[Battlefleet Gothic 01] - Execution Hour

by Gordon Rennie - (ebook by Undead)

  Towards the vital and highly vulnerable generarium core that powered the Macharius’s engines, weapons and defences.

  TWO

  “Anything?”

  Semper bent down to peer into the exposed mechanics of the cathedral vox-ark, watching as the nimble, surgically-adapted hands of the tech-priest sifted through the tangle of wiring and rune-covered circuit boards. Despite the tech-priest’s best efforts, the gargoyle speakers atop the ark remained stubbornly silent, emitting only a low, steady snarl of static.

  “Nothing, sir,” answered Caparan, wincing from the pain from his injured, sling-held arm as he tried to stand to attention in the presence of his captain. Semper waved off such formalities; under the circumstances, with them all probably only a day or so away from extinction, normal naval protocol now seemed strangely unnecessary. “It’s working, but we can’t send or receive anything. Looks like we’re on our own, after all.”

  Semper cursed. The comm-systems aboard the shuttle were destroyed, and his personal vox-caster was only good at short, sub-orbital ranges, but the cathedral’s powerful vox-ark, linked into the miraculously-unscathed antenna of the building’s cloud-piercing spire, should be able to reach anything within the borders of the planetary system. Looking at the bronze-sculpted features of the ark’s ornamental speaker, listening to the strange, almost rhythmic, bursts of static emanating from it, a disquieting thought occurred to Semper.

  “Tech-adept, could it be that our signals are being somehow jammed or blocked? There have been unconfirmed reports that worlds targeted by the Planet Killer experience planet-wide communications blackouts shortly before they are attacked. Could this be what we are encountering now?”

  Shanyin Ko paused to consider the question in that strange, considered way distinctive to so many members of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Unlike many of his brethren, the Starhawk tech-adept was unmasked, but perhaps he felt no need to be so. At some point in the past, the tech-adept’s face had been removed, and Semper could clearly see the surgical scars left by the procedure. Beneath the man’s paper-like skin, patterns of gold and platinum wire circuit diagrams had been woven into the bone and musculature of his skull prior to his skin being grafted back on again, giving the adept’s face an eerie, death-mask-like appearance.

  “That would be the most likely possibility, captain,” ventured Ko, after consulting whatever augmented thought processes the Mechanicus surgeon-priests of Mars had gifted him with. “However, the power and jamming systems required to effect a total, planet-wide communications blackout from that far out in space would be…”

  The tech-adept’s voice tailed away in confusion. Semper and Caparan exchanged glances; it was not often that one of the servants of the Machine God was lost for words when discussing technical computations, but the forces of the Imperium had never faced a weapon such as Abaddon’s Planet Killer before.

  “Just one of the many, many things we still don’t know about this new weapon’s capabilities,” grunted Semper.

  “And how are we to learn anything about it,” replied Caparan, “if all we do is turn and run away from it every time it is used against us?”

  “You suggest attacking from a position of ignorance, squadron commander? Squandering precious and thinly-stretched military resources against a target that has so far proven invulnerable?” Ulanti would have recognised this favourite tactic of Semper’s, but Caparan had little direct experience with his ship’s captain, and did not realise that he was being tested.

  “Invulnerable?” answered Caparan, refusing to be cowed by his captain’s tone. “Only because we refuse to put that legend to the test. I’ve faced supposedly unbeatable foes and their super-weapons before. When I was a novice pilot, we were told by the tutors at the flight academy that there was nothing in the Imperium’s armouries to match the capabilities of the attack craft of the eldar. Maybe that was true once, but we developed new tactics to deal with those alien ghosts, and now I’ve lost count of how many debris clouds from destroyed eldar corsair fighters I’ve seen splashed across my cockpit surveyor screens. New tactics, captain, and a willingness not to believe a damned word any time anyone tells you anything about invincible enemies and their unbeatable weapons. That’s all it takes.”

  Semper clapped Caparan on his uninjured shoulder, favouring the surprised-looking Starhawk commander with a grim smile. “I agree wholeheartedly, captain. Would that there were more at Battlefleet Command who thought the same as you and I.”

  We need more men like this, thought Semper. More men like this Starhawk commander and that Imperial preacher, if we are to win this war. Men who simply do their duty to the Emperor without wasting time considering the enemy’s supposed invincibility or in counting the odds against them.

  In considering his own position, Semper had to acknowledge that the odds were certainly against him, but that did not stop him trying to continue to do his duty, despite the circumstances. A day ago, he mused, he had commanded one of his Divine Majesty’s mighty warships, with a crew of ten thousand under him. Now he was here, trapped on the surface of a world destined for destruction, taking refuge with these ragged and ill-equipped pilgrims, and with scarcely half a dozen naval crewmen left to command.

  They had survived the shuttle crash, but not without cost. The reinforced armoured shell of the shuttle’s passenger cabin had functioned as intended, with its occupants suffering on the most part nothing more serious than a few broken bones, but the rest of shuttle had not withstood the impact of the landing so well, and neither had its crew. Caparan’s co-pilot had been crushed against the brass and bronze levers and fittings of his cockpit instrumentation panel, and now lay injured—probably dying—in the cathedral infirmary below. The corpses of the nose turret gunners were still trapped within the remains of the shuttle’s smashed front. Caparan himself had suffered a fractured arm and had been lucky to avoid being crushed to death amongst the tangled wreckage of the destroyed cockpit, but by far the worst of the casualties had been the shuttle crewmen stationed in the craft’s cargo compartments and belly gun turret, killed instantly on impact as the shuttle struck the ground and ploughed across the stone surface of the cathedral square, completely ripping away its underside. Even the craft’s complement of servitors was no more, dying at the same time as the onboard power systems that they had been plugged directly into.

  Now, besides Caparan and Ko, the only other crew of the Macharius left under Semper’s command was Caparan’s barbaric tail-gunner Daksha, and Borusa and Rahn, Semper’s two remaining petty officer bodyguards. Six men—so much for having one foot on the steps of the Golden Throne, he thought to himself wryly.

  Ko gathered up his tools and resealed the instrumentation panels of the vox-ark, intoning the necessary purification rites as he did so. Together, he, Semper and Caparan descended the narrow stone stairs back down to the main hall of the cathedral. There they found the Ecclesiarch preacher Devane and a group of his frateris followers kneeling in a huddled circle around the altar of a side-chapel. Semper would have guessed they were praying or conducting some kind of sacred Ministorum rite, but, as he came closer, he recognised the situation for what it truly was: a pre-battle briefing. Devane was issuing orders to the leaders of the frateris combat squads. The faces of the assembled men—and several women—were tight with concentration as they listened urgently to their commander’s instructions. Like most officers of the Imperial military, Semper thought of the forces of the Frateris Militia as a disorganised, ill-disciplined rabble, only to be used to wage the Emperor’s wars in the last resort, in want of other, more professional and dependable forces. Now, seeing the determined looks on the faces of these warriors as they prepared once more for battle, knowing, whether they were victorious or not, that they still faced imminent death, Semper realised that he would willingly exchange these frateris brethren for any few thousand of his own crew.

  The Imperial preacher glanced up the approach of the navy men. He looked expectantly at Semper, but
the look in his eyes suggested that he already knew the answer to his unspoken question.

  “It would seem, Preacher Devane, that my men and I will be remaining here rather longer than we imagined,” confirmed Semper, with a wry smile. “We are at your command. What would you have us do?”

  “The spotters on the barricades say that the heretics are massing again on both the northern and eastern sides of the square, no doubt getting ready to attack us again. We’ll need every able-bodied servant of the Emperor we can get on those barricades when they do.”

  Devane broke off, staring doubtfully at the bloody and bandaged figures of the navy men, and especially at Semper’s full dress uniform, now smeared with blood and grime. He indicated the sheathed sabre and bolstered laspistol that Semper wore along with his ceremonial crimson cummerbund. “You know how to use those things?”

  Semper drew the sabre, showing Devane the sword-blade’s gleaming, razor-tempered edge. “I’ll admit it’s been a while, Confessor Devane, but I haven’t always merely seen combat from the bridge of a warship.” He smiled thinly, touching first the jagged, ancient scar that split one side of his face and then the distinctive Order of the Gothic Star decoration on his tunic breast. “After all, how else do you think I earned these?”

  “Very well. I’ll take the north side, you take the east. We’re short of warm bodies on the east barricades, but I’ll try and send you whatever we can spare from the south and west sides.”

  “No need to risk weakening our defences elsewhere, confessor. If they attack us on the north and east, it might only be as feints to make us draw defenders away from our other flanks. Don’t worry, though. I know where I can find a few extra bodies to fill the gaps in my line.”

  Devane followed Semper’s gaze, looking over to a side-chapel off the main cathedral floor. A group of figures sat there, shying away from the rest of the mass of wretched humanity huddled all around, a line of tall, armed guardsmen in palace guard uniforms making sure that none of the pilgrims approached the group sheltering in the side-chapel. Devane looked back at Semper, sharing his smile.

  “The governor-regent has several times expressed just how much he shares his peoples’ suffering. If he suffers with them, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind fighting alongside them either.”

  The great and the good of Belatis aristocracy took some convincing before coming round to Semper’s way of thinking.

  Maxim Borusa broke the wrist of the first guard officer who tried to bar Semper’s way as the Macharius captain marched up towards the assembled dignitaries. When the second tried to draw his laspistol on Semper, Maxim merely took the weapon off the man and used it to club its owner unconscious, mindful of Semper’s instructions to do as little crippling damage as possible to anyone who tried to stop him. They would, after all, be needing these men soon enough in the defence of the cathedral barricades. A warning stare from the hulking hiveworlder, backed up by the weapons in the hands of Caparan, Daksha and several of Devane’s frateris brethren, quickly dissuaded the rest of the governor-regent’s bodyguards from any further interference.

  “What is the meaning of this?” spluttered First Minister Kale, standing to face Semper. Behind him, Sarro huddled with his sister, clutching at his chain of regal office as if it were some protective talisman that could ward off the awful reality of the situation that the governor-regent now found himself in. Sarro’s eyes were wide with disbelief, his shell-shocked gaze that of a man trying to convince himself that none of this was really happening.

  Semper had seen that look many times before, mostly on the faces of navy pressgang victims as they were brought unconscious aboard ship and awoke to find themselves unwilling new recruits of His Divine Majesty’s Imperial Navy, condemned to a brutal and often short-lived slave existence aboard the strange and dangerous surroundings of an Imperial warship, doomed never to see their friends, family and entire homeworld again.

  “His highness the governor-regent is still the Emperor’s appointed representative and is still in command here, captain,” continued Kale, with all the false dignity and authority that he could manage. “By all means take what few men we can spare from his personal guard, but you surely can’t expect any of the rest of us to fight?”

  “I can, and I do,” replied Semper, gesturing at the ranks of the frateris around them. “The light of the Emperor has been withdrawn from this world. The protection of the Imperium is gone. Rank and privilege mean nothing now. Take a look around you, Kale, take a look at these people. They are the poor and low-born of this world. Their kind count for nothing to the likes of the Emperor’s worthiest servants, to the ministers and governors of the Emperor’s world and the commanders of the Emperor’s fleets, and yet their dedication to the service of the Master of Mankind shames us all. They have been fighting here for days. They know they are soon to die, and yet still they keep on fighting. This is the Emperor’s house, and we are still his servants. What other choice do we have but to join them in this final duty?”

  Behind Semper, Kale and the others saw only the sullen, hostile stares of the frateris. Devane had gathered his flock from amongst the populations of the impoverished rural districts far from the prosperous planetary capital. To these simple, Emperor-fearing people, Governor-Regent Sarro and the rest of the planetary nobility were remote and obscure figures, decadent and debauched aristocrats of the kind that Imperial preachers frequently railed against from the pulpits of their rural parish churches. Most of the wealth and all of the power of Belatis was concentrated in its capital of Madina, and many of the frateris peasants here would have come from ancestral estates owned by the nobles; ancestral estates which many of those nobles would never even have visited, seeing them merely as distant but useful additional sources of income, appointing harsh and merciless estate managers to squeeze every extra piece of worth out of these agricultural lands and the peasants who were expected to work them. No, clearly the people here bore little love for Governor-Regent Sarro and the rest of the ruling elite of Belatis, and Kale’s insistence on the governor-regent’s continued authority would find few supporters amongst them.

  Sarro’s bodyguards, sensing the increasingly tense mood in the chapel and completely outnumbered by the frateris facing them, shifted nervously, their fingers edging towards the firing studs of their las-weapons. It was the Lady Malissa, stepping forward into the firing line between the two groups, gesturing to her brother’s bodyguards to lower their weapons, who diffused the situation.

  “We are all fellow Belatisites here, captain, all loyal servants of his Divine Majesty. Our nobles and guards will be glad to serve alongside Confessor Devane’s brave frateris brethren in their defence of this holy place. I and my servants will be glad to serve alongside the Sororitas sisters in the infirmary, tending to the injured and dying. All I ask,” she said, stepping forward towards Semper, her voice softening as she indicated with a subtle and graceful gesture back towards the quivering form of the governor-regent, “is that my brother be excused for the moment from taking his place with the other defenders. The events of this last day and the suffering of his people have temporarily disordered his mind, but he will find solace here in the Emperor’s house, and I feel sure, when the final time comes, he will be ready to take his ordained place amongst his beloved subjects on the barricades.”

  Semper nodded in acquiescence, realising, as Byzantane had before him, that it was the House of Sarro’s misfortune, and the planet of Belatis’s as a whole, that the local laws of regal succession did not allow a woman to sit on the governor-regent’s throne.

  General Brod, his uniform stiff with dried blood from his shoulder wound, came forward to organise the remaining troops and nobles. Other than the bandaged sling he wore on his injured arm, Brod had refused all medical attention, refused to be given a place amongst the rest of the wounded, even though it was plain to see that he was in much pain. Barking hoarse-voiced orders and supported by one of his few remaining aides, he moved stiffly through the thr
ong, pausing to rearrange the details of his uniform. To Semper, he looked like a man who had failed once in his duty and was determined not to do so again. He looked, thought Semper, like a man preparing to buy back his honour at the willing price of his own life.

  Looking round, Semper also saw a frateris-cloaked figure stealing away from the main group, lurking behind the side chapel’s holy statuary.

  “Adept Hyuga,” called Semper. “Eager for battle so soon? No need to join the ranks of the frateris brethren. I will be honoured to have you with me on the eastern barricades, in the first line of defenders.”

  Even as the Macharius captain spoke, Maxim Borusa materialised in the Munitorium adept’s path, pulling away the tattered cloak disguise to reveal the rows of glittering decorations on the terrified Munitorium official’s gaudy uniform tunic and the ornate, hand-crafted laspistol tucked into his waist sash.

  In panic, Hyuga reached for the pistol, squealing in pain as Maxim’s huge, paw-like hand shot out and seized his wrist, almost crushing it.

  “Nice gun,” Maxim growled, taking the weapon off the official and studying it with a practised eye. Studded with gems and made from finely wrought platinum and other precious metals, the pistol was probably worth enough to equip an entire company of Imperial Guard. And, decorative toy that it was, would probably explode the first time it was actually fired, thought Maxim.

  Deftly tucking the pistol into his own belt, Maxim selected a heavy stubber handgun from the brace of pistols he himself wore in a bandolier across his chest. “Here, have a real weapon instead,” he said, pressing it into Hyuga’s hand. “It’s not as pretty as yours, but it’ll do the job a whole lot better than that little thing.”