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V3 Chapter 83: These Ultramar Folk Are Boarding Us Again?
The instant Kosorax saw the void between the Conqueror and the Macragge's Honour tear open, he sat bolt upright on the command throne.
A restlessness rising from somewhere deep in his blood swept through his entire body, and the Butcher's Nails flared with pain at the very same instant. That unmatched fury, that hunger for blood, told him at once exactly what was happening.
He was here.
The Red Angel had descended into the mortal realm once more.
The massive figure burst from the rift in the Warp and slammed, unstoppable, into the Macragge's Honour's flank. Kosorax threw back his head and laughed, the sound echoing through the Conqueror's warped bridge.
He had done it.
Angron would kill the returned son of the Emperor, tear that Thirteenth Legion flagship apart from within. And in the end, once Badab lay in ruin, every World Eater would know exactly who had completed the eightfold blood sacrifice, who had opened the gates of reality for the Red Angel and delivered him the returned son of the Emperor to kill!
When that day came, he would name himself Regent of the Twelfth Legion on the strength of that deed alone.
The warbands scattered across the galaxy would gather to the Conqueror, and the World Eaters would become a Legion once more under his command. Kharn, Angron, and everyone else who had torn the Twelfth Legion apart with their own hands, none of them would be able to stop him.
Kosorax strode quickly to the Blood Mirror, fixing his eyes on the churning pool at its centre.
He wanted to see Guilliman fall.
Wanted to see the Macragge's Honour torn open from within by Angron's own hands.
But as the time crawled by, the pool showed nothing but blurred, blood-red shapes. The warriors who had boarded the Imperial flagship had likewise gone silent, nothing left on the comm channels but harsh static.
The smile faded slowly from Kosorax's face.
The bond deep in his blood surged once more, so strong it left him trembling all over. But this time, all that reached him was a single soul-roar, thick with fury and refusal to accept defeat.
Right after, the bond snapped.
"..."
Kosorax muttered, his voice thick with disbelief.
"No. No, no... this isn't possible..."
The blood at the centre of the Blood Mirror suddenly boiled, and the image of Angron's beheading flashed across it for an instant.
Kosorax stumbled back several steps and dropped heavily back onto the command throne.
How could this be possible?
The Red Angel had barely arrived, hadn't even destroyed a single ship, and already he'd been driven back into the Warp. Yes, there was a gene-Primarch on the other side, but Guilliman should never have had the power to banish Angron so swiftly.
In the First War of Armageddon, even the Grey Knights, the ones best suited to dealing with daemons, had paid a terrible price just to drive the Red Angel off.
And now, barely any time at all had passed.
What had they actually done?
The Butcher's Nails turned shock into fury. Kosorax let out a roar and surged up from the throne, his weapon sweeping in a wide arc, cutting the nearest slaves to pieces.
He seized a lesser daemon clinging to the bridge by the skull and smashed it into the flesh-console. Two mutant tech-thralls trying to flee were torn apart by his chain-axe, and blood swiftly covered the entire bridge.
An Oathbreaker who had barely come near was struck once and had his breastplate crushed for it.
He kept swinging his weapon, until a calm voice cut through both his roar and the Butcher's Nails' shrieking.
"Sergeant Kosorax. The enemy has begun boarding."
Kosorax's movements froze on the spot. The Lady stood before the main console, red mist still churning around her, watching the shifting tactical display ahead, and continued in a flat, unwavering voice.
"As expected. The Thirteenth Legion hasn't given up the chase. These Ultramar people are boarding us again. But Kharn and Lord Angron are already engaged in the landing on the surface... which leaves only... only..."
"Sergeant Kosorax. Rally your warriors. Your duty was always to protect the Conqueror. Seal off the invasion routes in every combat zone. Move interior defence units toward the breach sites."
Sergeant Kosorax.
Kosorax looked down at the wreckage scattered across the deck and lost himself, briefly, in a daze.
How long had it been since he'd heard that name?
Ten thousand years ago, he had only been a sergeant of the Twelfth Legion's Third Assault Company. After the defeat at Terra, he had cast that name aside, and killed anyone who still dared to use it against him.
But the Lady had never once acknowledged what he had made of himself.
In her eyes, he was still nothing more than a sergeant who had barged onto the bridge and tried to seize command that was never his.
Kosorax raised his head slowly.
A new image had already appeared in the Blood Mirror. A great many Imperial boarding torpedoes and assault rams were closing on the Conqueror, while the Macragge's Honour and the Imperial ships around it kept suppressing the hull's outer defences.
That rotting corpse's lapdogs really had come.
Kosorax forced down the fury the Butcher's Nails kept stirring in him. He wasted no more time arguing with the Lady, and simply let her take control of the ship's interior defences, turning instead toward the armoury behind the throne.
"Rally every Oathbreaker still able to fight."
"Send them to the core sections."
He tightened his grip on his weapon once more.
"I'll tear these people apart with my own hands."
Amid the roar of thermal cutters at the boarding torpedoes' tips, the thick hull plating quickly began to glow red.
Dozens of boarding torpedoes and Caestus assault rams punched into the Conqueror from multiple directions. Their armoured heads drove through the outer hull, the massive metal capsules carried onward by their own momentum, tearing through daemon-warped compartments and the fused flesh-and-machine structures along the way.
The Macragge's Honour had already completed three rounds of directed suppressive fire beforehand.
The point-defence turrets, hangars, and localised void generators on the Conqueror's Imperial-facing side had already been destroyed, and the Imperial ships nearby had intercepted any escort vessel that tried to close in. The first wave of boarding craft met almost no effective resistance closing on the hull or punching through it.
The boarding torpedo carrying Duvette finally came to a stop.
A low grinding, squeezing sound came from beyond the hull, the flesh structure nearby slowly contracting, as though trying to swallow this metal intrusion lodged in its body.
Markus stepped up to the hatch and kicked it hard.
The armoured hatch tore free of its housing and crashed into the dim passage beyond. The thirteen Shadow Wolves of Luna moved through the breach at once, forming a defensive line in front of Duvette.
The sight inside the Conqueror came into view before him.
The bulkheads were covered in raw red flesh, though patches of the original metal armour still showed through here and there. Blood dripped slowly from broken pipes, and heaps of white skulls lay piled in the darker corners.
A stench of burnt, rotting flesh flooded straight into his nose.
Duvette's brow furrowed as he forced himself to adjust to the surroundings. A faint pulse rose and fell beneath the deck at his feet; the entire Conqueror seemed to sense every enemy that had entered its body.
He opened his strategic map.
The green markers for the Salamanders, Blood Angels, and Shadow Wolves of Luna had all made it inside the hull. Over two hundred Astartes were spread across several neighbouring landing points, craft status and personnel counts both largely matching the plan.
Duvette opened a channel to every company at once.
"All units, report landing status."
Harath Shen's and Cassian's voices came in turn, and each squad confirmed its position in sequence. Aside from a handful of warriors with minor armour damage from the impact, the first boarding echelon had come through almost entirely intact.
"By Lord Guilliman's order, I hold full command of this boarding operation from here on."
Duvette's voice reached every Astartes present.
"Each company will still organise under its own commander, but my orders take absolute priority. Every squad is to move strictly along the routes I mark. No one is to break off and chase down the enemy on their own initiative."
He looked at the hull's ever-shifting structure across the strategic map.
Some passages were slowly shifting position, and some sections had simply vanished from where they should have been entirely. Relying on any ordinary ship's schematics to navigate would see these Astartes cut off and scattered by the Conqueror before long.
"This ship will lie to you."
"Don't trust the route in front of you. Don't enter any passage that hasn't been confirmed. If you want to walk out of this alive, follow my instructions to the letter."
A crisp, unified acknowledgement came back over the comm.
Duvette went on. "Lord Guilliman will lead the second boarding wave in. Mechanicus tech-priests and follow-up support will come in behind them."
"Our first objective is to seize the enemy's main bridge and data relay nodes, and establish a stable landing zone. From there, we'll use the main bridge as a foothold to locate this ship's true core machine spirit."
Duvette drew the Blade of Glory.
A faint blue disruption field lit the surrounding flesh-bulkheads, and the structures nearby immediately began convulsing violently.
"Salamanders take the left main passage."
"Blood Angels advance along the right transit line."
"Shadow Wolves of Luna, with me, toward the ship's centre."
"Wait for my order."
Duvette watched the red markers flickering deep within the strategic map.
"Move out."