More warships translated in all the time, cutting through the empyreal sheath like knives through black silk. Each new arrival brought a burst of vox-chatter that gabbled from the vox-turret hardlines and bled into the general commotion. Void-suited tacticians hurried to update the strategium desk, while vox-personnel spoke on two, or sometimes three, lines at once in an effort to impose the pre-formulated formation protocols on the emerging fleet.
It had been for just a few short decades that the Fists Exemplar had called Eidolica their home, but for seven centuries prior their home range had been the Rubicante Flux. Their fleet was sizeable. With the exclusion of the Black Templars, whose numbers were a secret guarded even amongst brothers, the Fists Exemplar provided over half of the Last Wall’s naval power.
Zerberyn was not of a mind to let them forget it.
A huge shape slid into main view, high on Dantalion’s z-axis.
Serfs from every station rose in unison to clap and cheer it. It was a battle-barge, Dantalion’s sister ship, but even more heavily armed. Kilometre after battle-scarred kilometre of adamantium-grey crenellations bristled with macro-batteries like the armour studs on a chrono-gladiator. Gothic spires rose from its central bulk, counterbalanced by smaller ventral towers. Launch tubes, flak turrets and antennae arrays vied with the asteroid-pitted statues of warrior angels aboard the immense dorsal spine. A volley of torpedo launches from her broadside tore a slow-turning ork crusier to shreds. Dantalion rocked with the energy discharge.
‘Alcazar Remembered,’ Marcarian confirmed with one half of a smile.
‘Welcome the Chapter Master,’ said Zerberyn in a voice that offered little of the kind. ‘Transmit our tactical data to the flagship.’
The vox-liaison frowned as she retook her seat, refitted her headset, and swivelled back to her console. Zerberyn joined her at her station.
‘A priority transmission,’ she reported. ‘It’s coming through some intense interference, but it’s definitely Last Wall.’
‘Our beacon?’
She shook her head as she worked. ‘The coordinates don’t tally. The beacon was being transmitted from a near-stationary position much closer to the Vandis star. This signal is new, and it’s coming from the system’s edge.’ She stood and shouted at the liaison working auspectoria, then dropped back into her seat as the requested read-outs squirted across to her system. ‘Residual warp backwash from twenty to twenty-five vessels suggests a recent inbound translation. An hour old, maximum. Multiple radiation sources, plasma discharge, particle spread suggestive of hostile tractor locks on ships running full ahead.’ She spun her chair towards Zerberyn and leant back to look up to him. ‘It’s a Black Templars fleet, my lord, inbound on the beacon at ninety degrees to our position. Auto-identifiers name the signalling ship the Interdictor.’
‘Can I speak to them?’
‘I can’t guarantee you’ll hear every word.’
‘Put it on.’
The woman flicked a switch, and angry static roared from the turret’s augmitters. The sounds of alien voices blizzarded across the channel, bleedthrough from neighbouring frequencies, some breathless prattle that ran and ran and ran.
Gorkamorkagorkamorka.
‘Castellan Kasemund,’ scratched the interference-punished voice of a Space Marine. Zerberyn could pick up only odd words of what followed. ‘Crusade… recall… Phall… retaliation beacon… cruiser, Obsidian Sky… venerable…’
The castellan stopped speaking as static erased his words like ripple patterns on a beach as the moons pulled the tide higher.
Gorkamorkagorkamorkagorkamorka.
‘They must have been in the materium when they received Obsidian Sky’s transmission,’ explained the vox-liaison. ‘Most likely they would have received the complete message.’
Zerberyn nodded his understanding. ‘Your strength and situation, brother?’
Gorkamorkagorkamorka.
‘Eleven ships… Crusade… spear in the belly… boarded… push us hard… not show the xenos our backs.’
The spit and pop of bolter fire imposed itself over the background crackle, but neither that nor the orkish chatter could quite disguise the Black Templar’s uncomplicated disdain for the alien.
‘Lord captain, sir,’ mumbled Marcarian. ‘Auspectoria confirms several hundred large-mass warships, twice that in escorts and support craft. It’s inconceivable that one ship could have survived.’
‘And yet the battle rages on.’
Zerberyn thought back on the picket fleet the orks had positioned to hold the Mandeville point, and presumably the other that the Black Templars had broken through. The incredible mobilisation of materiel to run down one ship.
It was the work of a moment, a moment in which the command deck buzzed with a thousand and one operations.
‘Bulwark and Faceless Warrior coming astern.’
‘The orks are pulling back their fighters. They’re breaking off.’
‘Orders from the Chapter Master to hold this line while Noble Savage takes Paragon under tow.’
The image on the main view had switched again, this time to a starboard shot. Dantalion’s broadside lit up with detonations as her macrocannons opened fire in unison. Zerberyn felt the battle-barge pushed several metres to port. Void flares and feedback flashed across the viewer as Dantalion traded fire with a pair of brutish ork battlecruisers, box-jawed with weapon blisters and extraneous plating. The astern battlecruiser came apart under a volley of prow lances and void torpedos as Bulwark slid into position.
There was some reason the orks wanted to keep the Obsidian Sky inside this system.
‘I have them,’ cried Vox. ‘Obsidian Sky and one other vessel. Her spirit resists divulging her identity, but energy profiles and mass ratios suggest an Adeptus Astartes cruiser.’
The turret augmitters fizzed with vox-corruption. ‘Incoming… Throne… massive… protects—’
‘Castellan? Castellan?’
Gorkamorkagorkamorkagorkamorkagorkamorka.
‘Cut it off.’
The augmitters hissed like the animated dead, and then went silent.
‘Should I apprise Alcazar Remembered, lord?’ asked Marcarian.
‘Of course, but first signal to Bulwark and Faceless Warrior.’
‘To what end, lord?’
An appalled exclamation drew Zerberyn and his shipmaster’s attention towards the chart desk before he could answer. Strategium serfs backed away from it as though afraid that it was one of them that had damaged it. A small portion of the display had been blacked out: a sphere of unidentifiable darkness moved slowly through the glowing hololith field towards the highlighted wedge of Black Templars ships, ork icons disappearing as though swallowed by a black hole.
‘The incoming vessel that the Interdictor reported,’ Zerberyn concluded.
Marcarian looked to him, aghast. ‘What kind of monster does it carry?’
‘Contact Bulwark and Faceless Warrior. Advise them to break formation and follow us.’
‘But lord, Thane’s orders—’
‘Are subordinate to an Exemplar’s judgement. We must protect the Obsidian Sky.’ Zerberyn glanced back to the chart desk, the auspex shadow that was slowly spreading across it. He could almost hear the challenge of the Beast roared across light years. ‘We must engage that ship.’
‘Try again,’ commanded Maximus Thane, Chapter Master of the Fists Exemplar. ‘I want my ships back in formation.’