[M] War in the Void - Imperials IC

[Azazeal849]

Spoiler: Shepherd of Light - Coseflame 

It was a long, dark walk through fractured decks, full of free-floating debris. It felt wrong for it to be so silent - no alarms; no noosphere; and no vox save for the periodic warnings from adepts at the front of the line of a new obstacle ahead. Chao glanced down at the chronometer velcro-strapped to her suit’s wrist. It had taken them fifteen minutes to wind their way down the wrecked bridge tower, and the only indications of what was going on outside were the occasional shudders that would throw them one way or the other with reaction force. Those could mean anything - a simple thruster manoeuvre, secondary explosions from damage, or even a new assault by Patriot bombers, come to finish the job.

Twenty minutes into their void-walk through the twisted, tomb-like decks, adept Zira located a transitway that was clear of debris, and they were able to save time by cutting directly down the lift shaft, mag-boots clamped to the sheer wall. Part of the shaft had been peeled open lengthways, and counterweight cables stretched over Chao’s head like severed vines, undulating freely in the zero-G. The elevator car itself was nowhere to be seen. At one point, they passed through a section where the entire wall was gone, the view above Chao’s head open to space through three successively ripped-open compartments. The lights that were still flickering washed out the stars, reducing the void beyond to a gaping black maw.

Her suit vox clicked. “Shaft base ahead.”

Chao checked her chron again. Twenty five minutes. She negotiated the 90 degree turn from shaft wall to deck floor, and found her companions clustered near a closed bulkhead door. The dim circle of her helmet stab-light played over the adept who was busy pulling off the cover panel of the hydraulic system to inspect it. Another red-suited priest had their glove splayed against the door, employing a less technological strategy to feel for the heat of fire or the cold of vacuum on the other side.

“The next section is intact, shipmistress.” the first adept reported after a few minutes studying the bulkhead control. “We can close this door behind us and repressurise.”

An enginseer with a small clade of servitors in tow stepped forward, directing two of his entourage to place mag-clamps against the door.

“Step back.” he warned, pulling the adept with their hand against the door out of the way. “There will be a pressure differential.”

The servitors began to lift, their hydraulic-assisted arms straining silently. A jet of pale mist spurted below the door as it started to rise, backlit by the still-functional lights beyond. The bulkhead slid up to reveal a ribbed corridor, empty but intact. The enginseer waved them through, and the servitors lowered the door behind them. The void-hardened constructs would have to wait for later recovery. Meanwhile, one of Chao’s priestesses removed another panel and got to work on the ventilation control.

“Repressurising.”

Sound returned slowly, like they were rising up from deep water. Sputtering generators. The groan of overstressed metal. All-too-human shouts and screams. The interlock panel of the next bulkhead door flashed from red to green as the air pressure in the corridor rose to a breathable level, and one of Chao’s adepts hauled up the lever. The hazard-striped blast door rumbled upward, and then the ordinary steel door behind it, onto a scene of controlled chaos.

Crew were evacuating aft from a burning reactor chamber, carrying as many priceless items of equipment with them as they could. The cargo lift hydraulics had clearly failed, as a jumbled gang of menials and servitors were hauling on the manual loading chains, the enginseers in charge squalling binary encouragement at them to keep up the quite literally blistering pace. The lift platform shuddered into view and machine parts were wheeled off, alongside several horribly burned reactor crew. Some of them were screaming, while others weren’t making any noise at all. The air stank of oil and burning electronics, and the atmospheric circulators were rattling as they struggled to clear the smoke from the air.

No-one paid more than a curious glance towards the void-suited bridge crew who had just spilled into the transit hub. Even so, the enginseer’s remaining servitors lumbered forward to establish a precautionary cordon between the priests and those of lesser Knowledge, as they hurried aft towards the secondary bridge. The adamantine doors yielded before Chao’s retina scan, splitting down the centre of the skull cog emblazoned on their front and grinding aside.

“Shipmistress.” a cable-studded priestess greeted, looking up from the central holotank. “Welcome back. The command is yours."

“Secundi Dorlia.” Chao nodded. “What developments have there been in the past half hour?”

“I have placed us in geostationary orbit above Coseflame nightside. Our engines are only capable of 60% acceleration after that torpedo hit, but due to superstructure damage from the bombing run it would not be advisable for us to run the engines above that level anyway. Four of eight reactors are still stable; I have cut power to nonessential and destroyed sections. Starboard guns are at 25% nominal firepower. The macros on deck 6 are functional but the loading systems have been knocked out, so I have relocated their gun crews to the operational turrets on deck 5. I have tasked repair parties to the starboard void projectors as a priority, but they report they are still attempting to find a way past fires and collapsed compartments to effect repairs. Portside gun batteries at 85% nominal. Bombardment cannon is operational.”

“And the tactical situation?”

Dorlia gestured at the hololith globe with a steel-jacketed hand. “We have disabled three of the Patriot transports, excepting a fourth destroyed outright by the bombardment cannon. Minor damage to another before they hauled out of range. My apologies for the substandard performance; gunnery control has had to be tasked to local oracles until the main director can be repaired. I authorised domina Rackham to deploy skitarii to two of the disabled targets. Skitarii dispatched to the crippled transport Peregrine are reporting minimal resistance and should have full control of the ship within the hour. However, skitarii dispatched to the Anisadora report a significant contingent of Patriot infantry aboard. At last contact they were being pushed back towards the boarding pods, but I have received no update from the commanding domina for the past 10 minutes. As for the Enforcers…”

Dorlia swept her hand around to rotate the hololith. The green dart of their ally Accusator had retreated to the lower apex of the Coseflame globe, keeping the horizon just between her and the two pursuing icons of the Patriot ships. Between and behind them, a mess of strike craft were scrapping; some fighters, some bombers - both sides flinging reinforcements piecemeal as soon as they could be made ready.

“Emissions spectra are consistent with the Adrantis home fleet vessels Custodian and Watcher, if those names mean anything to yourself or to mistress Koudrakis.” Dorlia said. “Accusator is keeping their bombers off our backs with a general strike craft melee, but both Enforcers are pursuing her over the south pole. She can outmanoeuvre them from higher orbit but she won’t win a straight fight with all those lance batteries.”

Spoiler: HDMS Tiamat’s Claw - Coseflame 

Vehemens was turning away starboard, keeping well out of the targeter cones of Tiamat’s torpedoes. The Corrino, however, had no such easy option. Tiamat’s augers picked up engine flares from first one quarter and then the other as the enemy battlecruiser flung its helm from side to side, attempting to evade. It heeled round just in time to take one square on its armoured prow.

“Torpedo impact!” commodore Granzt’s piscis officer exulted from his forward station.

Fire and lightning washed back along the length of the Corrino, a corona of destruction from which the scorched vessel drove clear, trailing grainy streams of shattered metal. In dorsal specula tower 3A, the Corrino’s now-burning star began to swing off to the left of Candless’ view as the Tiamat itself yawed starboard for a broadside lock.

“Keep us trained, please.” Velikov’s voice echoed through the speaker pipe. “I’m trying to determine from those plumes how much damage we’ve done.”

Candless hand-cranked the scopes around another couple of degrees, looked back at her eye lens, and cursed at the sudden blurts of static fouling her screen. “I can’t get it to focus.”

“Ah, we must be catching some of the jamming directed at the torpedoes.” Velikov sounded almost pleased. “One moment, I can home in on the source to improve our gunnery lock.”

Candless was about to ask what he meant, but another barrage of explosions rippled their way across the void shield. A loud clink as some sizeable piece of debris cannoned off the tower brought her heart into her mouth, but the menacing hiss of an air leak failed to materialise. She reached for the nearest talisman, a double eagle with something scratched on it that she couldn’t read, and kissed it firmly. When she climbed back into her seat, she was disappointed to see that the rest of the Tiamat’s staggered torpedo volley had passed around the Corrino without acquiring a lock.

“Can we please shoot back n-?”

A wave of fire rolled along the Tiamat’s portside - macro cannons, she knew; blasting scabbards of plasma from which kinetic penetrators flew at mind-bending velocity. Still, it took them nail-biting seconds to cross the void between the brawling ships.

“Impact report please, crewman?” Velikov prompted after about half a minute had passed.

Candless studied her scope, which was now flashing violently. “All kinds of flares, we definitely hit them.”

“Anything in the gamma spectrum that might indicate a shield collapse?”

Candless glanced at the relevant readout. “Not yet.”

“The machine god will not be happy with that. We must appease him. Brace for lance fire outgoing.”

The raised barrels of the nearest lance turret flickered with building light. Then barrels burned stark white, before subsiding to a glowing red. Somehow, Candless was disappointed.

“That was it?” she asked as the next turret glowed, and then the next.

“Consider yourself fortunate.” Velikov replied, in that sagely manner of his. “If you can see a lance beam in space, it’s pointed right at you.”

“Oh.”

A clank echoed down the pipe. “Ah,” Velikov said. “There’s that gamma burst. We have stripped their shields.”

Candless looked back at her scopes. “I can see plasma from hull impacts. We - woah!”

The blinding flare on Candless’ scopes constituted a colossal bloom from the Corrino’s portside as something exploded and then chained back along the gun deck. Turrets, metal and atomised crewmen were flung like spalling from the battlecruiser’s hull. The explosion ripped halfway back to the port quarter, leaving sheets of flame in its wake.

On the bridge, the commodore’s XO glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. “Plasma detonation. We’ve killed them, we must have.”

Both of them had heard rumours of the particular weakness of the Chalice class - overcharged plasma conduits that gave their guns immense long-range stopping power, but behind too-thin belt armour that left them vulnerable to catastrophic ruptures. Other members of the bridge crew were cheering as the Corrino drifted past them with flames towering from its portside, rolling slowly over as it went.

Back in her tower, crewman Candless wheeled her infrascope array round, trying to make sense of the blaze of radiation pouring out of the stricken Patriot. It had ceased fire and was tumbling, but...no, not quite tumbling, there was something a little too controlled about it...

“I can’t…” she muttered, an uneasy feeling creeping up the back of her neck. “Velikov, do those look like thruster flares to you?”

“It may be atmosphere venting.”

“No, look, they’re coming from the starboard side too.”

The scopes briefly cleared as the burning side of the Corrino rolled away, then they sparked with a whole new wash of interference. Candless swore under her breath.

“They’ve moved into our engine wake, I can’t get a lock.” And then she went cold as she pictured the Corrino completing its roll, presenting its starboard side to the Tiamat’s rear quarter. Its undamaged starboard side, still bristling with heavy plasma emplacements. “Tell the bridge! Tell the bridge now!”

Her entire world flared white. Bolts of magnetically-caged plasma, glowing like comets, hammered down on the Tiamat’s shield bubble, until the view below the tower was nothing but a sea of roiling blue flame.

“Cog-damned scrap shunt!” Velikov cursed loudly through the pipes. Somehow, the fire-gutted Patriot was still fighting.

Through the wash of interference, Candless saw the red star of the Corrino flickering, engines pulsing erratically as it tried to deal with the unvectored thrust of its fire-bleeding wounds and haul in behind the larger Tiamat for a killing blow.

[dakkagor]

"You've done well considering the situation, Dorlia." Chao patted the other woman on the shoulder. "Keep trying to raise the Domina, or anyone left in charge, aboard the Anisadora, and order them to fall back to the pods. If we have to we can turn our guns on the target to prevent its escape."

She stepped past the Secundi and approached the holo table. The secondary bridge was often used to support groundside operations, especially in contested landings. It was not optimally designed for void combat, but its spirits would serve until the main bridge could be restored.

"Get hold of the Accusator and give them a frank appraisal of our current combat readiness. Tell them we stand ready to assist but recommend that for the moment we keep the enemy out of line of sight and wait for reinforcements from the main fleet to arrive"

The Shepherd was limping, still combat capable, but effectively crippled. She'd rate against a frigate or even a defence monitor, but two of those damn Enforcers was too much. She tapped on the hololith and brought up key low orbit features.

"If we could alongside just one of them, we might have a chance. . . but how?" She flicked her gaze back to the markers for the crippled transports. The Peregrine was a fat, slow tub, but. . .

"Do we have any idea what the Peregrine was carrying? Fuel stocks, bulk ammo loads? How intact are its dorsal bays?"

Another gamble was putting itself together in her mind. If the Peregrine was loaded down with the logistical tail for the Patriots, then it might yet serve the Imperium one last time. . .

[Azazeal849]

Spoiler: Shepherd of Light - Coseflame 

Electric light skipped up and down the cables trailing from Dorlia’s scalp as she processed Chao’s words.

“Barring some superficial damage where our skitarii had to cut through airlocks and bulkheads, offences to the machine spirits of the dorsal bays were minimal.” Something like a smile flickered in the stoic priestess’ eye as she extrapolated the shipmistress’ plan. “Data returned by squad alphas suggests the cargo is primarily vehicle parts and prefabricated ground bases…complete with modular plasma reactors.”

A junior priest traced a command sigil on the haptic panel of the holotank, causing a brief wash of static before the display updated. Accusator and the two Enforcers were still crawling across Coseflame’s southern hemisphere, by turns closing and opening range as they zagged to avoid orbital batteries in enemy-held ground sectors. Accusator had just cut spinward and was sailing past one of the orbital elevators, probably to the gawping amazement of the Patriot troops who were no doubt still garrisoning the ore offloading station at the apex.

“We have perhaps twenty minutes before they enter our threat zone, shipmistress.” the priest reported. “Friendly cruiser Vehemens en route with frigate support, a further thirty minutes out.”

[dakkagor]

"Then we need to improvise ten minutes of complete brilliance."

Chao started to issue her orders. Aboard the Peregrine, enginseers were spinning up the plasma reactors to their highest state, and linking their volatile hearts to a simple dead-mans switch to be operated by servitors. With control on remote to the Shepherd, the Peregrine would become a vast, crude, plasma grenade.

"Make sure as many of our skitarii and enginseers get clear." Chao stated. "I don't want any heroics."

She watched as the boarding craft returned from the Peregrine, as well as a scattering of saviour rafts that started to fall down the gravity well. There still had been no communication from the Anisadora and Chao was forced to admit there may have been a heavy enemy presence aboard that ship. Crippled, it had fallen out of arc of her guns so it was going to escape punishment for the moment.

"Timing will be critical. We will need to detonate the Peregrine at the right point to blind the sensorium of the two pursuing ships, to cover the Accusator, and our own attack. We'll then need to push the engines hard, and cut between them as their shields fail so that we can leverage our broadside weapons to hopefully do them enough damage to force them to withdraw. Have the shield generators focused forward for the initial approach, then switch to full defense port and starboard."

The crew stations around her signalled readiness, and Chao took a precious second to steady herself, and reassuringly tap her own console.

Come on old girl, don't fail me now. I know I ask a lot of you, oh spirit, but its no more than any of us give.

"Commence!"

On the small repeater screen, the Peregrines engines flared into life, and the labouring engines of the Shepherd coughed into life to follow.

[Azazeal849]

Spoiler: Shepherd of Light - Coseflame 

HDMS Accusator

Projector skulls whirred and swooped around the strategium hololith, beaming new threat cones and trajectory vectors as updates were voxed in from the warp vanes and oculus towers splaying from the cruiser’s hull. One of the skulls buzzed a warning as the dashed line ahead of the Accusator turned a flashing red.

Captain Fayder Langsdorf indicated the line with a slender arm. He was a thin man, but the way a sword was thin; sharp, rather than frail.

“Another ground battery?”

Beside him the chief magos tilted his cowled head upwards as he consulted the invisible data-ribbons of the ship’s noosphere. “Sector two gamma two, mass driver battery. Sector enemy occupied for approximately six months.”

Langsdorf glanced at his XO, a similarly thin man with a Ventiliar campaign ribbon on his green Ixaniad uniform. “Thoughts?”

The XO also looked up, this time towards the hololith. “Ventral burn to higher orbit over the equator would take us clear, sir, but it might give the Enforcers a shot at us.”

Langsdorf bit the inside of his cheek. “Magos, I don’t suppose there’s any record of the Guard spiking the guns before they withdrew?”

The magos continued to stand in prayer to the machine spirits, the iron knuts of his rosary clicking as he thumbed through them. “No data, captain.”

Langsdorf’s XO scratched the corner of his mouth with a thumb. “And even if they did spike the guns, the Patsies could easily have got them working again in six months.”

The captain pursed his lips in reluctant agreement. “So a nasty salvo either way. But you can always put a bigger gun on a planet than a ship.” He extended a thin finger towards the sublieutenant at the dirigarium station. “Helm. Full ventral burn, keep us clear of those Patsie ground silos.”

The sublieutenant acknowledged the order with a nod. At a gesture the servitors below him began to whir into motion, winking lights of feedback data pulsing along the fibre-optics that traced from their scalps to plugs in the vaulted ceiling. “Full burn ventral manoeuvre jets, aye.”

As Accusator zagged back towards Coseflame’s equator, the two Enforcers briefly loomed over the horizon in pursuit. Within seconds they began to pulse with malevolent light, like two angry neutron stars. Langsdorf and his bridge crew gripped columns and devotional statues for balance as killing light splash-patterned over Accusator’s shields. One of the straining projectors must have failed; the orbiting skull drones began to chirrup, painting red bars over the ship’s ghost image that hovered above the tactical hololith. Aftershocks and secondary explosions vibrated through the grated deck.

The magos flinched, clenching his fist around his iron rosary with a clack. “Reactor 3 is breached. Enginarium coven is shutting it down.”

Langsdorf gritted his teeth. They had felt almost nothing on the bridge, but no doubt hundreds of his crew were dying in a plasma firestorm on the decks below them. The runes turning red on the ship display didn’t tell him how many; only the grim cleanup operations and after-action roll call would verify that.

“Do we still have power?” he asked, still looking at the hololith as Accusator limped back over the horizon, out of the amber threat cones sweeping like searchlights ahead of the enemy ship icons.

The magos took a ragged breath. “Enough.”

“Make it count, magos. Flight command, get another squadron in the void. Let’s really sell Shepherd’s ruse for them.”

* * * * * *

For the middle of a battle, it was unnervingly quiet. Back on the Accusator there would be alarms blaring, hydraulic gun-layers screaming, crew-bosses roaring orders as the recoil of the macro batteries shuddered through the deck. For flight lieutenant Annalee Kusch there was just the steady thrum of the Fury she was piloting, and the occasional rattle against the armourglass canopy as the debris of distant explosions buffeted the interceptor.

A proximity rune began to pulse on her visor HUD as they entered the 5000 km threat zone, and blinking targeter brackets boxed in around one of the distant stars as her navigator, Vasquez, helpfully tagged the Peregrine for her. A dashed line snaked out to intercept the Patsie transport, bending slightly off to starboard.

“Angel flight, adjust to vector one nine zero minus three zero.” Kusch voxed to the other three Furies under her supervision. Above and behind her, the distant comet tails of Bane and Chimera flights began to arc as the rest of the squadron made similar course adjustments. Squadron leader Pohl and Dagger flight were further back, sweeping the void and covering their arses.

Kusch twisted her neck to glance back over her shoulder, past the humped grav-couch apparatus ready to pump oxygen, adrenaline or morphia into her system through the spinal ports in her void suit. “Alright kids,” she hollered to the rest of her crew on the internal vox channel. “Strap in - we’re gonna start pulling combat G’s very soon.”

There were ayes and vox pips of acknowledgement, followed by the clicking of voidsmen checking the neck joints of their auto-sealing helmets, and grunts of discomfort as spinal plugs engaged. Vasquez, a rangy young Glavian whose brown skin was splotched pale by the effects of some genetic quirk, climbed hand-over-hand round his hemisphere of navigation consoles and secured himself into the grav-couch behind Kusch’s, giving the pilot a quiet thumbs up as he did so.

“New contact over Coseflame horizon.” Mercer, the gunnery officer up in the dorsal bulge, warned.

“Friendly.” Vasquez placated, tagging it on the crew’s djinn-linked HUD with the tap of a rune. Information scrolled down the edge of Kusch’s visor, blinking around another star that was hovering low against the blue streak of Coseflame’s atmosphere.

“Shepherd of Light.” Amsted, the gunner in the nose turret, read off his screen, slowly sounding his way through the unfamiliar high gothic words. “What’s a Shepherd?”

“Some kind of grox-minder I think.” Vasquez commented, no doubt casting his mind back to the smattering of High Gothic he remembered from weekly prayers in junior scholem.

“Bloody stupid name for a warship.” Mercer grumbled. “Ships should have proper names like Revenge or Arse Kicker or Victory.”

“What’s an Accusator then?” Amsted pointed out.

“Frakked if I know.”

Kusch let them have their banter. The few minutes of calm before the storm of contact were always the worst. In the far distance, some of the stars flared brighter - the visor tags that boxed in as she focused on them told her that they were the few Patsie transports that hadn’t been crippled by Shepherd’s guns, burning hard for the safety of warp jump points.

“Go on then,” Mercer muttered over the vox link. “Off you frak.”

“This one ain’t getting away.” Amsted replied, tracing fire cones across Kusch’s HUD as he tested the pitch and yaw of the lascannon turret.

“Remember what the squadron leader said.” a deep, distant voice broke in from further back in the fuselage. “Superficial damage only.”

That was Morden, the astropath, strapped in near the medicae table with his tinted visor lowered so the crew didn’t have to see his blind, staring eyes. Many of Accusator’s flight leaders refused to have a psyker lurking over their shoulder while they sortied, but the carrier ship’s augers were much more powerful than those that could be wedged into a Fury, and more often than not the vox masts got shot away or swamped by jammer sprites, and Kusch would rather have an astropath looming behind her than an enemy squadron that their auspex scanner had missed. Besides, Morden was decidedly one of the less weird sanctionites in the void wing. Even if whatever he had gone through on Terra had turned his tightly-curled hair grey and brittle, although he couldn’t have been more than thirty standard. And, barracks rumour claimed, that didn’t stop flight lieutenant Kellerman from having her wicked way with him when they were on long-haul picket flights, far from the eyes of the AAT handlers back on ship.

“Superficial damage only?” the gunnery officer repeated, his lip curling slightly beneath his open visor. “What gives? What a crappy war this’ll be if we’re not even allowed to blow up heretics.”

“Maybe they want it boarded for intel.” Kusch interjected. “Either way, any plasma ruptures and you can explain yourself to Pohl.”

The pilot paused as overhead, from her cockpit perspective, the void lit up with white flashes and streamers of sunfire. The world-ending salvoes slashed back and forth between the much larger ships as Accusator finally turned to fight its two pursuers, the odds evened by the approaching Shepherd.

Lets hope she’s a damn good grox-minder. ’Cause those two bulls chasing the carrier are pissed.

“Four thousand kilometres.” Mercer reported. “Arming seekers.”

“Seeker one only.” Kusch ordered, and twisted the vox dial from Internal to Flight. “Angel flight, one missile each, repeat one missile only, confirm.”

The replies came back scratchy, distorted by EM waves scattering back from shield impacts, and by the feuding jam and counter-jam of the distant capital ships.

“Eighth squadron.” squadron leader Pohl’s voice broke in through Kusch’s helmet earpieces. “Initiate full burn - engage, engage!”

“Hang on.” Kusch voxed her crew, before slamming back the acceleration lever. The Fury kicked her back into her seat and kept pressing, like a huge hand. The G-forces squeezed tears from the corners of her eyes.

“Range two thousand.” Vasquez reported.

“Seeker one auspex locked!” Mercer shouted back. “Firing one.” The Fury kicked slightly beneath them, and a long black dart trailing flame briefly crossed Kusch’s field of view before fireworking away into the black. Her vox roared with voices and feedback.

“Angel Two. seeker away!”

“Angel Four, seeker away!”

“Eighth squadron, break!”

“Angel flight, break vector zero one zero plus sixty!” Kusch added her voice to the coordinated chaos and hauled back on her flight stick. The Fury reared back with far more G’s than the human body was meant to withstand, and Kusch heard the vascular pumps in her grav couch kick in, followed by a painful bulging sensation in her neck as the system forced blood back up into her head to keep her conscious. A second later and the pressure against her eyes and chest returned to a tolerable level as they accelerated clear.

“Missile impacts on Peregrine dorsal bow.” Mercer reported, his disappointment evident even though they had carried out their orders to the letter. “No significant damage. Target maintaining course and speed.”

“Accusator choir warns bats incoming.” Morden coughed out from behind them. “Vector one one zero plus forty.”

“I see them.” Vasquez confirmed a few moments later. “Patsie Fury squadron, nine…maybe ten bats, range ten thousand.”

Kusch nodded and clicked round the vox frequency dial. “Eighth squadron, Angel One, be advised ten bats incoming from one one zero plus forty, range ten thousand.”

“Copy Angel One.” squadron leader Pohl’s voice rasped through the interference. “All flights maintain burn back to Accusator, we’re not here to tangle with Patsie Furies.”

Gunnery officer Mercer groaned his frustration. “Crappiest war ever.”

“If you want to dive out the airlock and headbutt those Patsie bats into oblivion, be my guest.” Kusch responded coolly. “Speaking of, where are they now?”

“Falling behind, moving to screen the Peregrine. Probably think they’ve scared us off. Peregrine is taking cover behind Watcher.”

Kusch craned her neck, icons sliding across her HUD to tag the Patriot transport as it broke forward between the brawling cruisers and dived under Watcher’s guns, like a whale pup ducking under the protective fin of its mother.

“He’s got away.” Vasquez sighed, and Kusch detected some of the gunnery officer’s pessimism infecting the young Glavian as the sun-reflecting star of the Peregrine dimmed, moving into shadow behind the lead Enforcer where it was shielded from imperial guns. “The frakker’s…woah!”

A tremendous flash filled the void, lighting up the Fury’s cockpit like a spotlight. Kusch’s helmet lenses polarised just in time to save her eyes, while around her warning alarms began to shrill as the auger scopes went haywire.

The Peregrine was gone, and the ventral hull of the Watcher was sagged and broken, steel towers melting and running like wax. Running lights flickered and died all along the ship’s flank as it began to heel out of line, trailing debris.

[dakkagor]

Everything on the secondary bridge jumped and then slammed down as the Shepherdcut through the blast wave.

"Sensorium!" Chao yelled, levering herself to her feet. The blast had been bigger than even Chao would have hoped, and she could hear damage spreading through her ship now. They had been a bit close for comfort and the voids were shrieking as they shunted aside gas and debris. But the Shepherd was an old, tough ship, and had been through worse. Though not by much now.

"Main view!" Her Sensori canted back, and a composite picture of the battlescape snapped into view. The Watcher was dropping towards the elliptical, dead and quiet, slowly curving under the effect of gravity into a terminal dive somewhere on Coseflame. The blast had been enough to knock out her drives and reactor, like taking a sledgehammer to a combustion engine. The damage to her forward sections was severe, and entire sections facing the blast had been stripped back, open to the void. The Peregrine had served the Omnissiah well in her final moments. Her Calculus Logi plotted the Watchers final course. It would take several hours for it to hit atmosphere. By then, they should be able to either get it under tow, or break it up under their guns.

Or they would all be dead, and someone else would have to deal with megatonnes of capital ship impacting a biosphere.

Accusator was closing, and Chao ordered the Shepherd forward at full available speed. Engines strained and coughed, reactors came back to life, and the two capital ships crossed the suddenly alone Enforcer. Archives identified her as the Lex Orbitalis Custodes, an old ship, present during Angevins crusade to claim the Calixis sector. And now here she would die, under the control of traitors.

Chao conducted a roll, allowing the starboard guns a single salvo and then bringing the portside weapons online. The portside battery was less damaged and hammered the shields of the Lex hard, tearing them down as the Accusator slammed fire into her exposed flanks. Both ships conducted a hard turn, the Accusator easily, the Shepherd still struggling, and continued to pour the fire on. She wasn't toothless yet, however. Lances hammered the shields of the Accusator and Shepherd even as the carriers attack craft conducted perilous bombing runs.

"Frakking die!" Chao snarled as her guns hammered away. She could imagine the sweltering heat and oppressive noise down below as the gunners fired at full rate, not knowing how many full salvos they would get.

[Atrum Daemon]

“Turn us away!”

The order was relayed with swiftness and a measure of panic as the grand bulk of the battleship began to turn the engines away from the incoming vessel. She had already sustained thruster damage in a previous engagement and was in need of repair on that section, otherwise Balthasar would have the “Claw” just take the ram on the chin before ripping the “Corrino” apart with her gun batteries.

But at the moment such a luxury was beyond the sailors. The whole ship lurched with the sudden high-speed turn (well as high-speed as a capital ship like “Tiamat's Claw” was capable of) throwing many crewmates to the floor or into walls and machinery. The broadside batteries opened up all the same, peppering the incoming and fire-wreathed vessel with with canon and missile fire.

But nothing could be perfect.

The sharp turn likely saved the “Claw” but the flaming vessel still scraped the Imperial ship, causing warning sirens to flare up as the starboard engines were engulfed in sudden flames from the impact of the ship glancing off and moving passed them.

[Azazeal849]

Spoiler: Shepherd of Light - Coseflame 

Three battered ships arced away from the planet, snaking and corkscrewing to gain advantage and to throw off enemy gunlayers while megaton salvoes and waves of attack craft volleyed back and forth between them. The shields of all three ships were long gone, and their hull armour was glowing red or venting atmosphere through cracked bulkheads. They fought on like three prize fighters in the last round of a gruelling melee, stumbling and punch-drunk, held up by willpower and a desire to see the other fall first.

Accusator had blood in her eyes; augers scrambled by jamming and by curtains of exploding ordnance, and her main director shot away by a precision lance strike, she was reduced to throwing warding jabs with her macro batteries, relying on what was left of her bomber wing to tip the balance. Shepherd’s right arm was hanging limp and half of the fingers of her left fist were broken, but somehow she was still in the fight, the patchy flares of her remaining guns resembling nothing so much as a grim, gap-toothed smile.

Their opponent was staggering, throwing wild but incredibly destructive haymakers through the manoeuvres and the white walls of jammer code. Most of its lance turrets were now cocked brokenly, spewing flame and debris into the void after consecutive bombing runs. Many of those bombers now trailed in its wake, spinning and void-opened after hits from flak turrets, short-range missiles and void-to-void fire from its own fighter squadrons. The Enforcer’s hangers were down, the port launch bays blocked with debris from collapsing superstructure, the starboard disabled by a bombing run that had cut power to the primary elevators. Those of its strike craft that remained in the void were milling chaotically, some using what was left of their fuel to burn for ground bases on Coseflame, others staying to vent their fury on the imperials - some even attempting to ram enemy fighters or the open wounds in the opposing capital ships after their missiles and power cells were expended.

The Patriot ship’s armour was ragged and hanging - the Custodian insignia burned away to reveal its former imperial colours as Lex Orbitales Custodes, and those in turn smashed and shredded to reveal bare hull or the peeled honeycomb structure of decks and galleries within. When purple witch-light started to bleed through those burned and voided ghost sections, the warp augers on Shepherd and Accusator began to shrill.

“Captain!” a sensori on Accusator’s bridge choked out. Her hair had been jostled free of its regulation bun, and was sticking to her face because of the blood running from her gashed temple. “Warp sensor spike on the Custodian, possible core breach imminent!”

Langsdorf hauled himself towards her, fighting the malfunctioning grav-plates. “Full burn engines and starboard thrusters, open range! Warn any of our fighters still engaged to get the Horus out of there!”

The stuttering criss-cross of fire between the ships tapered off as the imperial vessels heeled off to either side, strike craft scattering in their wakes. The Patriot cruiser plunged on, trailing a plume of burning debris, now with lightning and corposant fire leaping across its ravaged hull. Some of the lightning washed ahead rather than astern, and space buckled ahead of the ship, an eye of darker black opening against the starfield. The lightning fingers drew the Custodian in, bending and breaking elements of its damaged superstructure under impossible g-forces. The eye swallowed the Patriot ship, and then closed with a thunderclap flash.

Among the wreckage of Shepherd’s secondary bridge, the cables studded across secundi Dorlia’s scalp skipped with light as she howled frustrated curses into the noosphere.

“My apologies, shipmistress. Due to the damage inflicted on their generators, I mistook a warp drive spin-up for a cascade failure of their containment. I did not anticipate the Patriots attempting something so dangerous as to jump away after such damage and under fire.”

“Shipmistress,” a junior priest called for Chao’s attention. “We are receiving a transmission, standard vox. From one of Accusator’s strike craft.”

That was sufficiently curious to draw the eyes of several other bridge crew as the vox operators patched the signal through to the cracked and dangling speakers around the chamber.

“Shepherd of Light,” a woman’s voice came through grainily, sandpapered by feedback and the scattering effect of millions of pieces of battle debris. “This is flight lieutenant Kusch of Accusator Eighth squadron. Sorry you can’t talk to someone more senior, but apparently the home ship got its vox masts shot away and we’re the only ship with an astropath aboard to pick up their choir. Captain Langsdorf’s compliments, and he asks if you require the transfer of any medicae or damage control teams?”

Spoiler: Tiamat’s Claw - Coseflame 

A deep groaning sound reverberated through the tower, like the mewling of a gut-shot giant. Without warning, Candless felt herself flung sideways, almost throwing her out of her chair and across the floor of the instrument-cramped chamber. The charms hanging from the telescope array jangled, knocking against each other. Beyond the specula dome, all of space was suddenly lurching and turning. The crewman could only look at it for a few moments before her head began to spin with it, and she had to look away.

“Velikov? What’s going on?”

“We appear to be executing a high-energy turn. Keep the scopes trained on the Corrino. The bridge will need a firing solution as we come around.”

Candless was gripping the arm rests hard enough to blanch her knuckles, but she forced herself to let go and take hold of the hand crank instead, working it frantically to rotate the infrascope and keep the angry red icon of the enemy ship centred in the view as it slid drunkenly off to the side. Within a few seconds of pressing her eye to the scope, she began to feel sick. She looked down, thinking it would be easier to focus on the fixed view of the ship’s hull instead, but soon that became even more disconcerting - thrusters were flaring white-hot all along the port bow, and the kilometres long superstructure seemed to be flexing and bowing. The ominous groaning sound intensified, the protest of the ship trying to hold its shape as it skidded, thrusters hauling its prow round even as its momentum pushed it forwards. Candless exhaled, touched one of the charms overhead at random, and went back to turning the auger scopes.

“Good work crewman. Two degrees down please and lock.”

Candless swallowed the bile that was threatening to rise up her throat. “Two degrees down, aye.”

And then, just as the keel seemed to stabilise along its new heading, every thruster on the port side lit up at once. Candless knew what that meant, and she braced herself again. A series of titanic flashes began to roll down the Tiamat’s starboard broadside from prow to stern as the main batteries fired. Answering explosions blinked and popped out in the star-field, and looking up Candless realised that the Corrino was close enough that she could actually see it, a flame-wreathed silver star against the black, stuttering with fitful light. Blinding orbs of plasma thundered against the Tiamat’s shields, scattering migraine-bright light in all directions, and still the Tiamat’s guns were firing, rippling back to the stern quarter as they flung more shells and missiles and kinetic penetrators into the void.

“Oh no.” Velikov said through the speaker tube.

Candless scrubbed cold sweat from her forehead with the cuff of her jumpsuit. “Oh no what?”

“Again this is for those of greater Knowledge than me to interpret, but I think we are on a collision course.”

Candless blinked. Everyone in the work crew had told her that as massive as ships were, the chance of two of them actually crashing into each other in the endless gulf of space was astronomically low.

“Collision?” she blurted. “Can’t we turn or something?”

Another salvo of plasma silently battered the shields. Tiamat’s guns began to flare again in reply.

“We are, and I don’t think it’s going to be enough. I suggest you get down here now and take cover.”

Candless took her eye off the scope and looked up, which proved to be a mistake. The dagger shape of the Corrino was looming above, aflame like a daemon released from hell, so close now she didn’t even need the telescopes to make out details. It was almost upside down from her point of view, giving her a view of the sprawling bridge complex and row after row of superfiring plasma turrets. She could make out the armoured trireme prow, she could make out every barrel on the dorsal gun decks, sweet Throne she could make out porthole lights on the dorsal gun decks…

“Thirty seconds to impact! Crewman, get down from the tower!”

She couldn’t take her eyes off the ship barrelling towards her - impossibly vast, unstoppable, bearing down on her like the end of the world.

“Crewman, get down from there!” Velikov’s voice sounded tinnily. “Get out of there now!”

The uncharacteristic urgency in the tech-priest’s tone unfroze her. She lifted the handle from the airtight door in the floor and frantically spun it to disengage the locks. The observation dome darkened as the shadow of the enemy ship fell across her, blocking the reflected light of Coseflame. Her wrists were already aching and clumsy from the long shift working the auger array. Come on, come on!

The door gave a hollow thunk. She hauled at it, levering the hatch open and almost throwing herself onto the ladder below. She didn’t climb, she simply skidded, bracing her feet against the edges of the ladder and letting artificial gravity take her. Her boots clanked against the steel plate at the bottom of the shaft. She grabbed the wheel lock of the hull door in front of her and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. The small caged light above the door glowed negative red.

“Velikov!” she shouted, hammering the metal with the heel of her hand. “Velikov! Let me in!”

She knew he probably couldn’t hear her, but she didn’t stop yelling until she looked up the tower, at the open door above her. The interlock. Candless laughed a shrill, hysterical, despairing laugh, because in her haste to scramble down she had forgotten to lock the upper hatch, and the safety interlock wouldn’t let both doors be open at once in case the dome breached and voided the inner compartment, and the dome hatch was a hundred metres above her now and too many precious seconds of climbing to reach in time, and now she was going to die.

Six years in the Navy, striking it lucky with a volunteer’s permit after escaping a soul-corroding data entry job in Decker Hive; six years of keeping her head among cramped compartments and constant surveillance that for some reason seemed to drive non-hivers insane; six years of friendship and, once or twice, even love among her fellow ratings of work crew twenty-two beta; six years of accepting that she was a very small cog in a very big machine, but knowing that people like Velikov depended on her, that she mattered; all of that was going to end. It seemed like an excessively harsh punishment for forgetting to close a stupid hatch. She wished she had at least brought one of the aquila charms down with her, to hold onto as she met the Emperor.

Four seconds later she was thrown against the wall by more g-forces than the arti-grav was ever designed to compensate for, and everything went white, then red, then black.

+ + + + + +

She floated for what felt like a long time before she realised that she was not, in fact, dead. It was dark, but that was because her eyes were scrunched closed. She tried to open them, but they were gummed together, and she had to scrub at them with the heels of her hands before her eyelids tore apart. Her hands came away red. That should have alarmed her, but her thoughts were thick and sludgy. She stared in groggy fascination for a moment at the little spheres of blood, bobbling through the air around her, then the rungs of the ladder spun slowly into her view and she was able to orient herself. She was halfway up the tower, looking up - well, down at the cracked arti-grav plate and the still stubbornly locked hatch. There was an ugly smear of red against the wall down there, presumably hers.

Her head hurt like blazes. Gently probing her hairline turned the throbbing into a sharp spike. Jerking her hand away caused her to spin in the zero gravity, so she reached out and grabbed the ladder for stability, leaving a sticky red handprint on the old metal. Okay, she told her uncooperative brain, Think.

She wasn’t choking to death. That meant the tower hadn’t voided. She wasn’t being crushed flat against the wall, which meant they were at a steady course and speed, at least for now. She could still see, which meant this section of the ship still had power. The tower shuddered, twisting her arm as the ladder tried to shake her off. She didn’t know what that meant. If she ignored it, she could climb to the upper hatch, close it to disengage the interlock, and make her way back down inside the ship and hopefully to a medicae cabin. The ship shuddered again. We’re still fighting. She spun herself around to face the open hatch at the apex at the tower, and began to climb.

The specula tower was miraculously almost untouched, and gravity reassuringly righted itself as she crawled out onto the floor of the chamber. Candless stood, took a moment to shake off her dizziness, and looked down. An entire section of the dorsal topside was gone - gouged away by some horrific impact, leaving twisted metal and billowing fountains of debris in its wake. Candless wondered how many of the spinning fragments were bodies. It made the fact her own survival feel all the more sharp and immediate. She glanced up, at the slowly twirling charms still hanging from the bracing struts. The sun disc directly above her was scribed with looping cursive script - she didn’t speak High Gothic, but she recognised that particular phrase. Solum in morte officium finem. Only in death does duty end.

She groped her way to the speaker pipe.

“Velikov? You there?”

“Crewman Candless?” If it was possible for a tech priest to be completely stunned, Velikov certainly sounded it. “Omnissiah be praised, are you alright?”

“Mostly. The scopes seem okay too.”

“Crewman, if you can, I need you to reacquire the enemy ship. Power to the prow sections has failed from the collision and we are struggling to triangulate a target. They should be somewhere within bearing two six zero to three five zero inclusive, upper hemisphere.”

That made sense. If the Corrino had come in from their right, it should now be moving away to their left.

“Upper hemisphere.” Candless repeated, and blinked in an unsuccessful attempt to lessen the pain in her head. “Aye.”

She began to crank the auger array round. She had only brought the scopes level with the Tiamat’s ravaged prow when a glare of purple light flashed off the port bow, and the needles on her radiation detectors jumped as if in shock.

“Velikov, I just got a bright light and loads of UV and X off to the portside…what does that mean?”

“Normally it means a ship entering or exiting the warp. Hopefully that is our opponent making a run for it. Either way, don’t look at it.”

Candless didn’t need to be told twice. Even through the armoured dome and the airless silence of the void beyond, she could swear that she heard screaming.

The purple glare shrank to a halo, and then imploded with a last pulse of bloody light as the outnumbered and outgunned Corrino wisely fled the combat zone.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

[dakkagor]

Chao slumped, exhausted.

"An acceptable mistake Dorlia. I doubt the Custodian survived that jump. With that much damage I can't imagine her gellar fields actually functioning. They most likely jumped straight into oblivion."

"And if they did survive, Mistress?"

"Then they can be some other bastards problem." Chao rallied slightly, running a hand through her hair and regaining her composure. Just because the battle was over, didn't mean she could relax.

Dorlia nodded, and retreated a few steps to focus on a different station. Chao brought up the damage control board and had to stifle a gasp of shock. The Shepherd had been beaten to hell, key systems were operating well below safe thresholds or barely running at all, and her armament was basically nil. Ammunition reserves in the bunkers had been shot through during the engagement, but that was a small mercy as several of those bunkers, rattling empty, had been holed by penetrating hits.

Weeks, no, months, no, even that was too optimistic. Years in drydock to put everything right, assuming they could reach a yard with the capabilities to do the work.

Her first task now was to staunch the bleeding, save lives, and preserve the ship. She stared dispassionately forwards as the message from Flight Lieutenant Kusch came through the vox. She moved over to the vox system and took the transmitter from the enginseer manning the station.

"This is Ship-mistress Chao of the Shepherd of Light. I can report we have taken heavy damage and would appreciate whatever aid the Navy can spare. Specifically, patch kits and transfer of atmospheric components to allow us access to areas we forced to vent to prevent fire damage, as well as any skilled enginseers the Accusator can spare from her own damage control efforts." She looked over the damage board again and winced. "We are void-worthy and not at risk of orbital loss, but we are nowhere near combat worthy."

She paused, and felt she should say something else. She reactivated the transmit button.

"Can you also pass along my sincere thanks and appreciation. The squadrons of the Accusator did the Navy's heritage of excellence and service proud this day. This victory could not have been won without their sacrifice."

Your sacrifice. She mentally added, though it wouldn't do to say that over the vox. She knew fighter crews were a tight knot bunch, and she couldn't imagine that Kusch had come through that scrap without losing a friend or two.

[Azazeal849]

Spoiler: Epilogue - Part 1 

HDMS Retaliator

Sublieutenant Ryba, until very recently of the Patriot destroyer Gheist, held up a hand to bring the rag-tag squad formed up behind him to a halt. He was not an armsman; he was in charge of a torpedo loading crew, but they had yet to find anyone more senior on their way out of the concertina-smashed compartments below, and alone on what was unmistakably part of the enemy ship, the other crewmen had looked to the rank flashes on his cuffs and collar for reassurance.

The party halted, stab lights flicking nervously back and forth. The Imperial frigate was buckled and torn, but Ryba couldn’t shake the feeling that something about it was twisted even before the collision. Its narrow galleries were all shadows and looming gunmetal, painted blood-red by emergency lights. Smoke from burned out cable runs slithered and grasped around their ankles, bringing with it the bloody reek of scorched metal. The shuddering vibration of the air ducts overhead was like a death rattle.

And since fighting their way up from the lightless nightmare of the loading deck where the enemy vessel had impacted, they had not encountered a single soul.

Ryba and his men had been fortunate enough to be in a compartment that hadn’t been torn open to the void, and more fortunate still to be within sprinting distance of an armoury and void-suit store. Somehow they had survived the collision, pulled together into a company, and routed the mostly-unarmed Imperial menials out of the prow augery cluster that was now jammed hard against their hull. Now, with their own ship crumpled and burning somewhere behind them, they had instead pushed forward, through a de-powered transit way whose railcars had bunched and crushed together during the collision. They had broken out somewhere around the mid-decks, hoping to take one of the generatorium crews by surprise, but apart from the auto-deploying barricades and servo turrets, they had met no resistance. Even the handspan-thick isolation doors had shuddered and jammed half way down. It might have been the Emperor’s providence, but it was difficult to feel blessed on a ship such as this.

Ryba glanced nervously at the auger box taped to the arm of his suit. It was reading atmosphere in this section - slightly depleted due to a fire, or perhaps a slow-draining hull breach, but still enough to breathe, and to fight. There was no reason for the defending Imperials to simply abandon their forward decks. They’ll be back soon enough, if we give them a chance to scan this section and regroup. Ryba cocked two fingers forward, ordering his company to resume the advance. At least as many good Navy men had died from too much caution as from a lack of it, failing to press an advantage and handing the initiative back to the enemy.

A whine of servos, muffled by the thin air and his armourglass helmet, had Ryba diving to the side a second before the others. “Turret!”

Yellow tracers slashed down the vaulted corridor and caught a less experienced crewman in the chest, cracking the armour plate over his void suit and putting him down hard on his back. Another man spun aside, cursing, his visor spider-webbed with fractures. Shotcannons thundered, blooming sparks around the ceiling and spilling ropes of cable and fibre-optic. The dome of the double-stubber turret at the intersection crumpled, and after a second hit the red eye of the targeting scanner went dark. An alarm bell had started to ring, tolling ominously through the deck. The destroyed turret dangled for a moment before falling from the ceiling in a shower of sparks, leaving Ryba and his men alone with the klaxons and the sweeping yellow beams of alarm lights.

“Clear!”

Men fanned out around the crossway, while others helped the two who had been clipped by the auto-sentry. One man called to Ryba, motioning down the left hand corridor. The sublieutenant joined him and found himself facing an archway decorated with the distinctive skull-and-cog of a mechanicus shrine. Like the others its protective blast door stood open, and in the cylindrical chamber beyond was the glowing blue tower of a plasma generator. The tech priests and their servitors were nowhere to be seen. Segmented steel cables spidered out from the apex, thrumming with power. Extractor vents rattled. Coolant mist hissed from a gasket that had been jolted by the collision of the two escorts, the leak unattended. The cloud spread slowly across the grated mezzanine deck above, condensing on the metal to drip down onto the men below. The air from a secondary entrance on the mezz deck kept the mist gently swirling, giving the doorway the aspect of a dragon’s maw.

Two of Ryba’s men shouldered across the threshold, shotcannons sweeping left and right. Following them, Ryba found his eyes drawn up the generator vessel to the vast, half-mechanical skull embossed on its casing. He had the sudden urge to cross his hands in the sign of the aquila, to ward off the steel gaze of this alien god. A muttering behind him broke the grinning sigil’s hold on his gaze, and he turned to see two ratings brushing off a copper panel near the door. One of them, his pale face lit up by Ryba’s helmet light, saw him looking and beckoned.

“Sir…” the rating said, hesitantly, “Look at this.”

Ryba stepped closer, his stab-light casting a pale ring over the panel and the acid-etched ship’s sigil set above it. It was a sigil that most of the Adrantean navy were familiar with, particularly the officers who had learned their trade aboard its grim decks. Almost as famous as liberator Tierce’s own flagship. The frigate HDMS Retaliator.

“What the frak?” Ryba murmured to himself. If there was any ship that should have been fighting alongside Ghost squadron’s Cobras instead of tearing through them, it should have been captain Daladier’s Retaliator. Then he realised that his helmet vox had picked up the words, and several Gheist crewmen were looking in his direction.

“Quick,” he said, snapping his hand around to break his own trance as much as that of his men. “Get some explosives on those plasma conduits.”

Men hurried forward, unslinging breacher charges from their armour harnesses.

“I don’t like this, lef’tenant.” one crewman murmured as he flattened himself against the arched door portal, covering their rear. “Where are they all?”

“Evacuated to the top deck?” Ryba answered. He knew it was a hopeful guess. If they’d done that, they’d have made sure to secure the enginarium. Maybe they had meant to, and the blast doors just jammed. It’d be nice to know the Emperor’s looking out for our lot for once.

No sooner had the thought entered his head, a weird, ululating sound echoed across the chamber - a ghost’s shriek, halfway between anger and pain. The clicks and clacks of thirty men turning towards the noise and raising their weapons followed it.

“The frak was that?” a torpedoman blurted, his voice high and strained.

“Easy, boy.” growled a gnarled old crew boss, and punched the rating in the arm for emphasis, drawing his attention to the ship’s patch sewn onto it. “We’re HDMS Gheist. The only mother-frakking ghosts on this ship are us!”

The ghostly moan came again, and this time Ryba heard the clank of running footfalls against grav-plate decking. Ghosts don’t run. The Imps were mounting a counterattack. It was almost a relief.

“On alert lads,” Ryba growled, snapping hand signals left and right. “They aren’t going to just give us the ship after all.”

His men scattered towards the edges of the room, taking cover behind buttress shrines and control lecterns, setting up converging lines of fire. Laser targeters scattered through the leaking coolant, hovering around the main door, the mezz deck entrance, and anything else that looked vaguely like a hatch or a kick-panel. The clanking from above grew louder, the weird shriek echoing between the curved walls. Something came sprinting and spasming out of the gloom onto the mezzanine gantry, and was immediately bracketed by two fans of shotgun fire. Ryba saw hard shot sparking from an armoured chest cage, impossibly long fingers scissoring at the air as it was battered backwards. A puff of red stained the mist as it thrashed forward for a moment and then fell, pitching over the balcony railing to land with a crash among Ryba’s men. They backpedalled, cursing and firing, until the armoured shape stopped flailing and died with a long, wailing shudder, its claws chittering against the deck.

“Reloading!” someone called.

“Switch to slugs!” replied another, “That thing was armoured!”

“What was it?” a younger crewman asked, his shotcannon still hard against his shoulder as he edged gingerly towards the blood pool spreading across the cog-pattern deck plates.

Ryba stepped up beside him. The thing was human, or at least humanoid, although the longer he looked at it the less human it appeared. Its legs were digitigrade and had splayed metal claws in place of toes. Its impossibly long fingers were not fingers at all but foot-long blades, attached to mechanical gauntlets. In place of hair, a nest of cables and feeder tubes studded its scalp and spine; some had been severed by buckshot and were leaking a milky, foul-smelling liquid.

“Combat servitor.” Ryba grimaced. “Ugly frakker.”

He put his boot against the cyborg’s armoured shoulder and levered it over onto its back. Its face was hidden behind a chrome skull-mask with cracked green lenses for eyes, making it difficult to tell if the human scaffolding for this murderous machine had been male or female. One of the armour plates welded to its upper arm had been blasted away, revealing the tattered remnants of the overalls beneath. A patch on the shoulder caught Ryba’s eye; a stylised skull with stars for eyes, above a blocky gothic script.

The script read HDMS Revenant.

Oh sweet Emperor. A shiver ran down Ryba’s spine, and needles pricked at his face behind the screen of his void helm. He dropped one hand from his shotcannon grip to mark the points of the aquila across his chest.

The ghost moans rose again. They were all around this time, coming from the upper tunnel, the vents, even the transit way behind them - blurring and ricocheting together in a horrific crescendo. The grizzled crew boss swore and looked at Ryba. Ryba could see the truth dawning behind his eyes, just as it was dawning behind his own. They drew us in. He looked down again at the dead servitor, who wore the badge of a lost Patriot vessel.

Oh no.

The moaning became a scream.

Fifteen minutes later, as the two horn-locked escorts careened through the debris of the wider battle, captain Machado gave the order to relight Retaliator’s forward void shields. They stuttered for a moment, showers of atomised hull metal blooming around the contact points, then the cone of force boomed outwards, blasting the abraded remnants of Gheist off Retaliator’s prow. The destroyer broke in two and tumbled away, shedding fire and atmosphere. Retaliator’s confessor solemnly tolled a bell to mark the passing of a noble vessel, while Machado’s marines set about dealing with the traitors who had commandeered it. Any Patriot crewmen still alive on the Gheist died in moments as the already torn and compromised decks explosively decompressed. Any Patriots still alive on Retaliator would soon wish that they had joined them.

Spoiler: Epilogue - Part 2 

HDMS Impiger

Sound ricocheted from the walls of the mezzanine deck, loud as the combat that was not six hours finished. The guns below were quiet now, some of them hauled away from their casemates to leave the battery gap-toothed, others still jammed with shrapnel and awaiting repair, but they were the only things that were silent. The music, blaring from several different portable vox units balanced precariously around the embarking gallery, was like the soundtrack to a brain seizure. Amongst it all were drums, synthesisers, and one unabashedly off-key petty officer.

The port embarking deck had been set up to give arriving crews from the rest of the squadron a lively if cacophanous welcome, and the vid screens linked to cameras on the outer hull gave an excellent view of the Patriot batlecruiser in tow. The grav beamers holding it were just visible by the debris they had snared, tracing stardust lines between the two ships. In the background, transports that had broken warp in the wake of the relief fleet were flaring their engines as they burned hard for Coseflame, running lamps flashing salute to the Navy vessels as they passed.

Gunnery officer Struss had come to the Impiger to deliver captain Aeneas’ compliments, but also to see the prize vessel up close for himself, and so he lingered for a while by the vid screen, marvelling at the lean silhouette of the Scintillating Wrath - which managed to retain some of its beauty even when battered half to hell, and being unceremoniously dragged behind a victorious enemy. He glanced aside to a chuckling, red-faced lieutenant who was also taking in the sight, and noted the carafe that he was holding in both hands.

“Is that an entire pitcher of wine?”

The lieutenant looked down at his prize, and then back at Struss. “It is.” He proved it by tipping it to his mouth and reducing the contents by a quarter. “I assume you had another question, since everyone knows better than to interrupt a man with a pitcher of wine without a damn good reason?”

Struss chuckled, and gestured towards the pict screen. “Do we go back to calling it the Exitus Est now?”

The lieutenant cuffed wine from his lips and shrugged. “Call me a heretic but I actually like the Patsie name better.” He pointed past the forlorn battlecruiser, to where another large cruiser was limping along in stuttering thruster-bursts, escorted by one of its fellows. “Look, there goes Accusator with the Shepherd”

Even at this distance, Struss could pick out the ragged holes in the titan tender. “Oof. The Patsies did a number on that one, right enough.”

It made him wonder if the atmosphere on Shepherd’s decks was as enthusiastic as here, or more funereal. But even as he formed the thought, there was a raucous cheer. The lieutenant was fast to turn despite his carafe, and it threatened to spill over both of them as he thrust it into the air and bellowed “Banastre governess-frakking Thurlow!”

Grinning and wincing at the same time, Struss peered past a knot of young midshipmen to see a rangy, handsome man holding both fists in the air as he negotiated his way through the officers now attempting to mob him. Maybe it was because he was used to the traditions of frigates, but Struss thought it passing strange for a ship’s XO to also be their master of armsmen, and stranger still for that XO to lead them personally on boarding actions. It spoke of a flamboyant, reckless courage - with all the pros and cons that implied. From what Struss had picked up from the Impiger’s officers, the fight for the Wrath’s command decks had been fierce, until Thurlow called in a coven of enginseers and diverted his attack through the deck below, where they’d proceeded to smash up all the power lines to the bridge. The loss of the lights and arti-grav had shocked the enemy captain into surrender. By rights Thurlow should have been dead, but luck seemed to have found him again, as it had when he had happened to board the very void-runner that the Baraspini governess had been attempting to escape on. The Emperor had a funny way of looking after the reckless.

The handsome XO negotiated his way past the midshipmen and offered Struss a smile and a nod before throwing his arm around the lieutenant. He, like Struss, had seemingly spied the jug of wine in his hands. “So!” Thurlow proclaimed, the word softened by his soft Axinite burr. "What does a war hero have to do to get a free drink around here?"

The lieutenant laughed, and clutched the carafe protectively. “Ask admiral Bravick for a favour?”

“The admiral?” Thurlow scoffed. “He won't come to our party. He's about as much fun as getting a bayonet through the neck, with a tithe notice stuck to the end of it. Give me rowdy Navy men any day.” He half turned and raised his voice. “Or failing that, give me marines!”

There was an answering cheer from the armsmen among the gathering.

"How do you deal with your marines?” the red-faced lieutenant asked, leaning unsteadily back against the bulkhead. “My deck crew are the most unsavoury bunch of reprobates."

Struss put his tongue in his cheek, and decided to break in. "Sixteen year old volunteers.” he guessed. “From the hives, most of them, right?"

The lieutenant nodded enthusiastically. "Yes.” he said, and took another swig. “Little shits."

“Old man Aeneas always said that shouting and screaming at the kids is good for breaking them in, but it doesn't work long-term. After that you need to give them someone to look up to, and make them believe you'll actually try and send them back home alive.”

“Your good captain gets it.” Thurlow agreed, raising an affirmative finger in Struss’ direction. “If you can do that then you won't have to flog them nearly as often.” He tugged down the front of his double-breasted tunic and looked around, spying the table of refreshments that had been set up haphazardly along the length of the mezz deck. “Right, I’ve got to meet Machado’s lot in a couple of hours, and I’m damned if I’m doing that on an empty stomach. If you’ll excuse me.”

Brash though he was, Thurlow’s good mood was infectious, and so Struss found himself smiling just a little as the commander took his leave. He might as well celebrate while he could - if he was bound for Retaliator, he’d probably find precious little cheer there. Machado had all the aggression and ruthlessness of a good frigate commander, with none of the dash or charm. There had been something theatrical about the way he had broadcast the Patsies’ deception back at them when he had hauled round to pick up the Revenant’s lifeboats, but to Struss’ mind there had been something chilling about it as well.

“So that’s the famous commander Thurlow.” the lieutenant confided, breaking into Struss’ thoughts. He raised his eyebrows in a way that might have been conspiratorial or testing. “What do you think?”

Struss considered a moment, reflecting on the fact that he was surrounded by Impiger men.

“He’s a firework.” he said after a moment.

The lieutenant cackled. “Lighting up the landscape, aye.”

Struss smiled. Aye, but not changing it. And if he keeps pushing his luck, he’ll burn out sooner rather than later.

Thee lieutenant leaned against Struss, his carafe threatening to spill yet again. “You think he’s famous now, wait until the propaganda adepts get hold of him.”

I hear the Patsie propaganda adepts already did, Struss thought, but this time he kept the words to himself.