[Battlefleet Gothic 01] - Execution Hour

by Gordon Rennie - (ebook by Undead)

  Closing to attack range, the Infidels had loosed their torpedoes. Watching the surveyor screens, Ramas could see eight of the deadly missiles—one of the lance-struck vessels had succeeded in firing its torpedoes before it was destroyed—darting towards the Drachenfels.

  “Brace for impact!” ordered Ramas. All over the Gothic class cruiser, his crew rushed to complete the command, sealing off decks and bays, shutting off non-vital power relays, manning fire control stations, taking shelter in specially-prepared, blast-proof compartments.

  The Drachenfels’s anti-ordnance defences opened fire, destroying two of the missiles. Another two went astray, failing to acquire their target. The remaining four torpedoes hit the Drachenfels in close succession.

  Two of them smashed into the rear portside turret batteries, one of them completely destroying Turret Octo, the other striking the thickly armoured mantle of its twin, Turret Sextus, damaging its turning mechanism. Turret Sextus would fire again, but not in this battle.

  The remaining two torpedoes impacted against the cruiser’s hull armour, one of them causing widespread explosive damage to one of the upper engineering decks. The damage was not serious, but the casualties of several hundred skilled and difficult to replace engineers were troubling.

  In his strategium, Ramas felt the ship’s systems react to the damage done to them even as his officers were still formulating their initial damage reports. Although no follower of the strange creed of the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Ramas felt, as any true navy man did, that his ship was a living thing, and through his link with its numerous power systems he felt his vessel’s pain as it struggled to recover from the wounds just dealt to it.

  Bleeding energy from severed power feeds, the Drachenfels fired up its manoeuvring thrusters, swinging round to present its lethal torpedo-armed prow to the Chaos formation and shielding its injured portside from any further attack. Damaged as it was, the Imperial cruiser was still quite battleworthy, and more than ready to prove so to its opponents. The next move was the enemy’s, Ramas knew. In tandem with the Murder class cruiser, the Infidels could out-manoeuvre and out-gun the Imperial ship, but almost certainly not without further loss to themselves.

  The veteran naval commander watched, unsurprised, as the changing images on the surveyor screens showed the Chaos vessels withdrawing back towards the protective cover of the Murder class cruiser’s batteries. Over the comm-net, he heard cheering amongst the crew of his command deck, but Ramas knew better than to celebrate.

  The Chaos force had achieved its objectives, although perhaps with greater losses than they had imagined. They had struck at the Imperial force and driven it back in-system, leaving them in command of the main approach to the Belatis system from its chief edge-of-system warp jump point.

  They’re waiting for something, Ramas realised. And they know that it’s coming. Coming soon.

  Somewhere within the Macharius, a life-force totally unlike the other thousands aboard the vessel also sensed the imminent glories to be. It had found another, safer burrow deeper within the ship’s metal innards. There had been other creatures in the burrow—more of the weak, squealing prey things that infested the ship—but it had dealt with them swiftly and brutally, revelling in its newfound strength and powers. Nesting amongst their torn, rotting remains, it began the work of its next stage of transformation. It had subsumed much of its prey’s flesh into itself, filtered it through the disease factories of its own poisoned viscera, and now it felt horrid new life ripening within it. Its body was gross and obscene, splitting into two as another being—its plague-twin—emerged slowly out of it like some monstrous tumour growth.

  As the entity gestated alone in the dark, it felt the growing purpose for its existence continue to slowly but surely reveal itself. It saw now that its original intent—to spread its plague gifts amongst the prey creatures—was too small and base. It was a daemon-creature of Chaos, a child of Grandfather Nurgle, meant for far greater things than skulking and hiding in the dark.

  It felt the source of its existence approaching towards it through the warp. It would wait for it, the entity decided. It knew the moment of glorious fulfilment was coming. And coming soon.

  From orbit, the batteries of the Imperial warships spoke in reply to the glittering lance beams still piercing up from the planet’s surface. As well as the damage done to the Graf Orlok and the destruction of the Arcona, the cultist-seized defence laser batteries had struck twice more, the probing, flickering fingers of energy each time seeking and finding targets within the cluster of convoy vessels. The promethium tanker-freighter Brennus had taken a direct hit, erupting with spectacular effect and sending a rain of burning promethium down into the upper atmosphere of the planet. Moments later, the forward transport holds of the troop carrier Varus had been eviscerated by a lance strike; when the 48th Valetta Imperial Guard regiment went into action on whatever world it was next destined for, it would have to do so two full infantry battalions short.

  Now, however, the gunners of the Graf Orlok, the Borodino and the Inviolable Retribution had finally zeroed in on the cultist-seized defence laser batteries.

  In the planet’s capital, to the terrified and shell-shocked populace still sheltering amongst the shattered ruins of Madina, it seemed that the very stars were raining death down upon them, as a curtain of solid light descended down to envelop the hills that surrounded the city.

  Armaments that could hurl energy hundreds of thousands of kilometres across space now turned their power on the planet’s surface in an awesome display of destructive capability, gouging wounds hundreds of metres deep into the rock and soil of the hills in search of the silos, command bunkers and generator caverns buried there.

  In the ruins of a township at the foot of the hills, a congregation of almost a thousand Chaos cultists assumed that the Planet Killer had come at last. They danced and howled in maddened, orgiastic joy in celebration of their impending deaths, commending their souls to the powers of the warp. A gunnery officer aboard the Borodino unwillingly granted their wish, directing a mis-aimed salvo of energy blasts away from its intended target down the hillside and onto the heads of the cultists, wiping the township and all it contained off the face of the planet.

  Inside one of these buried bunkers, the loyal servant that Khoisan had left in command of the cultist forces there felt the growing, rumbling tremors as the impacts from the Imperial bombardment pushed closer and deeper into the rock strata. In front of him was a control console linked into the chain of missile silos hidden throughout the area, a series of blinking status runes on it signalling which missiles were ready to launch. On the floor behind him lay the body of the merchant, his throat slashed, his usefulness to the cause of Chaos over. The servant felt the booming vibrations grow closer; saw the glow-lamp lighting in the chamber start to flicker and fail; saw dust fall from the low, rockcrete ceiling as a network of growing cracks spread across its surface.

  “For the Warmaster,” he intoned, leaning across the console and activating the launch runes. “For the ascension of Khoisan the Faceless. I give my life for your greater glory, master, gladly and willingly.”

  Seconds later, the roof of the chamber caved in. A split-second after that, the entire bunker complex was obliterated, vaporised, in the all-consuming furnace of white-hot plasma. But by that time it was too late.

  In silos studded throughout the rock of the surrounding hills, missile engines roared into life. In several of those silos, launch preparations were not yet complete and work-crews of cultists, still inside the launch silos at the time, were immolated by the engines’ fiery ignition blast. Missiles shot out of their hidden silos, several of them barely clearing the ground before they were caught and destroyed in the storm of energy being hurled down from orbit. It didn’t matter. As the now dead merchant-cultist puppet had told Khoisan, there were still more than enough of them for the Chaos champion’s purposes.

  “Missile launch! Incoming torpedo wave detected
from the planet’s surface!”

  Ulanti looked up sharply at the surveyor officer’s alert. Through the command deck’s viewing bays, he could see the continued confusion amongst the evacuation fleet. Ships firing up their engines to evade the targeting scopes of the surface-based laser batteries, their panicked manoeuvrings ironically taking them out of defensive formation and making them more vulnerable to attack. The lifeless corpse of the Arcona, broken in half and surrounded by a nimbus halo of wreckage fragments. The wounded bulk of the Varus, the burned and decompression-exploded remains of the men of two Imperial Guard battalions still spilling out of the jagged tears in its hull.

  And, moving amongst it all, the bright silver-hulled darts of the Fury Interceptors, launched just moments ago by the Macharius as it sped back to rejoin the rest of the convoy.

  “Mister Nyder?” queried Ulanti, aware of the mood of unease aboard the Macharius’s command deck since Semper’s departure. Aware of the appraising gaze upon him of the command deck crew. Aware that his hive world noble house heritage still did not sit well with many of his brother officers. Aware that, even if the most hidebound of them would now have to admit—grudgingly, perhaps—that he had proven himself to be a highly able flag officer, there was still a world of difference between standing in the captain’s pulpit, and relaying orders issued from it. Aware that there were many here on the bridge who would question whether the young hive world aristocrat was ready to make the transition between the two positions.

  Standing in his captain’s customary place on the command deck’s central nave and surrounded by over two hundred command crew, Hito Ulanti was learning just what a lonely place the bridge of an Imperial warship could be for the man who was supposed to be the vessel’s master.

  If the Macharius’s Master of Ordnance held any such doubts about going into combat under Ulanti’s temporary captaincy, there was no clue to be found in the characteristic, gruff, clipped tones of his reply. In all matters relating to the conduct of his duties and the operation of his precious attack craft squadrons, Remus Nyder was every part the experienced and no-nonsense naval man.

  “Twelve missiles,” reported Nyder, reading off the information on his lectern screen. “All of them of are orbit-capable. We have elements of Storm and Tempest squadrons already launched and on course to intercept them. I also have Starhawks from Firedrake outfitted for planetary atmosphere operations and warming up in the launch bays. With your permission, I recommend we send them in to pick over anything left down there on the ground when the gunnery crews on the Orlok and the Borodino have finished their work.”

  Ulanti nodded his assent, turning to watch the events of the battle outside the viewing bay windows.

  “Vandire’s oath!” cursed Kaether, sharply jinking his fighter craft out of the path of high-density streams of massed but unfocussed autocannon fire that poured out of from the underbelly of the transport freighter. “Someone tell those Emperor-damned idiots aboard that junker heap to cease fire with their defence turrets until my interceptors are out of the way and the targets they’re supposed to firing at are actually within range!”

  A brief touch on the manoeuvring thrusters brought his Fury back into position alongside those of Altomare and Zane, the three of them forming up into a wide intercept pattern. He didn’t have to check his surveyor screen to see the target coming up towards them; its engine flare showed starkly against the darkness of the night-side surface of the planet below. “Concentrated, intersecting fire,” he told his wingmen, quite unnecessarily, he realised. “Remember, it takes a lot to stop these brutes. We’ll only get one shot at it. Let’s make sure we do it right.”

  “Check, commander,” came back Vale’s typically relaxed and comradely mocking reply. “And, after that, you want to remind us not to open our cockpit canopy seals until we’re safely landed back aboard the Mach again?”

  From Zane, there was only the appropriately cold, curt sound of a brief comm-net acknowledgement blip.

  Ahead of them, Kaether saw the darkness light up with the tell-tale flickering light-lines of lascannon fire, followed seconds later by the bright corona flash of a missile harmlessly exploding just beyond the upper fringes of the upper atmosphere of Belatis. That’s one of the brutes gone, thought Kaether, just as he fired his own wing-mounted laser weapons in tandem with Vale and Zane. The triple streams of las-fire reached out to intersect the oncoming missile, which blindly passed right into the Furies’ intended kill-zone. Las-blasts hammered against the dense shell of its warhead armour, ripped off fused and shattered chunks of its body casing, ruptured into almost spent fuel tanks and reduced engine components to melted slag. Finally, after long seconds of intensive punishment, the missile exploded apart.

  The Fury formation cruised through the outer fringes of the explosion, already searching for the next target.

  “Commander, I have another missile target on my screen, one hundred and sixty kilometres away and closing. It’s—” Over the comm-net, Zane’s voice suddenly broke off in a momentary lapse of almost human-sounding surprise, before returning seconds later, its usual cold and unemotional tone once again in place.

  “Commander, the missile is firing retro thrusters and radically changing course. It is no longer heading towards any of the transport vessels. It is falling back towards the planet’s surface.”

  “Towards Belatis?”

  Ulanti checked the readings on the pulpit’s lectern screen, what he saw only confirming the report relayed to him by the command deck’s surveyor section.

  “Confirmed, captain,” reported a metal-masked tech-priest. “Five of the missiles have so far been successfully intercepted by our attack craft. One has been destroyed by the target vessel’s own anti-ordnance defences. Four of the remaining missiles have changed course and are falling back at speed towards the planetary surface.”

  “A guidance system malfunction?” asked Nyder, questioning doubt in his voice.

  “Doubtful,” answered the servant of the Machine God, pausing in his reply as he communed with the ship’s own machine-mind, checking complex, matriculator-spun probabilities and calculations. “From the nature of their matching trajectories, it seems most likely that they have been converted to atmospheric ballistic missile use and deliberately targeted at a pre-planned target on the planetary surface.

  “What target?” enquired Ulanti sharply.

  Another pause as the tech-priest again checked equations fed through from the ship’s ancient and complex logic engines.

  “The capital city, Madina. Most likely, the palace of the planetary governor.”

  TWELVE

  Panic, bund and instinctive, numbing and all-consuming, reigned supreme inside much of the governor-regent’s palace.

  It had begun some hours earlier at the base of the rocky pinnacle, amongst the still-loyal planetary defence force units which had been guarding the main ground-level entrances against the threat of enemy infantry sallies through the defence shield barrier. As those at the top of the palace peak made their final preparations for departure, sealing off the upper palace from the lower levels, panic and outrage set in amongst the planetary defence force troopers as it became obvious that they were being abandoned to die along with the rest of the planet’s population, in breach of what their commanding officers had promised them.

  Their numbers swelled by the crowds of lower level household servants similarly betrayed by their governor-regent master, the troopers tried to storm the upper levels of the palace and seize the shuttle bays there, clashing head to head with the units of elite and still-loyal palace guard troops set to guard the entrances to the upper palace.

  Sounds of combat echoed through lift shafts and stairways that traversed the rock of the ancient palace. Several of the lower levels were now on fire, abandoned to the cultists and refugees now streaming past the abandoned ground-level defences. Panic, along with the heat and smoke and sounds of screams and gunfire, now rose up through the palace in a palpable w
ave, penetrating even into the sanctified surroundings of the Sarro family chapel.

  At the last moment, the governor-regent had decided that if the living branch of the House of Sarro were to escape the planet’s destruction, then so too would the mortal remains of his honoured ancestors. The congregation of nobles and family retainers visibly fidgeted with impatience as Vitas Sarro went about the business of conducting the necessary but time-consuming prayers and rituals involved in the disinterment of his ancestors’ sacred ashes.

  Coin-counting while the Imperial palace burns, thought Semper to himself, remembering the legend of the chancellery adept who had insisted on conducting a review of the holdings of the Imperial palace treasury as the shells of the Traitor Warmaster’s renegade Space Marine legions rained down on the palace’s inner walls.

  Still, even Sarro started to hurry through the final litanies as the sounds of conflict from the levels below grew noticeably closer, and then broke off altogether as flashes of violent red light flared through the high stained-glass windows of the chapel, accompanied by distant sounds similar to the dry crack of a lasgun firing but magnified a hundredfold. As one, the congregation pushed out onto the chapel’s outer balconies, staring in terrified awe at the scene beyond the city’s edges, where dancing beams of laser light flickered up from the hills, the flash of their firing reflected in the dull mirror of the cloud ceiling that hung over the city.

  “What is happening?” asked the governor-regent, his voice tight with fear and growing panic. “The defence laser batteries are firing! I did not order this! What are they firing at? Surely the Planet Killer cannot be here already?”