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V2 Chapter 71: Slaughter, Courtesy of the Shadow Wolves
At that moment, the port weapons deck of the Styx-class heavy cruiser had dissolved into chaos.
Harsh alarms shrieked through corridors and between compartments. Masses of Chaos crew, slave-workers, and Blood Pact soldiers were moving at a run toward their preset defensive lines, driven by the orders of their officers. They had seen it on the augury stations and through the external observation ports: the boarding torpedoes and assault craft launched from the Imperial vessel.
The point-defence systems were running at full capacity.
The close-in weapons turrets on the hull's outer surface fired without pause, tracer fire and autocannon rounds sweeping the void in an attempt to tear apart those high-velocity steel coffins before they could close. And yet, somehow, the boarding torpedoes kept threading through the heaviest fire at moments when it seemed impossible.
Some were destroyed. Some lost their heading. Several more struck the recharging void shields and were ripped apart on impact.
But some kept coming.
Deep inside a corridor adjoining the port weapons deck, an impact struck with a weight heavy enough to shake the floor beneath it. The sound of metal shearing came immediately after, as the thermal cutting ring from the outer damaged armour bored through load-bearing structure, piping, and several intervening compartments in succession.
The ship's automatic pressure doors slammed shut. Fire-suppression foam and high-pressure steam discharged simultaneously. Several slave-workers who had been moving ammunition nearby were thrown off their feet by the shockwave and struck the bulkhead without making a sound.
"Boarding action! Port weapons deck thirty-seven is breached!"
A Blood Pact officer's shout came through the vox.
The Blood Pact reacted with speed, as they always did. They were not ordinary cult rabble. Large numbers of soldiers established fire lines on both sides of the corridor immediately, moving barriers dragged forward as improvised barricades, heavy stubbers mounted on tripods, with demolition specialists behind them already pulling the safeties on thermal charges.
Smoke and ruptured piping obscured the forward view.
The Blood Pact did not wait for the enemy to emerge fully. Their lasrifles and autoguns opened fire into the smoke. Laser beams punched through the haze, briefly clearing transient gaps in it, giving them fleeting sight of the enormous Astartes-grade reinforced boarding torpedo behind.
"Keep firing!" the officer snarled. "Don't let them out!"
In the next instant, the torpedo's front hatch was kicked open from inside.
The heavy armoured door flew outward and crashed into the Blood Pact's front rank. Several soldiers were hurled off their feet along with their weapons, bones and armour plate shattering together, bodies driven into the metal wall behind.
The remaining Blood Pact did not fall back.
They redirected every weapon into the torpedo's interior. Laser beams, autogun rounds, and heavy stubber fire poured into the darkness, producing a continuous percussion of metal impacts.
Then three tall figures walked out of the smoke.
They wore power armour painted a flat black, their grey cloaks scorched at the edges. Each one held a storm shield on the left arm, large enough to cover most of the body, the energy field on each face crackling and flickering under the incoming fire.
Laser beams and solid rounds struck those energy fields and scattered as brief arcs of blue-white discharge, none of them making it through.
Markus Sevian walked at the front.
He said nothing. He did not break stride. He drove forward behind the shield and the two Shadow Wolves flanking him matched his pace, the three massive shields forming a moving black wall that simply pushed the Blood Pact's first fire line backward.
More black-armoured Astartes stepped out of the torpedo behind them.
The bolters opened fire.
Heavy bolt-rounds crossed the gaps between the three shields and off to either side, punching into the Blood Pact formation. Front-rank soldiers had their chest armour blown open. The stubber crews at the rear were destroyed along with their weapons.
A Blood Pact officer raised a chainsword and led a dozen soldiers in a counter-charge from the flank. They did not break or beg. They came in trying to get thermal charges close enough to matter.
Markus still said nothing.
He stepped forward, and the great storm shield came down.
A single blow, and the metal of the shield struck the Blood Pact soldier lunging at him with a combat knife hard enough to send him tumbling backwards into the men behind him. The impact carried all of them into the bulkhead together, and what hit the metal wall was no longer recognisably individual.
Markus's motion broke for less than a second.
He had become aware of something. Something inside him that had not been there before.
It had not made him into a different order of being, but it was pushing his two hearts and three lungs, his muscles and nervous system, to operate at an efficiency approaching the edge of their design limits. His perception sharpened. The armour felt lighter. Something was driving every fragment of his strength outward, and his body was answering it. He could sense where opponents would emerge.
His visor showed moving points of red light, each one trailing the unmistakable stench of Chaos corruption.
The Commissar's power? He recalled the mortals' performance inside the temple, and understood something he had not quite grasped before.
He raised his eyes toward the Blood Pact still charging at them.
The question would wait until after the fighting.
Very well.
Continue the advance.
He drove forward.
The three shield-bearers crashed into the Blood Pact line, and the remaining Shadow Wolves spread out from behind them. The corridor was too narrow to allow mortal troops any effective encirclement; the Blood Pact could only absorb the push of these black-armoured giants from the front.
A Blood Pact soldier threw himself at Markus's knee joint with a thermal charge. Another Shadow Wolf stepped on his chest, pressed a bolter against his helmet, and fired. The helmet and the bulkhead behind him opened simultaneously.
More soldiers tried to flank through a side passage.
They came through the hatch and ran into a Shadow Wolf waiting on the other side. His chainsword swept level and three bodies were severed at the waist. The men behind them had no time to stop and went down into their own companions' remains.
The Blood Pact were brave, and they were disciplined. There was no rout. Officers continued issuing commands, organising a second defensive line. The heavy stubber opened up again, several armour-piercing rounds striking a storm shield's edge and forcing one Shadow Wolf back half a step.
Only half a step.
Markus turned, advanced, and pressed the storm shield across the stubber's line of fire. A combat brother came out from his flank, drove a power sword through the barricade and through the gunner behind it, then swept the weapon and cut the gun in two.
In this kind of space, a mortal force without heavy anti-armour weapons faced Astartes the way a wall faces a tide. No matter how willing they were to die, the arithmetic allowed them only seconds.
The gap in strength, speed, reaction, and armour between them was simply too wide.
In under a minute, the several hundred Blood Pact defenders holding the approaches to the weapons deck had been cleared. The corridor, side passages, and transfer compartments were covered in torn bodies, shattered armour, and the impact craters of bolt-rounds.
Not one of the thirteen Shadow Wolves had gone down.
Their shields and shoulder guards showed a few charred marks, their cloaks had taken significant damage, but none of them had lost combat capability.
Markus looked down at his own gauntlet.
He was fairly certain now that the force amplifying him had something to do with Duvette.
A series of heavier impacts cut through that thought. The other boarding torpedoes had found their marks. The vox channels filled with reports in quick succession.
"This is Evan. Second assault team through the port maintenance passage. Clearing now."
"Stroud's element has secured the breach point. Beacon team is fixing the extraction coordinates. The smell here is terrible, by the way."
"Anderson in position. Demolition team is sealing the rear compartment doors."
"Third element taking Blood Pact heavy fire. Requesting Black Shield support."
Markus opened the channel. "Markus Sevian here. Black Shields are at the entrance to port weapons deck thirty-seven. All 112th elements, converge on the main deck spine by the designated route. Priority targets: side passages, compartment control rooms, and vox relay stations."
No one on the channel questioned his orders.
Duvette had handed him interior assault command for this strike. The 112th's officers had clearly been briefed in advance; they moved into their assigned positions without hesitation.
"Major Evan, transmit the ship-structure data."
"Uploaded."
Markus's helmet display populated with an incomplete internal schematic. It could not reveal the entire Styx-class's interior, but combined with external hull reference data, the transmission signatures of vox pulses, and the tactical markers Duvette had relayed, it was sufficient to confirm the general direction of the command bridge.
The target was on the upper main spine of the vessel. Still a considerable distance from their current position.
And the enemy had recovered from the initial shock.
Heavy bulkhead doors boomed shut deep in the passages ahead. The ship's internal broadcast began demanding that all defenders seal and hold the port boarding zones. Markus could even hear the evacuation pumps engaging as the ship attempted to vent sections of corridor to vacuum.
For the Shadow Wolves, this was manageable.
For the 112th, it was a serious problem.
"All Black Shields, advance." Markus said. "Take the nearest compartment control room."
He paused, then added: "Open the path for the mortals."
All thirteen Shadow Wolves moved simultaneously.
There was no pause to account for their progress or take stock of the dead they were leaving behind. Black-armoured boots crossed the debris-covered deck. The storm shields came back up to the front. Bolters were racked and ready.
At the far end of the next corridor, a new Blood Pact defensive line was assembling.
Markus looked toward the command bridge.
"We are going to take the head off this ship."
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