Battle for The Abyss (11 page)

The bridge of the
Waning Moon
was alive with transmissions from the rest of the ship: some calm, reporting peripheral dam-73

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age to minor systems; others frantic, from plasma reactor seven and the gun decks, and there were those that were unintelligible through raging fire and screaming: the last words of men and women dying agonising deaths.

‘Be advised, captain, they are coming about.’ Principal Navigator Cronos was eerily calm as his voice came through the internal vox array. Mhotep scrutinised the tactical holo-display above the command console. The
Furious Abyss
was changing course. It was suffering lance imparts from the
Wrathful
and was turning to present its heavily armoured prow to the aggressors.

‘What folly from this Bearer of his Word,’ Mhotep intoned. ‘He thinks we will flee like the jackal, but his only victory is in raising the ire of Prospero! Mister Cronos, bring us across his bow. Gun decks port and starboard, prepare for a rolling broadside!’

THE
WANING MOON
rotated grandly, as if standing on end in front of the
Furious Abyss
. The Word Bearer vessel had not reacted, and its blunt prow faced the damaged strike cruiser.

Deep scores, like illegible signatures, were seared into the prow armour of the traitors’ ship by the
Wrathful
’s laser batteries. An insane crosshatch of crimson lance beams erupted between the two vessels with pyrotechnic intensity as they traded blows, silent shield flares indicating absorbed impacts.

Errant bursts glittered past the
Waning Moon
as it opened up its gun ports and the snouts of massive ship-to-ship cannon emerged. Behind them, sweat-drenched ratings toiled to load the enormous guns and avenge their dead. They chanted in gun-cant to keep their rhythm strong, one refrain for hauling shells out of the hoppers behind them, another for ramming it home, and yet another for hauling the breech closed.

The signal to fire reached them from the bridge. The rating gang leaders brought hammers down on firing pins and inside the ship, thunder screamed through the decks.

Outside, jets of propellant and debris leapt the gap between the two ships. A split second later the shells impacted, explosive charges blasting deep craters into the enemy vessel.

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THE BRIDGE OF the
Furious Abyss
stayed calm.

Zadkiel was pleased. His ship, the city over which he ruled, was not governed by panic.

‘My lord, should we retaliate?’ asked Helms-mate Sarkorov.

‘For now, we wait,’ said Zadkiel, content to absorb the punishment as he sat back on the command throne watching images of the
Waning Moon
’s assault on the viewscreens above him. ‘There is nothing they can do to us.’

‘You would have us sit here and take this?’ snarled Reskiel at his master’s side.

‘We will prevail,’ said Zadkiel, unperturbed.

Dozens of new contacts flared on the viewscreens, streaking from the launch bays of a ship identified as the
Boundless
.

‘Assault boats, sire,’ Sarkorov informed him, monitoring the same feed. ‘Escorts are closing.’

Zadkiel pored over the hololithic display.

‘They intend to attack from all angles and confuse us, and while we weather this storm, their assault boats and escorts will pick us apart.’ Zadkiel provided the curt tactical analysis coldly, his face aglow in the display.

‘What is our response?’ asked Reskiel.

‘We wait.’

‘That’s it?’

‘We wait,’ repeated Zadkiel, his voice like iron. ‘Trust in the Word.’

Reskiel stood back, watching the fire hammering in from the
Waning Moon
, and listening to the dull thuds of explosions from within the
Furious
’s prow.

THE ATTACK CRAFT wing of the
Boundless
swept in tight formation through the veil of debris building up from the damage to the two ships ahead of them. The
Waning Moon
and the
Furious
Abyss
were locked in the Spiral Dance: the long, painful embrace that saw one ship circle another pumping broadsides into the enemy as it spun. Like everything else in space the Spiral Dance
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Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss

had its own mythology, and to a lifelong pilot of the Saturnine Fleet it meant inevitable doom and the spite of one ship lashing out at the enemy in its death throes. It was desperation and tragedy, like a dying romance or a last stand against vast odds.

The fighters, ten-man craft loaded with short-range rockets and cannon, streaked past the
Waning Moon
, the pilots saluting their fellow ship as custom dictated. They locked on to the
Furious Abyss
, the squadron leaders marking out targets on the immense dark red hull already pocked with lance scars and broadside craters from the battering the
Wrathful
had given it. Shield housings, sensor clusters and exhaust vents all lit up on the tactical display in a backwash of emerald light. Targeting cogitators locked on and burned red.

Silver Three, flown by Pilot Second-Class Carnagan Thaal, matched assigned approach vectors and built to full attack run speed. Through the shallow forward viewscreen, Thaal could see the
Furious Abyss
crisscrossed by laser battery barrage, its prow a flickering mass of smouldering metal.

He ordered his weapons officers to lock on to their target, a stretch of gun turrets along the
Furious
’s dorsal spine. The port guns obeyed, the lascannon mounts swivelling into position.

The starboard guns did not move.

Pilot Thaal repeated his order through the ship’s vox. His copilot, Rugel, checked the array, but found nothing amiss.

‘Rugel, go down to the armaments deck and align those guns,’

Thaal ordered, deciding there was enough time before they hit their final approach vector.

The co-pilot nodded and tore out the wires attaching him to his seat and the console in front of him, and swung around in his chair.

‘Scell, what are you doing?’ Thaal heard his co-pilot ask and turned to get a good look at what was going on.

He started when he saw Weapons Officer Carina Scell standing there with her autopistol in her hand. Thaal was about to tell her to get back to her post and get the damn cannons locked on when Scell shot him in the face.

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Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss

She took Rugel in the chest, stepping forward to deliver the shot point-blank. Bleeding badly, the copilot scrabbled to get his sidearm out of its holster.

‘It is written,’ Scell said, and shot him twice more in the head.

Silver Three continued on its attack vector. Scell headed below decks to finish her work.

‘SILVER THREE’S DOWN,’ said Officer Artemis on the fighter control deck of the
Boundless
. The deck ran almost a third of the length of the
Boundless
to accommodate the numerous tactical consoles.

Captain Vorlov, his face awash in the reflected ochre glow of datascreens, paid it little heed as he prowled the ranks of fighter controllers. Attack craft were always lost. It was the way of the void.

Vorlov continued his tour, preferring to witness firsthand the actions of his fighters rather than make do with the fragmented reports filtering through to the bridge. The
Boundless
was a dedicated carrier for attack craft and his duties were here, listening to the fates of his fighter wings. His helms-mate was perfectly capable of keeping the ship running in his absence.

‘Any defensive fire?’ asked Vorlov of the nearest control overseer.

‘None yet,’ said the overseer, whose shaved scalp was festooned with wires feeding information from each controller into her brain.

‘But we’re in range of their countermeasures,’ said Vorlov, a thought occurring to him. ‘You! What took down Silver Three?’

The controller looked up from his screen. ‘Unknown. The pilot went off my screen. Possible crew casualties.’

‘Non-standard transmissions from Gold Nine,’ said another controller hunched over his screen. He held one of his earphones tight against his head and winced as he tried to hear more clearly. ‘Some kind of commotion aboard ship, sire. They’re not responding to protocols.’

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‘Bring them in. The rest of you, report any further anomalies!’

Vorlov harrumphed in annoyance and leaned forward on his cane. The Saturnine Fleet had the best small craft pilots this side of the galactic centre. They didn’t just flake out during a firefight.

‘Gold Nine is lost, captain,’ reported the controller. ‘I detected small-arms fire in the cockpit.’

‘Get me word on what the hell’s going on or I’ll have your commission,’ barked Vorlov at the overseer.

‘Yes, captain.’

‘Fragmented reports are coming in from Silver Prime,’ interrupted yet another controller. ‘They say they’ve lost control of the engine crew.’

‘Get all this on air!’ shouted Vorlov. The overseer fiddled with a couple of settings and cockpit transmissions crackled through the deck’s vox-caster.

‘...gone insane! He’s barricaded himself in the aft quarters.

Esau’s dead and he’s venting the bloody air. I’m pulling out from attack vectors and going down there to shoot him.’

‘I am the light that shines always. I am the lord of the dawn. I am the beginning and the end. I am the Word.’

‘Agh, I’m... I’m bleeding out... Heral’s dead, but I’m not going to make it.’

‘Gold Twelve just opened fire on us! We’re hit aft-wards, pulling back and venting engine three.’

Vorlov was assailed by the desperate voices and distorted screams, dozens of them, all from experienced assault pilots, all tinged with fear or disbelief, or pain. Reports of colleagues sabotaging engines or murdering crew, ranting paranoia and delusion spewed forth from the vox. Vorlov couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His wings were in total disarray and the glorious attack run he had envisaged had failed utterly without the enemy firing off a shot. He had never even read about such a thing in the histories of the Saturnine Fleet.

‘It’s as if they’re going mad, captain,’ said the overseer, struggling to keep her voice level, ‘every one of them.’

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Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss

‘Abort!’ shouted Vorlov. ‘All wings! Abort attack run and return to the
Boundless
!’

‘WE ARE SUCCESSFUL, lord,’ the sibilant voice of Chaplain Ikthalon said through the vox array. ‘The supplicants have effectively neutralised their fighter assault.’

‘You are to be commended, chaplain. Ours is a divine purpose and you have ensured your name will be remembered in the scriptures of Lorgar,’ Zadkiel replied coldly from the command throne, before turning to address Helms-mate Sarkorov.

‘Let the escort craft close and then open the book.’

‘Yes, my lord.’ Sarkorov relayed the order at once.

Zadkiel watched a close-up of the sector of space through which the
Boundless
’s attack wings were flying. Fighters were already tumbling, glittering short-lived explosions as their colleagues shot them down. Others were spiralling off-course. The pathetic assault was in ruins.

‘Behold,’ Zadkiel said to his second standing alongside him,

‘the power of the Word, Reskiel.’

‘It is indeed humbling,’ Reskiel replied, bowing deeply to his lord.

Zadkiel found the obvious toadying distasteful. Even so, this was a great moment, and he allowed himself to bask in it before returning to the vox.

‘Ikthalon, how many supplicants did we lose?’

‘Three, Lord Zadkiel,’ the chaplain replied. ‘The weakest.’

‘Keep me appraised.’

‘As you wish.’ Ikthalon said, and terminated the link.

Zadkiel ignored the impudence and sat back in his command throne to watch the damage control reports flicker by. The prow was mangled, chewed up by the
Waning Moon
’s broadsides and torn by the lances of the
Wrathful
, but the prow was merely armour plating and empty space. It didn’t matter. It could soak up everything they could throw at it for hours before the shells penetrated live decks. Even then, only Legion menials would pe-rish, the unaugmented humans pledged to die for Lorgar.

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‘This is the
Fireblade
,’ came the transmission intercepted by the
Furious Abyss
’s advanced sensorium from one of the approaching escort ships. ‘We’ve got a clear run. Lances to full.’

‘On your tail,
Fireblade
,’ came the reply from a second frigate.

‘Master Malforian, bring turrets to bear and reload ordnance,’

said Zadkiel. He followed the blips of the escorts as they negotiated the graveyard of fighter craft, intent on helping the
Waning
Moon
finish off the
Furious
.

Zadkiel allowed himself a thin smile.

‘THE FIGHTERS ARE lost,’ said Vorlov. His face was ruddy with frustration as it glowered out of the viewscreen on the bridge of the
Wrathful
.

Almost to a man, the crewmen of the ship were watching Captain Vorlov’s report of the total failure of the attack run.

‘What, all of them?’ asked Admiral Kaminska.

‘Twenty per cent are en route back to the
Boundless
,’ said Vorlov. ‘The rest are gone. Our crews turned on each other.’

‘You think this was a psychic attack, captain?’ asked Cestus, suddenly glad that Brynngar was off the bridge.

‘Yes, lord, I do,’ Vorlov breathed, fear edging his voice.

This was a worrying development. All the Legions knew full well what had been decided on Nikaea, and the censure imposed by the Emperor on dabbling in the infernal powers of the warp and the use of sorcery. The Ultramarine turned to Admiral Kaminska.

‘What of our remaining escorts?’

‘Captain Ulargo on the
Fireblade
is leading them in,’ she replied.

‘No problems so far.’