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  Spika ignored the losses. He disregarded the rupturing seams of the outer armour, the inner frame sleeves, the hullskin compartments. He paid no attention to the atmospheric failures on four decks, the brownouts and blackouts, the energy drain as available resources were re-routed to the realspace engines and the shield repairs. He took no heed of the rank of realspace windows that blew out along a distorting hull ridge and opened sub deck 118 to hard vacuum. He ignored the critical alert hazards that were flashing at the top of the engine console, warnings that the frantic, red-lining plasma drives were close to failure and shut down.

  By the Golden Throne of Terra, he had never seen a master’s console alight with so many alarms at once. He knew he had a survival margin that could be measured in milliseconds.

  The Armaduke could not outpace the free-running torpedoes delivered from the Ominator. It could only hope the warheads found something else first.

  ‘May the God-Emperor forgive me,’ said Spika.

  The Armaduke, engines searing white hot, turned the ship in behind the listing bulk of the stricken Benedicamus Domino. The sundered hull of the wounded frigate eclipsed Spika’s ship.

  Spika knew that there were likely to be ten or even fifteen thousand crewmen still alive on the Domino. But the Domino was past saving. The Armaduke was still alive.

  The warheads, thirty of them, rained into the starboard side of the keeling ship, which had been knocked side-on into the path of the enemy by the first strike. Only wisps of shield remained. Two torpedoes detonated as they ploughed into the dense, glittering debris field that fogged the vacuum beside the Domino like a cloud of blood beside a floating body. Another triggered as it struck the hard, pressurised release of environment gases squirting through the Domino’s burst hull.

  All three detonations, miniature starbursts too bright to look at, disappeared a moment later as the other twenty-seven warheads encountered the primary hull. Concentric rings of shockwave and overpressure criss-crossed, and twisted the fabric of the hull apart, like raindrops rippling the still surface of a pool. Light bloomed, a supernova, a ferocious pink-tinged white that scared away the blackness of the void like a sunrise and turned the Benedicamus Domino into a sharp-edged black silhouette.

  The frigate perished. Disintegration crept through its structure from the blast point outwards, vaporising the hull’s armour jacket, chewing away the superstructure, sloughing away surface plating like fish scales. Tidal waves of liquid flame poured and gurgled through each deck level, and then ate away the deck planes in between. Firestorms surged up connective shafts and access wells, boiled through environmental systems, and torched the ship’s leaking atmosphere. Within a second of the main strike, geysers of fire and explosive shockwash were squirting out through the other side of the ship like exit wounds, blowing out shuttered ports, carrier deck doors, airgates and gun stations. Out flung debris, including several furies and cargo shutters washed out of the Domino’s bays, born along like flotsam in the blast, spattered against the Armaduke’s outer hull.

  Then the shock pulse hit, a double hammer blow: first the electromagnetic punch then the kinetic rip. The Armaduke rode them out, shuddering, lurching.

  The glare faded. The Benedicamus Domino was left as nothing but a blackened metal mass of fused and glowing scrap, an iron-rich asteroid fragment.

  Shipmaster Spika fought back the urge to vomit. Adrenaline had spiked critically in his system: his augmetic neurides were overheating, and his vision had reduced to a grey tunnel. Dataflow assault was so intense his stomach was churning and he wanted to gag.

  He yelled a new heading at the chief steersman. He entered the engine correctives manual at his master console, nursing the screaming plasma engines down to a more gentle roar, cooling and banking down their excessive output, swinging the Armaduke on a more gentle turn to avoid the Domino’s radioactive cadaver and square with the Ominator.

  The Ominator’s jubilant, taunting shrieks had been briefly silenced by the electromagnetic pulse of the multiple detonation, but now it was back as the vox system recovered. It was crowing, almost laughing out its name in a voice scarred and scaled by vox distortion. The Ominator had direct-line speed, the proper momentum and attack rate of a charging predator. It had not been obliged to bleed valuable speed and energy through stumbling evasions and desperate antics, the way the Armaduke had.

  ‘Gunnery!’ Spika commanded. He used a haptic reader to communicate the munitions spread he desired. The Ominator’s attack squadrons were already rolling in on them, zipping over and under the smoking mass of the wrecked Domino.

  ‘Shields as a matter of urgency,’ said Spika, trying to clear his throat of rising acid. ‘We’re going at them, and we’re going to burn them all the way back to hell.’

  ELEVEN

  The Clear Shot

  Everybody was down on the deck, the women sobbing, the children bawling. Elodie was holding on to Juniper to stop her throwing herself at the man who had seized Yoncy. He had a gun, and he was shooting it wildly. Anyone who waved a gun, and was prepared to fire it in a crowded room, anyone who was prepared to snatch a little girl as a shield, that was someone you didn’t try to tackle.

  Elodie wrestled Juniper down, slapping her pawing hands aside. Elodie was moaning. Everyone was making some kind of sound: distress, fear, desperation.

  Everyone except Yoncy. Elodie saw that Yoncy was still and expressionless. Trauma had clearly conquered her. She was like a doll in the crook of the gunman’s arm.

  The man rattled off a few more shots to keep them all ducking. More screams came from the womenfolk. He was backing towards the hatch under the portside walkway, coming right down past them. Elodie wished she could work out what was wrong with the man’s face. It was twisted, distorted. It wasn’t a proper face at all.

  ‘Drop her! Drop the girl!’

  More panicked screams. Elodie glanced around and saw three Ghosts rushing into the transport deck from the far end, rifles at their shoulders, covering the man and his hostage as they prowled through the rows of cowering retinue personnel.

  The man who had shouted the order was a Belladon, Cardass. To his left was Bonin, the Tanith scout, weapon up and sighted. To Bonin’s right was Gol Kolea.

  Kolea’s lasrifle was at his cheek. The expression in his eyes tore Elodie in half. It was part hatred, part anguish.

  His daughter. His little girl.

  ‘Drop her!’ Cardass yelled again.

  The gunman answered with some inarticulate noise as though his mouth wasn’t working properly. His face seemed tangled.

  Elodie felt her heart fluttering. She so wanted to get up, to tear the girl out of the maniac’s grip.

  She saw Captain Meryn. He was cowering right beside her, next to one of the cots. Costin was nearby too, his head in his hands, the documents he’d been carrying scattered around his knees. One of the gunman’s wild shots had clipped his shoulder, leaving a grazed burn.

  Meryn’s eyes were bright with fear, like those of a cornered animal. He wasn’t carrying his rifle, but Elodie could see the laspistol holstered at his waist.

  ‘Shoot him,’ she hissed, holding Juniper down. ‘Captain, shoot him!’

  Meryn ignored her.

  ‘Shoot him!’ Elodie repeated.

  There was a clear angle. The gunman was side on to them, and he hadn’t seen Meryn or his comrade. Any half-decent shot could have put a las bolt through his head or his torso, missing the girl entirely.

  ‘Are you mad?’ Meryn rasped back.

  ‘You can take a clear shot!’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Captain, shoot him!’

  ‘Shut the feth up!’ Meryn snarled.

  ‘Put the girl down,’ Kolea ordered. His voice cut the air and the panic like a scythe. It was toneless, as if the light had gone out in his heart.

  ‘Back off! Back off!’ the gunman yelled back, the words clawing, imperfectly shaped, out of his deformed mouth. The strain of his efforts had finally over
come the Sirkle’s face-shifting abilities.

  Kolea, Bonin and Cardass had him triangulated, all aiming straight for his head. They were squinting down the top sights of their weapons, shoulders hunched, trotting forwards with short, hurrying steps.

  Elodie wondered if any of them would dare take the shot.

  ‘Put the girl down!’ Cardass demanded.

  ‘Forget it,’ Kolea said. ‘Judd, forget it. He’s got nothing to lose any more. He’s not going to let us take him.’

  He lowered his rifle to his chest, though he still kept it pointing at the gunman.

  ‘Are you?’ he asked. ‘You bastard. You’re going to make us kill you, and you’re going to make us kill the girl to do it.’

  The gunman said something. His lips were too slack and misshapen for the words to be intelligible.

  The ship shook. It was violent and abrupt. There was no sound, and no light came through the sealed port shutters, but the ship juddered as though it had been dropped.

  A moment’s distraction.

  Rawne dropped from the portside walkway onto the gunman’s back. The impact felled the gunman and took Yoncy over too. Rawne’s straight silver blade plunged into the killer’s right shoulder. His weapon went off, spraying las bolts into the air.

  All three of them tumbled. Rawne lost his grip on the warknife. The gunman kept his grip on Yoncy. With a bellow that made the civilians sheltering around them shriek, Rawne got hold of Yoncy and wrenched her out of the killer’s grasp. He simply hurled her into the air, perhaps out of desperation, perhaps in the belief that a fall injury would be preferable to letting her stay in the killer’s reach a moment longer. The killer lashed out and clubbed Rawne in the face with the edge of his rifle.

  Hoisted, Yoncy tumbled. Elodie sprang forwards, her arms outstretched, and managed to catch her before she bounced off the sheet metal deck. The little girl was heavy. The impact tore muscles in Elodie’s forearm. She kept her grip, rolling, trying to shield Yoncy from the landing. They crunched down onto Elodie’s right shoulder, Yoncy cushioned against Elodie’s breasts and stomach. The back of Elodie’s head struck against the leg of a cot and she blacked out for a second.

  There was blood in her mouth, in her nose. She blinked. Yoncy was yelling and thrashing on top of her, squirming, kicking her heels. Pain flooded Elodie’s skull and her right arm.

  The gunman was back on his feet. The warknife was still wedged into his shoulder blade. Rawne was down, flattened on the deck by the clubbing blow. The killer pointed his lasrifle at Rawne to cut him apart.

  Kolea’s first shot blew the gunman’s right arm off at the elbow, causing the dismembered limb and the lasrifle it was aiming to spin like a slow propeller. Kolea’s second shot blew out his chest in a splash of burned blood and splintered ribs.

  Kolea’s third shot traumatically deformed his head far more significantly than anything the face-slip had achieved.

  The killer went down, full length, felled like an old straight nalwood, leaving blood mist in the air behind him.

  Elodie’s shoulder was busted. The pain speared into her so sharply she couldn’t move.

  Meryn took Yoncy off her and turned to Kolea.

  ‘She’s all right,’ Meryn said. ‘She’s safe, Gol. She’s safe.’

  The Ominator’s attack ships, ugly, cackling arrowhead craft, came in around the dead Domino. They were like miniature versions of their sire, a litter of squealing, ravening whelps.

  ‘Shields?’ suggested Spika, overcome by a terrible, analytical calm.

  ‘Repairs still underway!’ sang out an artificer’s junior.

  ‘Track them. Deterrent fire,’ Spika ordered.

  The Armaduke’s smaller, more nimble batteries and gun stations woke up, streaming beams and ripping, stuttering lines of las bolts up into the black. Barrels pumped in their arrestor sleeves as the gun mounts traversed hard, chasing the fast-moving attack ships. Through multiple viewers via multiple pict feeds, Spika watched the enemy pack rip over, darting along the flanks and underside of the Armaduke, banking between crenellated surface towers and engraved armour buttresses, hugging the lines of the ribbed prow, like aircraft flying low-level through the streets of a hive. Battery fire pursued them. Spika saw one attack ship engulfed in flame, tumbling like a firework wheel under its own momentum. He also saw a battery go up, strafed into oblivion. Lights began to go dark across his master console, tiny individual lights among the thousands of system indicators. Prow battery 1123. Prow battery 96 (starboard). Keel battery 326 (centreline). Port tower 11. Environment hub 26 alpha (portside). Detection relay nine beta.

  A wave of target strikes rippled down the Armaduke as the enemy squadron raced aft, jinking, evading, gunning for weak spots.

  There was a sudden electromagnetic crackle, a distort across most pict feeds, the fuzz-wash of serious las fire. As the pictures jumped and cycled back into life, Spika saw Furies. The Imperial void fighters, all of them from the poor Domino’s fighter screen, were soaring down the length of the Armaduke’s hull in the opposite direction, meeting the enemy squadron head-on. Spika tracked almost three dozen individual dogfights, acrobatic duels that were suddenly, bitterly in progress. Furies banked after enemy craft around shield pylons or detection towers, or harried them down around the flanks and around the keel line. Like ascending birds, Furies and foe-ships locked together, spiralling up and away from the Armaduke as they tried to out-turn each other and gain the kill shot. Some were tumbling. Others turned out in wide arcs, forced away from the frigate in an effort to lose a pursuer, sometimes as far as the glowing mass of the Domino. It was like an angry swarm of insects mobbing the old ship.

  ‘Shields in twenty seconds!’ an artificer announced.

  ‘Acknowledged,’ Spika replied. ‘Vox, do what you can to signal the Furies. Warn them we are relighting and they need to be clear when we do.’

  ‘Aye, master!’

  Spika’s attention was on the Ominator. It had clearly not grown tired of saying its own name. Instruments estimated about nine minutes to firing point at their current intercept rate. Spika shook that off. More like seven or six and a half. The Ominator was hasty and hungry. It wanted to get a lick in before the Armaduke was shielded again, and before the storming bulk of the Aggressor Libertus came charging in from the rear line. The Aggressor Libertus was already trading long-range punches with the Necrostar Antiversal as it accelerated. Necrostar Antiversal, realspace drives burning orange-hot, clearly wanted to test its mettle against the Sepiterna.

  ‘Dammit, do we have any vox?’ Spika asked.

  ‘Routing available circuits to you, master.’

  Spika pulled his silver speaker-horn close.

  ‘Hailing, hailing, Master of the Libertus. Hailing, hailing, Master of the Libertus. This is Spika, mastering the Highness Ser Armaduke.’

  A crackle.

  ‘This is Libertus, confirm.’

  ‘Confirm, Libertus. Let the capital ship worry about that cruiser. We can crush this target with pinning fire and then turn together.’

  A long pause, full of static.

  ‘Libertus, confirm?’

  ‘Agreed, Armaduke. You have guns effective and shields, confirm?’

  ‘Confirm guns effective. Maintain positions relative. Armaduke now accelerating to close. Be ready to turn wide, repeat wide, if he proves reluctant to run between us.’

  ‘Relative noted and matched. Acceleration matched. Let’s slay the bastard, Armaduke.’

  ‘Confirm.’

  ‘Shields at your discretion!’ the artificer announced.

  ‘Light them,’ said Spika.

  There was a stuttering pulse as the void shield generators cycled into life. Deck lights dipped all the way into brown-out and back as onboard power was briefly refocused. Shielding crackled into being around the advancing Armaduke, forming blistering fields of immaterium distortion. Several Furies, late leaving the side of the Armaduke, tumbled, lights out and power gone, their systems temporaril
y blanked by contact with the defence fields. Four of the Archenemy’s small hunter-ships detonated, crushed against the expanding shields, their drive plants destroyed by some allergic, alchemical interaction.

  Shields raised, the Armaduke began to power past the Domino towards the onrushing Ominator. Aggressor Libertus followed on, about sixty kilometres astern and twenty to starboard.

  ‘Clear the missile tubes!’ Spika commanded. ‘Main batteries, main mounts – firing solutions on the designated target now.’

  He focused the primary rangefinder on the Ominator.

  The air in the system still smelled of smoke. At least this disguised the Armaduke’s pervading odour of kitchen grease.

  Gaunt walked back towards the bridge, through corridors empty of life. All of the passenger complement was stowed in the bunker decks, and the crew personnel were at their battle stations. Occasionally, a junior rating or a servitor rushed past on some errand.

  Gaunt had started out with little sense of the void fight, and now he had none at all. He wondered if they were close to winning, or close to dying. The ship was peaceful. It wasn’t like being in a battle on the field, with the thump of guns, of artillery pummelling the skyline, with airborne overhead. Space was silent. There was no communication of nearby destruction.