At this distance, the moon appeared in the Dantalion’s oculus as a metallic tangle. It was only a few hundred kilometres in diameter. Industrial works covered the entire surface. The gravity was too weak to sustain an atmosphere, and the belching of thousands of chimneys floated off into the void. The grey mass of twisting pipelines and manufactoria was lit now by blossoming fire.
‘Shipmaster Marcarian,’ Zerberyn said from the bridge pulpit, ‘set course for the starboard flank of the enemy.’ The Palimodes had engaged the port. ‘Weapons masters, target shields and weapons.’
Marcarian looked up from the throne. ‘Not the engines?’
‘No. The vessel’s orbit is too close to the moon. Anything like a plasma detonation might destroy… our goal.’ His hesitation was brief, and he hoped it was not noticed. He had been uncertain how to refer to the moon. It was a world of slave manufactoria controlled by the Iron Warriors. He had just ordered the preservation of a Traitor possession.
Of course you have, he thought. We need the resources to make repairs. I am honour-bound to aid Kalkator for the moment. And I do not intend to destroy a second world on this mission.
The reasons were good. The reasons were true.
They also sat uneasily in his heart.
Marcarian communicated Zerberyn’s orders to the rest of the flotilla, and the Fists Exemplar vessels adjusted their course. The ork battleship had not reacted to their presence yet. They had the luxury of planning an attack.
‘Master of the Vox,’ Zerberyn said. ‘Hail the Palimodes. Command channel.’
‘So ordered.’
‘Your arrival is welcome, if tardy,’ Kalkator said a moment later.
The Iron Warrior’s grim humour made Zerberyn’s neck muscles tense. It seemed to carry a presumption of brotherhood, one that Zerberyn was unable to reject as fully as he knew he should. He responded as if Kalkator had said nothing. ‘You cannot risk the destruction of the enemy.’
‘We cannot,’ Kalkator agreed. ‘Not in its current position.’ The effect of the warsmith’s voice was diminished by the distortions of the vox. Even so, it was harsh, the sound of spikes against a millstone.
‘You plan to board it?’
‘We do. We will be in position to attack the bridge shortly.’
‘If your ship survives long enough.’
‘Quite.’
The orks were hitting the void shields of the Palimodes with punishing broadsides. The strike cruiser was surrounded by a desperate flaring of red. Like the Dantalion, the damage it had already sustained was considerable. It would not be able to take much more.
‘We will launch boarding torpedoes to aft starboard to coordinate with your attack,’ Zerberyn said. ‘We will work our way forward and silence their guns.’
‘Then we shall meet on the bridge,’ said Kalkator, and signed off.
Zerberyn became aware of a presence to his right. ‘What is it, Brother Mandek?’ he said.
‘We are fighting alongside the Traitors again?’
‘Yes,’ Zerberyn said. He was unable to keep all the irritation from his voice. ‘Why are you asking? We travelled with them to Immitis. Or did you think we were following them in order to lay an ambush?’
Mandek gazed at him levelly. Zerberyn had been given command of the mission by Thane, but Zerberyn and Mandek had held the same rank until a few days before that. Mandek appeared to want Zerberyn to remember this. ‘I needed to hear it said,’ he said.
‘Why?’
Mandek frowned. Instead of answering directly, he said, ‘I’ve just come from the astropathic choir.’
‘Why?’ Zerberyn said again.
‘I wanted to know if there had been any message sent to the Chapter Master.’
And again, Zerberyn said, ‘Why?’
‘You have not communicated with him since we began travelling this path with the Traitors, have you?’
Was Mandek refusing to name the Iron Warriors, Zerberyn wondered, or was he simply choosing to state what they were until Zerberyn acknowledged that truth?
This was not the time, he thought. There was a slippery tightness in his chest.
‘What is your point?’ Zerberyn said. He gestured at the oculus. ‘We are entering battle.’
‘There has been another message from Chapter Master Thane,’ said Mandek.
‘Oh?’
‘We are ordered to return to Terra with all haste.’
‘So we shall.’
Mandek blinked.
‘Do think the flotilla can travel that distance through the warp and arrive intact?’
‘No,’ Mandek admitted.
‘Then we will make repairs first. Or are you suggesting we ignore the ork battleship before us?’
The dark look Mandek gave the oculus suggested he wished the Iron Warriors and the orks the pleasure of each other’s company.
‘We cannot go far in our present condition,’ Zerberyn insisted.
These are all true things, he thought. All of them.
‘Is there a message for the Chapter Master?’ Mandek asked.
‘Yes. That we have heard, and proceed as ordered.’
‘You will inform the astropathic choir of this message?’
Zerberyn forced himself not to bristle. ‘No,’ he said. He met and held Mandek’s gaze. ‘You will.’
Mandek nodded, satisfied. ‘So ordered.’
They were both pretending now that the decision had been entirely Zerberyn’s.
‘Good. Let’s kill some orks first.’
The boarding torpedoes from the Fists Exemplar flotilla drilled through dozens of metres of shield. They burrowed through the skin of the ork vessel like worms through earth.
Outside the hull, the vessels of the Fists Exemplar and the Iron Warriors had the battleship surrounded. The strike cruisers Paragon, Implicit and Courageous were so heavily damaged they had to keep further back and within the shelter of Dantalion and Guilliman, but they too pounded the enemy with cannon fire. The orks had no need for void shields. The vessel’s plating was so thick, so dense, that shells burst against it with little effect. It retaliated, redirecting some of its firepower from the bombardment of the moon to target the ships.
Zerberyn felt the blasts of the gargantuan cannons as his boarding torpedo ground its way forward. He was in the flesh of the enemy, and it shook with each concussion of its immense turrets. ‘Shipmaster,’ he voxed, ‘all torpedoes are breaching the target. What is your status?’
‘Our shields are at the limit,’ said Marcarian. ‘The hits are counting.’
‘Get some distance. I want something to return to when we are done here.’
‘So ordered.’
The torpedoes burst through the outer hull. They came out in emptiness. Zerberyn and his squad were suddenly weightless as the torpedo dropped. It struck hard, and its front hatch blew open. Zerberyn lunged forward, bolter held out before him.
The torpedoes had arrived in the lower third of a gallery that stretched for over a kilometre towards the bow of the vessel. Multiple levels of catwalks ran along the bulkheads. They led to the entrances to the turrets. The centre of the hull was a criss-crossing of metal platforms, bridges and ladders. In the vastness of the space, the web looked gossamer-thin. Orks swarmed over the structure like insects, running transport trains of shells to the guns, carrying materiel and tools as the web crumbled and shook with every blast of the guns.
They had taken the orks by surprise. Enemy fire was sporadic. The greenskins raged, hurling blades. They overturned their transports, derailing them and sending them and their contents hurtling down on the invaders.