Certainly there was never anything like panic, not even among the human crew who were still biochemically capable of such a reaction. Discipline overruled any instinct to allow fear to dictate poor decision-making. There was a chain of command and a process to guide every decision, with Captain Aeschelus himself as the sole arbiter and executor of free will.

  So it was that Praxa­medes tried hard to confine himself to the roles directly under his command as not-panic enveloped the strategium. The captain reeled off orders faster than was usual, his words hastened by a sense of urgency not normally seen. This had the effect of creating an unmannerly bustle about the control stations, with deck officers proceeding with unsavoury haste, occasionally getting in each other’s way, having to shout to one another for reports, energy transfers and other functions that should have happened seamlessly and without prompting.

  At the augur read-outs, the lieutenant monitored the target vessel for any sign that it was powering weapons or shields, while simul­taneously viewing another screen that charted the energy distortions in the asteroid field. The plasma readings had been verified, the telemetry triple-checked and his entire terrible theory proven correct.

  He really wished he had not been right.

  The traitor battleship had given up all attempt at disguising its whereabouts, its commander confident that the Ultramarines vessel had been utterly ensnared in the ambush. Pulsing low-energy navigational shields shunted aside debris and gas, creating a bow wave of stellar detritus that marked its accelerating passage through the cloud.

  The distinctive signature of the laser conversion engines of the lance batteries supported the reports of the vessel’s primary armament. Bigger than the Ultramarines vessel, itself three miles long, the attacking battleship was also a specialist ship-hunter. Though not especially powerful, the secondary batteries would still be capable enough to overload the void shields of a cruiser-class target with one or two full salvoes. Unprotected, the prey would be cut open by accurate lance fire; shield generators, engines, environment control all pinpointed by ancient scanners and firing metriculators more powerful than anything aboard the Ithraca’s Vengeance.

  In contrast, the Ultramarines warship was dedicated to boarding attack and orbital support. It could hold its own in a fight with a similar-sized enemy or two but lacked the range of a true ship-of-the-line. Flight bays took up more room than gun batteries, and with the gunships launched and a good proportion of the fighting complement on the enemy lure, the Ithraca’s Vengeance had little with which to strike at long range.

  ‘It is a convoluted plan, risky, with a low chance of success,’ remarked Lerok. ‘Damned sneaky, though. You must have your own share of ­cunning to have worked it out, lieutenant.’

  ‘On the contrary, the risk is slight,’ Praxa­medes replied. Speaking helped distract his thoughts from the motor-function tasks he had to complete. If he had to think about his fingers moving across the runepads they felt slow and clumsy. ‘Assuming that if our enemies in this sector had the resources to fully crew two destroyers and a grand cruiser they would do so, giving them a skeleton complement and acting as bait is the most efficient use of what would otherwise be empty materiel.’

  With the trap sprung, there was no need to dedicate a complete sensor array to monitoring the gas and dust cloud. Praxa­medes powered it down, rerouting the energy back to firepower targeting matrices.

  ‘It’s also not through any personal insight that I uncovered the subter­fuge. In fact, it was Lieutenant Nem­etus’ instincts that were the first clue that all was not well. His insight was correct but his conclusions were not bold enough. I’ve unpicked the enemy plan only through diligent observation of the facts, in retrospect.’ He looked at the range to the incoming battleship and checked the chronometer. ‘Though too late, possibly.’

  Moving to the neighbouring terminal, Praxa­medes inspected the recali­bration of the telemetric array. He trusted Lerok would have carried out the calculations impeccably but it was his responsibility, and therefore his duty, to confirm them.

  ‘The true masterstroke was in using the escorts,’ he continued, stabbing a finger onto the target lock rune. ‘Any kind of vox or narrowpoint transmission might be detected. Similarly, any kind of scanning wave from the hiding battleship had the potential to betray its presence. The escorts were like our outriders, the simple fact of their arrival in the dust cloud a pre-arranged signal that the bait had been taken. And two of them means that, should one get caught out by unlikely long-range fire or assault action, another would still survive to bring the message. Every angle covered.’

  ‘You admire them?’ Lerok seemed shocked by the possibility. ‘It is a coward’s way to wage war.’

  ‘It is a pragmatist’s strategy,’ countered Praxa­medes. ‘If we can escape the consequences of our oversight, we can take heart that the enemy is not nearly as strong in this sector as we feared. Resorting to such measures indicates not that the enemy are unwilling to engage in traditional battle, but are unable.’

  Praxa­medes turned to the propulsion officer. ‘Ahead one quarter, bring us to within six miles of the target ship.’

  The deck officer signalled his compliance and turned to the controls, his command answered by the grunting of half-dead servitors.

  ‘Captain, shall I take gunnery control?’ Praxa­medes asked.

  ‘No, I will do it,’ Aeschelus answered. ‘You make sure that our targeting is right on the mark.’

  ‘Yes, brother-captain.’ Praxa­medes knew his superior’s exhortation was purely reflexive, not an expression of any doubt in the lieutenant’s calculations.

  ‘In position, lieutenant!’ The officer at the navigational banks turned to the weapons control station. ‘Range ten thousand yards from target.’

  ‘Main bombardment cannon ready,’ reported Shipmaster Oloris, who had taken over direct command of the gunnery terminal. He in turn looked to Praxa­medes. ‘Ready to fire.’

  ‘Understood, shipmaster.’ Praxa­medes activated the command vox. ‘Assault command, gunship command, are you in position?’

  The pilots signalled their acknowledgements before Nem­etus’ voice broke through the static of the communications link.

  ‘Ready when you are, ship command.’ There was resignation in his voice. ‘Target area is clear.’

  ‘Captain, all stations and commands report ready.’

  Aeschelus received the report with a nod, one hand massaging the fist of the other. The following few seconds felt like a lot more, until the captain raised a finger and signalled to the shipmaster.

  ‘Bombardment cannon, open fire on designated target.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The physical attributes of the Adeptus Astartes made them formidable warriors. Their size, speed, weapons and armour made each of them a fighter capable of taking on the worst that xenos and heretics could bring to battle. Psychodoctrination made them fearless. Training and deep learning had turned every Primaris Marine into a tactical expert, able to take up a leadership position should a sergeant fall. Their vox-network, auspexes and other armour systems gave them unparalleled coordination among the soldiers of the Emperor, both between individuals and squads, and all the way up to entire companies of warplate-clad transhumans.

  All of this combined to give Nem­etus and his Ultramarines the most important quality: absolute trust. If a battle-brother said he would guard a junction, he knew that Space Marine would guard the junction until dead or relieved, no matter what happened. If a gunship pilot asserted that he would be at the extraction point in precisely ninety-four seconds, then Nem­etus would know that the pilot would be there if it was possible.

  It also meant that when Praxa­medes had told him that he had identified a weakness in the dorsal hull of the cruiser, and could crack it open with a single bombardment cannon shot no more than forty yards from Nem­etus’ current position…

  Even so, it was some effort to concentrate on the ongoing firefight that embroiled the halls and corridors on the deck three levels above the strategium. The thought of the broad gun atop the spine of the Ithraca’s Vengeance turning to bear upon a cracked slab of ferrocrete not far above his head was an image Nem­etus could not wholly push away as he slashed his blade through the padded jerkin and chest of a young traitor crewman.

  ‘Enemy forces incoming from aft,’ warned Dorium. ‘Six or seven hundred life signs. Two hundred yards.’

  Nem­etus did not need an auspex to picture the situation, his mental image updated to bring in a fresh tide of humans and mutants. He used his shield to slam aside another foe, skull crushed as it flopped to the floor.

  ‘Acknowledged, brother-sergeant. Complete final withdrawal to defensive perimeter.’

  A green flash of light bounced from his pauldron and the lieutenant turned, confronting a grey-haired woman with a laspistol held in both hands. She shrieked something in a language he didn’t understand, eyes filled with hate. He caught the next flurry of las-blasts on his shield a moment before a bolt from one of his companions punctured the woman’s chest and then exploded, cutting her almost in half.

  It was without a doubt a very desperate plan, but the alternatives were even less appealing. Only the timely warning from the cruiser had allowed the Ultramarines to break away from the immediate vicinity of the strategium. The sudden massed wave attack of the crew that followed would have pinned them down within a few dozen yards of the command bridge, far from any launch bay or even maintenance portal.

  The mutants who hurled themselves along the corridors and hauled themselves up the empty conveyor shafts possessed a frantic demeanour. Nem­etus returned to his earlier diagnosis of martyrdom – they were not only prepared to die, they seemed to embrace it. That they likely had lived terrible, maligned lives was coupled with some offer of a far greater reward, an offer of a post-mortem paradise in exchange for their deaths. Release from living misery coupled with eternal indulgence.

  With the corridor cleansed of enemies, Nem­etus joined the perimeter, his heavy tread crushing bodies underfoot while he swapped blade for plasma pistol. No longer concerned about the effect of collateral damage, he fired steadily, plasma blasts turning bulkheads into detonations of molten plasteel every bit as deadly as a grenade. Where the enemy came into the open, they were easy targets, turned to ash and body parts. Within a dozen heartbeats, he stopped firing, the warning runes on his pistol’s plasma chamber gleaming amber with use.

  Such was the enemy’s zealotry that they were heedless of the concentrated, measured fire of the Ultramarines. Bolt-round after bolt-round unerringly found its mark, heaping corpses in stairwells and doorways so that the mutants clambered over and pushed through their own dead to get at the Emperor’s warriors.

  ‘Keep firing. Sustained volley,’ Nem­etus told his brothers. ‘Any bolt left unfired is a bolt wasted.’

  Admonius led a counter-charge to the left, aided by the Assault Intercessors. A black point to a spear tip of blue, the Judiciar cleaved into the foe with deadly sweeps of his sword. He fought in silence still, but the battle-brothers that followed gave vent to their battle-ardour, defiant of the cries and screeches of the traitors.

  ‘Heretis mortalis profanum!’

  ‘Slay the impure!’

  ‘I am Guilliman’s blade!’

  Many of the mutants were unarmed as they appeared, stooping to pick up clubs, blades and guns from the cadavers of their companions, prising them from dead grips or fishing them from pools of cooling blood. No small number simply charged the Space Marines without armaments, a few perhaps thinking their curled horns or bony protuberances might be effective weapons.

  They were wrong. Not sharp spine nor fangs were any threat to the ceramite-clad giants. Bolts, blades and fists made short work of the deranged enemy.

  Even so, the enemy were not seeking to kill the Space Marines, simply to delay them. The flicker of bolt shells and flash of heavier weaponry created a strobing effect in the dim light of the upper deck. Every half-second seemed to paint a different tableau of disfigured faces, twisted bodies and inhuman appendages clawing at the floor and walls. Determined to give their lives to trap the Space Marines aboard the ship, the traitorous humans and mutants would bury the Ultramarines in corpses and let the incoming battleship annihilate them at will.

  The command vox hissed into life with Praxa­medes’ voice.

  ‘Assault command, gunship command, are you in position?’

  The gunship pilots all signalled readiness while Nem­etus made a last check of his complement’s positioning.

  ‘Ready when you are, ship command.’ Though the withdrawal was tactically sound, a necessity in fact, the feeling of defeat weighed heavily on the lieutenant. ‘Target area is clear.’

  He switched to the battle channel to speak to his warriors.

  ‘Extraction operation in progress. Check mag-locks and boots. Stand by.’

  Nem­etus followed his own command, assuring himself that his power armour was magnetically attached to the metal deck underfoot. A few seconds of sporadic bolter and melta fire passed.

  An explosion above shook the corridors, the shockwave of the bombardment shell’s impact throwing splinters and pieces of broken support beam from the ceiling. Cracks as wide as Nem­etus’ finger zig-zagged through the ceramite, while the ship’s damage alarms wailed into life and the lights flickered before cutting out altogether. Dust billowed along the passageway, stirred by a still-functioning filtration fan somewhere behind the lieutenant, coating his armour and that of his companions with glistening grey.

  ‘Breach the doors!’

  His voxed order carried to the Eradicators stationed by a sealed secur­ity bulkhead about thirty yards up the main corridor. In the darkness, the lieutenant’s auto-senses picked up the surge of melta radiation and sudden explosion of heat from the bulwark. In seconds, the yard-thick metal had evaporated, the last slivers blown outwards by decompression to reveal a haze of starlight.

  The internal atmosphere became an evacuating gale, carrying corpses and live foes alike, their misshapen bodies slamming against walls and warriors. Nem­etus ducked a large mutant with tusk-like teeth, turning his head to see it vanish through the ragged opening along with scores of others. When the rage of air and cadavers finished, a few corpses skidding to the deck around the opening and the passage beyond, Nem­etus saw the bright spark of plasma engines against the darkness of the void.

  ‘Gunships incoming. Extraction by squad!’ Nem­etus stepped back, his steps heavy as his boots pulled his feet down towards the deck.

  The sergeants led their subordinates through the broken bulkhead, the first squads met by the ramp of a descending gunship. Nem­etus checked his chronometer. Three minutes until the enemy battleship was in range.

  ‘Faster! We have to be aboard in two minutes.’ He started down the corr­idor as the first gunship lifted away, its compartment full. Void-frozen flesh crunched underfoot as he strode over the bodies of the mutants, his gaze occasionally meeting the frozen glare of a heretic. He waited a few seconds, assuring himself that everyone under his command would board before he did. Admonius waited ahead, also opting to be aboard the last gunship. It was the way of the Ultramarines. First to attack, last to withdraw.

  A few of the battle-brothers had sustained injuries by sheer weight of fire, but none requiring anything but the most basic aid. All were capable of getting back to the gunships without assistance. In any other situation it would have been an unqualified success, mission one hundred per cent achieved with zero casualties.

  Too good to be true, it had turned out.

  Instead he experienced a moment of grudging admiration for not only the deviousness of the enemy plan but also for the unflinching hate that had powered it.

  He moved towards the jagged opening again. They had to be aboard the Ithraca’s Vengeance in two minutes or the traitors’ martyrdom would be rewarded.

  ‘Master Oloris, status on embarkation?’

  Aeschelus asked the question softly, with just a tilt of the head towards the shipmaster at the monitoring station. It was moments like these for which the captain had been created. Not just trained, but moulded from frail human flesh and thoughts into a warrior capable of leading a force of the Adeptus Astartes.

  He felt tense. It was counter-productive to suppress all reaction to conflict. His thoughts proceeded without too much biochemical impediment, aided by neuroboosters from his armour. He could see Praxa­medes restless at the augury position, probably desiring to oversee the shipmaster’s duty. It was to be expected from a Space Marine who had risen through the company from its inception; his first instinct was to personally involve himself, whereas Aeschelus had been inculcated with the need for a certain amount of strategic distance.

  Even so, the several seconds it took for Oloris to reply felt much longer.

  ‘All three gunships are returning, captain. First embarkation to commence in twenty seconds.’

  Aeschelus did not need to ask how long until the battleship was within weapons range. The countdown was superimposed into a corner of the chrono-display of the videolith, and the captain was subconsciously monitoring it with every second that ticked past.

  Sixty-two seconds.

  Sixty-one seconds.

  ‘Detecting plasma surge in the enemy vessel, brother-captain. They’re powering up their batteries and lances.’

  ‘Void shield generators operational and nominal,’ added the deck officer assigned to the defence grid station.

  The captain accepted these reports without comment, his attention focusing on the schematic that showed the relative positions of the two warships and the crippled vessel. He let them swallow his thoughts for a short while, the noises of the strategium, the movement in the periphery of his vision fading to nothing. The chronometer crept down and the distance-to-target estimate receded with it.

 

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