I do not own the Warhammer 40000 universe nor any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.
Azarok Sector – Berrenos System
744.M32
In the dim light of the daemonship Blade of Terror's bridge, the obsidian teeth of Morkoth gleamed as the fleetmaster of the Unbound Host smiled. He had not stopped smiling since the Shiva's Wrath had fired, destroying the outermost planet of the system and throwing the carefully ordered formation of the Imperial fleet into disarray.
That smile was making the bridge officers who had not already been absorbed into the Blade of Terror very nervous. Life aboard the daemonship was hard and often short, especially for mortals. There were things roaming the lower decks born of the infernal presence that infested every piece of the ship that had once been called the Blade of Terra. The slaves who packed the vessel were as much crew as they were food for the daemonship, with only those who proved of use allowed a degree of protection. The bridge officers were among those worthy few, but even they knew that the Blade could turn on them and devour them at any moment should Morkoth withdraw his protection.
Morkoth had been the first to actually tame the daemonship since it had been transformed into its current form, at the dawn of the conquest of the Wailing Storm. Members of the crew who had his favor were more or less safe from the ship's hunger, but the Unbound fleetmaster was fond of removing that favor as a way of punishing those who failed him or didn't show him the proper respect – or, sometimes, just because it amused him. Typically, such rebukes only lasted for a single standard day : if the crew member managed to survive that long, then he or she had clearly proven that they could still be of use. It was rare, but it had happened before, and except for one unfortunate case all of these still worked on the bridge to this day.
Since assuming command of the Blade of Terror, Morkoth had rarely smiled, and his smile had always meant someone else either was suffering, or was about to. Most of the time, it had been the enemies of the warband that had suffered, but the crew had still learned to dread the sight. So long as they did not let their fear affect their performance, neither Morkoth nor the Blade cared. In fact, the daemonship seemed to relish the fear of the crew, savouring it like a mortal man might an appetizer, something to whet his appetite before the true meal began.
Something which had once been an hololithic projector, but was now a giant, translucent orb filled with something the hereteks refused to name displayed the situation in the Berrenos system. Sparks of light – blue for the enemy, red for Morkoth's forces – marked the position of the ships of the two fleets. Around Morkoth's command throne, screens showed more detailed information about the enemy fleet, gleaned from the auspexes of the Blade of Terror that were linked to the handful of auspex officers who had been sacrificed to their posts, forever merged to their stations.
Morkoth absorbed the flow of strategic data with a practiced eye. After several hours of confusion and desperate manoeuvres, the Imperial fleet was pulling itself free of the asteroid field created by the destruction of Berrenos V. The last stragglers of the Unkindness were abandoning pursuit and retreating to the ruins of the frozen world, digging into the larger chunks of the world to lay to rest, their bloodlust sated for now.
Between the Unkindness's assault and the asteroids, the auspexes had registered nine enemy ships destroyed in the ambush, with many more suffering various degrees of damage. Only the lesser crafts had been destroyed – escort ships and troop carriers. But the ambush had still fulfilled its purpose. The Imperial fighter wings had been crippled, and the Imperial fleet would face Morkoth's armada with its formation disturbed and its void shields already strained by the asteroid field.
And there was more to it than that. The loss of a few lesser ships, the culling of their fighter wings, the damage to shields and hulls – those were important, but were not enough on their own for the importance Morkoth had placed upon the Shiva's Wrath succeeding in its mission.
Morkoth could sense it, piece it together from a hundred scattered bits of information. He could hear it in snippets of vox-transmission that were now reaching the armada and decrypted by the Blade's daemon-touched cogitators, in the way the enemy ships moved.
The Imperials were rattled, their confidence shaken by the awesome might their foe had displayed. They had come to make war upon those with the power to destroy worlds. The crew of these ships, who had been trained to fight in battles of cold calculation where every decision stretched across minutes or even hours, where every attack could be seen coming, had been struck by surprise and overwhelming force. The Unbound could almost taste their fear.
It was his heritage, he supposed. While many Unbound neither knew nor cared from where the gene-seed that had transformed them had come, Morkoth had never needed to wonder. From the color of his eyes to the memories running through his blood and his own temper, all had always pointed to him belonging to the gene-line of the Eighth Legion. Such things hardly mattered among the Forsaken Sons, and even less so among the Unbound, whose connection to the old Legions was even more tenuous than those of their Legionary brethren. But it still affected them.
Not all aboard the enemy ships would be afraid, of course. Morkoth could see the outlines of Space Marine vessels, bearing the markings of Chapters he did not recognize from his implanted memories. The Astartes aboard would not be rattled by the destruction of Berrenos V. Their mortal crew, though ? That was another matter entirely.
"What news from Julius ?" Morkoth asked. The Shiva's Wrath had been silent since firing.
"Lord Julius reports that the damage to the Shiva's Wrath falls within the expected limits, sir," answered the same vox-officer who had given the Wrath its order to fire. "It won't be able to fight anytime soon – months of repair, according to Lord Julius."
Morkoth nodded. That was what they had expected. "Very well. Tell Julius to try to make it look like the Shiva's Wrath is still able to fire if he can. The mere threat of another shot could serve us well."
"Yes, lord."
It was doubtful Julius would be able to do what Morkoth asked of him, but you never knew. Perhaps Julius would surprise him. In truth, he had taken the Shiva's Wrath out of his plans the moment it had successfully fired. Even that much had been a gamble – Morkoth had seen the schematics of the Wrath that the hereteks had managed to sketch, and though he was not particularly versed in the Mechanicum's arts, even he had recognized how unstable the entire thing was. But it had worked, and given them the first blood in the coming void battle.
It was one advantage, and they would need it. They had been contacted by the forces on the surface moments ago : apparently, Jereb's gambit to drown the entire system into a Warp Storm had failed, the False Daemon slain by agents of the Imperium that had made it past the Black Temple's defenses. While Morkoth didn't mourn the creature's destruction, the notion that the Imperials had somehow managed to slip by his fleet without him noticing was … unsettling.
"Estimated time until we reach weapon range ?" he asked another menial. He already knew the answer, of course, but it couldn't hurt to double-check his own calculations.
"Seventeen minutes and fifty-four seconds," replied the man immediately.
Off by three seconds. Not too bad, he thought. We will see who was right soon enough.
The fleetmaster of the Unbound settled back into his command throne, watching as the time of carnage drew closer. His smile grew a little wider.
"Let the game begin," he whispered.
The names of lost ships passed before the eyes of Lady Admiral Rebecca Del Baranthir, each accompanied by the estimated numbers of crew and passengers that hadn't been rescued from the wrecks. Nine ships in total. Tens of thousands of crew lost, with only a fraction saved from the void. There may be more, hanging in escape pods and crippled gunships, but Rebecca couldn't let any ship hang back in the asteroid field to recover them – not when the surviving monsters could return.
This wasn't a crippling blow, not for a fleet of that size, but still one that had been dealt without them being able to inflict any damage in exchange – except for the cybernetic abominations the fighter wings had managed to destroy, and that was not an acceptable trade. Since arriving in the system, they had been dancing on the heretics' tune, playing directly into their hands.
They will pay for this, she vowed silently to herself, echoing the oaths that had already been sworn over the vox. By the Emperor, they will pay.
The Perseus's shields and guns had protected her from the asteroids, but her fighter wings had been decimated by the cybernetic abominations. Only a scant few Interceptors had made it back to the hangar bays, not nearly enough to be deployed again in this conflict.
"Auspexes," she called out, "what's the status on that superweapon ?"
"The power levels are fluctuating wildly," responded a servitor that spoke for the brain in jar that was the highest-ranking Mechanicus representative on the bridge. "And we are getting signs of damage across the entire structure. It is our belief that the hereteks' vile blasphemy will not be able to fire again without months of repairs even if it manages to avoid self-destructing in the coming hours as a result of the Omnissiah's wrath for their heresy."
"Your calculations better be correct, magos. Fleet report ?" she asked, turning to her first lieutenant.
The man was, for all intents and purposes, the true captain of the Perseus, commanding the ship while she focused on her responsibilities as Admiral. But it was Navy protocol that an Admiral be in command of a vessel, even if that position was largely ceremonial until things had gotten really, really wrong for the fleet – in which case Rebecca wasn't certain the Admiral should still be in charge anyway. Regardless of her personal opinion, First Lieutenant Nero Lurius was one of the finest Navy officers she had ever had under her command, and he was more than up to the task of directing the enormous battleship.
"Morale across the fleet has taken a hit, ma'am, no two ways about it," he replied without missing a beat. "The destruction of Berrenos V has shaken the crews, and the techno-horrors reinforced that. Executions and speeches are doing the job, though – not a single mutiny reported across the armada, and performance levels are expected to return to normal for all ships within three point seven minutes, long before we reach the edge of the enemy's fire envelopes."
"With the Ordos' presence in that fleet, even the ratlings wouldn't be that stupid," the Lady Admiral scowled.
Proving once and for all that the God-Emperor not only listened to His servants, but also had a wicked sense of humor, the entrance of the bridge opened at that exact moment, and the guards on station saluted as Inquisitor Galloreene briskly walked in. Even the elite troopers were nervous at the presence of an Inquisitor, something Rebecca could hardly blame them for. Inquisitors were figures of dread for all within the Imperium : to not fear them was perhaps the greatest proof of disloyalty, heresy and stupidity conceivable.
Not that Inquisitor Galloreene wouldn't have been an intimidating sight even without the crimson rosette hanging from her neck. It was whispered behind her back that she could make children cry and heretics scream at the sight of her, and Rebecca wasn't willing to dismiss the claim out of hand. She was tall, made taller by the suit of power armor she wore – Rebecca had not seen her without it since she had boarded the Perseus as representative of the Ordos' involvement in the retribution effort. Her skin was the color of night, and though her face was covered in scars she either had avoided wounds requiring augmetics or those she had were so lifelike Rebecca couldn't spot the difference. An inactive power mace hung from her waist on her right, an ornate bolt pistol on her left, and a trio of servo-skulls hovered around her like gruesome cherubims, each with a symbol emblazoned upon its forehead that, according to rumors, represented the sin for which the Inquisitor had executed their former owners.
"I have received word from the planet," said the Inquisitor without preamble, coming to stand next to the Admiral's command throne. "Our enemies' scheme there has been thwarted."
"Thank you for sharing this information with me, Inquisitor." She had known the heretics were doing something on the system's sole inhabited world – the Inquisitor had wanted her to be ready to react at once if whatever the something was succeeded. But she hadn't been told any details.
Given the many horrors that had been included in her briefing before the beginning of the campaign, she shuddered to imagine what it was the Inquisitor had judged laid beyond her clearance level. She was glad that particular threat had been adverted, though she did wonder how the Inquisition had managed to deploy forces on Berrenos III already, with the heretics' fleet in the way.
"I didn't want you to be distracted, Lady Admiral. I expect you to do swift work of these heretics, so that we can liberate this system and continue our work in the rest of the Sector."
"Battle will begin soon," she replied. "It will be a tough fight, I won't deny it, but by the Emperor's grace we shall prevail."
"Indeed we shall. There is another matter," the Inquisitor continued. Under my authority, my men have taken custody of the pilots who survived the engagement. They have nothing to fear from us at this time," the Inquisitor added, and Rebecca was grateful of the courtesy. "But we need to know every detail about that particular brand of heresy they faced."
"I understand," replied the Lady Admiral, and truly she did. She just hoped that whatever the Inquisitor's servants discovered didn't result in the execution of what remained of the 727th Fighter Wing. No sign of corruption had been reported when the few fighters had made it back to the landing bays, but that didn't mean the pilots were in the clear. Hopefully the Inquisitor wouldn't just order them all purged just to be safe …
Rebecca forced her thoughts away from such a dangerous course and back to the matter at hand. Slowly, the fleet was coming back together, reforming as the last ships emerged from the asteroid field. The remaining twenty-one troop carriers were stationed at the back of the formation, guarded by a generous portion of the fleet's escorts – just in case the cyborgs followed to strike them from behind. The vessels of the Red Hunters and the Purple Stars were in the lead, designed by the Mechanicus to move more swiftly than their Navy counterparts in exchange for diminished firepower. Rebecca would always prefer the Imperial Navy's designs, but she still had to admit that the Space Marines ships were a magnificent sight.
The two Chapters had brought a total of eight ships, a not inconsiderable portion of their fighting strength. The Rend Hunters' colors were on display on a battle-barge, a strike cruiser, and three escort ships, while the Purple Stars had three strike cruisers of their own, their escorts having been destroyed in the campaign they had been fighting before the call to Azarok.
Behind the Space Marines came the bulk of the armada. Over a quarter of Battlefleet Ekontyr was present, supplemented by the Rogue Trader vessels that some Inquisitors had commandeered prior to the muster. If not for the fact that every such vessel counted an Inquisitorial presence aboard, Rebecca wouldn't have been willing to rely upon the mettle of these independent captains : they were famous for putting profit above duty, and in a war such as this one that made for poor allies.
The Adeptus Mechanicus' contribution was glaring by its absence. The disciples of the Omnissiah had refused to send forces along the first wave, citing the ancient treaties of mutual alliances that bound them to the forge-worlds of the Zethirion system. Rebecca would have thought such treaties meant that the cogboys had to send reinforcements, but apparently the interpretation of the arch-magi of Ekontyr was that they had to save their strength, and only send their ships and armies once passage to Azarok had been secured by the rest of the Imperium. She had been given to understand that there had been words exchanged between the arch-magi and the Imperial powers-that-be behind the swift gathering of the armada, but they had remained inflexible.
Not that the Adeptus Mechanicus would be alone in joining the war for Azarok later. The rest of Battlefleet Ekontyr was already mobilizing when they had left, gathering all but the barest contingent necessary to keep the Ekontyr Sector safe while the rest of the fleet went to liberate its neighbour from the horrors of Chaos.
While the Imperial armada was reassuming its formation, the enemy host was coming at them like an undisciplined horde. Over two hundred ships sailed ahead of the foe's cruisers, a fleet of converted civilian ships. Their reactors had clearly been tempered with, and strange weapons had been installed on their hulks. According to the tech-priests, these modifications left almost no power for the void shields of these ships, some of which were little more than gargantuan troop transports who had discharged their cargo upon Berrenos III before being turned against the Imperial fleet.
I wonder if those heretics on Berrenos realize that their only way off that world is being sent out to die ? Rebecca mused. Her hands tightened around the armrests of her command throne as she thought that they likely wouldn't care even if they did. The Lady Admiral had faced the cultists of the Ruinous Powers before, and though the raiders she had obliterated had been insignificant compared to the storm of malice that had engulfed Azarok, they had displayed a complete lack of concern for their lives that had chilled the then-captain.
"They outnumber us four to one, Lady Admiral," noted Nero. For all the tension in his voice, the first lieutenant could as well have been talking about the last report from the tech-priests about the amount of blessed screws they still had in their inventory. Rebecca smiled, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. No matter how nervous she may be, she had to keep it hidden from the rest of the crew. Gossip spread faster than astropathic communication, and if she gave any hint of fear the already shaky morale of the fleet would crumble.
"Then maybe these degenerate will offer us a challenge after all," she answered, her words echoing across the bridge. Spines straightened, and resolve filled those who had been, if not fearful, then nervous.
"Six minutes to contact," called out one of the bridge servitors in its monotone voice.
"Get me a link to the entire fleet," she commanded, and despite the ongoing repairs and the frantic work to put the fleet into a passable formation it only took a few seconds for her will to be done.
"This is Lady Admiral Del Baranthir, speaking to the Retribution Fleet of the Ekontyr Sector. Before us is arrayed the might of the Archenemy, who seeks to steal what belongs to Him on Earth. Through sorcery and heresy they have sought to break us, because they know, in their black hearts, that they cannot hope to defeat us in honest, open battle. But their petty tricks will not save them, for all the might they wield is as nothing compared to the wrath of the God-Emperor !"
She paused.
"You may fire when ready," she added. "And know that the Emperor smile upon us, for today we do His work."
"Oh Great Ones, we beseech you, hear our prayer !"
The Doomborn had once been a grain-barge, transporting the production of agri-worlds to the other planets of the Azarok Sector that required a constant import of foodstuffs to survive. It had been captured by the Unbound Host on their way to Berrenos, its crew slaughtered by a boarding party of Unbound and replaced with the cultists who now occupied it. Now it sailed directly into the teeth of the Imperial armada, even as many other such ships around it burned and died, destroyed by the methodical fire of the Imperial Navy and its allies.
"Oh Lords of the Dark, Oh Blessed Ones, though we are but maggots in Your eyes, we implore you to grant us Your blessing."
Only one voice rose on the Doomborn's bridge, for all others had been silenced long ago. The cultists of the Redeemed ritually severed their own tongues as part of their initiation, so that the only words spoken were those exalting the Gods. The twenty-three skeleton crew on the bridge communicated with hand signals and through the machines of their station instead. Thankfully, there had never been a need for complex manoeuvres, not that the largely untrained cultists could have pulled those off even had they been able to speak.
"Though we are unworthy of even the smallest speck of Your attention, by fire do we make holy war upon Your enemies, the slaves of the Corpse-God."
The speaker was the sole priest of the Redeemed aboard the Doomborn, the only one of them who had been allowed to keep his tongue so that he may speak the words of dedication and sacrifice. He stood where the captain's chair had once been, long since removed along with the bloody remains of its last occupant. Like all of the Redeemed, he had been part of the Imperial Navy force that had first met the Black Crusade at Silberstadt. After being taken prisoner, he had had his eyes opened by the dark priests among the Forsaken Sons, made to witness a fraction of the Primordial Truth. Even that limited revelation had been enough to drive him mad, and the priests had rebuilt his shattered psyche into something like theirs. They had seen something in him, some glimmer of worthiness, and so he had been allowed to keep his tongue and learn the sacred hymns and litanies. He had lost everything else, including the memory of his name.
"We commend our souls to You, as all must be in the end. We offer You our blood, our toil, and ask only that You accept this paltry sacrifice to Your infinite glory."
There were hundreds of Redeemed scattered across the fleet, with even more among the other forces of the Black Crusade. The Forsaken Sons had left Silberstadt a graveyard, but there had been plenty of flesh to plunder along with the ships seized by Chaos Marines' boarding parties. Of the thousands who had been taken then, less than a tenth had been assigned to the Unbound Host, who did not lack in mortal fodder. Blessed Karalet, the Lord of Ash, had refined the process of breaking a mortal's will to an art form, and shared his teachings with those of the Forsaken Sons who were of similar inclination before departing to attend his own duties. What had been used on the Redeemed was as crude as it was cruel, and had left only part of their former skills intact, but that was enough for the Doomborn's purpose.
"By this fire, we give ourselves onto You, that our miserable lives may find purpose in Your cause."
Along with hundreds of converted civilian vessels, the Doomborn was sailing ahead of the Unbound Host's real fleet. Its engines were burning hot, too hot, driven into overdrive by Dark Mechanicum modifications and the sacrifice of thirteen souls to the plasma reactor. The sacrifices had not been Redeemed : they had been captives taken from Berrenos III and dragged in chains across the ships of the first wave for that exact purpose. On dozens of vessels, thousands had been bled over engines pulsating with Warp-light, feeding their lives and souls to the infernal principles by which they operated. Now these engines were providing one final burst of acceleration, closing the distance between them and the enemy even as the metal bones of the ships cracked and bent, unable to withstand the forces coursing through them.
"Let the will of the Gods be done."
The holds of the Doomborn, filled with explosives where they had once contained grain, detonated with the strength of a nova-cannon's shell. The shields of the three Imperial vessels caught in the blast buckled and strained before bursting.
Dozens of other ships also exploded, their crews consumed in one final tribute to the Ruinous Powers. For the Dark Gods were creatures of war one and all, and nowhere were they more honored by their followers' offerings than when those took place on the battlefield. The vanguard of the Imperial fleet was crippled, even though no ship was outright destroyed. With their shields overloaded, their power cores suffered from catastrophic feedback, leaving them twisting impotently in the void as the second wave of the Chaos fleet slipped between them.
Rebecca swore silently as she saw the first enemy ships detonate, immediately followed by dozens more, punching holes inside her formation by disabling her vanguard. She had thought the weapons slapped on the hulls of the enemy first wave were the heretics' attempt at getting the most use out of captured civilian vessels, and doubtlessly they had also been that. But precisely because these additions had been unstable piles of blasphemous technology, they must have been very easy to convert into giant bombs.
Fire ships, she thought. The entire first wave was made up of fire ships.
It was … it was insanity. Rebecca had encountered fire ships before, but those had been captured merchant vessels, used by pirates to bait Imperial patrols and cripple them before striking from ambush. The enemy had sacrificed over a hundred ships and their crew to this suicide tactic, and due to the enormous distances of space combat, they hadn't destroyed a single one of hers in exchange – only created an opening that the other ships could take advantage of.
If an Imperial Admiral had used tactics like these, the Commissars would have had him executed before the hour was done for wasting the lives of the Emperor's servants and, more importantly, the ships of His Navy. But that's the thing, isn't it ? We aren't facing Imperials, or even raiders and pirates. She had thought, however subconsciously, that the enemy would behave sensibly. That they would seek to husband their forces in preparation for the long and bloody war that would consume the Azarok Sector, for the next wave of Imperial retribution that even now gathered in the rest of the Segmentum.
She had underestimated the depths to which the Archenemy was willing to sink, the sacrifices it was willing to make for immediate gain, and it might cost them the entire first wave of the reclamation Crusade.
"Get me the damage on the ships caught in the blast radius," she ordered, "and an estimation of how soon they will be back online."
"On it, ma'am," answered Nero, calm and professional as ever. The two of them had spoken loudly enough to be heard on the entire bridge, and their exchange was like a whip to the back of the shocked bridge crew. Within moments, a list of compiled auspex reports began to flow on her command station. This ... this wasn't good. The Space Marines had been crippled, left to float in the void with their shields down and their engines overloaded. Already the second wave of the foe was passing between them, aimed straight at the second line of the Imperial fleet.
"Lady Admiral," came the voice from her side. "A moment, if you please."
She turned toward the Inquisitor, rising an eyebrow to convey that now was not the time to disturb her without outright saying it. Galloreene looked just as grim as she had before, but, Rebecca noticed, she did not appear surprised by this sudden turn of events.
"I understand that you may be troubled by this recent developpment," she said, an understatement if there ever was one. Then, to Rebecca's shock, the woman actually smiled. "But keep faith. Our situation is not as dire as it may seem. The God-Emperor watches over us, and in this instance, He intervened more directly than He typically does."
Rebecca looked at the Inquisitor, someone she knew could have her killed at any moment if she judged it either necessary or deserved. Her face remained neutral, while her thoughts spinned furiously. She was Lady Admiral of the fleet, and while there were others in the gathered armada whose positions offered them greater influence in the Imperium (such as the Chapter Masters of the Space Marines, or the Generals of the Imperial Guard Regiments in the transports), this was a void battle, and in those things her authority should be unquestioned.
Yet she also knew that there were aspects of this war she did not know, and shouldn't know. The speed of this fleet's gathering, the presence of two Space Marine Chapters and so many Inquisitors, had been proof enough of that.
So she didn't press and ask the Inquisitor what she knew, for that path led to either refusal, punishment, or knowledge she was confident she was better without.
"What can you tell me ?" she said instead, softly, just as Galloreene had, so that none others could hear them over the dim of the bridge's activity.
"The Archenemy will seek to board us," replied the Inquisitor, "to bring the fullness of their horrendous strength to bear against us, because they know they cannot defeat you in a clash of ships. We both knew this would be their intent, and you sought to prevent it by sending the Astartes forward, as was your duty. But me and mine ?"
She smiled again, and Rebecca shivered.
"We knew that boarding actions were inevitable. And so we took precautions."
If the Inquisitor had intended that to be reassuring, Rebecca thought, she hadn't quite succeeded.
Morkoth's smile widened as he saw the void lit up with the detonation of his first, sacrificial wave. Many of the fire ships had been destroyed before reaching their appointed positions, as he had known they would, and the damage those who had hadn't been enough to destroy any enemy ships. But it didn't matter. The path was open, and those ships who had been caught in his trap were drifting in the void, defenceless.
"All ships : full speed ahead," he commanded. "On my signal, unleash the first wave of torpedoes, with focus on cruiser-class ships and above. Balance of Virtue, take your pack and break through their lines, get to their transports and gut them. Negator, Tiarelion, follow the flagship and keep the Navy's second line occupied."
He did not bother giving orders to the rest of the chaff. Now that blood and fire had been spilled, the madmen and cultists they had put inside them would not be in any state to follow a coherent strategy. That was fine : their sole purpose was to keep the enemy guns occupied, and inflict as many deaths of a thousand cuts as possible with their Dark Mechanicum weapons.
The Chaos fleet rushed forward, lances blazing as the cruisers opened fire on vulnerable foes. Like a knife to the gut after punching an opponent into the head to stun him, the ships of the Forsaken Sons had pierced the Imperial formation, and unleashed the full wrath of their armaments.
One by one, the stressed void-shields of Imperial ships collapsed, and their point defenses were overwhelmed as wave after wave of torpedoes slammed into their hulls. Some were destroyed outright, as a lucky shot found a munition depot, or simply because too many shallow cuts could still kill even a leviathan of the void.
It would be soon, Morkoth could feel it. That moment when they would have to send their boarding parties in order to reach their targets before the first shields were raised again. The more he delayed, the more damage the enemy ships took and the more boarding parties would make it without being blasted apart, but if he waited too long, they would lose everything.
Half through instinct, half through stolen memories, and with a generous helping of the Blade's shared infernal senses, the fleetmaster of the Unbound sensed the moment arrive, and gave the order.
"Now," he growled. "All forces, mark your targets and launch boarding actions. Make the slaves of the Corpse-God bleed ! For the Awakened One and the Unbound Host, break them !"
From the armada of the Unbound Host, hundreds of drop-pods, boarding torpedoes and gunships burst forth, carrying within them the monsters that had been forged in the crucible of the Wailing Storm and their slaves. On every Imperial ships, vox-speakers disgorged the sound of blood oaths and the screams of the damned before their officers shut them down.
Still some of the carriers were destroyed, the lives of those within snuffed out before they had time to realize their doom. Dozens of Unbound and hundreds of slaves perished before having spilled a single drop of Imperial blood. But many, many more reached their prey, as their transports smashed through hull-plates or crash-landed into open bays amidst the remnants of the Imperial armada's fighter wings.
From boarding torpedoes and ramshackle gunships emerged the progeny of the Fleshmasters, drunk on the promise of slaughter to come, and on the other side of an ever-thinning veil, vast and monstrous Powers laughed.
"Prepare to repel boarders."
To the crew of the Golden Ember, these four words heralded the coming of death. Since being commandeered by the Inquisition to join the retribution fleet bound for the Azarok Sector, the thousands of lowly menials dwelling in the underdecks of the Rogue Trader vessel had lived in fear of that moment. Ship enforcers rarely went this far from the bridge, guns and engineering decks, and rumors about what they would face in Azarok had run unchecked. When word had filtered down that the enemy had destroyed a world in a single blow, it had been like pouring promethium on an open flame. Only the fear of the Inquisitor aboard had kept them from rioting.
Instead, they had bunkered down into makeshift shelters, sealing heavy doors behind them and praying for safety. The Household troops sworn to the Berienbach line, whose members had captained the Ember since the Scouring, would not protect them. They were focused on defending the important areas of the ship, not the redundant systems and the masses crewing them.
This went against the instructions that had been sent to the Golden Ember : as the ship fumbled her way out of the asteroid field, several messages had been sent telling her ship master to send troops to the lower decks. Unfortunately, the Golden Ember's vox-master was dead, his brain having fried when an unlucky blow to the hull had shattered the ship's vox-array and sent feedback throughout the entire system. But since these new orders hadn't included any updates regarding the Ember's positioning in the Imperial armada, fleet command hadn't noticed anything wrong – it wasn't like the Rogue Trader vessel was the only one who had been unable to respond to the hails.
A small thing, but one that would see the Golden Ember and every single one of the thirty-thousand souls aboard her doomed.
Six projectiles hit the belly of the Golden Ember. Crafted in great numbers by the Dark Mechanicum, these were cheap, single-use torpedoes with a metal-devouring construct at the tip to dig their way through the hull of enemy vessels. From them emerged the Flayed Ones, Unbound for whom the gene-forging process had gone horribly wrong – but not quite wrong enough to warrant the mercy of a quick execution.
As their name indicated, the Flayed were skinless. Plates of metal had been hammered over their raw, bulging muscles – there was no way for them to wear standard power armor over their deformities – and they had been implanted with injectors whose drugs helped keep their perpetual torment manageable. Not that it did much for their sanity : the Flayed were all completely insane, the result of another corner too many cut by the Fleshmaster who had directed their Ascension. They were consumed by a desire to inflict their pain upon their surroundings, which made them a threat to any who did not share their condition. Controlling them in battle was a fool's errand.
They could, however, be aimed at the enemy and let loose with a set of cursed weapons in their hands, which was what Morkoth had done. Twenty-nine Flayed emerged from the wreckage, holding weapons within which the Coven had bound lesser daemons of Khorne, and began to hunt. The Neverborn within their blades guided them toward the crew's hiding places, and the daemon weapons cut through the reinforced doors in moments, letting the monsters in among the horrified mortals.
Blood and terror flowed, and the bound daemons drank deep from both, until – as expected by the Flayed's masters – their infernal power eroded the shoddy wards that had kept them contained. The Neverborn broke free, empowered by the slaughter of thousands, and made bodies for themselves out of the dead mortals and the Flayed who had wielded them. Then they turned on each other, devouring one another's power and stolen flesh, until only one remained, swollen far beyond its humble origins – but still hungering for more, always more, as was ever the wont of the Neverborn.
The first glimpse that the Ember's household troops caught of the enemy was enough to turn half of them insane. A monstrosity of bone, blood and skinless flesh rose from the lower decks, destroying all in its ways, drawn to the bridge whether by the promise of more souls to send to Khorne or by some lingering instinct engraved in the genetic memory of the Flayed it had consumed. Those who retained their wits fired ineffectively at the abomination, before being dragged by thorny tentacles into mouths filled with rows upon rows of human teeth.
Kael Berienbach, current holder of his bloodline's Warrant of Trade, was on the bridge when it was breached. It had been many years since the Rogue Trader had last taken part in a fight himself – the days of his youth were long since spent. But he still met the horror with sword and pistol in hand, though it availed him nothing before he was torn to pieces and devoured by the abomination.
Mercifully, the horror of the Golden Ember's crew ended before the daemon could claim the bridge and seize control over the entire ship, turning the venerable vessel into a brand new daemonship. As the screams of the crew spread across the Warp, orders were sent to the ships surrounding the Rogue Trader vessel, and it was blasted to pieces – and the pieces fired upon again and again, until nothing was left but molten slag, to prevent any trace of the corruption from remaining. But though the worst had been adverted, the ship had still been lost; the balance still shifted ever so slightly in the heretics' favor.
Brother Karius of the Red Hunters' Third Company had wondered why he was here, on the bridge of the battleship Bellerophon.
Not "here" in the Azarok Sector, of course. The officers of the Chapter had made sure to share the intelligence they had received on the fallen Sector's fate with the rank-and-file. And he knew why they were in the Berrenos System too : the overly-simplified star maps were clear that this was the only direct path between the Ekontyr and Azarok Sector. Once this system was claimed and the taint of the heretics purged with bolter and blade, the next wave of the reclamation forces would be able to use the several Warp routes that led from Berrenos deeper into Azarok. Taking this galactic choke point would be hard and bloody work, but there was honor in doing this, in being the first into the breach against so despicable a foe. The Archenemy had made Azarok bleed, and for that sin the Red Hunters would visit upon them the Emperor's judgement. Of this, there was no question.
No, instead Karius had wondered why he was aboard the Bellerophon, standing on her bridge as her officers made war with enemies tens of thousands of kilometers distant. He had thought that he should be aboard his Company's strike cruiser, the Banner of Fury, preparing to bring the fight to the enemies of the Golden Throne. Indeed, such had been his squad's initial assignment. But as the fleet had pulled itself out of the Archenemy's planet-shattering trap, new orders had arrived from the Captain of the Third Company. Like half the Company, Karius and his squad had been redeployed, their transport taking them to the Bellerophon while the rest of the fleet was still struggling to return in formation. By order of the Captain, half the squad was to go to the bridge and the other to the enginarium, in order to lend their aid to the battleship's defense.
He had obeyed, of course, for that was what a Space Marine did. But the thought that while he stood guard his brothers would fight in the very teeth of the foe sat ill with him. The Bellerophon was a leviathan of a ship, her armaments designed to unleash death from afar, not to slug it out with the enemy in what passed for close-quarters in space engagements. There would be no boarding action launched from here, and from the formation he could see on the screens it was highly unlikely the enemy would break through the battleship's escorts and deploy boarders of their own.
His squad's deployment had felt like a waste. But his Captain would not have relinquished his warriors without cause : even as Karius and his brothers moved out of the Banner of Fury, so too had half the Company, sent piecemeal to other vessels across the fleet. And so Karius had remained silent, and wondered what it was he had missed.
Now, with his blade clashing against the shrieking chain-axe wielded by a grotesque parody of a Space Marine, he didn't need to wonder any more.
The entire first line of the armada had been crippled by the detonation of the fire ships. Karius had seen it happen on the Bellerophon's auspex screens, watching in cold horror as the five ships his Chapter had brought to the crusade were knocked out, their shields overloaded by the series of self-detonations. The Chaos cruisers had sailed right past them, and what seemed to be their flagship – an abomination that was as much daemon as it was metal – had unleashed its weapons upon the Bellerophon, crippling her shields before letting loose a tide of boarding torpedoes that had slammed into her hull and disgorged their lethal cargo into her belly.
The Imperial Navy enforcers had done their best to stop the boarders, assisted by the soldiers of the Jerusian 158th Regiment who had been brought to Azarok aboard the battleship. By all accounts, the mortals had fought well, but some of the foe had still torn through them and made it to the bridge – where they had found Karius and his half-squad waiting for them.
The warrior in front of Karius resembled a Space Marine in the same way a Mechanicus servitor resembled a man. It wore a suit of black power armor that left its arms bare, the muscles bulging in unnatural fashion under the scarred and branded skin. It was covered in the blood of those he had slain to come here, but Karius could see older stains beneath the fresh ones.
"What," growled the Red Hunter as he strained against the Chaos Marine's monstrous strength, "are you ?"
"Your replacements," it rasped back through its horned helmet's vox-grill. "Mankind's new masters. The Unbound !"
"There is only one Master of Mankind," Karius said between gritted teeth. "And in His name, you will die here this day !"
It laughed at him, the sound broken and deranged, and kicked him in the leg. His balance broken, Karius stumbled, but before the Chaos Marine could take advantage he bent down, leaning into the fall as he came to one knee while letting go of his sword with one hand. His knee hit the deck and the chain-axe bit into his armor, but he had turned the blow aside just enough that it found his shoulder instead of his skull, and with not enough strength to sever the appendage.
Then, with his free hand, he drew his bolt pistol and rammed it into the heretic's chin before pulling the trigger, turning its head into red mist. With a grunt, Karius pushed himself back up, sending the headless corpse tumbling down with a push, tearing the chain-axe out of his shoulder as he did so. The roving teeth had reached his flesh, but the limb was still functional. Good. It wouldn't do to be taken out of the fight before the actual battle for Berrenos had even begun.
Silence was falling on the bridge as the last of the Chaos Marines was being put down. The Red Hunters had managed to keep the bridge crew safe, but more than two-thirds of the bridge human security troops had perished, and all of Karius' brothers bore some wounds.
"This is Karius," he called out over the vox. "Bridge is secure."
"This is David," came the reply from the squad's Sergeant. "Enginarium is secure."
Karius allowed himself a breath of relief. With the main thrusts of the enemy defeated, the Bellerophon was safe for the time being, though there was still work to be done purging the remains of the foe that had fled. Still, he wondered. How had the Captain known to send him and his squad here, on that particular ship ? If they had not been here, these "Unbound" would have torn through the bridge and likely the enginarium as well, either destroying the Bellerophon or, worse, turning her against the rest of the fleet.
Unknown to Brother Karius, the same scene was being repeated across several ships of the Imperial armada, as warriors of the Red Hunters and Purple Stars who had been removed from their Chapters' vessels fought Unbound boarders.
No longer smiling, Morkoth clicked his tongue in displeasure, and the Blade of Terror shuddered in sympathy. Though the void battle was still unfolding, its conclusion was already written for those who knew how to look.
Not enough of the boarding parties had succeeded to disrupt the Imperials' formation. Reports from those Unbound disciplined enough to send information up the chain of command had revealed Space Marines had been deployed on several targets. Given that those had been chosen at the last moment, there was only one possible cause for their presence : sorcery. Somehow, the Imperials had known those ships would be boarded, and sacrificed the deployment of these Space Marines as boarders of their own to defend their vessels instead. Not all boarded ships had been reinforced by the Angels of Death, but even on the others there was more resistance than anticipated.
From the beginning, Morkoth had known the only way to win this battle had been to break the enemy formation – to shatter their discipline and spread terror across their ranks. His fleet was a gang of killers, whereas the foe's was a disciplined, regimented army with a few unruly auxiliaries. The whole point of blowing up Berrenos V and sacrificing a not inconsiderable portion of his fleet as fire ships had been to engineer such a collapse : repeated blows to morale, inflicted with ruthlessness and through eldritch means, enough to make even the blind sheep of the Imperium falter. And it hadn't worked.
Oh, the Imperials would bleed for a while yet. The Unbound would exact a terrible price before being put down. But unless a miracle occurred in the next few hours, eventually the Chaos fleet would be crushed.
"Do we have word from Julius ?" Another shot of the Shiva's Wrath may just be the miracle they needed, though aiming it to minimize casualties on their side would be tricky.
"Nothing, lord," came the reply, the mortal not quite managing to hide his fear at delivering ill news. Morkoth ignored him – only a fool would have taken out his wrath on his own officers while a battle was raging.
It had been a long shot anyway. The fleetmaster looked at the image of the battle, trying to think of an approach that may yet turn the tide. Memories not his own flickered at the edge of his awareness – the memories of the Legionaries whose blood had been made to flow through his veins during Ascension, as well as those of the captured Imperial Navy officers whose brains he had devoured after the battle of Silberstadt. But all those tactics were dependant on having a fleet that would obey instructions, and he did not have that – so instead he focused on what he had learned for himself during the conquest of the Wailing Storm.
With his eyes closed, Morkoth called upon his eidetic memory, recalling the previous engagements he had fought. He thought of the Battle of Grey Ash, when the Unbound had fought the long-dead ships of an Imperial Navy flotilla, bustling with the ghosts of their former crew. Of the weeks-long hunt they had waged amidst the Sevenfold Nebulas, pursuing void-beasts that had been strange before the Warp had gotten to them. Of the orbit of Nemelea III, where they had defeated a gathering of pirates and raiders ten times their strength by shattering the tenuous alliances between rival warlords. Of Uldagesh, whose fighter wings had taken three months to destroy amidst that system's outer rings, their pilots wired to their machinery and driven beyond fear and mortal needs by the chems running through their veins.
He thought back on every void battle he had ever fought, and he found … Nothing. There was no way for him to turn this around. Unless …
There was one option left. The Blade of Terror was far faster than a vessel its size, and more resilient besides. If he gave the order to the rest of the fleet to clear a path, he could take his ship into the heart of the enemy formation – aim it like its namesake directly at the far larger Perseus, the battleship that vox-interceptors had confirmed was the flagship of the Imperial armada. His gauntleted hands tightened into fists. It could be done, he thought. How long had it been since he had spilled blood in person ? He could join the boarders – how glorious would it feel, to rip out the heart of the one who had outmanoeuvred him, to devour it before their eyes before feasting upon their brains and adding their knowledge to his own …
No. He crushed the temptation out of his mind, before reaching through his connection to the Blade and lashing out at the daemonic spirit. It had been behind that foolish idea, hungry as it ever was to spill blood and fire into the void. But the daemonship didn't exactly have a concept of its own mortality : it was too limited to really understand such a move would see them all dead even if it worked. Morkoth did not fear death, but neither was he willing to throw his life away.
Especially when his orders ran to the contrary.
The fleetmaster sighed, and leaned back into his command throne.
"This round goes to you," he whispered, unheard by any save the ship itself. In a louder tone, he called out : "Send messages to the Balance of Virtue, the Negator and the Tiarelion. Their Unbound contingents are to return home as soon as they have completed their current operations, and the ships are to disengage immediately after. Then prepare for our own withdrawal."
There was a pause, as the crew digested his words.
"Do it," he snarled, and they jerked back into activity. He couldn't really blame them for their surprise : the withdrawal may have been Mahlone's instructions if things turned against them, but Morkoth hadn't shared them with anyone in the fleet. In order for them to have any chance of victory, there could be no hesitation, no holding back in the hope of being still alive to join the retreat.
"Contact the Eidolon of Regrets and the Daggers as well," he added, almost as an afterthought. "We will meet up with them in orbit of Berrenos III and decide on our next course of action."
"My lord, the Negator and the Tiarelion are responding. They still have most of their Unbound contingent deployed aboard enemy ships."
"Tell them that if they can't disengage within ten minutes, they are to leave them behind," he commanded brutally. "These warriors aren't worth risking the ships."
As the Blade of Terror and its crew moved to follow his orders, Morkoth stared at the image of the enemy flagship on the bridge's fleshy hololith-equivalent. You did not earn this victory, he thought to himself. And you will yet pay for that.
Aboard the battle-barge Fire of Dawn, the warrior who was known to his brethren only as Janus opened his eyes. He had spent the last hours in meditation, casting his mind beyond the boundaries of his flesh and the corridors of the venerable battle-barge, sensing the ebb and flow of the battle raging beyond.
It was done. Though ships still burned and died, any chance of the battle turning against them had passed. The enemy commander had withdrawn, abandoning the bulk of his fleet to be slaughtered. Some would seek to escape – those whose crews were not too deeply enthralled by fear or madness. And some would succeed, despite the Lady Admiral's best efforts. Those who did not rejoin the Black Crusade's other forces would be a plague upon the region for decades to come.
Janus could see this, as clearly as he had seen which ships needed to be reinforced for the Imperial formation to hold. His predictions hadn't been perfect – they never could be, and to even attempt it was to court perdition – but they had helped secure what would otherwise have been a very close battle. With the Chaos fleet broken, the Imperial forces would be able to make planetfall, and purge Berrenos III from the heretics who now held it. But no Grey Knight would fight in that campaign, however righteous. Already the ships of the Chapter were parting from the Imperial armada, still hidden from the auspexes of those they had secretly accompanied.
In front of the kneeling Chapter Master, on a table carved from wood from one of Terra's last trees, laid five crystal cards. Since leaving Titan, Janus had consulted the Tarot many times. He had always drawn the same cards, marking the dooms that grew within Azarok. The Hierophant. The Tower. The Devil. The Chariot. The Magician. Not since the Heresy had so many evils been unleashed at once by the servants of Chaos. Even the Black Crusades of Abaddon had been little more than a collection of raids, masking the true intent of the Sons of Horus' First Captain.
And yet all of these were but lesser threats compared to the one that had driven him to depart from Titan, and that the last communique from Lord Inquisitor Akhaman had finally named.
The Nightmare Fleet. Having a name to put on the shapeless visions of rising darkness had helped clear his second sight. The Chapter Master of the Grey Knights could see it now, when he closed his eyes and cast his mind down paths he had first learned to thread beneath the sun of a world whose name was now forbidden within the Imperium. Riaway Noara, the Eldar called it. The name was written into the tapestry of Fate, surrounded by the flames of ruin. An old sin, sealed away but never expunged, never atoned for. Did the Chaos Lord Arken understand what it was he sought to unleash ?
Most likely, yes. Long gone were the days when Janus had believed there were limits to the horrors men would willingly inflict upon one another. He did not doubt that the Awakened One also thought he could control, or at least direct the Nightmare Fleet. And perhaps he could, but that was irrelevant. Janus could not, would not, let it come to that. The evils of Old Night would remain locked away, and Arken's plan, whatever it was, would come to nothing.
This was the reason why he had left Titan, but while the Nightmare Fleet was the greatest threat of this Black Crusade, the lesser dooms revealed by the Tarot could not be ignored either. It was Janus' belief that Arken had engineered these catastrophes in order to muddle the tides of Fate, the better to hide his ultimate purpose from scrying. Of course, the Awakened One would reap the benefits of these plots all the same should they succeed – they would not have been nearly as effective in disturbing the Grey Knights' oracular abilities if they hadn't been real.
Janus had consulted the archives, when the name of Arken had been carried to the Grey Knights on the aetheric tides. In the wake of Heresy, the Imperial records had been thoroughly purged by the Inquisition, who had sought to erase all knowledge of the Traitor Legions so that none would seek to replicate their rebellion or unleash them from their pit. But copies had been preserved, for the heirs of Malcador had known that knowledge was one of the most powerful weapons against the Archenemy – if also one of the most dangerous to wield.
The Crusade-era biography of Commander Arken of the Sons of Horus was recorded within the encrypted archives of the Fire of Dawn. Like most of the sons who had followed the Warmaster to rebellion, he had been born on Cthonia, taken from the endlessly feuding underworld-gangs that had ruled this bleak planet and made into a Legionary to serve and die within the Sixteenth. He had risen through the ranks, and had earned his mantle of Commander – a rare title in the Legions, but not one unheard of – when he had needed to lead four companies of the then-recently renamed Sons of Horus in battle against an uprising in the galactic west. A worthy history, but not one of any particular significance, which made it all the more chilling that such an otherwise unremarkable warlord had ended up rising to become one capable of unleashing such devastation upon Azarok.
There were other records, though. Fragmented pieces of information, about what the Awakened One had done in the Warmaster's service during the Heresy. These were even more restricted, and even the archives of the Grey Knights had not escaped the Inquisition's purge. But Janus had been able to find enough pieces to form a very disturbing pictures.
It was Janus' mission to kill Arken and end the threat to the Imperium he represented. But before he did so, the Chapter Master fully intended to extract from the Chaos Lord the truth of what he had done on Cthonia.
Not all sins could, or even should be expunged, but all should be remembered, after all.
AN : Whew. For some reason, FFNet was being a real pain about the formatting of this chapter : I had to use the file for the previous one and copy-paste the contents inside so that it wouldn't remove the formatting every time I hit the "save" button. Probably something to due with me using a new computer, but it was still annoying.
So, here we are, new chapter and all. My New Year's resolution is to actually finish Warband of the Forsaken Sons this year, so you can expect more relatively soon.
My new story, A Blade Recast, has been received absurdly well, so you can rest assured that I am also working on it. But once again, I find myself spread between too many stories. Prince of the Eye is less time-consuming than the other three, of course, but even so, that's quite a lot. So I am going to focus on Warband for now, with A Blade Recast in the background - of course, this is unless inspiration suddenly strikes for The Roboutian Heresy or Prince of the Eye.
We will see how long that lasts. I have the skeleton for the next seven chapters of Warband down, so hopefully I will be able to go through them quickly, but without the quality of the writing suffering for it.
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, and welcome all of your comments and ideas.
Zahariel out.