[Battlefleet Gothic 01] - Execution Hour Read online

“Let them try and run. They won’t get far,” said the rotting figure in the captain’s chair. “Power up the engines. When they try to escape into the immaterium we’ll be ready to take up the chase.”

  “Opinions?” asked Flag-captain Semper, looking at the senior bridge officers assembled before him and aware that some of them might take this unorthodox command tactic to be a sign of weakness in their new captain. It was Remus Nyder, the ship’s stolid veteran Master of Ordnance and the longest-serving officer aboard the Macharius, who was first to speak.

  “Without our payload of attack craft our offensive capabilities are limited. Even if we already had our new Starhawk squadrons aboard, we would still be outgunned against a Hades class ship. I am satisfied that your decision to disengage from contact with a more powerful enemy vessel is the best course of action under the circumstances.”

  There was a murmur of assent from many of the other officers present, although Semper noticed no such sign of agreement from his second-in-command.

  “You have a different opinion, Mister Ulanti?” Semper asked.

  “Forgive me, captain, but if the enemy vessel truly is the renegade Vengis and its captain exactly whom he says he is, then we are not out of danger yet.” The young lieutenant paused, gathering his thoughts, before continuing under the steely gaze of his captain.

  “Morrau’s treatise on tactics is still required reading for all collegium cadets, and he was known to be a most determined and tenacious opponent. Indeed, his relentless pursuit and harrying of the eldar cruiser Changeling is now part of fleet legend. It seems unlikely that Morrau—if that is who he truly is—will give up the chase so easily, and may even be willing to take the battle against us into the warp itself. After all, we have long known that the daemon-things which helm such renegade vessels have warp-senses superior even to those of our own Navis Nobilite. There can be no guarantee that we would be able to evade them in the warp as we would any other normal vessel.”

  All those present waited on the captain’s response, but if their new captain had an answer to his second-in-command’s points, he chose to keep it to himself.

  “Enemy contact detected. Vandire’s oath, he’s found us again! All decks, brace for impact!”

  It had been three days since their initial encounter with the Contagion in the Dolorosa system. Three days of emergency warp jumps and constant skirmishing with the Chaos vessel, the Macharius unable to shake off its pursuer. Unable to match its opponent’s firepower, the Imperial vessel had retreated into the warp where, as Flag-lieutenant Ulanti had predicted, it had still been impossible to evade the daemon-piloted Chaos ship amongst the storms and tides of the immaterium. Time and again the Chaos ship had emerged, weapons firing, from one of the swirling energy storms, forcing the Macharius to crash-jump back out of the warp to emerge in the empty interstellar void between star systems. Morrau’s ship would either follow them, not allowing them sufficient time to properly recharge their warp drives, or would wait in ambush for them to re-enter the warp again, the Contagion holding position on the ever-changing warp currents in a show of skill that no human navigator could ever match.

  It had become a battle of energy levels and crew stamina instead of firepower and ordnance attacks, Leoten Semper grimly realised—and one which his ship was losing, its power systems and human crew overloaded to the point of exhaustion by the effort of so many emergency jumps.

  Now the Contagion was coming at them once more, its now-familiar energy signature emerging from out of the random chaos of the warp currents which it had up until this moment been using to mask its presence. Even though the viewing bay blast shields were down, Semper could almost imagine the scene outside: the sinister delta shape of the Chaos cruiser gliding towards them through the warp, its tall and distinctively narrow-shaped command tower cutting through the stuff of the immaterium like a shark’s fin, its massive lance battery turrets crackling with energy as they swung around to bear on their target. The Macharius rocked violently as the Chaos ship raked it with a primed volley of massed energy weapons fire and for a moment the Imperial ship’s command deck, its blast shields lowered for warp travel and many of its opticon screens switched off for maximum energy conservation, seemed more like a besieged underground bunker than the bridge of a warship as it shook under the impact of the enemy broadside.

  “Void shields penetrated, starboard side,” judged Master of Ordnance Nyder impassively, drawing on the experience of a long and battle-scarred naval career. “No critical damage, but probably at least one of the starboard gun-bays knocked out of action.” It would be at least another minute before the official damage report confirmed the veteran officer’s opinion, neither dry-toned damage appraisal containing any hint of the awful devastation inflicted on the hundreds of crewmen in those gun-bays as the barrage of lance beams, mass-reactive explosive shells and white-hot plasma streams ripped through the Macharius’s metres-thick armoured hull.

  At Semper’s command, the Macharius locked on with its remaining starboard weapons, both ships firing simultaneous broadsides as they came abeam of each other. Combat in warp space was up-close and deadly, the range of scanners and weapon targeters so limited here that engagements took place at distances measured in hundreds rather than tens of thousands of kilometres. The area between the two ships was saturated with energy as enough firepower to level a city was unleashed across it. Void shield strikes registered as bright blossoms on surveyor screens, and both ships shuddered under the impact of on-target hits.

  “Warning! Power systems failure!” a tech-priest adept signalled as alarms went off on the bridge. Semper swore, realising that they had either overloaded their dwindling energy levels or had taken reactor damage in the last broadside. Either way, his short captaincy of the Macharius was about to come to an ignominious end. The ship’s ancient auto-systems would maintain the Geller Field’s own emergency generators, but before they exhausted themselves the Contagion would long ago have come about to blow his defenceless ship into drifting warp debris.

  Everyone aboard the Macharius was already dead—and Semper suddenly realised that dead men have nothing left to lose.

  “Lower Geller Field to 60% of normal safety level!” he yelled. “Channel excess power into manoeuvring systems and hold it there in reserve!”

  “No!” It was the voice of Magos Castaboras, the tech-priest reacting in shock to Semper’s order. “Commissar Kyogen, stop him! Without the protection of the Geller Field we will be torn apart by the forces of the maelstrom!”

  Semper looked up to see the commissar bearing down on him, sidearm already drawn, when the figure of Hito Ulanti interposed itself in front of the commissar, the flag-lieutenant calmly staring down the barrel of the bolt pistol now levelled at his face. “As second-in-command I concur with the captain’s order, commissar. Shoot us both if you must, but our deaths will only precede your own by a matter of minutes. At least this way the captain is giving us a fighting chance.”

  Kyogen’s aim never wavered as he called out to the nearby tech-priest. “Magos Castaboras: is such a stratagem possible?”

  “Yes, perhaps… If the enemy can be lured close enough. But the greater chances are that—”

  “Thank you, magos. That is all I need to know,” said the commissar, stepping aside and lowering his pistol. “You may proceed, flag-captain.”

  Semper watched the image readings on the main surveyor screen. The Contagion had come around and was now standing off their port bow, from where it could safely finish them off with its long range batteries.

  Come on, you arrogant bastard, thought Semper. This is what you really want. This is what you’ve been fighting so hard for these last few days. Come in close and gloat on your moment of victory.

  “Enemy vessel’s power systems failing. Warp field now at less than two-thirds integrity,” reported the slithering voice of one of the Contagion’s heretic tech-priests.

  Morrau leaned forward in his chair, staring through the command deck
’s main viewing port at the distant shape of the stricken Imperial warship. The servants of the Powers of Chaos had no fear of the true face of the warp. He tried to read his enemy’s intentions in the flickering patterns of the maelstrom, sensing a possible trap. But surely only a madman would risk the eternal damnation of his soul to the hungry forces of the immaterium with such a desperate gambit? The Chaos commander had witnessed the spectacle of total warp field failure several times in his centuries-long career, and it was a sight never to be forgotten: the very structure of a ship being unravelled as the daemon-things of the warp coalesced into physical form to feed on the souls of its doomed crew.

  Morrau smiled at the memory and passed a fleshless hand over the activation rune on his lectern screen, looking to find the truth in the surveyor symbols displayed there.

  He’s not taking the bait. We must raise the stakes higher!

  “Lower Geller Field level to 40%,” Semper ordered, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. There was a deep groan from all around them—the ship’s hull starting to buckle inwards as the forces of the warp pressed in all around the weakened Geller Field—and many of the Adeptus Mechanicus adepts on the bridge cried out in fear, believing it to be the angry voice of the Machine God spirit inhabiting the Macharius. Magos Castaboras led his adepts in fevered prayer, knowing that the warp field could not maintain its integrity for more than one or two minutes at such a low energy level.

  Semper stared at the image of the Contagion on the flickering green screen, willing it to move closer. Hendrik Morrau was a tenacious and determined opponent, yes, but Semper remembered reading of another side to this Battlefleet Gothic legend. Morrau had been a cruel and capricious martinet who had once ordered over three thousand mutineers to be fed out of an open airlock. This was a man who had enjoyed the suffering of others, even before throwing in his lot with the Emperor’s enemies. How could he resist the lure of the spectacle now being offered to him?

  “Enemy vessel closing!”

  As the surveyor finished speaking, Semper was already issuing orders: “Engage reserve power systems and reinstate Geller Field integrity. Helm control—engage starboard manoeuvring thrusters and bring us about hard to port! Mister Nyder—”

  “Torpedoes, flag-captain?”

  Semper’s savage smile of triumph matched that of his officer. “Oh yes, Mister Nyder. Torpedoes.”

  “Target coming to new heading!” Hendrik Morrau didn’t need the helmsman’s warning to understand the trap he had fallen into. With sickening realisation he saw the Imperial ship’s armoured prow swing round to face the oncoming Chaos vessel. To the veteran captain, it was like staring down the barrel of a loaded boltgun. Or six loaded boltguns, as the Macharius’s six torpedo ports gaped open, exhaust gases streaming out of them as the missiles within fired up their launch engines. The Dictator class cruiser had used its torpedo ordnance before in the previous few days’ engagements against the Contagion, but every shot fired had lost itself in the currents of the maelstrom before it could reach its intended target.

  These could not be lost. Not at this range.

  Launched in close spread, all six found their target, hitting the Contagion amidships on its underside, the combined explosion all but wrenching the renegade cruiser in half. One unexploded warhead continued on and up through a dozen deck levels, detonating several seconds later inside the Contagion’s field generators.

  Hendrik Morrau was ripped out of his chair by the impact of the first salvo of explosions. He had just enough time to feel the agony from his severed bio-link tendrils before the last torpedo destroyed the warp shields and all the daemons of hell, it seemed, rushed in to claim the soul that he had unknowingly promised to them so long ago.

  “Vessel destroyed!” confirmed the surveyor officer. Leoten Semper looked at the tell-tale readings which indicated the destruction of the Contagion and tried to imagine the incredible scene happening right now on the other side of the Macharius’s sealed viewing ports—the renegade cruiser being wrenched apart by the fury of the warp as hungry things fought over the souls of its crew.

  He deactivated the lectern screen and turned to see Ulanti, his second-in-command, standing expectantly before him. Semper hadn’t slept in days, a fact he suddenly became acutely aware of. Suddenly he felt tired, very tired.

  “Orders, flag-captain?”

  “Assess battle damage and use whatever power we have left to exit the warp. We’ll recharge our generators and make any necessary repairs before continuing on to Bhein Morr. You have the bridge, Mister Ulanti.”

  Maxim Borusa picked his way carefully through the still-burning metal and human wreckage of the gun-bay. The bay adjacent to this one had taken a direct hit in the battle, and the blast doors hadn’t sealed fast enough to stop the wave of fire that came roaring along the gun deck. Maxim had acted fast, pulling two of his fellow press-gang conscripts down on top of him to act as human shields as the wave of fire rolled over them.

  Crawling out from under their heat-blasted bodies, he’d thought he was the only one left alive in the entire bay. And then he found Gogol.

  The crewboss was pinned beneath a collapsed gantry beam, his legs crushed. The beam had sheltered him from the worst of the firestorm that had swept through the bay, but the heat flash had left him blind. Gogol stared up at him with sightless eyes, sensing that someone else was close to him. “Who’s there?” he cried. “Don’t just stand there. Help me. Go fetch the ship’s surgeon!”

  “Wait here,” Maxim told him, thickening his voice in disguise, and went off to sift in the nearby wreckage. He came back with something that suited his purposes exactly. A metre and a half of engineer’s wrench used to make repairs to the gun track.

  Gogol never knew what hit him.

  Three swift blows followed by a final satisfying crunch of bone, and Maxim’s chances of surviving life in Battlefleet Gothic had just increased immeasurably. Happy with the way things had worked out, he sat down and waited for the rescue crews to arrive.

  Six days later, His Divine Majesty’s Ship Lord Solar Macharius emerged from the warp on the edge of the Bhein Morr system, its comm-net systems instantly picking up the reassuring sounds of dozens of different Imperial coded channels of busy radio traffic. A squadron of defence monitor ships were on patrol nearby, one of them breaking off to escort the cruiser through the minefields recently sown around the warp jump beacon and on towards the battlegroup armada now assembling in-system.

  “Good hunting, Macharius,” signalled the defence ship captain, noticing the recent battle damage scarring the hull of the Dictator cruiser.

  “Good enough,” replied the captain of the Macharius. “Good enough.”

  Again, and at the risk of infuriating those critics who seek pleasure in taking me to task for my many personal academic preferences and peccadilloes, I return once more to the subject of the cruiser Macharius and its commander, Leoten Semper. Those readers less well-versed in the details of the later events of the Gothic Sector War may wonder why I have involved myself to such an extent in the events surrounding one vessel—which was, to he sure, just one of hundreds such warships amongst Battlefleet Gothic—and its so far unknown captain. To those readers, I ask that they indulge me for a time yet, although the next action which I intend to examine is remarkable (and so far unmentioned and overlooked by previous chroniclers) in that it serves as prologue to the unimaginable events that were soon about to change the nature of the Gothic Sector War. Leoten Semper, serving in the front line of the conflict, could not be aware of the true meaning behind the mutiny and desertion of the crew of the scouting cruiser Bellerophon or of the stolen prize they were taking with them over to the enemy—but others serving in Battlefleet Command could and perhaps should have seen the events surrounding the Bellerophon for what they truly were: the final piece of a puzzle trail that began some four years earlier, before the start of the Gothic War proper, with the devastation of the Imperial outpost guarding the Arx Gap in 139.M41
. Had this and other events been recognised for what they were, the Despoiler’s intentions—and the reasons behind his incursion into the Gothic sector—could have been divined earlier, saving the lives of untold billions of the Emperor’s subjects and averting a terrible danger that still threatens the Imperium of Mankind to this very day.

  —Scribe Emeritus Rodrigo Konniger,

  Into the Jaws of Death, Into the Mouth of Hell: Notable Actions of the Gothic Sector War, 143-149.M41

  PART TWO

  MATTERS OF HONOUR

  All over the ship, the clamour of combat was dying away. The sounds of gunshots and the clash of steel on steel were now being replaced by cheers and screams. Cheers, as the victors hunted the last few enemy survivors through the labyrinth of the ship’s decks and passageways; screams, as they found each of them in turn.

  Flag-lieutenant Pava Magell walked the length of the main chancel leading to the ship’s arsenal, accepting the salutes of the weary but victorious fighters and stopping to offer praise and words of comfort to the injured and dying. It was here that their enemies had made their final stand, barricading themselves inside the main arsenal hold and attempting to detonate the munitions stored there in a last desperate act of defiance—and it had been Magell himself who had led the assault to clear out this last pocket of resistance and prevent the enemy destroying the entire ship.

  A new wave of cheering, louder than any of the others he could hear, rang out from along the broad passage. Magell saw an excited scrum of his men running towards him. They were tossing something ragged and bloody up into the air and catching it on the ends of their cutlasses and bayonets. Magell watched as something smaller but just as bloody was kicked along the deck towards him. It landed at his feet with a sick wet sound. He looked down in curiosity. It was lumpen and misshapen—kicked to a bloody pulp by the heavy work boots of the gunnery crew gangs—and with one eye gone, but Magell still recognised it as the head of Ship’s Commissar Brandt.