Legends of the Smoke Jaguars Chapter 44
Ork vessels came streaming out of the red-tainted heavens in numbers beyond counting. They came from the inner worlds and asteroid belts in ramshackle craft, bulbous frigates, leaking shuttles and tumbling Roks. They came from every corner of the Copan system like a shoal of sharks scenting blood in the water. Millions of roaring Greenskins, packed into rickety craft and thirsting for carnage, drawn by the prospect of violence. They had been struck most grievously and their feral natures demanded retribution. So they came, all of them, every last Ork, summoned by the call of war.
In low orbit of Copan XII Implacable Judgement hung under the cover of Reflex Shields, the stately craft loitering like a cutpurse trying to avoid pursuing constables. She was drifting on inertia, powered as low as she could get. Even with her arcane protection her crew were under no delusions that they were safe. The converging shoals of Orks could swarm her in moments, those crude Gunz more than enough to reduce her to clouds of atoms. Invisibility was their only chance, so the systems ran on their lowest ebb and the crew sweated as they watched the number of Orks growing faster than they could count.
"That is a lot of Orks," Xavaar breathed with trepidation as he stared at a pict-screen.
"Are you actually worried?" Engar retorted.
"Tell me you aren't and I'll call you a liar," Xavaar grunted.
"Worrying is a waste of energy," Sedaxus declared, "What will happen, will happen, no point fretting."
"Easy for you to say, this is your mad plan."
They were stood in a surveyor relay station, located near the bow of the ship. One of many such processing stations, where cogitators chewed through incoming augur feeds and streamlined them for transmission to the bridge. Here background radiation, errant solar flares and gravity spikes would be sorted from genuine ship signatures, weapon discharges and vox-captures. Such places turned a staggering amount of external data into coherent intelligence and it was more than enough for them to see what was going on outside. Sedaxus peered at a back of pict-monitors, as serfs laboured over wheezing logic engines, examining the arriving Orks with keen interest.
Xavaar coughed slightly then said, "These Reflex Shields, they will screen us won't they?"
"They invert void shields, so instead of shunting aside incoming fire they deflect outgoing energy, heat and vox-leaks," Engar explained.
"I understand the principle, only there's a hell of a lot of Ork frigates out there, banging away with active scans. One good return from our hull and we'll be lit up like a bonfire on a hill."
"Any signal that hit our hull should get deflected before it returns to them, in theory."
"In theory?!"
Damolos chuckled evilly, "I wouldn't worry about that bit, you should be more concerned with the fact that it leaves us with no void shield cover."
"I wish you hadn't told me that," Xavaar groaned.
Sedaxus ignored their back and forth as he spotted a blip moving in the screens. A target, bigger and more powerful than any other vessel, a full Kroozer, wallowing into orbit on spluttering drives. Her prow was lined with tusks a hundred metres high, making it resemble a Crotalid's jaws. She lorded over the rest of her kin, eclipsing them utterly in size and firepower.
"There it is, the Warbosses' ship," he declared.
"How can you tell?" Engar asked.
Damolos snorted, "It's the biggest, where else would a Greenskin warlord hang out?"
Sedaxus opened his vox to signal, "Shipmaster, target designated. Begin your approach, thrusters only. Slow and steady, give them no hint we're here." High above and many kilometres back the bridge crew went to work, slowly steering Implacable Judgement out of low orbit into an intercept trajectory. It was meticulous work, relying on chemical thrust to move the immense vessel. Even under Reflex Shields they dared not fire up the main drives, the power spike would surely give them away.
Slowly the immense vessel rose, leaving the planet behind. She drifted past squadrons of Ork frigates, moving mere kilometres from their searching eyes. In space, where fights extended over ten of thousands of kilometres, this was insanely close, tantamount to passing close enough to disturb the hairs on the back of their necks. Sedaxus tried not to look worried as auspex sweeps passed over them, scouring space for intruders, telling himself the Orks would never best the secret arts of the Raven Guard. It seemed the shipwrights of Kiavahr were as skilled as their reputation proclaimed, for Implacable Judgement sailed past them without tripping a single surveyor, leaving the perimeter guards unaware they were ever there.
"I think it's working," Damolos breathed quietly.
"Why are you whispering?" Xavaar asked in confusion.
"Don't know," Damolos grunted, "Just feels like we should."
Engar shook his head and asked, "Should we be concerned about the miners on the planet? These Orks will obliterate them easily should they set foot on land."
"If we're right then the Orks will be too distracted to think of invading," Sedaxus countered, "They're here in number. The Red Flayer can't be far away."
Xavaar shook his head as if in pain and said, "You're more right than you know. I sense a disturbance, a shifting in space… he's… he's here already."
Sedaxus' gaze turned to the big Kroozer, seeing it writhe in distress. The bow lurched sideways as the drives spluttered out, leaving her drifting without helm control. Explosions rippled down her port flank, blasting air and bodies into the void from gushing wounds. Attitude control failed and she began to roll, tumbling helplessly over and over in space as her escorts went into mad confusion, swirling about without direction or orders. The whole Ork fleet lost cohesion, milling aimlessly about as their warlord was beset and yet there was no sign of any attacker. No incoming fire, no waves of attack craft or lance beams, these explosions were internal. Whoever was attacking the Kroozer was doing so from within.
"Kharkul's made his move!" Xavaar exclaimed.
"I didn't see any gunships land," Damolos protested.
"What, did you think he'd fly through this?!" Xavaar snorted, "With the warpcraft he's displayed, a translocation ritual would be childsplay."
"We need to get there. Shipmaster, permission granted to light the main drives, take us to them," Sedaxus ordered. The pict-screens jumped as Implacable Judgement's drives ignited, testing the Reflex Shields to their limit. Their pace increased tenfold and the Kroozer grew large on the screens. Sedaxus however didn't stay to watch, he led his party from the room and headed to the bow. In his head he began a mental countdown, ticking off seconds as they passed.
Swiftly they made their way to the very front of the ship, where they found the rest of their forces waiting. Sedaxus found a place near to a massive Macrocannon, where Juru lurked with his Claw and Gorth with his Brothers. The bad blood between their squads was set aside for the moment, with what was about to come there would be no time for feuding and they knew it. Sedaxus paused under the shadow of the massive macroweapon and nodded to the waiting Space Marines as they clutched their weapons. Two hundred indentured labourers tended the gun, condemned to spend their lives in the shadow of the weapon, and it was only one of the bow weapons, but Sedaxus ignored them, such was life aboard any Imperial vessel.
"We really doing this?" Juru grunted.
"Committed already, too late to back out," Sedaxus affirmed.
Gorth hissed, "We should have done this with gunships."
"Not with what's out there," Engar retorted, "Even a Shadowhawk couldn't slip past that lot. You can almost walk to the target, so many hulls are floating in space."
"A teleport assault then," Gorth protested.
"Energy spike would be a dead giveaway," Sedaxus snapped, "There's only one way in, and it going to be rough."
Suddenly the vox crackled, made unintelligible by distortion, however the meaning was clear as seconds later the hull vibrated and terrible explosions rang loud. "Weapon hits, they've seen us!" Xavaar exclaimed.
"Those are Gunz shells," Damolos spat, "They'll tear us apart!"
"Too little, too late," Sedaxus grunted as his mental countdown neared zero, "All hands: brace for impact!"
Every Space Marine slammed his backpack against a bulkhead and gripped his weapons tighter. Meanwhile serfs wrapped their arms around girders and hid under stairwells, consoles and in doorways. Hundreds of haggard guncrew took shelter in the lee of their weapon, clinging to the one thing they had spent their lives tending, trusting the gun would care for them as they cared for it. Superstition, but Sedaxus didn't blame them for it.
Seconds passed in tortuous dread, every moment bringing a fresh impact from the bowels of the ship. But then an almighty crash rang through the hull, louder and more violent than all the damage taken so far. The ship had rammed the Ork Kroozer at full thrust, driving her prow deep into the flank of the Greenskin ship, leaving her sticking out of the side like a spear thrust into a boar. The nearby frigates stopped firing, for fear of hitting their flagship, even Greenskins wouldn't dare to fire on their warlord, knowing what he'd do to them if a single round clipped his ship.
Unfortunately for the humans the crash was as violent as an artillery barrage. Sedaxus felt his bones rattle as vibrations were transmitted through the metal. In other circumstances he would have stood clear but accompanying this was the sheer force of deceleration, pressing him into the bulkhead like an industrial press squeezing hard. Implacable Judgement shed velocity at bone-breaking rates as the impact shook her hull, making the eight-kilometre-long ship quiver like a newborn colt as her superstructure screamed in protest.
For the mortals the collision was far worse. The violent impact hurled them against walls and bulkheads, breaking bones and snapping limbs. Stairwells collapsed, crushing those sheltering beneath and doorways skewed out of true, dicing those lurking in the frames. An oxygen line ruptured and ignited, sending a plume of flame to douse a cluster of menials in brilliant flames, immolating the mortals head to toe and reducing them to charred corpses. A hundred men were thrown against their gun, its sheer sides and unyielding flanks breaking bones without any hint of mercy. Whatever affections they had for their charge were repaid with cruel indifference as the gun killed its operators, as surely as if they'd driven a groundcab into a brick wall.
Sedaxus endured the rolling waves of catastrophe with gritted teeth, then suddenly the violence ended and it was over. He instantly bounded away, dashing towards the bow as he cried, "Come on!"
The others followed, taking up weapons, but he heard Gorth grumble, "Do you lot always have such mad plans?!"
Juru laughed, "If you want to make an impression, then you have to make a big entrance!"
Ahead the gunports began to slide open; blast shutters a hundred metres tall grinding apart to reveal what lay beyond. The atmo-fields frizzed impotently, useless in this environment for there was no void to be seen. Instead was a twisted snarl of crumpled metal, broken corridors and severed powerlines sparking randomly. The interior of the Ork ship, sectioned opened like sliced fruit. Much of it was crumpled into metal knots but several corridors and walkways were open, inviting boarders into the heart of the Kroozer. Sedaxus led his strike team towards the nearest, knowing across the bow three hundred Space Marines would be doing the same. Kharkul was in there somewhere, battling to reach the warboss, but hot on his heels came the Smoke Jaguars, and their thirst for vengeance would not be sated until they claimed his head.