A/N: I considered cutting this chapter because it didn't really advance the story. Really, it was a love letter to Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series. I decided instead of cutting, to instead do another double post. I hope some of you enjoy, and if it's not for you, then you can safely skip.
Chapter Forty: Terram Miseriae et Tenebrarum
"Captain, the astropathica has awoken. The choir master begs an audience."
Lord Captain Olara Baern may have clung to the appearance of a strong woman in her prime, but the magic of rejuvenate treatments did nothing to alleviate the weight of almost three centuries of constant warfare. It took a moment, even with her cranial augmentation, to come fully awake.
"Repeat, Ferge."
Her tactical officer's voice came from a grill inset over the wall of her bed. "Apologies for waking you, Captain. The astropahica has awoken. The choir master begs an audience."
"Very well."
She forced herself to sit up, thinking perhaps it was time for another rejuvenat treatment. She ignored the wrinkles and liver spots in her hands and instead concentrated on the lingering headache that had plagued her for three days now, ever since some terrible perturbation had swept through the Warp and caused half her astropaths to die screaming in agony.
The screams echoed in all their minds, and lingered still.
A servitor assisted her in dressing–the vile creature had been a crewman once who betrayed the ship. Now he served, and would survive for centuries more, as a mindless slave. She could think of no better punishment for one who would betray their captain or the Imperium.
Dressed in gold and white uniform, her epaulets glistening with her badges of rank granted by Warmaster Slaydo personally before his death on Balhaut, Olara left her luxurious quarters and stepped directly onto the bridge deck of her beloved Suffrance.
Her executive officer snapped to stiff attention, as did the other officers of her bridge crew. Around her pulpit, set in recessed tiers like an auditorium of old, dozens upon dozens of tech priests, servitors and the surviving astropathic navigators and the choir that provided their communications stood or sat in their places to serve as the heart of her mighty ship.
She acknowledged Ferge and her other senior officers, but did not stop her walk until she reached the pulpit on which her captain's throne waited.
The seat adjusted to her contour, perfectly balanced with the most advanced sorcery of the tech priests. She leaned back until the plate of her cranial implant mated with the throne, and at once the beauty of the Sufferance filled her consciousness. All five kilometers of her ship were known to her. She felt its hull like a second skin; the fires of its nuclear heart warmed her own.
It was the same ritual she had exercised daily for the entire century of her role as a ship's captain. It was both meditation and prayer to the God Emperor on Holy Terra; a sincere thanks for the wonder of commanding such a vessel.
With her hands palm-down on her throne, she engaged haptic interfaces and commanded half a dozen servo arms to hold the many data slates, pict-plates and even two large actuality screens that provided real-time visual footage from various points of the heavily armored hull of her cruiser. Bonded as she was to the ship's cogitator banks, she processed all simultaneously.
The fighter screen flew by at two thousand meters starboard, while five thousand meters port hung the smaller but no less lethal escort frigate Nevarre. They held station at the Mandeville point of the Hagia System, guarding the birthplace of the most holy Saint Sabbat against potential chaos forces that had been incoming before the warp phenomenon seemed to sweep the enemy away.
Their last communique from Hagia had a transmission delay of 13 minutes and consisted of a terse report: Planetary astropathic communications suffered catastrophic interference due to an unknown event in the north of the western continental land mass. Evacuation proceeding.
Only once she had assured herself, though her own senses and interfaces that her ship was safe, did she entertain conversation. "Send the choir mistress."
"At once, Lord Captain," Ferge snapped.
It was not a long wait. Olara's astropaths were in terribly short supply–the thirty on her beautiful vessel had been reduced to a mere dozen, and had to band together in a choir to be of any use at all. Her old choir master was the one she missed the most–the ancient man was utterly unflappable, and had seen more years even than her.
His screams still seemed to echo in the back of her mind.
The new choir mistress of the Suffrance's astra telepathica was a slim, blind stick of a woman who looked a hundred years old, but barely claimed forty. She was not a strong psyker by any measure and her power was obviously burning away her limited life, but it was that very weakness that helped her and her fellows survive the event that all but blinded her crew three days before.
The woman stood hunched over in her bare robes, a bit of drool hanging from one corner of her small mouth. She did not bother covering her empty eye sockets where the Emperor's soul branding had blinded her in her youth.
"Report," Olara commanded. "What do we know?"
The withered psyker pointed her blacked, empty eye sockets to the golden dome of the bridge deck as if she could see. "The Saint has been reborn. The seas of the Immaterium are rife and angry. Chaos comes."
Merged as she was with the ship, Olara understood the woman's ranting immediately. "You've received word from Hagia?"
"Not words." The astropath shook like a bare tree limb in a winter wind. "She lives. The child of magic, the child of war, the child of man. Three mirror faces, one soul. Oh, how the Archenemy hates her so! They come. Hagia will die, but as Hagia dies, so too does mankind."
Ferge left the captain's side, attracted by a signal from one of his ensigns. Olara concentrated on the astropath. "From where do you receive this message?"
"The Emperor Protects," was the only response.
"Captain!" Ferge's voice whipped through the bridge deck. "Perturbation in the Empyrean, imminent reversion, warp modulus one-one-zero, at point…"
Olara sank her consciousness into the ship's powerful sensors; one-one-zero, regardless of the point, was nearly on top of them. "Void shields!" she commanded.
Friendly or not, an emergence from the Empyrean so close to them could not be ignored. "Power the lances, load all torpedo bays. Ferge, get those macrocannons prepared!"
Klaxons began to wail. She sent a tight-beam transmission to the Nevarre and felt Captain Wysmark respond. No doubt his few surviving astropaths felt the incoming vessels as well.
"Signal that worm Lugo on Hagia, tight beam transmission. Unknown ships incoming!"
"Signal away," Ensign Raesh responded.
"Scramble our fighters, I want our birds in the void now!"
"Aye, captain."
"Reversion imminent," a servitor announced in a dull, emotionless voice.
A ship emerged from the roiling ocean of other space. It was a ship unlike any she had seen, a relic of an age long lost. For one brief moment, fear overcame conditioning and training as the twelve kilometers of dark, chaos-twisted steel dominated her sky. No, this was no frigate, nor cruiser. This was a battlebarge of old, the likes of which once swept through the galaxy when the Emperor himself walked among his children.
Now, it was a thing of death and terror. It out massed Olara's beloved Suffrance by several orders, and with her ship's sensors she could see macro and nova cannons as well as torpedo tubes beyond counting bristling along the monster's flanks.
She would not survive, but then again, how better than to die for the Emperor?
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
Squadron Leader Holbarth sprinted toward his Fury interceptor, scrambling with his flight suit. He touched his vox bead. "Hannon, where are you?"
"Coming, Lead!"
He didn't hear her over the vox, but to his left. She sprinted toward him even as he ran to their bird, bobbing between the other scrambling flight crews, hangar crewman prepping their interceptors, and servitors and techpriests that kept the venerable Fury-pattern ships flying.
One of the priests was praying to the machine spirit of their interceptor to smite the enemies of the Imperium and protect their crew. Holbarth added his own prayer, pausing just long enough to accept a blessing from the squadron priest before climbing into the interceptor variant. Some Furies could hold a crew of five, but their ships were tailored solely for fleet defense and intercept.
Hannon went forward to her gunnery station. "What's the word, Lead?"
"None yet, but…"
The whole launchbay turned red and alarm klaxons began to wail. "Enemy vessels on fast approach! All ships launch! Defend the ship!"
Executive Officer Ferge's voice echoed through the bay and the cockpit.
"That would be the word," Hoblarth said. "Third squadron, form up on launch! Weapons hot the moment we hit void!"
The other pilots responded by number. All systems showed green and the techpriest finished his benediction before stepping away from the launch sled. The fighter bay launch doors opened, exposing the distant stars, and Holbarth pushed the Fury's engines to max. They blasted out into the void.
Almost immediately his interceptor's auspex began pinging off incoming enemy fire.
"Emperor protect us. Lead, is that a damned battle barge?"
"Yes. And those are torpedoes flying toward our ship. All ships, target incoming torpedoes! Watch for friendly fire!"
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
"Fire torpedoes, full yield! Cannons and lances, fire for effect! Navarre is to make best speed for Hagia!"
The heavens burned with the trail of torpedoes and fighter screens. Lord Captain Baern watched through actuality screens and her own senses the Nevarre's massive aft thruster bells ignited in conjunction with their latitudinal thrusters to turn the vessel on a fast-turn. The Suffrance's initial volley attracted the attention of the primary enemy vessel, but it was for naught.
The enemy battle barge did not come alone. Five other ships reverted from the Empyrean mere thousands of kilometers away. With her ship's powerful auspex suite, she quickly identified two chaos heavy cruisers and three frigates. They immediately unleashed a volley of torpedoes not toward her, but to the Nevarre.
"Ferge, two squadrons to cover Navarre."
He glanced up at her, but transmitted her orders without hesitation. He knew as well as she did that their fighters would do little to save the Suffrance.
The Suffrance shook violently as the first enemy shots from the battle barge pounded against their void shields. Still the monstrous enemy came, making no effort to swerve. It would ram right through them! "Enginarium, flank speed! Reactor output to ninety-five percent. Set course five-five-three, point nine!"
"Helm, five-five-three, point nine, aye captain!"
The survivors confirmed the order as the Suffrance dove in relation to the oncoming battle barge. The chaos ship was still ten thousand meters distance, but ten thousand kilometers was nothing in void battle. It burned on, adjusting its own course and making clear their intention. Through the auspex of her ship, she could see the abhorrent symbols sprawled in paint over the ribbed, gothic hull of the Archenemy. Particulates like smoke boiled up and out from various vents, leaving a black trail of the burned sacrifices within.
This ship was the chariot of a champion of Chaos.
"All weapons, fire at will! Helm, adjust course to nine-nine-three, three vertical quarters spin! Broadside to the enemy and fire!"
The Suffrance now hung nearly vertical to its original plane, and the ship spun until its port side macrocannon batteries faced the on-coming threat. All this time, though, it continued receiving massive, devastating fire from the larger, more well-armed ship. Their fighter screen fought valiantly, she saw, but were vastly outnumbered. She felt each enemy lance; each devastating blast of their macrocannons, as if they were welts against her own skin. If the enemy brought that nova cannon to bear, the fight would be over.
"We will not die while a single shell remains unfired!" she shouted, her words echoing through the ship. "We will not perish while a single torpedo remains to fly in the face of our enemy! Crew of the Suffrance, the Emperor protects! Do your duty! Death to the heretics!"
The enemy vessel plowed on through the void, ignoring her brave words.
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
The orders came. "They want us to abandon home?" Hannon sounded outraged.
But Holbarth understood. He watched as the vastly superior enemy ship tried to match trajectories with the smaller, more agile Suffrance in order to bring its ventral nova cannon into range. Their home could not survive such a weapon, which also meant the Suffrance couldn't flee, either. The venerable old cruiser had to engage at close range in a deadly dance to avoid certain death, but doing so invited death by a thousand cuts of lances, torpedoes and macrocannons.
"Third and fifth squadrons, with me! Captain's orders, defend the Nevarre!"
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
The void burned behind them as the Nevarra fled.
Executive Officer Kreff knew his captain hated to flee a fight, but Lord Captain's Baern's orders were not only clear, but necessary. They had to get to Hagia to buy time for the evacuation ships to fleet.
The issue, of course, was that the enemy did not want them to succeed. And there were far more of the enemy than there were of them.
"Status of enemy vessels?" Kreff asked.
The nearest servitor, their head all but lost in the tangle of cables that connected them permanently to their station, answered. "Nearest enemy vessel is 20,000 K bearing 119 and accelerating."
"Relative speed?"
"One-one quarter relative."
The enemy was going faster than the Navarre.
"Enginarium, flank speed, if you please," Captain Wysmark spoke from his pulpit. "Reactors to 90%. At the very least, we should be able to match the enemy speed. Kreff, we appear to have two more squadrons."
"Aye, captain. Third and fifth interceptor wings from Suffrance."
"And they're welcome."
The captain's orders were echoed and obeyed. Kreff could feel the plates under his boots vibrate from the energy surging through them. An actuality sphere hung before the captain, with their best orbital course highlighted to rendezvous with the orbit of Hagia. Two frigates, the Vincit Eternus and the Laudate Omni both hung in low orbit of the planet to facilitate the evacuation.
The last word they had was that the two ship's navigators had survived the odd Warp event on Hagia, but their dedicated astropaths had perished. Any communication had to be done through direct tight-beam vox, with its real-time transmission delays. The Navarre lost four of their twelve astropaths all the way out at the system's Mandeville point. He shuddered to think any survived in the planet's orbit.
Their fighter screens, both new and old, hove about like angry insects, swarming against any of the enemy fighters or torpedoes that managed to catch up. The first of the enemy torpedoes came into range of their point-defense lances and were easily swatted down, but Kreff knew more would come.
"Weapons, prepare deadfall torpedoes," Captain Wysmark ordered. "Full yield to plasma warheads. Drop ten on my command at intervals of fifty k to stern."
Such weapons would likely not penetrate the void shields of the enemy, but might be enough to slow them down. The command was given, and upon the captain's command inactive torpedoes were dropped like crumbs from the stern of the Nevarre. They burned on, going a negligible fraction of the speed of light while the enemy fighters continued to eat away at their fighter screen.
Another wave of enemy torpedoes reached their point defense range, while the massive shell of an enemy macrocannon zipped by at almost luminal speeds, just barely missing the edge of their void shields.
"Status of lead enemy ship relative to first drop torpedoes?" Wysmark asked. He would know the answer; Kreff suspected the question was for him.
"Two thousand kilometers, captain," Kreff answered.
"Weapons, fire astern, torpedoes, lances and macrocannons, aim for the projected location of the ship in ten minutes."
It was no easy thing to chase a ship in the void. Kreff had more often been the pursuer than the pursued. So he understood the risks of chasing after a ship that could turn and attack. The Nevarre was outnumbered, but not defenseless.
And its captain knew his business.
As the lead enemy frigate came within range, the ten drop torpedoes suddenly flared to life just a few kilometers away. They instantly accelerated beyond any possible human tolerance, faster than the enemy vessel could anticipate. The enemy's lances, locked upon the distant fleeing form of the Nevarre and the quickly incoming barrage she'd just launched, did not have time to lock onto the unanticipated new threat.
The ten high-yield plasma torpedoes struck with megaton level power against the ship's void shields. Kreff could see the entire vessel slow as its huge tonnage reacted against the megatonnage of the rippling explosions.
He realized his initial estimate of the effectiveness of the blow was off, because to his absolute delight the enemy's void shields stuttered out of existence, overcome by the brief, concentrated enemy barrage.
The entire ship listed off its ecliptic, bowing forward in the beginnings of an uncontrolled vertical spin that its captain no doubt would have corrected in mere minutes if not for the artistically timed arrival of Captain Wysmark's barrage.
Lances of glowing plasma, torpedoes and massive shells from their stern macrocannon slammed with unimaginable violence against the foredeck of the vessel, raking along its length from prow to stern. The blow likely could have been handled by a void shield. Perhaps. But without their shields, and with the ship at such and angle, the enemy vessel was overcome.
The enemy disappeared in a sphere of white nuclear fire.
Kreff raised a fist. "Emperor be praised! What a shot, captain!"
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
Holbarth celebrated the enemy ship's destruction with a hearty laugh and a release of his interceptor's autocannons against an enemy torpedo.
"Lead, Fury four. Incoming fighters."
"Acknowledged. Hannon?"
"A hundred, sir. At least."
Her voice had dropped flat, almost like that of a servitor.
Between the two Suffrance squadrons and the Navarre's fighter screen, there were forty Imperial fighters in the void. Navarre's fighters were not even void-dedicated, they used Lightning fighters more designed for atmospheric operations than void combat.
He pulled up the auspex reality screen before his eyes, and saw the incoming fighters, with the four pursuing enemy capital ships far behind and only visible on screens.
And then a brilliant second star flashed in the sky for one split second, before it went dark.
"Sir?"
"Make your shots count, Hannon. Emperor protects."
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
"Suffrance is gone," Captain Wysmark reported somberly. "May the Emperor guard Baern's soul. Steady on to Hagia!"
"Incoming fighters," Kreff reported. "We're outnumbered and outgunned. More drop missiles?"
"I only wish they were as stupid as they are evil, Kreff. They are now alerted to the tactic. All I did was buy us a cushion, nothing more. Hold nothing back–every fighter, every bomber, every void-capable ship that can fire a weapon is to be in the void. We fight now for the people of Hagia. In the Emperor's name, we must succeed. In the meantime, I need what few astropaths we have remaining to try to get word to Crusade Command. The Warmaster needs to know what is happening here."
"Aye, captain."