HDMS Vehemens, low orbit above hive Kintora
The whole bridge crew reeled sideways as the grav-plates fought against the volley that had just slammed them across the starboard side. Commodore Nasim Tehrani swore under her breath, and cuffed away the trickle from a bruised and bleeding lip.
“Give me a 180 clockwise roll.” she told a message runner, steadying the both of them on the pitching deck by the simple expedient of grabbing him by the epaulettes. Spreading the impacts across the dorsal shields would buy them some time, and bring the mostly undamaged portside batteries back into action. But it was a stalling tactic. Close and messy, she liked. Point blank with an active defence grid, less so.
“
Lance satellites down.” she muttered under her breath. “Like Horus.”
They had received the communication despite the loss of Strike squadron the previous month, and the presumed loss of the infiltration team they had been carrying. The message had been signed by someone called interrogator Hybrida, a name that meant nothing to Nasim, but one which had apparently been good enough for admiral Bravick to greenlight this operation. However, whether it was down to a mistranslation by the astropath, or to treachery, or just to a particularly industrious Patsie repair crew, the lance network around Tranch was still very much online.
The deck shuddered again, a ripple that Tehrani recognised as the portside guns thundering into action. It was answered, inevitably, by another battering strike from the nearest lance satellite. Tehrani remembered flying through the defence grid above Ichabarr, the hub world for battlefleet Ixaniad, upon her arrival as a fresh-faced sublieutenant. The satellites looked like steel roses with solar collector petals and jutting stamens full of capacitors and focusing lenses. She remembered them slowly turning to follow her transfer vessel like flowers tracking the sun, perfectly coordinated by the hub station that loomed in distant, geostationary orbit. She remembered thinking that only a fool would try and storm such defences head on.
“Portside scutum primary is overloading again, commodore!”
“Secondary?”
“Still venting heat!”
Tehrani exhaled. “Brace.”
The ship shuddered, and the lumoglobes bathing the strategium stuttered for a moment before settling steady once more. A moment later, a wash of light suddenly bloomed across the auger globe in its recessed pit below Tehrani’s station.
“Sensori?” she queried, pointing.
“Shield collapse, planetside.” the officer reported, as his attendant enginseer brought the section into focus with a gesture. “The titans did it!”
Despite the chaos, the alarms and the smell of smoke that hung in the air, a cheer rippled across the bridge.
Now let’s see if the Patsies are willing to see sense. “Comms.”
“Ma’am?” a handler responded, one hand still on his astropath’s shoulder as he looked up from the focusing litanies he had been chanting in the psyker’s ear.
Tehrani shook her head. “Let him rest a moment. Our shields are down too so we might as well use vox.”
“Commodore!” the sensori suddenly shouted out. “Warp surge detected on the far side of Tranch!”
The commodore wheeled back towards the auger globe. “What?”
+ + + + + +
Defence orbital Primus, low orbit
They had gotten lucky in capturing the gun decks - no sooner had the shock of the initial breach worn off, then the enemy, panicking and unsure of the imperials’ position, had opened fire on their own incoming reinforcements, opening up a chance for
Impiger’s marines to charge. Now all we have to do is escort the tech priests to the reactor and shut it down. Ban Thurlow looked at the map slate one of his men had found on a dead Patriot officer, tracing the corridors and transitways with a finger. None of the possible approaches looked pretty.
The monotone voice of a vox servitor sounded through the captured gallery, blaring encouragement to defenders who were no longer alive to hear it. The Imperial were walking into a trap, it promised. By the grace of the Emperor, a defector had given them all the tools they needed to bury their oppressors in the cold black void.
“Here’s your grace.” one of Ban’s armsmen snarled, and an auto-shotgun boomed, turning the vox caster hanging from the roof into shreds of metal confetti. The broadcast died in a keening wail of static.
Ban chewed his tongue. His men had been hungry for blood ever since they had landed on the station and heard the servitor vox-reels crowing their premature victory.
Nothing like knowing you were supposed to have been massacred in the void.
Unfortunately, Ban himself knew more - and he had a horrible suspicion that the defector the Patsies were championing was no garden variety traitor. Sapphira hadn’t had to tell him about her friends’ mission. In fact, going by what he presumed to be normal inquisition protocol, she shouldn’t have. Inquisitor Drake she was not, and Emperor willing neither were her masters Machairi and Lucullis.
“You don’t really think he did it, do you?” he asked Gerald O’Rourke. Normally he would not have voiced the worry aloud, but his men were giving the grizzled old preacher at his side a wide berth - being presumed to be here as an inquisition representative (despite the old man’s denials) had its perks.
O’Rourke hummed low in his throat, crinkled eyes fixed on the ruined vox caster. “Aye.” he said at last, answering not the question Ban had asked, but the unspoken sentiment behind it. “I wish I was there with Saph as well.”
“I’m not afraid for her.” Ban lied.
“Aye.” Gerry said again, and nodded sagely, almost as if he believed him. “But I
am afeart of what she’s goin’ to do.”
“Contact rear!” a voice warned. Somewhere behind, an autogun began to bark in wild, hysterical bursts.
We can’t stay here. Ban hurried to the burned and las-scorched transitway that connected to the next station module. The transfer shuttle lay in a bulldozed wreck to one side of the rails, and armsmen in heavy, diver-suit armour were stacked up along both walls. A familiar figure towards the front stood up and waved cheerfully at them.
“Ban!” grinned frateris Lucia. Unlike O’Rourke, she hadn’t even bothered to deny the assumption that she was an inquisitorial overseer, and so her gross familiarity drew no comment from the waiting marines. “The fuck is the attack order? Y’all got me watchin’ the vox like I'm hopin’ they'll ask me to prom!”
She gestured to the vox-man, a lay adept of the mechanicus temple who was kneeling beside his set. Ban beckoned for the caster. “Akira flight, please tell me the second wave’s on its way?”
There was a fizz that might have been a voice. Then static. Either interference from the void fire or jamming fields from the ships were playing merry hell with the vox.
Frak waiting. We lose the momentum, we die. He picked out the platoon commander and beckoned him closer, laying the map slate flat on the floor between them and stabbing it with a gloved finger. “Alright. We push through the cargo module to the next transit way, then swing left and cut them off from the escape pods. We can work our way down to the reactor once this deck’s clear.”
“Aye sir.” the lieutenant nodded, and turned his head inside his helmet to speak into the vox thief near the collar. “Tell the boys to strap up, bodies are gonna drop.”
“Watch the connecting routes.” Ban added, pointing them out on the map. “This place is full of aspiring heroes wanting to die for the great governor Tierce.”
The lieutenant nodded. “For Emperor, honour and homeworld, sir!”
“The leadin’ causes o’ death among heroes like us.” Gerry clapped the officer on the shoulder and followed Ban forward as he hunkered down beside the arch that led into the next gallery, its barricade doors already peeled back by a meltagun. The Patriots inside the cargo module were still trying to clear firing lanes - some taking overwatch while others shoved at steel crates or worked the cranks on the deck’s deployable cover plates.
“They’ve left themselves wide open.” Ban said, grinning savagely.
“Take a beat, son.” O’Rourke warned him softly.
Ban pressed his lips together, and took a moment to recall his Tranchite gothic before turning up the vox caster attached to his cuirass.
"Patriots, this is commander Banastre Thurlow. You have one chance and one chance only. Surrender or die!"
His answer was the boom of an auto shotgun, which struck sparks from the edge of the door.
"Well I suppose that answers that one.” Ban dragged his sword from its sheath. “Grenades and charge!"
+ + + + + +
HDMS Impiger, low orbit
The scything lance beam caught a defence monitor and killed it, carving in from the portside and blowing out the starboard in a violent breath of flame. Strike craft buzzed past the spreading wreckage like angry hornets,
Accusator’s fighters trying to contain both the surface-to-orbit missile waves and the bombers scrambling from the defence hubs.
“Good shooting, lances.” captain von Scharn allowed as she pointed a command wand towards the auger sphere. “Helm, keep us on station!”
The deck pitched and groaned underfoot. Getting close enough to board the orbitals was a damnably vulnerable place for a cruiser to be, and the Patriots were being sure to remind them of it, as hard as
Accusator and
Triumphant were trying to cover them. Most of the fleet was keeping bombardment distance, with the frigates running interference, sweeping back and forth across the line and trailing smokescreens of jammer probes. But 5th squadron were in the teeth of the enemy orbital grid -
Impiger launching boarding waves at the hub stations, while the flagship and two frigates covered
Shepherd’s daring run.
The titan tender was pulling away now, but Tehrani’s
Vehemens was taking a beating, despite the best efforts of
Vindicta and
Velox to screen her. And
Impiger getting shot out from under von Scharn’s own arse was still a very real possibility. They had two generators offline, gun deck four evacuated due to a hull breach, and an unexploded Patriot torpedo buried in the dorsal hull, which the enginseers were frantically trying to locate and disarm.
“Our new friends on Omnicron are going to love us after this.” the captain murmured. “We’re going to be buying so many spare parts off them.”
The subcommander who was filling in as her XO in Thurlow’s absence smiled, uncertainly. Elspeth bit her cheek. She wouldn’t have thought it six months ago, but she missed Ban and his rakish smile. Not that she could have justified keeping him back from leading the armsmen assault, nor would he have agreed to shirking the danger his men were being thrown into. A good man, Ban Thurlow - one who by rights should have been martyred by now, but somehow the Emperor kept smiling. She hoped that his luck would continue.
The ship shuddered, and a klaxon wailed. The captain sighed, and motioned to her temporary executive officer. “Go and see what that was and update the spare parts list.”
“Captain!” a voice rang out suddenly. “Warp surge on the port quarter, beyond the Van Allen belts …a huge one! Battleship size, minimum!”
The Patriots don’t have any battleships. Elspeth’s brow furrowed.
The Nebula hulk.
“Bring us about, signal
Triumphant and
Shepherd!”
Inquisitor Lucullis, currently aboard domina Veiss’ ship, had been planning for this - counting on it even. [i]Let’s hope
+ + + + + +
Titan tender Shepherd of Light, high orbit
New objective: Board the Nebula hulk
The shields warped in an oily flash of defensive pyrotechnics, but they held, shunting Kintora hive’s parting gift sideways into the immaterium. Ahead, through the thicket of slashing lance satellites, a new enemy had appeared.
The Nebula hulk loomed in space ahead of them like a great evil god, a misshapen amalgam of two ancient capital ships crushed together at a canted angle, and barnacled with lumps of asteroids and less identifiable materials. One ship was recognisably a Murder-class cruiser - the other was something older, sleeker. The catamaran double-hull had been braced with adamantine struts that served as mounts for additional weapons systems and shield-projection masts. Baleful lights began to flare along the tilted flanks as the hulk opened fire.
Impiger and
Triumphant Rationality were already turning to meet the monster. Chao had been briefed on the inquisition’s contingency plan and it was a bold, borderline mad one - board the Patriot homeship and tie up its Nebula contingent before they could lay waste to another Imperial ship. Getting there, through the lance grid and the hulk’s own guns, was another matter.
“Captain.” a message runner reported, sketching a sharp bow before handing over a data slate detailing the offensive forces still aboard the titan tender. “Equerry Savic requests an update. Our orders?”
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks