Battle for The Abyss (42 page)

Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss

ter, half suspended by the circuitry and cables linking him to the dreadnought armour. A second shot from the still unseen bolt pistol struck him in the chest and thick blood oozed from the wound. The dreadnought fell backwards, hitting the armoury floor with a resounding clang, and was still. Brynngar crawled on top of it, straddling the machine, and tore into the wasted body of Baelanos with his rune axe until there was nothing left.

‘Try coming back from that,’ he breathed savagely.

Resonating footsteps made the Space Wolf turn around to regard his saviour. Skraal emerged from the gloom, bolt pistol still smoking in his outstretched fist.

‘Thought you were dead,’ grunted the old wolf and promptly collapsed.

MHOTEP FORCED THE end of his arm back into his shoulder joint.

The pain didn’t mean anything. The grimace on his face was from frustration that the arm, and with it his spear, would be weakened. He heaved down a couple of deep breaths and backed up against a bulkhead.

The battle against Wsoric had passed beyond the corridor outside the bridge and had progressed to the senior crew quarters, chambers allocated to him before he’d been confined to isolation.

They were relatively close to the bridge, should an emergency necessitate the presence of any senior crew. That fact meant little, in the face of certain death, save that the trail of destruction left by their battle was short-lived.

As he regarded the collapsed ceiling, the wreckage of two decks punctuated by a few intact support stanchions and columns still smouldering, Mhotep came to realise that he was the last living being on the command deck. The Thousand Son had lost sight of the daemon when he’d been smashed through the deck and landed in the chamber below. Wsoric could be anywhere. He tasted blood in his mouth and knew the fused carapace of his ribs was broken. His breathing was ragged, which indicated a punctured lung and his shoulder burned.

In truth, the fight was not going as he’d hoped.

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‘You resisted,’ said the daemon. ‘I turned your brothers against you, showed you the path and you refused it. That was folly.’

Mhotep tried to follow the sound of Wsoric’s voice, but it came from all around him.

‘Do you realise how fragile the Emperor’s house is? How easily his sons will war with one another? It took nothing to make the wolf turn on you and little more for the puritan captain to abandon your defence.’

Mhotep ignored the goading, and tried to focus. It was dark in the crew quarters, all power having died on the
Wrathful
and he closed his eyes, relying instead on his psy-sight to guide him.

Life support was dead too and the air was growing stagnant without it. Mhotep kept his breathing steady, so as not to use up too much oxygen.

‘The Imperium will fall,’ Wsoric promised, ‘and the galaxy will bathe in blood and fire. Humanity’s dominance is at an end.’

Mhotep cast about the chamber. His psy-sight showed him a grey, shadow world that was indistinct and grainy. Corpses of the slain officers who had died in their quarters flickered briefly like dimming candles. A voracious life spark, red and angry, got Mhotep’s attention. He saw the daemon form. Its skin was like incandescent fire, constantly burning, and ribbed horns curled from its snarling head. A hide of thick, black hair covered its back from where immense, tattered wings extended, and its clawed feet raked the floor.

‘I see you,’ he whispered and threw his spear.

The daemon roared in agony as the golden spear impaled its neck. Mhotep’s eyes snapped open and Wsoric became the fleshy abomination once more, transfixed by his weapon. He ran headlong at the creature, trying to make the most of the small advantage he had gained.

The daemon twisted, enduring the pain it brought as the spear tip tore at its ephemeral flesh. Its gaping maw split open all the way down through its torso and, just as Mhotep reached it, the daemon vomited a hail of burning bone shards. The Thousand Son took a shard in his leg that pierced his battle-plate with ease.

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Limping backwards, he ripped the spear out of Wsoric’s neck, ichor spewing in its wake and thrust again, shredding through the muscle of the daemon’s shoulder.

With a lurch of straining steel, the deck collapsed, Astartes and daemon plunging into a dark void below. They landed in a dead space in the hull, separating the crew quarters from the lower industrial decks. A freezing gloom persisted there, criss-crossed with support beams. Mhotep rolled off the creature, which had taken the brunt of the fall, and staggered backwards.

Wsoric rose with the screech of sundered metal. The struts around it were already damaged. The ship was breaking apart.

The daemon roared its anger, preparing to vent its wrath when the supports gave way. Together, they tumbled down into the cold blackness.

THE SOUND OF the ocean receded as Brynngar came around. The scarred visage of the World Eater in his battle-helm looked down on him.

‘You’re a sore sight for my eyes,’ grumbled the old wolf and got to his feet. Brynngar’s body felt bruised with the effort, and the pain down one leg made him stagger at first before he righted himself. Blood flecked his beard and armour.

‘How long was I out?’ he asked, aware that they were still in the armoury hall.

‘Just a few minutes,’ Skraal replied, ‘but we’ve no time to rest.

Word Bearers are patrolling the ship looking for us.’

‘Been hunting you for a while, eh?’ guessed the Space Wolf, taking in the rents and burns on Skraal’s armour. He could almost imagine the fevered look in his eyes, the kind of nervous expression that any man on the run might adopt after being chased for long enough. The World Eater was already volatile. Shaken up as he was, he might crack at any moment.

‘Several weeks... I think.’ The son of Angron came across a little dazed as his time aboard the ship had dulled his sense of what was real and what were merely phantoms of the mind.

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‘Did anyone else get aboard?’ Brynngar asked, swinging Felltooth to better remember the strength of his arm. The old wolf noticed that the red-limned portal was still open.

‘I am the only survivor,’ Skraal responded curtly and headed for the light.

‘You know where that leads?’ asked the Wolf Guard, noting the nonchalant way the World Eater approached the doorway.

‘The corridor beyond will get us to the engine deck.’

‘We need to reach ordnance and destroy the cyclonic payload,’

said Brynngar, ‘and how do you know that we can reach the engines from there?’

‘He knows because I told him,’ said a familiar voice from the gloom that sent the hackles on the back of Brynngar’s neck rising.

‘Destroying the cyclonics is no longer viable,’ he added, emerging out of the penumbra.

‘Cestus.’ Brynngar growled when he said it.

The Ultramarine slammed a fresh clip from the armoury’s stores into his bolt pistol and nodded to the Space Wolf.

‘There is but one opportunity left to us,’ Cestus said. ‘The easier course is no longer possible. We must walk the harder road. It is the only one open to us.’

Brynngar’s silence held the question.

‘We must destroy the ship,’ said Cestus.

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TWENTY

Contention

Avenge me

Immolation

‘DESTROY THE SHIP?’ Brynngar laughed as he limped after his battle-brothers. When Cestus went to aid him, he snarled, ‘I’m fine,’ before continuing.

‘This is the single largest and most powerful vessel I have ever seen. A few incendiaries,’ the Space Wolf indicated the grenade harness he still carried ‘will not see to its ruin.’

‘Have you lost your mind as well as your honour, son of Guilliman?’

‘Neither,’ Cestus replied. ‘The
Furious Abyss
can be destroyed.

In order to do it, we must reach the engines and the plasma reactor that fuels them. If we can overload them with an incendiary payload of our own the resulting explosion will commence a chain reaction that cannot be averted by the ship’s fail safes and redundant systems.’

Brynngar seized Cestus by the shoulder. The Space Wolf’s eyes were full of anger.

‘You knew this and yet said nothing?’

‘It was irrelevant before,’ Cestus returned, shaking free of the Wolf Guard’s grip. ‘Our only way in was through the torpedo tubes, which made the cyclonics our obvious and most immediate target. There was no way of knowing we could’ve made it this far into the ship for an assault on the main reactor to be even possible.’

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‘Leaving aside the matter of how you even know this,’ snarled the Wolf Guard, ‘how do you plan on getting close enough to destroy it? Have you seen the size of this vessel; it will be like a labyrinth in the engineering decks. We might never find it.’

‘I can guide us. It will take minutes,’ Cestus replied curtly. He was about to head off when Brynngar grabbed his arm again.

‘I don’t know what pact you have made with the witch that cowers aboard the
Wrathful
and what secrets you may be privy to,’ growled the Space Wolf dangerously, ‘but know this: I will not abide sorcery in any form. Once we gain the reactor and set this ship burning, our alliance is at an end, Ultramarine.’ Brynngar let Cestus go, and stalked away, taking a bolt pistol from the armoury and making ready at the open portal.

‘So be it,’ said Cestus grimly to himself and went to join his battle-brothers.

THE
FURIOUS ABYSS
had been forced out of position during the battle with the
Wrathful
. Formaska glowered well to its starboard side, Macragge scarcely less ominous well below it. The planet’s local defence fleet was also in sight, lingering above Macragge’s upper-atmosphere. With the supplicants dead, the
Furious
’s surveyor-dampening systems, which had allowed it to ambush the
Fist of Macragge
were no longer effective.

Slowly, the vessels were moving into defensive positions.

Without knowledge of the Word Bearers’ intentions or their defection from the Imperium, though, the Macragge fleet was cautious and had yet to engage. They would try to hail them first. It was all the time that the
Furious Abyss
would need to realign, destroy Formaska and thus cripple the fleet in one stroke. The
Wrathful
was gone from the massive ship’s viewscreens, now little more than a chilling tomb of dead lights and lost souls, as it floundered in the void without power. Gravity would claim it.

Orders were relayed down to the
Furious Abyss
’s engine rooms to engage the directional thrusters and orient the ship back towards Formaska. The ordnance decks had been retaken, although the damage done by the enemy assault was extensive in
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some areas. The explosive discharge from a rapidly detonated melta bomb cluster had been ill-targeted, but destructive. The repair crews were hard at work clearing debris and expelling corpses into the void, but reaching operational status again would take time. It meant, although the cyclonic payload was intact, the launch would be delayed further.

Zadkiel felt his glory slipping through his grasp even as he listened to the toiling of the ratings on the ordnance deck. He shut down the vox link and closed his eyes, trying to master his anger.

Opening them again, Zadkiel looked at the positional display on one of his command throne’s viewscreens. The
Furious
had yet to change its heading and reset the launch vectors for the torpedoes.

‘Gureod,’ he barked into the vox array.

Silence answered.

‘Damn it, magos, why are the engines not engaged?’

Nothing again. Now the magos was just mocking him.

‘Reskiel,’ snarled Zadkiel, his tone impatient.

‘My lord,’ said the voice of the sergeant-commander, the thud-ding retort of gunfire audible in the background.

‘Get to engineering and find out why the ship has stalled.’

‘My lord,’ said Reskiel again, ‘we are at engineering. The enemy are here. They move through the ship as if they know every tunnel and access conduit. My squad is moving in to eliminate—’

The sound of a thunderous explosion broke the vox link for a moment. Crackling static reigned for a few seconds before Reskiel returned. ‘We have made contact. They are at the edge of the main reactor approach...’

Frantic cries and the screams of Word Bearers punctuated the chorus of bolter fire before the vox link went dead.

Zadkiel clenched his fist, and bit out his next words.

‘Ikthalon, lead three squads down to engineering. Seek those curs out and destroy them!’ Zadkiel’s veneer of calm cracked and fell away completely. He was shaking with apoplectic rage.

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Ikthalon had returned to the bridge following the death of the supplicants and had, until now, observed proceedings with silent deference.

‘No, my lord,’ he responded in his usual sibilant cadence, adding, ‘I have endured your ineptitude for long enough. It threatens the glory of Kor Phaeron and our Lord Lorgar.’ Zadkiel heard the chaplain draw his bolt pistol from its holster.

‘I had thought you impudent, Ikthalon,’ said the admiral calmly, his composure returning as he turned to the chaplain. Zadkiel saw that he did indeed have his pistol trained upon him.

‘I did not believe you to be stupid.’

The chaplain’s posture was neutral and unassuming.

‘Stand down,’ he said simply, lifting the pistol a fraction to emphasis his point.

Zadkiel bowed his head. In the corner of his eye, he saw Ikthalon start to lower his weapon. It would be the chaplain’s last mistake.

Zadkiel moved swiftly to the side, his rapier-like power sword drawn fluidly. The bucking report of the bolt pistol sounded on the bridge, but Ikthalon’s shot, confounded by the admiral’s sudden movement, missed.