MAGISTER – CHAPTER 3
Tzenaar was tired of such foolishness. The Mars-class battle-cruiser flew in orbit of Akkad VI, intending to stop his assault. That he could not allow.
***
Captain Jannsen of the Mars-class battlecruiser Emperor's Will watched as the mighty battleship prepared to fire.
Nothing would stop him, not even death, from protecting this world. The traitors, the heretics that seeked to destroy it would not prevail. That he vowed. That he swore. That he promised.
'The Emperor protects,' he whispered before giving the orders which began the battle.
'FIRE!'
The two behemoths traded broadsides for what seemed like an age, lances, lasers, particle-beams, antimatter charges, conversion beams and fusion blasts sailing through the darkness of space over the immense distance of 50,000 kilometres, shields of the void enabling the two leviathans to continue their seemingly ceaseless battle.
The Emperor's Will had the odds against it, outnumbered and outgunned, yet still it continued battling, knowing that to stop would mean its, and the world below's, utter annihilation at the hands of traitors and heretics. The battle continued in the void, as the shields of the battle-cruiser, began to flicker, weakening, for a moment, an instant, allowing a single, terrible lance-strike through.
***
Naval Commissar Lekzius was tired of this. The heretics, the traitors, had attacked in force, three ships, the smaller two seemingly waiting for a sign of weakness.
That was when the lance-strike went through the hull, setting the atmosphere ablaze, tendrils of fire running down the corridors, secondary explosions wrecking a scar through the mighty battlecruiser.
They continued, striking down the shield generators and continuing the devastation, the destruction wrecked upon the mighty battlecruiser. Large sections were rendered open to the void, sucking through the atmosphere of the ship and the crew with it. Those sections were placed under lockdown, the crew left to suffer a most terrible fate.
***
Armsman Flavun raised his naval shotgun, as the shields were down and thus enemies could teleport in.
'All is dust,' he heard behind him, like a whisper, as cold steel penetrated his heart and everything went black.
The Rubric Terminators continued the methodical slaughter, massacring anything and everything that stood in their way as they marched to the Command Basilica of the mighty ship.
Combi-bolters fired, shattering doors and reducing living humans to so much fleshy ruin. Blood and remnants of bodies floated in the rapidly-depleting air as the gravity system failed, but the Terminators were unfazed by it.
They continued to march toward the heart of the ship.
***
Captain Janssen stood, his pistol faltering in his hand. He was a scion of the House of Jannsen on the world of Frigius Prima, a proud son of his house, an honourable child of the Imperial Navy.
The door broke. A single Terminator marched through, its footsteps loud and clanging on the metallic floor. Jannsen rushed toward it, firing his bolt pistol, yet nothing happened, even as he drew his power-sword.
He raised it, attempting to stab the foe...
The blade melted into nothingness an inch above the Terminator's armour, as a casual backhand from it sent Jannsen's head flying off its body.
A quick flurry of bolter-shots ended the rest of the commander's lives.
The Emperor's Will had just ceased.
And Tzenaar was uncontested.