He didn’t answer. Strict vox-silence protocols were in force, but when had something as trivial as a direct order from the Warmaster troubled Ezekyle Abaddon?
‘Remember the moon,’ repeated Abaddon. ‘For two hundred years, we’ve tried to forget the moon.’
On the flag bridge of the Guardian of Aquinas, Lord Admiral Brython Semper watched the unfolding engagement in the central hololith with a measured sense of satisfaction. He paced with his hands laced behind his back. A cohort of nine Thallax followed him on hissing, piston-driven legs, the low hum of their lightning guns ruffling hairs on the back of his neck.
At least, he told himself it was their strange weaponry.
Semper didn’t like the blank-faced cybernetics, as it always unnerved him to know there was some scrap of a living being within that sarcophagus armour.
Still, at least they didn’t speak unless you spoke to them, unlike Proximo Tarchon of the vessel’s assigned complement of Ultramarines, who proffered unasked-for tactical advice like he were the one who’d spent most of his life aboard a warship.
Tarchon was only a centurion, for Throne’s sake, but still he acted as though the Guardian of Aquinas was his own Legion warship.
To the Mechanicum and the fleet, Semper’s flagship was an Avenger-class grand cruiser, which captured something of the vessel’s majesty, but nothing of its savagery. A part of the Guardian’s crew since his recruitment on Cypra Mundi, Brython Semper knew just how ferocious a machine of war it was.
Its mode of attack was not subtle. It owed nothing to finesse and was bloody in the way two starving rats locked in a box was bloody. Guardian of Aquinas was a gunboat, a sledgehammer vessel that waited for the enemy line to widen before surging into the gap and unleashing hellish broadsides from multiple gun decks.
‘Good hunting indeed, Argaun,’ hissed Semper, as the wounded vessels of the provocateur fleet limped back into range of the orbital weapons platforms. ‘Gave those traitor bastards a bloody nose and then some. By Mars and all his red blades, you did!’
That was overstating the damage caused by the provocateur fleet, but his lavish estimation of it would fire the blood of his crew. The Thallax straightened at the mention of the Red Planet. In pride or some conditioned reflex, he couldn’t tell.
As impressive as Argaun’s attack had been, it was just the prelude to the real fight. Semper cast his critical gaze over the disposition of his fleet, and was content.
Forty-two Imperial vessels were spread between three attack formations; a strong centre of frigates and destroyers, with fast-attack cruisers on the flanks. Two Gothics sailed abeam of the flagship, the Admonishment in Fire and the Solar’s Glory. Both had fought in the reclamation of the birth system and, like the Guardian of Aquinas, they were linebreakers, armed with broadside lances that were sure to wreak fearful havoc among the traitor ships.
Sailing in the leftmost battlegroup was Semper’s mailed fist.
Adranus was a Dominator, and its nova cannon was going to create the gap Semper and the Gothics would rip wide open.
The combined Sons of Horus and Death Guard fleets were in wrathful pursuit of the vessels that had hurt them. As Argaun had communicated, the enemy fleets were moving to englobe Molech, but retained a centre mass to engage the orbital defences and Battlefleet Molech.
Semper saw a textbook planetary assault formation, one any first-year cadet would recognise from the works of de Ruyter, Duilius or Yi Sun Shin.
‘They must not think very highly of us to come at us with so basic an attack,’ said Semper, loud enough for the deck crews to hear. ‘So much for Captain Salicar’s fears of us being outfought.’
Yet for all his outward bluster, Semper was under no illusions that the enemy approaching Molech was supremely dangerous. He’d studied the Warmaster’s tactics during the Great Crusade. His assaults were brutal, without mercy and the enemy almost never saw their doom coming.
This assault felt almost comically simple and direct.
What was he not seeing?
The Warmaster’s fleets would be in range of the orbitals at his back in less than three minutes. The hololith flickered with confirmed firing solutions received from their master gunners.
He’d already authorised captain’s discretion for each of the platform’s commanders. They knew their trade, and needed no direction from him to punish the traitors.
Yet the nagging doubt that wormed its way into his thoughts at the sight of so basic an assault formation wouldn’t go away.
What am I missing?
Platform Master Panrik had a surfeit of weapons aboard the Var Sohn orbital station; torpedo racks, missile tubes, close-range defence cannon, ion shields, mass drivers and battery after battery of macro-cannons.
All were eager to be unleashed.
‘Weapon systems at full readiness,’ reported the deck officer. ‘Command authority transfer on your mark.’
Panrik nodded. They’d achieved full readiness a little slower than he’d have liked. Still within acceptable tolerances, so no sense in making a scene just now.
‘Mark,’ said Panrik, inserting the silver command ring on his right index finger into the slot on his throne. He turned and sub-vocally recited his authority signifiers.
Clamps locked his neck in place, and a whirring, rotating connector plug slotted into the mind impulse unit socket drilled through into his spine.
Information flooded him.
Every surveyor and auspex on the great, crescent shaped platform was now his to access. His organic vision faded, replaced with a sensorium suite of approach vectors, closure speeds, deflection angles and targeting solutions.
In a very real sense, Panrik became Orbital Platform Var Sohn.
A potent sense of might surged through him. Connection burn and inload surge made him wince, but it faded as cognition-enhancing stims flooded his thalamus and occipital lobe.
Implanted vents at the back of Panrik’s skull opened, allowing the heat generated by his over-clocked brain to dissipate.
‘I have command authority, aye,’ replied Panrik, alternating between the local auspex and the feed coming in from the attack logisters of the Guardian of Aquinas. The enemy fleet was coming in hard and fast, looking to roll straight over the orbital defences and break through before suffering too much damage.
A bold strategy, but a risky one.
Too risky, thought Panrik, glancing down at the staggered line of orbitals and the haze of minefields strung between them like glittering jewels.
Panrik cricked his neck and flexed his fingers.
Weapon systems armed in response.
‘Come ahead then,’ he said to the advancing fleets. ‘Give it your best shot.’
00:12
Aximand watched the mottled grey and green marble of Molech rotate below him. Close, so very close. Ice limned the kinetic bracing and frost webbed the plate of his fellow warriors. For the last sixteen hours, he’d been watching the timer in the corner of his visor count down to zero.
00:09
Inaction didn’t suit him. It didn’t suit any of them, but he at least had learned to deal with it. Ezekyle and Falkus were prowling hounds who savoured the swift kill. Not for them the patient hunt. In contrast, Aximand was a bowstring that lost nothing of its power by being kept taut. Yet even he’d found this long, frozen vigil testing.