Beyond the End
The thunder of battle rang on every deck, filling vast expanses with the clashing tones of war. The boom of Macrocannons echoed in transepts and the snap-roar of lances wailed in naves. Shield impacts rolled like the pealing of great bells and the sound of voices raised in the ritual cants of orders given and confirmed was a hymnal given in praise of violence. Even the air was anointed with the sharp incense of wiring overheating and the burnt offerings were servitors in their death throes. The bridge had transformed from a place of mechanical labour into a fane of battle, once that thought would have given Noira Su-Kassen pause, but those trifling fancies had been lost in the screaming madness of the darkest night. Now day was upon them and she rejoiced.
All around her the vast bridge of Phalanx bustled with activity, tier upon tier of ratings, officers and Mechanicum working to bring the mighty starfort into battle. Phalanx may have suffered greatly in the Solar War but it remained the greatest bastion of loyalist might in the entire Segmentum. Weapons that could split a Glorianna in two let loose their fury, stacked ranks of lance batteries blazed in sequence, dissecting the void into neat quadrants. Hundreds of thousands of ratings within strained to load the guns by hand, autoloaders long destroyed, they were reduced to heaving shells into place with immense chains. Primitive and wasteful of lives, but it worked and the crews toiled with grim satisfaction, knowing what joyous destruction they brought to the enemy.
The bridge rang with cries, "Shields in quadrant 7 are fluctuating, direct more power to the defences. Macrocannons in sector 9 have an ammo jam, we need more Servitors to clear it. Plasma drive 24 is overloading, commencing emergency shutdown. XVIth Legion cruiser squadron pushing past the Widdershins pier, they will break free if nobody can stop them."
Su-Kassen reacted with fierce ardour, "Have hub lances redirect to target those cruisers, gut them and then have Admantine Will swing about and finish them off. They won't get past an Avenger grand cruiser without paying a heavy toll in blood!"
Noira Su-Kassen had always been a thin woman, but her gaunt frame had been made even leaner by months of emergency rationing. Her head was shaved bald so data-trunking could interface her skull, and her stiff uniform was the proud styling of a Jovian Fleet Admiral. A veteran of her Void Clan and the Great Crusade both, chosen by the Praetorian to command the last ragged remnants of the Solar Fleet, she was as fierce as she was stern, a queen commanding her court with absolute conviction.
A gruff voice at her elbow, "Our course takes us right into the heart of the enemy."
"That's the general idea," Su-Kassen retorted.
"We are outnumbered a hundred to one, a thousand."
"And yet the Traitors cannot stand against us, they are divided, rudderless, the fight has gone out of them."
"They are still many and we are few. Our optimal strategy is containment, until the XIIIth Legion arrives in strength."
"Guilliman is still nine hours behind, are you content to wait for vengeance?"
Captain Halbract considered this, "No, I am not."
Halbract was a classic of the VIIth Legion, stalwart, unyielding and unquestioning of orders. He'd been at her side since the Warmaster's endless fleets battered the Solar armada into retreat. He'd never flagged nor failed, her unflinching rock in the face of catastrophe, and yet even he unbent enough to enjoy the slaughter they were unleashing. After months of enforced stillness in the Saturnine rings no man could feel anything but joy in the culling of Traitors.
Su-Kassen looked into the central Hololith beheld a rout. Phalanx was charging past Luna's orbit, all guns blazing. In the Starfort's wake came the remains of the Solar armada. Ravaged ships of the Sol fleet, and battered hulls of the VIIth, raked warships of the Vth and limping cripples of the Xth, XIXth, XVIIIth Legions. There were even a handful of cruisers from the IXth, though they were ghosts of themselves, some strange calamity overcoming them in the final hours of the Siege. The ships at her command were the broken and the blooded, the last tattered remains of a once glorious fleet, but they were enough for the task at hand.
Ahead lay the nigh-infinite shoals of Traitors. Vast flotillas of warships, world-burners and troopships. Many of them had been transfigured by their new allegiances, hulls remoulded like wax under the touch of an idiot-savant. Organic fronds waved from many, blinking eyes and gnashing teeth spouted from all angles and sails of skin and bone pushed into the void. Nightmarish visions from the deepest recess of the mind, given form and life by the unreality of the warp. Now they flopped helplessly, anima draining away as the Warp retreated and the cruel laws of the materium closed in like an iron maiden upon a prisoner, piercing the lost and the damned unto the very marrow.
The reason lay beyond, Terra, resurfacing from frothing tides of madness. The Throneworld was ravaged, every city laid waste and yet it stood. The continents were cracking the poles melted and the dust-bowl oceans were clouds of grit, and yet none of that compared to the brilliant ray of the Astronomican, blazing fiercely once more as a beacon and a message both. The beacon made possible the arrival of reinforcements, but the message was more important: Horus is dead and the Emperor lives.
"Redouble fire from the third battery stack," Su-Kassen ordered, "I want those troopships gutted!"
"Ammunition count is at 17% and falling," a hoarse adept called out.
"We don't stop firing until every shell is depleted!" she snapped back, "Concentrate shooting on those ships still active, and find me the damned Iron Warriors!"
"None detected," the master surveyor called.
"Check again," Halbract spat, "The wretched IVth must be here."
"Confirmed, no Iron Warrior vessels present in theatre."
Su-Kassen did not smile but her tone was scornful, "Looks like Pertuarbo quit early, we'll have to deal with him later. Let's mop up the rest. Take the fleet to course 100 mark 100. Ready torpedo spreads then hit them with guns as we pass. All batteries fire as they come to bear!"
From Phalanx's mass shot waves of torpedoes, each a carefully recovered bullet from broken guns. Taken off dying hulks and unrecoverable ships during their silent sojourn, carrion eaters picking at corpses in a most undignified manner. Now they proved their worth, flying into the packed masses of reeling traitor ships. Troop barques exploded, spilling thousands of corpses into the vacuum of space. Cruisers were gifted new craters in their pitted flanks, gutting gundecks and incinerating lance arrays. Even the mightiest of battleships was not spared, their pockmarked hides given fresh scars to carry. The torpedoes could not miss, so dense was the enemy, any stray shot immediately picked up a new target and locked on.
Into the flaming debris drove the battered loyalist forces, flanks alight with dual broadsides. Justice Bringer unleashed rolling waves of shots into the reeling Executioner's Axe, gutting the World Eater battleship bow to stern. Burning Conviction, an ancient veteran of the Jovian fleets punched lances into the festering mass of what once was Inevitable Sorrow, incinerating the malignant heart of the Death Guard ship. Swift Sword, a sleek White Scar cruiser rolled under Limitless, an Emperor's Children light cruiser and tore the guts out of her, ending a litany of depravity once and for all. On and on, ships dying all around, a hundred deaths in the first minute, but no vessel could match Phalanx. The starfort's guns reaped hulls in every quadrant, its lances cleaved vessels in half at a furious rate while its shields rebuffed the tawdry return fire with ease. Traitor ships fell away, burning within and without, it shouldn't be possible the loyalists were outnumbered beyond belief, and yet it was. This was more than a battle, more than a tactical engagement, this was justice for the dead and the bitter months of the Solar War. This was retribution manifested.
Halbract cut in, "There, bearing 323 mark 250, the Vengeful Spirit!"
"I see her, but she's not important," Su-Kassen rebuffed.
"The Warmaster's command ship is within our reach," Halbract snapped.
"I see her, but Horus is dead. There are living enemies to deal with."
"She is moving under her own power, she will get away," Halbract argued.
"If we turn to engage the Traitor may shake off their malaise. We have to finish them when we can. Continue the assault, I want to kill as many of them as we can!"
She'd already fixed her sights on a new target, a Night Lord Battlebarge named Nightbane. The mighty ship was less afflicted by the mutations of the warp than other ships, and as such she still retained some mobility and gunnery. She was acting as a rallying point for the Traitors, ships from the World Eaters, Death Guard and Sons of Horus flocking to regroup under the shelter of her guns. She was a tough ship, designed for planetary assaults, her bastions second only to a Glorianna. How strange that of all Legions the Night Lords should present some semblance of hope for the hopeless. Su-Kassen cared not to ponder why, only that this defiance be brought to a halt.
"Ready Nova Cannons!" Su-Kassen ordered.
"We only have enough for one volley," Halbract warned.
"One's enough, all ships: Fire!"
Across the loyalist ships gravitic impellors glowed with building power. Precious shells, taken off the wreck of a Dominator-class crippled early in the Solar War, were brought to a fever pitch of excitement and discharged. Twelve colossal shells were flung at near-luminal speed towards the enemy formation, exploding a single second after discharge. Newborn suns were birthed over Terra, competing with the Astronomican's light for a second. Traitors died in raging infernos, ships breaking apart and as the plating was peeled off bracing and the decks below melted into slag. Vicious Traitor Marines, already floundering without the animus of their fickle patrons, collapsed into pools of bubbling skin and Ceramite, the price of their sins paid in full.
"All ships push into them and attack!" Su-Kassen yelled, "But save Nightbane for us!" Loyalist ships streamed past Phalanx, maxing their drives as they plunged into the dying fires. Broadside batteries boomed silently, turbolaser, macrocannon, grav-blasts and missiles exchanged at insanely close range. The White Scar ship Endless Horizon raked the World Eater vessel Gnasher, hammering her spine with a series of point-blank shots. The Grand Cruiser Inwit-Born cut under the keel of the Sons of Horus ship Unstoppable, volleying salvoes into her drives and bringing her to a rude stop. The IXth Legion cruiser Crimson Accord went after the IIIrd Legion battlecruiser Inexplicable, massively outgunned she did not try to exchange shots, instead plunging headlong into the flank of the bigger ship in a suicidal ramming action. Whatever strange madness had overtaken the Blood Angels was expunged as the reactor blew, annihilating both ships.
Su-Kassen cared nothing for the loss as she ordered, "Primus Lances, lock onto Nightbane and fire!" Searing beams from the hub of Phalanx streamed away, carving through the spine of the reeling Battlebarge. The Night Lords fired back, but their shots pattered off Phalanx's shields, barely troubling the mighty starfort. Su-Kassen looked upon them with contempt, seeing all the dead lost in this terrible war, her daughter among them, her atoms drifting in the light of Beta-Garmen's suns.
"Secondary lances: Fire!" she ordered and searing beams shot out from the lesser bastions of Phalanx's mid-rim, opening Nightbane's gun decks to space. "Tertiary Lances: Fire!" Bastions about the circumference opened fire, cleaving Nightbane's Enginarium deeply. The Battlebarge lurched as power failed across the ship, leaving her wallowing. "Quartus lances: fire!" Again Phalanx let her ire be known, searing the bridge of Nightbane clean off. The Battlebarge was dead in the void, bleeding out from vicious wounds and rolling over into a terminal plunge towards Terra below.
It wasn't enough for Su-Kassen, "Torpedoes!"
Halbract spun to face her, "She's dead already!"
"I don't care!" Su-Kassen spat as her icy demeanour cracked.
"You're wasting shots while real threats escape!"
"I want that ship obliterated!"
"This is not combat protocol!"
"Damn protocol, the only good traitor is a dead traitor. Now obey my order and launch torpedoes!"
Again Phalanx's wroth was delivered, at the point of a dozen precious torpedoes. They struck Nightbane as she tumbled away, plasma warheads blooming deep within. Fibrillating reactors suffered catastrophic failures and overloaded, spilling the power of her heart into narrow corridors. The Battlebarge came apart in a brilliant fireball, spreading her atoms far and wide, smashing down the shields of Traitor ships in lower orbits, burning a dozen troopships to ash in the process.
"Target destroyed," Halbract stated with reproach in his tone. Su-Kassen was flushed with anger, the death hadn't satisfied her, not by a long shot. Her daughter's face still hung before her eyes, all the faces of the lost did. She longed to drown that pain in torrents of Traitor blood, and thankfully there was no shortage of targets. She would chase them wherever they fled, and burn down their fastness's around their ears. The war had left no room for mercy or compassion, there was only kill or be killed.
Su-Kassen straightened up and ordered, "Cycle lances, prepare to engage next targets."
"Vengeful Spirit has disengaged," Halbract pointed out , "She's leading a significant portion of the Traitors away. The XIIIth Legion will not arrive in time to stop them."
"It doesn't matter, there's plenty of traitors left to kill right here."
"If they get away well just have to fight them again somewhere else," Halbract scolded.
But Su-Kassen dismissed that, "There's nowhere left to run in the galaxy we can't hunt them. We'll chase them around the moons of Predax and round the Howling Gyre and round the Maelstrom's shoals before we let them go!"