by Ben Counter
They banked into long swooping strafing runs and with nose-mounted turbolasers began spattering the gunmetal hull of the Rubicon with fire.
In the gun decks and maintenance runs of the strike cruiser, men and women began to die.
ALARIC HEARD THE strafing runs hitting home, dull chains of explosions rippling along the outside of the hull. He was inside the Grey Knights' remaining Thunderhawk, strapped into a grav-couch ready to launch, alongside his squad and Squad Tancred.
With Krae lying dead in Titan's vaults, Squad Tancred now numbered just Tancred himself and his remaining three Terminator brothers. Tancred cradled his Nemesis sword, Locath and Golven held halberds, and Karlin carried the squad's heavy incinerator. The Terminator Marines were much like Tancred himself - uncompromising assault troopers who lived to do the Emperor's work up close where their massive armour and Nemesis weapons would bring them the greatest advantage.
Karlin was a regular student in the chaplain's seminary, where his incandescent brand of faith echoed the blessed burning fuel he sprayed over enemies. Locath was as strong as Tancred himself, and the Nemesis halberd he carried was a powerful relic given to him by a brother-captain he had once attended on as a novice. Golven was a skilled halberd fighter who had earned his Crux Terminatus boarding abandoned spaceships and fighting Chaos-tainted genestealer cults.
Alaric carried the Nemesis sword of Mandulis under one arm.
'This is yours, justicar.' he said, handing the weapon to Tancred.
Tancred took the weapon and looked up at Alaric in surprise. 'Brother-Captain, I do not feel I have earned the...'
'You are our best soldier, Tancred.' said Alaric. 'It took Captain Stern to beat you. We need you to carry the Lightning Bolt. It's what you do the best of all of us.'
Tancred put his own Nemesis sword to one side and held the sword of Mandulis. It was an abnormally large weapon but it fitted Tancred perfectly - it was made more for strength than for finesse but in combat Tancred had plenty of both, and it looked as firm and balanced in his hand as it must have done when Mandulis held it. The inside of the Thunderhawk was lit by the gleam of its blade - Tancred seemed to loom even larger in the reflection from its blade, darker and stronger, a reflection of the spirit inside Tancred. 'The sword that banished Ghargatuloth.' said Tancred, almost to himself. 'I can believe it.'
He turned the blade, weighing its point of balance, checking the razor sharpness of its edge and the flawless surface of the blade. It seemed like an extension of Tancred, a weapon he had been born to hold. To Alaric it was a sacred relic, but to Tancred it was a sword the Emperor wielded through him.
Another sequence of dull ripping explosions echoed overhead, so close the strafing ran must have scored hits along the side of the launch deck itself. Secondary explosions sounded somewhere in the ship. Alaric could hear the vibrations running through the deck as the Rubicon's manoeuvring engines were fired up.
'Pray to the Emperor that you will get the chance to use it.' said Alaric, as the high resonant vibrations of failing shields thrummed through the hull.
THE ENGINES OF the Rubicon kicked in even as strafing runs tore ruby explosions from its hull. The strike cruiser, using its superior mobility, darted forward suddenly, ploughing forward through its own debris field and right into the upcoming fighter wings. Many pilots were forced to adopt new formations as the ship bore down on them, launching runs that impacted only against the Rubicon's thick prow armour. Attacks down the side of the hull were shortened as the craft flashed by and those fighters who banked for a second ran were targeted by the turrets now free of debris interference and reaping a harvest of burning fighter hulls. More than seventy craft were destroyed or disabled, their valuable pilots killed or stranded with little hope of rescue, munitions detonating in firing tubes before they could be fired, attacks scattered as the huge silver beak of the Rubicon ripped through space.
The strike cruiser's ordnance was depleted, and it was bleeding fire from scores of wounds. The Avengers and Starhawks had done their work, but they had not finished the Rubicon off.
Leaving shoals of attack craft whirling in its wake, and with the follow-up squadrons of attack boats and boarding torpedoes fleeing before it, the Rubicon headed at full speed towards Volcanis Ultor.
CAPTAIN GRAKINKO, ON the bridge of the Unmerciful, listened in to the sounds of his fighter assault breaking up. Crackling screams as cockpits filled with fire. Static-filled chains of explosions as ammunition cooked off. Transmissions cut short as power plants detonated. The crewmen operating the fighter command helm were used to hearing such long-range death and Grakinko had lost thousands of men in naval engagements before, but it was still disheartening.
'Navigation!' bellowed Grakinko above the growing din on the bridge. 'Why are we standing still? Where are they going?'
'Heading for the planet, sir!' came the reply from somewhere in navigation, where dozens of junior officers were wrestling with system charts and compasses while the cogitators smoked with the effort of calculations.
Grakinko let out a barking, triumphant laugh. 'Then we'll get in front of 'em and give 'em a broadside! Let's see the gakkers run away from that!' He slammed his hand down on the arm of his throne. 'Gunnery! What are our rates?'
The gunnery officer - seventh-generation Naval man, Grakinko remembered playing three-board regicide with his father - stood up smartly. 'Fresh gangs and fully loaded, captain. At their speed I can give her three full volleys to the prow.'
'And if we hang about to get them in the backside?'
The gunnery officer thought. 'A good two half-volleys to the stern.'
'I've got a bottle of dry amasec older than I am. Give me three half-volleys to her stern and it's yours, you hear?'
'Yes, captain!'
The Unmerciful wasn't a pure gunnery ship, but it had been refitted (against Grakinko's wishes, he admitted) with plenty of guns after the Gothic War and by the Emperor it could give a decent volley when it had to. Three full volleys, and then three half-volleys from the depleted gun gangs, should be enough to cripple any ship at point blank range. Then it was a matter of bringing the surviving fighters in and bombing the gak out of the strike cruiser until it came apart.
Grakinko thought he might let the escorts of Absolution Squadron get a sniff of the kill, too. It was the done thing, a gesture of courtesy to fellow captains.
Those upstarts on the Holy Flame could go gak themselves, though.
'Navigation, get us side-on to them now!' ordered Grakinko. He felt the Unmerciful lurching as its engines turned its old creaking hull round and hauled it into the path of the strike cruiser.
The holographic tactical display on the viewscreen zoomed in, leaving the scattered attack craft out of its field of vision. Instead it concentrated on two blips - the shining blue symbol denoting the Unmerciful, and the red triangle of the Chaos strike cruiser, streaming burning fuel and debris as it hurtled towards Volcanis Ultor.
ALARIC WAS STRAPPING himself into the grav-restraints when he heard klaxons going off all over the Rubicon. 'Collision warnings.' he said to himself, as the ship's engines roared louder.
THE UNMERCIFUL OPENED up with a few straggling shots, range finders that streaked past the oncoming prow of the Rubicon. The gunnery sergeants denoted the target in range and closing, the officer at the gunnery helm concurred. With that order, every gun on the port side of the Unmerciful let loose.
Against a ship with full shields and the ability to return fire, the effect would have been damaging but ultimately unspectacular. Against a ship with few shields and in no position to return fire, the guns could pour volley after unanswered volley into the strike cruiser's prow. The massive armoured beak of the strike cruiser, shielded with layers of adamantium and covered in engraved prayers of warding, was first battered and then pierced by the munitions fired by the massive guns. Plates of armour were ripped off, flung spiralling through space, trailing fire. Secondary explosions sen
t walls of flame spurting from between the seams of hull plates. With a single titanic eruption the whole prow was blasted off, a rushing cowl of flame billowing out from the front of the Rubicon. The void swallowed the fire and an ugly, blackened ruin of metal was all that remained of the ship's prow.
The ship didn't slow but it did veer dangerously, systems without number damaged, fires coursing along maintenance ways and corridors, bulkheads bursting into hard vacuum. The bridge was rocked, and had it been set a few metres further forward it would have been torn apart, too. Thousands of Malleus crew died, immolated, blown apart or sucked out into space. The wrecked prow shed armour sections, plumes of debris, and broken, frozen bodies.
THE THUNDERHAWK WAS thrown sideways, slamming against its moorings as the Rubicon rocked.
'Injuries?' voxed Alaric.
'None.' said Genhain, whose men were loaded into one drop-pod alongside the Thunderhawk.
'None here.' echoed Santoro.
Alaric checked the Marines in the Thunderhawk with him - his Marines were unhurt and it took more than that to injure one of Tancred's Terminators.
Alaric voxed the bridge. 'What was that?'
'Took the prow off.' came the reply, warped by the damaged vox systems. 'All forward locations lost.'
'And the bridge?'
'Minor damage. Nav is correcting our course. We'll hit the atmosphere in twenty-two minutes.'
From the tone of the crewman's voice and the background noise on the bridge, Alaric knew he wasn't alone in thinking that was too long.
THE RUBICON PASSED close underneath the Unmerciful, close enough for the wreckage raining off it to spatter like iron rain against the Unmerciful's underside.
Gun gangs on the starboard side of the Unmerciful were under-manned and under-munitioned compared to those on the opposite gun deck, but they had their part to play, too. As the stern of the Rubicon emerged from under them the ship tilted to give them a better firing angle before they poured everything they had into the aft section of the strike cruiser.
The massive engine exhausts were punctured again and again as red lances of fire fell in a burning hail. Jets of superheated gas kilometres long shot from the ruptured engines. One plasma reactor was cracked open and boiling plasma flooded out, forming a ragged smouldering ribbon where it hit the cold of space. The secondary explosions tore a hole in the upper hull four decks deep, exposing the primary engineering command centre to the void. The chief engineering officers stared up at the yawning hole above them where the ceiling of their aft bridge had once been, their breath stolen from their bodies, their blood frozen, the Unmerciful rolling slowly and pouring fire into them from above.
The bridge's primary link with the engine section of the Rubicon was gone. As far as the state of the engines went, the ship was flying blind.
The starboard guns of the Unmerciful ran dry. The Rubicon passed underneath it, prow gone, stern badly chewed, spewing air, plasma and wreckage. But it was not dead yet. The fleet records on Iapetus would witness that it had survived worse.
Plasma reactors thrumming with the strain, the Rubicon plummeted on towards the pale disc of Volcanis Ultor.
CAPTAIN GRAKINKO LOOKED up to see the gunnery officer standing on front of him, the buttons of his neat starched uniform gleaming.
'That was a few shots short of four half-volleys from the starboard guns.' said the officer.
Cocky little prig, Grakinko thought, taking the bottle of amasec from within the arm of his command throne. Never taking his eyes of the officer he smashed the neck of the bottle on the edge of the arm and poured the whole bottle down his throat, letting it spill down his chin and the front of his uniform. When it was empty he threw the bottle to smash on the bridge floor.
Heretics or not, those gakkers knew how to build themselves a damn spaceship.
CAPTAIN PRYNCOS GURVEYLAN, seated behind one of the many banks of cogitators that made up the bridge of the Holy Flame, watched the Rubicon trailing wreckage as it ploughed through the curtain of fire from the Unmerciful's starboard batteries. The Unmerciful was not a ship known for its guns, but it had opened fire on a closing opponent at point blank range, with everything it had. It was a testament to the toughness of the enemy strike cruiser that it was still going.
Gurveylan was not a ship captain in the old sense. His word was not law on his ship - he left that privilege to Security Officer Lorn and Ship Commissar Gravic. He did not rule his bridge with an iron fist, since he could rely on his officers to do their duty. He was, instead, the executive arm of the Holy Flame's officer corps. That was how they had done things at the Academy - teamwork, responsibility, obedience.
The giant holoprojection unit filled the bridge with the image of the enemy strike cruiser, its prow chewed off, ribbons of congealing plasma coiling from its engine section. The projection of the Unmerciful drifted through the ceiling of the bridge as the strike cruiser carried on, tracked by the Holy Flame's sensors. It was headed directly for Volcanis Ultor - not taking any evasive action, just streaking towards the planet.
'I want a damage report on that ship.' said Gurveylan.
One of the several dozen engineering officers took the bridge vox-caster. 'The ship's an unknown marque, captain. It's a Space Marine strike cruiser. We don't have the specifications for it.'
'Give me your best guess.'
'Extensive prow damage, non-essential systems only. Command structures probably intact. One major plasma breach, engines down to seventy per cent. Crew casualties thirty to fifty per cent.'
'Gunnery and logistics!' snapped Gurveylan. 'If we match her speed and hit her with rolling broadside volleys, what is the probability she'll be crippled?'
There was a long pause as gunnery officers and lexmechanics scrabbled and calculated. 'Eighty per cent.' came the reply.
'Good. Comms, contact Absolution Squadron and have them take up high orbit in case the enemy gets through. Everyone else, I want us alongside the enemy ready to open fire in seven minutes. I think after this is done I shall shake Captain Grakinko's hand for softening her up for us. All stations, to your duties.'
At the order the hundred-strong officer corps of the Holy Flame snapped into action. The wood-panelled theatre of the bridge was full of activity. Navigation had to plan complex vectors. Gunnery and ordnance had to flood the gun decks with gangs to work the enormous broadside cannons. Engineering had to place damage control teams at strategic points because even the depleted firepower of the enemy strike cruiser could, with bad luck, cripple key systems of the Holy Flame.
A warship was a beautiful thing: every part and crewman directed at the same goal, bound by the same duty. From the short-lived labourers of the engine gangs to the command crew and Gurveylan himself, the whole of the Holy Flame was united towards a common purpose.
If all the Imperium were run like the Holy Flame, the Enemy would be thrown back into the darkness forever. But for now, Gurveylan was content to see the Chaos Marine strike cruiser reduced to flaming wreckage.
VALINOV COULD SEE, through a break in clouds of pollution, the white streaks of fire in the sky as the Holy Flame opened up on the Rubicon. He knew how much firepower the Holy Flame could bring to bear. If Valinov had pulled the right strings, if the threads all came together as they should, then the end was almost here.
Valinov was in an open-topped groundcar driving through the final dregs of rains and shanty towns that marked the western edge of Hive Superior. In front of him the dry broken earth was cut through with lines of trenches edged with razorwire, and studded with large plasticrete bunkers. Even from some way behind the rear lines Valinov could see men hurrying to their positions, and hear the klaxons and vox-casters ordering them to full battle alert. Recoba had managed to put together a fairly cohesive defence and the word had spread quickly down the command chains that the enemy was in-system and, just as Valinov had predicted, were heading straight for Volcanis Ultor and Hive Superior.
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nbsp; The groundcar, driven by a liaison officer from the Balurian heavy infantry, rounded a rear supply post where pallets of lasgun power packs were being stacked, ready to go out to wherever the fighting required. Standing in the back of the car, Valinov watched as tiny crimson explosions blossomed in the sky as the battle in space raged on. The last of Ligeia's death cultists sat beside Valinov, her ever-taut muscles twitching now and then. Valinov had made sure the death cultist was hidden while he went about his business in Recoba's spire - she looked sinister and dangerous, and she could have compromised his attempts to be trusted. Out in the field, he didn't need to hide her any more. Valinov had to look like a warrior, and the death cultist certainly helped generate an air of lethality.
The groundcar turned north and Valinov saw they were driving just behind the Balurian lines. The Balurian heavy infantry were noted for their discipline, which was as much an asset to Valinov as the heavy half-carapace armour the Guardsmen wore or the las-guns they carried which were configured for high power and short range. The Balurians would do what they were told. That was all he needed of them.
Their officers were barking orders, shuffling units into position. Fields of fire were overlapping, counterattacks were placed, key weak points were reinforced with heavy weapons posts. The regimental commissar prowled the ranks, bolt pistol in hand, but Valinov knew he wouldn't have to use it on his disciplined, faithful men.
Except perhaps towards the end. But by then it wouldn't matter.
The groundcar headed towards the northern end of the line, the processing plant and the bleached shore of Lake Rapax. The glossy red armour of the Sisters of the Bloody Rose glinted in the murky greyness that passed for the morning sun on Volcanis Ultor. Valinov spotted Sisters on the roof of the plant itself, Retributor squads with heavy bolters. Seraphim units, with their distinctive winged jump packs, were kneeling in prayer as their Sisters Superior prepared them to act as counter-attacking units when the enemy broke through. Canoness Ludmilla had brought a whole commandery of more than two hundred Sisters of Battle. It was them that Valinov was going to review, to thank the canoness personally for answering Volcanis Ultor's call, and to warn her further about the nature of the Enemy. Their leader, he would tell her, carried a powerful daemon weapon that must be captured so the Inquisition could have it destroyed. And she would believe him, of course, because in high orbit the blazing sheets of broadside fire were proving him right.
