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 offline 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 vessels 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 per cent.”
“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 online 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 almost 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.
The two vessels parted as the Oceanid’s drives swept across the tau starship’s prow, propelling them apart and inflicting hideous damage in the process. The smoke and flame obscuring the view ahead parted.
What Lucian saw made him punch the arm of his command throne in celebration.
The Imperial Navy’s battle line had followed Lucian in as he had drawn off the lead tau starship, which, even now, spun drunkenly away from the battle. Jellaqua’s cruisers were trading devastating volleys against the tau ships, who appeared hard-pressed to keep them at bay. The entire area of space ahead was lit blue with the discharge of the tau’s weapons, and fiery orange with the shells and torpedoes of the Imperial Navy’s. Ships burned and men and aliens alike died as the vessels of each fleet sought to wreak bloody slaughter upon one
another.
“Comms online!” Katona announced. Lucian saw that the man’s face was badly burned down his left side; evidently the man had refused to leave his station even while it burned, and he had restored the Oceanid’s communications system even while fighting the fire that had burned him. “Incoming transmission on fleet wide band.”
“Thank you, Mister Katona,” Lucian said, nodding to the man, determining to reward each of the bridge’s crew, assuming they all lived through this battle. “Patch it through.”
“Imperial warships…” Lucian smiled as he recognised the voice of Admiral Jellaqua. “The Oceanid’s unusual manoeuvre has taken the bastards by surprise! We have a new contact in amongst the escorts, and I am taking the Blade of Woe in to deal with it. Finish them off! In the name of the Emperor and the Imperium, give them hell!”
The bridge crew cheered, and this time Lucian joined them. As the last of the Oceanid’s cogitation banks came back online, the holograph spluttered to life at the centre of the bridge. Lucian leaned forward to study the unfolding battle, and smiled.
“Ordnance,” he said, “I want every gun loaded and ready for firing. Shields, full power to frontal arc. Helm?”
“Helm standing by, my lord.”
“We’re going in.”
Brielle stood upon the observation deck of the tau vessel the Dal’yth Il’Fannor O’kray. The circular chamber was ringed with a single viewing window, and at its centre was projected a blue-tinged, three-dimensional representation of the battle unfolding around the nearby world. A dozen tau stood around the projection, conversing quietly and nodding as they watched events unfold.
Her heart raced as she saw an Imperial Navy vessel, a light cruiser, possibly a Dauntless by its displacement and configuration, die violently, its overloaded plasma reactor creating a new sun for an instant, which rapidly died to leave nothing but atoms to mark the ship’s grave. The tau envoy she had met upon Dal’yth nodded to her at the ship’s passing, quietly marking the victory. She nodded back, yet she raged inside.
The tau expected her to celebrate with them, but she could not.
As she watched, the defence station that had wrought such havoc in the early stages of the battle was overwhelmed by the Imperium’s escort squadrons. Then, a senior tau of what they called the Air Caste, those responsible for the operation of the tau’s fleet, issued an order. A mighty vessel, called a warsphere, belonging, she was told, to a subject race of the tau called the kroot, emerged from behind the planet and ploughed right into the escorts’ formation. Though its weapons were close ranged, the warsphere took a fearsome toll amongst the far smaller escorts, before the Imperium’s largest warship, undoubtedly the Blade of Woe, circled back and destroyed it with relative ease.
“They’re winning,” she said, more to herself than to anyone around her. “The Imperium is winning.”
“My lady,” replied Naal, standing at her shoulder, “have no fear.”
Brielle turned her back on the projection and looked out into the blackness of space. Although the battle was too distant to see in any detail, pinprick sparks blossomed amongst the stars, each no doubt marking the passing of a thousand needlessly expended lives. What if one of those tiny lights was the death of the Fairlight? What if it were the Oceanid or the Rosettal Then she would truly be alone, set adrift from all that had made her what she was.
She was a child of the Arcadius dynasty. She was born to explore and to conquer the dark regions that lay beyond the borders of the Imperium. She was not, she saw with sudden clarity, born to be some turncoat ambassador, and she would not act out such a role for the tau or for anyone else.
“My lady?” Naal asked, his voice low and urgent. “The envoys, my lady. They wish for you to witness the fleet pull back before the next phase is implemented. And when you have, they will wish to have an answer to their proposal.”
Rage welled up inside her, but she beat it down savagely before turning to face the gathered tau. Let them gloat over their small victory, she thought. It can’t possibly last. That would be her answer to their damned proposal.
Lucian sat alone in his stateroom, the lights down, a glass of strong liquor in his hand. They had won, he brooded, but at a terrible cost: four cruisers lost in a single battle. The names would be entered into the rolls of honour, but Lucian knew the Duke Lakshimbal, the Centaur, the Niobe and the Lord Cedalion would be missed grievously in the coming battles. The Niobe at least had been afforded the unusual luxury in space combat of its crew having time to escape, for the damage done to her had not been initially fatal. It was only three hours later, once the tau had finally disengaged, that the vessel’s damaged plasma relays had lost containment and Captain Joachim had ordered his ship abandoned. Another hour later and the Niobe’s reactor had gone critical, engulfing her and those crew who had not escaped in roiling plasma. Lucian had not been surprised to learn that Captain Joachim had survived the death of his cruiser; he had not expected the man to be the last off of his vessel.
In addition to the four capital ships, the fleet had lost fourteen escorts, with another two almost certainly damaged beyond the fleet’s capacity to repair them in space. The battle had been a victory, Jellaqua had announced, but it was obvious the Imperium could scarcely afford another such win.
Lucian could not guess how many lives had been lost, and this was only the first engagement in the crusade’s mission. Downing the contents of his glass in one gulp, Lucian cursed the cardinal and his faction to the depths of the warp. If only the council had not been swayed by Gurney’s rantings.
A chime sounded at the door to Lucian’s chambers.
“Enter,” he growled.
The wheel at the door’s centre spun, before it swung inward on creaking joints. A junior officer stepped through and saluted smartly.
“Report,” Lucian ordered.
“The pathfinder wing, sir…” Lucian slammed his glass down on the table beside his chair. “We have them on the rangers.”
The holograph revolved slowly before Lucian. The augurs had picked up three returns, which even now were speeding towards the fleet at high speed. Both the Oceanid and the Blade of Woe had been hailing the three small scout vessels continuously for thirty minutes, but their long-range communications systems must have been down, for no signal was received back.
“Coming into range now, my lord,” announced Katona. “Hailing on all short range channels.”
Lucian nodded, his heart pounding. If only three scout vessels of the elite pathfinders had returned from their mission, they must have ran into serious trouble, for they were trained and equipped to escape enemy contact, not to seek it out. The thought that he might have lost a second child was too awful to consider, and so Lucian offered up a silent prayer that Korvane would be returned safely to him.
“Pict signal on screen now,” Katona said.
The main screen above the forward portal came to life. At first the signal was little more than static, but after a minute, the picture became more distinct. It was the small, cramped bridge of the lead scout vessel. The ship must have suffered terrible damage, for the small cockpit was wreathed in smoke, the figure sitting at the command station barely visible.
Then, the smoke parted as that figure waved his arm to clear it. Lucian knew blessed relief as he saw that it was Korvane.
“Son!” Lucian said. “Thank the Emperor. What happened?”
“Father?” Korvane replied, his voice hoarse; the effects of the smoke, Lucian supposed. “Father, it’s you.”
“What is it, Korvane? Come aboard immediately.”
“No, father, wait.” Korvane reached across to his console and flipped a switch.
“We’re on fleet wide,” Katona announced. Lucian knew that what Korvane was about to say would be heard upon the bridge of every vessel in the crusade fleet.
“I can see,” he said, before pausing to cough violently. “I can see that a great victory has been won here this day, though not without a price, I j
udge.”
“Yes,” Lucian replied. “The action cost us dear, but the tau are beaten back.”
“No,” Korvane answered, coughing once more, “they are not beaten back. They have regrouped. The fourth body in this system is a major centre of population. We fought a small patrol and trailed the survivors home. We monitored their comms traffic. We couldn’t translate anything, but we measured the signals and their sources.”
Lucian’s blood ran cold. “Go on.”
“As I said, the fourth body is a major world, as populous and as well defended as any sector capital. And it’s not the only one. By the comms traffic we intercepted, this entire region is swarming with activity. Father, these tau are not some insignificant little race limited to one or two systems. There are millions of them, spread across the whole cluster. Whatever you faced here today is only the smallest part of their forces. And…” Korvane broke into another fit of violent coughing.
“And,” he continued, “they are converging on the fourth body. It seems their entire fleet is converging on the fourth body of this star system.”
Lucian stood, looking up at the image of his son upon the main pict screen. The fleet wide channel broke out in chaos as those masters who had listened in demanded a million answers to a million questions, all at once. Lucian saw then that the crusade council had made a terrible error in underestimating the tau as it had. The council had decreed that the crusade would be sufficient to conquer the tau. Lucian had to admit that even he had believed the aliens would sue for peace rather than face the might of the crusade, somehow having convinced himself that no sane foe would risk the utter devastation the fleet could wreak upon any world it encountered.
Lucian saw then that the crusade might soon have to fight, not for conquest, but for its very existence. He doubted the dominant faction, led by Cardinal Gurney, would view the matter in quite the same way, however. Lucian knew that the crusade would continue blundering on into tau space until it ran out of momentum entirely and the tau unleashed the inevitable counter-attack.
[Rogue Trader 02] - Star of Damocles Page 23
