselves as the Merciless Death lurched sharply. Through the occulus, two bright beams of energy blazed on by, the Dark Angels vessels missing their target thanks to Malgar’s quick manoeuvre. ‘Hard to port!’ he yelled again.
It was a double-bluff and one he’d used to good effect many times before. The pursuing vessels would be expecting a jinking manoeuvre and would place their next shots expecting him to turn back to starboard. By heading further to port, Malgar was not only avoiding their fire but was moving away from them, putting future shots at the limit of their effective range. The ship pitched again, this time sending crewmen sprawling to the deck and another shot streaked by, missing the Merciless Death by a comfortable margin. Before it registered that only a single ship had fired, the prow battery of the other loosed a shot that caught the Merciless Death square in the top aft section.
Rocking violently, the ship listed hard under the ensuing explosion, threatening to roll completely before the gravitic compensators kicked in at the last moment. His armoured boots maglocked to the deck, Malgar was the last soul who remained on his feet on the bridge. Ignoring the devastation wrought upon the crew and the fires that had broken out he barked more orders.
‘Steersman. Hard to–’
Twin impacts cut him off, the bridge going momentarily dark before the emergency systems sputtered to life. Despite the gloomy half-light he could see that most of the bridge crew were dead. The slab-muscled steersman lay motionless over the wheel, his bestial head split open from forehead to temple.
Malgar crushed the carpet of bodies underfoot as he made his way over to the steering controls but, as yet another direct hit was scored upon the Merciless Death, even his maglocked boots and Space Marine physique could not prevent him from being knocked forcefully to the floor. Disentangling himself from the jumble of dead crew, he rose to his feet and struggled on across the rumbling deck. Something filled the circle of the occulus that caused him to stop cold in his tracks.
In the final stages of bringing itself to bear on the helpless Chaos ship, the unmistakable prow of a Space Marine strike cruiser loomed large through the huge glass eye. Tiny explosions flared around it where the suicide fighters launched from Merciless Death either smashed against the Dark Angels’ shields or were shot down by defence batteries. Movement caught Malgar’s attention, a massive turret rotating until its linear accelerator was pointing directly at Merciless Death’s bridge.
As the bombardment cannon fired, Malgar Irongrasp – formerly Malgar Eringrisp, White Consuls Master of the Fleet – at last gave in to the inevitable.
766960.M41 / Exterior, Revenge, Pythos blockade, Pandorax System
Kaldor Draigo blinked back into reality, a fleshless hand still gripping him tight.
Instantly, his suit’s systems went into overdrive, runes and icons flashing insistently to warn him of massive changes in temperature and pressure. Inbuilt oxygen reserves kicked in with a low hiss and vibrations rattled through his ancient armour as the soles of his feet automatically maglocked to whatever was beneath him. A noiseless explosion bloomed in the distance causing his visors to darken momentarily, sparing his eyes from damage. When they cleared, Draigo realised where he was.
The vast outlines of Imperial vessels swam through the blackness of space, pursuing fleeing Chaos ships and mopping up the last of the enemy’s fighters with their turrets. Stars shimmered, their light reflected from the hulls of the spacefaring behemoths and from the Supreme Grand Master’s own armour. J’ian-Lo had teleported them both onto the hull of the Revenge.
Diago brought the Titansword up in a blur of silver. The upstroke caught the arm gripping him at the wrist, almost severing the filthy bones. His captor’s grasp relinquished, the Grey Knight reversed his motion and caught the daemon prince’s arm again on the downstroke, splinters of radius and ulna floating free in the void. J’ian-Lo’s face formed a snaggletoothed snarl, its visage incongruous without the noise of a roar to accompany it. Balling its fist, it swung its undamaged arm at Draigo’s head.
Draigo reacted just in time, the huge knuckle making contact with his pauldron rather than his helmet. He spun at the torso, presenting his other shoulder to J’ian-Lo but his maglocked boots prevented him from being knocked back.
Recovering, Draigo used both hands to slash violently upwards with his weapon, trying to splice the massive daemon through the sternum but his blow was countered. In the blink of an eye, J’ian-Lo’s ruined arm reshaped and refashioned itself, flattening and reknitting to form a wide, flat blade of bone. The Titansword locked against it, both wielders straining to keep the other’s weapon in place, but inevitably the daemon prince’s greater strength won out. Overriding his armour’s maglock, Draigo took two quick steps backwards. J’ian-Lo’s bonesword passed harmlessly through the space the Grey Knight had just vacated and embedded itself in the hull of the Revenge.
Too far away to capitalise on the daemon prince’s momentary predicament, the Supreme Grand Master instead used the opportunity to assess his surroundings and situation. Crenulations ran for kilometres in each direction, th
e pattern interrupted by weapons cupolas and sensor arrays until it met either the prow of the ship or the protruding bridge section. The only feature close by that broke the straight line of the hull top was a comms tower, its metallic structure thrusting ten metres upwards from the body of the Revenge. Had it been freestanding on the surface of a planet, the comms tower would rightly have been called large but here, in comparison to the Imperial Navy ships and celestial bodies, it paled into insignificance. To Kaldor Draigo it was currently the most important thing in the universe and his best chance of ending the battle with J’ian-Lo swiftly and in his favour.
Breaking into a sprint, Draigo turned and headed for the tower, rhythmically engaging and disengaging the maglock in time with his footfalls, lest he drift off into the void. Freeing its blade-arm, J’ian-Lo grinned and beat its wings to set off in pursuit. The grin soon became another snarl as the daemon prince realised that despite all of the gifts lavished upon it by Nurgle, it too was subject to certain natural laws.
Draigo had surmised that J’ian-Lo had teleported him to the exterior of the ship not only to separate him from his battle-brothers but also to diminish his arsenal. With sound not able to travel in a vacuum, J’ian-Lo’s true name would be useless against him, as would any binding or banishing incantations as it was the hearing, not merely the speaking, from which the power sprung. But lack of sound was the sole boon the void afforded the daemon prince, the absence of both atmosphere and gravity making its wings useless and working to the Grey Knight’s advantage instead.
J’ian-Lo dipped his head and gave chase on foot. Already a significant gap had opened up between the favoured of Nurgle and its prey, and this lengthened as the skeletal giant struggled to navigate across the Revenge’s bumpy surface. Whereas Draigo could lock himself to the hull without breaking stride, J’ian-Lo had to grip the hull in its claw-like feet with every step it took, talons biting deep into metal. By the time Draigo reached the base of the comms tower, there was over twenty metres between him and the daemon prince.
Finding hand-holds with the ease an ogryn finds food, Draigo clambered up the outside of the tower, his boots gripping the metal as he went. Even in a full suit of Terminator armour, he had almost traversed the structure by the time J’ian-Lo had reached the base.
Looking up at the trapped Space Marine, J’ian-Lo shook its head in pity. All Draigo’s foolish gambit had done was strand him at the top of the tower leaving him at the mercy – not that it had any – of one of Nurgle’s most blessed. Not bothering to clamber up after him, J’ian-Lo started tearing at the comms tower, trying to separate it from the rest of the Revenge and send it floating off into space with Draigo still attached to it.
It was only when the shadow cast by the Grey Knight kept getting larger that J’ian-Lo realised that it was the one who had been led into a trap.
The magnets in his soles inexorably attracted to the vast metal hull of the ship beneath him, Draigo dropped, the hilt of the Titansword clasped between both gauntleted hands, blade-tip pointed downwards. Too quick for even a daemon prince to react, Draigo’s feet made contact with J’ian-Lo’s ribcage at the same instant the blade met its throat. Slamming the giant skeleton to the deck, the Grey Knight’s blade slipped through the top of the thing’s spine, parting its deformed skull from the rest of its frame. It rolled away into a recess between two crenulations.
Lifting himself from the crouched position he’d landed in, Draigo removed himself from the inert frame of the daemon prince and it drifted away from the hull, floating slowly into the depths of eternity. Steadily, the Supreme Grand Master approached J’ian-Lo’s severed head, its bulbous eyes flicking in all directions, mouth moving as if in prayer. When Draigo finally came to stand over it, he realised the head was mouthing the word ‘please’. Derisorily, the commander of the Grey Knights order flicked the daemon prince’s head away with a swift motion of his foot and looked on impassively as the skull followed the rest of the body out into the blackness.
He opened a vox-link to the Silver Nemesis. ‘Captain Fischer. This is Supreme Grand Master Draigo. Lock onto my position and teleport me back aboard the Revenge.’
Seconds later, the silvered form of their leader rematerialized amongst the cadre of Purifiers and Paladins, but the scene Draigo returned to was very different from the one he had been so rudely dragged away from.
The noise of combat had abated, the whoosh of flamers cremating the corporeal remains of daemons being the only weapon discharge. The suppurating portal had been closed and some semblance of normality had been restored to the lower decks. Patches of bulkhead still retained a living, fleshy quality, but at least it was now possible to distinguish between up and down.
A cheer went up from the assembled Grey Knights when they realised that their leader had been returned to them and as news spread around the ship of Draigo’s safe return, his vox link filled with exclamations of relief and joy. Even those members of the Deathwing who had witnessed Draigo’s abduction sent respectful nods in his direction, which he returned with equal respect. In his absence, more Dark Angels had made their way down to the lower decks, and green and black armoured figures moved among their First Company brethren. Spying a group of three figures deep in conversation in a darkened corner, Draigo removed his helmet and made to join them.
As he got within several metres of the trio, one of them, a hooded, blue armoured figure with an augmetic eye, gave a subtle gesture with his head in Draigo’s direction, causing all conversation to cease. The other two Dark Angels, a Terminator-clad Deathwing and a robed figure with two spiked skulls decorating his backpack, turned to regard the newcomer.
‘Supreme Grand Master,’ said the robed figure, a finely crafted combi-weapon slung casually at his hip. His armour was scratched and dented, and the tell-tale bite of a chainaxe had taken a chunk of his left pauldron. His arm hung limply at his side and dried blood congealed over a thick rent in the armour over his thigh. He looked as if he had already waged a one-man war.
‘Supreme Grand Master,’ returned Draigo.
‘Brother Gabriel you have already met, and this is Brother Ezekiel of the Librarius,’ Azrael said motioning with an open palm towards the blue armoured Dark Angel.
‘Well met, Brother Ezekiel. Your reputation precedes you,’ said Draigo, genuinely.
The Librarian’s crude augmetic eye whirred noisily as it focused on the Grey Knight. ‘As does yours, Lord Draigo,’ Ezekiel replied, his gaze switching briefly to Azrael, the ghost of a smile creeping across his face.
‘You look as if you’re going to be keeping your artificers and apothecaries busy for some time to come,’ Draigo said. ‘Unexpected trouble?’
‘Trouble is never unexpected, brother, though the source of this strife was an opponent I had believed long dead.’
Draigo considered pressing for more information but knew it would be futile. Even the Dark Angels’ secrets held secrets.
‘What about you, brother?’ Azrael continued. ‘You too bear the mark of combat. Gabriel tells me that a daemon prince took a shine to you and wanted to keep you all to itself.’
Draigo glanced at the pauldron that Azrael was puzzling over. He hadn’t noticed before now that the blow from J’ian-Lo had dented the ceramite. The perfect impression of a giant fist adorned the plate.
‘An opponent I knew to be still alive but had wished long dead,’ Draigo said, matching Azrael’s reluctance to divulge any more details than were absolutely necessary. ‘Still, that foe is now vanquished and the day is won. You and your brothers have the gratitude of the Grey Knights for your… timely intervention.’
‘The battle for the Pandorax System may be over but the war for Pythos has yet to begin,’ Azrael said, not acknowledging Draigo’s thanks. ‘I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities for you and your brothers to honour the obligation you now owe us.’ Although the word remained unspoken, Azrael had made it quite clear that he considered the Grey Knights to now be indebted to the Dark Ange
ls.
Not wishing to rise to the bait, Draigo bid the three Dark Angels farewell and went to rejoin his battle-brothers.
766960.M41 / Red Six. Upper Atmosphere, Pythos
To anybody left alive on the ground on Pythos, it looked like a meteorite breaching the planet’s atmosphere. To Shira Hagen, strapped into the cockpit of the lifeless Kestrel, it felt like she was locked in an incinerator. Her flight suit smouldered, several patches already glowing bright orange with the promise of flame, and sweat dripped from her every pore. Her mouth was dry, her head heavy from dehydration and the massive gravitational forces at play on her body. To top it all, the Heldrake had followed her to Pythos and was still tight on her tail, its powerful wings driving it ever closer to the stricken fighter.
Remembering what she learned on the first day of basic training, and added to over the years with knowledge gleaned from mess rooms and below decks bars, Shira fought against the forces pressing her back in her seat to stick an arm out to release the catch keeping the cockpit shut. She swore, and quickly retracted a burned hand, the atmospheric entry had heated the metal of the craft up to unbearable temperatures. Pulling her hand up into the sleeve of her flight suit, she tried again but the superheated metal had fused to the frame of the cockpit and her only reward was her elasticated cuffs igniting. Patting her arm against her thigh to put out the flames she looked around the cockpit for inspiration, anything that could save her from the twin fates facing her: a crash landing which she had no hope of surviving or being engulfed in daemonic flame. Scores of useless dials and instruments looked back at her.
And also the one thing that might give her a slight chance of survival.
Remembering what she learned on the second day of basic training, and had never discussed with anybody since as, as far as she was aware at least, what she was about to attempt had never been tried by anybody ever before, Shira let a flight suit-covered hand drop to the side of her seat. She fumbled around for a moment before finally locating the small plastic knob atop the end of a lever. The plastic felt malleable, its chemical structure debasing under extreme heat, but it was still intact and, more importantly, still connected to the wing flaps.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 329