[Rogue Trader 02] - Star of Damocles

by Andy Hoare - (ebook by Undead)

  “You heard the man,” said Lucian. “Helm, bring us around on the Blade and match her speed. Echelon to port, two kilometres by fifty.”

  “Aye sir,” responded Ruuben, hauling on the Oceanid’s wheel. Lucian felt the gravity fluctuate as the vessel was subjected to the forces put into play by the change of heading. His head was forced back into the command throne for an instant, and he looked to station nine, one of the few manned by a servitor.

  “Grav, I want those compensators online, or so help me I’ll…”

  He let the threat tail off. It was pointless threatening the servitor, for it had no independent will and felt no emotion. Besides, he was more intent on studying the holograph and its representation of the unfolding battle. The fleet was slowly moving to its new heading, though Lucian’s practiced eye saw immediately that the arrow head formation was losing its former cohesion, the vessels becoming strung out in a long line, with the Oceanid, the Rosetta and the Fairlight at its centre. It felt to Lucian that the manoeuvre was taking far too long to complete, the tau vessels closing on them all the while.

  They were closing on a single vessel that had drifted too far ahead of the formation. The Dauntless-class cruiser the Regent Lakshimbal was isolated at what had previously been the extreme port flank, but was now the head of the line of vessels moving to intercept the tau. With no escort squadrons to picket the fleet’s perimeter, the cruiser found the enemy bearing right down upon her.

  As the range between the two fleets closed, the Oceanid’s sensors began to gather more data on the enemy vessels. There were eleven of them, and as the readings flooded across the pict screens above his command throne, Lucian sought out the configurations he had observed in his previous encounters.

  He did not find them. At his previous battles against the tau, he had faced huge, lumbering starships with modular bays underslung beneath a central spine. He had come to discern that these bays might be swapped out for weapons, cargo or carrier duties, but that was not what he was seeing here. Instead of the comparatively vulnerable configuration encounter before, these vessels were smaller, yet evidently intended to carry out a far more aggressive role in ship-to-ship combat. Instead of a single weapons battery mounted to the fore, these bore multiple batteries. Lucian’s professional eye saw immediately how the interlocking field of fire of each battery might combine with devastating effect. Even as he watched, he knew that the Regent was perilously close to entering those fields of fire.

  “Full power to mains!” Lucian bellowed. “Break formation if you have to, Mister Ruubens.”

  “Aye, sir,” the helmsman called back as the roar of the Oceanid’s main drives was transmitted her entire length.

  We can make it, Lucian thought, if only the Regent can hold out against the first tau volley.

  As Lucian’s vessel swung gracefully to port, breaking formation with the main battle line, a mournful wail went up from somewhere deep in her bowels.

  “What the hell was that?” Lucian spat. “Report!”

  “It’s drive three, my lord,” responded Ruuben, even as he struggled with the great wheel in an effort to maintain the Oceanid’s heading. “Something’s wrong with—”

  “Not now!” Lucian cursed. Drive three had been a concern for several years, but had never failed him when actually needed. He had delayed an overhaul, knowing that the Arcadius could ill-afford such an extravagant expense, and had intended to attend to the matter after the crusade had sufficiently lined his pockets.

  Lucian’s mind raced as he looked helplessly on at the Regent Lakshimbal as the tau vessel bore down upon her. “Shut drive three down.”

  “Sir?” replied Ensign Ruuben.

  “I said shut it down, Emperor damn it! I want a full purge cycle, right now!”

  “Aye sir,” replied Ruuben, before relaying Lucian’s orders to the drive stations to the Oceanid’s aft.

  Even as he watched, Lucian saw that the tau were in range of the Regent. He knew from bitter experience that the hyper velocity projectile weapons utilised by such vessels would outrange anything a Dauntless carried. Evidently, the captain of the Regent saw this too, for he brought his light cruiser around to face her armoured prow towards the enemy, and to present as small a target as possible against the inevitable salvo.

  As the range closed, Lucian saw that the Regent had raised her shields. He knew the ship’s master would be channelling every available reserve into the shields, for he would not be able to return fire until the tau vessels were within range of his forward lance batteries.

  “The foremost tau vessel is powering up for a shot!” Batista called out, as Lucian had known he would.

  Once more, the familiar wink of blue light appeared, marking the launching of one of the tau’s projectile weapons. Though he knew he was not the target, Lucian gripped the arms of the command throne. An instant later, and the attack struck the Regent square across the frontal shield arc, unleashing a blinding explosion as the shields converted the attack to energy and bled it off into space.

  “She’s holding!” Batista said. “Shields maximal. Second shot incoming.”

  This time, Lucian saw several of the tau vessel’s weapons batteries open fire, and he realised that the first attack had been nothing more than a ranging shot. The Regent was struck a glancing blow across her armoured prow, and it was immediately evident that the shields had not absorbed the full force of the projectiles. A mighty wound was gauged along the starboard flank of the Regent’s prow, raging fires bursting forth and roiling black clouds billowing out into space.

  “Ruuben?” Lucian called. “What’s the status of drive three?”

  The helmsman took but an instant to consult a data-slate mounted above his station. “Purge cycle at fifty per cent, my lord.”

  “Not good enough.” Lucian knew that the Regent Lakshimbal was dead if she continued to take the punishment being meted out by the tau. “Push it to maximum, right now.”

  Lucian saw Ruuben turn as if to voice an objection, but the helmsman evidently thought the better of it when he saw the look in Lucian’s eye. Lucian knew the risks of forcing the plasma drive’s purge cycle, but he was prepared to take that risk, however slim, if he might save the Regent.

  Even as he watched, Lucian saw that the Regent Lakshimbal was doomed. Rising to his feet and crossing to the forward portal, he saw a second and third tau vessel close upon the stricken light cruiser. The range had closed, however, allowing the Regent the dignity of putting up a fight. The Dauntless-class vessel’s prow mounted lances spat incandescent death at the first tau starship, scoring a solid hit against its rear section. Lucian punched the air in bitter celebration, savouring the heroic act even as he knew the tau ship’s shields had withstood the blow.

  “Come on, Mister Ruuben,” Lucian growled.

  “Ninety, sir.”

  The second and third tau starships were moving to envelop the Regent, but in so doing, the tau showed the relative inexperience that Lucian had noted on previous occasions. The Regent wasted no time in punishing the xenos for their mistake, both her starboard and port weapons batteries unleashing a fearsome broadside at the approaching enemies. The tau, it appeared to Lucian, were caught entirely unawares, neither vessel managing so much as to offer its prow to the Regent so as to present as small a target as possible.

  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 aspe
ct 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 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 seismic force of its sudden reawakening transmitted like a quake throughout the 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 straggling 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 me 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.

  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 Regent 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 online. 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?