V3 Chapter 76: You Really Dare to Board Us?
Duvette still stood in his own strategic command room.
The deck beneath his feet trembled faintly, and dull impacts sounded through the bulkheads now and then. The distance between the Macragge's Honour and the Conqueror had already closed to under two thousand kilometres.
Guilliman had already ordered a halt to any further attempt to break free of the Beast Claws by force.
Keeping the main engines at full reverse thrust would only tear the massive harpoons buried in the hull open wider still. Since there was no shaking the Conqueror free in the short term, better to stabilise the ship and settle into close-range gunnery instead.
The two ancient Legion flagships poured fire into one another without pause.
Tens of thousands of tonnes of macrocannon shot crossed the void between the two ships, and lance arrays struck again and again against void shields and armour alike. Every hit sent a fresh shudder through the Macragge's Honour's vast hull.
Duvette paid no mind to the dull thuds sounding beyond the command room.
He worked quickly through the reports coming in from the ground war on Badab Prime.
Kosorax's Chaos fleet, driving straight through Imperial gunfire and the orbital defence array, was still determined to unload every last soldier from its transports onto the surface. Cruisers were run through by lances, landing craft blown apart by anti-air fire before they ever touched ground, yet still the push never stopped.
It had already cost the Chaos fleet three cruisers and a heavy cruiser.
Shattered hulls and wrecked landing craft tumbled from orbit into the atmosphere, burning into streaks of fire in the heat. Some of the larger fragments slammed straight down into the Ash Plains, touching off fresh explosions.
Kosorax really was spending everything he had.
Duvette muttered the thought to himself as he watched the holographic display.
Chief of Staff Evan stood beside him, collating the reports coming in from every front before passing them on for Duvette's judgement. Marker after marker for the shifting battle situation kept appearing across the holographic map, changing again almost as soon as new orders went out.
"The incursion on Badab Secundus is essentially suppressed."
Evan said. "The remaining enemy forces aboard the orbital station are being mopped up too. We expect that engagement to wrap up shortly."
Neither of those two locations had ever been Kosorax's real target to begin with.
The number of enemy who'd actually broken through was limited, and once Duvette's abilities went active, the Mantis Warriors and the Lamenters made quick work of the vast majority of the invaders. Those Astartes could feel the change plainly, in their own bodies and their weapons alike, though none of them knew why.
Badab Prime's situation, by comparison, was far more serious.
A great number of drop pods and heavy landing craft forced their way down through the Astral Claws' ground fire. Most of the enemy's chosen targets lay along the hive city's outer edge, and at the cargo domes and industrial lift zones that led directly down into the lower hive.
These were densely populated areas, with relatively weak anti-air coverage.
Open just one route in, and the landed Chaos Astartes could press on down through the cargo tunnels and lift shafts, deep into the lower hive.
Evan went on reporting. "Based on word from front-line commanders, we've confirmed over three thousand Chaos Astartes are now pressing our ground lines."
"There's also a large number of successfully landed cultists and heavy vehicles out on the Ash Plains. The enemy's setting up temporary staging areas there, and the numbers are still climbing."
Duvette looked over the great spread of red markers across the ground battlefield.
Over three thousand Chaos Astartes.
Vast numbers of mortal cultists.
Heavy vehicles massing on the Ash Plains.
Add to that the Nurgle plague still not fully cleared from the depths of four hive cities, and Badab Prime as a whole now had multiple dangerous fronts open at once.
Had Duvette not activated his abilities in time, some of those lines would very likely already have broken.
Fortunately, most fronts were now holding steady.
Huron's command had proven immensely effective.
The more than two thousand Astral Claws now on Badab Prime, along with the two hundred thousand Badab Guard, had become the backbone of the ground counterattack. The rest of the PDF and standing garrison forces, drawing on the hive city's own defence network, kept plugging the gaps as they appeared.
Under Duvette's enhancement, their fighting strength had transformed entirely.
Huron had noticed as much himself, before long.
On the comm feed, the Astral Claws Chapter Master fell silent for a few seconds, then asked directly:
"Where does this power come from?"
Duvette did not keep hiding it this time.
"This is a power I'm giving you. A battlefield enhancement that only functions under my command. It comes from me. It won't corrupt you. Lord Guilliman knows this as well as I do."
He looked at Huron and said, "So use it well, and drive every last one of these invaders out."
Huron stood before his tactical command console, his gaze falling on Duvette through his helm's lenses.
He was silent for a moment.
Then the comm channel filled once more with nothing but battle reports, one after another, and the specifics of Astral Claws troop movements.
Duvette watched the holographic map shift once more.
Honestly.
He finally goes and gives an honest answer for once, and gets absolutely nothing back for it.
Just then, another violent tremor ran through the Macragge's Honour.
Several data terminals in the strategic command room flickered briefly, and a moment later a piercing alarm rang out across the entire ship. Guilliman's voice soon came through the fleet-wide comm array.
"The enemy is launching a boarding action against the Macragge's Honour."
The Primarch's voice carried across every combat zone.
"All armed ratings, shipboard security, and every Astartes company still aboard, seal off the affected zones immediately."
"Protect the main hangar bays, the reactor, and the approaches to the bridge."
Duvette raised his head.
These people were actually boarding the Macragge's Honour?
Well, now.
The Nails must really be running hot.
Guilliman was standing right here on this ship, and the World Eaters aboard the Conqueror had still chosen to launch a boarding action anyway.
Any other enemy would at least have thought twice about what that might cost them.
Duvette pulled up his own strategic map.
The Macragge's Honour's vast internal structure unfolded before him. Red markers were already appearing, one after another, throughout the main hangar deck and the adjoining cargo decks.
Some clustered near the outer bulkheads.
Still more of the enemy were pressing inward through breaches torn in the hull.
"Interesting."
Duvette said quietly.
The Astartes still aboard the Macragge's Honour came mainly from three companies: the Novamarines, the Salamanders, and the Blood Angels. Combined with shipboard security and a substantial complement of armed ratings, the defending force was hardly weak.
The problem was simply that the Macragge's Honour was enormous.
The moment the enemy scattered across different decks, ordinary shipboard defenders would struggle to pin down their locations fast enough. And if the World Eaters made it into any critical area, even if every last one of them died there, they could still do serious damage.
But Duvette could see them.
Every single one, marked out clearly on the strategic map.
Evan had already set his staff to keep managing the ground reports from Badab. With Huron handling ground command, Duvette had no need to personally intervene on every front for the time being.
Duvette opened a channel to Guilliman.
"Guilliman."
There was a brief pause on the other end.
Duvette looked at the red markers still multiplying on the strategic map, and said only one thing.
"Leave the counter-boarding fight aboard the Macragge's Honour to me. You keep commanding the fleet."
If you're enjoying the story, toss a Power Stone or drop a review — it helps more than you'd think.
Advance chapters → patreon.com/Eatinpieces