Legends of the dark ange.., p.16
Legends Of The Dark Angels, page 16
‘Lord Boreas, the Thor Fifteen is closing fast with the target, it looks as if she’s going to board,’ one of the surveyor officers reported. Boreas strode to the comms console and jabbed at the transmit rune.
‘Thor Fifteen,’ he demanded. ‘Abort your attempt to board or I will be forced to fire upon you.’
It took a few seconds for the reply to come through.
‘Emperor’s teeth, man!’ Stehr cursed over the speakers. ‘We’re on the same side! You can’t be serious.’
‘Torpedo controls, retarget trajectory on vector one-five-six,’ Boreas called to the weapons officer.
‘Confirm, new trajectory one-five-six,’ The officer replied after a moment at his panel.
‘Launch torpedoes,’ Boreas ordered, glancing at Neziel.
‘Are you sure, my lord?’ Neziel asked, checking his own tactical display. ‘At that course, we would be firing on the Thor Fifteen.’
‘Launch torpedoes!’ roared Boreas, causing Neziel and the other officers to flinch. ‘Question my orders again and I’ll have the tech-priests render you into servitors!’
‘Aye, my lord,’ Neziel said uncertainly. ‘Launch torpedoes, target vector one-five-six.’
‘Torpedoes away!’ the weapons officer called out.
Boreas activated the comms rune once more.
‘Thor Fifteen, cut speed by thirty per cent and alter course forty degrees to port,’ he said, darting an angry look at Neziel. ‘Failure to do so will result in impact with our torpedoes.’
‘You launched torpedoes at us?’ Stehr’s voice sounded hoarse over the link. ‘Whose side are you on, Emperor damn you!’
‘I repeat, alter course by forty degrees to port and reduce speed by thirty per cent,’ Boreas replied. ‘Break off your closing course and you will be safe.’
The Interrogator-Chaplain looked over at the surveyor officer’s station. He was watching his reticule intently.
‘Thor Fifteen reducing speed,’ he said, confirming what Boreas was reading on his own tac-panel. ‘She’s veering to port and rising.’
‘Good,’ Boreas grunted. ‘Prepare for assault boat launch, and power up the starboard batteries. I want the target’s prow raked as we close.’
‘Confirm target, please,’ Neziel said pointedly.
‘The Saint Carthen,’ Boreas said with a scowl. ‘Another remark like that, Neziel, and I will have you executed for insubordination. Am I understood?
‘Forgive me, Lord Boreas,’ Neziel said, hanging his head. ‘I have never fired upon an allied vessel before.’
‘Neither have I,’ Boreas replied heavily. ‘Signal the docking bay to prepare for my arrival. Neziel, I trust you will follow any subsequent orders to keep the Thor Fifteen from boarding. If she puts troops onto that vessel, they will be killed along with the enemy crew.’
‘I am sorry, my lord,’ Neziel said, wiping the sweat from his eyes. ‘I understand now. The Thor Fifteen will be prevented from closing.’
‘Good,’ Boreas said, striding towards the doorway. He lifted his helmet from a stand next to the door and hooked it onto his belt.
‘One other thing, my lord,’ Neziel called after him. Boreas turned, a questioning look on his face. ‘May the Emperor watch over you and guide your hand.’
‘Thank you, Neziel,’ Boreas said after a moment. ‘The Emperor’s blessing on you and our other subjects while we are gone. Keep the ship safe for me, Neziel.’
‘I will, Lord Boreas, I will,’ Neziel said with a smile and a nod.
With a roar and a judder, the assault boat launched explosively from the Blade of Caliban’s hull. A modified drop pod, the assault boat was much like an armoured teardrop, with claw-like grappling clamps at its base and a ring of melta-burners set into the hull to cut through even the thickest armour of an enemy ship. Small manoeuvring thrusters burned sporadically along its length as Hephaestus steered the craft on an intercept course with the Saint Carthen. Satisfied that their trajectory was correct, he unlatched his harness and stood, his magnetic boots clamping him to the hull in the zero gravity. As he thudded down the hull towards Boreas, the Chaplain signalled for the others to rise.
‘Time to impact?’ The Interrogator-Chaplain asked, checking the chronometer display in his auto-senses.
‘Approximately twenty-seven Terran minutes, Brother Boreas,’ Hephaestus told him.
‘Display chronometer countdown, twenty-seven minutes,’ Boreas told his suit, and a readout flickered into life in the lower left of his field of vision, reeling down through the minutes and seconds. Though much could happen in half an hour in a space battle, Boreas trusted to the speed and small size of the assault boat to see them through to their objective. The augurs and scanners of a large vessel were immensely powerful, built to peer into the vast depths of space. However, an object as small as the assault boat was unlikely to register at all until within close range of the enemy’s low level scanners, and even if they were picked up, they would most likely appear as an errant asteroid or piece of debris.
‘Weapons check,’ he ordered, testing the activation stud of his crozius and clicking off the safety of his bolt pistol with his other hand. He made a count of the equipment on his belt, though they had all done so three times already in their pre-combat checks. Along with the powerfield-enclosed crozius and his bolt pistol, Boreas had five spare magazines, each carrying fifteen rounds; four fragmentation grenades; two blind grenades; two melta-bombs; five proximity-triggered anti-personnel mines; an auspex scanning array; a monomolecular-edged combat knife; a spare power cell for his crozius, and another for his rosarius conversion field generator.
Battle-brothers Zaul and Thumiel had their standard-issue boltguns and combat knives, as well as the same quantity of grenades and mines. Damas wore a massive powerfist on his right hand to complement his bolt pistol, and a chainsword hung at his belt next to his knife. Hephaestus carried a hefty power axe and a plasma pistol, both of them crafted by his own hand. Nestor also had a bolt pistol and chainsword, and the cabin filled with the throaty whirring of the spinning blades as he tested the motor. Satisfied that the weapons check was complete, Boreas bowed his head and the others followed suit.
‘What is it that gives us purpose?’ he intoned.
‘War,’ the others replied.
‘What is it that gives war purpose?’
‘To vanquish the foes of the Emperor.’
‘What is the foe of the Emperor?’
‘The heretic, the alien and the mutant.’
‘What is it to be an enemy of the Emperor?’
‘It is to be damned.’
‘What is the instrument of the Emperor’s damnation?’
‘We, the Space Marines, the angels of death.’
‘What is it to be a Space Marine?’
‘It is to be pure, to be strong, to show no pity, nor mercy, nor remorse.’
‘What is it to be pure?’
‘To never know fear, to never waver in the fight.’
‘What is it to be strong?’
‘To fight on when others flee. To stand and die in the knowledge that death brings ultimate reward.’
‘What is the ultimate reward?’
‘To serve the Emperor.’
‘Who do we serve?’
‘We serve the Emperor and the Lion, and through them we serve mankind.’
‘What is it to be Dark Angels?’
‘It is to be the first, the honoured, the sons of the Lion.’
‘What is our quest?’
‘To purge our shame through the death of those who turned from the Lion.’
‘What is our victory?’
‘To remake that which was broken, to earn the trust of the Emperor once more.’
‘And what is the fate of the Fallen we hunt?’
‘Retribution and death!’
The last intonation was roared across the comm-link, a vocal thunder filled with anger and hatred.
Silence followed for a moment, and then Boreas took a small phial from a pouch at his belt. He walked along the line of Space Marines and dripped a little of the fluid within the phial onto the bowed helmet of each warrior.
‘With the blessed waters of Caliban, I sanctify your souls to the Emperor and the Lion,’ chanted Boreas as he performed the ritual. ‘Be pure in mind, body and spirit. As the water flows over you, let your hate flow through you. As the lost water is spilt, let us spill the blood of our foes. As the water dries, let us harden our hearts to fear. We are the Dark Angels, the chosen of the Emperor, the holy knights of Caliban. The blood of the Lion flows through our veins. His strength beats in our hearts. His spirit resides within us.’
‘Praise to the Lion,’ the Dark Angels chorused, straightening up.
Boreas led them down the craft to stand at the exit port. Glancing at the countdown display, he saw that they were a little under ten minutes from impact.
Looking through the viewing plate, he could clearly see the Saint Carthen. The ship had haunted his nightmares for years, and now he looked upon it for real for the first time. Barrages of high-powered laser blasts from the Blade of Caliban lanced overhead into the enemy ship. An explosion of purple and green waves of energy signalled a void shield being overloaded, and the next salvo crashed into the hull of the ship itself, spewing gouts of igniting air and tangles of wreckage.
‘Lord Boreas!’ suddenly the comm crackled into life with the urgent voice of Sen Neziel. ‘We have detected power build-ups in the lower prow of the Saint Carthen. I believe she possesses forward batteries and is about to open fire.’
‘Close in, brace for impact and draw her fire!’ Boreas spat back. ‘Launch torpedoes to mask our signal!’
Despite the perilous situation of the assault boat, Boreas couldn’t help but admire the cunning of the Saint Carthen’s captain. During the fight with the Thor Fifteen he had been presented with plenty of opportunities to conclude the fight if he had launched an attack with his prow batteries, but instead he had prolonged the duel to tempt the Blade of Caliban into a vulnerable position. His assumption might yet prove dangerous, but he was still confident that they would reach their target. The chances of a main gun being able to lock on to something as small and fast as the assault boat were slim, but there was also a chance that the Dark Angels would unintentionally get caught in the fire from the enemy.
‘Hephaestus, get back to the piloting chair and steer us upwards, I want to get above the battery’s elevation of fire,’ he ordered, staring intently through the armoured port. His augmented eyes picked out the flaring trails of a missile salvo, disappearing below the assault boat as the Techmarine clambered back to the controls and set the boosters to push the craft out of the Saint Carthen’s line of fire.
It was then that the pirate vessel’s anti-boarding turrets opened fire. A lattice of laser beams erupted from six point-defence emplacements scattered across her prow. Far too small to worry a starship, they were still more than powerful enough to blast the assault boat into shrapnel with a direct hit. Flickering beams of blue energy enclosed the assault boat, and Boreas’s helmet automatically dropped a filter over his eye-lenses to stop him being blinded by the glare.
He checked the countdown again. Two minutes until impact.
‘Scan for possible location of command chamber,’ Boreas told Hephaestus. From here, the forecastle of the Saint Carthen was a mass of turrets, armoured plating and observation galleries. One of them had to be the bridge though, and Boreas wanted to punch into the ship as close as possible to the nerve centre. His plan was hinged on a swift, decisive strike. Even in close confines and with far superior armour and armaments, they would not be able to hold out against an entire ship’s crew. They had to take the bridge and cut the life support within minutes, or else they would be trapped and killed. Or worse, Boreas realised with a start, they might be captured. The thought repelled him, and he resolved that he would take his own life rather than fall into the hands of the Lutherites.
‘I’ve located a communications array,’ Hephaestus reported, breaking Boreas’s morbid thoughts. ‘Guidance systems locked on.’
The hull shook as a las-beam scored along the outside, melting partway through the armoured shielding of the assault boat. An instant later, they took another hit, which caused the lights to short out and explode.
‘Terrorsight,’ Boreas barked to his armour and his vision instantly cleared as the sophisticated lens array creating an artificial view from powerful emitted radiation waves rather than ordinary light.
‘Stand-by for impact,’ Boreas warned as the hull of the Saint Carthen rushed towards him through the window. Retro-jets fired at the last moment, slowing their pace slightly.
It was still a tremendous impact when the assault boat hit home. The servos and muscle bundles in Boreas’s armour whined and creaked to keep him upright as the ablative nose-cone of the craft was crushed and the docking clamps lashed out, tearing into metal and pulling the assault boat tight against the enemy ship. With a white-hot flare, the melta-cutters burst into life, searing through ceramite and metal in a few seconds, before pneumatic rams punched out, hurling the severed section into the enemy vessel and leaving a serrated circular opening into the metres-thick armour plates. Boreas hit the button for the assault ramp and it swung down with a clang.
Instantly, a storm of las-fire filled the opening. A beam struck Boreas’s helmet, knocking his head back. The roar of Zaul’s bolter filled his ears and drowned out the zip of lasguns. Recovering quickly, Boreas leapt down the ramp, taking in the four bloody bodies strewn across the metal mesh of the passageway they had cut into, great holes ripped into them by the explosive bolts. More of the enemy crouched behind pillars and buttresses, firing wildly at the attacking Space Marines.
Zaul and Hephaestus flanked Boreas as he levelled his bolt pistol at the nearest target, a man with a visored helmet who had paused to change the energy cell on his lasgun. An aiming reticule sprang up in Boreas’s sight as the bolt pistol’s targeter linked into his helmet. He squeezed the trigger softly as it changed to red, and a moment later a flickering trail of fire marked the bolt’s passage. It tore through the man’s padded vest without slowing before its mass-reactive warhead detonated, ripping his chest open from the inside. Boreas and the others advanced steadily down the corridor, each step punctuated by the bark of a bolter or pistol and the scream of a dying man.
‘Forward for the Emperor!’ Boreas bellowed.
‘Retribution and death!’ answered Zaul as his bolter ejected its empty magazine and he smoothly took another from his belt and slammed it home, las-shots pattering harmlessly off his power armour.
Las-shots also struck Boreas repeatedly, searing the paint from his left shoulder pad, scorching a mark across his left gauntlet, glancing harmlessly from the shaped armour plates protecting his thighs and groin. A ball of flickering blue plasma erupted from Hephaestus’s pistol to his left, punching through a stanchion and incinerating the man cowering behind it, his steaming arm and head flung messily to the deck. Twenty metres ahead, the corridor met an intersection, with passages continuing ahead and to the left. Three dozen bodies left in their wake, the Space Marines continued their relentless assault to the junction and took up covering positions. Boreas shot away the leg of a crewman as he attempted to run away, his scream echoing in the Interrogator-Chaplain’s audio pick-ups. Suddenly quiet descended, as the last enemies fled out of sight.
‘Status check,’ Boreas demanded, his pistol aiming down the corridor to the left. Zaul and Thumiel had the forward approach covered.
‘Entry point cleared,’ confirmed Zaul. ‘Praise the Lion!’
‘We need to orientate with the bridge,’ said Boreas, holstering his pistol and passing his auspex to Hephaestus. The Techmarine activated the scanner and swung it in a slow arc to the left and right and then up and down. Swirling static on its screen coalesced into an image of their surroundings, extending out some fifty metres.
‘I have numerous life-signs ahead and to the right,’ Hephaestus reported, holding out the auspex. ‘I’m detecting the power grid, there seems to be a terminal thirty metres ahead, in a chamber to the right. Detecting communications nexus as well, same position.’
‘Zaul, Nestor, secure this point,’ Boreas ordered, taking the proffered auspex from the Techmarine. There were between thirty and forty crewman nearby, waiting around a corner ahead, and within side rooms to the left. ‘Prepare for counter-attack. The rest of you with me. Take and hold the terminal chamber.’
The Space Marines stalked quickly ahead, and just as they approached the sealed door to the chamber, the crash of bolters sounded out behind them.
‘Enemy attacking, heavy casualties inflicted,’ Nestor reported. ‘No assistance required.’
Hephaestus bent to examine the keypad next to the chamber door. At that moment, more than twenty of the Saint Carthen’s crew charged from around the corner ahead. Bullets clattered off the bulkheads and las-fire flashed brightly down the corridor. Thumiel returned fire immediately, his bolter firing on semi-automatic, carving a path of bloody craters across the chests of the first line of attackers, hurling them from their feet into those that followed behind. By the time they had clambered over the dead, Boreas had his bolt pistol in his left hand and was firing, the bolts punching fist-sized holes into the poorly protected men. The last few realised their mistake too late and were cut down as they tried to turn and run, their lifeless bodies falling upon the heap of those already dead.
‘They’ve engaged security rites, the area is locked-down,’ Hephaestus reported.
‘If I may?’ Damas said, holding up his powerfist, which erupted with a sheen of shimmering blue energy.
