[Night Lords 01] - Soul Hunter

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden - (ebook by Undead)

  In fact, quite the opposite. He had no desire to inspire tactical union within the fleets he sailed with. All he cared about was the dissolution of order within the enemy’s armada.

  The easiest way to win a void battle was to ensure no enemy commander achieved tactical unity for his own forces. If their overall cohesion was compromised, each vessel could be isolated from any potential support and torn apart, alone, piece by piece.

  It was an approach the Night Haunter had honoured the Exalted for on no small number of occasions. As the primarch himself had said, it was worthless to know an enemy’s plans. The foe should be defeated before his plans even come into play.

  The Warmaster’s Crythe invasion fleet had translated into the system several days before—that much was obvious to the Exalted as soon as the Night Lords strike cruiser tore from the warp. Dozens of broken hulks of vessels, their shattered metal skins declaring allegiances to either side in the conflict, hung powerless in the void, destroyed in the opening phases of the war.

  The Exalted ordered its helmsmen to guide the ship through this silent graveyard, engines burning to reach the main battle, where the Warmaster’s fleet had at last forced the Throne’s forces into an orbital defence.

  The creature’s eyes drank in the sight of ancient names on the flickering hololithic display. Great vessels that had waged war for thousands of years, their names and titles etched into the flooding tides of the Exalted’s memory despite the turning of time.

  There, the Ironmonger, which served the Legion of Primarch Perturabo. There, the Heart of Terra, still with the scars it earned when it laid siege to the world it was named for. And ringed by dozens of smaller vessels, in the heart of the storm, the Vengeful Spirit.

  The Exalted gestured with its claw.

  “Make for the Warmaster’s flagship as you transmit our identity codes, then break formation and engage ahead of the fleet.”

  The Covenant of Blood streaked into the maelstrom of the orbital battle, and the Exalted pictured the command decks of Imperial vessels as another mighty ship joined the Archenemy host. Console alarms would sound, orders would be shouted… It was delightful to envisage, even if just for a moment.

  But the Covenant was vulnerable. It burned its engines white-hot as it powered past the Vengeful Spirit, past the Chaos vanguard.

  This had to be done fast.

  Even a cursory glance at the occulus revealed to the Exalted that the battle result was inevitable. The Imperial fleet was doomed. He watched the icons on the wide holographic display table before his oversized command throne, seeing their slow dance through three dimensions. In a matter of moments, he saw the outcomes of each icon’s motion, calculating the many ways every vessel might move in relation to the others. A game of many—but ultimately finite—possibilities, unfolding before his eyes.

  Again, he looked to the occulus. The forces of the False Emperor were still numerous enough to inflict severe harm upon the Warmaster’s attacking fleet, and that was what counted. Victory at too high a price was no victory at all.

  As he grinned, his eyes leaked tears of oily blood. The dark tears ran cold down a face as pale as porcelain, showing every vein beneath in thick, black cables. Muscles in his face strained and his tear ducts tingled. The Exalted was not used to smiling. It had been too long since entertainment of this calibre had been forthcoming, and better yet, the Warmaster was watching.

  It was time to make the most of it.

  Two Imperial ships stood out from the pack. Two targets that had to be destroyed in order to dissolve the hopes of tactical unity. The Exalted had marked both of them, and relayed his desires to the strategium crew. They worked now to make his intentions a reality.

  The Covenant of Blood raged through the battle, taking incidental damage on its void shields from the few fighters and light cruisers that had reacted fast enough to its sudden arrival. A speeding shrike of blue-black and bronze, it speared between two ships of similar size to itself, ignoring the barrage from their broadsides.

  By the time they had come about to give chase to the diving blade of a ship that had evaded them, they were already engaged by other vessels. These new attackers bore the black and gold of the Black Legion, the Warmaster’s own Astartes.

  The Covenant of Blood didn’t even slow down. The Night Lords hunted larger prey.

  An Astartes strike cruiser was a powerful ship, excelling in actions of surface bombardment and blockade-running. In void warfare it was a dread enemy, for while it lacked the offensive capability of a battle-barge or heavy cruiser of the Imperial Navy, because of its armaments and dense shielding, it would make short work of most vessels of a similar size. Had the Exalted joined the orbital battle above Solace by lending the fury of the Covenant’s lances and weapons batteries, the Night Lords would have made a significant and useful contribution, worthy of praise.

  That, however, was not enough.

  The greatest threat from an Astartes strike cruiser was its cargo. While the Covenant had weapons capable of levelling cities and shields that could take punishment for hours on end without flickering its deadliest and most feared weapons were already leashed into their deployment pods and awaiting the moment of launch.

  The Night Lords cruiser was a huge and weighty ship, yet graceful despite its bulk. It rolled, shark-like, slow and smooth, as it dived towards the much larger Gothic-class ship, the Resolute. The Imperial cruiser was a monument as much as a warship: a small city of cathedral-like structures jutted from its central spine, and its aggressive beauty was an inspiration to the small fleet of support ships that streamed around it, orbiting like satellites in its presence.

  The occulus aboard the Covenant was blinded by the release from the Resolute’s lances. The larger ship was still target-locked on the Warmaster’s attacking vessels—it had had no time to bring its furious weapons array to bear on the new arrival yet—although the support ships in its shadow began to power up to destroy the racing Night Lords cruiser plunging into their midst.

  The Exalted watched as one of the icons situated behind the Covenant’s symbol winked out of existence. The Unblinking Eye was no more, coming to pieces under the final assault of the Resolute. A Black Legion ship: one of the Warmaster’s own.

  Strange, thought the Exalted, to have endured for millennia, just to die here. The Unblinking Eye had been at the Siege of Terra ten thousand years before. Now it was debris and an ignoble memory of failure.

  Then it was the Covenant’s turn. The strategium shuddered again, and not gently.

  But the shields were holding, the Exalted knew. He felt the ship’s skin as keenly as he felt his own. Three ships firing abeam, and… something more.

  “Shields holding,” a mortal officer called to the command throne. “Weapons fire from three light cruisers and incidental fire from a fighter wing.”

  Fighters, it chuckled. How quaint.

  The Exalted instantly assimilated this information into his overall vision of the icon formation ballet unfolding before his eyes. The Resolute had been his first target because its shields were already down. He’d known from the moment the battle hololithic display had flickered into life that, from its place in the formation, the Gothic-class cruiser had fallen back from the fighting to restore its void shields. The minor fleet spinning around it like parasites only confirmed his deduction. It was one of the larger ships in the Imperial fleet, swarmed by protectors as it sought to restore its defences. It was clearly key to the defence.

  The Exalted snarled harsh manoeuvre orders, and the Covenant strained to obey. It began below the Resolute, and with engines howling, it climbed hard. Shields still holding, rippling as they reflected incoming fire, the strike cruiser sliced almost vertically up past the Resolute’s starboard side. The Night Lords ship presented almost no target to the masses of broadsides, though they fired anyway. It was a curious move by the standards of traditional void warfare. Running abeam of the ship would have allowed for a more standard exchange of heavy bro
adside batteries as the ships coasted alongside each other, but lancing vertically seemed to achieve nothing at all. Although the Resolute’s broadside volley went tearing off into space, completely wasted, the Covenant’s weapons batteries would have also done almost nothing—if they had actually fired. The guns of the Night Lords vessel remained silent.

  Aboard the Covenant of Blood, all of the human strategium crew were still crying out or throwing up in the aftermath of the insane gravitational forces from the manoeuvre. Several had passed out. The Exalted wiped bloody tears of joy from his cheeks.

  That had been divine.

  “Confirm,” it said simply to the servitor at the pod launch console.

  “Seventh, Ninth and Tenth Claws deployed,” the half-machine slave murmured in response.

  “Contact?” it demanded.

  “Confirmed,” came the toneless reply. “Boarding pods confirm successful contact.”

  A moment later, a familiar voice crackled over the strategium vox-speakers.

  “Exalted,” it said in the deep resonance of the Astartes. “This is Adhemar of Seventh Claw. We are in.”

  All this smiling made the creature weep more aching tears. They had just run a gauntlet of Imperial vessels through the heart of the enemy fleet, and by the time the officers of the Resolute realised what had happened, three squads of Astartes would be butchering their way to the command decks.

  Truly, that had been divine. The Resolute and the fleet leadership on board were as good as dead. Once the other Imperial crews heard of the slaughter aboard their key vessels, fear would spread like a merciless cancer.

  One down, one to go.

  “Helm,” it said as the strategium shivered under another barrage. “Make for the Sword. All power to the engines.”

  “Lord,” an officer close to the throne cleared his throat. “The enemy flagship’s shields are still raised.”

  Not for long. “Approach vector: insidious predation.”

  “Aye, lord.”

  The Exalted licked its lips with a black tongue. “Fire all forward lances and torpedoes at hull section 63 as we move across her bow. Time the firing of the bombardment cannon to coincide with the exact moment our lances and torpedoes strike.”

  That was no easy feat. A dozen servitors and mortal officers hunched over their consoles, working their controls and calculations.

  “It will be done, lord,” assured the nearby officer.

  The Exalted couldn’t recall his name. Either that, or it had never learned the human’s name, it wasn’t sure. The creature knew the man as its bridge attendant, and that was all it needed to know. “But—” the man hesitated.

  “Speak, human.”

  “My lord, Exalted of the Dark Gods… This attack vector will bring us within the Sword’s firing solution for fifteen seconds.”

  “Thirteen,” the Exalted corrected with a death’s head grin. “And that is why as soon as we fire our prow weapons, the ship will execute a Coronus Dive, full burn on the engines with port thrusters overloaded by seventy per cent. We will roll while holding maximum sustainable negative yaw and pitch for ten seconds.”

  The officer went paler, if such was even possible for a man who hadn’t felt sunlight on his skin in decades.

  “Lord… we’re too large a vessel for—”

  “Silence. You will coordinate this attack run with main armament weapons fire from the vessels Ironmonger, Vengeful Spirit, and the Blade of Flame. Align with their strategiums and inform them of our intent.”

  “As you say, lord.” The officer swallowed. His eyes, the Exalted noted, were a particularly rich brown. They did not flicker here and there in his nervousness, as did most mortals’ in the presence of the Exalted, but he was still reluctant to speak his mind in the presence of his liege. The reasons for this were fairly obvious, of course. Arguing with the Astartes always, always ended in blood and pain.

  The ship moaned a long, agonised heave as it passed through the forward fire arc of another sizeable cruiser. Again, the Night Lords ship declined to defend itself, letting its shields take the impacts while it stormed to its chosen target.

  “Speak, human,” the Exalted repeated. “Entertain me with your thoughts in these moments before our victory.”

  “A Coronus Dive, lord. The g-forces alone are likely to kill us, and the attitude thrusters will be offline for weeks with the burnout. The risks—”

  “Are acceptable.” The Exalted nodded to the officer. “The Warmaster is watching, mortal. And so am I. Bring my wishes into being, or you will be replaced by one more capable of doing so.”

  The officer should have known better. When he turned back to his station and whispered under his breath “This will destroy the damn ship…” he should have known the Exalted would hear.

  “Bridge attendant,” the Astartes smirked.

  The man didn’t turn around. He was too busy working his console, sending binary orders to the minds of the strategium servitors to prepare for the madness to come. “Yes, lord?”

  “If this is not flawlessly done, I will feed you your own eyes, and you will die tonight, skinless and howling for mercy that will never come.”

  The bridge fell quiet, and the Exalted grinned wetly.

  “I do not care about overhauling the attitude thrusters, nor the slaves that will die in the repairs. A Coronus Dive, as close as this vessel can come to such a manoeuvre, timed with weapons fire from the three named ships. Do it now.”

  It was beyond audacious.

  The Ironmonger, Vengeful Spirit and the Blade of Flame pulled into position, supporting the Night Lords’ manoeuvre by firing their weapons in a coordinated burst, though from a significant distance. The Exalted suspected their own captains aligned with his plan out of amused curiosity rather than the belief it would actually work but then, their lack of courage was their cross to bear.

  Almost every fleet captain on both sides stared—at least for a moment—at the Covenant of Blood, the only vessel of the Warmaster’s fleet to run the gauntlet of enemy lines, as it sliced past the massive Avenger-class grand cruiser Sword of the God-Emperor. Many captains also recognised, to their disbelief, that the ship was in the initial movements of a wrenching, spinning, maddened Coronus Dive.

  It began its attack run in the face of incredible firepower. Ghosting through the great ship’s fire arc, the Covenant suffered the rage of the Sword’s forward lances and weapons batteries which were already spitting torrents of fury against the enemy ahead. The Night Lords vessel endured the assault of supreme weapons fire that had been destined to hit other Chaos ships, and its shields first cracked, then shattered, within a matter of moments.

  To all observers, it seemed the Covenant of Blood was sacrificing itself in a ramming run. And it would succeed, too. That much weight, inertia and explosive capability would burn out the Sword’s shields and gut the ship to its core.

  But the Covenant didn’t ram its prey.

  It returned fire just as its shields died, unleashing a blistering barrage of lances, solid shells and plasma fire from its prow weapons batteries, as well as a precisely timed single magma bomb warhead, principally designed for surface attack, from its bombardment cannon.

  This payload struck the Sword just as massed fire from the three other Traitor Astartes vessels coordinated their prow weapons on the same target. It was as close to the shark-like unity of the black sea sharks as the Exalted could have imagined, but that was hardly foremost in the Night Lord commander’s mind.

  All of this unleashed punishment was enough, barely, to achieve the Exalted’s desires. The colossal Sword of the God-Emperor, pride of Battlefleet Crythe, flagship of Lord Admiral Valiance Arventaur, no longer shimmered behind an invincible screen of rippling energy.

  Its shields were down, overloaded by the sudden savage assault of the Astartes strike cruiser.

  The Exalted was not a fool. He knew void war, and he knew the capabilities of his foes, the strength of their weapons, and the power of their
vessels. He knew the Sword of the God-Emperor was bristling with failsafes and auxiliary generatoriums, and his attack had inflicted no real damage to the enemy flagship beyond temporarily overloading its shields by giving them too much to absorb at once. They would be back online within moments—a minute at the very most—multi-layered and strong once more.

  The Covenant of Blood veered sharper than a cruiser of its size had any right to do, throwing itself into a potentially terminal rolling dive alongside and past the grand cruiser it had almost rammed. Alarms hammered the senses of all her crew across the ship. The bladed spear of a vessel roared down into its dive, taking secondary fire from the Sword’s broadsides as it plunged past. It didn’t return fire. A single volley from the mighty Imperial flagship pounded the Covenant’s port weapons batteries into nothingness.

  Still twisting as it slid past, the Covenant trailed a path of shed debris. Halfway through its plunge, the Exalted felt that one perfect moment of connection with the battle.

  Here.

  Now.

  Even as his ship was being torn apart by Imperial guns, he felt the moment with unbroken clarity, and growled a single word.

  “Launch.”

  “Three,” the servitor’s voice had said. “Two.”

  “One.”

  “Launch.”

  Talos felt his world lurch from under him, every muscle locking tense. It wasn’t a feeling of falling, exactly, nor one of dizziness. His altered senses were resistant to matters of unbalance and unreliable perception. Where a human would have been painting the pod’s interior with vomit and passing out from the pressure of launch, the Astartes on board merely suffered mild sensations of discomfort in the pits of their stomachs. Such was the blessing of biologically reconfigured perceptions.

  “Impact in five seconds,” the pod’s automated voice chimed from everywhere and nowhere at once. Talos heard Uzas wheezing into the vox, gleefully counting down the seconds.