There were no visual feeds to the Thunderhawk, but Adnachiel ensured Koorland had a channel to the command vox and received a constant update of ship positions relative to the Herald. He would know the state of the battle. He would know when the moment came for the launches.
The strike cruiser cut through the void, closing in on the burning region of the attack moon.
‘The Imperial Navy still has the orks contained,’ Shipmaster Aelia said.
Adnachiel grunted. ‘They’re holding them only because this is the greatest concentration of ships to destroy,’ he said.
The tacticarium screens flickered as they adjusted to the constant changes. The positions of Navy vessels changed slowly compared to the darting swarm of ork ships. Their status changed far more quickly. Green icons flashed amber, then red, then vanished. The frigates and destroyers that made up the blockade fleet were far from being the largest at the Navy’s command, but each was still over a kilometre long, with crews numbering in the tens of thousands. The pace at which they were disappearing from the sight of the Herald’s auspex array was disturbing. The orks were feasting on the Terran fleet. There were fifteen destroyers, almost as many frigates, and scores of escorts still in the fighting. Nowhere near enough.
Adnachiel had to hope they would feast a little longer. He resented the necessity for that hope. His anger spurred his determination to see the moon destroyed.
He looked back and forth between the screen readouts and the cloud of battle visible in the oculus. A battle cluster was forming, growing tighter. The Imperial ships were converging as they sought to provide supporting fire for each other. The orks battened on the higher concentration of prey. The blockade still surrounded the moon, but as the Navy fell, gaps opened. The orks were not coming through them yet, but instead they appeared to be intent on the total annihilation of the blockade.
‘Commander, we have a possible course plotted,’ Aelia said.
‘Show me,’ Adnachiel said.
The mortal pressed a key on her command throne stationed just below Adnachiel’s pulpit. An arcing path appeared on the oculus, cutting through one of the gaps to bring the Herald of Night close to the surface of the ork base.
‘No,’ Adnachiel said. ‘The target is the interior.’ The nearest approach of Aelia’s route would force the kill-teams to breach a surface thick enough to be a planetary crust, or travel to the open maw. That would take too long, giving the orks too much time to detect and counter the attack. ‘The jaws are our goal.’
Ork interceptors still streamed from the vast launch bay. The grotesque mouth opened and closed in an imitation of speech. It was the Beast’s shout given visual form. It gaped wide, narrowed, then gaped again. It never shut completely.
‘Use the gap between the vessels,’ Adnachiel said. ‘Enter the battle by that path, then cut through to the maw. Maximum speed, continuous fire.’
‘So ordered,’ said Aelia.
The Herald of Night plunged towards the war. It was larger and more powerful than any ship still in the battle, and its approach altered the gravitational tides of conflict. Adnachiel tracked the readings and the oculus display. In his mind’s eye, he saw the full shape of the struggle. He saw the shifting currents, the networks of fire, the ripple effects of actions large and small. The cloud began to bulge towards the Herald. The movement was slow. The orks were becoming aware of what was closing in, but they were already engaged. The reinforcements coming from the moon turned in the direction of the strike cruiser. Some were destroyed by crossfire within moments of their emergence. Others became caught in the maelstrom of the war. Still others kept their heading.
‘The enemy has seen us,’ Aelia said.
‘And I see them,’ Adnachiel answered. ‘Maintain course. We will meet them and crush them.’
The strike cruiser entered the gap. To port and starboard, above and below the course of the ship, the void burned and screamed. The edges of the oculus flashed with lance and torpedo fire. Ignited plasma billowed towards the centre of Adnachiel’s vision. In the upper right of his view, a dozen ork interceptors dived towards the core of the destroyer Unstinting. Its void shields fell. Its hull, already compromised, erupted. A new star burst from the centre. Destroyer and interceptors vanished in its roiling embrace. Edging in from the left was an intersecting web of fire between two frigates as they struggled to cut down the horde of greenskin ships that circled them like feasting insects.
The gap between the battles had looked like empty void from a distance. Now it revealed itself to be a graveyard of broken hulks and dying gas flares. It was dense with ruin. The Herald of Night struck the corpses of ships with its prow. A huge tomb of ragged metal half a kilometre long tumbled end-over-end along the Herald’s length towards the superstructure. The void shields strained under the impacts, but held. Adnachiel saw the ruin fill the oculus, then vanish as the feed redirected to sensors on the other side of the obstacle.
The hulk slammed against the superstructure. The impact reverberated through the hull. Adnachiel felt it in the walls of the bridge and in the deck. The Herald of Night was moving fast, and the mass of the hulk was huge. The first red icons of damage reports appeared on the tacticarium screens.
‘Anomalous gravity readings,’ Aelia announced. At the same moment, strange waves swept through the ship and Adnachiel felt himself weighed down, then pulled upward as if he might fly to the dome of the bridge. Conflicting forces pressed against him. His Lyman’s ear resisted the disorientation, but still his sense of the vertical fragmented. It spun. He held steady. Below, officers and serfs lost their balance. Some fell from their seats. Servitors jerked upward and then down against banks of consoles. The hull groaned.
Adnachiel saw new meaning in the shape of the path. The orks’ gravity weapon had swept through these coordinates, a scythe for ships. The reports reaching Terra from the battle had indicated it was active, but in a limited fashion. Its area of effect was narrow. Its strikes were sporadic.
The orks were back, but the injury inflicted on them before was real, Adnachiel thought. The base was weaker.
The Herald of Night’s run was a wager. There was no pretending otherwise. But if the aftershocks of the weapon were still being felt, it had been used very recently. Adnachiel disliked wagers. War had too much chance in it already. To willingly engage with it was a form of moral carelessness. His hand was forced, though. And everything about the Deathwatch mission was a wager.
But the fading gravity effects were promising. If he must wager, perhaps he was making a good one. The Herald of Night ploughed onward through the debris field, speed undiminished. Ahead, Adnachiel saw a path to the curve of the attack moon’s surface. ‘Hard to port,’ he ordered. ‘Fire at will.’
‘Hard to port,’ Aelia confirmed.
The Herald’s bow turned from the darkened path towards the cloud of lethal light, and its batteries acquired targets and fired. The first ork interceptors came into range and died. The hull shook as the ship entered a zone of overlapping shockwaves. Hostile targets closed in.
‘Master of the Vox,’ Adnachiel called, ‘begin a broadcast to all Imperial vessels.’
‘Transmitting,’ Master of the Vox Enger confirmed.
‘Ships of the Imperial Navy,’ Adnachiel said. ‘We come to drive a blade through the heart of the greenskins. Hold the xenos. Do not allow them to deflect the blow.’ He paused. ‘End vox-cast,’ he told Enger.