Rescue operations continue for six hours. There was some discussion about leaving the Imperial shuttles to complete their work alone but it was deemed too risky. Karrad Vall’s strike craft appear to be going for Footfall next, which baffles us all, but there is still time enough for them to readjust and target rescue operations should we leave them unguarded.

  Over a thousand people are pulled from the debris, mostly strike-craft crews. A few dozen Heralds are fortunate enough to survive the extraordinary quantity of ordinance launched at the destroyed Class-3 D-POTs. They are quickly tended to by the hospitallers (combat medics) and their recovery does much to restore our battered morale. There are also multiple casualties on the shuttles that survived their bombardment who require attention.

  Meanwhile, emergency repairs are applied to the strike-craft that require it and those damaged beyond immediate repair are abandoned. The larger pieces of wreckage and non-functional void craft are welded together; a handful of Imperial shuttles are retasked as tugs to direct the hunks of metal towards Footfall. The tugs’ value is low and their journey slower; with Karrad Vall’s strike craft preparing to dog our steps, there is little risk in them being destroyed.

  There isn’t time to save everyone and more rescue craft are dispatched from the support fleet to comb the last of the debris. A small satellite is dropped to tag and track every piece as they scatter, just to be sure we can find everything again. It will also boost the local vox so that stranded individuals can talk to each other.

  The hyperweave undersuits can sustain a person in vacuum until they starve to death, so long as they have power. Not only do my crews have external power packs and extra air as part of their kit, but all of my people have a potentia coil as well to power their implants. Including their liquid rations, I dare say some could manage sixty days, depending on their discipline, and half that at the lower end. Floating around in the void for days, hoping for rescue will be a nightmare inducing experience, but at least they have a chance.

  Calligos’ crews will not be so lucky.

  The relief force resumes its deceleration, altering its trajectory into a slight curve to make up for the time lost lest they overshoot Footfall.

  There is a short lull in the action as my stealthed void craft sneak up on Karrad Vall’s fleet, their approach masked by their Empyrean Mantles and the combined powers of myself and my Navigators.

  Their stealth holds until they are a scant eight kilometres from the rear most vessel, using the long plumes of plasma thrown out by the enemy void ships to hide their own signatures.

  The sixteen enemy vessels are spread over four hundred kilometres in a diamond formation. The heavy cruiser and three cruisers form the tip, upper point, and the port and starboard points of the diamond. At the bottom point of the diamond, where I would expect to see another cruiser, or at least a light cruiser, are a trio of Apostate-Class Heavy Raiders in a small triangle, twenty kilometres apart from each other.

  Chaos fleets often have minimal numbers of light cruisers as they only have three designs, the Hellbringer-Class Planetary Assault Ship, the Hellbringer-Class Mk.Ⅱ, and the Pestillans-Class. No new Hellbringer Mk.Ⅰ vessels have been recorded in the last eight thousand years. Traitor Marines are fond of them. It is no surprise that Karrad Vall doesn’t have any.

  The Mk.Ⅱ is far more common and I have no idea why Karrad Vall doesn’t have any. Perhaps the Traitor Marines lost all their Mk.Ⅰs and stole the Mk.Ⅱs from their ‘allies’?

  The Pestillans-Class is exclusive to the Death Guard and its successor chapters. I am delighted none are present.

  The Apostate-Class is a lance variant of the Infidel-Class, which in turn is supposed to be a larger variant of the Cobra-Class whose designs were stolen from the Forge World of Monsk before they could be submitted to Mars. The stolen designs were later repurposed as the Falchion-Class.

  Either the stolen plans were incomplete, because both the Apostate and Infidel are slightly smaller than the Cobra, not larger like the Falchion is, or someone messed with the public records to make the traitor forces think that they stole a heavy escort only to later find they nabbed a cut-down Cobra.

  What matters to me though is that the Apostate-Class is the Chaos equivalent of the Firestorm-Class, or my Adder-Class, both of whom have a big lance weapon and are dangerous to larger vessels when fielded in packs. The difference, however, is that the Apostate-Class is slower than most escorts as its power is dedicated to its big gun. It’s also expensive to operate.

  This long litany of factors, large fleet, expensive designs, extensive quantities of strike craft and so on, tells me that Karrad Vall doesn’t just have a minor world out here in the Koronus Expanse, he has a Forge World, or is building one. Attempting to steal a Macro Conveyor stuffed with munitions and the premier flamer fuel of the galaxy implies a massive buildup of troops.

  I can only conclude he is attempting to conquer the Koronus Expanse and if we don’t stop him here, he might just pull it off.

  The remaining nine escorts are shielded by the larger cruisers, filling the space between the points of the diamond formation. There are four Iconoclast Destroyers, three Idolator Raiders, and two Soulcage Slaveships.

  The Iconoclast-Class are fast fleet defence vessels often tasked with countering strike-craft and torpedoes. Idolator Raiders are a superior version of the Apostate-Class, they’re larger, far faster, and known for using xenotech sensors, often of Kroot or Fra’al origin, that make their lance and weapon battery fire far more accurate than most Imperial vessels.

  Soulcage Slaveships are desecrated Imperial transports, usually Vagabonds, who follow more powerful vessels. They fill their holds with Imperial citizens and surround the doomed souls with Chaos iconography until they are forcibly converted. Some prisoners are kept in stasis as pure sacrifices for cruel rituals while others are sold to xenos and Chaos warlords.

  All will be given the Emperor’s Mercy.

  The moment my void craft are detected, multiple events occur simultaneously.

  Karrad Vall’s fleet, The Wolfpack, springs into action. The hulls of their cruisers ripple as swarms of Heldrakes are kicked into a frenzy and prepare to detach from their hosts.

  A small amount of panic ripples through my connection with Reina as she realises that we did not draw off all of The Wolfpack’s void craft like we’d hoped. Auspex provides an immediate estimate of 500 Heldrakes.

  There’s no way Karrad Vall acquired that many Heldrakes, ancient Space Marines fused to their strike craft and mutated by the Ruinous Powers, without a sponsor.

  My navigator coven drops A Cloud in the Warp and casts Disrupting the Empyrean, churning up the Warp around The Wolfpack, making emergency Warp jumps, even micro-jumps, all but impossible.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  35 Vitrum-Class strike craft launch 108 melta torpedoes and 32 boarding torpedoes at their targets. The torpedoes spread out like an opening flower, with the meltas going for the multi-kilometre sized engines on all the vessels. The boarding torpedoes target the Cathedral and Castelum super-structures on the capital ships.

  The melta torpedoes accelerate at 40 gravities, striking all three Idolators ten seconds later, followed swiftly by hits to the two Soulcage Slaveships. None of the enemy vessels have a chance to even fire a shot, the close range and difficult angles negating their CIWS. Taking advantage of the surprise, the Machine-Spirits within direct the torpedoes to flip and decelerate, slowing them enough to slip through the void shields. The torpedoes manoeuvre between the big engines, then detonate. Each vessel is struck by four melta torpedoes, crippling their engines.

  Over the next 45 seconds, 60 torpedoes target the four capital ships and 36 burn towards the nine, undamaged escorts.

  The Iconoclast Destroyers manage to turn five degrees over 30 seconds. Their unusual structure, with the Cathedral in the front third of the vessel, rather than the stern, gives their defensive fire a chance to intercept the torpedoes gunning for them. Rather than risk interception, the Machine-Spirits burn hard, evading the defensive firepower as best they can and pump a brief burst of power into their meager void shields.

  I do not have access to Officio Assassinorum’s secret shield bypass that they like to stick on their sniper rounds. I would absolutely love to put those bypasses on my macro-shells and torpedoes, assuming a small device is capable of negating such a significant power difference. Alas, the torpedoes strike the Iconoclasts at almost nine kilometres per second, relative to the Iconoclasts, and trigger the void shields.

  The first two torpedoes drop the void shields and a third detonates by their keels where the defensive fire is most obscured by their thruster plume. The fourth is intercepted. The Iconoclasts’ main thrusters are damaged, but not crippled.

  The Apostate-Class are not so fortunate and, despite the longer 45 second travel time, they fail to put out any proper defensive fire, the bad angle negating most of their CIWS. The Machine-Spirits log the poor performance; the torpedoes decelerate then slip through the Apostates’ void shields and detonate. The Apostates’ acceleration immediately drops and they begin to drift out of formation.

  Numerous Heldrakes propel themselves from the underbellies of the cruisers they were feeding from. Flapping their six metal wings like great insects, they attempt to intercept the melta torpedoes burning towards the capital ships while screaming gibberish across the vox.

  Armed with Hades Autocannons and Baleflamers for close range engagements, the Heldrakes have few options and throw themselves in the path of the torpedoes. Their low velocities, relative to the torpedoes, leave them floundering and the screen of cursed metal they throw at the melta torpedoes is wholly inadequate. Despite their numbers, they intercept a mere seven torpedoes.

  The melta torpedoes slam into the capital ships. Most are spent on the thick void shields. Excrucian, the Hades-Class heavy cruiser, has two torpedoes strike its engines. I doubt it will slow the vessel much. The Carnage-Class and Devastation-class cruisers, Gift of Despair, and Mortis Ex Astra suffer three hits. They are damaged, but not disabled. Optimus Nemesis, the Murder-Class cruiser, is particularly unfortunate; it is struck five times and crippled.

  My strike-craft dash after their ordinance and descend upon the enemy fleet. Using their superior range and auspex, they butcher the slow moving Heldrakes even as the enemy strike craft accelerate hard to get in range.

  Through this mess of lascannons, plasma, and bolter travel 32 boarding torpedoes, eight for each capital ship. To my great pleasure, my plan goes off without a hitch: the Heldrakes and CIWS ignoring the boarding torpedoes. Their command is no doubt thinking: what hope do 480 souls have against a ship filled with hundreds of thousands?

  My strike-craft finish off the Heldrakes and lay into the damaged vessels, stripping them of their turrets as fast as they can while a large fleet of shuttles hovers just out of effective CIWS range broadcasting Imperial hymns on all vox channels.

  The boarding torpedoes strike true, burrowing deep into the enemy vessels, disgorging Battle Automata into the enemy vessels. The four squads on each torpedo scatter through the capital ships, carrying teleport beacons and searching for vital systems.

  They gut hundreds of malnourished slaves and scarred cultists as they push through the vessels, mostly unopposed, their resilience and firepower far beyond the usual rubbish sent on a one way trip. Once the Automata find an important system, like a plasma relay, or a defensible location, they hunker down and send a ready signal to Reina, who, in turn, broadcasts a message to my fast vanguard fleet and to me.

  Fifteen minutes later, the enemy catches on to what we are doing and starts pushing hard for the beacons. I give the signal and all ten of my teleport capable vessels transport atomics into the enemy vessels. With the void shields down from the previous melta torpedo strike, and the beacons broadcasting strong signals, the atomics almost all arrive at their intended location, the massive distance being no obstacle to the Warp, only accuracy.

  The atomics detonate in a bright flash. For a brief moment, the capital ships look like suns. Gift of Despair, Mortis Ex Astra, and Optimus Nemesis, the three cruisers, take catastrophic damage. Massive plumes of debris, and gasses are launched into the void as their Cathedrals and Castelums are reduced to radioactive slag.

  Excrucian, the heavy cruiser, fares better. Sorcerous protections flare around the vessel, shunting the teleportation away. The atomics detonate outside creating an intense flash of radiation that destroys their sensors. Unless they have hidden back ups, Excrucian is likely blind for the remainder of the engagement.

  At the cost of half my strike-craft, the enemy vessels are stripped of their defensive guns and the shuttles move in, deploying Penal and Battle Automata regiments into the vile holds of the Karrad Vall’s voidships, focusing their efforts on the more lightly defended escorts.

  Armed with improvised weapons and lacking in preparation, the cultists are outmatched. Emperor forbid the traitors trust their slaves with guns! Most flee, unwilling to engage with the outrageous volume of firepower that my people bring to their tainted halls.

  On the Apostates and Idolators, bridge crews are purged, enginariums are shut down and sabotaged, and more teleport beacons are hidden near Warp drives. Then my people retreat, leaving the escorts leaderless and drifting.

  The less damaged Iconoclasts are also sabotaged, the Machine-Spirits cleansed and their void shields disabled. Bridges and Enginariums are locked down and automata are left to guard them. Tech-Priests brave the corrupted noosphere of the vessels, commanding the Iconoclasts to ram the capital ships in 30 minutes. More teleport beacons are placed and the boarding parties retreat.

  With everything in place, my void craft perform a final pass, dumping every Battle Automata they have remaining on the hulls of the cruisers. As the Automata wade through hot, radioactive slag and into the breached hulls, my surviving void craft grab as many broken strike craft as they can with their magnetic clamps and retreat at maximum burn.

  I am taking no chances that these tentacle humping twats have the slightest chance to escape, yet somehow, it is not enough.

  To my utter surprise, Excrucian deploys a Graviton Flare, a rare device that scrambles both long range augur and short range auspex for an hour. It will take at least 20 hours before they can charge another, likely much longer considering the damage I’ve done to their vessels, but it is still frustrating.

  The flare fades. The Iconoclasts have missed their ramming attack and no further manoeuvres were programmed in, so they’re all heading away from The Wolfpack at an angle, like alpha particles scattering through a vapour chamber. The other escorts are drifting, their engines dark. Their manoeuvring thrusters have kept them somewhat in formation even as they fall behind the capital ships.

  All of the capital ships have restored their void shields and their acceleration has dropped to one gravity. No shuttles have been sent out to help recover their escorts, and my Battle Automata are still broadcasting and Disrupting the Empyrean is still holding, so at least something is going right.

  I take a deep breath and send out the next string of orders.

  HERE. Many thanks to Brian for putting this together in their spare time.

  Warhammer 40k Lexicanum, , and . I've also enjoyed opinion pieces such as: , The via Gamespot, and . While not strictly 40k, they are good for inspiration and IRL explanations.