[Battlefleet Gothic 01] - Execution Hour Read online

  Semper gestured at the activity below. “Your opinion, commissar? Your assessment of the ship and its crew?”

  “We have a good cadre of command crew and petty officers familiar with the ship and its operations, but too many gaps have been filled amongst the lower rankings by untried recruits who haven’t even made their first warp jump yet. Too many press-ganged convict scum as well, although they’ll soon be wishing they were back in the work camps on Lubiyanka once they get their first taste of space combat.”

  Semper nodded, already impressed with Kyogen’s straightforward way of talking. Maybe, he thought, I might actually have a useful officer here and not just another Schola Progenium-created automaton.

  “And your assessment of the ship’s captain?”

  Kyogen looked Semper straight in the eye as he answered. “Your service record shows you to be a highly capable officer, and it is difficult to argue with Admiral Haasen’s decision to promote you to your first full captaincy.” There was a scream from the deck below, abruptly cut off, as one of the gun crew stumbled and was instantly crushed beneath the weapon carriage’s huge rolling wheels. If Kyogen noticed, he gave no indication. Deaths amongst the lower ranks were so common on an Imperial warship that they passed unnoticed. “You acquitted yourself well in the attack on Stranivar, but in view of your basic inexperience and the threat now facing the Gothic sector fleet, there must remain some doubts about your ability to captain a vessel of this size during the present crisis.”

  A loud warning chime sounded over the comm-net—fifteen minutes to warp jump—and Kyogen shifted impatiently, obviously keen to be attending to his duties elsewhere.

  “One last thing, commissar,” Semper said, sensing the other man’s impatience. “In the event of my death or injury, who would you choose to replace me as captain?” It went unsaid that one cause of Semper’s death might be Kyogen himself, since any fleet commissar could summarily execute a captain for anything they judged to be a serious dereliction of duty.

  “Flag-lieutenant Ulanti is next in the chain of command,” replied the commissar, the fixed snarl carved into his face deepening at the mention of Semper’s second-in-command. “But, noble title or not, he’s still nothing more than Necromundan hive-trash. Hive-trash have their place on a warship, but only as press-gang conscripts. No senior officer would take orders from such a captain, no matter how high-born they claimed to be.”

  Semper took all this in without reaction. “I see. Then who would you nominate instead?”

  “Myself, captain. In the event of your death, I would consider it my proper duty to appoint myself in your place. Now, if that is all, I have to oversee the final security arrangements for the transition to the warp.”

  And with that, Commissar Kyogen saluted smartly and turned and walked away, leaving the captain of the Macharius to wonder about the man who held the power of life and death over even him.

  On the gun-deck below, Maxim Borusa glanced up at the two officers on the walkway above before a vicious kick from Gogol brought him sharply back to the business at hand.

  “Back to work, Borusa, before I finish that piece of handiwork I started back on Lubiyanka!” spat the crewboss, giving the new conscript another swift kick for good measure. Maxim fell into step once more with the other members of the work gang as they hauled one of the huge gun carriages along the track. He winced, remembering the scars all over his back from the time Gogol and his gang had caught him, and the boss had gone to work on him with a fire-heated blade. He had escaped, and once again Maxim cursed the fates which had brought them together again years later: Maxim press-ganged into service aboard the Macharius, only to find the gloating Gogol waiting for him.

  Maxim had been born into the lawless underworld of the hive cities of Stranivar and had survived the gulag hell of the Lubiyanka prison moon, but even he had few illusions left about his survival chances aboard an Imperial warship. Not with Gogol here too.

  “Spiritus Machina,” intoned the metal-masked figure of Magos Castaboras, resplendent in his glittering robes of woven silicon. “Prepare to engage warp drives on my mark.” The vital task of taking a ship into warp space could only be done by the most senior tech-priest aboard, for only he could conduct the proper rituals or knew the correct Tetragrammaton code—the true secret name of that aspect of the Machine God which inhabited the Macharius’s systems—which allowed access to the ship’s warp drives. Standing on the bridge and surrounded by a phalanx of adepts, the tech-priest waited for the silent nod of assent from Leoten Semper before completing the ritual.

  “Quinque…”

  “Quattuorum…”

  “Tres…”

  “Due…”

  “Unus…”

  “Engagus!”

  At the magos’s command, the truly stellar levels of energy contained within the ship’s plasma reactors were released into the warp engines, ripping a hole in the fabric of space and pushing the cruiser forward into the immaterium. The Geller Field—the teardrop-shaped bubble of reality which protected the ship and its crew from the full fury of the maelstrom—crackled with power as waves of warp energy lashed against it, rocking the Macharius from prow to stern. Inside the ship, the new recruits cringed in terror, their screams and cries almost drowning out the traditional litanies of protection chanted by their more experienced crewmates. Confessors, junior commissars and shotgun-armed petty officers walked every deck, encouraging the crew to keep good faith in the divine protection of the Emperor, but meanwhile keeping a close vigil for any sign of daemonic intrusion into the minds and bodies of their shipmates.

  On the bridge, the magos stepped away from his control lectern and bowed silently to the captain, signalling that his task was over. As of now the fate of the entire ship was now in the hands of another.

  Sealed off in his pilaster dome and guarded by fanatically loyal Navis Nobilite retainers who would not even allow the ship’s captain himself to enter without their master’s permission, Principal Navigator Solon Cassander closed his eyes and removed the warding band from around his head, allowing him to open up the mystic third eye centred in the middle of his forehead.

  Looking out on the true face of the maelstrom with his mystic warpsight, he could see most of the length of the ship extended out before him. Aft lay the engine section, comprising fully one third of the ship’s three kilometre length, but below him was the main body of the Macharius, bristling with crenellated gun turrets, observation domes and spires, antenna arrays and other baroque features of the vessel’s superstructure. On each side of the hull were the heavy weapon batteries and the tiered ramparts of the cruiser’s launch bays, each bay capable of unleashing wave upon wave of fast attack fighters and bombers. Ahead of him was the fearsome armoured beak of the prow, its metres-thick solid adamantine armour designed to smash through the hulls of enemy vessels in a full head-on ramming attack. There, too, was the ship’s main frontal armament: six missile tube tunnels, each firing a thirty-metre-long plasma torpedo.

  The firepower of the Macharius was formidable, but Solon Cassander knew that it was insignificant in comparison to the power contained in the merest flicker of warp energy in the maelstrom raging around them. The navigator paused, clearing all thoughts from his conscious mind and extended his gaze into the higher realms of the warp, using the psychic signal of the astronomican as a beacon to plot a safe course through the currents and tempests of the immaterium. Course changes and navigation instructions would be relayed down to the command deck for immediate implementation, but for the next few days, while the ship was in transit through the warp, Navigator Cassander would be the true master of the Macharius.

  Standing immobile on the bridge, Semper stared in fascination at the complex and ever-changing energy patterns of the warp as they were electronically interpreted on one of the command deck’s opticon screens. Navigators claimed to be able to sometimes see glimpses of the future in the swirling patterns of the warp. Watching the images of the ebb and flow of
the currents, Semper wondered what the future held for the men and ships of Battlefleet Gothic.

  “Good hunting.” It was the traditional greeting hail between ships of the fleet as they left on patrol or encountered each other in the warp, but now, with the warfleets of Abaddon the Despoiler pouring out of the Eye of Terror and a dozen navy bases already fallen to the sudden onslaught of the Chaos attack, Leoten Semper was left to wonder exactly who would be the hunter and who the hunted in this war.

  The Contagion drifted inert and seemingly lifeless on the solar tides, its power systems reduced to such a low output as to make it to all intents invisible to the electronic senses of another vessel. His own reactions deadened by the low power levels trickling through the ship’s systems, it took Morrau some seconds to realise that the ship’s navigator-seer was standing before him. The flesh of the navigator’s face bubbled and suppurated as he spoke.

  “Your pardon, flag-captain, but—”

  “I know,” Morrau said, cutting off the sibilant hiss of the voice of his daemon-possessed navigator. “I have sensed it too. The powers of the warp warn us of the approach of our prey.” Morrau settled back into his chair, contemplating with pleasure the prospect of the coming battle.

  On the fringes of the Dolorosa system, a miniature second sun suddenly blossomed in the vacuum of space, its light outshining that of the real star at the far distant centre of the planetary system. Waves of energy cascaded out of the extra-dimensional breach as a three-kilometre-long metal leviathan ripped its way back into the normal universe, its shields straining at near-overload point to withstand the terrible energies surging around it. His Divine Majesty’s ship the Lord Solar Macharius had completed a successful exit from the warp.

  Leaving the tech-priests and confessors to their prayers of thanks, Leoten Semper took up position in his captain’s pulpit. A ship was at its most vulnerable in the moments immediately after re-entering normal space, when its power levels were still in flux and the energy burst of its warp exit broadcast its existence and position to any other vessel in the system.

  “Astrogation!” Semper barked. “Determine our course and position. Surveyors! Locate the position of Destroyer Squadron Mako and check for presence of any other unknown vessels. Captain to all decks! Raise blast shields and make ready all weapons.”

  There was a pause while the crew moved to carry out his orders, and then the responses started coming back.

  “Astrogation reporting. Position confirmed as the Dolorosa system. Estimate we are within 89.7% accuracy of intended exit point.” Semper made a mental note to commend his navigator. Any jump that hit its intended exit point with more than a 70% level of accuracy was considered the mark of a master.

  “Surveyors reporting. Heavy interference from warp energy residue. Unable to locate Squadron Mako at the rendezvous coordinates.”

  “Communications reporting. No response to our coded hailing signals. Dead air on all standard fleet frequencies.”

  Semper turned to look at the empty starfield revealed beyond the viewing bay’s now-raised blast shields. Never mind long-distance surveyor reports, with the bridge’s enhanced viewing devices they should actually be able to see the waiting escort squadron.

  Emperor’s throne, where were they?

  Several hundred thousand kilometres directly behind the Macharius, the Contagion closed in on its prey. Power flowed through the Chaos vessel as its energy levels were gradually brought up, and Hendrik Morrau fought to keep the growing excitement out of his voice as he stared at the bright target blip on the surveyor screen.

  “Maintain course and increase speed by mark point two. Stay in his warp trail. Bring the prow batteries and dorsal lances up to half power. Void shields to remain down until I give the order.”

  Morrau watched the target blip grow brighter on the screen in front of him. It was an ambush tactic he had long ago honed to perfection—using the energy trail of a craft recently emerged from the warp to mask his own approach from directly behind it. Before the time the enemy even knew he was there, the Contagion would already be in position to deliver a crippling strike to its power systems. The defenceless Imperium ship would then be boarded and seized, and Morrau looked forward to the prospect of more prisoners, particularly if the Macharius’s captain was amongst them. The Chaos captain had already given Surgeon-Interrogator Torque careful and highly specific instructions on what he wanted done, should his opposing number be foolish enough to allow himself to be taken alive.

  “Possible surveyor scan anomaly detected.” The toneless voice of one of the servitors rang out, followed by Semper’s urgent reply.

  “Identify!”

  Officers converged on the drone’s position, knowing that their captain wanted the crucial information from a human rather than one of the soulless man-machine things that operated many of the command deck’s monitor systems. Hito Ulanti leaned over the console, quickly interpreting the surveyor scan symbols which flashed across the screen. “Still a lot of warp energy interference, but possible target blip fifteen to twenty thousand kilometres immediately behind us and closing… Could be another ship!”

  Semper didn’t hesitate. “Helm control—hard to port! Engineering—open port vent valves and engage plasma reactor emergency release systems!”

  “Target veering to port. Energy surge in his power systems,” croaked the Contagion’s toad-bodied helmsman.

  “He’s detected us!” Morrau snarled with a curse. “Full power to forward weapons. Fire when ready!”

  “Flag-captain! The void shields! We should—” bleated a heretic tech-priest, before one of Morrau’s Plague Marine bodyguards savagely cut him down in response to the curt gesture from their master.

  “No time!” bellowed Morrau in fury. “Lock on with forward weapons and open fire!”

  The Macharius swung round in space, gargoyle-faced vents opening up along its port side to bleed gaseous clouds of broiling plasma out into space. The expelled energy cloud appeared as a hazy after-image on the Contagion’s surveyor screens, confusing the Chaos ship’s targeting systems and sending its opening weapons fire blazing harmlessly past the Imperial cruiser.

  “Engage void shields!” Morrau bellowed, already knowing that the Macharius’s manoeuvre would bring its port batteries into firing alignment before enough energy could be diverted to the Contagion’s void shield generators. At this range, the damage would not be critical, but the Chaos cruiser sustained several hull-deep hits as it passed through the sights of the Macharius’s weapons batteries, before its void shields finally powered up sufficiently to absorb the energy blasts and macro-shell impacts.

  The moment of danger over, Hendrik Morrau sat back in his chair, grudgingly impressed by his enemy’s unexpected resourcefulness. Perhaps this engagement might be even more enjoyable than he anticipated.

  Semper watched the target blip on the scanner screen move out of weapons range for the time being. The initial exchange of fire over, both ships would now withdraw to manoeuvre for the best possible advantage in their next attack runs. They would also use this moment to learn as much about their enemy as possible.

  “Surveyors: identify enemy vessel by class and name, if you can.”

  The Officer of Surveyors consulted the readings on his lectern, calling up centuries-old data from the vast repositories of information held in the ship’s logic engines. “Vessel is a Hades class heavy cruiser. It’s broadcasting a modified form of an old Segmentum Obscurus fleet identification code, but we should be able to—Vandire’s oath, it’s the Vengis?”

  A murmur of shocked disbelief rippled round the command deck, cut short by the urgent words of a junior signals officer. “The enemy vessel is hailing us, flag-captain. The enemy captain wishes to speak with you!”

  “On audio,” Semper ordered, warily noting the way Kyogen unsnapped the fastenings on his holstered bolt pistol. “Have faith, comrade commissar,” the captain remarked, smiling grimly. “Perhaps he merely wishes to discuss the te
rms of his surrender.”

  Even over the interference of the ship-to-ship link, the inhuman nature of the voice that suddenly filled the interior of the Macharius’s command deck was all too apparent. It was a voice thick with decay, each word bubbling obscenely up from a body bloated full of its own poisons. “My congratulations, captain,” gloated the voice. “It has been some time—several centuries, in fact—since I last saw an immerman Manoeuvre implemented so well.”

  “This is Flag-captain Leoten Semper of his Divine Majesty’s Ship the Lord Solar Macharius,” Semper said. “Identify yourself!”

  The voice on the link gave a sick wet laugh. “I regret we cannot see one another, captain, but I imagine that you would find my appearance much changed from whatever portraits and statues of me still exist on Port Maw. I am Flag-captain Hendrik Morrau, master of the vessel once known to you as the Vengis.”

  “Impossible!” snapped Semper. “Morrau and his crew were lost to the warp after the defeat of the Bligh Mutiny renegades six hundred years ago!”

  “Lost?” choked the voice of Morrau. “Perhaps it might have seemed, when we were marooned in the immaterium, and madness and disease took so many of us, but how could we be lost when our suffering led us to find salvation in a power far greater than the withered thing which sits even now upon the Golden Throne? This ship is called Contagion now, captain, and we gladly serve the glory of the Great One who found us there in the warp and remade us in his own pestilent image.”

  On board the Contagion, Morrau contemplated the glowing icon marking the Macharius’s position on the opticon screen and savoured the hiss of dead static over the now silent comm-link. “They have closed communications, lord,” reported one of his nearby crew-things. “Enemy vessel now changing course and breaking away from engagement zone.”