[Battlefleet Gothic 01] - Execution Hour

by Gordon Rennie - (ebook by Undead)

  “Shuttles, sir. Imperial shuttles!” grinned Maxim, seeing the activity in the square outside. “Volkk forgive me, but I’ve never been so glad to see the eagle crests of one of those Arbitrator bastards in all my life.”

  Semper ignored him. Incredibly, Devane was still alive. The captain bent down over the preacher, kneeling in the thick pool of blood that spilled out from his chest and the stump of his severed arm. Retrieving Devane’s power sword, Semper pressed it into the dying man’s hand. “Better that you keep hold of it,” coughed Devane. “I won’t be needing it any more, and you’ll need something better than one of those fancy, brittle-bladed pigstickers you navy types like to call a sword.”

  Heavy-booted feet pounded up the hallway towards him, voices called out the captain’s name. Semper ignored them, refusing to let go of the dying man’s hand. He followed Devane’s glance, seeing the huddled mass of humanity sheltering in the gloom of the cathedral hall behind them. Of the thousands of pilgrims who had flocked to the cathedral for sanctuary, only a fraction now remained. Women and children, mostly. The families of the frateris militia who had laid down their lives to defend the Emperor’s house from the defiling presence of the heretic horde.

  “Save them,” implored Devane, his voice a fading whisper. “Don’t let all this have been in vain. They are what we fight to preserve. They are the Emperor’s children, more important than any number of Adeptus servants or blueblood aristocrats, more valuable than anything carried away in the holds of those transports. They are the best part of this world. They cannot die along with the rest of it.”

  Semper nodded, clutching Devane’s hand, feeling the preacher’s grip slacken as the life slipped out of him. Hands tugged at Semper, trying to draw him away. “Captain, we must go. We are almost out of time,” implored a petty officer. Only after he was sure that the preacher was dead did Semper let go of Devane’s hand. Standing up, he issued a command to the waiting armsmen.

  “See to the civilians, petty officer. Women and children first. Have your men carry aboard the shuttles any of the wounded that the Sororitas sisters say still have a chance of surviving.”

  The armsman visibly gawped at the orders he had been given. “Sir, we don’t have the space for all these extra passengers. And there’s not enough time—”

  “Then make space,” snapped Semper. “Empty the cargo compartments. Jettison whatever you have to, but make no mistake, petty officer, we do not leave this place until every one of these people who still has a chance of life is aboard those shuttles.”

  Byzantane looked down at the governor-regent, staring into the corpse’s still open eyes, the look of horrified disbelief there still evident even through the tortured rictus grin expression that his facial muscles had contorted into, a side-effect of the deadly venom that had killed him. The corpse was still fresh, and Byzantane realised that they had probably missed the traitor by only a few minutes.

  It had been the Lady Malissa all along, Byzantane now knew. Kale had been her dupe and lover accomplice. Possibly Brod too. She had probably played the two men off against each other, using their jealousy to blind them to the truth of what she was making them do. Maybe at first, they thought they were involved in plotting a relatively bloodless coup, taking advantage of the larger events happening elsewhere in the Gothic sector to overthrow Imperium rule on Belatis. The Lady Malissa would be installed on the throne in place of her brother, and she had probably promised to each of them that they would be made her consort. And each man would have secretly believed that he would be able to rule as consort, ruling through the Lady Malissa just as she had effectively ruled through her brother. Probably she had promised them that a deal could be brokered with the forces of the Despoiler, assuring Belatis’s loyalty to the new masters of the Gothic sector.

  It was only later that they must have realised the extent of her treachery and ambition, but by that time, it would have been already too late, and they had both cravenly sought to save their own skins during the evacuation rather than undo any of the damage they had wrought.

  Byzantane felt a sense of failure overwhelm him. He would order a search for her amongst the refugees still crowding the cathedral hall, even though she was almost certainly no longer within his reach. The heretics had concentrated their attack on the cathedral’s main entrance, but there were other, more secret, ways in and out of the Ecclesiarchy building. Byzantane had no doubt that, if they had time to search long enough, they would find the frateris guards at one such exit lying slain.

  Again, the architect of Belatis’s destruction had escaped final justice.

  Malissa crouched in the ruins, watching as the last of the shuttles took off from the square, carrying away their precious naval commander and that rabble of religious zealots to supposed safety. It had finally stopped raining—the wretched monsoon season was another thing that she would not miss about her backwater homeworld—and the skies had even cleared a little. She could see new stars in the sky, stars which she knew must be the Chaos warships arriving to take up position. One of the stars glowed a dull, ominous red. With a thrill of fear, she realised that it must be the Planet Killer itself. She smiled to herself: there was little to no chance that those fools aboard the shuttles would escape now, not with so many of the Despoiler’s warships now filling space around Belatis.

  She knew that her own time was short, but there were still many cultists amongst the surrounding ruins. Once she made it clear to them who she was, they would swiftly give her safe conduct to the Faceless One, who would then take her off-world with him before the Planet Killer was unleashed. There were many risks, she knew, but she was still confident that this last-ditch plan would succeed.

  In the darkness nearby, something shifted amongst the rubble, hissing angrily at her.

  She reached for the bolt pistol that she had lifted from one of the Ecclesiarch adepts guarding the crypt tunnel along which she had made her escape, but her attacker was far swifter. Powerful reptilian jaws clamped round her gun-hand, crushing the bones in her wrist. A slick tentacle wrapped round her throat, choking off her scream. Something that felt like a giant, bristle-haired spider’s leg brushed against her face, and a fanged mouth on the end of a probing tendril bit experimentally into the flesh of her cheek.

  Khoisan had not died from the wound Semper had inflicted on him, although, had he any sentience left, the Chaos champion might wish he had. His retreating followers had carried him off into the rabble, abandoning him there in terror as the changes—terrifyingly rapid in their onset—began to manifest themselves out of their master’s body. Denying him ascent to daemonhood, the powers of the warp had instead condemned Khoisan to the fate reserved for those who failed in their service to the Gods of Chaos. Khoisan’s inhuman flesh had rebelled against him, shifting and splitting into terrible new forms, transforming him into a crawling, mewling, blind-eyed horror—a Chaos spawn-thing, a warp-born abomination given mindless physical form.

  Locked in screaming, struggling embrace, the Chaos champion and the traitor who had carried out his every bidding were united together at last under the shadow of the Planet Killer, their deaths only minutes away. For both of them, those deaths could not now come soon enough.

  SEVEN

  Ulanti no longer needed the long-range surveyor screens to monitor the progress of the Planet Killer fleet. Through the enhanced opticon systems incorporated into the command deck’s viewing bays, he could actually see the constellations of enemy warships as they took up position near Belatis, hovering in space over the doomed world like carrion birds circling in wait above a dying animal. At their heart was the Planet Killer itself, and Ulanti studied the vessel’s exotic shape and configuration in appalled wonder, marvelling as he tried to estimate the details of its construction and capabilities.

  It looked like no other kind of vessel he had ever seen before, the massive needle-spindles of its main weapon array thrusting out from a central hub that itself bristled with gun batteries, torpedo tubes
and lance turrets; even without its main armament, the Planet Killer still possessed a truly formidable amount of firepower. Crackling bursts of energy leapt between the tips of the so-called armageddon gun’s projection barrels or spun blazing off in spectacular displays of energy discharge from giant capacitors and other structural features, the purpose of which Ulanti could only guess at. He noticed too that the surrounding enemy ships kept a wary distance from the vessel they were supposed to be protecting; unfocussed and uncontrolled, any one of these random energy discharges could rip through a capital ship’s void shields or completely destroy a smaller escort class vessel.

  It was a terrifying craft, its very existence a threat to the order of the Imperium, Ulanti thought. He could well believe the whispered rumours that the details of its construction and estimated power requirements could not be easily explained by any normal technical means; that the powers of the warp themselves must have had a hand in its creation and operation. Even as the flag-lieutenant watched, he knew that Magos Castaboras and a small army of tech-priest fabricators and lexmechanics were also studying the Despoiler’s flagship vessel. This was the closest that any Imperial ship had ever come to the Planet Killer, and the data gathered by the Macharius would be eagerly dissected by the naval tacticians and senior Adeptus Mechanicus magi at Battlefleet Command.

  Assuming we actually survive the next hour or so, thought Ulanti, seeing the viper-prow shapes of several enemy cruisers descending fast on the Macharius, accompanied by a pack of smaller escort vessels. Magnified by the viewing bay opticon, he saw the launch bays of one of the Chaos ships—one of the dreaded Styx class heavy carrier cruisers—yawn open and spit out a stream of attack craft.

  “Three cruisers,” confirmed Officer of the Watch Broton Styre. “That big Styx class devil is the Scylla. The other two are the Kali and the Virulent, both standard Slaughter class vessels.”

  “The Virulent, an old friend from the battle of Helia,” noted Nyder.

  “And apparently keen on renewing our acquaintance,” added Ulanti, dryly.

  The bridge surveyor screens showed the Virulent breaking away from the Chaos line of battle, swinging in close to Belatis, using the planet’s gravitational field to slingshot itself at speed towards the Macharius. And, beyond this forward line of cruisers was the main Chaos fleet, containing not least the Planet Killer itself. The Macharius and the Arbites ship may have won the earlier skirmish, but they would be annihilated by the forces now closing in on them if they remained here much longer, a fact which everyone on the command deck was all too well aware of.

  “Mister Nyder?”

  The master of ordnance didn’t have to ask what Ulanti’s query was referring to. “The shuttles are in the air. They’ll be back on aboard within the next twenty minutes.” He broke off, glancing at the nearing target icons of the enemy ships still crowding toward them. “It’s going to be close, though, especially with those carrier ships of theirs out there too.”

  “We stay in position until the shuttles are aboard. Launch everything we have,” ordered Ulanti, knowing as well as Nyder that his orders would cost the lives of many of the Macharius’s attack craft crews.

  Nyder nodded in assent as he gave the necessary orders. In seconds, the first of the Macharius’s entire attack craft capability would be launched and space-borne. How many of them would return to the carrier ship afterwards, though, would be a different matter entirely.

  Kaether banked steeply away, charging all available power through to his forward shields as another enemy Swiftdeath fighter blazed through space towards him. He stabbed at the firing triggers just as his Chaos counterpart did the same. Streams of multi-hued laser energy criss-crossed past each other in the void, impacting against defence shields, striking through to shatter plated hull armour. At the last second, Kaether barrel-rolled his fighter aside, barely avoiding a head-on collision with the Swiftdeath, ignoring the flashing warning runes on his instrumentation panel as he brought the Fury round in a tight looping manoeuvre to bring it fast in on his opponent’s tail.

  The Swiftdeath streaked on ahead towards the bomber formation, its path marked by the energy bleed from its ruptured power systems and the glowing trail of laser-melted armour pieces still fragmenting away from it. Kaether locked in on the enemy fighter, sending a krak missile winging along the same well-marked trail. Moments later, he was rewarded with the sight of the Swiftdeath exploding apart, just seconds before it came within launch range of the Starhawk formation.

  Kaether turned away again, feeling the Fury’s sluggish response to his control instructions. “Tell me what I don’t want to hear, Manetho,” he spoke through to the Fury’s other crewman occupying the navigator turret gunner position in the cockpit behind him.

  “The power packs feeding the starboard wing lascannons have been shot away. We’re bleeding energy, but it’s not as bad as it looks. I can re-route and draw power from the main engines or the defence shields, although neither of these options does much to increase our long-term chances of ever seeing the Macharius again. Also, there’s not enough armour plating left in places along our forward fuselage to stop a shot from an underpowered laspistol. Other than that, we’re in fine shape.”

  Kaether smiled. For a servant of the Machine God, Manetho sounded almost human sometimes. He keyed up the tactical display on his auspex screen, studying the information it conveyed. They were through the enemy’s forward fighter screen, with combined losses to Storm and Hornet squadrons of nine Furies against fourteen confirmed enemy kills, while the jubilant Starhawk turret gunners were reporting another three Swiftdeaths destroyed. The Starhawks were closing on their designated targets—a squadron of enemy destroyers—but there was also the far more threatening prospect of that Slaughter class cruiser now rapidly moving forward towards the Macharius.

  Several thousand kilometres away, a large group of Swiftdeaths was speeding towards the two Imperial warships. Kaether studied their changing surveyor patterns, suspecting that they were oscillating their energy outputs, attempting to disguise the presence of larger, more powerful Doomfire bombers within their formation. Then, even as he watched, the formation split apart into three separate waves. One group continued on towards the Macharius and the Arbites vessel, the tell-tale blips of missile-laden Doomfires now clearly registering amongst them. The second wave—all fighters—moved off to attack Tornado squadron, which was escorting the highly vulnerable shuttle formation back to the Macharius. The remaining fighter group peeled away on a clear intercept path towards the Starhawk attack that Kaether and his squadron were protecting.

  Kaether cursed, opening up a comm-channel to his counterpart in Hornet squadron. “Storm Leader to Hornet Leader,” he began.

  “We see them, Storm,” came the reply. “You deal with them. We’ll accompany our friends here the rest of the way and lead them in on their targets.”

  “Understood, Hornet. Dice you for the mission honours back aboard ship,” said Kaether, signing off with the Fury pilot’s traditional and well-worn good luck joke, both of them knowing the probable truth of the matter. Hornet Leader and his squadron would be leading the attack on the Chaos ships, drawing the murderous hail of anti-ordnance fire onto themselves and away from the more vulnerable bombers.

  Not that our survival chances seem any better, thought Kaether, seeing the number of Swiftdeath fighter icons multiply across his target screen as the two fighter formations sped towards each other. There were ten Furies left in his squadron, several of them, his own included, already damaged. Facing them was a enemy fighter wave twice as numerous, their weapons and power systems still fully charged.

  Vandire’s teeth, cursed Kaether. Where was that damned maniac Zane when you really needed him?

  Zane backed warily up the passageway, clutching his laspistol, trying to get a fix on the angry hissing of the daemon-thing as it searched for him through the steamy gloom of the generarium sub-chamber. It seemed like hours, not, in reality, a few scant minutes, sinc
e he had heard that terrible, continuous screaming down the ducts towards him, drowning out the distant rumbling sound of the ship’s gun batteries. Hours, not scant minutes since he had finally exited the maze of pipes and ducts that ran through the guts of the ship, dropping down onto the corpse-strewn deck of the generarium sub-chamber beyond, seeing smashed machinery, the bodies of engineers, servitors and tech-priests gleefully ripped apart.

  Hours, not scant minutes, since he that began his battle with the putrescent daemon-thing that had found its way to this place.

  Zane did not understand the purpose of this chamber or the strange and unfamiliar machinery that it contained, but he knew that it was somehow vital to the operation of the ship, to the massive plasma reactors rumbling with barely-contained energy just a deck or two above his head. The creature had been busy in the short time since it had arrived, smashing and tearing apart machinery, power conduits and rune panels with the same ease it had rent apart the bodies of the chamber’s tech-crew occupants. Warning chimes sounded in alert at the destruction caused by the creature’s rampage, but they were lost amongst the cacophony of alarms and battle chimes now sounding elsewhere all through the vessel. What difference one more alarm, one more urgently flashing warning rune on an instrumentation panel somewhere on the command deck many levels above? Zane knew that no one else would come to help him, that the task of saving the ship, of preventing the daemon-thing from completing its destructive work fell, to him alone.

  He did not know how this monstrous, rancid-fleshed abomination had come aboard the ship, but he knew it for what it was: the Malign, the Daemonic, the Great Foe that he had dedicated his life in service to the Emperor to opposing. Without hesitation, he had raised his laspistol and fired. The las-bolt had seared away most of the creature’s face. It had turned, hissing in rage, flesh swarming almost instantly across the deformed surface of its skull to cover the wound. Zane had fired several more shots, dangerously depleting the scaled-down weapon’s limited charge capacity. He knew that the shots would do little to injure the thing, but he was satisfied that they had achieved their intended purpose.