Chapter Two Hundred and Seventy-Nine
A mix of outrage and relief flashes through Emil’s thoughts as my insult slams home.
Emil swallows, then says in a level tone, “Thank you for your mercy, Lord Captain.”
I say, “Don’t get too excited. The Inquisition are yet to have their say and they are not as restrained as I am. Raphael Horthstein works for me. He is young, righteous, and full of fire. Raphael is a student of history and well aware of the consequences of your choices. Lyre Hamiz is old and bitter. He despises me and may spare you out of spite. Which side the throne gelt falls remains in question.
“You will spend the following weeks and months in your quarters, Commodore, in prayer, contemplation and uncertainty. The same uncertainty that plagued your crews as you sent them to die, feeding their blood to traitors, their bodies into bondage, and their souls to the Dark Gods. Death at my hands would have been the mercy you seek. Sparing you is not.”
“Whatever you say, Lord Captain,” says Emil, his tone bland.
Emil does not believe me. Should he survive, his peers will shun him, his career will stall, and he’ll spend his days in misery as the consequences of his failures drag him into the bilge decks. He’ll either be driven into the arms of Chaos and an eternity of torture, or persevere long enough to take his own life. If he’s lucky he’ll perish in a mutiny or the knife of an ambitious junior officer. There is no need to throw blessed gelts after bad rubbish. Either way, he won’t enjoy the hospitality of the Inquisition.
++Therenseus, please escort Commodore Astoris to his quarters and ensure his rooms have no weapons, sharp implements, or too many cravats and shoelaces. Lock down any vox, dataslates, and the like as well. Pass the word among your brethren about the change in leadership and have them gather their knowledge. There is much to trade with the Stellar Fleet. No contact outside this cruiser until we dock with Footfall.++
++Acknowledgement: I obey, Magos. Sorrow: Farewell.++
Emil and Therenseus leave the bridge and I turn to Leonis.
“I’ll need you to remain here and answer any questions I have about this cruiser and other vessels.”
“Yes, Novator.”
I reach out to my bound psykers and update them on my location and circumstance. I do not want to direct the upcoming naval engagement from here while playing 20 questions and pass the baton to Leith Madara. I have confidence that the Captain of Red Knoll will bring us victory.
We return to the waiting game. I order a Servitor to retrieve a proper uniform for myself, then start meeting with the Imperial officers. Leonis’ presence aids my legitimacy and eases my task. If I still bothered to speak with Lyre, I am sure he would complain about me being a subversive force!
One by one, I restore the officers’ command privileges, though not all pass my scrutiny. I also audit the vessel and run diagnostics, a mix of curiosity, boredom, and duty driving me to investigate.
A five kilometre long void ship has no shortage of issues, both reported and not. There is nothing critical or unique; I resolve many minor issues and set in motion the programs to deal with longer term problems. Emil wasn’t doing a bad job, he just didn’t have the cybernetics or technical knowledge to deal with the volume of problems that come with being a captain and commodore in an efficient manner. His command staff were lacking too.
Two days tick by and the distance between the Stellar Fleet and The Wolfpack are reduced to a single AU.
I observe significant activity around The Wolfpack as hundreds of shuttles fly between vessels. It is unclear if they are sharing or consolidating resources, nor can I tell if they manage any repairs.
After the last engagement, The Wolfpack has three cruisers and one heavy cruiser remaining. Their twelve escorts were destroyed.
The flagship, Excrucian, a Hades-Class heavy cruiser, took two torpedoes to its main thrusters, though they only caused minor damage. Boarding parties sabotaged their Gellar Field and their sensors were fried by atomics.
Crew casualties from boarders were immense and we have a good map of the euclidean interior of the vessel, though that won’t have helped our planners as the map was quickly labelled as a cognito hazzard. Both port and starboard Macro-Cannon Batteries remain functional, as does their Graviton Flare mechanism. The powerful lances along its spine got wrecked. The status of their void shield remains in question. It is currently offline. I suspect trickery.
Gift of Despair, a Carnage-Class cruiser and Mortis Ex Astra, a Devastation-Class cruiser, are much worse off. They each took three torpedoes to their main thrusters, dropping their maximum acceleration by a third to 1.6 gravities. Optimus Nemesis, a Murder-Class cruiser is even worse off. Their main thrusters were crippled by five torpedoes and The Wolfpack slowed to one gravity to maintain its diamond formation.
All three cruisers were hit with multiple atomics, their internal systems and twisted crews reduced to slag by guided teleport strikes. Their Cathedrals and Castellums are still glowing.
I am confident that the cruisers, even if they do still have some shield emitters, they won’t have the power for them, either because their primary genatoriums are wrecked beyond repair, or their power cables are puddles on the deck.
The cruisers have no Gellar Fields or other eldritch protections. Their command and control systems have been reduced to vapourware in more ways than one.
Gift of Despair has a single Triple Barrelled Heavy Macro-Cannon Turret.
Mortis Ex Astra, their carrier, has expended its strike-craft and Heldrakes. A Light Macro-Cannon Turret is its last remaining armament.
Optimus Nemesis has two Macro-Cannon Batteries remaining on its starboard side. The rest were lost in the teleport strike. Its primary weapon, a Heavy Lance Turret, was wrecked by the Vitrum bombers.
Unless they’re hiding something, the cruisers are cooked. Only Excrucian has a chance of pulling something off. The Wolfpack has its back against the unforgiving void and they have every reason to be as spiteful as possible: No hope, no backup, abandoned by their allies and their gods.
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An expected outcome for traitors.
By the way I measure void ships, four cruisers should be capable of taking on a battleship. Much like a battleship, in their damaged state, they’re still dangerous to my fleet. The upcoming engagement isn’t about destroying the enemy, the priority is to defeat them in a manner that means the Stellar Fleet still has the resources to win the next engagement too.
It’s about the Long War.
With their lances down, their shields offline, and their Gellar Fields sabotaged, there is no reason to get close. We can, on paper, outrange and out manoeuvre them.
The Stellar Fleet and its allies have eleven escorts, three light cruisers, two cruisers, and one grand cruiser available for this engagement.
My support vessels, armed transports and factory escorts, led by Alipa, remain far from the fighting as they continue to recover organic and mechanical assets lost during the strike-craft exchange.
I don’t know what Leith Madara has planned. He isn’t going to send battleplans via vox or psyker relay with so much sorcery in play, nor is the captain of a Astartes light strike cruiser one to seek approval before taking action.
To my surprise, I detect weapon fire from the Wolfpack as my vessels pass the 0.5 AU mark, that’s approximately 75 million kilometres or 4.1 light minutes. It’s rare for anything other than a Nova Cannon to fire beyond the 200,000km mark.
Not only do all four enemy cruisers fire their macro-cannons, but they actually hit Sol Faithful, an Adder-Class escort carrier, with a staggering 80% success rate. Sol Faithful void shields hold and I detect the tell-tale flicker as its shield capacitors trigger to keep the protections up under the sudden assault.
My current time lag is 42 minutes. I don’t have to wait that long though as a frantic Reina Benetek reaches out to me through the Novis Coven Link. It is distinctly unpleasant to be on the other end of the device. I’m sitting on the Emil’s Throne Mechanicum, not a navigator one, so I don’t get completely pulled into the gestalt against my will. I can feel that I could resist with sufficient willpower and focus, but I still don’t like it. I also catch snippets of Reina’s life through the link, yet another side effect of the Dark Age relic that none of my Navigators had dared to tell me about.
Even the brief glimpses of her life are enough to make me vomit, were I capable of doing so. Her husband would have made Slaanesh blush. Reina’s first child nearly killed her too.
“My Lord! I have returned hale and ready for duty. Apologies for usurping your seat. Captain Madara has ordered me to cast Disrupting the Empyrean upon our foes rather than A Cloud in the Warp on our own ships.
“Even now I feel their insidious magics peering at us, perhaps Void Watcher, Warp Vigil, or similar. Mayhap they attempt Foreshadowing or seek guidance from the Ruinous Powers with a corrupt deck of the Emperor’s Tarot with Divination. Either way, the enemy is a master of such magic and is using it to strike at us from impossible distances!”
I send, “Welcome home, Reina. Your transgressions are forgiven. Stop fretting and show me what’s occurring.”
A series of images flow into my head. Sol Faithful is struck by a masterful barrage. The lighter shells crack its shield for just long enough that a heavy macro-cannon slams into its armoured prow. The building-sized shell partially deflects off the prow, ripping through the armour then exploding off the starboard bow, damaging the manoeuvring thrusters and a shield emitter. The Overload Shield Capacitors trigger and the second heavy macro-shell that could have punched through the damaged front armour was stopped cold, its energy forcefully teleported into the Warp. The third heavy macro-shell misses.
The mild drifting performed by the Stellar Fleet during its deceleration burn towards the enemy becomes far more erratic as the manoeuvring thrusters work in tandem with the Arrester Engines to avoid further enemy fire. Strike-craft are launched and perform screening actions, pumping the void full of noisy scans, and occasional bursts of chaff and flares.
Thirty minutes later another strike lands among my fleet. This time, they target Petitor Veritas, Inquisitor Hamiz’s Enforcer-Class light cruiser. It doesn’t have Castellan Shields or Overload Shield Capacitors and the cruiser grade munitions overwhelm its Single Void Shield Array.
Petitor Veritas endures a full macro-cannon broadside across its prow and Cathedral. A single shell from Gift of Despair’s heavy turret hits the bridge, venting it. The other two heavy shells miss. Petitor Veritas stops broadcasting as the Primary Machine-Spirit and Enginseer Prime, Talliel-Iota-5 attempt to recover the vessel from the Enginarium.
The force behind the strikes pushes Petitor Veritas out of formation and Leith Madara changes his approach. With the failure to prevent strikes through manoeuvres and E-War measures, it becomes clear that sorcery is being used to target my ships. The Stellar Fleet forms three lines, each led by a cruiser or grand cruiser, shielding the weaker ships from The Wolfpack. Petitor Veritas brings up the rear, well behind Calligos’ grand cruiser, Emperor’s Vow.
I turn off my emotions, unwilling to broadcast my glee that Lyre may be dead.
Reina establishes the coven link and draws on all the Navigators in the Stellar Fleet, blanketing The Wolfpack with Disrupting the Empyrean, preventing any Warp jumps. Leith is not taking any chances after Emil’s fuck up, even with all The Wolfpack’s Gellar Fields taken out, and I can’t fault him for his choice.
Yes, we’re taking damage that our Navigators could shield us from, but now Leith has figured out what is going on, further barrages should be less impactful and, sure enough, the next strike hits Torchbearer and fails to break its Double Castellan Shield Array. Torchbearer doesn’t even have to use its Overload Shield Capacitors and the void shields are back to full before the next attack comes. The Wolfpack doesn’t bother with a fifth strike.
I’ve always looked down on macro-cannons. Sure they don’t require as much power to tech-burden as plasma or lance weapons, but macro-cannon munitions take up a lot more space than plasma does, especially when voidships already need multiple genetoriums anyway. Macro-Cannons are harder and slower to load too. Even with auto-loaders, it is still a difficult and dangerous task.
With plasma, you fire the heat generated by void shields back at the enemy. It also tickles me pink at the thought of turning water into plasma and using it in a space battle. They’re pretty much massive water pistols. I had never even considered that someone might use divination to extend a macro-cannon’s range far beyond its specification. You can’t do that with energy weapons as they dissipate.
I missed the hint that The Wolfpack was capable of such strikes when they were bombarding Footfall from an AU away. Footfall is massive and stationary. With guided or intelligent munitions, I reckon the Stellar Fleet could pull it off too. Daemonic munitions did not seem too far-fetched to me.
Striking a moving target that is actively performing evasive manoeuvres with a four light minute delay? Even an Eldar Farseer would baulk at that level or precognition. I am so glad we softened The Wolfpack with my traps. No wonder they charged at us with such enthusiasm. I am not confident we would have survived long enough to engage the enemy if their whole fleet could have bombarded us from an implausible range.
I watch my Fleet close with cold detachment, whispering instructions into Reina’s mind as she whips up a local Warpstorm over The Wolfpack.
I pray that it will be enough to prevent their escape.