There was no early warning for the return of the Shatter Corps or their Lost and the Damned warships. No scouts, no indication of imminent arrival. The one courtesy they afforded us was waiting—likely unintentionally—until those that needed to be awake were so, such as myself and most of my nameable allies. When the Shatter Corps did return, I was on the bridge of the Coldbreed, assisting its captain with whatever administrivia I could.
Experts would tell you that technically there was a warning of the Shatter Corps’ arrival. Astropaths had felt the looming approach of such a monstrous—in size and in purpose—fleet and scream to the high heavens about it. Navigators may have seen it likewise. But where the infernal Warpspace carried warships at such heightened speeds, the air we breathed carried words far slower, and word of the entrance of our foe passed from mouth to ear at too inferior a pace to matter on the scale of the capital ships and Starfort upon which we dwelled.
Suffice to say that when the Materium folded in upon itself to give birth to the gaping maws of the Immaterium, the arrival was anticipated, unexpected, and prepared for all at the same time. The enemy fleet wisely chose to land almost exactly upon the vertical axis of the Dawnshadow, no longer constrained to fighting against the starfort’s rotating horizontal plane. I had anticipated this and so had taken a gambit in asking Varnus to focus on the northern and southern hemispheres for the deployment of our mined asteroid field. And indeed, the Shatter Corps arrived all but embedded into the northern field.
For that reason it came as no surprise, then, that among the first things I heard on the Coldbreed’s command bridge was Massino Varnus asking me if he should detonate the field. “Wait for my command, Varnus,” I ordered him, and then struck out from the group I had been standing with at the time, which had consisted of Varnus, Lucene, a few of Lucene’s Sisters, and Zha. Bliss was on the command bridge as well, but some distance away, as ever keeping a watchful eye on everything on my behalf. As I strode forth to the large, reinforced-glass windows of the bridge’s primary viewport, I did so through a cacophony of other sounds—automated and servitorized warnings alike, declaring the presence of our vast enemy fleet. The scrambling of human response teams. The sudden panic; panic which, surprisingly, I did not feel.
Instead I looked up to the enemy fleet with an unexplained and subtle fury, as though finally seeing the face of a foe I was destined to extinguish. And yet it was not so; I did not believe Valeran Mortoc himself was present in this fleet. However, this fleet was his first real communication with us, his showing of his hand. In war, we spoke with each other. He had seen the strategy of the axial rotation of the Dawnshadow. I had foreseen his response. Had he foreseen mine?
“Only war,” I muttered to myself, still looking on upon the Shatter Corps in my simmering rage.
“Cal?” Lucene asked, standing to my side, as ever. As ever, I had failed to track her movement in following me so.
“The heretics came knocking, and with what do we answer?” I asked, quoting Hans Okustin, my long-since-passed Interrogator. He had often used the phrase motivationally, with fire on his voice, but when I said it then I spoke in cool hatred.
“Only war, Cal,” Lucene understood, agreeing with me.
“Captain Vakian!” I called then, still keeping my eyes locked to the enemy fleet. “Point us skyward toward the enemy! Keep them on our port side, but only just. When we begin to take fire, turn into it, exposing our nose and starboard bow to shield our aft sectors. Time until we’re in firing range ourselves?”
“Approximately twelve minutes, Inquisitor. They are rather far out, but on approach,” Vakian replied.
“Gives us time to breathe, then,” I nodded before turning to him at last. “The rest is your call. I trust your judgment.”
“Thank you, Inquisitor. You should know, that minefield of ours is not playing nicely with our targeting servitors. They are being scrambled on the reflectivity of the rocks,” Vakian warned.
“Let me worry about that. Seems it won’t matter for another twelve minutes anyways,” I told him. I then turned back to my original group. “Varnus! Not yet, but on my mark. Stay ready.”
“Ever so, Inquisitor,” he answered.
It was then that Captain Vakian notified the bridge that the Dawnshadow and our allies in Battlefleet Ixaniad were launching their fighters. “Earlier than I would’ve liked,” I grumbled. “Let’s hope Mortoc’s vessels have as much an issue targeting our fighters through the asteroid field as we do. Tell the fleet to launch our fighters as well, Captain,” I ordered him. He nodded and saw it so. “Good luck, and good hunting, Mirena,” I muttered, turning back to the viewport to overlook the warzone.
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We had no business, in my opinion, launching fighters so soon. I assumed they would just be sitting ducks at this engagement range, well beyond the range of their own weapons but soon within that of capital ships’. We could have waited, I thought, at least until our foe began to deploy their own fightercraft, or opened their launch bays even. I understood wanting to preempt the launch so as not to be waiting for our squadrons to form up, but even so, I worried about the vulnerability of doing so too soon. I hoped Valeran Mortoc, wherever he was, did not anticipate our error in that regard.
For a time, there was nothing more to do on my part but wait and watch. I hated it. There was a powerlessness in staring down an enemy at such a distance and with such tremendous weapons between us. I myself, in the immediate, was of little consequence. I was eager not to fight this battle but the one that loomed beyond, for I did not expect to dirty my hands here as often I had. Mine were made to plunge a blade through the flesh of the foe, not stand behind monolithic metal hulks in the depths of space.
But enough abstract prose.
We took fire about as soon as we were able to reciprocate. I suppose it should not have come as a surprise, as our vessels were not dissimilar in original function—the heretics were once of our flesh, blood, and steel, after all. That is what makes them traitorous. In any event, reciprocate we did; when void shields and bulkheads were pounded by primary battery fire across the span of our fleet, our fleet answered in kind. Yet still, I waited and I watched, holding a hand up toward Varnus, requesting his patience. He provided without complaint, as ever. Then at last, I saw it: the opening of enemy bay doors. The first sign of their fighters, boarding torpedoes, and drop pods—the latter of which would be required for our yet-unused (in this battle) planetside defense grid. Our planetary batteries would have shields to protect them from enemy bombardment—the foe surely knew this—so ground troops were required to disable such shielding.
The fighters flew forth, some in attack squadrons and others in an escort formation about the boarding torpedoes. The drop pods slammed out like a bombardment unto themselves. Finally, my hand dropped in a silent slice, pointing to Varnus. I do not know if I commanded him audibly, but I do know I did so with my psykana: +NOW!+ And the heavens before us were set ablaze in an instant, untold volumes of fusion munitions detonated at once within the ranks of the enemy fleets. There was enough force across the span of the rocks we detonated not merely to break a continent, but to rip one off the face of a world itself and plunge it into the endless space beyond. I thought, then, to Absalom, and his derision for our methodology in destroying his accursed fortress. He made reference to the breaking of worlds then; I would have done so now, given such a terrestrial target.
There was no atmosphere in space. Nothing with which to carry the blastwave, which would have otherwise been tremendous. No great boom! or crack! But there was energy—and heat—on a tremendous level, enough of it to temporarily strain even our cogitators and the servitors behind them. And, yet, it was barely enough to crack more than a handful of the capital ships belonging to the enemy. No, I had known their void shields would hold, as ours would have. So I had always intended to wipe out what smaller invasive forces I could, to ease up the defense on a level I could understand, in a way that I knew how to fight—protecting my fightercraft from theirs, my capital vessels from their torpedoes, and Quintus and Galen from their ground forces.
They would have more, yes. And they launched more soon thereafter.
But if they wanted to take this world and remove the Inquisition from Ixaniad, they would need to climb a mountain of their own corpses and cross an ocean of their own blood to do so. In that, I was certain. I could see to that, and I would.
“Varnus,” I called, satisfied with the immediate destruction I had ordered. I turned to him as well. “They have arrived in only one front this time. Direct the remaining asteroids, mined or otherwise, to fly their way. At worst, it will provide a distraction for their guns to shoot at, rather than aiming at us.”
“Right away, Inquisitor. Your ingenuity and strategy pleases the Omnissiah today,” he nodded in confirmation.
“Let us hope the Omnissiah wishes to see more of it, then,” I suggested, and turned back to my viewport. “Only war,” I muttered again, musing to myself. “How do you intend to answer, Mortoc? Show me your hand. Show me that, if indeed you are too cowardly to show your face.” I paused for a moment, then asked in a normal, not-muttering voice, “What would you do?”
No response came in the immediate.
“Lucene?” I asked her.
“Cal?”
“What would you do?” I repeated.
“Apologies, I don’t understand, Cal,” she shook her head.
“How would you destroy us, if you were them.”
“I think I would prefer to destroy myself if I were them,” she admitted. “Being your enemy does not strike me as being very enjoyable.”
“I should hope it isn’t,” I said with a grin. “But if you had—”
“If I had to? Cal, I am not a tactician. My mind belongs behind a blade or a gun, both levied to the necks of those that cross you. I do not strategize as you do,” she denied me. I sighed, and must have seemed quite deflated from her response, as she chose to weigh in regardless. “But…from my perspective…their fleet about matches ours, sans the Dawnshadow. They will believe their troops will make up for the difference there. Their genetic makeup provides them power we cannot know, and they will believe that will make all the difference.”
“And it may,” I noted.
“It may. But it has ever been the courage and faith of men and women alike that have outlasted the darkness. The foes that believe otherwise simply have never faced it before. They will hit us. They will bleed us. And they will kill us. But our fight is one extinguished with greater difficulty than a life. There are only heroes in the Imperium because of battles such as this. If there are to be heroes here, it will be because the enemy forced them to be, and the Emperor protected them so. I believe we can rise to meet this threat and drive them back, that our valor can persist beyond their mere genetic advantages. Most importantly, we have two things they do not.”
“Which are?”
“You, Cal, and the Throne.”