Chapter 57: Word Bearers: Time to Board! Hey, that Mechanicus Cruiser looks pretty weak, I'll take it—
Chapter 57: Word Bearers: Time to Board! Hey, that Mechanicus Cruiser looks pretty weak, I'll take it—
In the burning sea of the void, the armored prow of the crusade fleet's Oberon-class battleship, the Holy Edict, tore through a nebula's veil, its nearly ten-kilometer-long hull reflecting the faint starlight.
"Salvo fire."
The lance batteries erupted in a simultaneous volley of crimson-gold beams. Ripples like water spread across the Imperial vessel's void shields. Three seconds later, the profane spires on the Chaos warship's port side exploded one after another, molten metal and mutant corpses freezing into crystals in the vacuum.
The macro-batteries began their second barrage.
The port-side cannons unleashed a torrent of armor-piercing shells at three-second intervals, the tungsten-cored rounds carving a conical web of fire into the Chaos ship's armor belt. On the seventh salvo, the enemy ship's aft armor finally ruptured. Plasma fire spewed from the breach, tearing two profane thruster engines and half a biomass facility into the void.
Above the enemy ship, the Carcharodons' battle-barge swept across the battlefield, its assault pods piercing the enemy vessel like sharp arrows.
Due to the incredibly thick armor of both Imperial and Chaos capital ships, after the Explorator fleet's overwhelming firepower had shredded the Chaos escort fleet, the subsequent engagement against the heavy vessels had devolved into a battle of attrition.
The Inquisitorial Black Ship, with durability comparable to a battleship, soaked up the damage while the joint fleet circled the enemy vessels like a pod of orcas hunting a baleen whale. A continuous bleeding, until the enemy ship finally collapsed.
"Will we be needed for the boarding action?" Romulus asked from the observation chamber, data-streams flickering across his lenses. He was learning. The data provided by the ship's Tech-Priests had been a great convenience, enough for him to construct a model for commanding a single vessel.
Though sometimes, Romulus really didn't understand why the Imperium was so afraid of ground units like Greater Daemons. Any one of these warships could just fire a single weapon battery at a planet's surface and probably vaporize an Emperor-class Titan on the spot. To protect the planetary environment? He remembered that the Imperium's terraforming technology could even restore planets that had been devoured by the Tyranid Hive Fleets.
"Unnecessary!" Marshal Orlando and Tyberos advised in near-unison, afraid that these elders would get excited and jump into the boarding action themselves. Boarding actions were incredibly costly, and sending small craft into the void was fraught with random chance. When you already had the advantage, not even the Space Marines would send their veterans or high command on such a mission.
"..."
Sensing the almost palpable tension from the other end of the comms, Romulus decided to hold his tongue. He turned his head and watched the wreckage of the three Chaos cruisers, now at the edge of the battlefield, drift into the star's gravity well. Sometimes, he really wanted to complain about these Space Marines who were starting to treat them like living relics.
"Sorcerer! The False Emperor's lackeys are boarding! We are few in number and cannot hold them for long!"
Inside the Chaos warship, a Chaos Space Marine, his features melted by the promethium fire spewing from a ruptured pipe, crawled onto the bridge. His roar was mixed with the wet, rasping sound of viscous fluids rubbing together. A fluorescent ooze seeped from a gash in his chest, corroding the deck plates.
STAB!
A staff, constructed from blue-flame crystal and twisted bone, pierced through the ceramite armor. Warp energy seared a distorted, charred mark around the wound. The impaled Nurgle-worshipping Word Bearer let out a wail. The blood that sprayed from the wound froze into crystals in the vacuum, the dark green polyhedrons reflecting the staff's eerie glow and tracing bizarre, twisting paths through the chamber.
"You have interrupted a divination that could have saved our destiny," the Tzeentchian Sorcerer's voice rasped like grinding gears. Behind his mask, which was inscribed with nine concentric circles, twenty-seven neural probes were writhing inside his skull. The Chaos Sorcerer, his helmet concealing nine mutated eyes, stared at the surface of his flesh-altar, where corroded passages from the Lectitio Divinitatus had formed a strange symbiotic pattern with Chaos scriptures.
'What is meant by the weakest, yet most important place? The cruiser named the Dawnlight is the greatest weakness of this fleet?'
The tremors from the cannon fire pounding on the armor were transmitted through the iron deck to his skull. The Word Bearer Sorcerer stared at the results of his divination and fell silent.
The bubbling brain-solution in his scrying instrument gradually settled. The prophecy-bubbles, formed from the sacrifice of the eyes and brains of ninety highly-educated Imperial nobles, were bursting one after another. He finally looked away.
How does this result look like a joke from the Lord of Change?
Even if his brain was about to be completely marinated in Chaos scriptures, he couldn't bring himself to believe that the False Emperor's lackeys would place anything of importance on a mere cruiser. And this cruiser was on the outer edge of the long-range strike group, in the middle of the entire fleet, completely unremarkable, just another ship moving in formation.
Refusing to believe it, he casually grabbed a few heretics from the bridge with a bolt of psychic lightning and brutally mashed them into a bloody pulp. The body of the Nurgle-worshipping Word Bearer at his feet began to mutate, translucent blue branches sprouting from its festering flesh, trying to grasp the dissipating fragments of the prophecy.
The Sorcerer then threw the Nemesis Chapter gene-seed he had just acquired—still warm in his hand—into the altar along with the blood-pulp and restarted the divination ritual.
The blue crystal at the tip of his staff suddenly projected nine holographic images, each depicting a different timeline. In four of them, the Carcharodon assault teams had already broken through his defenses and were taking his head in four different ways. In another four, the ship's power core had been overloaded, and he was consumed by cannon fire.
The last one, the only one in which he survived, showed him boarding an assault boat and heading for that cruiser.
The same result...
The neural probes buzzed. The Word Bearer Sorcerer, who had always hated himself for selling out his comrades and not running fast enough, looked around. The honor guard that had just been surrounding him had all taken a step back. Only their lead sergeant had dared to approach.
"...My Lord?"
The Sorcerer ignored the sergeant and picked up his staff. The Chaos Space Marine he had just killed had been reduced to an empty suit of armor, containing nothing but ash. The ship's captain, who had been fused to the command throne, had been crushed into a paste by a fallen pillar. Besides his own honor guard, there were no more suitable sacrifices on this decaying bridge.
The Lord of Change is also the Lord of Hope. Perhaps my offerings have pleased Him? the Sorcerer began to reason. There must be something of importance on that ship that we have not yet detected. If I can obtain that thing, I might just be able to get out of this alive. This is the path the Lord of Change has shown me.
"Yes, that's it. That must be it," the Sorcerer thought, and the more he thought about it, the more correct the conclusion seemed. He quickly convinced himself, believing in this reason with all his heart.
"Prepare the assault boats. Lock onto that cruiser," he said, suddenly standing up. He glanced at his honor guard, who had returned to their positions, his voice filled with an unprecedented confidence. "I will show you the path to survival."
How much trouble can one Mechanicus cruiser be?
If I can't beat the False Emperor's lackeys, I can still beat you!