Objective secured: Clear the docking spar and reach the hub
The Patriot defenders were in full retreat when the scream knifed out through the vox net. By the time princeps Zoerrin had reined in her rampaging titan, the retreat had become a full-scale rout.
Hange and Historia’s sensors registered void-suited menials and scrap-rig walkers actively casting themselves free of the station, preferring the cold, lonely death of void exposure to a titan’s wrath. For all their conditioning and drug-induced aggression, some of the enemy skitarii were following them.
As
Rosa’s weapons blasted plumes of debris from the station, the remnants of men and machines spiralled down towards Perinetus, burning down through the atmosphere like falling angels.
+ + + + + +
Harmothoe had the honour of breaching the spotter Paladin that Levvi had so thoroughly disabled, through a buckled carapace hatch that was already leaking squirts of atmosphere. When she levered it open with her glaive, the rest of the air left the chamber beyond like the last gasp of a dying beast. Beyond the hatch cables hung in sparking ropes, the blue flickers of electrical fires dying away as their oxygen supply was choked off. The Amazoneum commander dropped to a crouch with weapon thrust forward and began to creep along the narrow tunnel - still the graceful hunter even clad in the additional bulk of void armour. No challenge greeted Harmothoe as she crabbed along the flickering access tunnel, and she could feel no tread vibration through the impact-twisted decking - only the shudders and spasms of machine spirits leaving their dying bodies.
The hatch that should have barred the way to the knight’s sanctum was broken off its mounting, its carved angels face-down on the cockpit deck. The throne mechanicum was turned away from her, a bloodied hand hanging over the arm. Circling slowly round amid a backdrop of sparking, sputtering display consoles, Harmothoe found the traitor pilot dead in his chair, his skull and spine disconnected from the communion ports. The exploded mess of his temple and the laspistol that had clattered to the ground beneath his trailing arm told of his end.
The Amazoneum commander ground her metal teeth. The manner of his death spoke more of his unfitness to pilot this god-machine than even his menial’s jumpsuit. A true knight wishing to evade capture would have disengaged the cerebral breakers and allowed the spirit of the throne to consume him, a sacrifice to the war machine that had been his bond. Instead this man had piled desecration upon heresy by turning his gun on the consoles around him before saving the last charge for himself.
Fool, to think that the war spirits reside in such simple interfaces as these. To think that the gods can be so easily slain.
The sanctum, like the battered shell of the knight, could be repaired. Whether the machine spirit would be the same after such violation was a question for the Omnissiah’s chosen.
+ + + + + +
Ignis Four Kappa regarded the airlock door with lidless eyes, the implant in his temple ticking as it fed back visual data to his alpha, and in turn back to the skitarii prime. On the external hull of the shipyard, the prophets strode in their titanic war machines, bringing fire and death to the apostates. Four Kappa’s warzone was comparatively more intimate, narrowed down to the undulating tunnel of a bridge link and the hull hatch of a bulk carrier that had not been able or willing to flee before the fight began.
The hull hatch was closed and locked.
“They should be welcoming us as friends.” Four Kappa mused aloud.
“Well they've locked the door.” observed Ignis Nine Zeta, Four Kappa’s vat brother and a comrade in arms for several crusades in the Omnissiah’s name. “Which is a pretty big frak-you from your friends.”
“I suppose we'll have to frak them right back then.” countered Ignis Five Lambda as she brought forward the unit’s plasma caliver.
As Five Lambda mag-locked herself to the articulated bridge and took aim at the door seals, a heavy shudder ran through the umbilical. The airlock seemed to slide further away from them, hitting Four Kappa with a baseline sense of vertigo as his feet remained locked to the bucking void-bridge. A moment later he realised the truth - the airlock
was sliding away from them. The bulk carrier was casting off.
The mag-seals holding the tunnel fast against the vessel’s hull failed explosively, spitting shrapnel down the umbilical. A metal bar came wheeling towards Four Kappa and smashed him in the helmet, exploding his sealed visor. The bridge lurched again and this time the umbilical tore open, splitting along its length. Suddenly the only thing in front of Four Kappa was spinning stars, as a vacuum fist closed around him and pulled, crushing the breath from his lungs as it dragged him out into the black.
+ + + + + +
New skitarii objective: Secure or destroy the Warhound titan
They had been searching for the cradle deck where the third banner of Kamil knights were berthed, and had stumbled across something even better.
The repair deck was a vast dome, a womb for god-machines with a vast arched door that allowed them to stride out onto the shipyard hull in glorious rebirth. It felt wrong for a mere skitarii to be standing in such a temple, let alone desecrating it with gunfire.
Zentarin Two Seven had the honour to serve as alpha to the squads tasked with retaking the bastion at the shipyard hub, and he was doing that by bolt and by blade. The maintenance cranes were like artificial mountains that his units had to scale; skeletons of girder work around huge, whining lifter plants where every gantry and control booth was a potential predator’s lair. Here and there the climb was lit by the firework sputter of servitor welding teams, still obliviously at work. Many of them were cut down by the harsher light of lasguns wielded by defending skitarii, heedless of their menial servants in the crossfire.
Two Seven would not have pushed his troops up through these vertical death-traps by choice. The simplest solution would have been to board the titan from below, but the apostates had revealed the folly of that plan when they had channelled prometheum through the titan’s hull ports, incinerating his initial rush of Sicarians and two squads of Vanguard. Zentarin Two Seven had assessed, recalculated, and adapted his strategy accordingly.
The god machine loomed above him, impressive even amid this nest of corruption, a tantalising prize for his legion’s prophets. The Warhound still bore its shipyard guardian insignia, unspoiled, though its body had been racked and mutilated - whether by half-repaired battle damage or unsanctioned modifications was difficult to determine. Its left arm was an inferno cannon and its right an ugly, incongruous power claw. Nests of auxiliary power feeds had been studded along the arm to make the weapon operational, and Two Seven could feel the waves of unstable energy bleed washing through the repair dome like a heartbeat, spiking his rad-censer every few seconds.
+Zentarin Two Seven, report.+
Two Seven’s blessed implants pulled the directed transmission out of the jamming-swamped noosphere and tagged it with the code signature of the skitarii prime.
+Detachment has reached titan repair dome within central hub. Operation to secure one Warhound class in progress. Heretic resistance significant. Ave Omnissiah.+
+Shipyard records verify a single Warhound assigned to station protection alongside Knight House Kamil. However, station has additional capacity for repair of berthing legions. Heretics may have co-opted for repair of units withdrawing from the surface. Confirm number of titan repair bays.+
Two Seven turned his head to gather relevant data.
+Six, primus. Hexagonal configuration. One occupied, as previously described. Five vacant. Mag clamps disengaged on three of those five. Hypothesise recent use for repair operations.+
The significance of that last statement struck Zentarin Two Seven and primus Hector Rho simultaneously. By one of the Machine God’s strange patterns, it was also in the same moment that both commanders were jolted by a rumble through the deck they were standing on. For Zentarin Two Seven, it was the reverberation of mag clamps snapping back against their buffers, as the cocooned Warhound began preparations to walk. For Hector Rho, it was the judder of docking clamps failing as his connection to breacher squad Ignis sputtered and died.
It took Rho an interminable 0.97 seconds to assess the cause and configure a microburst to his legion commander.
+Princeps, one of the vessels on the docking spar just went hot.+
0.52 seconds later, he was able to append further data.
+Vessel is Themis-class tender
Tempestus Lator, sworn to traitor titan legion Fulminata.+
+ + + + + +
New titan objective: Survive
It was like a cliff of black metal, running lights dimmed so that it was little more than an imprint of deeper darkness where it blotted out the stars. It put Krista in mind of a thunderhead, rolling towards them across the night sky.
“Arletta.” she voxed down to her reactor domina, currently spacewalking around the Warhound’s crippled knee joint to assess the damage. “Get back inside the hull
now.”
“What’s going on?” Pietr transmitted from inside his blind and immobile knight.
“Trouble.” Hinzer answered grimly.
Honest Mistake’s remaining arm began to pulse with light as he powered the battered machine up for another fight.
“How far away are
Rosa and
Sinae?” Anna voxed in, tensely.
Krista gritted her teeth, already hating the answer that
Maria’s shaken-up augers were giving her. “Twenty minutes at full stride. Twenty five for Levvi and the rest of the knights.”
Up front, Krista could see Kaldon sending out sensor pings, trying to focus down the looming ship’s weapon emplacements before the expected barrage of turbo-las smote down at them. The ship continued to roll slowly past, but the barrage didn’t come.
Maybe they’re just focused on running?
Lightning flickered down from the black thundercloud; once, twice, thrice. The burst of teleporter light flashed and faded, leaving three hunched shapes mag-locked to the ravaged docking spar. A subsonic vibration thrummed through the shipyard hull, tingling Krista’s feet through the mind-link. The aftershock of a titan warhorn howling its challenge into the silent vacuum.
She saw a Reaver, fully armed, battle ready. To its left a Warhound with jammer code cackling from its vox casters. A second Warhound stood off to the right. Behind its shimmering void shield it was a ruin, skeletal in places where armour sheets had gone unreplaced. An undersized knight harpoon was clamped to the modular arm mount, a hasty replacement for the plasma blastgun that had been crushed as it fell. Its reactor heart pulsed visibly behind holes in the thorax. Krista recognised the holes -
Furvus Maria had made them.
The move made no tactical sense. With the loyalist blockade already redeployed to help the push on Coseflame, the enemy transport had a clear run towards open space and freedom. Instead they had seen a wounded and isolated enemy, and hadn’t even deigned to use their weapon batteries. Instead, they were deploying their battered legion for the chance to settle a grudge, a mad throw of the devil’s dice.
It was reckless, even for a matter of honour. It bordered on lunacy. But the spirits of titans were not beasts of tactical thought. They were engines of destruction, of hunger, of visceral rage. And they remembered their enemies.
It seemed that today the Fulminata princeps were indulging their titans’ animal instincts.
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