36: Hell or High Water
"What on Terra..." Loken's voice rings in the forward compartment of the stormbird as they skim past the grand cruiser Judicature and line up on the Vengeful Spirit. But the massive Glorianna was a bewildering sight, spewing billowing yellow flares from the embarkation deck, venting flames into the void which ripple and diffuse its roiling haloed heat glow. But the vessel itself yaws to its starboard side and rolls like a monolithic astral whale floundering in the void. "What is she doing?" he voices to no-one, though the Imperial Navy flight crew and pilot all glance towards him.
"Something wrong, Garviel?" Horus's deep timbre resonates in the hold, stiffening the crew and setting everything in order.
Loken glances over his shoulder, having been standing behind the pilot on the flight deck, looking out the broad forward canopy while clutching the chair back. Only his magnetized armored boots kept him clamped to the floor.
The primarch didn't have that luxury, but still somehow appeared stately enough as he clasped an overhead handle to the spinal turret and held himself as if he were standing straight. Only the billowing pink material around him ruined the impression and made him look perhaps a little like a conjured image of a raunchy sequentialist. But the primarch peers past Loken, taking in the sight of his own enormous flagship's erratic movements. "Coms officer," Horus's bass growl dips to its gravelly landslide tone. "Are the vox networks still down?"
With a light squeal of noise and static, the mortal gulps and stares stiffly ahead at his console. "Y-yes lord Warmaster. There's still too much interference."
"It's safe to say we're being jammed. Hmm, it's almost certainly a full spectrum blanket, too." Horus snarls, eyeing the Vengeful Spirit before casting his gaze around the cosmos with a studied eye.
"From where?" Loken glances back at Horus before peering more intently out the front glass at the bevy of ships hanging like spears among the stars. From their position, they all appeared like silver lights, their green, gold, grey, and black hulls were all illuminated by the sun that painted them in stark white.
"There." Horus points past the war galleass laying off the port side just a few dozen kilometres from his stricken flagship. Behind it, partially obscured by the raised communication spine and astropathic tower, hides a sharper vessel behind yet another broad galleass. Even from that distance, Loken could see it wasn't one of the 63rd expeditionary fleet's aged grand cruisers. No, it was sharp, stark, with the sleek triangular armored prow indicative of recently laid down hulls from the Sol fleetworks. "Harbinger class?"
"Cardinal heavy cruiser." Horus's replies with a shake of his head. " Erebus's new toy straight from the Saturn shipyards." he growls and looks over the shoulder of the communication's officer.
The new Saturnine vessel yaws away from them, using the bulk of another vessel to screen it. The shield in question was one of the mighty Odysseus-class Galleasses; a nine kilometre long warship lined in stately white turrets and towers. Its outriggers of engine banks and the flat spade-prow could have given away what vessel it was without effort.
"I can tell you one thing, Loken." Horus points at the seemingly stationary warship, "If Captain Erdoss isn't moving the Cthonic Dawn in the next thirty seconds, he'll be scrubbing meteor dust off the prow tomorrow."
"Sir... Tarik might know better than me and maybe we should have brought Abaddon with us, but isn't it too late to evade if the Vengeful Spirit is lining up a shot?" Loken continues to watch as their stormbird banks sharply to the left.
"Yes, but sometimes the attempt is what matters most. Then luck picks up the slack." Horus growls and leans forward to point past the pilot's shoulder, "No, no! Keep us on course with the Vengeful Spirit. Take one of the fighter bays if you have too." The extension of his arm gets the primarch to hiss in pain as the movement agitated the black clotted wound in his shoulder. But as Loken looks back to his liege with no small degree of worry, Horus's eyes were fixed on his target.
"Horus?" Kibre's worried voice and pounding fist ring on the stormbird's flight crew compartment door.
Again Loken looks at the Lupercal, though this time the slight twinkle in his golden eyes couldn't hide. He covertly shoots the captain a playful grin that says 'if we stay quiet, maybe he'll give up and go away'.
Screaming alarms and bleating klaxons ring through the Vengeful Spirit's entire length, occasionally interspersed with the clatter of bolter fire and screams of the ratings and crew. Burbles of unintelligible vox traffic babble uselessly in a psychotic menagerie that echoes ceaselessly through the immense Hall of Memories. A single lanky astartes hurries down the run from the corridors from the librarius, one of the last flowing chambers before the civilian 'gate' towards the remembrancers' gallery.
Iacton Qruze takes in a few lungfuls of air, only hearing his armor cycle to full power now, the aged mark two battle plate had been taken straight from the librarius's exhibit of the ancient legion. The glossy pearl plate buffed to a mirror shine was still, perhaps, a little more familiar than the sea-green mark four suit he'd been issued. While he followed the Lupercal, a part of the aged captain was still more comfortable as a Luna Wolf than a Son of Horus. But between the ancient reawakened battle armor, a power gladius that he could only hoped still functioned, and the long barreled phobos bolter with a single full magazine that had been plucked from the stasis field cases, it was all that was at hand. They were relics of war now pushed straight back into use once he heard gunfire in the distance.
The aged third-company captain halts at one of the hall's intersections, pressing his back to a flat stone arch topped with a glinting golden aquilla at the mouth of the water garden. It was a place for reflection on the great crusade, and terminated right before the glowing civilian concourse. The crowds from taverns and entertainment halls primarily set up for the remembrancers and iterators had screamed and panicked, but the astartes captain was more concerned with them noise blotting out his hearing.
Peeking out around the corner, he can see the flash of red lights and shadows filtering through the water gardens. There's a slight lurch of what mortals often described as 'void-sickness' as the stars slowly shifted beyond the enormous armorglass bubble running the full length of the hall. Other warships slowly appear to drift and turn in the void, and Davin's accursed grey-green moon slowly sets from their off-kilter roll.
Whatever thoughts passed his mind, the veteran said nothing of it. Instead, he ducks out, power armour creaking and whirring noisily at every step as he crosses straight along the side of the Hall of Memories with a clumsy shuffle. He instinctively bolsters the power to his legs, feeling the sluggish movements give way to the more familiar lope he'd grown accustomed too in his earlier centuries.
Even this ancient battleplate, enshrined from their assault on Terra's sole natural moon of Luna, was 'new' in comparison to some of his memories. They were good memories, but damned if he couldn't figure out why bolters would be cooking off here aboard the flagship. What assassins or xeno intruders had broke in? This was all uncomfortably new.
A hundred meters disappears in a fugue of half-conscious memories as captain Qruze hustles through the dark red flashing space and up the wide mouth avenue. He sighs, breath rasping as his accumulated age made the necessity of regulating his breath a priority. A voice calls from the darkness of a hutch near the Nemesis arch and its short Avenue of Conquest.
"Sedeirae? Is that you?" the wheezing rasp was unmistakable as the figure lumbers from the gloom with an uncomfortable lurch and tap of a cane.
Iacton's hearts jumped in his chest, surprised at the sudden appearance, though training had the illum sight dance across the figure's center of mass for just a fraction of a second. The dull red dot traverses reinforced astartes battleplate, the piston outriggers of an exoskeleton shackle keeping the form upright, though it leans awkwardly to the left on a twisted skull-topped cane. From a heavily scarred and burn-slicked face, Maloghurst The Twisted shoots him an immediate glare of disdain.
"No, it's me." Iacton grumbles at the Warmaster's equerry. The intelligence officer merely harrumphs, but Qruze slows his pace and inclines his head as the pair uncomfortably join up as he notices a flurry of activity from one of the walls along the short hallway to the xeno museum. Qruze fights off the scowl at having not noticed the small bevy of figures, Imperial Navy armsmen. He hadn't attuned the armor's prey-sense, and it had overlooked the allied armsmen completely.
"For a moment there, you looked like the ghost of Sejanus." Maloghurst wheezes, and makes a series of sharp gestures that the armsmen take note of. Ten black-armored forms slink through the gloom, covered one another as they form up in a kneeling circle around the two astartes.
"There's no such thing as ghosts, Mal." Qruze's soft, untainted voice is only mildly hardened by the helmet vox.
Maloghurst makes a harsh tut of irritation. "I know, I know. Half-heard." Qruze flinches at the inauspicious nickname, comfortably certain it was repayment for the informal way the equerry had been addressed. "There's no need to lecture me about what I already know. But tell me, did you hear general Varvarus just now?"
Qruze nods as the rest of the squad falls in around them, and he picked up the telltale-blip of allied units just further up. His preysense wasn't needed at the moment, he could damned well see the pair of terminator wardens emerging from the mid-corridor lifts around the enormous Arc of Triumph that rose fifty meters in the chamber, just short of the armorglass dome's plasteel girders.
"I thought it was my imagination. The vox net is completely distorted." He pulls off his casement helm and whistles loudly, getting a start from the armsmen, but also a sharp look from the tartaros guards. The captain waves once, and both of the hulking figures approach as fast as the lumbering walking-tanks could manage. "Mal, what in the blazes is happening?" he subtly shifts as the Twisted and their guard all plunge forward to meet the wardens.
Maloghurst's augmented shuffle is painfully slow even as he does try to hurry, each wheezing huff of breath a struggle exasperated by the severe limp. "Damned if I know, I heard someone say they saw an astartes killing a crewman, and just thought after the embarkation deck incident..." he lets the sentence warble off.
"Sacred Unity, you thought Varvarus did something stupid?" Qruze lofts a brow.
"Varvarus?" Mal's chest shakes with wet laughter, "No, no, don't be foolish. If someone did something this overtly stupid, it would have to be Sedirae, Abaddon, Ekkadon, or Targost. And two of them are planetside."
"So why Sedirae?" Qruze asked as the pair of tartaros close enough to meet them.
"You were running. Targost doesn't hustle like that, smug little worm struts everywhere." It gets a bit of an airy half-laugh from the captain. "Where's your company?"
"Vox is down, I haven't a clue. I assume they're still in the barracks." Qruze replies, loping over to the group as they resume their ascension up the long and intricate corridor to the main ship spine. "Am I supposed to assume you've tried the mag-lifts?"
Maloghurst spits a wad of phlegm. "Do you think I'd be walking for any other reason? The vox is down, the lifts are down, and the trams aren't responding. Something's happening and I damned well refuse to be the last person to know about it, Iacton." he turns sharply on the two terminators and points a gnarled gauntlet at them, "You two, report."
The first plodding terminator slows, but his thunderous steps echo in the hall as the slinking armsmen fade into near obscurity under the power of the walking-tanks.
"Lord Equerry, Captain Qruze." One begins, voice echoing with the deep roil of the external vox amp. "Inconclusive reports, but we heard gunfire and were prepared to reinforce the bridge nexus. Orvan thought he heard something about 'a trade'." he nods to his terminator equal.
"Smugglers in-system?" Qruze lofts a brow as the whole group continues their more stately march up the wide boulevard. They pass completely in the shadow of the shrines of fallen warriors carved into the tall arching pillars plated in plaques of etched bronze. The memorials and trophies of the 16th legion were always laid out here, under the stars, for all the galaxy to see.
"Don't be daft, nothing would attack a vessel this size, let alone a fleet." Maloghurst sharp rasp slowed as he let one thought slip through, "Eldar raiders?"
Qruze even ventures a glance up at the void, seeing a pair of Siluria cruisers in the middling distance, though there was no blistering tines of lance fire or spastic blooms of batteries engaging. If it was a foreign entity, it damned well wasn't from a capital ship. And if they were smaller raiders, how in Terra's shade did they get past the roving clouds of fighters?
"No... something else." Qruze replies, albeit it more darkly and quietly than he meant. The gaze into the starry abyss always did this to him, but it did cut the conversation short. As such, the motley little band continues up the corridor.
The first herald of something dreadfully wrong is the blob of red-yellow light shining from the top of the steps, then the rush of pressurized fire. Sprouting gouts of flame spew from the opening like the depictions of dragon's belching fire from their mountain caves. And then came the shapes.
From the end of the nearly kilometer and a half long corridor, the ghostly grey figures emerge from among the curls of smoke and flame. Bearing flickering hand-held flamer units, a pair of legionnaires can be picked out clearly by genhanced eyes. The Word Bearers atop the steps spit fire at the rows of banners taken from defeated warlords across a thousand worlds, immolating the priceless cloths held in stasis fields by the steps to the entrance of the Warmaster's Hall.
"What are they doing?!" Maloghurst's dry hiss is as shocked as it is indignant, creeping up a full register. "Don't stand there looking for orders, kill them!"
The duo of Tartaros terminator guards flick their bolters up, advancing with the armsmen slinking behind them as they try to get to a better spot to fire.
"I can get them from here." Iacton unslings his bolter and kneels to set up the shot.
"You?" Maloghurst snorts in derision before resuming his assent after the lumbering terminators.
"I'm not so old as to need glasses, Mal." Qruze scowls. But in truth, it was uncomfortably close. He squints, letting his experience make up for aging senses. The breath of stale air, the roll of the ship, he could see it all. Even fifty years ago it would have been an easy shot from this distance. He'd been a Seeker once, a marksmen of the highest caliber. That was well before he'd been a captain. Now, that was a distinction that few remembered.
It would have been galling, but as he squeezes the trigger, the first shot goes wide. A puff of vaporized stonework half a dozen meters above the flame-lit Word Bearer is his only sign where the shot drifted. He adjusts a fraction, squeezing the trigger again. With a splash of sparks, it slams into his target and bursts off its pauldron.
"High, to the right." he whispers to himself before guiding his palm to shift it just a hair. He still his breath, letting him press the trigger twice more with a flutter of thought. A double tap. It bursts low under the arm, tearing the limb off in a puff of pink. A second shot pumps into the stump, bursting inside his target and dropping him on his side.
"Hurry up, Iacton!" Maloghurst says, clomping up the steps, his own bolter on a sling around his neck.
It takes three more shots to drag down the second Word Bearer, but he'd done it. Whether by remembered skill or luck, a shot to the neck nearly decapitated the Word Bearer. The final echoing thrum of his bolt rings off the rafters and to the armourglass bubble letting in starlight far above them.
He looks for a moment before the realization hits. "Maloghurst, we're still rolling!"
The Twisted looks back, then up out past the ribbed armourglass blister sixty five meters overhead. The sunlit glare bleaches the adamntium hull of the massive Odysseus-class galleass visibly hanging in the starry void. Its massive slab plated sides carried over from the earliest days of the Great Crusade, as did its gleaming towers. The slow drunken roll of the Vengeful Spirit telegraphed what was happening in horrid painful detail.
"We're lining up a firing solution on the Cthonic Dawn?! On whose orders?!" Maloghurst indignantly hisses, but is swiftly seized in a coughing fit.
"I can't tell you who gave the order, but I can tell you who didn't." Iacton hefts himself back up to standing and redoubles his lope up the steps. Even the broken form of Maloghurst shuffles faster as he mutters darkly beneath his breath.
"It was rhetorical." Maloghurst huffs, leaning heavily on his cane as he tries to hobble down the corridor, "They'll have completely taken the bridge, there's no other way this could have happened."
"You're better at void warfare than I am. How long?" Iacton catches up and slows his pace to match the crippled astartes.
But an armored palm stops him, and Maloghurst fixes the ancient captain a stern glare. "Three minutes, maybe more, maybe less. I'm not going to get there in time. Go with the wardens, take the bridge back at all costs. Here." He snaps off a silver medal from around his neck, presenting the Warmaster's personal seal that only Horus and his equerry possessed. "If they won't listen to you, they'll damned well listen to that. Now go! See if you can get us out of this." The shove was harsh and insistent. Any harder and it might have tossed Iacton flat.
But he took the medal in hand and nods before sprinting towards the nexus, leaving the lagging Maloghurst to hobble behind.
The white-clad captain hurries forward, catching up with the terminators and armsmen as they near the broad steps leading up to the nexus. The stink of charred fabric and drifting ash clog the air, though it doesn't quite cover the iron stink of spilled blood. Qruze stays with the two terminators and ascends the steps in their midst.
Emerging into the Nexus, his hearts skip a beat. Broken grey armor lies scattered in seeping blood slicks as the shattered bodies of legionnaires stretch from the middle of the room straight up in a broken line leading up to the doorway of the bridge. Two of the posted terminator wardens were surely dead, slumped down the steps and laying in heaps of slag, almost assuredly the work of plasma.
Iacton saw it with his own eyes, but the scene still wasn't real or authentic to him. Astartes killing astartes? It had to be a mistake, or a nightmarish dream. The numbness set into the captains limbs as he spots four Word bearers draped across the hacked apart corpse of a third warden.
"The captain didn't say anything about 'a trade'." Iacton's voice hitches, "he said 'betrayed'."
"Halt. Identify yourself." a distorted voice proclaims from the stop of the steps. One of the wardens kneels in front of three corpses, having dropped to one knee with an axe flickering weakly and his combi-bolter leveled at them. His leg was broken to bloody pulp by a krak grenade, helmet and cuirass showing deep gashes and scars, but the ship's guardian remains at his post to bar the way.
"Captain Iacton Qruze, third company. We have two other wardens and a compliment of ships armsmen." the captain says without so much as raising his voice. "We mean to pass, on authority of Horus Lupercal." The 'half-heard' produces the silver emblem. After the faintest moment, the warden nods and shifts to one side on protesting servos.
"Iacton?" a wheezing gasp pulls itself from among the ruined husks, wriggling up from the dead.
Iacton Qruze points his wardens terminators and group of navy armsmen towards the bridge door while he scrambles towards the frail shell crumpled in the center of the room. "Targost?!"
Serghar Targost lies under the auspice of the immense Eye of Terra emblazoned in garnet and onyx doorway. Red light pulses from the emergency system and the scream of klaxons still fills the air. Crimson light lands on the sharp edges of an intricately carved marble and bronze relief, red glow illuminating the damaged wrought by gunfire and reflecting wetly from a blood slicked floor as the captain slowly raises one shattered arm.
The assault captain weakly pulls himself towards the bottom of the steps, making it all the way over to the bronzed relief of a Luna Wolf legionnaire framed in art deco bands of sunlight. The ancient Lunar battle memorial is smeared red from the corpses of two Word Bearers blasted apart, along with a tangle of mortal crew who were evidently caught in the crossfire.
Targost was sweating in his black reaver plate, gory pits are carved from his side, his face gouged with knife wound and scrapes from a gauntlet, and the man's left arm terminates in a ruined stump. But his right shakily clutches a bolt pistol, spent casings littering the polished marble around him.
"What happened?" Iacton crosses over as Targost lets go of the bronze and slumps to the floor leaving a crimson smear. His bolt pistol clatters down into his lap.
"Word Bearer bastards." he coughs as the rest of the terminator team and armsmen make it to the door. Already their wounded warden was tapping an exposed data terminal to allow them entrance. "We were headed for the bridge... said it was to secure it from any enemy attacks." He coughs up a light pink foam and weakly mops his lips. "Probably converging on the astropathic choir, labs... and there's more on the tram line below. Iacton, doesn't matter why. .. kill them. Just take this and kill every single one of them." Qruze slides to kneeling only to have a plasma pistol thrust into his grasp before he's weakly shoved away. "M'alright, I'm alright for now. Go!"
Iacton nods sharply and hurries up the steps as it opens wide. Climbing the steps, it leads to another Wolf-head emblem of the legion as the hallway splits upwards into another slanted hallway leading to the armored bridge bulkhead. Its untouched by violence, but still plunged into the rhythmic flash from emergency lights. Iacton Qruze takes up a position between the two interceding Terminators while the rest of the black-clad armsmen in their far lighter carapace mingle among the demi-gods.
To look at the warriors standing among giants was almost pathetic, but the steadfast guardians had seen the ship through before. Though never against astartes. Qruze could see the trepidation in every tight grip around a shotgun stock, or in nervous little head bobs, or even the tap of toes inside metal shod boots.
They had every right to be scared. Qruze locks his bolter to his hip and checks the plasma pistol. The plasma fuel cells were used, but there was still at least a few shots left. Drawing his power sword, he thumbs the activation stud, sending a skating blue haze dancing across the blade with a mellow hum.
The door chimes with a vibrant soft 'bing' and opens right into a firestorm. The chatter of bolters and whip-crack of rounds scream in the moment a crack opens in the door. The first armsmen is blasted apart at the clavicle and drops. Terminator armor deflects rounds off sheer plate and scatters spall into the surrounding mortal troops. It wasn't a straight fight, even as the first warden plunges into the breach he would have to pick his target to avoid hitting a console or any crew left alive.
The green and black tartaros warden growls from the vox amp, firing almost a full second after the barrage rakes his frame. The combi-bolters' demonic chatter slacks the fire in a howl of rage, and already the second and several armsmen hurled themselves into the breach. Qruze hears another of his troopers hit the floor as the abattoir of the Vengeful Spirit's command deck opens to them.
One grey slab-sided cataphractii fires from behind a heap of shredded crewmen, another shaking helmsmen cowering behind a console in front acting as a partial human shield. Two belches from shotguns draws out the helmsman's scream as he drops, and Qruze lines up a shot with the snub nosed pistol, aiming it at the small well armored head of the Word Bearer cataphractii. The Colchisian doesn't even stagger as the shotgun blasts patter harmlessly across the immense slabs of adamantium. But Qruze's pistol howls with a high pitched undulating thrum. The white hot lance of super heated plasma connects him and the cataphractii for a moment, before a shimmering energy field ripples just in front of the warrior.
Despite the searing after-image and stink of scorched ozone, the Word Bearer still blazes away unharmed. The plasma pistol wafts smoke from its barrel shroud, and despite the risk, Qruze plunges through the door and taps the trigger again. The pistol barrel glows red hot as another high-pitched scream lashes out. This time the cataphractii is caught in the chest and the energy shield shimmers for a moment before fizzling out. The terminator's chest collapses completely, pouring out in a molten slag as he staggers back, loses his footing, and drops into a crew pit.
Another Colchisian terminator roars a challenge and closes in at a slow ponderous run towards the wardens. One of the armsmen tosses a grenade, bursting at the giant's feet and sending scads of white-hot metal buzzing through the air to shred terminals and ring off armored plate. But a brace of shotgun blasts and another grenade unsteadies the Colchisian warrior just long enough for the warden's power axe to split him down the middle in a single stroke.
A third and forth cataphractii fire from the forward part of the bridge, partially obscured by the slope of the descending deck. But as Qruze plunges into the room, the hairs on the back of his neck rise. The elderly captain throws himself into a roll, ducking behind a console as a rippling tide of fire hits them from behind, shredding four armsmen in a hail of explosive bolts and spattering the terminator wardens with scraps of wet tissue.
A pair of cataphractii fire down from the strategium rail, pumping combi-bolter shells into them as they emerge. Bracketing fire shatters the heavily reinforced venting on the back of the warden's tartaros plate, but besides pitting the armor and bending the vent grating, it does little to the unsuspecting Horusian elite.
Peeking out from the railing, he spots a Word Bearer terminator with a crest and raises his pistol again. The plasma pistol glows, flashing a single searing ray of energy and arching it upwards. It catches the rail a glancing blow, deflecting some of the energy and bending the now curling red-hot metal back towards him, while the rest of the blast carried on and buckles the Terminators hip. Instead of immolating the warrior, the servos whine and protest for a moment, the combi-bolter shells suddenly weave wide as the leg gives out. With a ponderous roar, the immense figure falls forward from the strategium's dais.
He falls like a bolder, slamming into the ruined command throne peppered with bolt shots, and crushes the ship's helm in a bellowing roar of shattered adamantium, stone, and steel. A dust cloud erupts from the impact as the remaining four armsmen dart inside, firing from the hip and taking cover behind consoles.
"Get the ones in the forebridge, I'll deal with this one!" Qruze bellows to the two wardens as he ducks out, only to be chased right back into cover by the twin-barrel combi-bolters tearing apart the console and clattering off the shrouding of his power pack.
An armsmen pops up, firing a shotgun at the terminator above, only for the reflexive fire from his target to walk across the console and catch him a glancing blow in the shoulder. The entire joint explodes in a pink mist, leaving a screaming, thrashing heap of a man behind.
But it was an opportunity. Among the shrieks of pain and the momentary lull, Qruze hurdles the console and darts forward, firing his pistol from the hip. The first beam connects with the cataphractii's energy field, sending watery ripples across the blue hazy ribbons.
Slowly but surely, the second cataphractii was rising up like some ancient golem. Taking his chance, Qruze darts forward as the power fist is splayed on the ground. The pistol's cowling crackles and clicks from its immense heat buildup. It gives off a lambent white hot glow, wafting smoke rings around it as the device desperately tries to vent the heat. But he caught the steady red glyph on the side, and despite its Colchisian nature, he recognized 'empty' when he saw it. Qruze mag-locks the smoldering pistol to his hip, its immense heat actually sending spikes of pain through the flex-steel joint. But it frees up a hand as he darts towards the downed terminator with both hands firmly gripping the power sword.
Weak points, joints. A blade like that wouldn't carve through the armor and reach the warrior inside... not unless he got lucky. But he'd worn cataphrctii plate before, he knew the problem spots, and knew just what had to be protected. Lunging by the lumbering giant, the blade lashes out in a single sweep, snipping the power fist's power couplings from the back of its elbow. And as Qruze turns, he plunges the blade into the back of the terminator's other leg. The howl of pain comes loud and fast, and as the immense warrior turns on him, he swings the blade again to bisect the combi-bolter just in front of its grip, splitting it in two and disarming him completely.
That was it. Already his other opponent was getting closer to the edge, swiveling the dual barreled weapon down to draw a bead on him.
Qruze throws himself backwards, trying to scramble for cover as the chatter of hellish fire chews apart instrument banks and blasts apart heaped corpses spread across the floor. The Luna Wolf veteran finds something broke his fall, and it was no surprise two mushed human bodies lay beneath his immense frame. But it was still distasteful, no matter what happened. The smell of cooked meat as his overheated plasma pistol touches the bodies is equally sickening.
Grasping the hard edge of his cover, he unlatches his bolt gun and braces it against the edge. Squeezing the trigger, it hurls a thunderous flurry of bolts towards the terminator pinning him down. The explosive shells patter harmlessly off his pauldrons and cuirass. But as a return torrent of shells clatters into his station and gnaws away at the edges of the now sparking terminal, another sound rises over the din.
A rhythmic 'clunk-scrape' noise from not too far away draws his attention. Iacton can hear the Colchisian grunt, and he peeks out just long enough to see the lamed terminator shamble towards him, dragging his dead limb like some mutant bell-ringer of a bygone morality play.
Qruze takes in a sharp breath, fully realizing the position he was in: pinned down, no support, and flushed out of hiding with an enraged enemy just meters away with the staircase and easy exits on the far side of the bridge... it was a bad situation. But a smile forms as an ancient adage quietly slips his weathered lips.
"Since when did that matter? We're Luna Wolves."
Qruze grips his bolter and twists to confront the terminator. Launching his foot out, he kicks off of the console and flings himself backwards while staring down the barrel and loosing a fusillade at point blank range into the face of the hulking monstrosity. The withering fire clatters in sharp yellow sparks from the gorget and comb of the terminator, pitting the armor where the shots impact against the surface. But the armorglas visor cracks and the hulking warrior raises its enormous hand in front of its face to stop the stream of shells.
Already the second terminator was firing, ringing shots off his white plate as the astartes captain unhesitatingly turns his boltgun in reply. Qruze sends a chattering stream of shells sparking on the near-impregnable battle plate as he darts for another station closer to the wall. The captain urges more power away from the suit's preysense and towards his legs as he thunders across the open space around the command throne, pursued by twin tails of gibbering fire all the way. An impact shatters the edge of his pauldron and another lucky shot bounces from his cuirass against his cheek to dent his aging helmet. His own shots don't even phase the terminator, and he lets the exhausted relic drop to the deck cladding with all the grace of an empty lamp-pack battery. The astartes' running start lets him leap on top of a broken weapons station to, propel himself up towards the raised strategium's railing.
Too much speed, not enough height. It wasn't a difficult jump for an astartes to clear, but instead of catching the rail, the armored captain's foot nicks the edge of the dais. The entire railing gives way as he barrels through it and tumbles into a roll on the flat open strategium
The terminator turns ponderously, bringing his weapon to bear. Opportunistic shotgun blasts rake the giant as it pivots, sending clouds of sparks up as they scrape off its plate. Qruze kicks himself up to his feet and barrels at the figure, power sword braced in both hands. A few meters, nothing more, just enough to gain some momentum as he throws his weight into the rush.
Bolts scream past him as the terminator fires, shredding his knee plate and pulverizing the segmented thigh armor. More shots bounce from his helm and crater against the pauldron. A shock of pain flares through his elbow as the entire casing buckles and bends in on his limb, but he was too close to stop.
With a roar, he throws himself against the terminator, slamming it back and rocking the object past the point of no return. The short stabbing gladius digs in under the terminator's cuirass, severing power conduits and stopping cold against the butted rim as both terminator and captain are carried out into the empty space above the bridge. For a heart-stopping second they hang in the void, the terminator's power fist crackling to life as it reaches for him. Qruze presses the hilt of his sword against his midriff and waits for the impact.
With a juddering 'bang', the terminator slams into the decking, buckling metal grating around its immense frame and carrying the captain down into him. The braced sword cleaves through the rim and carves up and into the terminator's chest cavity with the added force of the impact. Seeing just the smallest bit of surprise and hesitation, Qruze pulls the blade to one side like a leaver on an ancient steam engine. The whole blade pivots around in the wound, slicing through everything inside the terminator's chest. In a single sweep, the man inside was bisected without anyone knowing it in the outside world.
The power fist continues to crackle, the eyes still glow, but the warrior is stilled. With his breathes coming in panting waves, Iacton Qruze stays hunched over the fallen Word Bearer. The sound of a snapping power axe barely registers as he looks up, seeing a battle-scarred warden with one dangling arm swing his weapon down on the cataphractii's head. It takes two more swings before the last Colchisian warrior was dead.
"Re...port." Qruze's usually quiet voice finds a rasping edge as he's racked with a cough mingled with a deep-seated laugh. A sound rarely expressed to the galaxy.
"Bridge secured, Captain Qruze, sir." the warden's booming reply echoes in the towering blood soaked cavern of the ship's bridge.
Qruze rises and tries to free the blade from the terminator's guts, but it was stuck. Even with a foot on its chest for leverage, the blade remains lodged in the terminator plate. He leaves it jutting from the warrior's stomach like a mast, and rises up over his quarry. "Anyone alive?" A few warbles from here and there were all that could be heard from a crew of almost three-hundred. "Helm control?" The Spirit was still listing.
With no immediate response, the captain stands up straight and looks over the shattered, corpse-strewn wasteland before calling, "All bridge crew, report." Two of the three remaining armsmen hustle towards the astartes while a third tries to carry out some form of triage on his still screaming compatriot.
From a distant niche, he sees movement. Qruze's hand did reach instinctively for a bolt pistol that wasn't there, but he notices a shaking junior officer clambering up from a pit. She wasn't particularly tall, or noteworthy in any respect beyond being 'alive'. The astartes sharply bobs his head and she halts. "Helm?" Qruze asks and gets a sharp bob of his head. There wasn't the need to mention the unsightly wet patch on her uniform or her erratic breathing. "Good." he points the two armsmen and says, "You two, keep her safe at all costs. Bring us out of this death role, chief helmsman."
Qruze keeps pacing, looking for Word Bearer trickery or more crew alive among the slaughterhouse. But once again there was a captain on the bridge, bearing the battered but recognizable livery of a Luna Wolf. "Very good."
Out the armourglass bridge window the Cthonic Dawn rolls to port and angles its bridge away from them. The massive galleass was descending, trying to run under the Vengeful Spirit's guns and below the horizon. It was too slow, too close, and far too late for a ship that size, but only after a moment did he catch a glimpse of silver glint past the warship. It heads towards another vessel already breaking formation and turning away from them with engines flaring blue hot plasma.
"Comms." Qruze calls, his typically soft voice getting a warbled unintelligible response. But a glance across the bridge saw two other officers carefully emerge from behind a astrological monitoring console. "Get to your position, find out what's happened in the rest of the ship. He lets out a ragged sigh and turns to carefully edge towards the pit where the Word Bearer was. Peeking over the edge with bolter upraised, the Word Bearer was ripped open and still, but had crushed another crewmen beneath his armored bulk.
"This is a disaster." Qruze whispers, hoping it didn't carry. But he knew few aboard would think anything but that once the final bill was tallied.