Chapter 4

Catharina von Hugenbutten had always been aware that she could die. It was very difficult not to be aware of that as a noble. She was personally aware of more than one hundred attempts on her life, the earliest when she was just a babe, when someone had placed a calodrian spider into her crib.

Only by the Emperor's grace had she survived that one, a maid coming in, whose scream attracted the spider's attention, and who provided enough of a distraction and nourishment for the creature, for some of the Hugenbutten household guards to arrive and put it down. It had been a constant deluge of that, all her life. Poison, violent assaults, parts of the spire that just happened to have an electrical malfunction... Twice did she participate in a ball where the air filtration systems malfunctioned and half of the participants - those too foolish or who lacked the resources to have a personal filter built into their aircanals without looking too unseemly - promptly suffocated on various gasses. Luckily her mother had seen it fit to have them all be prepared for such eventualities.

Assassinations, power games, those were terribly common amongst the emperors chosen nobles and that didn't even count in those horrible heretic attacks the nobility had to endure as of lately.

Yes, she had always been aware that she was mortal, unlike some of her more deranged cousins and brothers... who were quite possibly also her cousins. Catharina grimaced a little as she pushed away the weird obsessions of some parts of her wider family with keeping the blood pure.

So, she had always figured that she'd perish in one of those, hopefully after advancing the cause of the Hugenbutten family as well as that of the emperor. A bomb, a poison she didn´t have an immunity or antidote for, a well placed sniper.

That's how she had thought she'd die.

Never, not in a thousand years had she thought she'd perish in the wilderness of open space, or at least that had been what was about to happen.

It had begun as stories. Some filthy group of xenos, daring to invade the sector, but none of them had worried much. The imperium's fleets and armies were mighty and knew no equal in all of the galaxy and they heard news of repeated victories.

In fact, they had been so certain of the safety -outside of the usual schemes of course- that she didn't even truly remember when exactly her father had left the planet, at the head of a huge force of the Calimian armed forces, augmented massively by the Hugenbutten household huscarls.

She had been too busy sleeping off the aftereffect of that new purple powder her friend Alectra had produced, after the necessary poison tests for the drug had been made of course.

Alectra was dead now, crushed by a collapsing shard of the upper spire they had lived in.

It all had happened so quickly.

One day they had been safe, the next, everything had fallen apart.

Swarms of things appeared in the sky, things shaped like the various mutated insects deep within the underhive, hostile pests which occasionally raided the middle layers. Only these hung in orbit, numerous enough that they could blot out the stars. She had heard from the household servants that most of the astropaths had died, preventing any chance of calling for help. It couldn't have been a coincidence.

Planetary defenses as well as the PDF mobilized, stitching macro battery fire across the sky from every functioning gun, while soldiers filled the streets. From where she could observe them, she saw that those sodding men were clumsy, sloppy, barely more than rabble. Completely unlike her grim and disciplined household guards. But they had numbers and a great many guns, so she had hoped they could hold out.

That hope died shortly after the first wave of pods landed across the planet, pulsating swarms rained over the hive spires. Power had gone out when the monsters arrived, there were communication failures at every level. Obviously the monsters had damaged generators and vox nodes, smashing the infrastructure in order to weaken the defenses. Catharina heard rumors of sabotage, but surely that could not be true. How could any faithful servant of the Emperor be willing to side with the xenos, especially at a time like this?

Whatever the reason, the invaders had overwhelmed the PDF. She could not see much, a glimpse of a herd of huge scythed beasts slamming into the defenses, carried by a tide of smaller creatures so numerous she initially mistook them for a flood. There were flashes of fire, booms of cannons… then nothing. She was too far away to hear the screams, supposedly, but did hear wails in the walls that could have been the hive foundations creaking.

It had been total chaos. The Lord Governor had died in a hunting accident out into the chemo wastes outside of the walls of hive Cealum, the man wanting a new set of teeth from the feral ork tribes out there, a collection that he loved to boast of so much during literally every ball he attended. As if anyone would ever believe the stories that he personally had killed them. Following his death and the attack plus the absence of her father, with much of the planetary defense forces everyone had been beating each other for who got to lead, all the while the hive and the planet burned.

So Catharina had made something of an executive decision.

One of the contingencies her honored Mother had drilled into all of her children - in case of the Hugenbutten family losing one of the various quiet - and sometimes too all that quiet - power struggles that went on on Adratur Seven there was a ship, hidden in their estates, a vessel of a Rogue Trader down on his luck, purchased off him some hundred to two hundred years ago. She didn't quite know, having not listened that closely to her mother´s lessons past the important bits.

A xenos invasion wasn't exactly a loss in the political game, but it was close enough for her to decide that it was time to leave.

Sadly her departure had been somewhat delayed by someone - a political rival no doubt - ratting out that she had a way off the planet, so a veritable tide of refugees, folk from the upper, midd and even lower sections of the hive, had flooded into the docks, most annoyingly of all whole host of other nobles demanding them to be brought to safety.

She had half minded to have them all shot, the nobles at least, but logic had triumphed over emotion. The ship was large enough to hold hundreds of thousands of people, and she couldn't have possibly shot them all, so she had acquiesced and let them in, even if that meant a significant delay.

Suffice to say, looking at the screen showing the humongous xenos ship that had appeared in the middle of the system, thousands of times larger than even the greatest imperial ship or station she had ever witnessed or even just heard off... she regretted that decision, somewhat fiercely.

The bridge itself wasn't that large, only maybe twice the size of her bedroom. Enough space was here that a couple hundred of people could fit, even with the banks of humming equipment or displays of information. Although the ship itself was technically hers, Catharina was effectively restricted from the main floor where the captain and his crew worked, she was stuck at a railing on the outskirts, marks on the floor indicating there used to be a case bolted where she stood.

She allowed it, this was his field and she didn't know enough about navigation or management to help. The captain was a little more curt with her than she liked, but due to the invasion he had his reasons.

Right now he was gripping a railing to stare out the windows, barking orders to the pilot and crew.

"Adjust heading, we need more speed if we're going to outrun that thing. On it man!" He snarled, making the crew work harder. "I need more power Enginseer, do something!"

"I am trying." The robed techpriest was working at another panel, his(?) synthesized voice sounding mechanical yet stripained. Even now Catharina felt a tiny shiver looking at the respirator covered face, as a pair of mechandrite claws repaired parts of the floor. An incense burner was supposed to help calm machine spirits, normally it worked for the devices in the Hugenbuttten employ. "This spirit is in terrible distress. I several minutes to-"

"We don't have the time. We'll repent later, right now get it to work." The captain snarled.

A series of beeps left him, but before an argument started bright flashes nearly blinded her. Catharina yelped, rubbing her eyes while the crew swore, blinking away spots so she could see outside.

The monster swarm outside the ship, who had already claimed several of their escorts, were simply… vaporized. Cooling gasses expanded in the void, while a chunk of what was a tentacled ship drifted away.

With her vision still aching, Catharina was aware of both the captain and the techpriest going quiet, staring at the same thing she was: the colossus far from their slapdash fleet, slinging lances of light that evaporated whole swathes of the swarm at once.

"Ahem. The… ship's machine spirit… is behaving." The techpriest carefully reported. "Erm, there are no records of that ship in this database. But it seems to…"

"Having a calming effect, that is helpful." The captain had a sliver of hope in his tone.

"Calming. Yes…" the techpriest was heavily modified, but he could still make a sound like a cleared throat.

From the comms station came a message, a gesture piping it to the speakers. "You all out there! Aliens who so assault this world! These people! I do not know what has happened for this war to exist, but to attack civilians? To burn down an inhabited world? JUST WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?! I am Simon! Leader of Team Dai-Gurren! Supreme commander of all of humanity! And I will not stand aside for such atrocities! Cease all combat or face the consequences!"

That voice, the fiery passion was as great as the most devout preachers, his confidence as high as a conquering general, and his tone, he would make good on his declaration or die trying. And he was definitely human, no xeno to inflict upon them just another terrible fate! It wasn't unheard of for different xenos to pounce on an attacked world, taking advantage of the chaos for their own dastardly plans.

Catharina felt herself swoon for a second, oh that sounded like a keeper!

She composed herself before anybody saw her slip. Right, yes, they were saved now. With that ship out there, they were getting out of this alive. Breathing a sigh of relief, she gestured to reply-

The internal vox crackled to life, speaking with the panicked voice of one of the house security officers. "This is Bay D, we're under attack! We have boarders breaching the hull, I repeat, boarders have breached-ah!"

There was a scream followed by an awful screech, then the vox went quiet.

"Send reinforcements." Catharina said loudly, ignoring how the captain sent her a look. She whipped to a couple of her household guards, hanging back doing very little. "Why are you standing around, grab the rest of the guard and help them now!"

She had a message to send to the Supreme Commander.

Her Mother had always taught her to seize every opportunity for an advantage, and by the emperor, they had just received one of the Commander´s princeps, if she had seen that correctly.

_

"Huh... not bad. Given the circumstances that is." Kittan observed the hanger he had landed in. Or well, landed might have been the wrong word…

Well the King Kittan was still intact. And the floor wasn't ripped up too badly, and the real wall was only lightly smashed, and he counted two crushed vehicles, or was that a third? And maybe a half dozen others that were trashed-

He was alive and things could be worse.

The hull clanged, shuddering from something hitting the outside. Oh well…. Couldn't possibly be worse here than in outer space.

AN:
I wish you all a happy easter.

Have all a nice day and i hope you enjoyed this chapter.

Feedback is much appreciated.