Incandescence lit the chamber. First one, then the other melta bomb detonated, burning through the barrels of the cannons. First one, then the other gun fired just as the integrity of the barrel was destroyed.
First one, then another monstrous shell exploded inside the weapons.
The cannons flew apart. Thunder so huge it had physical force slammed the orks down. Shrapnel like jagged storm shields flew through the chamber. Flame engulfed the space. And now Straton triggered his bomb too. The cataclysm smashed into the weakened first cannon, and the barrel fell. It smashed down behind the Deathwatch, a wall six metres high.
Thane lost sight of the other Space Marines. He ran through fire, the world was fire, and the world disintegrated. The deck whiplashed. He flew through the fire, the world of fire. He landed on collapsing metal. He kept his feet and ran on.
To the rear, the explosions continued. Destruction spread, feeding greedily. Another cannon erupted, and deeper in the hull, a shell was triggered by the impacts of the blasts. It set more off. The battleship groaned as a chain reaction tore apart the interior of its port side.
Thane passed through the entrance of the gun chamber. The flames reached ahead of him, but he could see the rest of the Deathwatch now, and he could see the stairs leading back down the levels, back towards Abathar.
A great thunder resounded. An earthquake shook the battleship, hurling orks from catwalks. One of the connections to the teleport homer broke free. The cable slashed back and forth, spraying lightning. Abathar seized it with the servo-arm claw. He struggled to reattach it and finish the rest of the assembly. The tremors became even more violent, knocking many of the greenskins off their feet, slowing their attack. Some managed to cling to the side of the generator and climb up to his position. Bestial faces came over the edge just as he was closing the last of the circuits. Without releasing his work, he turned the plasma cutter on them.
The power coil wavered back and forth. Metal groaned. The crimson energy flickered, then steadied.
The explosions continued. Abathar had the sense of the battleship suffering wounds at a profound level. Had it been an Imperial ship, its machine-spirit would have been screaming. Abathar grunted with satisfaction. Well done, brothers, he thought. He finished his work, and the homer began to charge. The red glow spread over its cylinders.
Abathar turned from his work in time to put bolt-shells into the skulls of three more orks climbing the generator. On the deck, the greenskins had found their feet. Not all of them were trying to reach him now. The blast doors on all levels of the enginarium were grinding down. Streams of orks flowed through them, rushing to fight the true threat, or so they thought.
‘Gladius,’ Abathar voxed, ‘it is time we departed.’
‘On our way,’ Thane replied. ‘What is our best approach?’
Abathar looked up at the conduit that had brought him here. Though new fissures had appeared in its surface, it still appeared sound. ‘The way I came.’
‘We won’t be alone.’
‘Understood.’
He gunned down a group of orks running across the catwalk towards him. Bullets smacked against his armour and dug into the cabling around him. Some greenskins had chosen to shoot from positions atop other generators. He moved closer to the catwalk, drawing their fire away from the power coil and the teleport homer. He had to save ork technology from being damaged by its creators. He stood tall, weathering the hits, placing his return fire carefully, pulping skulls at a distance.
The mercy was that the orks labouring in the enginarium were not the largest or most heavily armed warriors. They were here because they were forced to be by their stronger brothers. Outnumbered scores to one, Abathar held his ground.
The homer charged. The ship’s tremors began to diminish. Abathar sensed time running out.
‘Gladius,’ he began, about to urge haste. He didn’t finish. On the deck below, time ran out.
A monster strode through the blast door. It was twice the height of a Dreadnought. Its armour was so thick, it seemed to be wearing the hull of a Land Raider. It carried a gun larger than an autocannon.
‘Gladius,’ Abathar said again, ‘there is no more time.’
‘Hold fast,’ Thane replied.
Abathar moved to his right, behind the wall of cables once more, further away from the power coil. He braced himself to fight the unstoppable.
The behemoth pulled the trigger. Its gun spat a thudding barrage of solid slugs. They smashed through generator walls and cut through cables. They set off a string of explosions and fires, a line of destruction marking the arc of the monster’s aim. The beast brought the gun up towards Abathar’s position. It was indiscriminate in its fire. It did not care what it destroyed. It revelled in the mad joy of devastation.
The conduit above Abathar shook with the tread of heavy boots and the concussion of bolter fire.
Abathar aimed his bolt pistol at the ork’s skull. He targeted the gap in the armour where the tusked jaw snarled. He fired. The shells smashed the ork’s fangs. They punched into the back of its throat.
It barely noticed.
The monster’s cannon shells pounded the cable barrier apart. Massive blows struck Abathar in the chest and threw him backwards. He fell in a tangle of wreckage, his armour cracked, servo-motors slipping and stuttering.
The other four members of Squad Gladius dropped out of the conduit. They fired back into it. The pipe trembled from the weight of the pursuing horde. It began to sag.
Abathar pushed himself to his feet. The giant ork had paused to examine its handiwork. Abathar forced movement into his legs and made for the teleport homer.
‘It must be now,’ he said.
The Deathwatch gathered around the homer. Orks poured from the conduit. The giant aimed its gun at the power coil. It fired again as Abathar triggered the homer.
And then, there truly was no more time.
Nine
As before, the human and the ork made war in a realm of energy. For an immeasurable moment, the last stop before disaster, the clash of technologies was a stalemate, and the tiniest sliver of the power was channelled in its proper path. The homer responded as it was designed to do, and transferred the Deathwatch from the ork battleship to the Herald of Night. Then the stalemate collapsed. The forces of the human and the ork technologies destroyed each other in their rage. Half the vessel’s engine block vanished, disassembled past the subatomic. What remained erupted. An event far more traumatic than rupture struck the engine core. A star was cut in half. It died howling.
A shockwave produced by the severing of reality flashed across the ork fleet. The battleship vanished in a supernova cry of light. The wave blasted the nearby ships to fiery dust. Further out, it snapped escorts and cruisers in half. The wave lost force quickly as it travelled and the outer elements of the ork fleet survived. Barely. Ships floated in the void without power. Atmospheres vented through huge rents in the hulls. Fires swept through entire levels, never to be extinguished.
The Herald of Night emerged from the deep dark to bring judgement on what remained.
The dislocation seized Thane again. The ripping apart, the disintegration of identity one with the annihilation of reality. The transfer was so much more brutal than with unmodified Imperial teleporters. In the wrench of the process came the sense of a monstrous excess of energy. Of something unleashed. And of a danger to the soul.
The device was bestial. It was unclean.
It was also gone.
Thane blinked, acknowledging his and his squad’s return to being on the Herald of Night. They shook off the sickness of the translation and made for the bridge. There they joined Adnachiel, Wienand and Veritus in the strategium. They watched the end of the ork fleet through the oculus. Veritus looked grim, disturbed by what he’d seen. Wienand seemed both awed and thoughtful.