"Your battleship took damage?"
Typhus had not yet released the bent railing when Abaddon's image flickered back above the surviving hololith. The projector leaned sideways on its pedestal, its visual pickup aimed into the hole where the center of the bridge had been.
A lieutenant pushed wreckage away from a vox terminal and tested its controls. Below him, air whistled through the ruined decks until an emergency shutter closed somewhere out of sight. The sudden quiet made Abaddon's voice sound especially clear.
Typhus looked up.
"You can see for yourself."
"I'm sorry." Abaddon inclined his head. "Once this is over, I'll do everything I can to help you restore the Terminus Est."
He delivered the offer with enough solemnity to make it insulting.
"Spare me your pity." Typhus pulled his hand from the railing and turned toward his officers. "Reserve power to the dorsal batteries. Firing solutions on vector forty-two. Warpfang and Sickle Moon are to cover our turn."
"The central targeting station is gone, lord," the lieutenant said.
"Then use the gun decks' augurs. Pass my bearings to the battery masters."
The lieutenant bent over the terminal. Other survivors gathered around him, taking orders as the first weapons reports came through. Typhus stepped across a fallen console without looking down into the breach again. He needed his ship answering commands. Abaddon could enjoy the damage while he worked.
Outside, Talon's Wrath kept advancing.
Its cruisers followed in a wedge, firing past either flank. The Chaos ships were still widening their formation under Abaddon's earlier order, and the Talon battleship drove toward the opening between them.
Captains who had spent the last moments searching their own decks for mines now had to bring their guns to bear. Cruisers rolled into firing position. Battleships turned more slowly, forcing neighboring vessels to clear their broadsides. Macro-shells and lance beams converged on Talon's Wrath as it approached the fleet's center.
Behind the Chaos line, the Will of Eternity continued aligning its vortex cannon with the desert planet.
The Talon destroyers changed targets. Over the next two minutes, they transmitted their remaining void mines into the fortress. Explosions broke through damaged sections of its superstructure, throwing fragments from wounds left by the fighting at Cadia.
Of the thirty torpedoes that followed the mine strikes, fifteen penetrated the exposed galleries around the main weapon before detonating.
The fortress endured. The machinery holding its cannon in alignment did not. Stabilizer arrays tore from their mountings, and the light gathering around the weapon aperture faltered.
"Main weapon unavailable," the fortress reported.
Abaddon turned sharply toward the receiving station.
"For how long?"
"Repair assessment pending."
His gaze moved from the fortress's damaged icon to the planet beyond it. Every delay gave the Talon fleet more time to reinforce.
"Restore firing alignment. All available resources."
There was still no sign of the Celestial Engine. Abaddon held to that fact as he returned to the engagement. Talon's Wrath was powerful, but it was a battleship, and he still had battleships with which to answer it. None had yet been destroyed in this exchange.
With the Vengeful Spirit still dependent on its towing cruisers and the Terminus Est struggling to recover its fire control, two other battleships moved forward to carry the counterattack. Their combined broadsides struck Talon's Wrath hard enough to check its advance.
The Talon vessel slowed and turned across its course. Batteries masked by its prow gained clear firing arcs, and fresh shield sectors took the incoming barrage. Its cruisers spread around the turn, keeping the Chaos ships under fire.
A screening frigate crossed ahead of the battleship, lasers cutting through a torpedo salvo aimed at its bow. Defense satellites engaged the survivors. Beyond them, more launch signatures appeared on the Chaos ships.
Abaddon watched Talon's Wrath settle onto its new heading. His teleportarium adepts had been searching for an insertion point since the vessel drew closer. Now a report appeared beside its icon: two possible destination locks. Neither was stable.
He reopened the link to Typhus.
"We could try a boarding action."
Typhus's expression hardened.
"I watched your boarding torpedoes die at Cadia. Send your Black Legion dogs if you think they'll do any better. Get them inside, and I'll consider sending my second-in-command."
Abaddon looked toward an officer beside his throne.
"Prepare the teleportarium."
Typhus leaned closer to the transmitter. "And you have a homer aboard their ship?"
"We have a destination lock."
"A lock on what? You knew nothing about their defenses when you attacked that iron world. Now you intend to throw warriors into this ship because your adepts found something they think is a room?"
Abaddon's claw settled against the throne's armrest.
"Twenty warriors and a lieutenant from each of us. Both parties go together. If either establishes a homer, we send reinforcements."
Typhus glanced away from the projection. Another hit shook the surviving bridge stations. The lieutenant at the vox terminal gripped its frame and continued relaying bearings to the gun decks.
Twenty warriors might reach a weapons control station or disable a shield relay. A small success could relieve the pressure on his damaged ship. At least this time Abaddon would share the cost of finding out.
"...Fine."
Aboard the Vengeful Spirit, a Black Legion lieutenant assembled twenty Astartes on the teleport platform. Typhus dispatched a lieutenant and twenty of his own chosen warriors to match them.
The adepts could distinguish large internal spaces within Talon's Wrath. They could not resolve their boundaries reliably through the ship's emissions and the continuing exchange of fire. Without homers inside, the warriors would arrive wherever the shifting locks placed them.
Both commanders authorized the attempt.
Warp-light closed around the boarding parties aboard the Vengeful Spirit and the Terminus Est. A moment later, both platforms stood empty. The adepts waited for the boarding parties' homers to establish a return lock, but the signals kept breaking up amid the interference.
....
"Intruders aboard."
"I see them."
Adam lay reclined in his command cradle, eyes closed beneath the neural interface. The fleet engagement receded to the edge of his awareness as two intrusion alerts opened across the ship's internal map.
The Maintenance Officer's avatar appeared beside him.
"Rear hangar and Bay Eleven." He enlarged the compartments. "No crew in either."
The teleportation had scattered the arrivals through the two spaces. Several warriors had materialized inside structural supports. A Black Legionnaire was embedded waist-deep in the hangar wall; his brothers moved past him while he tried to wrench himself free. In the forward munitions vault, a Plague Marine's trapped leg buckled as he pulled against the deck.
The rest were already searching for a way farther into the ship.
"How shall we deal with them?" the Maintenance Officer asked.
Adam selected the munitions vault.
"Seal Bay Eleven."
The blast doors slammed shut. Locking bars drove into their housings behind two meters of hardened void-steel, cutting the Plague Marines off from the adjoining passages.
Their lieutenant reached the nearest access panel and tore its cover away. Another warrior struck at the door with a powered blade while the others searched between the torpedo racks. There was no operator to seize, no crewman to force into opening the locks.
The vault's maintenance pickups carried their voices to Adam.
"Stick that thing to the door."
"Got it."
A Plague Marine reached beneath his gorget and pulled a swollen growth from his neck. He pressed it against the exposed controls. White filaments spread through the panel, tightening around contacts and forcing themselves into the cable openings.
The Maintenance Officer disconnected the controller from the ship's network. The panel went dark, but the growth continued feeding itself into the housing.
"It's following the wiring," he said. "I'm isolating the trunk."
Adam watched a tendril disappear into the wall. His hand closed against the cradle's armrest.
Talon's Wrath was not the Navy's flagship, but it was the first warship built under Qin Mo's direction. Adam had walked Bay Eleven before its first torpedo was loaded. It held symbolic weight far beyond its tonnage, the pride and honor for every member of the Talon Navy.
The Maintenance Officer turned toward Adam.
"The locks are holding. We have time to deploy—"
"Flush the vault. Launch its ordnance at the current enemy targets. Leave one torpedo with a promethium warhead."
The officer checked the compartment, then nodded.
"Clearing the firing lanes."
Inside Bay Eleven, the loading racks began moving. Torpedoes withdrew through armored feed gates, and empty cradles returned along the rails. The Plague Marines turned toward the machinery as the first launches shook the deck beneath them.
Their lieutenant pointed toward the feed gates. Two warriors moved to investigate, but each opening closed behind its departing load. The route offered them neither a passage nor an exposed mechanism they could easily seize.
The lieutenant called them back to the door. The growth had reached the edge of the panel housing. He struck the inactive controls with his fist, then ordered the warrior with the blade to keep cutting.
Adam watched the ammunition inventory fall. The reserved torpedo remained on its cradle near the door recess.
"Calculate blast radius."
A red boundary appeared around the warhead on the deck plan. The lethal zone covered only a tenth of the vault, but the Plague Marines had crowded around the access panel within it. Those still caught in the plating lay near the same insertion point.
The Maintenance Officer checked the surrounding compartments.
"Contained within Bay Eleven. We'll lose the handling rails."
Adam looked at the hostile markers gathered against the door.
"Arm it."
On the camera feed, the Plague Marine lieutenant turned. He saw the isolated torpedo, then the empty racks around it.
"Away from—"
"Detonate."
The initial charge burst the casing and hurled fragments through the gathered warriors. Burning promethium followed, driven into broken armor and exposed flesh by the pressure of the blast. The camera failed as the fire reached it.
A heavy jolt passed through Adam's cradle. Bay Eleven changed from green to amber on the ship diagram. The adjacent doors held.
A surviving sensor resolved an image through the smoke: a twisted loading cradle, ruined controls, and scorched armor piled against the door. Nothing moved among the remains.
Adam loosened his grip on the armrest.
"Keep it sealed."
"Until decontamination," the Maintenance Officer confirmed.
Adam turned to the rear hangar.
The Black Legion lieutenant had gathered his surviving warriors at the entrance to a broad cargo passage. They had found the route toward the ship's interior and were advancing along it, leaving the casualties from their arrival behind.
"Seal the section."
Adam transmitted the section's boundaries through his neural link. Emergency gates closed ahead of the boarding party and behind it. A warrior sprinted toward the nearest opening, but the gate reached the deck before he could pass beneath it.
He fired into the seal. The lieutenant pulled him back and directed the squad toward a freight junction where they could cover the adjoining passages.
All crew remained inside the protected citadel. Adam checked their positions once, then selected the ship's reserve automata.
"Initiate anti-bording protocol."
In a storage bay, restraints released from rows of heavy metal bodies. Iron Men straightened in their cradles, red optics lighting as weapons and actuators came online.
The Maintenance Officer marked clear arrival points inside the sealed section. Blue light flared along the freight passages, and the first machines appeared within sight of the intruders.
The Black Legion fired immediately. Bolter shells burst against metal torsos and shoulder housings. One automaton lost an optic; another staggered as a joint broke beneath repeated hits. Those behind them continued forward.
More arrived at the opposite end of the junction.
"Back to the hangar!" the lieutenant ordered.
A warrior turned to cover that route and found another rank advancing from it.
"Blocked!"
The lieutenant brought his men into a tight circle around a low loading platform. Bolters covered every approach. A melta gunner moved between two of his brothers, waited for a clear shot, and burned through the leading Iron Man's chest.
The machine collapsed. Another stepped past it before the gunner could fire again. A cutting beam struck his weapon and continued through his raised forearm. His brothers dragged him back as the front rank reached them.
The passages were wide enough for tanks, but the machines filled them. Damaged automata fired from where they had fallen while fresh units advanced around them. The warriors could kill individual attackers. They could not clear an approach long enough to escape.
The lieutenant drew his power blade and met the nearest machine at the edge of the platform. He severed one of its claws and drove the point beneath its chest armor. Before he could pull the blade free, a second automaton seized his shoulder and wrenched his arm back. A third struck through the opened joint beneath his arm.
His warriors closed around him, firing at arm's length. The circle broke as the Iron Men forced their way onto the platform.
Adam followed the fight through the remaining cameras. One Black Legionnaire drove a krak charge into a machine's damaged torso, destroying it and throwing the warrior beside him to the deck. Another hacked at a gripping claw until a cutting beam burned through his gorget.
No reinforcements followed them aboard. The automata pressed forward from every passage, separating the survivors and killing them where they stood.
The screaming faded.
The last hostile marker disappeared from the internal map. Adam dismissed the compartment view and returned his attention to the void battle still raging across the system.
.....
If you'd like to support me and read a bit ahead, feel free to check out my Patreon. (https://www.patreon.com/c/Hemont).
Do you like this Novel? Then pls consider supporting me by Commenting or Rating it.
.....