The Scorix Litany was a Hazeroth-class vessel; a Privateer, or in terms of combat capability, a Raider vessel. It was one of many vessels belonging to Antonius Sigird’s fleet, but being as it was the smallest, it was the best for a covert operation on Hestia Majoris. Do keep in mind, the spacefaring ships of Rogue Traders were made for drydocks, not atmospheres, particularly those of such density as Hestia Majoris. A larger craft would not have sufficed for Sigird’s purposes.
So where exactly was the Scorix Litany? On the other side of the world from Abseradon itself, deep beneath the seas. Mechanicus augmentations as much allowed the vessel to survive in a submersible environment as they provided with a means of escape. By the time we arrived, grav-boosters retrofitted to its underside were lifting the moss- and seaweed-covered ship out of the water. “Hardpoints,” I warned Mirena.
“I see them,” she nodded, and immediately launched all six of our Hellstrike Missiles to the—conveniently—six weapon hardpoints that could have fired upon our Bird. Every missile met its target, vaporizing huge swaths of metal along the ship’s hull. Small for a spacefaring vessel the Scorix Litany may have been, it was still a kilometer and a half in length, so the conflagration our missiles created did not serve to overwhelm Sigird’s ship. That fell to our Bird’s Heavy Bolter systems, which aimed at and shredded through some of the grav-boosters along the starboard edge of the vessel. On our first pass, that tipped the Scorix Litany a few degrees to its side, but did not sink it. Mirena tugged the Bird back for another pass, this time approaching from Sigird’s stern.
“Hit his aft engines. Use the cannon,” I told her.
“Yes, sir,” she agreed. A single shot thundered out of the Bird in a near-deafening blast, and punched straight into the back of the Scorix Litany. A shockwave raced over Sigird’s ship, but nothing more followed, and the vessel continued to rise above the seas. So Mirena shot again, and this time when the cannon’s payload struck, a massive fireball ruptured out of the Scorix Litany’s starboard quarter. The ship immediately nosedived back into the seas, grav-boosters barely keeping it from sinking, but no longer able to propel it higher into the skies.
“Bring us in to land amidships. When we’ve boarded, take off and continue strafing his ship, all weapons hot, save for the cannon. I may designate cannon targets as required,” I explained to her.
“Understood. Happy hunting, Cal,” she nodded, and I at last rose and left the cockpit, leaving the best pilot this side of Cadia behind to slice the Scorix Litany in half.
When I arrived in the bay, I found my remaining crew fully armed and ready. They saluted me on arrival. I nodded to them, but said little, only instructing, “If something moves on the ship and it isn’t one of us, shoot it until it stops. I don’t care if Governor Merek is on board, anyone that’s not one of us dies on sight.”
“Understood, sir,” Silas nodded to me, as usual covered head to toe in his heaviest armaments. I, too, willed my weapons to me. Power sword, Nemesis Falchion, Bolt Pistol, all sheathed along my waist. My Eviscerator was too unwieldy to be stored in such a fashion, so I would open our engagement wielding it. “Any marching orders in particular?”
“Breach, clear, kill. That’s it. You and your fireteam have complete autonomy. Penitent, you’re with me. We’re making sure the captain goes down with his ship,” I told her.
“With pleasure, Cal,” she nodded.
“Landing now! Doors opening in twenty-five seconds!” Mirena voxxed to us. “You have ten to leave the bay! Go slaughter these bastards!”
“I intend to,” Luther muttered to himself with a seething sigh. I nodded in assent. Silence—other than the warzone—again filled the bay. I heard Penitent whispering a prayer to her Eviscerator by my side, but otherwise everyone waited with eager anticipation for the bay’s door to open.
That happened soon enough, and our fighting force—once seven members, now five—jumped out of the Bird as one. We did not face immediate opposition, which did not surprise me. Most of Sigird’s mercenaries had likely been annihilated on other days. In fact, it was entirely possible that the last of his forces died with the Skitarii and Espirov. But a vessel this large undoubtedly had crew and servitors that could stand in our way and needed to be expunged for aiding the heresy. And at this point, my life be damned, I was ready to demand a viral strike on Hestia Majoris if needed to kill the one remaining man behind the world’s horrors.
Until then, I let Silas and his fireteam loose to purge the Scorix Litany of any and all life they could find. Behind us, Mirena took off for further strafing runs as great waves crashed against the slowly-sinking ship. “Where are we headed?” Penitent asked me after a few moments of standing idle.
“Nowhere. If he’s still alive, he’ll come topside to avoid drowning, and we’ll kill him here,” I replied. I then looked at her and shrugged. “I suppose we could seek higher ground too, so you don’t get your feet wet.”
“That’s hardly a concern of mine, Cal,” she shook her head.
“Regardless,” I shrugged again, and led her on, further up the sinking, flaming ship. Call the need to go higher a hunch, if a very informed one. Again, I knew to expect Sigird to get as far away from the water as possible. One may question whether I was sending my Silas and his fireteam to drown, and one would be ignorantly underplaying the abilities of my retinue. If there was ever a risk of drowning for them, they would be able to handle themselves. And moreover, the ship was not sinking that quickly. Only a few of the grav-boosters had been blown out, so of the kilometer-long vessel, only an inch of it was sinking minute to minute. It would be hours before the vessel was truly uninhabitable.
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After finding purchase on higher ground, I heard some rumbling coming from a nearby operations tower. Penitent and I turned to face it while I drew my Bolt Pistol, and when the door burst open and a trio of ordinary humans ran forth, I gunned them down without hesitation. They were crew members, not military forces; they did not possess the muscle mass of combat operatives. It did not matter to me—they were Sigird’s, after all. I had little time to consider their deaths, however, before a second, deeper stomping emanated out of the same tower. “Ready yourself,” I told Penitent, which felt redundant, as though to imply she were ever not ready.
Metal scraped against metal, and eventually a titanic figure emerged from the operations tower. Most doors and walkways in the Imperium were built to a scale to allow for the giant Astartes to navigate them; even so, this figure, clad in red ‘Prensio’-class Lifter Armor, covered in Vostroyan Firstborn insignias, was of another size entirely. The armor was made for tearing into armored bulkheads for salvaging purposes, which allowed Antonius Sigird to rip his own ship apart, stomping out toward us. “Sigird,” I growled.
“Blackgar,” he seethed in reply, towering over both me and Penitent.
“You’re…larger than I expected. And not merely from the armor,” I offered, Bolt Pistol pointed at his head. He was bald, and not unlike Governor Merek, had cybernetics attached to the back of his skull.
“Go ahead, make your inquisitive deduction,” he sneered.
“Espirov mentioned having success with living specimens, in reference to Okustin not being one. You are, though, aren’t you?” I surmised.
“Alas, an imperfect one, but yes,” he confirmed. “I was not provided with the more invasive organs, as the others could not risk my demise. But those that I have, I can use to grind you and that lovely Sister of yours to a paste. I’m afraid, my dear, I’ve never gotten your name. It would be a shame to kill you without knowing it.”
“Not in your time, cur,” Penitent grumbled, holding her Eviscerator between herself and him. Sigird mockingly chided her, shaking his head, and opened his mouth to speak, but I interrupted him with his sentencing.
“Antonius Sigird, you are Extremis Diabolus, and I hereby revoke your Warrant of Trade and sentence you to death,” I called to him. “Kneel before me and receive it quickly. Or make my day, for once, and continue to resist the Holy Throne and the Inquisition.”
“Dear Pyrras, I would be happy to,” he laughed, and then stomped toward us. Weighed down by his Lifter Suit, he was slower than the other Astartes—slower than Penitent, even. But the suit made him far, far larger, and more durable. Direct hits from my Bolt Pistol did little. The average Astartes was about eight feet in height, and the puppets we had seen thus far were about Penitent’s 7’4”. But in his massive Lifter Suit, Sigird towered over us at nearly ten feet of height.
The first thing he tried was crushing me beneath the two great, metal claws of the suit. I dove away, knowing no mortal man could block or withstand such an attack, and dodged just in time to avoid the same fate as the then-dented hull. When I landed on my feet, I carved a scratch—nothing more—into the waist of Sigird’s suit with my Eviscerator while he smacked aside Penitent’s weapon, his strength sending her careening by proxy. As his focus returned to me, I wove away from the red goliath before he even levied an attack my way. Sigird hammered toward me, pinching his great metal claws in eager anticipation of crushing my head within them.
Having turned his back upon her, Sigird was assaulted by Penitent from behind, who all but tackled him with her Eviscerator. The great chainsword screeched into Sigird’s metal backside, though he merely stopped in his tracks to jam his body backward toward her, knocking her to the ground. He turned to crush her to a paste, but found himself forced into a backpedal as a wave of psychic energy and lightning struck him on his side. I persistently pressed my mind against the great metal titan, and even willed him to his knees, but Sigird was a puppet-Astartes now. Even as the metal of his armor bent and broke, he was merely trapped within it against my abilities, and was not himself too vulnerable to my mind. As evidence of this, when Penitent rose her Eviscerator overhead to decapitate Sigird, he still had the means to raise a hand to catch both of her arms, and crushed her elbows together before tossing her aside.
Penitent flew through the air, Eviscerator dropped to the ground, and hit the hard metal deck of the Scorix Litany. She did not get up. And even though my resulting mental onslaught began to reduce parts of Sigird’s armor to molten metal, he remained undeterred, and managed to right himself to his feet and return to hunting me down. “Is that all, Pyrras?” he shouted as I dodged away from him. “You’re bleeding; have you split your mind by merely denting my armor? I expected more of the great Inquisitor!” he roared, gradually catching up to me. He was right, I had again overused my mind, as I had against each of the heretics thus far, and was now bleeding from my nose and ears. “No more gnats to get in the way, just us two neighbors to sort things out! So go ahead, carry out your sentencing, would you?”
A great wave hit the Scorix Litany, then, and I stumbled to the ground as a result of it. I thought I got to my feet quick enough, but I was wrong, and found a metal, two-pronged claw wrapped around my ankle. Sigird lifted me into the air and whipped me to the metal ground, making lights briefly shoot through my eyes. The daze passed in a moment, just in time to see him stomping a great, two-toed metal foot upon me. I met it with my augmetic arm, trying to keep him at bay, but that was for naught. He crushed my arm into itself, compacting it like a piece of trash, and then briefly lifted his foot away to kick the augmetic aside. He then planted his foot over my entire body, pinning me beneath him, while in the meantime one of his claws chopped the remains of my augmetic arm off.
“Well?” he shouted at me. “Where’s my death, hm?”
“On its way,” I grunted, spitting blood onto his metal toes.
“I think not,” he laughed. “Does the great Commissar and Inquisitor from Pyrras-3 have any last words?” he asked, levying one of his claws over my head.
“Law,” I started, but he interrupted me.
“Law? What is the law going to do to stop me now, you kheking insufferable chevek?” he shouted, falling back on his native tongue again.
“Hit him,” I groaned.
“With pleasure,” Mirena replied over vox, and in an instant, one of Sigird’s arms vanished from his body. Further down the spine of his ship, a great explosion rocketed out of the hull, and a pale shockwave raced toward us. The collateral force of having been stripped of an appendage by a Thunderhawk cannon made Sigird recoil off and away from me, to then be pushed toward me by the shockwave. Then Mirena hit him for real, smacking his upper body with the underside of the Bird as she came in for a screeching, impromptu landing. Sigird was launched dozens of meters away from me, violently tumbling over the main deck of his own ship.