The new contacts were numerous, and represented an unexpected threat to the Emperor's Judgement. They were not bombers or fighters, but assault boats and boarding torpedoes, specially converted ordnance turned into troop transports for the express purpose of getting men aboard an enemy vessel. Each torpedo could carry several squads; an assault boat could carry an overstrength platoon. And there were hundreds of them.
The Emperor's Judgement was not dead in space. Its engines still worked, and Marcos ordered them to perform a long burn to drive the battleship into a higher orbit. He was conscious of the need to remain fairly close to the planet, lest the Chaos fleet entrench itself in low orbit and perhaps throw up a similar warp curtain to before. No doubt if the Princess became aware of the problem, she could correct it as she had last time, but she was rather busy at the moment, still fighting the Daemon so far as he knew. He had to do all he could to prevent anything like it happening at all.
Several escort frigates saw the danger and leaped to the defence of their flagship, but the traitor capital ships were alert and their lances flashed, destroying two of the gallant craft, lost with all hands. Their lances continued to keep a clear path open for the assault forces, which were closing in rapidly. There was no doubt where they were heading. Most of the enemy fire had been focused on the Emperor's Judgement, attempting to render it either stationary or defenceless to aid their boarding attempt. The enemy seemed to know that the Emperor's Judgement was the flagship of the fleet, a reasonable guess given that it was one of only two surviving capital ships in the Imperial line-up. Taking it out of the fight would cripple the Imperial force, both in a physical sense, and also through the morale effect of having the flagship and their leader fall. Whether they intended to capture Lord-Admiral Marcos or to kill him, they clearly intended to get aboard his ship.
Imperial fighters and bombers moved to intercept the incoming assault boats, meeting them with heavy las-fire and missiles. Chaos void-fighters joined in the battle, squadron upon squadron of them trying to protect the assault force and get them to their target, the huge ceramite cliff that was the damaged flank of the Emperor's Judgement. A confusing dogfight erupted in space, with Fury interceptors dancing with Chaos Swiftdeath fighters, lascannons flashing against the dark background of space. Most of the smaller attack craft lacked any kind of void shields, relying entirely on their armour and manoeuvrability to survive the deadly gauntlet that was void combat. A single hit from a missile or from any of the main battery weapons of even the smallest capital ship or escort would destroy a fighter, turning it into scrap metal and the crew into floating corpses. Several hits from the weapons carried by the attack craft of the enemy, or by smaller point defences, would achieve the same effect. Only a few of the attack craft manned by the most experienced crews were outfitted with void shields, to give them a small edge in combat and to hopefully keep their aces alive.
Often, it was a futile task. The sheer amount of firepower being hurled around during a fleet action made space a hazardous place to be. It was deadly for many of the Chaos assault boats and boarding torpedoes, which fell in clouds of flame and venting gas as they crossed the void. But they were closing in, getting inside the shields of the Emperor's Judgement. The Imperial fighters were being held at bay by their Chaos counterparts, allowing the assault forces to slip in closer. The Emperor's Judgement was powering into a higher orbit, accompanied by cruisers and escorts, but the assault boats were tiny targets against the backdrop of space, and hard to target among the jumble of Auspex contacts. Some of the leading craft deployed additional countermeasures, chaff to help mask their signatures on the Imperial tactical screens, decoy drones that followed a simple forward path but appeared on Imperial sensors, thanks to Chaos trickery, to have an identical signature to the assault boats themselves. On they came, into the range of the point defences.
The defence guns were dialled in, and opened fire with a hailstorm of shells and plasma, destroying several dozen of the boarding torpedoes and assault boats. But many of the point defences had been knocked out by the bombing raid, and there were gaps in their coverage. The assault forces slipped into those gaps, sneaking in through the final screen protecting the battleship, bringing them right up alongside the huge mountain of ceramite and adamantium that towered both above and below them.
Inside the firing arcs of the point defences, the assault boats and boarding torpedoes set about their business. They moved right in close, the assault boats using maneuvering thrusters and the torpedoes simply powering straight in. They hit the hull of the Emperor's Judgement with a bang, immediately gripping on with pincer claws. The assault boats took a more gentle approach, nosing in with brief bursts of their thrusters. They too had gripping devices mounted to their bows which held them in place once they reached their target. Aboard both types of craft, men waited eagerly, vicious killers, howling lunatics, devoted servants of the Dark Powers. They were ready, a motley mixture of ship crew and traitor guard, regular ground forces intermingled with men of the Chaos navy. All of them were ready for battle, waiting to get to grips with the enemy. They had lost many of their number on the journey over from their carrier ship, which only served to spur them on. They wanted vengeance. They wanted blood.
Explosive charges fitted to some of the boarding torpedoes were placed by remote control against the hull of the battleship, while others prepared to make use of las-cutters. The assault boats readied their melta-charges, seeking to cut through the outer hull of the ship, its final layer of defence. Then they would be aboard, and then they could get to grips with the Imperials. They were looking forward to it.
At Marcos's command, thousands of men aboard the Emperor's Judgement had suited up. They were the armsmen, internal police force for the mighty vessel, and also its final defence against boarders. They were not trained to the same standard as Imperial Guardsmen, but then they were not expected to fight in the same kinds of conditions as those faced by the men and women who operated planetside. They were there to keep the peace, for the most part, dealing with fights on board before handing the suspects over to the Commissars or deck officers for punishment. They made routine patrols, guarded key locations such as armouries, and were responsible for the protection of visiting officers and other dignitaries who might come aboard the ship. But they also protected the ship against enemy action, although that was the one aspect of the role that no armsman ever wanted to have to put into practice.
Senior Armsman Marcallas most certainly agreed with that sentiment. The Emperor's Judgement had never yet been boarded in its long career, but then it did not customarily engage in combat with such a large enemy force when its own support fleet was so depleted. There had been no choice this time, however, and though Marcallas did not know the precise manner in which the situation had come to this, the message had been clear, broadcast over every vox circuit aboard the ship.
Standby to repel boarders.
A little more detail had come through moments later. The enemy was expected to attempt their boarding action on the port side amidships, near some of the heavily damaged sections of the vessel that had been ravaged by enemy fire. Marcallas and his squad were based there, on deck 28, neatly sandwiched just below one of the plasma manifold chambers and above a secondary macrocannon gallery which had taken a direct hit from something large and loud, and stopped returning fire as a result. The deck plating had buckled in places as a series of explosions had torn through the level below, but nothing had broken through to deck 28. The enemy, however, may well do just that.
Marcallas had never been boarded, but he had been part of boarding parties sent over to attack or capture enemy ships in the past, mostly pirate vessels which had held captives who needed to be freed, though a Dark Eldar raider had been the target once in an ironic role reversal for its Xenos crew. It was an action which had given him the scar on his left cheek, which still ached whenever conditions were damp, which was surprisingly frequently considering he was on a starship and not a planet.
As a Senior Armsman, Marcallas was in charge of a squad of men and women, twelve in total. They were all with him now, and they all looked nervous. None of them had seen real action before, not having been chosen to be part of any of the boarding operations performed during the Crusade thus far. Nor had they been part of the brief bout of violence when the Changeling prisoner had broken out of confinement and run riot through the ship. That was a totally different section and deck of the vessel; they had only heard about it through the grapevine of gossip and rumour, where the truth had been shrouded in the usual hyperbole guaranteed to appear in such stories.
There was no need for hyperbole where the forces of the Archenemy were concerned, however. Indeed, it would be difficult to deliberately over exaggerate their aggression, bloodlust, foulness or depravity to be any greater than the reality. The most hated enemy of the Imperium, and now they were trying, daring, to get on board the Emperor's Judgement?
They may have made it through the defences, Marcallas thought, but I'll be damned if they'll get through us.
They were positioned well back from the outer hull, on the other side of a large chamber that could be used for storage, though was presently almost empty, save for a few crates and boxes which the armsmen had hastily dragged over near to the hatchway for use as impromptu cover. A quick alert signal had been flashed through the deck vox system, alerting all hands that at least one enemy assault boat had attached itself to the hull in their vicinity, outside of this very chamber. There was no danger of depressurisation- the assault boats and boarding torpedoes formed an airtight seal with the hull of the target ship, since otherwise its own passengers would risk immediate suffocation upon opening the hatch if it let the air escape.
His squad had been joined by two others from elsewhere on deck 28, and Marcallas knew there were more armsmen in other compartments on either side, as well as in the companionway outside. There were deck hands, too, members of the ship's crew neither trained nor necessarily armed for combat, but wielding whatever improvised weapons they could find; chains, metal bars, fire axes, plasma torches, saw blades, anything that could be gathered up. They were as determined as any armsman to protect their ship, their home, and their comrades.
The armsmen themselves were carrying mostly shotguns, with some, including Marcallas, armed with autoguns, all ballistic weapons. It had been deemed long ago and far away that such weaponry was the best for use aboard ship, perhaps due to the reduced potential for overpenetration compared to las and plasma weapons, which could potentially penetrate the outer hull of a ship and cause an explosive decompression. Only certain units, such as officers' bodyguards, bridge protection crews, and those men guarding key locations, would be issued with lasguns or hellguns. That restriction would likely not apply to the enemy, who could be armed with anything, and would probably be armed with everything.
Ominous sounds could be heard from outside the hull, echoing through the storage chamber where they waited, crouched low behind the boxes and crates. The chamber was large enough that the armsmen's shotguns would be of limited use in the first moments of an engagement. Only once the enemy got closer would they be in effective range, meaning the autogunners would shoulder the task of the initial fire that would have to either pin the enemy down, stop them in their tracks, or at the very least slow their advance and inflict a few casualties. A stubber had been set up as well, about the heaviest piece of armament that they had at their disposal. Speed was key in such an engagement, as it was with breaching any structure or room in urban combat, and what was a battleship if not a giant, tremendously well-armed city in space?
The bangs and clanging outside the hull were getting louder. Marcallas wasn't sure exactly what he was hearing, but he knew it wasn't good. The enemy would be breaking through at any moment. He made sure his squad was well positioned, using the crates for cover. Another section was covering the hatchway behind them, and the stubber was loaded and ready for action. They were poised, anxious but confident, as confident as they could be, in their ability to throw back any attacker, to hold the ship, and to make the enemy pay for their arrogance.
The enemy had other ideas.
With an almighty crack, explosive charges punched through the outer skin of the Emperor's Judgement. A cloud of dust and fragments of metal filled the air, obscuring the defenders' vision and shrouding the breach in smoke.
'Here they come!' Marcallas shouted over the din. He took aim with his autogun in the general direction of the opening blown in the hull, though he was unable to see it directly.
Instead of enemies, a volley of grenades emerged from the smoke, bouncing on the deck, either thrown by the men within the assault boat or launched by some kind of projector mounted on the front of the craft. Marcallas ducked down, but a few men who had not expected the ordnance to come flying at them were caught by shrapnel and went down bleeding.
Behind the grenades, there did indeed come the enemy. A baying mob, some shouting obscenities and others howling lusty war cries, bellowing as they charged. Most carried lasguns or autoguns, but some were armed only with close combat weapons. Ship's crew, perhaps, rather than traitor Guardsmen or members of whatever passed for armsmen aboard Chaos vessels. There were several dozen in all, perhaps a platoon or so, though Marcallas did not stop to count them all. Instead he pulled the trigger, hosing the enemy down with the entire magazine of his autogun. The stubber opened up close by, bullets pinging off of the interior of the thick hull and cutting down the enemy as they charged forward.
They were far from a uniform force. Indeed, most of them were not wearing real uniforms at all. A few of the enemy wore tattered remnants of fatigues of whatever Regiment they had deserted from, but with any Imperial insignia defaced, crossed out or torn away, replaced with the sigils and foul icons of Chaos, as a further insult to the unit and the Emperor they once served. Some men were shirtless, while others wore simple overalls or other garments. A few, perhaps officers or NCOs, wore armour of varying kinds, ranging from Imperial flak vests to pieces of spare metal crudely welded or glued onto metal or leather frames to protect limbs or heads. Many of them wore helmets, though almost none were helmets that they had any right to wear. There were pilots' helmets, the familiar profile of the Imperial Guard's combat helmet, the full-face visors of the Adeptus Arbites, even a couple of strange leather hats that seemed more suited to an Ork than a human.
Marcallas ducked back down again to reload, whipping out a spare magazine and replacing the empty one. Gunfire echoed around the storage chamber as the Chaos boarding party spread out, firing back. Unlike the armsmen, they had no cover, but that did not seem to dissuade them at all. If anything, it spurred them on as they rushed at the Imperial defenders, eager to close with them, both to stop them firing and to get into hand-to=hand combat range. No doubt many of the Chaos troops were pumped full of stims and other combat drugs, to stimulate their bloodlust and make them ignore or forget the dangers that they faced. A boarding action against anything less than a defenceless freighter was likely to result in heavy casualties, on both sides, but especially for an attacking force if the defenders knew the first thing about how to resist them.
A ship the size of the Emperor's Judgement could hardly be expected to be captured outright by any boarding force, either. It was the size of a city and would require just as many men, if not more, to clear it entirely. Losses would be heavy; internal automated defences, turrets and tracked servitors, could inflict massive losses, and the armsmen and crew would be fighting desperately for every inch, every companionway and every compartment. Blood would be spilled in copious amounts to capture even a single deck. As a result, boarding actions had to be predicated on capturing strategic points; the bridge, the backup command centre, main reactors, engine room and the main launch bays, so that additional troops could be shuttled over with relative ease for reinforcement without the hazards of using boarding torpedoes in a risky move. Even then, on a ship as big as the Emperor's Judgement, it would require a concerted effort and the concentration of forces to overcome the resistance at even a single one of those locations.
But first, they had to get through the outer ring of armsmen, who were not about to surrender their positions. Marcallas opened fire again, catching one man in the legs and sending him tumbling, trampled upon by his own comrades as they charged over him. Las-fire killed several of the armsmen as they crouched behind the crates, leaving their heads exposed to accurate or stray shots. The stubber took up the slack and gunned down half a dozen Chaos troops. Their lack of cover was a disadvantage, but they were rushing to close the gap and cross the open chamber. As they drew closer, they came into shotgun range, and the rest of the armsmen were able to add their weight to the struggle. Their heavy slugs and buckshot rounds tore limbs clean off, sending men sprawling.
The stubber emptied its belt-fed magazine, and the loader struggled to hurriedly reload as quickly as he could. The weapon was cumbersome, and reloading was a lengthy process, slow enough that the enemy was able to cross most of the room in the interval. Shotguns picked off a few of them, but they returned fire and drew nearer and nearer. A shot struck the woman next to Marcallas, knocking her down with a pained grunt, blood leaking from her neck. There was no time to treat her wounds or drag her to safety. The enemy were almost upon them, baying for their blood.
Marcallas took rapid aim again. A man was coming straight for him, lasgun raised, but Marcallas fired first, putting him down with a hole through his face. No time to think. Aim again and fire again. Another man went down. There were more coming, getting closer; he could see them in the corners of his vision. They were jumping over the crates to his left and right. One man lost his whole head to a shotgun blast, while another had a great ragged hole torn in his chest by a similar shot. But they had reached the defences, and now it was no longer a firefight, but a bloody struggle for survival.
Marcallas had no bayonet on his autogun, but he still had ammunition. He took a step back from the crates. The enemy were there, they were with them. He had to be alert, watch both flanks as well as straight ahead. More men were pouring out of the smoke, the remainder of the passengers aboard the assault boat, which remained clamped to the side of the Emperor's Judgement like a parasite. Now, not only were there parasites on the outside, but the infection had spread within, too.
A man lunged at Marcallas, seemingly from nowhere, swinging a sword in his direction. Not a fancy power sword or howling chainsword, but a regular blade, sharp enough to slice his arm clean off. He jumped back, almost falling over the body of the armswoman who had fallen beside him. He brought his gun up and fired, but the man had moved, ducking to the side and swinging again with his sword, missing Marcallas, who fired again, and this time he did not miss. The man crumpled up, dropping back and draping himself over one of the crates, dead, his sword clattering onto the metal deck.
Marcallas took a quick glance left and right. The enemy were now all over the defensive line, and armsmen were engaged in close combat, caught as they tried to reload or simply moving to meet the enemy, using their guns as clubs. The section officer, an ensign overseeing the defence of the area, gave a loud blast on his whistle, and with a roar, the crewmen waiting out in the compaionways came rushing in to aid their armsmen comrades, swinging their improvised weapons, meeting the Chaos charge with equal fury. They met halfway, and the melee, already confusing, devolved into a complete maelstrom of grunts, shouts, screams, and the occasional gunshot.
Marcallas swung the butt of his autogun at the back of one man's head as he tried hard to decapitate another armsman with a spiked axe. The traitor stumbled and turned to face Marcallas, allowing his fellow armsman to recover his own autogun and put several bullets through the man's spine, dropping him in an instant. Marcallas could not help his comrade to his feet, because another man was coming for him, a glinting bayonet on the end of his lasgun, aimed straight for the Senior Armsman's gut. Marcallas took a desperate step back and narrowly avoided impalement. The man had overstepped himself with his charge, and struggled to check his forward momentum and turn. Marcallas lashed out with a boot to the back of his leg, dropping him to one knee, before finishing him off with a shot through the head.
The enemy were being held. More than that, they were being pushed back, slowly driven away from the defence line, losing many of their numbers. The timely reinforcement by the ship's crew had turned the tide and prevented the attackers from being able to take control of the chamber. The armsmen and the rest of the crew fought side by side. No longer were the armsmen objects of terror or ridicule, not lackeys of the officer classes, keeping the peace through unnecessary force and abusing the rules and regulations. Now, they were comrades, fellow crewmen, and no self-respecting member of the Imperial Navy would abandon a fellow crewman to the depredations of the Archenemy. They stood and fought together, driving the enemy back, and slaughtering them to the last man.
And it was all in vain. A shrill double blast on the section officers' whistle told every man and woman to fall back. Farther along deck 28, just a few compartments up, the enemy had forced a breakthrough out into the companionways, rolling up a section of the armsmen's line and linking up with their fellow boarders who had been pinned down in other compartments. If Marcallas and the others did not fall back, there was danger that they, too, could be overrun. The officer, a young woman who barely looked old enough to have hit puberty, gave them directions with nerves of surprising steel for one so young, directing them down the companionway in the dim light, through the bulkhead door to the next section. The door would be barricaded, blocked off, to stymie the enemy assault and hopefully keep them contained. If they could be held, the section they occupied could hopefully be deliberately decompressed from the bridge or engineering. There were no living crewmen still in that area.
Marcallas made his way hurriedly through the doorway, with his squad in good order alongside him. The rest of the survivors cleared the section and headed into the next, and when the last man was through, the ensign ordered the airtight door to be closed and sealed. Burly men complied, slamming it shut and spinning the locking wheel. Even as they did so, explosions shook the ship from somewhere close by. They may have the enemy contained here, but what was going on elsewhere?