Herald of the Stars: Chapter Sixty-Seven (Patreon)

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The giant bird, likely an avatar of Tzeentch, one of the four chaos gods, cackles, then blinks. Its eyes widen and it coughs, great hacking sprays that force the mountains behind me to crumble in great avalanches of jagged rock.

From its two beaks shoot three asteroids and, over my vox, comes a jolly, heavy metal tune.

“Wot shall we do wiv a drunken squig herder, early in da morning? Nuffink! What herder? Didn’t even have ta push ‘em. Dat’s how da song goes, right, Rusty Slayah?”

That sounds like the gretchin, Bola.

Three ork roks, each over two kilometres in length and width tumble through the sky. The avatar of Tzeentch rapidly fades, its form disrupted by the hitchhiking orks. It screeches and reaches out with its wings, curling around two of the roks.

One is hurled at the planet and the other tossed at my shipyard, then the avatar disappears, along with the angry purple scar in the sky.

I watch in horror as my armour gives me a perfect view from below and the sensor feeds from above let me observe the rok, bristling with guns and random plates of metres thick metal, as it spins, prow over stern, and collides with the shipyard.

The collision is catastrophic, shattering both the rok and the asteroid that contains the shipyard, and crumpling the front half of the Iron Crane.

Before I can express how furious and distraught I am, the second rok hits the atmosphere and my body shakes as the sky burns with an orange white flame that streaks overhead.

Aruna transmits a vid-feed of the impact to me half a world away and all around me, for a brief moment, Marwolv experiences the light of a terran day. I run for a trench, ignoring the gibbering tau, and dive within, waiting for the shockwave, watching it propagate over the whole planet from Distant Sun’s sensors.

A minute later I realise I am being hasty.

I broadcast an override to the command channels and have everyone withdraw. It will take six hours until the shockwave reaches us at its current speed and I have no intention of being here when it does.

All the fight has left the tau. We confiscate their weapons and the battle suit wrecks, but otherwise leave them alone. My heralds, those still able to function after the psychic phenomena, recover their dazed and dead comrades and follow soon after along with ten bird corpses.

I do not believe that the birds attacked the altar by accident.

Mr Cygnus picks me up and I return to orbit as fast as I can.

The third and final rok is on its way and seems determined to have a go at the Distant Sun; it fires a massive salvo of macro shells at my light cruiser.

The rok is seven thousand kilometres away and has no trouble hitting the Distant Sun, the void shields stop most of the rounds but two shells punch through the rapidly depleting shield on the port side and expend themselves on the Distant Sun’s twenty metre thick armour.

With field bracing active, the shells only remove the outer layer of ablative ferrocrete, two metres of material, and another metre of the composite plasteel and ceramite plates beneath it.

I’m so glad I didn’t skimp on the repairs and the orcs aren’t using melta shells or something even worse like vortex or grav weaponry.

The emergency capacitors are triggered and the void shield purges the displaced energy, almost instantly restoring the port side shields to full strength, rather than waiting the thirty minutes it would usually take.

The shields can only instantly restore once every twelve hours and Eire has arguably wasted the extra function. There is no other vessel able to fire on Distant Sun within the next thirty minutes, the time it takes for the shields to recharge. There is a chance, however, that the orks have a teleporta, a warp based transport device that functions poorly through shields.

I’ve no idea how long it will take the orks to load another salvo, but, unless they’re blessed by Gork and Mork, the ork deities, I should have at least thirty minutes grace, so long as Mr Cygnus and his meat bag assistants can get me aboard before the ork strike craft get close.

A disorganised swarm of one hundred and eighty-seven strike craft close in as the thunderhawk slips behind the restored void shield and I am taken to the main cargo hangar.

As I disembark, I notice that the D-POTs are getting ready to launch and intercept. It is unlikely they will be ready before the orks can launch their strike craft at us.

The Distant Sun doesn’t have any combat hangars or dedicated strike craft and it is going to cost us.

The Omnissiah’s Erudition is two days distant and, while the fight could easily go on that long, I don’t want to drag it out as we need to perform rescue operations on the Iron Crane.

There is every chance enough orks survived the collision they could capture my crippled mobile shipyard and then I’d be well and truly scuppered; it’s a lot of industrial capacity and I can’t let the orks take it.

I order the heralds to remain onboard their transports until my intercepting force has launched and immediately assign the two wings of D-POTs and the troop transport escorts to the fight, with orders to stick close and remain within the defensive sphere of the Distant Sun’s close in weapon systems (CWIS): One thousand multi-lasers, heavy bolters, auto-cannons, and lascannons.

It might sound like a lot, but the Distant Sun’s surface is a byzantine collection of canyons, hatches, and sensors that are hard to defend once strike craft get close enough.

Striding from the hangar, I traverse the ship to the main bridge deep in the centre of the vessel.

As I enter, a junior officer standing by the main door announces my presence in a shrill voice, “Captain on the bridge!”

No one turns to salute me, and I would be quite annoyed if they did, as we are in combat. I rush up the stairs overlooking the bridge and see First Officer Eire Lobhdain sitting on the command throne, her lips pressed in a fine line and a small amount of blood dripping from her nose.

“Eire, Aruna is overwhelming you, you need to disconnect.”

Eire blinks slowly and comes back to herself. I send a command and the many wires detach themselves from the hyperweave suite’s collar around her neck and retract into the throne.

“I don’t know how you do it, Captain. There is so much information!”

“Don’t worry about it, we’ll work on your implants and tolerance another day. Combat operations are still a bit too much for you, even if you’re fine the rest of the time.”

“Thank you, Captain, I’m glad you are back.”

I help Eire to her feet, “Head for the medicae deck and have them check you over. Only return if you are declared fit for duty. Ask for one of the heralds to escort you in case you fall on your face.”

Eire winces, “Yes, Captain.”

“It’s not a criticism. You’ve done well. It took me two years of integrating the Distant Sun before I could connect to the vessel for an extended period of time and I am still learning. Aruna is a powerful and ancient machine-spirit and the bonding process is not well understood. Be thankful it is not a knight or titan, they are much more demanding!”

“Thank you, Captain,” Eire sighs and her shoulders slump a little.

“Find me when we’re not in a crisis and we can talk more. Dismissed!”

Eire salutes me and wobbles slightly, then carefully walks down the stairs, leaning on the bannister.

I sit on the command throne and thick cables seek out and plug into my power armour, which, in turn connects me to the Distant Sun. My awareness expands and I become the void ship; I feel the thrum of energy pumping through my body and the tickling of the guns as they track the rok.

Focusing on the shipyard, I grimace. The Iron Crane is trapped and the shipyard has been pushed out of orbit and is going to crash into Marwolv. Perhaps I won’t have to worry about the orks nicking my industry afterall.

“Helm, full speed ahead, get us out of the front arc of the enemy vessel and prepare to intercept the shipyard. Search and rescue (S&R), prepare the tow cables.”

On the screens in front of me, my orders are translated into text that turns green, along with a green light next to it as the orders are acknowledged and a small audio file I can play if I wish to hear their vocal confirmation.

The crew stations, implants, and datapads all have similar functions.

Another screen shows our new course and planned manoeuvres and their timing, the forces expected, and the estimated disruption for tasks over the ship for the one manoeuvre that will require the pilot, officer Tuathal Ualas, to flip the vessel.

Tuathal plans to use the main engines to decelerate, reducing the number of times we have to lap the planet and our total travel time. Distant Sun’s retro-thrusters aren’t powerful enough to stop the ship in a useful time frame.

The artificial gravity should mean the crew don’t notice the manoeuvres, but after our training exercise I’ve made bracing and tethering standard practice for any manoeuvre performed at greater than one gravity.

The artificial gravity and the inertial dampening it offers is excellent and it can deal with massive, brief spikes that reduce the impact of collisions on the crew, but I still prefer to play it safe. All manoeuvres are planned sufficiently in advance that the crew can receive alerts on their datapads and other communication devices, as well as the general alerts that are broadcast throughout the vessel.

“Master of Ordinance, Kiera Ó Ceallaigh, target the enemy guns. I want one salvo from our macro-cannons to weaken their shields, followed by the lances to punch through any remaining protection and slag their main gun.”

Aruna appears next to me sitting upright on the left arm of my throne. Its tail twitches as it moves its head from side to side as its avatar observes the scene.

“Master of Etherics, Finn Pádraig, contact the Iron Crane and order them to fire up their engines and use their thrust to delay their deorbiting and that we are coming to help tow the yard out of trouble. It doesn’t matter if they wreck the yard more, but while they are preparing to launch, they should initiate evacuations and search and rescue in the area that will be damaged by the thrusters’ plumes.”

The guns fire and eight strike craft sized shells cross the intervening space in zero point two milliseconds. All of the shells strike simultaneously.

From the auspex I realise five would have been enough to overwhelm the enemy shields and, had I ordered staggered fire, like the orcs achieved by accident with their disorganised salvo, we could have done more damage to their hull. There is a chance that overloading their shields like that has disabled them for a time though.

Lance turrets on the spine and keel slice through the void, targeting the orks single battery of ‘eavy gunz, the most dangerous of their armaments, and wrecks it. I really want to cheer, but that would be unprofessional and the ork strike craft are upon us.

Hundreds or smaller weapons erupt all over the hull of the Distant Sun as the enemy strike craft split into pairs, blasting our defences with their oversized beamy deff gunz and looted heavy bolters. Others launch dozens of missiles or drop self propelled plasma and melta charges on the hull directly.

It is a little amusing to watch gretchin open the hatches of the back of their fighta-bommerz and push the explosives out the back. Occasionally, the little green beasties fall with the explosives.

While most of the missiles are conventional and don’t do much, thirty of them are high yield atomics that vaporise large chunks of our armour and obliterate tens of turrets. Two macro-cannons are disabled by orks flying down the barrels. Fortunately they hadn’t been reloaded yet so the crew were not butchered by the shells exploding in the breach.

The forty two D-POTs stick to their larger formations, two of fifteen and one of twelve, and remain within the protective sphere of our AA defences, sweeping up and down the hull, using their turreted guns to focus down the ork strike craft. Whenever the orks rally and dive one of the groups, the D-POTs slink beneath the Distant Sun’s void shields, rather than relying on their own protections.

The D-POTs are less nimble than the ork strike craft and can’t afford to get into a dog fight with them.

The vessel’s remaining D-POTs in the main hangar bay are still getting ready to scramble.

Every time the D-POTs duck and cover, the orks barrage the D-POTs with insults over the vox, but the machine-spirits ignore the communications and send their own packets back laced with scrap code. A remarkable number of orks fall for the trick and we disable more strike craft with scrap code than we do with our guns.

It is immensely challenging to hit rapid aircraft, even with the mechanicus’s impressive predictions and rapid tracking. Multiple CWIS batteries have to work in concert to saturate the space around individual strike craft and bring them down.

Over the next ten minutes the orks lose a hundred and twenty-six strike craft and retreat. Our losses are more modest, with both of the class two D-POTs disabled, but not destroyed, as the orks just can’t resist going for the biggest opponents. We’ve also lost thirty-eight percent of our CIWS turrets, with seventy percent of our losses being on the port side.

“Helm, spin the ship and present our starboard side to the orks. Guns, prepare for another salvo. Target the lesser batteries of enemy gunz.”

It takes fifteen minutes to spin the ship and it is increasingly likely the orks are going to try and ram us. Helm repeatedly updates our projected path as they try to avoid the orks as we orbit Marwolv.

The orks were already travelling at speed when Tzeench accidentally vomited them from the warp and we are struggling to adjust as the Distant Sun was in a stationary orbit and not travelling anywhere near as fast.

The macro-cannons on the starboard side fire and the recoil pushes us minutely off course.

The ork shields are still down and we pulverise the front of their vessel, stripping away their armour and enough of the metal rich asteroid that acts as their hull to space a few hundred orks and gretchin as well as bring them down to three main batteries of gunz.

“Officer Pádraig, get me a count on the enemy’s CWIS. I want to know if we can bomb their engines. No reason to fight the orks if we can force them to sail through the system for a few days.”

As my command is greenlit, I get a red query from Tuathal. I play the audio file.

“Captain, permission to ignite a full burn. I don’t think we can avoid being rammed and boarded without it, but it will delay our arrival at the shipyard significantly.”

I double check his numbers and bring up the projected trajectory of the ork rok.

“Permission granted. Rotate us again, I’d like to get another salvo in as we pass them.”

“Acknowledged, Captain,” says Tuathal.

“Officer Ó Ceallaigh, prepare the port guns and lances for another salvo. Target their AA with the macro-cannons and their hangar with the lances.” I swap vox channels, “Drive master Rian O’Luinin, prepare for maximum burn.”