[Battlefleet Gothic 01] - Execution Hour

by Gordon Rennie - (ebook by Undead)

  “We’ve won a fine victory today, captain, but it’s plain to see that you’re almost dead on your feet. You should retire to your quarters. Emperor knows you have earned your rest.”

  Semper turned, unaware until now that Koba Kyogen was even present on the bridge; he had thought that the ship’s commissar was still touring the ship, checking that crew morale was at sufficiently high levels after the recent victory, gathering information and making notes for the inevitable commissar’s report that he would later secretly transmit via astropath to Battlefleet Command. Along with Ulanti, Kyogen had led the battle against the enemy boarding assault, and Semper was fairly sure that the stem-faced giant had been on duty for even longer than he had. Sometimes Semper wondered if his vessel’s enigmatic chief commissar wasn’t some kind of ingeniously-crafted automaton creation of the servants of the Machine God rather than an ordinary flesh-and-blood human.

  “You are of course right, comrade commissar,” said Semper agreeably, only too aware that Kyogen’s casually-expressed words were probably less of a suggestion and more of a direct command. In all matters relating to security and order aboard an Imperial Navy vessel—including even the well-being of its captain, it seemed—the word of a ship’s commissar was law. Semper looked around the bridge, searching for and finding the next most senior present officer in the chain of command.

  “Mister Maeler, the bridge is yours. Gentlemen…”

  Senior Gunnery Officer Werner Maeler clicked his heels together in understanding in the approved Battlefleet Gothic manner, the other command deck officers saluting in response to their captain’s farewell. Semper walked towards the bridge elevator, the waiting trio of veteran armsmen bodyguards falling into step beside him. The elevator doors opened ahead of them, and Semper saw the familiar dark grey robes of the group of figures who stepped out onto the command deck. They were the acolyte servants of the members of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, and amongst them was the tall and hooded figure of their master. His sightless gaze swept the command deck, settling on Semper.

  “Adeptus Rapavna,” murmured Semper, nodding his head in deference to the adept. “What brings my exalted senior astropath here to the command deck?” If Rapavna detected any hint of disapproving censure in his captain’s words, he gave no indication. Amongst the notoriously superstitious crews of the Imperial Navy, it was often considered bad luck to allow psykers onto a vessel’s command deck.

  “An urgent communication from Battlefleet Command,” came the reply, intoned in an astropath’s customary eerie, empty-toned whisper. “We have new orders, captain. The Macharius is to make haste at once to Belatis, where we are ordered to safeguard the evacuation of the Divine Emperor’s most loyal and valued servants from that world before the moment of its appointed destruction at the hands of the enemy.”

  INTERLUDE

  The Planet Killer moved through the warp with ponderous majesty, like a triumphant Imperial potentate marching at the head of his all-conquering army. Escort vessels swept ahead of it like heralds bearing the news of their master’s approach. A phalanx of cruisers and battlecruisers travelled alongside it, flanking it in protective formation. Two battleships and an awesomely ancient and venerable Adeptus Astartes battle barge followed in its wake.

  Once known as the Magna Tyrannis, the battle barge was older than the Imperium of Mankind and had served throughout the Horus Heresy as the flagship of the Despoiler. Fully five companies of Black Legion Chaos Marines were carried within it, serving as Abaddon’s personal praetorian guard. Now re-christened Harbinger of Doom by Imperial historians since its fall to Chaos, the battle barge—twin to the one aboard which the final confrontation between the Emperor and Horus had taken place as Abaddon and the Chaos Warmaster’s other lieutenants led the assault on the Imperial Place—was a symbol of the Despoiler’s personal power and continuation of the dread legacy of the Warmaster, and the mercifully rare sightings of it beyond the boundaries of the Eye of Terror almost without fail heralded the advent of another major Chaos incursion into Imperium space.

  Larger than any vessel ever constructed by human hands, the Planet Killer moved implacably forward towards its still distant target. Its crew went about their duties, ever aware that the eye of the Despoiler was upon them, even though it was by no means certain if he was aboard the vessel. Ever cunning and mindful of the danger of a surprise enemy attack or even the possibility of an assassination plot amongst his many ambitious and ruthless underlings, the heir of Horus randomly transferred his command flag between vessels, and at any one time could be aboard the Planet Killer, the Harbinger of Doom or either of the two formidably-armed battleships. Only his most trusted inner cadre of servants and acolytes knew his exact location, and there were whispered rumours amongst his fleet admirals and legion commanders that the Despoiler had secretly created a series of homunculus duplicates of himself to further confuse his enemies. The truth of this last legend was so far unknown, but Imperium and Chaos forces alike had been confused on more than one occasion by apparently confirmed reports on the Warmaster’s whereabouts, only to then receive conflicting reports of simultaneous sightings of him aboard a different flagship vessel in other warzones many days’ warp travel from his previous reported position.

  Cunning and resourceful, it was not for nothing that Abaddon the Despoiler had endured for these last ten millennia within the Eye of Terror as the commander of the Traitor Legions and the chosen champion supreme of Chaos Undivided.

  Inside the observation blister atop the spike-crowned spire of the Planet Killer’s central command tower, its triumvirate of Chaos sorcerer navigators cast their otherworldly gaze out into the warp, mystically divining a path through the shifting currents of the immaterium. The mysteries of the warp held no terrors for them as they did for the human navigators guiding the vessels of the Imperium. They could sense other presences out there in the warp: other navigator-minds belonging to other vessels, and, moving unseen and predatory amongst them, the disembodied daemon-things of the warp. The mindless, bloody thoughts of these entities burned bright in the empyrean as they hungrily and impatiently scratched at the protective warp shields that separated them from the frail and mortal creatures that dared trespass within their realm.

  Nearby, the sorcerer-navigators detected the lurking presence of an enemy scout vessel shadowing the Planet Killer fleet on its journey through the warp. It would be a simple thing to issue orders and despatch escort vessels to hunt down and destroy the enemy spy, but the Despoiler had already forbidden such action. It suited him at present to allow the enemy to be aware of the Planet Killer’s position. He knew that, hard-pressed on so many different fronts, they could not currently hope to rally a sufficiently large force to try and attack it, and so the knowledge of their own powerlessness must seem all the more terrible to them as they watched the awesomely destructive power of the massive weapon device moving slowly, implacably towards its target.

  And, from somewhere out there in the distant reaches of the immaterium, the Planet Killer’s sorcerer-navigators could dimly sense the warp of that target. It flickered there on the edges of their mystic warp-sight perception, but growing brighter and more distinct as they closed towards it. The navigators of the Imperium used the guiding call of their weakling Emperor’s astronomican to find their way within the warp, but the pilots of the Despoiler’s Planet Killer vessel used a different kind of beacon to guide then to their destination.

  Fear.

  The terror of billions of human minds. The blind panic of an entire world’s population, imprinting itself on the psychically-sensitive stuff of the immaterium and manifesting itself as a bright, dense dwarf star of bitter fear shining in the void.

  The minds of the people of Belatis called out into the warp in uncomprehending fear against the injustice of their imminent destruction, and it was that same fear which guided the instrument of their destruction to them.

  PART FOUR

  EYE OF DESTRUCTION

  ONEr />
  The mortar shells fell out of the grey, cloud-shrouded Belatis skies, impacting into the muddy earth of the Arbites’ precinct-house courtyard and exploding amongst a crew of labourers.

  “Blessed Helena’s holy teats!” cursed Vannan Korte, taking the name of one of the Adepta Sororitas’s greatest heroine-saints in vain and ducking for cover behind the tracks of a Rhino transport as the shower of mud, filth, shrapnel and body parts rained down around him.

  He ran from cover, knowing from the experience of the last few frantic, chaos-filled days that he had about twenty seconds’ grace to reach other cover before the next round of mortar shells blasted into the precinct compound.

  “Mahan,” he called into his helmet vox-caster as he ran, “what are your men doing up in those wall turrets? Comparing their favourite passages from the Books of Judgement? Take your boot to your spotters’ arses and get a targeting fix on the location of those mortar units!”

  “We’re trying, Marshal Secundus, but they’re hiding out in the hab-zones to the east, amongst those bombed-out ruins, and they’re moving their mortars every few rounds, before our spotters can zero in on them,” came back the crackling reply on the helmet’s vox-unit, strain and tiredness sounding clear in the voice of the Arbites squad commander. Mahan was the youngest and least experienced of the marshal’s lieutenants, and Korte had originally opposed his promotion, arguing privately with Byzantane that, promising as he was, the young agri-worlder Arbitrator wasn’t yet ready for squad command. Grudgingly, he had to admit that, as in so many things, the marshal’s judgement had been right. In the last few weeks, Mahan’s performance had been outstanding, often surpassing that of other, more senior squad commanders. He had taken command of the precinct house wall defences, repulsing several full-scale mob attacks on the fortress battlements and offering an umbrella of effective covering fire to the evacuation airlifts that arrived daily from the other Imperium outposts across the planet.

  Not, of course, that he was about to tell any of this to Mahan himself. As second-in-command, it was his duty to be the holy terror of the marshal’s junior commanders. And besides, he smiled to himself, recognising the familiar biases of a born hiveworlder, he’d be Emperor-damned if he was going to be putting any compliments the way of some dumb hick of an agri-worlder cattle-worrier.

  “Then keep at them. Duty to the Emperor demands results, not excuses,” growled Korte into the vox-unit microphone.

  A warning shout from a nearby trooper alerted him to the whistling whine of the next round of approaching mortar shells. Korte threw himself forward, joining a group of Arbitrators crouching behind a sandbagged lee-wall just as the mortar shells struck, exploding against the solid, reinforced rockcrete walls of the precinct fortress’s inner blockhouse or churning up the mud of the outer courtyard. Almost instantly, the macro-cannon turrets of the wall defences spoke in reply, hurling adamantium-tipped high-explosive shells back at the mortar battery’s estimated position. A few seconds later, and there came the roaring blast of their impact somewhere amongst the ruins to the east, followed by a series of smaller explosions.

  Korte and one of the other Arbitrators—Dolan, who had been with the marshal since the pacification of the genestealer infestation of Tannen’s World—exchanged glances, nodding in unspoken agreement.

  Secondary explosions, thought Korte. We hit something, alright. Definitely at least some of those mortars. Maybe even an ammo dump into the bargain. Not bad, Arbitrator Mahan. At least for a dumb agri-worlder cattle-worrier.

  “Fine work, Mahan,” he spoke into the vox-unit, “but keep looking. Find and destroy whatever’s left of those mortars. There’s a flight of grav-hoppers on their way to us from the evacuation of Precinct Tertius, and I don’t want to spend the rest of an afternoon clearing the landing zones of wreckage and body parts again.”

  “Understood, marshal secundus,” came the gunnery commander’s calm-voiced reply.

  With the mortars at least temporarily silenced, Korte stood up, taking in the scene around the precinct house’s outer courtyard. Baton-wielding proctor-sergeants bawled in unison, directing convict work labourers to clear the courtyard of bodies and wreckage. The chaingang work-crews crept nervously out of whatever cover they had been able to find, terrified that at any second the skies would again drop another deadly hail of razor-edged shrapnel down upon them. One of the crews fought the blaze from a burning, open-topped Rhino transport variant that had taken a direct hit from a stray incendiary round, and the smouldering wreckage of one of the local planetary defence force grav-hoppers still lay where it had crashed nose-first into the western quadrant of the courtyard, shot down by ground fire after almost completing its third strafing run of the Arbites’ compound. From somewhere above the low ceiling of rain clouds came the thin, threatening drone of high altitude flyer engines. Korte and Dolan exchanged glances, both of them vainly searching the grey, formless skies above Madina for clues to the flyers’ location and identity. “One of ours, or one of theirs?” asked Dolan.

  “These days, does it make any difference?” shrugged Korte, with dismissive contempt. Three hours ago, they had watched a flyer formation make a textbook and apparently devastating low-altitude air-strike on ground targets amongst the industrial suburbs to the north of the capital. Who the flyers were, and what their targets had been, was still a mystery to the defenders of the Arbites fortress.

  Korte looked out past the walls of the fortress, seeing the dark shape of the rock of the regent’s palace visible through the curtain of rainfall, the rain lighting up the enormous, looming edifice as it sparked off the crackling defence shield that surrounded the seat of power of the planetary governor of Belatis. Even from this distance, and even through the sound-blanketing barrier of rain, he could hear the sounds of artillery fire. He raised his binoculars, wiping the lenses free of dripping rainwater. The range-finder device zoomed in on the regent’s palace, allowing Korte to see the spattering of artillery fire impacting harmlessly against the barrier of the defence shield.

  As long as they keep firing at their beloved governor-regent then at least that means they won’t be firing at us, Korte consoled himself as he thought again of just how sickeningly quickly events here on Belatis had overtaken them all. It was scarcely two months since the unexpectedly premature end of the dry season and the beginnings of this, the harsh and unforgiving monsoon months; scarcely two months since the fearful discovery in that now thankfully-obliterated underground chamber beneath the Rook, but in that time the whole of Belatis had slid into anarchy and civil war with a speed and viciousness that had been truly terrible to behold.

  Korte watched another round of artillery fire strike against the palace defence shield. Several shells overshot their target—Emperor alone knows how the gunners could miss a target that massive, thought Korte—and landed with disastrous effect amongst the thousands of refugees sheltering in futile hope amongst the surrounding ruins, under the falsely protective shadow of the palace rock.

  The whole place is going to the warp and the warp’s welcome to it, thought Korte sourly, with a bitterness that he knew came from helplessness and his own angry reaction against what was now the inevitability of total defeat. The sooner the marshal gets us out of here, the better. Emperor knows we’ve done everything here we could for these poor wretches.

  TWO

  Muffled by the defence shield and the invisible nullfields that screened off the otherwise open balconies from the outside world, the sounds of the civil war tearing Belatis apart hardly penetrated the throne room of the regent’s palace. Indeed, thought Byzantane, you wouldn’t know that their world was only days away from extinction, the way these fools prattled on, still vying for petty privileges and personal advantage as their world died around them.

  “What you must understand, honoured marshal, is that his majesty the governor-regent is not yet ready to take leave of his beloved homeworld. A world which, I hasten to add, the Emperor in his divine wisdom has entrusted t
o the stewardship of the governor-regent and his family for these last four hundred years.”

  What you really mean, thought Byzantane, staring impassively at the tall and patrician figure of First Security Minister Judda Kale, is that you’ve persuaded the fat fool that it’s his noble duty to remain here until the very end, because you and your kind still haven’t finished plundering your beloved homeworld for every piece of booty that you need to set yourselves up for the rest of your parasitic and well-pampered lives on another world. Preferably one far from any warzones and any troubling memories of Belatis and the ghosts of its inhabitants.

  So far, the first security minister had almost filled the holds of one orbiting transport with property of the household of the governor-regent; property which included not only the contents of the now-emptied vaults of the regent’s treasury, but whatever other loot and valuables that Kale’s security thugs could plunder from elsewhere amongst Belatis’s museums, shrines and treasure houses. The question of how many of their fellow doomed Belatisites could have been carried to safety inside those cargo holds was apparently not one that occurred to either the security minister or his accomplices.