Picking up their returns on her auspex, Shira silently cut through the blackness towards the rest of Red Wing and their escorts, determined to make the most of every second of her liberation.
766960.M41 / The Bridge. Revenge, Pythos blockade, Pandorax System
As with any Imperial naval vessel on the precipice of battle, the bridge of the Revenge buzzed with suppressed urgency. Ensigns and strategicians moved from console to console, officer to officer, not running but at a pace brisker than walking. Real space navigators tapped away at arrays of buttons, their keystrokes running at a fraction more per minute under combat conditions, while beside them calculus logi ran through thousands of flight vectors per second, feeding the optimum results to their human counterparts only after every possibility had been processed.
Kranswar sat upon his command throne staring contemplatively through the occulus. To the starboard side, Stalwart hung motionless in space, the afterburners of her last launched wave of interceptors disappearing into the distance, while dead ahead of them lay their objective. The largest of the asteroids were constantly visible at this distance, but the Adamantium Fields sparkled periodically as the light of Pandorax’s sun caught the hull of one of the wrecked Imperial vessels drifting dead among the celestial rock.
‘Even the stars are taunting me,’ muttered Kranswar under his breath.
‘Sir?’ came the confused response from the immaculately attired lieutenant beside him.
‘Nothing, Faisal.’ He turned his attention from the cosmos back to what was happening on the bridge. ‘Report. Are all attack waves deployed and running alongside their escorts?’
‘Affirmative,’ replied a young woman sitting before a vast screen, streams of seemingly indecipherable letters and numbers scrolling rapidly before her augmented eyes. ‘Primary and secondary flight decks are reporting that only three interceptors failed to launch.’
‘Stalwart are reporting the same,’ added a vox officer, one cup of his headset held to his ear, the other hanging loose so he could hear the activity on the bridge. ‘All birds released, no failures to launch.’
The Lord Admiral smirked ruefully. Something else for that smug bastard Blaise to hold over him. ‘Time until contact?’ he asked nobody in particular.
‘Seven minutes, Terran standard,’ said one of the strategicians, reading from a sheet of parchment one of the calculus logi had just produced from its portable cogitator unit.
Kranswar was about to deliver fresh orders when activity flared over by the auspex array, followed by an excited buzz of chatter.
‘Lord Admiral. We’re picking up multiple contacts on the edge of the asteroid belt,’ an ensign called from the far end of the bridge.
Kranswar turned his throne away from the occulus to face the bridge crew. ‘Scout vessels. The enemy commander isn’t stupid. He knows that his instruments are useless while he cowers behind the asteroid belts and drifting wrecks. He’s running reconnaissance, for all the good that’ll do him now.’ He started to turn back to the occulus, but the ensign spoke again.
‘There are too many contacts for scout vessels. Two, three hundred craft at least, sir.’ The ensign kept looking back to his auspex as he spoke. ‘They must have known we were coming for them. The entire Chaos fleet is moving to engage our assault.’
766960.M41 / Red Wing. Pythos blockade, Pandorax System
To Shira’s starboard side, the frigate Feinstein died in a nimbus of blue flame, warp engines torn asunder by the concentrated fire of a dozen Chaos fighter-interceptors. She dipped her control stick, putting her Kestrel into a vertical descent to avoid the attentions of an enemy pilot who had latched onto her tail before pulling up sharply and delivering her pursuer directly into Hyke’s crosshairs. The corrupted craft imploded silently as his nose-mounted lascannon shattered the cockpit canopy, allowing the immeasurable pressure of deep space to finish the job.
‘What do you reckon, we share that kill?’ Shira voxed, moving into formation alongside the wing commander’s craft. ‘I did all the hard work, you only had to shoot straight.’
‘I think I get that one to myself just for saving your skinny ass,’ Hyke replied, his voice warping over the comms channel. The Imperial fighter craft’s auspexes were being occluded and whatever foul sorcery the enemy was employing was affecting the vox-units too.
The Chaos counter-attack had not been a surprise – visual contact had already been made with the larger vessels before the auspex problems became apparent – but the speed of their assault had caught the Imperial ships on the hop and several were lost before any form of defence could be mounted. The enemy flagship had burst from the Adamantium Fields at full speed, ramming the Equaliser and Sword of Honour, two Cobra-class destroyers packed in close formation, before either could take evasive manoeuvres. Already the gravitic pull of the asteroid belt was tugging at their drifting shells, claiming them as the latest occupants of the ships’ graveyard.
Even Red Wing, seemingly impervious to death during the prior engagements with the Chaos fleet, were two Kestrels down, Goyez and Makita both succumbing to defence turret fire as they sought to assault an iconoclast destroyer.
‘Red Wing. Form up on me,’ buzzed Hyke across the general vox channel. ‘We’re going to target that idolator engaging the Arbitrator.’
Against a backdrop of stars, the two ships were literally blowing chunks out of each other as their shields failed. It was impossible to miss at such close range. Vast gouges in the hulls of both craft bled atmosphere and crew into the cold blackness and though both were far from inoperable, if they maintained their barrages, destruction was mutually assured.
‘Quofe, Vandire, Forczek, Skelmer, Tetsudo, Mkana. Fly cover. Hagen, you’re going to target the warp engines with me. Think you can take on something that big?’ Under the heat of combat, there were no witty comebacks to the wing commander’s unintended innuendo, only distorted confirmations.
‘Just keep their interceptors off my back and try to stay out of my line of fire,’ Shira replied as the rest of Red Wing fell in line alongside her and Hyke.
Afterburners glowing the brightest orange, the eight Kestrels banked and adjusted formation into a blunt-headed ‘V’ shape before powering towards the duelling behemoths. A swarm of enemy fighters broke off from their personal dogfights and strafing runs to target the more obvious threat.
Skelmer was the first to peel off, rapidly cutting his afterburners and allowing the two lead enemy craft to overshoot him, placing themselves directly in front of his deadly weapons array. Unlike the Thunderbolt used by planet-based naval wings, the Kestrel forwent autocannons and instead carried extra powercells for the two nose-mounted lascannons. It was one of those lascannons that destroyed the first Chaos flyer, a hellstrike missile the second. Both burned briefly before their onboard oxygen supplies, like the craft themselves, were utterly consumed by the flames.
Another of the Chaos interceptors fell in behind Mkana, but a quick burst from Quofe’s lascannon sheared away one of its wings, making it spin away madly before Forczek finished it off with a concentrated pulse from her own nose-mounted weapon.
Vandire and Tetsudo did not fare so well. Isolating one of the enemy fighters, they poured fire at it but to no avail, the swifter craft always ahead of their guns. So intent were they on claiming the kill, neither of them saw the other Chaos pilot coming at them from below. A wave of solid shot broke across the hull of Tetsudo’s Kestrel, breaking it into three and spilling its already dead occupant from the cockpit. Vandire avoided the worst of the autocannon shells but as he banked to avoid absorbing yet more fire, he impacted with the wrecked fore-section of Tetsudo’s Kestrel. Embedding in the port-side engine, Vandire lost control and, as he spun recklessly end over end, consciousness. Red Wing watched on helplessly as his bird smashed against the shields of a Chaos destroyer, a brief ripple of energy the only marker of his passing.
‘Hagen. Commence your attack run. I have your wing,’ said Hyke, his voice adrift i
n a sea of static. The enemy destroyer loomed large through Shira’s canopy. ‘The rest of you keep those fighters busy.’
The response from Red Wing was instantaneous. Forczek put one of her hellstrikes straight down the fleshy exhaust port of the craft that had killed Tetsudo while Skelmer did the same to the enemy pilot his two dead comrades had been pursuing in the first place. More of the Chaos fighters converged on their position, but Hyke and Shira were clear of the dogfighting now and heading straight for their objective.
‘I’m out of missiles,’ Hyke voxed. ‘Better make yours count.’
‘I bet you have a rack full. You just don’t want the embarrassment of missing such a large target,’ she voxed back.
‘And if you can’t hit it, I’m sure the crew of the Arbitrator will be embarrassed for you.’
Hyke’s words were sobering. Too often the fighter pilots of the fleet sought only personal glory, the pursuit of new kill markings for their hulls their primary driver. It was easy to forget that their real job was to make sure the bigger vessels remained protected.
‘When have you ever known me to miss?’ Shira said, twisting her control stick and lining her Kestrel up with the port-side of the Chaos destroyer, ready to commence her attack run.
‘There’s always a first time for everything,’ Hyke replied, mimicking Shira’s manoeuvre and drawing alongside her, mere metres between the tips of their wings.
Defence turrets opened up all along the length of the hull, but the enemy gunners were chasing ghosts. At near top speed, the two Kestrels evaded the barrage of fire, Hyke shooting his lascannon on full-auto, destroying many of the bizarrely deformed anti-aircraft batteries before they could open up. Alongside him, Shira primed her last two hellstrikes and attempted to get a visual on the hull breach that had exposed the destroyer’s warp engines. It didn’t take her long, the tell-tale blue glow of the pulsating drives lighting her way like a flare. Pulling up to achieve a better firing angle, Shira eased her pace slightly to give herself longer over the target. Alongside the breach, two turrets rotated towards her Kestrel, both lascannon barrels trained straight upon her. Hyke quickly took care of them.
‘You’re all clear,’ he said, giving Shira the thumbs up from his cockpit as he banked away from the hull of the destroyer.
Narrowing her eyes, Shira flicked the safety cover away from the firing stud and squeezed down with her thumb. Beneath her wing, a missile detached itself, racing straight and true towards the tear in the ship’s hull. She pulled her Kestrel up and away sharply, looking back over her shoulder to follow the hellstrike’s path. Overshooting the rent by a few agonising metres, it detonated harmlessly near an inactive defence turret, a shallow black crater the only lasting damage.
‘Why did you have to go and jinx me?’ Shira spat down the vox.
‘You’ll get it next time,’ Hyke encouraged. ‘Red Wing. Regroup and prepare to commence second attack run.’ Beneath them, the anti-aircraft batteries renewed their barrage.
‘No time for that. We can only avoid those turrets for so long and there are more enemy craft inbound.’ Another full squadron of Chaos fighters were converging on their position. ‘I’m going back in right now.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Hagen. The turn alone will–’
Shira cut the vox-feed, disinterested in Hyke’s admonishment. Knowing what was to come next, she pulled the rebreather away from her face and double-checked that her flight harness was secure. She pulled back on the control stick, putting the Kestrel into a sharp swooping vertical turn. Massive G-forces planted her back into her seat as far as she could go without being pushed through the back of it as she fought to remain conscious. Reaching the apex of the climb, her fighter flipped over and the urge to vomit she’d been suppressing messily overwhelmed her. Now on a collision course with the Chaos destroyer, she forced her eyes to remain open, the gravitic energies she was being subjected to deforming her features and painfully stretching her skin and muscles. With an effort akin to pushing her thumb through a block of lead, she tore the tendons in her hand as the firing stud depressed.
Not needing to see the evidence of the missile striking its target, she jerked the control stick violently towards her, sharply pulling upwards before she followed the hellstrike into the body of the ship. Behind her, a noiseless explosion detonated as the missile tore into the unprotected warp engine ripping it asunder. A bow wave of energy chased her, buffeting her Kestrel and emptying the contents of her stomach again.
Unaware of its own death, the Chaos vessel continued to fire even as thick cracks tore it open and unnatural blue warp energy engulfed it. Sensing an opportunity to inveigle their way into the materium, thousands of daemonic hands and tendrils thrust forth from the gap sliced through reality, clawing at the rapidly disintegrating ship, attempting to gain a hold in the corporeal realm.
Accompanied by the anguished screams of the Neverborn, the warp rift closed as quickly as it came into being, taking the wreck of the destroyer with it.
Groggily, Shira wiped the puke from around her mouth with the sleeve of her flight suit and switched her vox back on.
‘…king idiot. You could have died pulling a stunt like that. If you weren’t already on a charge once we get back to the Revenge, I’d throw you in the brig myself.’ Hyke’s reprimand seemed incongruous against the backdrop of whoops and hollers from the other four members of Red Wing sharing the same vox channel.
‘Hey, Shira. You should put in for a transfer to the Arbitrator once you’re out of the stockade,’ Quofe laughed. ‘You’ll never have to pay for another drink again as long as you–’ His booming voice cut out replaced by static followed by the hiss of three more vox-units suddenly going dead.
Blinking and shaking her head to overcome the adverse effects of her risky loop-the-loop, Shira turned to face the last location of her four fellow flyers. Four explosions briefly bloomed and died, the edges of a dark, jagged shape picked out in the intense orange light.
‘No… They’re not supposed to be real,’ Hyke, who had a better view of the Kestrels’ destruction, muttered. ‘They’re just the ramblings of space jockeys and asteroid miners, the fevered dreams of those who’ve spent too long in the void. They’re not real. They’re not real. They’re not–’
‘What? What aren’t supposed to be real?’ Shira asked. When she saw what was headed directly for them, she got her answer.
Like a mythical dragon of old, the beast glided through space as if it were riding on warm currents of air, snorting destructive bursts of balefire as it went. A metallic beaked head snaked out from a slender, serpentine body made from the same unholy alloy and its daemonic eyes darted this way and that, seeking out its next prey. Four wicked rending talons protruded from its underside and the inherent wrongness of the thing was completed by the three pairs of wings that were swept forward in antithesis of everything Shira knew about the principles of flight and aerodynamics.
‘Heldrake,’ Hyke barely managed to utter. ‘It’s a Heldrake.’
766960.M41 / Merciless Death, Adamantium Fields, Pandorax System
‘Lord Irongrasp. We’ve lost the Perfidious Virtue,’ said one of the hooded bridge crew, flickering psycholithic markers slowly moving in the air in front of him. ‘Mutilator, Incarnadine Thirst and Blighted Sky are all reporting catastrophic damage.’
In contrast to the bridge of the Revenge, the command centre of the Merciless Death had a dark calmness to it, crew and servitors going about their appointed tasks with an almost laconic detachment from the battle raging around them in space. From his command pulpit, Malgar Irongrasp orchestrated the Chaos counter-attack as if by rote, over a thousand years of experience fighting for and against the forces of the Imperium ingraining within him certain automatic responses.
‘Have them overload their warp engines and ram larger vessels. Let not their deaths be in vain,’ he ordered as if he were sending the ships for a refit rather than to their certain doom. At this stage of the battle, the loss of
four destroyers and raiders was a better casualty rate than he had anticipated, twice that number of Imperial Navy vessels having been lost to his guns along with scores of fighters and interceptors. The battle was currently going his way but the two capital ships remained skulking at the back of the Imperial battlefleet, ready to rearm the still numerous wings of attack craft and tip the balance back in their favour.
‘Blackheart wishes to address you, lord,’ said another hooded figure through a grilled half-face mask. The contempt for the pretender Chaos lord exhibited by both Abaddon and Irongrasp was mirrored by even the lowliest vox-operators of the Black Legion fleet.
‘Transfer him to my private channel,’ Malgar said. The vox-bead in his ear crackled as the communication from Blackheart’s fleet was patched through.
‘Impressive, Irongrasp,’ Huron said, but only Malgar could hear it. ‘I had expected your gambit to have been more costly, but to take down eight of the enemy vessels with the loss of just one of your own? Even I would have been proud of such a feat.’
On the psycholithic display towards the fore of the bridge, three more small icons blinked out swiftly, followed by three larger ones of a different colour.
‘Ah, it seems I spoke too soon,’ said Huron, obviously witnessing the same thing on his own sensors. ‘Still, at least that’s three fewer ships that my fleet have to worry about.’
Malgar was unsure whether Blackheart meant the Imperial vessels or the three he had just sacrificed.
‘Is your ship in position, Blackheart?’ Malgar asked, brushing aside the Red Corsair’s attempt to goad him.
‘Of course,’ he replied, feigning indignation. ‘It has been since before you sprung your little trap.’
‘Then why don’t you stop trying to antagonise me and deliver your surprise to the enemy admiral,’ Malgar said, cutting the link.
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