[Battlefleet Gothic 01] - Execution Hour Read online

  He spat again, clearing the vile aftertaste of the intoxicating tajii root juice out of his mouth. Let those prayer-babbling idiots think what they want, Maxim decided. He knew that the only luck that counted for anything was the kind you made yourself.

  He stood up, reaching under his pallet to bring out his own good luck talisman, a metre and a half of solid metal engineer’s wrench. Petty officers and crewbosses were issuing weapons—axes, gaffs, cutlasses—to everyone assigned to the boarding assault, but for his own personal reasons Maxim preferred to use this. He smiled to himself as he took hold of the heavy tool, remembering the satisfying crunch of bone as it stove in the skull of the last man who had underestimated Maxim Borusa.

  The first rule of space combat is to always know the exact position of the enemy but Pava Magell didn’t have to check any of the surveyor screens around him to check whereabouts the Macharius was in relation to his own stricken vessel. Looking out of the command deck viewing port, he could see the shape of the Imperial cruiser—vast and imposing at such close range—blotting out the starfield as it slid into position port side of the crippled Bellerophon. The batteries on that flank of the Bellerophon were gone, obliterated by the hail of missiles that had punctured the warship’s armoured skin, but Magell could see the Macharius’s own gun batteries trained on his ship—just as he could see the tiered openings of the attack carrier’s launch bays, ready to unleash another wave of bombers at their helpless target. Magell knew that the Macharius could destroy the Bellerophon at will, but he also knew that by moving in this close, the captain of the Macharius had already signalled his real intent.

  “They’re launching a boarding assault!” Kelto said, his voice ragged with panic and fear. “We don’t stand a chance. We should signal our surrender now. The punishment for mutiny is death, I know, but with the rate of casualties the fleet is suffering, Ravensburg can’t afford to throw away an entire crew. Perhaps we could—”

  Magell reholstered his laspistol and stepped contemptuously over the body of his former officer of the watch. With so many other corpses littering the decks of the Bellerophon, one more shouldn’t make any difference. He drew his sabre and strode towards the doors of the command deck, signalling for the other remaining officers to join him. He didn’t have to turn round to look out the viewing bay to know about the swarm of shuttles and assault pods now exiting the Macharius as they swiftly bridged the void between the two ships. Soon they would be attaching themselves to the outer hull of the Bellerophon, breaching airlocks and entry ports and unleashing their battle-hardened occupants into the interior of the ship.

  Magell knew that his short-lived command of the Bellerophon was over. He had gambled, and he had lost everything. Now all he had left was his honour.

  For the second time within a few scant days, the decks and sections of the Bellerophon rang with the sounds of combat as its crew battled with the boarding parties from the Macharius for control of the stricken ship.

  Hito Ulanti sidestepped the chainsword blade which buzzed through the air in front of him. A dangerous weapon, he knew, but a clumsy one as well, with many of those who wielded it depending too much on the weapon’s fearsome destructive capabilities rather than their own fighting prowess. Ulanti knocked the blade aside on its return swing with a casual flick of his weapon and then thrust the point of his sabre into his opponent’s throat. The enemy—some kind of ship’s engineer, judging by the armoured suit he wore—collapsed to the ground, gurgling. Ulanti moved swiftly on, grinding one booted heel into the face of his still-twitching opponent for good measure.

  In front of him, he saw another wave of the Bellerophon’s defenders charging down the corridor towards him. He drew his laspistol, sending volley after volley of searing laser fire into their packed ranks, only stopping when the weapon’s power-pack critically overheated, scorching the flesh of his hand. Ulanti threw the pistol away with a curse, taking up his sabre again and urging forward the remains of his boarding party who filled the corridor behind him. A stray shotgun blast took off the head of the man next to him, adding another corpse to the carpet of bodies that lined the passageway. A hand scrabbled at his legs from down amongst this litter of dead and wounded and Ulanti stabbed his sabre down in a short killing thrust, not even glancing down to check whether his victim had been from the crew of the Macharius or the Bellerophon. Blood flowed down the young officer’s face from a head wound he didn’t remember receiving and the creeping numbness in his hand told him that the burn wounds there would require treatment after the battle.

  Ulanti had heard of the tactics perfected by the warriors of the Adeptus Astartes for such boarding actions: small well-armed squads of Space Marines penetrating deep into the interior of enemy craft via teleport assault or manned boarding torpedoes and waging a rigorously-coordinated battle plan with each squad seizing control of a specific vital part of the ship.

  This was nothing like that; this was simple brute slaughter, a bloody scrum in which the only victors would be the side which succeeded in putting all of the enemy to the sword. There were other senior command officers from the Macharius aboard the Bellerophon—Ulanti knew that Commissar Kyogen had taken command of the second assault wave from the Macharius—but he had no idea where they were or how they were faring in their own separate battles.

  The blast doors at the end of the corridor rumbled open, disgorging another wave of the Bellerophon’s crew. Defenders and boarding party attackers met in a savage clash of arms. Ulanti rushed forward, catching a glimpse of a familiar crimson braiding on a uniform worn by the figure at the head of the enemy counter-attack. It was the uniform of a flag-lieutenant, identical to Ulanti’s own, and so far it was the most senior rank Ulanti had seen amongst the defending crew. Ulanti lashed out with his sabre with a newfound vigour, cutting a path through the press of bodies towards his enemy counterpart from the Bellerophon.

  Maxim Borusa spat into his opponent’s face, the rebel screaming as the stinging tajii juice came into contact with his eyes. He followed up with a brutal headbutt, breaking the bones of the rebel’s face. The crewman reeled back, giving the Stranivar underhiver space in which to use to use his wrench. One blow and the rebel’s head opened up in a red gush.

  “Macharius! To me, Macharius crew!”

  Maxim looked round to see Petty Officer Dobrzyn struggling against a trio of attackers. Maxim didn’t hesitate, shoulder-charging into the back of the nearest one and smashing him against a thick iron bulkhead. He stumbled, his feet becoming entangled amongst the limbs of the downed man and he was a split-second late in blocking the attack from the next enemy in line. He hissed in pain as the rebel’s sword blade sliced into the muscles of his upper arm, retaliating with a short punch into the rebel crewman’s neck.

  The man staggered back, trying vainly to staunch the blood fountaining from the hole that Maxim had opened in his jugular with the narrow-bladed stiletto secreted in his fist. The third rebel came at him with a hooked boarding gaff. Maxim took it off him with dismissive ease, snapped the man’s arm and gave him his weapon back by carving it through his stomach.

  Maxim bent over the prone form of Dobrzyn, checking him for signs of life and finding a weak pulse. Good, he thought, hoisting up the petty officer and carrying him towards the nearest knot of Macharius crewmen.

  “Help me!” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Help Petty Officer Dobrzyn!”

  Hands reached out to take the weight of the injured petty officer. In the confusion Maxim deftly withdrew the stiletto blade from between Dobrzyn’s ribs and slipped away before anyone noticed that the injured man was already dead.

  Looking down, he noticed that Dobrzyn’s dark blue rank sash had come away in his hand. Distractedly he tied it round his arm wound as a makeshift field dressing, then headed back into the thick of battle.

  Feint. Block. Cut. Parry. Riposte. His opponent’s fencing style had elements to it that were dangerously unfamiliar to Magell, but in its basics it differed little from
the thousands of other styles of swordsmanship as practised on countless violent warrior culture worlds throughout the Imperium. He and his opposite number from the Macharius were well-matched. The enemy flag-lieutenant was probably the better swordsman, Magell realised, but he still had an advantage over the Imperial officer. He had nothing left to lose, and a man who has already accepted the fact of his own imminent death was a dangerous opponent indeed.

  All around them, men were fighting and dying, and it was impossible to tell which way the battle was going, but Magell knew that victory would eventually go to the Macharius. The Bellerophon’s standard crew complement was several thousand less than the larger Dictator class vessel, and Magell knew that over a third of the rebel cruiser’s crew had died in the mutiny, and probably a thousand or so more in the bomber attack. They were doomed, but he was determined to acquit himself well before the end.

  One of his own crew rushed forward, wild-eyed with blood-lust as he bore down on the Imperial officer. Magell ran him through without a moment’s thought, not willing to be robbed of the honour of the enemy flag officer’s death. But the delicate balance of the duel had been broken. His opponent was the first to take advantage of the moment with a lightning-fast thrust. Magell twisted his body, deliberately not parrying the blow, and he felt hot bright pain as the blade slid deep into his side.

  Magell fought down the wave of pain. He knew that, with his blade impaled inside Magell’s own body, the enemy officer was effectively disarmed. Magell brought his own sabre down on the shoulder of the Imperial officer’s sword arm, the heavy blade cleaving into flesh and bone. The Imperial officer cried out, falling back and leaving himself defenceless against Magell’s follow-up killing blow.

  Magell swayed on his feet, the sabre still piercing his side, and raised his arm to strike. A grip as implacable as the massive docking clamps used to hold a vessel in orbital dry dock descended on his wrist, crushing the bones and causing his sword to slip from suddenly nerveless fingers. He felt something sharp and cold punch him in the lower back, the coldness penetrating deep into his body. Once, twice, three times, in rapid succession. His legs gave way beneath him but Magell remaining standing, dangling like a puppet in the grip of that vice-like pressure on the wrist of his still upraised-arm. Then the pressure went away and Magell collapsed to the deck, his vision dimming.

  Through a haze of pain and shock, Hito Ulanti looked up to see the stoop-shouldered giant standing over him. The giant leaned down over him, rough hands lifting him up. Ulanti’s eyes saw but didn’t register the hive world gang ritual scar patterns and prison world tattoos and brands which covered the giant’s arms and face.

  “Maxim Borusa, sir,” growled a voice in an accent that could only have come from the depths of the Stranivar underhive. “Crew of the Mach, sir. You’re in safe hands now.”

  “I… I owe you my thanks,” Ulanti mumbled, his eyes fixing on the bloodstained rank sash. “I owe you… my thanks, Petty Officer Borusa.”

  Maxim Borusa grinned. He didn’t recognise the officer whose life he’d just saved, but he knew what all that fancy braiding and uniform ornamentation meant. Command deck brass, and his ticket away from the miseries of life on the lower decks.

  “If you say so, sir. If you say so.”

  +Bellerophon to Macharius. Prize crew aboard and in position. We have restored engine and warp jump capability. Ready to move out on your mark+

  The squadron of Chaos scout ships, three Idolator class raiders, drifted inert on the fringes of the Delphi system, listening to the intercepted radio chatter between the Imperial vessel and its captured prize. They had arrived too late to rendezvous with the renegade Imperial ship and escort it safely back to enemy space, and they could only watch from hiding as the Warmaster’s prize was snatched away from them. The commander of the raider squadron knew that his ships would have stood no chance against an Imperial cruiser and its accursed bomber squadrons, but he doubted that the Warmaster would see it in such terms. Standing on his vessel’s command deck, the dark shrouded captain watched as the target icons of the two Imperial cruisers moved away towards the outer edge of surveyor range. He turned towards the cultist astropath standing nearby.

  “Send the signal to the Warmaster. Inform him that the technical information the rebel vessel was bringing to us remains in the hands of our enemies.”

  The daemon-thing living inside the flesh of the possessed Chaos cultist hissed in displeasure, its body warping into twisted new shapes as an almost physical foretaste of the Warmaster’s own anger at the news he would soon be receiving.

  All over the bridge, the command crew busied themselves with their appointed tasks, none of them daring to look their doomed captain in the eye.

  “My thanks, Magos Castaboras. Please continue with your work.” The haughty tech-priest nodded in acknowledgement, his expression hidden behind the mask he wore, and turned to join his entourage of servants waiting outside, leaving Semper alone in his quarters.

  Captain Semper leaned forward on his desk, one hand rubbing the jagged ork-blade scar that marked one side of his face. It was force of habit, he knew, one that he was particularly prone to whenever he was troubled. He cleared his mind, thinking through what he had just learned.

  The stolen technical information had been removed from the Bellerophon’s logic engines and transferred to the jealous guard of the Adeptus Mechanicus tech-priests aboard the Macharius. An astropath message had been sent acknowledging the safe retrieval of the data, together with his recommendation that his injured flag-lieutenant receive an official commendation for his actions in the battle, but Battlefleet Command were anxious to know the exact nature of the stolen information. As the vessel’s most senior tech-priest, Castaboras had already completed a partial analysis of the coded data and had presented his findings to Semper. The two men were the only people aboard the starship who knew what the stolen data files contained, but what they had learned posed more questions than it answered.

  The files were a technical overview of the mighty Blackstone Fortresses, the six massive and ancient alien constructs which formed the backbone of the Imperial Navy’s strength in the Gothic sector. Each Blackstone was base to its own battlegroup fleet—and each possessed more than enough firepower of its own to fend off an attack by any of the Warmaster’s current reaver fleets. The information in the files was highly sensitive, yes, but never in the history of Battlefleet Gothic had a Blackstone Fortress fallen to the enemy and Semper found it hard to believe that the Warmaster would consider wasting his strength in such a foolhardy move.

  “Emperor’s oath!” he swore to himself as he studied the marked-out positions of the Blackstone systems on the star-chart in front of him. What did it all mean?

  Somewhere within the Eye of Terror, where space and warp space merged together as one, Warmaster Abaddon, Despoiler of Worlds and Dread Vessel of the Legacy of Horus, stared out at the eternally shifting patterns of the maelstrom. What he saw there, what mysteries and secrets of the powers of the warp revealed to him, only the Warmaster alone knew.

  He turned back to the scene before him in the audience chamber, dismissing the mutated messenger thing with a curt gesture. It scuttled away gratefully, all too aware that a subtly different gesture would have caused any of the dozen terrifying figures in Terminator armour standing around the room to cut it down in an instant. The sword in the scabbard at the Warmaster’s side made a low keening sound, sensing its master’s dark mood. Abaddon laid a hand on its hilt, murmuring a few words of blasphemous reassurance to quiet the daemon-spirit bound into the weapon.

  In truth, the Warmaster’s anger would soon be assuaged. Orders had been despatched, and the commanders and crews of the escort squadron would soon know the price of their failure. Abaddon knew that the loss of the Blackstone data was only of temporary significance and would not affect his carefully-laid plans.

  He turned back to the viewing bay, staring out the wide daemon-mouthed portal in the flank of his te
mporary flagship and into the maelstrom beyond. He could see shapes moving out there in the warp, innumerable small vessels and construction platforms. Through the moving warp patterns he could see the spires and pinnacles of the object of their labours, a vast and threatening shape hanging motionless amidst the tides of warp space. It was almost complete now, he knew. His new flagship. His new terror weapon. His “planet killer”, thought the Warmaster, enjoying the crudeness of the name—so simple, but so apt—that many of his lesser followers had already bestowed upon the device.

  His thoughts returned to the six secret prizes that were the only objectives in the entire war that truly mattered. Soon this new weapon, this planet killer, would be unleashed on his enemies. The followers of that withered corpse on the Golden Throne would tremble in terror at the destruction it would cause.

  Let them be afraid, gloated the Despoiler. Let them think this will be the worst they have to face. When the time is right, when all the pieces are in place, they will soon know there is far worse to come.

  Planet killer! Even now, these many long years after the resolution of the Gothic Sector Wars, when the details of even that most notable of struggles has passed from living memory and become perhaps, in the minds of many, just another terrible and glorious chapter of Imperium history, the name still evokes a shudder of fear and horror whenever it is uttered. I have heard tales that on worlds far outside the borders of the Segmentum Obscuras, worlds where the events of the Gothic Sector War have little or no impact or meaning, the very mention of that name fills the inhabitants with an almost superstitious dread. I once met a wise and worthy member of the Missionarus Galaxia who told me of his travels and adventures amongst some of the many savage and barbarous worlds within the vast and scattered Diaspora of this mighty Imperium of Mankind, and of how the primitive inhabitants of one such world still kept careful vigil of the star-filled night skies above their tribal dwellings, praying to the All-Father (which, my learned brother-adept told me was their term for the Divine Emperor, blessed forever be his holy name) to protect them from a particular terror which they called “the Sword of Abaddon”. How these backwards peoples, unaware of even the most elementary truths concerning the Imperium and their insignificant place within it, came to know of such things is a puzzle which we can only conjecture at, but my friend assured me that he had little doubt that it was the Despoiler’s terrible weapon to which they were referring.