The warships Bright Lance and Stone Burner streaked ahead of the Watchtower, both of them raking the exposed side of the behemoth that had suffered the concentrated fire of all three human ships. The garm vessel began drifting as a tear opened in its flesh and its interior depressurized in a fountain of rapidly freezing gore. The Watchtower's proximity alarms sounded, and despite being subject to intense fire the third behemoth rammed into the right flank of the super heavy warship.
The multitude of large spikes on the behemoth's shell pierced the thick armor of the Watchtower's hull, and the commander winced as he saw how many decks were depressurizing. The behemoth's soft tissues slid up the hull of the ship and spewed forth a crystalline projectile.
In such close range, the projectile only had meters to go before it splattered across the side of the warship. The beast might have been a ponderous and lumbering one, but it was directed by a fearsome intelligence, and it had intentionally used its own body to create breaches in the human ship's hull. Liquid tons of caustic fluid ate through metal, wire, circuit, and flesh as it moved.
The Watchman directed available batteries to drive the creature back even as he ordered others to engage additional garm bio-vessels that were beginning to converge on the super heavy warship. He had wanted to attract the Hive Mind's attention to himself, and draw it out by making himself such an unavoidable threat, and he had done so rather soundly.
Stone Burner banked hard and pulped the scorpion ship that charged the Watchtower even as Bright Lance fired every weapon system on board into the maw of an oncoming tentacle vessel, Captain Yusef apparently determined to fly through the beast's carcass or destroy his ship in the process.
The Watchman let this all fall away, trusting in his warriors to follow their orders and fight to the best of their ability. The splinter fleets were engaging the aft sections of the armada, and already he could see more swarms of every ship he knew of and several that he had never seen before moving in from all directions. All of this he pushed to the back of his mind, the data becoming background information that did not so much influence his own actions as simply provide a context to them.
"Magna-cannon engage," said the Watchman, as the weapon finally came back online after cooling down, feeding his firing solution to the gunnery team.
Another behemoth died messily, this time the shell absorbing most of the bolt's heat, though the impact liquified the vessel's insides. The Watchtower lumbered forward as the behemoth's shell became not unlike a sun and the freezing carnage a belt of orbiting debris. He angled the ship sharply just as he passed the shell, and was able to dislodge the behemoth that had been grievously wounding his ship. He was dimly aware of the Stone Burner strafing the already rather wounded behemoth as it and the Bright Lance followed.
The Watchtower was now well away from the core of the void battle, as most of the heavy warships and smaller vessels had sufficiently engaged the garm fleet and were now occupied.
The sphere formation was locking into place, and now the Watchtower trailed only the two warships and the hornet's nest of dropships. Every warship with an on-board Einherjar legion had deployed their dropships and nearly half of them had emerged from the initial brawl. That was beyond the Watchman's best estimate, considering the sheer size and tenacity of the enemy's attempt to halt and envelop the armada.
Something was bothering him though, and he couldn't quite place it. The Watchtower and it's few escorts had already done the impossible and smashed through the thickest garm naval resistance on record. Yet even after destroying four behemoths, each the equivalent of several heavy warships, multitudes of scorpion and tentacle ships, still nothing.
Suddenly, the Watchman found his ship on the other side of the thicket of enemy ships, with nothing but void and stars a lifetime's journey distant ahead of him. His ship was listing badly, a dead man walking as it were, and even if he took the ship to dry dock immediately it would be years before it was battle-worthy again.
He was furious.
After the sacrifices made to get here so quickly, and with such significant naval strength, only to be denied their greatest prize. While the Embla and the Askr were being bought precious lightyears for every moment the enemy was distracted, it felt like a hollow victory.
The void battle might continue for several more hours, shifting from the gunfights of ships to the bloody deck by deck grind of boarding actions, but defeat was already assured. He might even limp the Watchtower back into the fray and take many more garm lives before it was done, but done it was.
For all of Skald Omar's proselytization, Loki's promises, and the insistence of Ajax that he could feel the Hive Mind's psychic presence pressing in on him, the commander found only empty darkness set against yet more darkness.
...Wait.
There.
In the shadow of the dying star.
No, not the shadow, the thing that was blocking the light coming from the star itself.
The Watchman blinked.
He felt blood gush from his nose as he fought through a sudden and violent headache. He stared out the viewport, suddenly not trusting his instruments, and finally, he witnessed that which he had fought so hard to reach.
All garm ground swarms were birthed from hive ships, and he knew the shape and capability of them well. It stood to reason that there would be a hive ship that gave birth to the starship sized bio-vessels. He had always known such a thing was likely, though as he set his naked eyes upon the great beast, this leviathan of unimaginable proportions, he knew that nothing in man's wildest capabilities could have conjured this.
It was a hive ship, but one that was large enough to have its own gravitational force, easily a hundred times the size of the super-heavy warship. He knew, from his mind to his very soul, that this was the source of the extinction fleet, the eye of the storm, and aboard it would be the Hive Mind. He could feel the crushing weight of the alien intellect buffeting against his mind.
He recalled the discovery of marine Sharif, the skull and brain that formed part of the hoard ship's ability to obfuscate themselves from the Einherjar. It was not a technological issue at all, but a psychic one. The Watchman imagined a mountain of skulls, millions, linked together and yielding enough force to overwhelm the Bloodhounds, to fool the mind of every captain, navigator, gunner, and pilot in the armada.
It was killing him to see it alone, as if the Hive Mind knew that one man had spotted its lazy orbit around the dying star.
He swiftly keyed coordinates to every ship in the armada. As he received pingbacks of confirmation the pressure in his skull eased. He could see it now, and from the gasp that came from Kohath and the sudden eruption of radio traffic, he knew that the captains of the Bright Lance and Stone Burner could see it too.
"Assault craft on the ready line. Captains, let's cut them a path," said the Watchman as he set a firing solution to the gunnery team and re-routed all non-essential power to his engines.
"Magna-cannon engage."
The Hive Mind was ready for them.
NEEDLE SHIP 8
Laird Vox had never thought himself a particularly courageous man, despite the reputation he enjoyed as an asteroid breaker, and when the pay cycle came around he was not one to divest anyone of their opinions otherwise.
Brindle Station was the sort of place where men with reputations and money to spend could find all manner of ways in which to occupy their time. It was a place of wine, women, and song, as it were, and he fit right in. Laird was a guy who worked hard, played hard, and didn't think much about the future.
In short, he was just like every other breaker in the Rimworlds. Even that fact that he'd been part of the refugee migration away from garm space when the extinction fleet started devouring everything in its path didn't really set him apart. Plenty of breakers were men who had lost everything to the alien invasion.
It took a certain sort of person to be willing to pilot a needle ship through solid rock and into the frozen core of the asteroids t
hat comprised the majority of the region of space collectively call the Rimworlds. More, it was a loose alliance of space stations and dirtside work camps than any one world, mostly because the only people willing to live out that far from the bright center of the United Humanity Coalition were those unfit, for one reason or another, to live anywhere else.
Laird had seen all sorts of folk come through Brindle Station, from convicts to conscripts to contractors, and everything in between. It was the frontier, if ever there was one, but it could be home for those hardy enough to make a life there. He'd been a shell of a man when he'd first arrived, the loss of his family and homeworld of Tarsis Prime having left him with little else but a name and the unwillingness to die.
Piloting the needle ships was a deadly trade, and it took the exact sort of balanced blend of fearlessness and survival instinct to be successful at it. Breaking asteroids was the sort of job where you were either good at it or you were dead, and sometimes you were still dead.
When the hybrid uprising hamstrung the UHC, the people of Brindle Station had fared better than most. Being hardy frontier folk, used to the dangerous life so far from the full might of the law, there were plenty of people armed and already suspicious enough that when the hybrids tried to take the station, it was a bloodbath for sure, but they ultimately failed.
Laird still remembered the way he'd almost pissed himself when the first of the hybrids came rampaging through the red-light district. He'd seen a girl he knew torn to pieces. Before he knew what he was doing his pistol was in his hands. Like most people used to living in the cold void of space, he carried a five-round wheel gun, the sort that fired cartridges full of steel shot that would tear flesh but bounce harmlessly off the metal that kept fragile human bodies away from hard vacuum.
Maybe it was seeing that thing so mercilessly kill someone, right in front of him, that made Laird volunteer when the Einherjar came. She reminded him of his late wife, which was why he often came to see her, spending more than he could afford on her fine company.
Something had snapped that day, and after nearly eight months of hiding in the Rimworlds with everyone else, hoping the war would pass them by, Laird stepped up.
There was a great battle to be fought, according to the marines who went among the people, and someone called the Watchman, the Einherjar leader, needed breakers to join his battle fleet. Laird couldn't imagine what a bunch of warships would need from a needle ship until he realized that this was a one-way trip.
He still volunteered, as did several score of other breakers, and just like that he and his needle ship had been welcomed on board the Watchtower, a super heavy warship that was easily the size of Brindle Station by itself.
"Suicide mission," Laird said to himself as his needle ship shook in its moorings, though he could not tell if that was the magna-cannon firing or the warship taking heavy fire.
"What did you say, Laird?" Oso, a fellow breaker called out to him from the cockpit of his own needle ship, "Talking to yourself before a bust run. You know that's the sort of thing corporate would usually ground you for."
"Somehow, I don't think these Einherjar guys mind a little fatalism," Laird replied as he did another pre-flight check.
"It’s crazy to think they're all clones of clones, just keep coming back after the bugs frag em," observed Oso, his voice betraying a hint of nerves as he, too, went through his flight checks again and again.
"Well I don't think they mean to come back after this one," responded Laird, partly to himself and partly to the other man. He found himself craving the chewing tobacco he'd left in his temporary quarters.
"Breakers, on the ready line!" boomed a voice across the intercom, and Laird gave Oso one last thumbs up before lowering his cockpit.
"Gold or gas pockets, buddy," said Laird just before the cockpit locked in place and sealed itself shut. He couldn't hear it, but he saw Oso mouth the old breaker saying back to him. It was the risk every breaker knew, that while smashing the needle ships through the asteroids there was always the chance that scanners missed the gas pockets that sometimes lay in the center of the floating debris. A needle ship that hit one of those would usually be destroyed in the resulting explosion, though after a successful break, the paycheck was huge. Death or wealth. Total victory or complete annihilation. It fit the occasion.
Suddenly a series of explosions rocked the flight deck, and it was clear that the ship had suffered a least one, perhaps several catastrophic direct hits from enemy fire.
Laird could see loose pieces of equipment being drug across the deck by decompression somewhere out of his line of sight, and alarms were going off everywhere.
The launch bay doors slid open, someone having given the command before most of the deck crew could evacuate, and Laird realized that the Watchman or deck chief had probably made that hard call intentionally. His mooring clamps released as he fired up his engines, and the last thing he saw in the bay was a deck crewman holding up his hand. The crewman had tied a cable around his waist to keep him from being dragged away into the void and was giving the launch signals by hand. He would freeze to death in a matter of seconds, but that apparently wasn't going to stop him from doing his job.
The dying man gave Laird the signal and the breaker ignited his engines. He was thrown back in his seat as the force of his launch rocketed the tiny vessel out of the hanger bay and straight into a titanic void battle.
He could see right away that the Watchtower, even though it was dying, was careening towards the alien hive ship at maximum speed. When the needle ships did their work, the super-heavy warship was going to ram itself into the monstrosity.
Laird choked back bile as he got his first glimpse of the hive ship, and realized just how huge it was compared to even the Watchtower. Suddenly, his needle ship felt less like an asteroid breaker and more like a mosquito. Good thing there were nearly eighty of the sleek vessels, perhaps one of them would strike gold.
Anti-air fire lit up the darkness of space, and Laird found himself working hard to dodge the multitude of what he'd been told were spore mines. Any other sort of pilot would no doubt have hit the mines, especially in any kind of ship bigger than his. Laird and the other breakers were a special sort of pilot and had countless hours of experience evading debris as they moved through asteroid fields in search of their targets.
Laird tried to pick an impact point as he evaded more mines and moved clear of several anti-air cones of fire. He'd spent the last few weeks in daily briefings and had learned more about the garm than any sane man would ever want to. It was up to the needle ships to cripple the hideous vessel, to prevent it from escaping the massive marine assault force that would be sweeping in behind the super-heavy warship.
Behind him, the Watchtower finally gave up the ghost. Everything went white as the engines of the giant ship exploded. At least, he was pretty sure that's what happened. It was difficult to tell without turning his ship around to see with his naked eye. Needle ships were essentially flying spikes, hence the name, and had little in the way of sensor arrays, as such things would only get sheared off when the ship bit into an asteroid.
He saw the Bright Lance and the Stone Burner directing their fire on the minefield, now that the Watchtower was listing away from the fight. Just before he was too far away to see without turning his head, he caught a glimpse of several nightmarish ships smashing into the outer edges of the Watchtower, and he knew it was over for them. He turned his full attention to the hive ship and made his target choice.
As he kicked on his busters, the additional short-lived burst pods at the rear of his ship, Laird saw several of the needle ships that launched before him make their impacts. The hardened titanium spikes that comprised seventy percent of the needle ships themselves, driven by the tremendous force of the engines and busters, punched through the hive ship's armor without pause. The ships were designed to spike through asteroids and shatter them from the center, and it was terribly satisfying to see the breakers having no prob
lem pounding their ships into the enemy's hull.
Laird worked his controls and let out a shout as he rammed his ship into the enemy vessel. No sooner had he passed through the outer layer of hull and armor he caught a glimpse of what looked like a thick mesh of blood vessels as his ship tore deeper still.
His cockpit awash in gore, and now flying blind, he activated his last set of busters. Usually, the second set was hit when the ship reached the center of the asteroid, but without reference scans, Laird had no clue how deep he was.
He knew that eventually, his ship would lose momentum, and then he'd be stuck in whatever horrible part of the ship he'd stopped at. His imagination played out a plethora of scenarios in which his ship was digested in acid, he was torn from the cockpit and devoured, or worse. For the first time in his time as a breaker, Laird hoped to hit a gas pocket, or maybe some kind of enemy ordinance stockpile, and then his ship would explode and take out an even bigger chunk of this bastard hive ship.
One and a half seconds later, he got his wish.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
The dropship shook again despite the mooring clamps that held it fast against the deck of the launch bay. Ajax shifted in his seat and adjusted the straps of his safety harness, taking out the slack and pulling himself snug. He worked hard to control his breathing, and let the rhythm of it calm him back down to manageable levels. While the rage was on a constant build within him, requiring constant effort on his part to quell, at least his mind felt somewhat clear. Considering the madness of late, having recently had the liquified brain matter of a traitorous monster injected into his own brain, making him both a beacon and a hunter to the Hive Mind, it was a small miracle that he felt such clarity.
Space Marine Apocalypse (Extinction Fleet Book 3) Page 19
