Unsure exactly who it was that the servitor was trying to convince, Sinopa turned and addressed another servitor. ‘Our shields?’ The lobotomised slave stared down at the cogitator before it.
‘Holding at fifty-five per cent.’
Sinopa gripped the arms of his command throne. Fifty-five per cent was quite considerable given the punishing salvoes they had already fended off from the Executors. One of them was on the verge of defeat but unless more heavy support came for them soon...
‘First torpedoes have struck the Dread Argent,’ another nameless servitor reported. ‘Their shields are reduced to inoperable.’
‘Daerys, my brother, Throne be with you.’ Sinopa murmured the words softly, then turned his attention back to his own dire situation. For now, they were struggling to deal with the cruisers. It was no easy feat. Had they been able to concentrate all their firepower on one of the Executors, they could have destroyed the target with consummate ease. One cruiser would have presented no threat against a battle-barge. Three of them were potentially devastating.
But they had to keep the three of them at bay and the only way they could do that was to split their firepower. It was working – after a fashion – but it was by no means ideal.
‘Continue firing. Those ships need to be brought down.’
‘Compliance.’
‘Torpedoes locked with the Dread Argent. Will achieve maximum and effective hull penetration in seven... six... five... four...’
The Manifest Destiny’s guns opened once again and the next round of battle commenced.
‘Whatever happens, Yanus, you need to maintain command of this ship for as long as you can.’ Prognosticator Brand spoke harshly – perhaps more harshly than he had intended – to the bridge officer. Yanus had been startled at first when the deputation of full battle-ready Adeptus Astartes had marched onto the bridge, but the surprise had rapidly turned to relief at knowing the Space Marines had them covered.
‘Yes, Prognosticator,’ he affirmed, dutifully, snapping off a smart salute. ‘Truth be told, we are an easy target right now. Our shields are reduced to nothing and all the time we are being breached, we cannot hope to get even a modicum of power back to them.’
‘Just continue training the guns on whatever you can,’ the psyker replied, his voice distorted by the battle helm he wore. ‘Take out targets of opportunity and, as soon as you are able to do so, take a swipe at the Spectre of Ruin.’ The psychic hood rising up from the gorget of his battle plate was already sparking with eldritch fire as he readied his mental abilities. Intricate filigree designs of silver curled around the blue breastplate of his wargear, designs that mimicked the tattoos he bore beneath. Several silvered human skulls hung from a chain at his waist; trophies the Prognosticator had taken himself from amongst cultists. He had a particular hatred for human traitors – but any Space Marines who had turned against the Imperium were far more deserving of his loathing.
It never failed to surprise Yanus that Brand, so genial and wise when he was going about his everyday business, became a warrior of such fearsomeness when the call came. The psyker radiated an unmistakable aura of majesty and command, engendering great respect from all those Silver Skulls who had been granted the chance to fight alongside him.
He is an inspiration, the officer thought. He embodies everything that we are told to admire about the Adeptus Astartes.
The Prognosticator turned his helmeted head towards Yanus as he skimmed off the man’s surface thoughts. He chuckled, lightly. It was a strange sound given the circumstances but its warmth was a peculiar sort of comfort.
‘Thank you, Yanus. May your ancestors guide you in this upcoming struggle. I sincerely hope that we get to swap stories at the end of it.’
Yanus felt a moment’s guilt at the ease with which the Prognosticator had plucked his surface thoughts from his mind, then he bowed deeply and turned back to the onerous task of keeping the Dread Argent steady. Warning sirens were now sounding throughout the ship as hull breaches turned into imminent attacks. Brand, with effortless ease, directed Matteus to take care of the outer defences and retaining only a handful of warriors on the bridge punched the door controls that would bring the reinforced bulkhead slamming down. The bridge was, from that point onwards, effectively sealed against attack. Any Red Corsairs raider who made it this far would have to contend with several squads of Space Marines, then get through the heavy barrier of the door.
In the unlikely event they achieved that, then they would discover the wrath of a powerful psyker.
In a moment of wild relief, Yanus was glad that he was this side of the door.
‘Three... two... one... contact!’
The first torpedo that successfully disgorged its load of raiders onto the decks of the Dread Argent was met with instant fierce resistance. Before the enemy had even disembarked, the Silver Skulls had opened fire with bolt guns and flamers. The explosive rounds mostly bounced off the torpedo, exploding as they did so. Frag grenades were activated and thrown forwards as well. All of these counter-measures increased the difficulty of exiting the boarding craft.
The majority of the cultist raiders, insane and foaming at the mouth, to engage with the battle were cut down on their exit, their bodies torn apart by the frag grenades and the detonating bolter shells that razored through their flesh with ease. The Red Corsairs Space Marines, on the other hand, were an entirely different matter. They withstood the initial cordon of fire and broke through to the next line.
With bellowing screams of allegiance to their traitorous leader, the Red Corsairs, dressed in desecrated, scavenged armour, tore into the Silver Skulls with no hint of trepidation or uncertainty. They were absolute in their commitment to the battle and even as they died, they took great pains to ensure they delivered just as much damage as they took.
Across the ship, more torpedoes were boring through the hull. Throughout the corridors and walkways of the strike cruiser, dozens of small battles were taking place. Ship’s servitors and Chapter serfs fought alongside their Adeptus Astartes masters and countless fell at the hands of the raiders.
For every last one of them Daerys Arrun witnessed fall, he swore a new oath of vengeance until his blood was boiling with the fierce battle rage that all Silver Skulls experienced. He tore apart one cultist with his chainsword, dismembering the man with two precise strokes of the weapon. His armour was spattered with blood and gore, the teeth of his weapon coated in more of the same. All around him, each one of his battle-brothers fought with the fury and might of five. He hurled himself back into the fray, his blade a blurring whirl of motion.
They would never take his ship. The Dread Argent represented more than everything he had worked for for such a long time. It represented a future for the Silver Skulls Chapter that he had longed to secure. He would never allow it to fall into the hands of Lugft Huron. When he and his company had dismissed these pathetic attackers, he would find the Tyrant and he would take his head as a trophy.
The thought of such a victory drove him forward once again into the thick of the battle. His chainsword sang as he cleaved heads from shoulders, shattered ceramite casings and denied these would-be thieves further egress into his ship.
The vox-bead in his ear crackled into life and he began receiving reports of similar incursions taking place throughout the Dread Argent. Every story was the same. A mix of human and post-human raiders in each boarding torpedo. The Red Corsairs were evidently using their slaves as cannon fodder. It was cowardly behaviour and entirely to be expected. At least, Arrun thought grimly, this way they were able to slaughter the cultists and the Red Corsairs at the same time. The warriors who survived were slowly gathering their numbers together into a single fighting force that was snaking its way to the core strategic points of the ship.
Is this how the Wolf of Fenris fell? Arrun wondered as a well-placed blow with his chainsword stopped a howling cultist in his tracks. In a single, unbroken move, he turned and fired his bolt pistol at point-blank
range into the face of another who had run screaming towards him. Is this how the Sons of Russ lost control of their ship? It seemed impossible to believe. Daerys Arrun had fought alongside the Space Wolves Chapter on many occasions. They were fierce, noble warriors. The rebellious, near-blasphemous thought flickered across his mind that perhaps their cousins had given in to the fight. He knew it couldn’t have been the case. He had known the Wolf of Fenris’s master. Bluetooth would never have given up without a terrible fight. Neither would he.
It was entirely feasible that unless they were to capture and question any of the surviving Space Wolves, they would never truly come to understand the truth of what had happened on board the Wolf of Fenris. The chances of such an individual surviving the furious, confined battleground of a starship corridor however, was slim to non-existent.
A flare of light burst into the corridor as a photon grenade was detonated and whilst the helms of the Silver Skulls adjusted immediately, their armsmen were temporarily blinded, forced into a semi-retreat up the corridor. The brief lull in the sounds of gunfire and chainblades seemed almost surreal. As the flare died, a hulking figure stepped from the open end of the torpedo into the corpse-strewn heart of the combat. It wore a bulky pack connected by an armoured feed to the huge weapon clasped in its hands.
Without any hesitation, the Red Corsairs Devastator turned towards the defenders. His finger squeezed tight on the heavy bolter’s trigger and cultists and Silver Skulls alike were cut down mercilessly, first by the impact and then by the explosions of the stream of bolts that thundered towards them. The corridor filled with screams, curses and vaporised blood and suddenly the Silver Skulls found themselves giving unwanted ground.
The plan was simple, but as was often the way, simple proved to be the most efficacious.
After several minutes of watching the communications tower, it became apparent that the Red Corsairs, in an unfathomable moment of arrogance, had decided to place only minimal defences on the structure. A few slaves who had been armed with standard automatic weapons and comparatively primitive melee weapons. There were only three Red Corsairs Space Marines that Porteus could identify. It was almost ridiculously under-defended, given its obvious strategic importance. Evidently, the raiders were engaged with the ongoing tasks necessary to ensure the refinery remained within their control and as such had spared minimal force for this task. They probably did not have long before that situation was rectified.
They had to move quickly.
Of course, the sergeant had no idea just how important the tower was. Still oblivious to the terrible battle that was going on back on board the strike cruiser, Porteus’s stated objectives were simple. Capture and hold the tower long enough to transmit a distress call. They had to do it with all haste and they had to do it now.
‘Move out,’ Porteus voxed on the squad channel. ‘Ancestors go with you.’
‘And you, brother,’ came the replies, one after the other.
It felt strange, initiating a plan without confirmation from Simeon, or any other Prognosticator. Strange – and also strangely liberating. Again, it was an odd, unwelcome thought and Porteus berated himself for indulging in such ideas.
The thundering rain had tailed off and now fell in a misty and precipitous drizzle. Night had fallen completely now. The cover of darkness wasn’t something they could hope to use to their advantage now that they were out of the mountains; the many lights of the Primus-Phi refinery along with the orange blaze that burst forth in periodic spumes from the flare stacks were bright enough to negate any benefit darkness may have offered. Their flickering, jumping shadows as they approached would be as much warning as would be needed.
Approaching the communications tower was going to be more about timing and opportunity than about any sort of stealth.
Not, Porteus mused briefly, that there was much chance of ten Space Marines in full battle plate employing that much stealth to begin with. What they did have in their favour was the element of surprise. With a little bit of forward planning, and a lot of cunning, they could deftly turn the situation to their advantage. If there was one thing the Silver Skulls had in plentiful quantities, it was cunning.
They had split into three small groups and, using the comparative cover of mountain darkness, two groups had encircled the militia station in an approximate horseshoe. The plan was really quite simple. Two of the groups would form a distraction and the third group would storm the entrance.
A burst from the flare stacks was the cue that they needed to make their move and Porteus sent a single static burst across the vox bringing the plan into action. As soon as the burning orange glow faded to a sallow orange light, three massive shadows were thrown across the wall of the low building as the first group of Silver Skulls moved in.
There were shouts and bellows of alarm and surprise and moments later the sounds of gunshots began to fill the void of silence. As soon as the first three were ensconced in the skirmish, Porteus sent another two bursts of static. The second group moved in swiftly and the defenders of the comms tower were engaged on both sides.
‘Now,’ he said to his own group of warriors. Chainswords and bolters held high, the four of them pounded across the compound. Blades swung and weapons were discharged and the fight became suddenly and rapidly very intense. Porteus’s team had covered enough ground in their dash to reach the entrance of the building. The sergeant reached for a frag grenade on his belt and pressing the activation stud, threw it in through the open doorway.
Tick, tick, tick.
Three seconds. That was all it was. But it felt like an age before the grenade detonated with a faintly muted boom. The worst of the sound was effectively muffled by the thick ferrocrete layers of the militia defence building. The few unfortunate humans who had been inside and had survived the explosion were cut down the moment they emerged. Some of them may have been original troops who had been retained as new slaves for the Red Corsairs. Porteus had no time to discriminate.
The Traitor Space Marines were going to prove harder to dispense with, but Porteus had to trust to the first two groups to handle the situation. He and his men had to get to the control room and resolve the issue of their jammed communications. There was no doubt that the Red Corsairs would already have voxed for assistance from their fellows, but if the Silver Skulls held onto the shred of luck that had kept them from dying in the death-plunge of the Thunderhawk, then this gamble, insane though it was would pay off.
Roaring in battle-fuelled rage, the four Silver Skulls burst into the militia building, bolters live and ready to meet any threat that met them within. Their weapons swept the circuit of the room rapidly.
They encountered nothing. The thermal imaging on Porteus’s helmet suggested that those who lay on the floor, still living after the explosion of the fragmentation grenade, were rapidly joining the ranks of the deceased. One or two tried raising rifles weakly and firing on the Space Marines, but their battle plate protected them fully, the projectiles harmlessly bouncing off. Porteus could hear heavy footfalls above them; running. Too heavy to be human, more likely to be Red Corsairs Space Marines.
‘We have incoming,’ he voxed to his brothers. From outside, the sounds of battle could still be heard. The battle-brothers outside would be able to hold the entrance for a reasonable length of time, but once the Red Corsairs backup arrived, their time would be cut murderously short. ‘Take them down.’
His prediction proved correct as two Red Corsairs loomed into the doorway. Both – to their ultimate cost – were not wearing helms and Porteus knew a moment’s gratification at the look of shock on their faces as they encountered the Silver Skulls.
Space Marines were built to survive the most extreme temperatures. Their bodies could heal the most atrocious wounds and they could get up after losing limbs and keep going as though they had merely scraped their knees. But even Space Marines, with all their genetic enhancements, hypno-doctrination and years of battle training could do little about a bolt
pistol fired at point-blank range right into their face.
The first enemy’s bellow of fury was cut abruptly short as the bolt pierced the soft skin of his temple and lodged in his brain where it exploded barely a heartbeat later. He fell to the floor twitching, blood and grey matter mixing from the jagged remains of his skull, before he lay still, his traitorous tongue forever silenced by Sergeant Porteus of the Silver Skulls.
To his credit, the other Red Corsair put up a strong fight. But he was unprepared and not fully armoured and the might of four furious warriors soon ended any thoughts he may have entertained of a heroic last stand. He shortly joined his dead brother on the bottom stair of the communications tower.
The bridge was on fire. With the collapse of the void shields, electrical overloads and exploding cogitator banks had erupted into a series of small infernos that the bridge crew were straining to keep contained. For now at least, they were managing.
The formerly well-structured and ordered bridge of the Dread Argent was now descending on the wings of celerity into complete pandemonium. Through it all, the Prognosticator stood, staring at the bulkhead. He had filtered out the panicked voices and terrified thoughts of the human bridge crew and had allowed his mind to reach out beyond the protective plasteel door to see what he found.
What he found out there disgusted him. The vicious, iron-forged minds of a Chapter of once-noble warriors, corrupted by a single warrior’s insatiable greed and lust for power. Brand pushed out further, beyond the ship itself into the void beyond and he encountered something unprecedented.
A mind easily recognisable as that of an Adeptus Astartes, but a mind that was now so warped by the hunger it held for power... Brand blinked involuntarily. It was detestable to him. It was a beacon of darkness amongst the shining minds of his loyal, Imperialist brethren. All of the unfamiliar minds that twisted and wormed into the psyker’s thoughts were unpleasant, but this one mind was unlike anything he had ever encountered. Insane, possibly. If not, then certainly well on the way to that state. Power-crazed? Yes, perhaps – but Brand, who had fought against a good many corrupted governors, cultists and countless slews of his own Chaos-warped brethren knew that mental state well.
The Gildar Rift Page 19
