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‘Seventh Claw, primed.’

  ‘Ninth Claw, prepared.’

  ‘Tenth Claw, ready.’

  None of those squads were complete, Talos knew. The centuries had been unkind. All of Third Claw had been slaughtered at the Battle of Demetrian, by the accursed Blood Angels. Fourth and Eighth Claws had both died piece by piece, battle by battle, until the last surviving members were absorbed into other under-strength Claws. Uzas had been Fourth Claw once. Talos hadn’t been thrilled by that particular inheritance.

  ‘This is Talos of First Claw. Give me a soul count.’

  ‘Second Claw, seven souls.’

  ‘Fifth Claw, five souls.’

  ‘Sixth Claw, five souls.’

  ‘Seventh Claw, eight souls.’

  ‘Ninth Claw, four souls.

  ‘Tenth Claw, six souls.’

  Talos shook his head again. Including his own squad, it racked up to thirty-nine Astartes. A skeleton crew would remain with the Exalted aboard the Covenant, but it was still a grim figure. Thirty-nine of the Legion were ready for deployment. Thirty-nine out of over one hundred.

  ‘Soul count confirmed,’ he said, knowing every Astartes on the vessel was patched into this vox-channel. He doubted the significance of the figure was lost on any of them.

  ‘Ten seconds,’ the servitor intoned. The pod was shuddering in its cradle now alongside the six others, like a row of jagged teeth pushing from a giant’s gums.

  ‘Five seconds.’

  The vox was filled with a frenzy – dozens of roaring Astartes, calling out for vengeance, for blood, for fear, and the memory of their primarch. Inside First Claw’s pod, Xarl howled long and loud, a sound of unrestrained glee. Cyrion whispered something Talos couldn’t quite make out, most likely a benediction to the machine-spirits of his weapons. Uzas cried out a string of oaths, promising bloodshed in the name of the Ruinous Powers. He invoked them by name, crying out like a fanatic in ecstatic worship. Talos bit back the urge to rise from his restraint throne and shoot his brother dead.

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘One.’

  ‘Launch.’

  IV

  VOID WAR

  ‘It has been said by tacticians throughout the ages of mankind that no plan survives contact with the enemy. I do not waste my time countering the plans of my foes, brother. I never care what the enemy intends to do, for they will never be allowed to do it. Stir within their hearts the gift of truest terror, and all their plans are ruined in the desperate struggle merely to survive.’

  – The Primarch Konrad Curze,

  Allegedly speaking to his brother,

  Sanguinius of the Blood Angels

  The Exalted saw void warfare as infinitely more graceful than any surface attack.

  He excelled in personal combat and had reaped a bountiful harvest of life with his own claws, but it wasn’t the same. Such savagery lacked the clarity and purity of a void hunt.

  Even in the years before he became the Exalted, when he had simply been Captain Vandred of the Night Lords 10th Company, he had taken his greatest battle-pleasures from those moments of orbital and deep space warfare where everything played out to perfection.

  And he was no simple observer in those moments. He prided himself on making the perfect battles come to pass, and it was a pleasure he’d taken with him through all his changes. It was a matter of attuning one’s perceptions to the realities of scale and dimension involved within a void war. Most minds, mortal and Astartes alike, could not truly fathom the distances between ships, the sheer size of warring vessels, the scars left by each and every type of weapon against hulls of different metals…

  This was his gift. The Exalted knew void war, seeing its grandeur within his swollen mind the way other men saw the weapons in their hands. His vessel was his body, even without the primitive tech-links engineered by the Mechanicum to merge man and machine. The Exalted bonded with the Covenant by familiarity and his modified perceptions. Merely by standing on the bridge, he felt the ship’s heartbeat in his bones. Simply gripping a handrail allowed him to hear its screaming voice as it fired its weapons. Others would feel nothing more than vibrations, but others were blind to such nuances.

  The Covenant of Blood had a fine history of pulling through engagements against long odds and taking part in some of the most savage conflicts to involve the VIII Legion. Its reputation – and, by extension, the reputation of the warband that had once been the 10th Company – was assured through a record of space battles won, largely thanks to the void warfare skills of the Exalted.

  As his precious, prided vessel broke into realspace, the creature that had once been Captain Vandred stared at the eye-shaped occulus screen that dominated the forward wall of the strategium deck. His own eyes were unchanged by the mutations that had twisted his physical form, remaining the pure black of the Nostramo-born, and these obsidian orbs glittered with reflected light from the dozens of crew consoles and the detonations lighting up the occulus before him.

  By necessity, the strategium endured a greater level of illumination than the rest of the ship, so the mortal crew could perform their duties with ease. The Exalted spared a sweeping glance around the multi-layered chamber now, ensuring all was in readiness.

  It seemed so.

  Servitors slaved to their stations jabbered and droned and worked consoles with a mix of bionic and human hands. Mortal crew, including several former Imperial Navy officers in service to the Legion, worked at stations of their own or supervised teams of servitors. Few consoles or strategium positions stood empty. Operations here were far too critical to suffer under a lack of manpower. It was almost the way it should be, the way it had been before the Great Betrayal, before the slow decline of the Legion’s strength had begun, and the Exalted revelled in this echo of a greater age.

  He took all of this in within the space of a single thump of his heart, before returning his attention to the occulus once more.

  And there it was. War in its grandest form. A theatre of destruction where hundreds, even thousands of lives were lost with the passing of each second. He allowed himself several moments to drink in the sight, to relish the sight of the life-ending explosions, no matter which side sustained the casualties.

  The feeling threatened to edge into euphoria, and the Exalted clawed his focus back. He had not earned his title by weakness and self-indulgence. Duty came first.

  The Exalted likened void war to the feeding frenzy of sharks. Few memories of his pre-Astartes life ever bubbled to the surface of his warped memory, but one in particular returned to him each time he brought his passions to bear in spaceborne battle. As a child, on several coastal journeys with his father, he had witnessed the eyeless barrasal sharks that would group together to hunt the great whales of the open ocean. They would form a pack, yet without any real bonds, for they rarely aligned their movements or worked together – they simply did not kill each other as they hunted the same prey. When each shark would strike at an exposed killing point on the great whale, it was instinct, not cooperation, that drove them. Instinct for the quickest kill.

  Void warfare seemed much the same to the Exalted now. Each ship was a shark swimming in the three-dimensional battlefield of space, and only the most talented fleet commanders could harness their instincts and bring their forces together into an efficient hunting pack. The Astartes creature smiled, baring black gums and fanged teeth as he watched the occulus. He was no fleet commander. His own talents had never been in bringing about such a pack unity.

  In fact, quite the opposite. He had no desire to inspire tactical union within the fleets he sailed with. All he cared about was the dissolution of order within the enemy’s armada.

  The easiest way to win a void battle was to ensure no enemy commander achieved tactical unity for his own forces. If their overall cohesion was compromised, each vessel could be isolated from any potential support and torn apart, alone, piece by piece.

  It was an approach the Night Haunter had hon
oured the Exalted for on no small number of occasions. As the primarch himself had said, it was worthless to know an enemy’s plans. The foe should be defeated before his plans even come into play.

  The Warmaster’s Crythe invasion fleet had translated into the system several days before – that much was obvious to the Exalted as soon as the Night Lords strike cruiser tore from the warp. Dozens of broken hulks of vessels, their shattered metal skins declaring allegiances to either side in the conflict, hung powerless in the void, destroyed in the opening phases of the war.

  The Exalted ordered its helmsmen to guide the ship through this silent graveyard, engines burning to reach the main battle, where the Warmaster’s fleet had at last forced the Throne’s forces into an orbital defence.

  The creature’s eyes drank in the sight of ancient names on the flickering hololithic display. Great vessels that had waged war for thousands of years, their names and titles etched into the flooding tides of the Exalted’s memory despite the turning of time.

  There, the Ironmonger, which served the Legion of Primarch Perturabo. There, the Heart of Terra, still with the scars it earned when it laid siege to the world it was named for. And ringed by dozens of smaller vessels, in the heart of the storm, the Vengeful Spirit.

  The Exalted gestured with its claw.

  ‘Make for the Warmaster’s flagship as you transmit our identity codes, then break formation and engage ahead of the fleet.’

  The Covenant of Blood streaked into the maelstrom of the orbital battle, and the Exalted pictured the command decks of Imperial vessels as another mighty ship joined the Archenemy host. Console alarms would sound, orders would be shouted… It was delightful to envisage, even if just for a moment.

  But the Covenant was vulnerable. It burned its engines white-hot as it powered past the Vengeful Spirit, past the Chaos vanguard.

  This had to be done fast.

  Even a cursory glance at the occulus revealed to the Exalted that the battle result was inevitable. The Imperial fleet was doomed. He watched the icons on the wide holographic display table before his oversized command throne, seeing their slow dance through three dimensions. In a matter of moments, he saw the outcomes of each icon’s motion, calculating the many ways every vessel might move in relation to the others. A game of many – but ultimately finite – possibilities, unfolding before his eyes.

  Again, he looked to the occulus. The forces of the False Emperor were still numerous enough to inflict severe harm upon the Warmaster’s attacking fleet, and that was what counted. Victory at too high a price was no victory at all.

  As he grinned, his eyes leaked tears of oily blood. The dark tears ran cold down a face as pale as porcelain, showing every vein beneath in thick, black cables. Muscles in his face strained and his tear ducts tingled. The Exalted was not used to smiling. It had been too long since entertainment of this calibre had been forthcoming, and better yet, the Warmaster was watching.

  It was time to make the most of it.

  Two Imperial ships stood out from the pack. Two targets that had to be destroyed in order to dissolve the hopes of tactical unity. The Exalted had marked both of them, and relayed his desires to the strategium crew. They worked now to make his intentions a reality.

  The Covenant of Blood raged through the battle, taking incidental damage on its void shields from the few fighters and light cruisers that had reacted fast enough to its sudden arrival. A speeding shrike of blue-black and bronze, it speared between two ships of similar size to itself, ignoring the barrage from their broadsides.

  By the time they had come about to give chase to the diving blade of a ship that had evaded them, they were already engaged by other vessels. These new attackers bore the black and gold of the Black Legion, the Warmaster’s own Astartes.

  The Covenant of Blood didn’t even slow down. The Night Lords hunted larger prey.

  An Astartes strike cruiser was a powerful ship, excelling in actions of surface bombardment and blockade-running. In void warfare it was a dread enemy, for while it lacked the offensive capability of a battle-barge or heavy cruiser of the Imperial Navy, because of its armaments and dense shielding, it would make short work of most vessels of a similar size. Had the Exalted joined the orbital battle above Solace by lending the fury of the Covenant’s lances and weapons batteries, the Night Lords would have made a significant and useful contribution, worthy of praise.

  That, however, was not enough.

  The greatest threat from an Astartes strike cruiser was its cargo. While the Covenant had weapons capable of levelling cities and shields that could take punishment for hours on end without flickering, its deadliest and most feared weapons were already leashed into their deployment pods and awaiting the moment of launch.

  The Night Lords cruiser was a huge and weighty ship, yet graceful despite its bulk. It rolled, shark-like, slow and smooth, as it dived towards the much larger Gothic-class ship, the Resolute. The Imperial cruiser was a monument as much as a warship: a small city of cathedral-like structures jutted from its central spine, and its aggressive beauty was an inspiration to the small fleet of support ships that streamed around it, orbiting like satellites in its presence.

  The occulus aboard the Covenant was blinded by the release from the Resolute’s lances. The larger ship was still target-locked on the Warmaster’s attacking vessels – it had had no time to bring its furious weapons array to bear on the new arrival yet – although the support ships in its shadow began to power up to destroy the racing Night Lords cruiser plunging into their midst.

  The Exalted watched as one of the icons situated behind the Covenant’s symbol winked out of existence. The Unblinking Eye was no more, coming to pieces under the final assault of the Resolute. A Black Legion ship: one of the Warmaster’s own.

  Strange, thought the Exalted, to have endured for millennia, just to die here. The Unblinking Eye had been at the Siege of Terra ten thousand years before. Now it was debris and an ignoble memory of failure.

  Then it was the Covenant’s turn. The strategium shuddered again, and not gently.

  But the shields were holding, the Exalted knew. He felt the ship’s skin as keenly as he felt his own. Three ships firing abeam, and… something more.

  ‘Shields holding,’ a mortal officer called to the command throne. ‘Weapons fire from three light cruisers and incidental fire from a fighter wing.’

  Fighters, it chuckled. How quaint.

  The Exalted instantly assimilated this information into his overall vision of the icon formation ballet unfolding before his eyes. The Resolute had been his first target because its shields were already down. He’d known from the moment the battle hololithic display had flickered into life that, from its place in the formation, the Gothic-class cruiser had fallen back from the fighting to restore its void shields. The minor fleet spinning around it like parasites only confirmed his deduction. It was one of the larger ships in the Imperial fleet, swarmed by protectors as it sought to restore its defences. It was clearly key to the defence.

  The Exalted snarled harsh manoeuvre orders, and the Covenant strained to obey. It began below the Resolute, and with engines howling, it climbed hard. Shields still holding, rippling as they reflected incoming fire, the strike cruiser sliced almost vertically up past the Resolute’s starboard side. The Night Lords ship presented almost no target to the masses of broadsides, though they fired anyway. It was a curious move by the standards of traditional void warfare. Running abeam of the ship would have allowed for a more standard exchange of heavy broadside batteries as the ships coasted alongside each other, but lancing vertically seemed to achieve nothing at all. Although the Resolute’s broadside volley went tearing off into space, completely wasted, the Covenant’s weapons batteries would have also done almost nothing – if they had actually fired. The guns of the Night Lords vessel remained silent.

  Aboard the Covenant of Blood, all of the human strategium crew were still crying out or throwing up in the aftermath of the insane gravitational
forces from the manoeuvre. Several had passed out. The Exalted wiped bloody tears of joy from his cheeks.

  That had been divine.

  ‘Confirm,’ it said simply to the servitor at the pod launch console.

  ‘Seventh, Ninth and Tenth Claws deployed,’ the half-machine slave murmured in response.

  ‘Contact?’ it demanded.

  ‘Confirmed,’ came the toneless reply. ‘Boarding pods confirm successful contact.’

  A moment later, a familiar voice crackled over the strategium vox-speakers.

  ‘Exalted,’ it said in the deep resonance of the Astartes. ‘This is Adhemar of Seventh Claw. We are in.’

  All this smiling made the creature weep more aching tears. They had just run a gauntlet of Imperial vessels through the heart of the enemy fleet, and by the time the officers of the Resolute realised what had happened, three squads of Astartes would be butchering their way to the command decks.

  Truly, that had been divine. The Resolute and the fleet leadership on board were as good as dead. Once the other Imperial crews heard of the slaughter aboard their key vessels, fear would spread like a merciless cancer.

  One down, one to go.

  ‘Helm,’ it said as the strategium shivered under another barrage. ‘Make for the Sword. All power to the engines.’

  ‘Lord,’ an officer close to the throne cleared his throat. ‘The enemy flagship’s shields are still raised.’

  Not for long. ‘Approach vector: insidious predation.’

  ‘Aye, lord.’

  The Exalted licked its lips with a black tongue. ‘Fire all forward lances and torpedoes at hull section 63 as we move across her bow. Time the firing of the bombardment cannon to coincide with the exact moment our lances and torpedoes strike.’

  That was no easy feat. A dozen servitors and mortal officers hunched over their consoles, working their controls and calculations.

  ‘It will be done, lord,’ assured the nearby officer.

  The Exalted couldn’t recall his name. Either that, or it had never learned the human’s name, it wasn’t sure. The creature knew the man as its bridge attendant, and that was all it needed to know. ‘But–’ the man hesitated.