Dawn of fire avenging so.., p.15
Dawn of Fire : Avenging Son, page 15
‘Repair crews, lock that malfunction down! I can’t hear myself think up here!’
The noise ceased, and she returned to her displays. The Imperial line held against the enemy, who were attacking without much in the way of discipline. They came in small groups, daring the gauntlet of fire the Imperial fleet put out. A determined spear thrust could break a protective sphere, but the enemy ships came at them in dribs, frenzied as the warriors they carried, and threw themselves heedlessly at the Imperial guns.
The first of the transports closed up its docking slots, and began to make hard burn away from the planet. A portion of the fleet detached and formed up around it, all painfully slowly as huge engines pushed the ships’ enormous masses into action. Then the second fired up its main engine stacks, its hangar gates still open, the last of the evacuation craft chasing after it. They were successful at first, darting into the still gaping decks, but as the Cetecea accelerated, the small craft fell behind, and an extra layer of desperate vox-messages was added to the hubbub of communication.
Finnula reread the specifics of the new enemy group. The announcement had been one of hundreds, and the group’s arrival was but one piece of data pulled into the general cascade of information. But it was significant, and she saw it as a potential turning point of the battle; not necessarily in their favour.
She brought up closer views and more data. The ships were hanging back around their chief vessel, a grand cruiser of an ancient sort rarely seen in Imperial navies those days. It was huge, and baroquely decorated, and radiated a malice that intensified her headache while she read the augur reports.
‘They’re going to make a push for it soon,’ she said. ‘Someone’s exerting control out there. As soon as they get themselves organised, we’ll be in danger.’
‘Seen and noted, first officer,’ Athagey said. Her voice was strained. Every person on the ship suffered the psychic pressure emanating from the rip in the sky. ‘Vox anunciato, pass on notification of incoming threat made by First Lieutenant Diomed to fleet command.’
‘We’re closest,’ said Finnula. ‘They’ll make their run right by our noses. They’ll wait until the fleet breaks up to withdraw with the last transports, and come at us then.’
‘They will.’ Athagey’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do we have enough fight in us to take on a grand cruiser and its escorts, that is the question.’
‘You’ll get your answer soon, commodore,’ said Finnula. ‘Admiral Treheskon is ordering a general withdrawal.’ She depressed a key rune and the admiral’s face came into being in the air in front of the command dais. He was young for an admiral, younger than Athagey, not much older than Finnula. He always looked immaculate. There was not a hair out of place in his beard.
‘All ships are to withdraw according to plan,’ he said. That was it. He disappeared. The fleet had coded orders as to their withdrawal points, sub-fleet organisation, emergency rendezvous and dispersal patterns. They knew what to do.
‘Now is the time,’ said Athagey. She called down her vox-cherub and spoke into the horn it proffered. ‘Strike Group Saint Aster, return to tight formation, staggered line, ascending ecliptic echelon. Enact now.’
‘Those are not the admiral’s original orders,’ Finnula said.
‘The enemy will attack within minutes. Our prescribed formation will see us all dead,’ she responded.
‘Aye, commodore,’ said Finnula, who agreed with Athagey’s command, but was duty-bound to point out the discrepancy. She caught the eye of the Saint Aster’s Commissar-Navis Sorenkus, prowling the gangways between the command pits. The old man blinked like a lizard and looked away. No challenge there, then.
Already, the sphere surrounding the ascension corridor leading up out of Fomor III’s gravity well was breaking apart. In most cases the ships behaved with admirable precision, and the sphere hinged outwards like an opening flower, keeping up well-coordinated volumes of fire as they repositioned. There were over a hundred vessels involved, and their discipline was perfect. They split into smaller groups, moving off to several headings to confuse the foe, the grouping of ships rearranging themselves into more flexible formations as they sailed. The enemy, already disorganised, broke apart to chase down the escaping Imperial ships. Only those around the grand cruiser held their position.
‘My Lady Commodore Athagey,’ said Lieutenant Hainkin. He was of the third watch, one of the dais officers, but rarely up on the platform. He had too big a heart, thought Finnula. He was choking on it now, his skin flushing and throat working uncomfortably. ‘If I may?’
Don’t, thought Finnula, but Athagey nodded her consent.
‘There are thousands of soldiers still on the surface,’ Hainkin said. ‘I have multiple requests for assistance from smaller craft who are out of range of the last transports, and more from the evacuation zone. We could take some on board.’
All eyes went to the commodore.
‘Ignore them,’ said Athagey. ‘We condemn thousands to death, but such is war. Thousands die so millions might live.’
It was the burden people like Athagey bore. Hainkin would never understand that.
The Saint Aster rumbled as her engines pushed her about, swinging her stern away from the planet.
A klaxon blared.
‘Enemy grand cruiser beginning attack run, all ships in attendance, spear formation,’ Finnula ordered.
‘Increase port manoeuvring thruster output,’ said Athagey. ‘I want us over the planet’s terminator and away before we’re in range of their main batteries.’
‘They’ll cut right through us if they catch us,’ said Finnula.
‘Then they won’t catch us,’ said Athagey.
‘The enemy has launched torpedoes, full spread. Contact in five minutes.’
‘They’re getting damnably close,’ said Finnula.
‘And I say they will get no closer!’ said Athagey.
‘I have an identity,’ an officer reported. ‘Blood King.’
‘I’ve heard of that,’ said Athagey quietly.
In the oculus, the bruised surface of Fomor III passed by. Finnula watched it. Scores of lights flashed in the debris between the ship and the surface as the enemy loosed his first lance shots. Their batteries of plasma casters, fusion beams and laser cannon were out of arc, but the grand lasweapons on their spines fired steadily. Thankfully, the debris field around the planet made targeting difficult.
Fires burned all over Fomor III’s surface. A few months before it was blue and green, a civilised world dominated by agriculture and small seas. It had been far from a paradise planet, but further from the overcrowded hells of many other Imperial worlds. Now it was a necrotic brown, choking on its own blackened breath. Finnula had seen a planet die twice before. Each time, her feelings became more wretched at the sight. There were trillions of worlds in the galaxy, perhaps billions of them were suitable for human habitation. The Imperium consisted of a million worlds, they said, but she had realised a long time ago that was a figurative number. It had no basis in reality. How could it, when so many planets burned every month.
‘World death,’ she whispered.
A flashing light on her command boards attracted her attention. She frowned in disbelief, never having seen that particular indicator illuminated. She pressed a button beneath it. A screen came on, displaying an Imperial badge that surprised her.
She turned to the commodore.
‘Madame commodore, I have a priority message on the canalus obligatio.’
Athagey looked at her sharply. ‘The Inquisition?’ she said.
Finnula nodded.
‘Play it!’ snapped Athagey.
The appropriate code sequence to activate the message cypher was so obscure that Finnula had to send for a specialist from the vox-pits. He was old, needed to retrieve a mono-task servitor from its case, which he did very slowly, then orderlies had to be summoned to convey the servitor upon a grav-sled, for it had been reduced to a head in an armoured box with a cogitator attached. The process was painfully sedate, and accompanied with many solemn utterances that irritated Athagey visibly.
‘Can you not,’ she said, ‘get a bloody move on? We are under fire!’
‘Madame commodore, Unmerciful requests adjusted course heading. We’re not moving as they expect,’ the Master of Manoeuvres called.
‘Of course we’re not moving as they expect. Tell them to come about! Get the whole flotilla to come about! Helm, full starboard thrust. Leave us pointing at Fomor III. Broadsides prepare to fire,’ she commanded. ‘We can’t go anywhere until we have this message decoded. Prepare to engage enemy spearhead.’
‘We could leave, madame,’ said Finnula.
‘We might escape with our lives, only to lose them later. The Inquisition are the agents of the Emperor,’ said Athagey. ‘They will not be denied.’
Klaxons wailed. The ship shuddered as its own lance turrets opened up, hurling the contents of gargantuan capacitors at the approaching enemy in beams of destructive light. The enemy had recharged theirs, and fired almost simultaneously.
The vox-specialist arrived at the dais. The box was opened, releasing a pungent waft of decay. A copper wire was unspooled from a reel and plugged into Finnula’s console.
‘Now, first officer?’
Finnula nodded.
‘Don’t you understand “hurry up”?’ shouted Athagey from the top of her dais. She had not taken any stimms for an hour, and was becoming irritable.
The vox-specialist turned a crank on the outside of the box. The head came to sudden, jerky life, eyelids fluttering and jaws clacking. A series of red lumen beads lit up on the box exterior, until they made a flickering line. They turned green.
‘Code conveyed and accepted,’ the old man said, then bowed, and began the slow process of returning the head to its locker.
Finnula watched the cypher on her screen interact with the message code locks. Blurred lines of text ran down the glass, then a hololith projector came on, and a phantom face appeared off to her left. He was a young man, of so serious a demeanour it looked like he had never smiled in his life.
‘Captain of the Saint Aster, I am Inquisitor Rostov of the Ordo Xenos. By the authority of the Emperor Himself, I demand immediate retrieval from the atmosphere of Fomor III. Coordinates for intercept are included. Transponder code for my vessel included. I am en route now. For the Emperor,’ the inquisitor intoned. The message snapped off.
‘The arrogance of it,’ said Athagey. ‘No doubt whatsoever we would respond.’
‘Are we going to respond?’ said Finnula.
The commodore sighed. Her long haptic nails drummed on the arm of her throne. ‘Of course. Send Rostov a message, same channel, tell him we are on our way.’
Finnula looked at the coordinates, then out at the world, and the closing enemy battlefleet.
‘Summon all my captains to hololithic conference. Message Commodore Shaloong, see if Strike Group Justicarius will cover our backs. He owes me from the Dandra debacle,’ Athagey said. As soon as she gave this order, small projections of her fleet masters began to appear around her. ‘And put out a general call to those fleeing Fomor III. We shall heed Lieutenant Hainkin’s craving for mercy this once. Any craft that can reach us, we will take in, but they must reach us, we cannot turn back or deviate from our course to save them. Helm,’ she said. ‘New heading.’ Her talon wands twitched as she datacast the coordinates to the fan-shaped helm section of the deck, where it was fed via ocular implant and direct cranial feed to the helmsmen. ‘All hands stand ready, this is going to be rough.’
The battlesphere over Fomor III was awash with fire and deadly light. Strike Group Saint Aster formed up with the ships of Strike Group Justicarius, presenting a block to the approaching Blood King and its escorts. Gunfire flew between the two forces with building fury. Void-shield flare flashed across the fronts of both fleets. Concentrated lance fire from Shaloong’s ships cut apart a squadron of enemy destroyers as they neared. The Ars Bellus of Saint Aster’s group took a mauling in return from torpedoes and solid rounds cast ahead of the Chaos advance.
The Saint Aster took no part in the worsening battle, but drove hard down the planet’s gravity well, her dorsal thrusters burning hot and main stack pushing at seventy per cent. Her prow hit the atmosphere at close to terminal speed, striking fire from the world’s gas envelope immediately. Stripes of flame trailed after her as she plunged down, her void shields reacting violently to the insult of atmospheric flight.
Behind her, the Ars Bellus succumbed to lance fire, breaking into glittering pieces and falling after the Saint Aster. Two Chaos ships left formation to chase the diving battle cruiser. The blocking Imperial force zeroed in on one and sliced it apart, its wreckage mingling with that of the Ars Bellus and tumbling into the atmosphere together. The other ship shrugged off the attack and plunged after the Saint Aster. Bigger, heavier and better armed, it chased the lighter ship with predatory determination.
Above the glow of the void-atmospheric line, the ships turned their guns away, for the Khornate force was ploughing through the joined battle groups, and the Blood King was among them, all weapons firing.
Lacrante came around in confusion. For a moment he had no idea where he was. Only when the deck bounced and then pitched forward hard did he remember all that had befallen him in the last day. His head was wet with blood running from his scalp.
‘Get up,’ said one of the Scions strapped into the passenger seats. ‘Another fall like that and you’re going to break bones. Yours I don’t care about, but you could break mine, and I do care about that.’
He pointed to the empty chair next to Rostov’s little xenos companion. Lacrante thought of the warrior left behind so that she could come aboard. He stared distastefully at her. She had big, flat feet, with an ugly fringe of toes running most of the way around the outside. Cheelche wore footwear, but it was so form-fitting it displayed the creature’s revolting physiology.
‘Get into the seat now,’ said another of the Scions. He nudged him with a filthy boot, showing no respect for Lacrante’s higher rank. Lacrante grabbed the restraints and used them to haul himself up into the seat. When he had buckled himself in, the constant bouncing of the ship was easier to bear. Blood continued to run down his face, soaking into his collar and pooling in the hollow of his collarbones. His mouth was dry, and his head swam, but he ignored it, for from his position he could see past Rostov into the cramped cockpit, and from there out of the frontal canopy. The sky was a terrifying mess of explosions and destructive energies, laced by the trails of duelling attack craft. The pilot shouted something at Rostov that Lacrante didn’t catch, then the little lighter yawed to the right, and brought into view an astounding sight.
A warship was flying down into the atmosphere. At first he thought it was out of control and on a crash course, for it drew a long, fiery line down through the sky. Black smoke flooded the atmosphere behind it. A teardrop of flickering energy trailed around it, the shields distorted and revealed by the pressure of the air. Fire wreathed it on all sides. A hundred enemy craft swarmed it like the mythical hornet of ancient Terra, their stings of laser fire and missile strike speckling its throbbing voids with patterns of lightning. Thick columns of lance fire flicked past it from behind, and when the Arvus moved a little more, he saw a second warship cutting another trail through Fomor III’s tortured air, and it was firing on the first. He blinked blood from his eyes. The Arvus was making its way directly to the foremost ship.
‘There’s our ticket away from this place, the Saint Aster,’ shouted Cheelche with wicked glee, following his gaze. ‘Do they gamble on your world?’ said the little alien. ‘Because I’d rate our odds as pretty low.’
Antoniato was staring at the ceiling, mouthing prayers to the Emperor. ‘Don’t listen to her,’ he said, in between pleas for salvation. ‘She’s a pessimist.’
‘Gah! Not even this will keep his mouth closed. He doesn’t like flying, you know,’ said Cheelche. Her piscean face was wrinkled as tree bark, and her mouth lipless, but she was obviously smiling. ‘He’s going to start crying, that’s something I’d wager my money on.’
Lacrante’s head was swimming. The Saint Aster wasn’t crashing. It had deliberately entered the atmosphere of Fomor III.
‘They’re coming to rescue us,’ he realised.
The Arvus bounced hard, falling a hundred feet, then rocketing back up again. Antoniato groaned.
‘That’s the plan,’ said Cheelche. ‘It’s a stupid plan,’ she added. ‘Rostov’s luck’s run out at last. It’s been a good run though, eh, Toni?’
‘Keep your filthy xenos quiet,’ said one of the Scions.
‘Don’t…’ said Antoniato. He gulped down a deep breath. ‘Don’t piss her off. I’ve seen her go through better than you in seconds.’
Cheelche stuck out one of her lower arms and waved at the Scion. He was about to reply when the Arvus shook with the impact of rapid cannon fire. The pilot reacted to the attack by yanking sideways on the flight sticks, sending the ship into an ungainly barrel roll. Lacrante grabbed at the straps. The blood rushed to his head, making the throb of his cut worse. One of the enemy’s dragon craft streaked past the pilot’s canopy, its scream of rage defying physics and penetrating the minds of the men aboard.
‘Get us aboard the ship,’ Rostov shouted. ‘Or the opportunity for salvation will evade our grasp.’ His boots must have had magnetic locks, for he stayed attached to the deck when the craft rolled. He was commanding, focused, but his knuckles were white where they gripped the doorway, and his previously inscrutable face was wrinkled with concentration. ‘Go faster!’
The pilot depressed her pedal, the Arvus’ engines howled louder. The boxy craft was as aerodynamic as a ferrocrete block, and it struggled to increase speed, but slowly they gained on the falling ship. Another daemonic screech punished the men’s minds. The draco-craft dived suddenly into sight, wings folded, then spreading to slow and come right at them. Though it appeared mechanical, close to it seemed to move more like a creature of flesh and blood than a machine, giving it a sense of wrongness Lacrante could taste.
The noise ceased, and she returned to her displays. The Imperial line held against the enemy, who were attacking without much in the way of discipline. They came in small groups, daring the gauntlet of fire the Imperial fleet put out. A determined spear thrust could break a protective sphere, but the enemy ships came at them in dribs, frenzied as the warriors they carried, and threw themselves heedlessly at the Imperial guns.
The first of the transports closed up its docking slots, and began to make hard burn away from the planet. A portion of the fleet detached and formed up around it, all painfully slowly as huge engines pushed the ships’ enormous masses into action. Then the second fired up its main engine stacks, its hangar gates still open, the last of the evacuation craft chasing after it. They were successful at first, darting into the still gaping decks, but as the Cetecea accelerated, the small craft fell behind, and an extra layer of desperate vox-messages was added to the hubbub of communication.
Finnula reread the specifics of the new enemy group. The announcement had been one of hundreds, and the group’s arrival was but one piece of data pulled into the general cascade of information. But it was significant, and she saw it as a potential turning point of the battle; not necessarily in their favour.
She brought up closer views and more data. The ships were hanging back around their chief vessel, a grand cruiser of an ancient sort rarely seen in Imperial navies those days. It was huge, and baroquely decorated, and radiated a malice that intensified her headache while she read the augur reports.
‘They’re going to make a push for it soon,’ she said. ‘Someone’s exerting control out there. As soon as they get themselves organised, we’ll be in danger.’
‘Seen and noted, first officer,’ Athagey said. Her voice was strained. Every person on the ship suffered the psychic pressure emanating from the rip in the sky. ‘Vox anunciato, pass on notification of incoming threat made by First Lieutenant Diomed to fleet command.’
‘We’re closest,’ said Finnula. ‘They’ll make their run right by our noses. They’ll wait until the fleet breaks up to withdraw with the last transports, and come at us then.’
‘They will.’ Athagey’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do we have enough fight in us to take on a grand cruiser and its escorts, that is the question.’
‘You’ll get your answer soon, commodore,’ said Finnula. ‘Admiral Treheskon is ordering a general withdrawal.’ She depressed a key rune and the admiral’s face came into being in the air in front of the command dais. He was young for an admiral, younger than Athagey, not much older than Finnula. He always looked immaculate. There was not a hair out of place in his beard.
‘All ships are to withdraw according to plan,’ he said. That was it. He disappeared. The fleet had coded orders as to their withdrawal points, sub-fleet organisation, emergency rendezvous and dispersal patterns. They knew what to do.
‘Now is the time,’ said Athagey. She called down her vox-cherub and spoke into the horn it proffered. ‘Strike Group Saint Aster, return to tight formation, staggered line, ascending ecliptic echelon. Enact now.’
‘Those are not the admiral’s original orders,’ Finnula said.
‘The enemy will attack within minutes. Our prescribed formation will see us all dead,’ she responded.
‘Aye, commodore,’ said Finnula, who agreed with Athagey’s command, but was duty-bound to point out the discrepancy. She caught the eye of the Saint Aster’s Commissar-Navis Sorenkus, prowling the gangways between the command pits. The old man blinked like a lizard and looked away. No challenge there, then.
Already, the sphere surrounding the ascension corridor leading up out of Fomor III’s gravity well was breaking apart. In most cases the ships behaved with admirable precision, and the sphere hinged outwards like an opening flower, keeping up well-coordinated volumes of fire as they repositioned. There were over a hundred vessels involved, and their discipline was perfect. They split into smaller groups, moving off to several headings to confuse the foe, the grouping of ships rearranging themselves into more flexible formations as they sailed. The enemy, already disorganised, broke apart to chase down the escaping Imperial ships. Only those around the grand cruiser held their position.
‘My Lady Commodore Athagey,’ said Lieutenant Hainkin. He was of the third watch, one of the dais officers, but rarely up on the platform. He had too big a heart, thought Finnula. He was choking on it now, his skin flushing and throat working uncomfortably. ‘If I may?’
Don’t, thought Finnula, but Athagey nodded her consent.
‘There are thousands of soldiers still on the surface,’ Hainkin said. ‘I have multiple requests for assistance from smaller craft who are out of range of the last transports, and more from the evacuation zone. We could take some on board.’
All eyes went to the commodore.
‘Ignore them,’ said Athagey. ‘We condemn thousands to death, but such is war. Thousands die so millions might live.’
It was the burden people like Athagey bore. Hainkin would never understand that.
The Saint Aster rumbled as her engines pushed her about, swinging her stern away from the planet.
A klaxon blared.
‘Enemy grand cruiser beginning attack run, all ships in attendance, spear formation,’ Finnula ordered.
‘Increase port manoeuvring thruster output,’ said Athagey. ‘I want us over the planet’s terminator and away before we’re in range of their main batteries.’
‘They’ll cut right through us if they catch us,’ said Finnula.
‘Then they won’t catch us,’ said Athagey.
‘The enemy has launched torpedoes, full spread. Contact in five minutes.’
‘They’re getting damnably close,’ said Finnula.
‘And I say they will get no closer!’ said Athagey.
‘I have an identity,’ an officer reported. ‘Blood King.’
‘I’ve heard of that,’ said Athagey quietly.
In the oculus, the bruised surface of Fomor III passed by. Finnula watched it. Scores of lights flashed in the debris between the ship and the surface as the enemy loosed his first lance shots. Their batteries of plasma casters, fusion beams and laser cannon were out of arc, but the grand lasweapons on their spines fired steadily. Thankfully, the debris field around the planet made targeting difficult.
Fires burned all over Fomor III’s surface. A few months before it was blue and green, a civilised world dominated by agriculture and small seas. It had been far from a paradise planet, but further from the overcrowded hells of many other Imperial worlds. Now it was a necrotic brown, choking on its own blackened breath. Finnula had seen a planet die twice before. Each time, her feelings became more wretched at the sight. There were trillions of worlds in the galaxy, perhaps billions of them were suitable for human habitation. The Imperium consisted of a million worlds, they said, but she had realised a long time ago that was a figurative number. It had no basis in reality. How could it, when so many planets burned every month.
‘World death,’ she whispered.
A flashing light on her command boards attracted her attention. She frowned in disbelief, never having seen that particular indicator illuminated. She pressed a button beneath it. A screen came on, displaying an Imperial badge that surprised her.
She turned to the commodore.
‘Madame commodore, I have a priority message on the canalus obligatio.’
Athagey looked at her sharply. ‘The Inquisition?’ she said.
Finnula nodded.
‘Play it!’ snapped Athagey.
The appropriate code sequence to activate the message cypher was so obscure that Finnula had to send for a specialist from the vox-pits. He was old, needed to retrieve a mono-task servitor from its case, which he did very slowly, then orderlies had to be summoned to convey the servitor upon a grav-sled, for it had been reduced to a head in an armoured box with a cogitator attached. The process was painfully sedate, and accompanied with many solemn utterances that irritated Athagey visibly.
‘Can you not,’ she said, ‘get a bloody move on? We are under fire!’
‘Madame commodore, Unmerciful requests adjusted course heading. We’re not moving as they expect,’ the Master of Manoeuvres called.
‘Of course we’re not moving as they expect. Tell them to come about! Get the whole flotilla to come about! Helm, full starboard thrust. Leave us pointing at Fomor III. Broadsides prepare to fire,’ she commanded. ‘We can’t go anywhere until we have this message decoded. Prepare to engage enemy spearhead.’
‘We could leave, madame,’ said Finnula.
‘We might escape with our lives, only to lose them later. The Inquisition are the agents of the Emperor,’ said Athagey. ‘They will not be denied.’
Klaxons wailed. The ship shuddered as its own lance turrets opened up, hurling the contents of gargantuan capacitors at the approaching enemy in beams of destructive light. The enemy had recharged theirs, and fired almost simultaneously.
The vox-specialist arrived at the dais. The box was opened, releasing a pungent waft of decay. A copper wire was unspooled from a reel and plugged into Finnula’s console.
‘Now, first officer?’
Finnula nodded.
‘Don’t you understand “hurry up”?’ shouted Athagey from the top of her dais. She had not taken any stimms for an hour, and was becoming irritable.
The vox-specialist turned a crank on the outside of the box. The head came to sudden, jerky life, eyelids fluttering and jaws clacking. A series of red lumen beads lit up on the box exterior, until they made a flickering line. They turned green.
‘Code conveyed and accepted,’ the old man said, then bowed, and began the slow process of returning the head to its locker.
Finnula watched the cypher on her screen interact with the message code locks. Blurred lines of text ran down the glass, then a hololith projector came on, and a phantom face appeared off to her left. He was a young man, of so serious a demeanour it looked like he had never smiled in his life.
‘Captain of the Saint Aster, I am Inquisitor Rostov of the Ordo Xenos. By the authority of the Emperor Himself, I demand immediate retrieval from the atmosphere of Fomor III. Coordinates for intercept are included. Transponder code for my vessel included. I am en route now. For the Emperor,’ the inquisitor intoned. The message snapped off.
‘The arrogance of it,’ said Athagey. ‘No doubt whatsoever we would respond.’
‘Are we going to respond?’ said Finnula.
The commodore sighed. Her long haptic nails drummed on the arm of her throne. ‘Of course. Send Rostov a message, same channel, tell him we are on our way.’
Finnula looked at the coordinates, then out at the world, and the closing enemy battlefleet.
‘Summon all my captains to hololithic conference. Message Commodore Shaloong, see if Strike Group Justicarius will cover our backs. He owes me from the Dandra debacle,’ Athagey said. As soon as she gave this order, small projections of her fleet masters began to appear around her. ‘And put out a general call to those fleeing Fomor III. We shall heed Lieutenant Hainkin’s craving for mercy this once. Any craft that can reach us, we will take in, but they must reach us, we cannot turn back or deviate from our course to save them. Helm,’ she said. ‘New heading.’ Her talon wands twitched as she datacast the coordinates to the fan-shaped helm section of the deck, where it was fed via ocular implant and direct cranial feed to the helmsmen. ‘All hands stand ready, this is going to be rough.’
The battlesphere over Fomor III was awash with fire and deadly light. Strike Group Saint Aster formed up with the ships of Strike Group Justicarius, presenting a block to the approaching Blood King and its escorts. Gunfire flew between the two forces with building fury. Void-shield flare flashed across the fronts of both fleets. Concentrated lance fire from Shaloong’s ships cut apart a squadron of enemy destroyers as they neared. The Ars Bellus of Saint Aster’s group took a mauling in return from torpedoes and solid rounds cast ahead of the Chaos advance.
The Saint Aster took no part in the worsening battle, but drove hard down the planet’s gravity well, her dorsal thrusters burning hot and main stack pushing at seventy per cent. Her prow hit the atmosphere at close to terminal speed, striking fire from the world’s gas envelope immediately. Stripes of flame trailed after her as she plunged down, her void shields reacting violently to the insult of atmospheric flight.
Behind her, the Ars Bellus succumbed to lance fire, breaking into glittering pieces and falling after the Saint Aster. Two Chaos ships left formation to chase the diving battle cruiser. The blocking Imperial force zeroed in on one and sliced it apart, its wreckage mingling with that of the Ars Bellus and tumbling into the atmosphere together. The other ship shrugged off the attack and plunged after the Saint Aster. Bigger, heavier and better armed, it chased the lighter ship with predatory determination.
Above the glow of the void-atmospheric line, the ships turned their guns away, for the Khornate force was ploughing through the joined battle groups, and the Blood King was among them, all weapons firing.
Lacrante came around in confusion. For a moment he had no idea where he was. Only when the deck bounced and then pitched forward hard did he remember all that had befallen him in the last day. His head was wet with blood running from his scalp.
‘Get up,’ said one of the Scions strapped into the passenger seats. ‘Another fall like that and you’re going to break bones. Yours I don’t care about, but you could break mine, and I do care about that.’
He pointed to the empty chair next to Rostov’s little xenos companion. Lacrante thought of the warrior left behind so that she could come aboard. He stared distastefully at her. She had big, flat feet, with an ugly fringe of toes running most of the way around the outside. Cheelche wore footwear, but it was so form-fitting it displayed the creature’s revolting physiology.
‘Get into the seat now,’ said another of the Scions. He nudged him with a filthy boot, showing no respect for Lacrante’s higher rank. Lacrante grabbed the restraints and used them to haul himself up into the seat. When he had buckled himself in, the constant bouncing of the ship was easier to bear. Blood continued to run down his face, soaking into his collar and pooling in the hollow of his collarbones. His mouth was dry, and his head swam, but he ignored it, for from his position he could see past Rostov into the cramped cockpit, and from there out of the frontal canopy. The sky was a terrifying mess of explosions and destructive energies, laced by the trails of duelling attack craft. The pilot shouted something at Rostov that Lacrante didn’t catch, then the little lighter yawed to the right, and brought into view an astounding sight.
A warship was flying down into the atmosphere. At first he thought it was out of control and on a crash course, for it drew a long, fiery line down through the sky. Black smoke flooded the atmosphere behind it. A teardrop of flickering energy trailed around it, the shields distorted and revealed by the pressure of the air. Fire wreathed it on all sides. A hundred enemy craft swarmed it like the mythical hornet of ancient Terra, their stings of laser fire and missile strike speckling its throbbing voids with patterns of lightning. Thick columns of lance fire flicked past it from behind, and when the Arvus moved a little more, he saw a second warship cutting another trail through Fomor III’s tortured air, and it was firing on the first. He blinked blood from his eyes. The Arvus was making its way directly to the foremost ship.
‘There’s our ticket away from this place, the Saint Aster,’ shouted Cheelche with wicked glee, following his gaze. ‘Do they gamble on your world?’ said the little alien. ‘Because I’d rate our odds as pretty low.’
Antoniato was staring at the ceiling, mouthing prayers to the Emperor. ‘Don’t listen to her,’ he said, in between pleas for salvation. ‘She’s a pessimist.’
‘Gah! Not even this will keep his mouth closed. He doesn’t like flying, you know,’ said Cheelche. Her piscean face was wrinkled as tree bark, and her mouth lipless, but she was obviously smiling. ‘He’s going to start crying, that’s something I’d wager my money on.’
Lacrante’s head was swimming. The Saint Aster wasn’t crashing. It had deliberately entered the atmosphere of Fomor III.
‘They’re coming to rescue us,’ he realised.
The Arvus bounced hard, falling a hundred feet, then rocketing back up again. Antoniato groaned.
‘That’s the plan,’ said Cheelche. ‘It’s a stupid plan,’ she added. ‘Rostov’s luck’s run out at last. It’s been a good run though, eh, Toni?’
‘Keep your filthy xenos quiet,’ said one of the Scions.
‘Don’t…’ said Antoniato. He gulped down a deep breath. ‘Don’t piss her off. I’ve seen her go through better than you in seconds.’
Cheelche stuck out one of her lower arms and waved at the Scion. He was about to reply when the Arvus shook with the impact of rapid cannon fire. The pilot reacted to the attack by yanking sideways on the flight sticks, sending the ship into an ungainly barrel roll. Lacrante grabbed at the straps. The blood rushed to his head, making the throb of his cut worse. One of the enemy’s dragon craft streaked past the pilot’s canopy, its scream of rage defying physics and penetrating the minds of the men aboard.
‘Get us aboard the ship,’ Rostov shouted. ‘Or the opportunity for salvation will evade our grasp.’ His boots must have had magnetic locks, for he stayed attached to the deck when the craft rolled. He was commanding, focused, but his knuckles were white where they gripped the doorway, and his previously inscrutable face was wrinkled with concentration. ‘Go faster!’
The pilot depressed her pedal, the Arvus’ engines howled louder. The boxy craft was as aerodynamic as a ferrocrete block, and it struggled to increase speed, but slowly they gained on the falling ship. Another daemonic screech punished the men’s minds. The draco-craft dived suddenly into sight, wings folded, then spreading to slow and come right at them. Though it appeared mechanical, close to it seemed to move more like a creature of flesh and blood than a machine, giving it a sense of wrongness Lacrante could taste.
