Herald of the Stars: Chapter Three Hundred and Four

Thank you to zack and Lorodir for donating to Herald of the Stars! It really is the greatest compliment an author can hope for.

-------------------------

E-SIM’s powerful bombardment cuts through the cloud of Daemons, revealing more wrecked ships. The vessels are promptly swarmed once again, their hulls cooling from the massive impacts that cracked them. A second examination of all the wrecks in the area informs me that 227 of them are new, nine of which are battleships.

Marabas’ fleet, other than the Ark of Omen, returns fire, though it is poorly coordinated, peppering Enlightened Self-Interest’s shields above the vessel’s gun batteries. Rather than focus on one battery, they fire at every single one, failing to create a momentary weakness that might actually take out one of E-SIM’s guns.

This is followed by even more shots from Evenus’ Dance Macabre. The volley is both beautiful and terrifying in equal measure. Macro-shells, plasma, and lance fire falls upon Enlightened Self-Interest like rain as hundreds of batteries discharge their payloads, also tearing through the cloud of Daemons and strike-craft as if it were little more than fog.

E-SIM’s voidshields overload, then snap back immediately. Out of a barrage of hundreds, 32 shots approach his hull only to drastically decelerate, then wash over his armour as light and plasma spread out until they are nearly harmless. Eight Macro-Cannon shells plink off his hull and denotate, leaving small scorch marks and pitted armour that quickly fills itself back in.

Streams of rainbow-like energy flow from the cloud of Daemon’s towards E-SIM, their essence consumed to fight the machine they wish to conquer.

The engagement has been going on for just under eight hours at this point. At first glance it would appear that Evenus and Marbas’ fleet has absolutely no chance against E-SIM. He can’t keep this up forever though and it isn’t ships he fears. 

E-SIM fears being boarded, leaving Daemons free to cast their unpredictable spells and rituals within his hull. It is the ever growing risk of corruption as he runs his Warp Taps at maximum capacity, to throw off the enemy before he energy reserves are depleted and he is left near defenceless.

Stellar Fleet SOL would do little good in the engagement above, even if I did dare to risk sending them through the silver rift in the false sky. Instead, I set my shuttle down, right at the edge of Enlightened Self-Interest’s restored shields, and order my strike force to unload.

I have not been idle while chatting with Alpia. My additional minds have been running scenarios and requisitioning resources from E-SIM.

On the left flank, I place my shuttle, with myself still in the pilot seat. It hovers above the chunk of STC we’re fighting on, pretending to be a Macro-Crawler or Titan. Alpia and the Sororitas are on standby next to the shuttle’s teleporter, ready to deploy wherever I need them. I thought about keeping more Heralds back to defend the shuttle, but decided the crew would be enough. 

The Barghests are in the hold of my shuttle. The ramp is configured to drop and the Barghests are ready to rush out at a moment’s notice. They’ve brought a mix of Tactical Marines, Heavy Support, and two squads of Assault Marines. Four Predator tanks and two Geist Pattern Dreadnaughts standby. 

Every Marine has his own Cyber Mastiff accompanying him, even the Dreadnaughts, who have a pack of four each. Really, the Barghest’s obsession with Cyber Mastiffs is getting a little ridiculous. Then again, it’s better than being trailed after by serfs, like some parody of a squire, carrying dozens of kilos of ammunition.

On the right flank are my Armour, 16 of each type: Mark Ⅰ Void Pattern, Leman Russ, Hydra, and Basilisk. Yes, they’re all Void Pattern, thanks to that neurotic administrator, even though they’re based on two different hulls, the Chimera and Leman Russ. My Basilisk pattern is also fully enclosed, like the Minotaur, rather than open topped. 

Alongside the Armour are all my transports, 36 Rhinos, 43 Chimera, and 18 Crassus. They’re only half full of Heralds as I don’t want to put all my infantry in one place and even if I wanted to I couldn’t fit them all into transports.

To the rear are my three experimental tanks, and 11 Vanguard Armour. They’re centred around four tracked vehicles that resemble a miniature version of my Macro-Crawler. Meaning that they’re only 50 metres long, rather than 400. Rather than tracks, E-SIMs variant uses repulsor technology, hovering five centimetres above the ground. These low profile tow trucks are layered in shields and bristling with guns. The two metre wide armoured cable attached to each one makes them look like large, wire controlled toys.

Hovering just beneath E-SIMs hull are five Ruby Owls, their auspex and stealth systems running at full power and complementing my sensors.

Spread in a long line, either side of the oversized tow trucks are my power armoured infantry, Warforged and Battlesmiths. Interspersed between them are small squads of hover bikes and Mastiff Riders.

I give the order and we move out, quickly accelerating to 60kmph. The moment we are out from under E-SIM’s shields, the traitor guardsmen open fire. My Ruby Owls track every shot, lighting up each artillery piece on our auspex and feed my strike force the trajectory of each shell.

A timer pops up in my vision counting down from 40 seconds and my HUD populates with thousands of small circles exactly 666 metres in front of me. Rather than do anything fancy, we just brake and wait.

The first barrage explodes in front of us, then we resume our advance.

A minute later, the enemy fires again. This time they spread out their barrage and we don’t stop. The first 20 seconds are rather tense as shells are identified, firing orders go out, and we hold fire, waiting for them to come within range of our ammunition swatters.

Every armoured vehicle I have has at least four mounted Marwolv Pattern Mark Ⅱ lasguns on its hull that can track and destroy a shell 0.5-1 second. Out of 2000 shells screaming towards us, about 800 are on target. I have half that in munition swatters, not including E-SIMs tow trucks, my shuttle, or that most of my infantry can pull off the same trick with their mechadendrite mounted guns.

A brief flash of red strobes across the Warp above us and the space is filled with hundreds of explosions as brief bursts of intense energy cook off fyceline by the tonne, blasting apart the artillery barrage. The rest fall relatively harmlessly all around us. 

Some shrapnel bothers my infantry, and a few stumble. A couple of fellows are unlucky enough to get a sliver of metal punch through a vulnerable part of their armour. Their mechadendrites are quick to pull out the jagged shards and patch their armour while their medical systems take care of the rest.

Now all we have to do is pull off the same trick repeatedly for the next 34 minutes before we can get into cover while praying that the enemy doesn’t have any tricks up its sleeve. 

I’m not a huge fan of prayer though, so instead I order a wing of strike-craft, four Sagitta and one Macross, to exit Enlightened Self-Interest and perform a bombing run. I also assign my logistics mastiffs and Mastiff Riders to spread out to the flanks and start using their lasguns at low power to blind the enemy auspex and harass the artillery crews.

I’m not expecting much out of the strike-craft and they have Servitor pilots, so I don’t mind if they get shot down. They’re both bait and a distraction. The Ruby Owls follow the strike-craft, flying high above them.

Meanwhile, I pick out the most dense concentration of enemy Basilisks and target them with my shuttle. Four, double barrelled, Turbo-Laser Destructors, Titan grade weapons that are half way between a lascannon and a void ship lance, hum with power as they rapidly charge then fire upon the enemy. The shuttle’s Data Guardian reports the ready status of my guns and a positive target lock. With a small flush of glee, I order the weapons to fire.

Eight red beams of cutting light, each as wide as a person, savage the enemy position. As they pass over the infantry, the traitor guardsmen turn to ash from their proximity to the beam. The impact is even more severe, melting each Basilisk I targeted into a puddle of metal and a flash of plasma that ripples outwards and flash-fries anything nearby. The light clears and my auspex readjusts.

Those eight shots alone killed over four hundred guardsmen and obliterated 21 Basilisks.

I didn’t even get to fire my two Volkite Destructors because they’re belly mounted and out of range.

A minute later I fire a second time and the enemy artillery picks up its pace, firing once every 40 seconds to little effect.

The strike-craft wing launches all their missiles, targeting enemy artillery and drawing out their Hydras. My tanks launch half their hunter killer missiles at the enemy Hydras the moment they start firing upon my strike-craft and score multiple kills each.

Ruby Owls use the distraction to swoop down and perch upon the edge of the four, battleship sized towers, getting close enough to start scanning for ingress points and better pick out the enemy units, or decipher their vox.

Terabytes of data are streamed to the Noosphere Operatives and their supporting Machine-Spirits on my shuttle. They comb through the data, looking for weaknesses to exploit, delaying and changing orders, revealing hidden units, and uploading viruses to enemy command and control.

Alas, the enemy is clearly fed up with its lackluster results and enough heavy bolters, missiles, and lascannons are turned upon my strike-craft to shoot them out of the sky.

The falling debris proves sufficiently lethal to put a grim smile on my face.

Less ideal are the Daemonic Horrors that are let off their leash. Strange creatures with multiple screaming heads and more tentacles than a Slaaneshi cultist would be comfortable with, roll towards us in a scattered crowd of Neverborn flesh. They scream and cry, sending plumes of smoke, flame, and lightning all around them. My auspex fuzzes from the intense display of sorcery.

I order my tanks to load high explosives and fire upon the Daemonic Hoards. Sure, their main cannons are well out of range for a kill shot on enemy armour, but loading more propellant than is wise for long term barrel health, then lobbing high explosives like an artillery piece, especially ones laced with blessed silver, on 70,000 Daemons is absolutely within their means.

Annoyingly, my actual artillery does not have the stabilizers to fire on the move without risking damage, or with any degree of accuracy for that matter, and I make a note to change that in case we end up in a similar situation again, even if I have to compromise on their range a little, or come up with some other fix.

My tank fire is rather lackluster. The enemy is well spread out and I only have 16 tanks. Their fire is steady and they fire 12 rounds each over two minutes, causing 500 casualties at best. I call a halt to the barrage, choosing to preserve the gun barrels and ammunition for when they get a little closer and have to bunch up, conceding that I may have made a small error.

I debate dropping my big surprise on the Daemons, then decide it’s not worth it. I bought every warpsbane bolt round in the fleet with me and that should be more than enough.

The next ten minutes are somewhat repetitive as my shuttle takes out a tenth of the enemy artillery and the enemy guardsmen start running around like headless grox, sending ammunition to the wrong places, repositioning in areas with less cover, and trying to take improbable shots only to reveal their position.

The disruption caused by my Noosphere Operatives isn’t as great as I’d hoped as the Traitor Guardsmen are neither obedient or disciplined. On the other hand, the enemy doesn’t seem to have twigged that we’ve snuck into their systems and are messing with them, their commanders clearly expecting some level of poor communications and infighting to occur. 

The Operatives won’t be able to keep it up forever as their wards are wearing thin as the Daemons hidden in the enemy Noosphere chase their digital ghosts through possessed systems and past imprisoned, twisted Machine-Spirits. Still, I am pleased with what they’ve achieved.

Enemy artillery continues, despite our successful interception of almost every shell, and we accrue less than fifty light injuries and one casualty that is rushed to the shuttle’s medbay.

Dare I say that I was worried about the artillery for no reason at all? I ruthlessly crush the thought, unwilling to tempt the Changer of Ways further with his fate twisting curses.

Then, at last, the Daemonic Hoard reaches the 15km line and my heavy weapons are free to fire.

Sponsons and other vehicle turrets fire up their heavy bolters, hurling Daemon banishing bolts in short bursts, targeting the biggest Daemons. Multi-lasers from multiple chimera work in tandem, sweeping across the Daemonic Hoards in methodical patterns, slicing through lesser creatures with ease. My special weapon teams deploy, unleashing plasma and lascannon fire in pinpoint volleys, cracking Daemonic wards and burning Neverborn flesh until it disintegrates.

Thousands of Daemons perish in seconds and I stop breathing as I witness the Daemons return fire.