[Battlefleet Gothic 01] - Execution Hour

by Gordon Rennie - (ebook by Undead)

  The shuttle suddenly lurched violently, banking steeply in the midst of its continued descent over the city. Semper saw bright shards of laser fire and tracer trails streak past the shuttle’s wingtip, realising that they were coming under fire from ground-based anti-aircraft batteries. The shuttle lurched again, rolling ninety degrees to port and causing one of the scribe-adepts to cry out in fear as the pilot took extreme evasive manoeuvres to keep his craft out of the ground gunners’ sights.

  The pilot was Milos Caparan, Semper knew. Ulanti had instructed Remus Nyder to assign his best flight crew to man the shuttle craft that would carry their captain to the planet’s surface and back, and the Macharius’s chief ordnance officer had obliged with the commander and crew of the lead bomber from the best of his Starhawk squadrons. Between Ulanti’s personal thug and the commander of Nemesis squadron, Semper thought, his second-in-command could hardly be accused of not taking adequate precautions to protect the life of his captain.

  From beyond the shuttle cabin came the roar of thruster jets as one of the Fury escorts peeled away, darting down towards the source of the ground fire. A variant of the normal deep space fighter Fury design and specially adapted for planetary atmosphere operation, it glided in across the rooftops of the burning city, zeroing in on its target. Small-arms fire, near useless at this range and unable to penetrate the fighter’s armour, crackled up from me hidden infantry positions on the ground. The Fury suddenly pulled up, its pilot hitting his lifter jets as he seeded the rains below with high-explosive incendiary death released from the dual bomb racks slung beneath its wings. The Fury surged back upwards, pursued by a column of phospherant fire that expanded rapidly to devour over two square kilometres of buildings and ruins, scouring them clean of all human life.

  After that, there was no more ground fire directed at the shuttle and its escorts as they made their final approach on the governor-regent’s palace.

  In the shuttle’s cockpit, Caparan cut their speed as they approached the shimmering energy barrier of the structure’s defence shield. The three Furies passed close by, rolling over and dipping their wingtips in a traditional navy pilot’s farewell, before arcing upwards on full engine boosters as they commenced their long, arduous climb back up into space orbit.

  There was a slight shudder of impact as the shuttle passed through the field of the energy barrier, sending crackling ribbons of electromagnetic lightning dancing along the craft’s hull and wing surfaces, and then it was through. Caparan brought it in on manoeuvring jets, guiding it towards and then through a beckoning open cave mouth set into the mountainous palace rock and then settled it gently down on the metal-decked landing bay within. Blast suit-protected ground crew and servitor slaves ran forward to secure coolant feeds to its overcharged power systems, heedless of fiery backwash from the shuttle’s landing thrusters.

  There was a minute’s pause as Caparan and his crew shut down the craft’s flight systems, while enormous extractor fans within the bay dispersed the heat and vapours expelled by the shuttle’s now silent engines, and then the main landing ramp opened and lowered itself to the deck. Semper’s bodyguards were first to descend, stamping their boots noisily on the ramp’s metal surface and glancing suspiciously around them. Semper came next, Maxim instinctively falling into step behind, and Hyuga and his two adepts following.

  Semper paused at the foot of the ramp, aware after so long aboard the Macharius of the scent of air not filtered a thousand times through a ship’s atmosphere recycling plant and sensing that traditional feeling of physical strangeness as his body adjusted to the subtly different and slightly higher gravity force of this world rather than that of the Macharius’s own artificial gravity systems. In time, he knew, would come the momentary sensations of agoraphobic fear when, after being used for so long to being enclosed by grey bulkhead walls and metal decking and ceiling, he stood for the first time in many months beneath open sky.

  Not that he planned on being on this world long enough for that to happen, he reminded himself.

  Semper stood to attention as an authoritative and daunting figure in black carapace armour and visored helm strode forward to meet him. Semper saluted formally, clicking his booted heels together, navy style, as he did so.

  “Leoten Semper, His Divine Majesty’s Ship Lord Solar Macharius.”

  “Byzantane, Marshal Primus, Adeptus Arbites,” the figure answered, returning the salute and then taking the navy man by surprise by offering a gauntleted hand in welcome.

  “My apologies, Captain Semper,” said the big Arbitrator, “but it is because of me that you were summoned here on this fool’s errand. What do you say we get this charade over with as quickly and painlessly as we can?”

  NINE

  Khoisan kicked aside the corpse of a Belatis planetary defence force trooper as he stepped through the blasted-open doors of the underground missile silo. The defenders of this silo and the others hidden amongst the slopes and valleys of these hills had fought hard, but Khoisan had been unstinting in his attack, throwing forward wave after wave of cultist attackers. He had personally led the principal attack, PDF deserters leading him and his troops on secret back-routes through the labyrinth of defence tunnels that honeycombed the area to mount a surprise assault on the main command bunker. The bunker had fallen quickly—the slaughter inside its rockcrete passages and chambers had been appalling. Khoisan remembered with a smile how the hand-picked force of his most fanatical followers had fallen with wild abandon on the unprepared defenders, and the other satellite silos and bunkers had succumbed in quick succession. Seizing control of the defence network’s central wirenet communications systems and piping through to the other bunkers the screams and shrieks of those unfortunate enough to be taken alive during the attack on the command bunker had, thought the Chaos champion, been a masterstroke in demoralising cunning.

  Khoisan had arrived on Belatis over a year ago, coming to the world via secret and hidden routes known only to the most arcane followers of the gods of Chaos. At first, he did not know what his purpose was, only that the currents of the warp and the will of the dark things that dwelled within it had drawn him here, but he had immediately set to work. He had formed the world’s scattered groups of Chaos followers into an organized network of underground cells, terror groups ready to strike at the heart of the enemy’s resources. He had reached out and found the weak and corruptible within the ranks of the great and good of Belatis, turning a few of the most vital-placed and easily malleable to the cause of Chaos. Under his direction, they had spread the secret gospel of the powers of the warp amongst those beneath them.

  In short, he had prepared the way, and now the forces of the warp had made manifest their divine intent for this world, and for their servant Khoisan the Faceless.

  The Planet Killer was on its way. All upon Belatis would die, but their deaths would provide the motivating psychic energy to elevate Khoisan to his final reward. He would ride on the wings of the psychic death scream of this world’s inhabitants, allowing it to carry him up into the far reaches of the warp where he would be gloriously reborn as one of the greatest and most powerful servants of the gods of Chaos. As a daemon prince of Chaos.

  Khoisan staggered, feeling the flesh beneath his rune-inscribed power armour split and convulse, feeling his Chaos-changed innards flex and twist into even stranger new forms and purposes. With an effort, he concentrated, trying to bring his rebellious physical form back under control. The caul of featureless skin that covered the portion of his skull where his face should have been writhed and heaved, creating semi-formed flashes of a myriad other, often horrific flesh-masks that the champion had worn over his millennia of service to the cause of Chaos. Khoisan could pass for a normal human when it suited him—the ability to control his shifting flesh-forms was a boon granted by his devotions to Lord Tzeentch, the Changer of the Ways—but most of the time it suited him to maintain this faceless facade.

  “Master!” called out one of his cultist bodyguar
ds, moving forward to help him and then retreating back in terror as that aspect of the Blood God which the Chaos champion had taken into himself momentarily manifested itself, Khoisan’s missing features changing into the snarling, bestial mask of a daemon servant of Khorne. Khoisan leant against the walkway’s rail as he struggled to regain control of himself, his servants standing back in wary caution. The final physical changes heralding his ascension to the rank of daemon prince were coming, and his body was already starting to react in anticipation of its imminent rebirth and transformation. There would be pain, Khoisan knew, as there had been on those other occasions when his body had changed to manifest those marks of Chaos that were signs of his masters’ favours, but it would be as nothing in comparison to the almost limitless power that would soon be his.

  Khoisan beckoned one of his cultist lieutenants forward. In his previous life just two months ago, the man had been a prosperous merchant from one of the industrial combines that dominated Belatis’s most northerly continent. Now he was a devoted follower of Chaos who had used his position to smuggle thousands of cultists posing as migrant workers into Madina, arming them with weapons manufactured in his combine’s workshops, stockpiled in its commercial warehouses throughout the city.

  Another faithful servant, thought Khoisan. Another fool who thinks I will save him from the Despoiler’s weapon, another sacrifice to aid my elevation to daemonhood.

  “Are the preparations complete?” growled Khoisan, his voice still thick with the last few lingering traces of the Khornate daemon that had briefly surfaced from inside him.

  “Almost, master. The defence laser batteries are secured under our control and ready to fire.”

  “And the missiles?” asked the Chaos champion.

  “The arming codes provided by our agents in the governor’s palace have proved to be most satisfactory. Six of them here, another ten in the other silos. More than enough for our purposes. They are being refuelled and will be ready to launch in less than an hour.”

  “See to it,” ordered Khoisan.

  The cultist adept bowed, and retired to carry out his master’s instructions. Khoisan moved to the edge of the walkway, looking down at the activity in the gallery below. On each side of the walkway stood the black metal towers of three giant orbital missiles, of a similar type to the torpedo missiles used by the accursed vessels of the Imperial Navy. Cultists and tech-adept deserters from the planetary defence force worked on them from the floors of the launch shaft bays, refuelling them and prepping them for launch. Other cultists swarmed up the gantry scaffolding that held the missiles in their launch cradles, carrying out the no less vital task of daubing them with Chaos runes and sigils, re-consecrating these weapons of the Imperium to the service of the powers of the warp.

  More than enough for our purpose, thought Khoisan, knowing that within the hour these powerful weapons, intended to defend Belatis from orbital attack by the enemy vessels, would be thundering their way towards a very different kind of target. By that time, of course, he would be far from here. After the initial shock of the attack, the wrath of the orbiting Imperial warships would be swift and summary, and the reinforced rockcrete walls of these underground silos and the hundred metres of rock and soil above their heads would offer little protection from sustained bombardment from the gun batteries of a Capital class warship.

  Khoisan turned away, signalling to his bodyguards that it was time to return to the grav-hopper waiting to take him to Madina. He took one last look at the scurrying activity around the giant, deadly missiles, seeing no difference between the still-living cultists working there and the corpses strewn at his feet. To the Faceless One, they were all the same.

  All sacrifices. All additions to the pyre of corpses which he must scale on his ascent to daemonhood.

  TEN

  Dust fell from the ceiling of the underground cell, leaving a fine scattering over the broken figure strapped onto the interrogation slab. Korte couldn’t tell whether the vibrations came from the impact of shells falling into the Arbites compound overhead or from the answering shots fired back by the defending macro-cannon turrets. After this long, the sounds of the artillery duel that had reduced much of the outer compound to smoking rubble now merged into one continuous ramble.

  Korte looked down dispassionately at the body strapped down on the slab in front of him, seeing the signs of imminent death written on the man’s broken and bloody features. “We’re losing him again. Give him another stimm-shot,” he ordered the Arbites surgeon.

  “This is probably the last time I’ll be able to revive him. His heart won’t hold out much longer,” warned the surgeon.

  “He’s not ready to die,” growled Korte. “He hasn’t told me everything he wants to yet.”

  The surgeon shrugged, adjusting the controls of the med-array and sending a carefully-measured amount of stimm-chem surging through the tubes leading into the man’s skin. The patient convulsed as the artificial stimulants kick-started his body into life again. Gasping, he coughed up blood and tissue matter, which the surgeon automatically wiped away with a cloth. The man’s torn lips opened and closed, forming silent words. Korte leaned in closer to hear what the dying man was straggling to say. It was not unknown for captured heretics to bite down on poison capsules hidden in their teeth, hoping to take their interrogators with them with their last toxin-filled breath. Korte was not worried: even if the prisoner’s mouth had not already been checked, the man had no remaining unbroken teeth left in which to hide such a capsule.

  Korte knew this man—he had been a captain in the PDF palace guard—and he knew too the phenomenon he was now witnessing. Captured in the latest and barely-repulsed ground attack on the courthouse’s defences, the dying heretic was recanting his treachery against the Emperor. Those weak and foolish dupes lured into the service of the Dark Powers often made such confessions, realising too late the true nature of the powers they had aligned themselves with.

  Yes, Korte had done this many times before, just as he had heard the words—desperate pleas for forgiveness, pathetic rationales for the heretic’s treachery, terrible and hate-filled retellings of the crimes they had committed in the name of their new masters—now issuing in a babbling, gurgling rush from the mouth of the dying man. He listened patiently, knowing he had to, and then silenced the prisoner with an upraised hand.

  “Give me the name. Tell me the name of the one who commanded you to do all this.”

  The man stared at him with death-glazed eyes, soundlessly mouthing one word over and over again. Korte leant in close to hear it. One word. One name. One utterance that genuinely shocked the veteran Arbitrator, making him sick with realisation at just how far the taint of Chaos corruption had reached on this world.

  All the way into the governor-regent’s palace. All the way into the throne room itself.

  Korte stared into the prisoner’s eyes, searching for some last sign of Chaos-inspired falsehood but finding instead only a dying man’s desperate need to be believed. A desperate need to be able to say one last truth after so many falsehoods and betrayals.

  “The charge is heresy. The sentence is execution, granted with merciful absolution.”

  Korte drew his bolt pistol, firing one shot through the prisoner’s heart. Swift and summary, this was the merciful absolution that the recanting heretic had craved. Unabsolved, the Arbitrators could have kept him alive and in agony for days on their specialist execution racks.

  Korte left the interrogation cell, the other Arbitrators following in his wake. The underground detention levels were now eerily quiet. The constant, terrified drumming on the thick metal doors sealing shut the areas where the general prisoners were held had ceased hours ago. As per standard Arbites procedure in the event of the courthouse fortress being captured or evacuated, poison gas had been flushed through the air vents into the detention caverns, killing the thousands held within them. It was a bloody, unpleasant business, Korte knew, but a necessary one. The prisoners would have be
en slaughtered anyway by the Chaos cultists, and many of them would have eagerly joined the heretic ranks.

  An Arbitrator of provost marshal rank awaited them at the entrance to the surface levels. “A communication from the marshal. He sends word that we are to proceed without delay with the evacuation here. He will rendezvous with us in orbit aboard the Retribution.”

  “Are we still in contact with him?” Korte asked.

  The Arbitrator shook his head. “Communications with the governor-regent’s palace are poor, at best. The enemy could be trying to jam our signals, or it could even be interference from that Emperor-damned defence shield. You throw enough rainwater at that thing, it’ll generate enough static interference to block out most comm signals,” Korte grunted, unsurprised. So far, little about this evacuation had gone as planned.

  On the surface, armoured Arbites Eagle shuttles emerged from their shell-proof bunkers, their pilots impatiently firing up their lifting thrusters in warning of imminent take-off. Arbitrators—all that remained of the Imperial presence on Belatis after the final evacuation of all non-Arbites personnel from within the Imperium compound—abandoned their positions on the courthouse walls, running through churned mud towards the shuttles’ open belly ramps. Shellfire landed around them as the enemy siege batteries intensified their bombardment, and Korte saw a group of running Arbites troopers suddenly enveloped in a roaring blast of flame and shrapnel as a direct hit landed amongst them.

  On the walls, the macro-cannon turrets opened fire, and, over the sound of the big guns and shuttle engines, Korte could hear the howl of triumph from the surrounding heretic mob—more than ten thousand of them, the Arbites spotters estimated—as they realized that their moment of victory was at hand. Emerging from their hiding places amongst the pulverised ruins surrounding the Imperial compound, they charged forward in their thousands. Inside the macro-cannon turrets, servitor gunners fired shell after shell of high-explosive and special anti-infantry grapeshot rounds, blowing open gaping, bloody holes in the enemy ranks, and still the cultists charged onwards. As they came closer, the air was filled with a terrifying staccato chatter as the courthouse’s secondary defence line of heavy bolter emplacements opened fire en masse. The cultists died in their hundreds. Yet still they charged onwards.