Rogue Trader

by Andy Hoare

  Lucian punched the bulkhead in savage jubilation as both broadsides struck home. He had never seen such a thing, and doubtless never would again, for surely the tau must learn from such an error. Both tau vessels were entirely enveloped in flame and smoke, and Lucian could tell right away that the Regent’s attacks had done significant damage, for flaming debris spread outward from the third vessel in an ever-expanding circle. Though not dead, Lucian was quite certain that the ship would be out of the fight, for a time at least.

  Then, the third vessel emerged from the smoke and flame that had engulfed it. It edged slowly and gracefully through the debris of its wounds, appearing to Lucian to have taken on the aspect of some oceanic predator from prehistory, closing on the blood scent of its prey. The ship was scarred and pitted, greasy smoke and flame trailing from a dozen scars rent across its armoured flank. The formally pristine white hull was blackened and scorched, but Lucian could see that its weapons batteries were still all too operational. Lucian saw that the tau had just learned a valuable lesson in the nature of the galaxy, and one he doubted they would fail to act upon.

  ‘Make it quick,’ he whispered.

  As it cleared the smoke and debris of the Regent’s broadside, the tau vessel opened fire once more. Blue flashes marked the discharge of its hyper velocity weapons, each propelling an indiscernibly small, but nigh impossibly dense projectile across space. Accelerated to an unbelievable speed, the projectile penetrated the Regent’s shields, unleashing a blinding storm of arc lightning.

  Lucian winced, expecting a catastrophic explosion, but none came. Instead, the Regent unleashed a second broadside, the entire length of its mid-section obscured as the superheavy shells of its weapons batteries were flung across space.

  The second broadside was just as unanticipated as the first had been, the tau caught unawares by a foe they thought dead. The tau vessel was wracked by mighty explosions, some blossoming across its shields and others penetrating them to strike its superstructure. The tau vessel veered drunkenly to port, and, through the debris and flame, Lucian made out that its drive section was aflame, ghostly plasma fire dancing across its rapidly melting armour.

  Then, disaster.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Regent Lakshimbal appeared to Lucian to shudder, faltering in her forward motion as she slewed about her central axis. He could see immediately that something had gone terribly amiss and that the shot that had struck her minutes before must have caused some unseen, yet fatal wound.

  Lucian watched as the Regent’s mid-section buckled. He could scarcely believe his eyes as he saw the dying light cruiser fold around its spine, its thickly armoured outer hull cracking wide open. Debris burst from the great rent in an explosion of escaping gases. Though Lucian could not make out the details from this distance, he knew that hundreds of men were dying a cold, desperate death even as he looked on.

  Lucian slammed his fist into the armoured portal. ‘Status!’

  ‘Almost there, sir,’ replied Ruuben, calm despite the edge of threat that Lucian had put into the simple request.

  Unable to watch as the Regent Lakshimbal spewed her guts into space, Lucian crossed to his command throne and threw himself down into it.

  ‘Initiate purge cycle, Mister Ruuben, and hold her steady.’

  The helmsman turned to meet Lucian’s eye, and then nodded his understanding. Bracing himself against the mighty ship’s wheel, Ruuben made a series of adjustments to the helm and then communicated Lucian’s order to the enginarium.

  Lucian too took the opportunity to brace himself, gripping the arms of his command throne against the shock he knew was about to overtake his vessel. He was too late to save the Regent, that much was obvious, but by the Emperor, he would make the tau starship pay for what it had done.

  ‘Purge in ten…’ called the helmsman.

  ‘Now is fine, Mister Ruuben!’ Lucian growled back.

  Without answering, Helmsman Ruuben hauled back on a mighty, floor-mounted lever. For a moment, it appeared to Lucian that nothing would happen. Then, he felt a subsonic trembling rise up from the deck plate, growing in intensity until every surface on the bridge was vibrating violently. Lucian gripped the arms of the command throne still tighter as the lights gave out, the only illumination provided by rapidly flashing pict screens.

  Then, these also died and the vibrating subsided in an instant. The Oceanid fell utterly, deathly silent. Lucian’s fists dug into the fabric of his throne and he closed his eyes tight.

  Drive three thundered into life, the nigh seismic force of its sudden reawakening transmitted like a quake throughout the entire length of the vessel. An instant later, the other three drives powered up, and then the bridge lights, and with them all of the ship’s systems were restored.

  All except the Oceanid’s cogitator.

  ‘Let’s see how good you really are, Mister Ruuben!’ Lucian yelled. He was aware that an edge of mania had entered his voice, though he believed he was entitled to it. No sane man would attempt what he had just ordered.

  Even from the fore-mounted bridge, Lucian could hear the roar of the Oceanid’s mighty plasma drives transmitted through the ship’s structure. As they reached a crescendo, the vessel began to edge forward, riding the wave of the tremendous momentum generated by the ad hoc purging of drive three. Ruuben was struggling at the helm, putting all of his strength into holding the great ship’s wheel on the course Lucian had ordered.

  Still the myriad clusters of pict screens and data viewers around the bridge remained black. The Oceanid was for the moment running with no form of guidance or regulation from the massive cogitator banks secreted in her heart. Lucian knew that she could not survive for long without them, and neither could Mister Ruuben control the helm in anything other than a cursory fashion.

  ‘Lieutenant Davriel,’ Lucian said, addressing the Navy officer overseeing the cogitator banks at station five. The man appeared at least as much a machine as one of the servitors who had crewed Lucian’s bridge until so recently, a cluster of data cables writhing around the back of his shaven head to interface directly with the Oceanid’s cogitation matrix.

  Davriel’s eyes had been closed shut as if he was in deep concentration, yet they snapped open the instant Lucian spoke his name.

  ‘My lord,’ the officer responded in a lilting whisper quite at odds with his appearance, ‘I am communing with the custodians.’

  Lucian knew that Davriel referred to the… creatures that maintained the Oceanid’s huge crystal datastacks. Each had once been a tech-priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus, who had, upon transcending the mental frailties of the organic body into which he was born, merged his consciousness with the Omnissiah, shedding his physical form to attain apotheosis with the Machine God. What was left behind once the tech-priest had merged his knowledge and experience with that of all his predecessors was a soulless husk. The Machine Cult used them to tend such cogitators as controlled the functions of the Oceanid. Davriel’s station communicated with them.

  ‘How long?’ Lucian demanded.

  ‘Primary functions?’ Davriel asked, a damned stupid question in Lucian’s opinion.

  ‘Any bloody functions,’ Lucian retorted. ‘Helm control might be useful!’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ replied Davriel, apparently unflustered in the face of Lucian’s wrath. Perhaps he wasn’t so bad, Lucian thought.

  Before Lucian could press the issue, the bridge was flooded with incandescent fury. Lucian snapped his head away from the forward portal, throwing an arm across his face in an effort to stave off the impossibly bright, pure white light. He clamped his eyes tight shut, and then dared to withdraw his arm, knowing that if the light remained he would see it through the membrane of his eyelids. Guessing it was safe to open his eyes, he saw that the portal had dimmed, an instant too late as ever, protecting the bridge crew from the worst of the inferno raging where once the dying R
egent Lakshimbal had floundered.

  Lucian was stunned. He had seen the Regent’s doom even before the terrible damage inflicted by the tau’s last attack had been revealed, but he had not anticipated the catastrophic fate that had engulfed her. He guessed that it was some form of reactor collapse, though he suspected none would ever know for sure, for scant evidence would be left to sift through.

  Knowing the luxury of mourning must be deferred, Lucian attempted to get a hold of the events unfolding around him. He had no course data, and no holograph to consult, but he could see with his own eyes that the Oceanid was being propelled by the force of the drive purge straight towards the tau vessel that had murdered the Regent.

  ‘Mister Ruuben,’ Lucian said, addressing the helmsman as he wrestled with the ship’s wheel, ‘hold as steady as you can. I don’t expect miracles, but I want to pass that tau bastard at point blank. I’m going to make them hurt.’

  ‘Aye, my lord,’ snarled back the helmsman. ‘How about two thousand?’

  Lucian smiled savagely, embracing the atavistic brutality of the battle. ‘Give me two thousand metres, Mister Ruuben, and we’ll have them stone dead.’

  ‘Two thousand it is then, sir,’ Ruuben replied, hauling upon the ship’s wheel to bring the Oceanid about on her new heading. Without the cogitation banks to aid the manoeuvre, Ruuben was steering her unaided, in a virtuoso display of spacemanship.

  ‘Mister Davrial,’ Lucian said, turning to address the officer at station five, ‘your turn to excel. Don’t let me down.’

  ‘Sub systems reawakening, sir. I’m prioritising helm, fire control and shields.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Minutes, my lord, I assure you.’

  Lucian nodded, and leaned back in his throne. He took a deep breath as he looked around the bridge for any sign of the cogitation banks coming back on-line. Individual lights blinked where moments before consoles were dark, and quite suddenly every pict screen on the bridge burst into bright static. After another minute, the bridge was filled with the familiar sound of comms traffic as the many stations around the vessel re-established contact with one another. Many would have had no clue as to what was occurring. Perhaps such ignorance was bliss, thought Lucian, considering what still had to happen for the coming manoeuvre to succeed.

  Still lacking the bridge holograph, Lucian looked through the forward portal to make an estimation of the distance the Oceanid still had to close before she would pass the tau starship. Less than eleven kilometres, he judged, give or take a couple of metres.

  ‘Helm function returning!’ Mister Ruuben called out, relief evident in his voice.

  ‘My commendations, Mister Davriel,’ said Lucian, determined not express his own feelings of relief. Looking towards the tau ship as it manoeuvred around the wreckage of the Regent, he realised that he had a major decision to make, and he would have less than ten minutes in which to make it: shields or fire control?

  If he raised shields before restoring fire control, the Oceanid would survive anything the tau vessel might throw at her as she passed, but with the cogitators off-line and unable to provide accurate fire control, that pass might be in vain. He could order a broadside without the aid of fire control, but even at two thousand metres, an impossibly close range at which to engage another vessel in ship-to-ship combat, he could not count on making his shots count. Unless…

  ‘Mister Ruuben,’ Lucian said, ‘I need five hundred metres.’ He leaned forward as the helmsman turned around and regarded him with ill-concealed incredulity. ‘Can you give me five hundred metres?’

  The bridge chatter fell silent, the tau vessel looming all the larger in the forward portal.

  ‘Aye, sir,’ Ruubens nodded, and then grinned like a madman, ‘five hundred metres it is!’

  ‘Emperor bless mad old spacers,’ Lucian said. ‘Mister Davriel, concentrate on the starboard shield projectors.’

  Lucian did not wait for confirmation that his order would be enacted. He knew it would, for this new bridge crew was competent and professional, and evidently well drilled in following orders under pressure. Instead, he concentrated upon the tau vessel as the range closed.

  The enemy starship was coming about. It had seen its danger then, Lucian thought. The tau must surely understand, by now, the danger an Imperial ship of the line posed at close range, where it could unleash the most fearsome of broadsides. He could see that the tau were moving to present their prow towards the Oceanid, thereby offering as small a target as possible to the coming attack. They were learning fast.

  Lucian saw another threat as the distance closed. This new class of tau vessel with its multiple weapons batteries could present a threat from almost any angle. As the two vessel, neared one another, he could make out the details of his foe. Foremost amongst those details were the weapons turrets mounted across the forward dorsal section, turrets that were swivelling towards the Oceanid even as he watched, locking those devastatingly powerful hyper velocity weapons onto her.

  ‘Mister Davriel?’ Lucian snarled, not taking his eyes from the turrets.

  ‘One minute, sir, and counting. Primary shield communion at fifty percent.’

  ‘Work fast,’ Lucian said. The turrets had the Oceanid in their sights. From previous experience, he knew they would fire at any moment.

  ‘Energy spike!’ yelled Mister Batista, the ordnance officer. ‘Brace for impact!’

  Lucian glanced across to the shields officer, but saw that Mister Davriel would not have the projectors on-line before the first shot was fired.

  ‘Mister Ruuben, thirty to starboard!’ Lucian shouted.

  ‘Hard to starboard, aye sir!’ yelled back the helmsman, bracing his feet on the deck and putting his entire weight into the ship’s wheel.

  The forward portal was enveloped in a blue flash, and Lucian gripped his throne all the tighter. The Oceanid veered hard to starboard, bringing her on a near collision course with the tau vessel. An instant later and the hyper velocity projectile struck the Oceanid. Lucian felt the attack strike his vessel as her armoured flanks were gouged savagely, a terrible rending sound echoing down the companionways, followed a moment later by the wailing of emergency sirens.

  ‘Hull breach, sector seven-seven delta!’ called out the Navy officer seconded to the operations station. ‘Damage control parties dispatched.’

  Lucian doubted whether the damage would be limited to the breach. He knew he would only get one chance at this.

  ‘Mister Batista,’ he said, addressing his ordnance chief, ‘prepare a broadside. All starboard ports. Manual offset, twelve degrees.’

  ‘Understood, my lord,’ Batista replied. Of all his remaining crew, Lucian trusted his ordnance chief. Batista would ensure that the broadside struck home. If he did not, this fight would be over all too soon.

  ‘Energy spike!’ yelled Batista. ‘Brace!’

  ‘Shields up!’ announced Davriel.

  ‘Fire,’ growled Lucian.

  The Oceanid rocked violently as the broadside was fired. The superheavy shells crossed the short distance between the two vessels and slammed home with devastating effect. Fire erupted across the tau starship’s flank, shearing off a vast portion of her drive section. The damage caused an instant destabilisation in the enemy’s handling, and Lucian watched as his foe was thrown off course, beginning a drunken slew about its own axis.

  Yet, despite the massive wounds inflicted upon her, it was obvious to Lucian that the tau vessel was determined to give a good account of itself. As he watched, the turrets mounted across its dorsal section swivelled as one, tracking the Oceanid with unerring stability, even as the tau starship came almost full about with the violence of its destabilised drives.

  ‘Brace!’ called Batista. Lucian held his breath.

  Once more, the forward portal was flooded with the blue light of the tau weapons batteries discharging
. At such short range, the impact came nigh instantaneously, yet to Lucian’s enormous relief the newly raised shields held, the incredible energy of the projectiles being translated into raging energies that roiled out into space, but which caused no harm to the Oceanid.

  Ruuben’s previous manoeuvre, combined with the drastic change in the tau vessel’s course following the damage inflicted upon its drive, left the Oceanid bearing right down on her. The tau vessel passed directly across the forward portal, its entire starboard drive section burning. As the flaming hull filled the entire portal, the tau vessel impossibly close, Lucian saw that the two ships were set to collide, and there was nothing he could do to avoid it.

  ‘Full power, Mister Ruuben,’ he ordered. ‘All forward. Shunt her aside’

  It was the only way, though Emperor only knew what damage it would inflict upon his beloved vessel. The armoured sides of the tau vessel reared ahead, flames dancing across its pitted and scarred surface. Then, the prow of the Oceanid ground into the tau starship’s side and a dreadful shudder was transmitted the length of Lucian’s ship. A moment later and a terrible grinding roar filled the Oceanid, the bridge lights dying, and then coming back to life as the ship’s reawakened cogitation banks re-routed the power conduits that fed them.

  The fiery drive section of the tau ship ground across the upper hull of the Oceanid, the vessel so close that the flames licking its surface washed over the forward portal. An explosion to the fore shook the bridge crew, bright sparks exploding from consoles as their operators dived for safety.

  ‘Keep going, Mister Ruuben!’ bellowed Lucian over the deafening roar of grinding metal. He could not tell whether or not the helmsman had heard his order, but felt the Oceanid’s drives pour yet more power into the manoeuvre.

  Raging flame and roiling black smoke entirely obscured the view through the portal. The bridge lights died once more and all was plunged into a stark darkness punctuated only by the guttering flames, and the small explosions of sparks that still spat from consoles. Yet another grinding quake shuddered through the vessel, and Lucian felt the Oceanid lurch upwards. Sweat poured from his brow and his heart pounded in his chest. If this didn’t work, he thought, it would be a damn stupid way for the Arcadius dynasty to end.