Olamic Quietus space.
The Tenth Chapter's fleet translated from the Mandeville point. On the bridge of the Chapter's flagship, the Venerable-class battleship Stinger Rose.
Sasebo Tezuka, recently elevated to "Telepathist" by their father, stood in Tartaros pattern Terminator armor, attending Lord Ramsey.
He looked at his Chapter Lord, his face identical to their father's, and stood a little straighter with pride.
Sasebo Tezuka knew Lord Ramsey held a special designation within the Legion.
Just as Aximand of the Luna Wolves' Mournival was called Little Horus, Ramsey was privately called Little Nareth by many non-Court members.
Sasebo Tezuka and other Court members utterly rejected this title. They had served beside their father. They had been granted wondrous power.
Though Ramsey looked exactly like their gene-father, he lacked their father's transcendent charisma, his commanding presence, his miraculous power.
Sasebo Tezuka never thought of Ramsey as Little Nareth. But he did see him as different from any other Chapter Master.
Lord Ramsey was their father's shadow.
Their father's shadow.
Just as he often grew from shadows.
The lumen lights overhead flickered. Sasebo Tezuka swayed slightly, his boots magnetically locked to the deck.
His eyes never left Lord Ramsey. The shifting shadows played across his helmet.
He saw Lord Ramsey raise a hand, identical to their father's, and trace a line across the holographic display.
"Our objective is the Interex's drydock."
"Secure that, and the enemy's fleet loses its foundation. The void becomes ours."
Sasebo Tezuka's gaze followed the line. The fleet, in a silent quagmire of red runes, laser fire and torpedo trails, struggled forward.
The battleships' sudden, brilliant flashes of light sliced through enemy ships trying to intercept.
Whoosh!
A deep red sphere materialized.
The Interex's spherical drydock was immense, the size of a small satellite.
A glance at the Augury Matrix scan told him its diameter was two kilometers.
Cavity echoes suggested it was not a pilotable vessel, like the Ork asteroid fortresses they had encountered in the Coronid New Zone.
Green lights flickered. Images flashed.
Honeycombed alloy scaffolding on its thick, sealed, armored hull. Vague glimpses of engineering access points.
Ramsey stared at the drydock for a few seconds, then tapped a point near the sphere's pole.
"Set the teleport coordinates. Prepare for boarding!"
Sasebo Tezuka, along with ten other Honour Guard members, followed Lord Ramsey onto the black obsidian floor.
"Activating," the Techmarine's warning. The eighteen adamantium pillars of the hexagonal array blazed.
As electricity leaped, a cold chill washed over the Shadows of Order.
The "Telepathist," Sasebo Tezuka, completely immune to the cold, found himself atop a network of girders.
He climbed quickly, using hands and feet.
In his Tartaros Terminator armor, the full-fledged "Gravedigger" moved even more freely than he had as a Court initiate in Mark II power armor.
He leaped from a crossbeam, landing on scaffolding, then jumped down without pause.
He descended through the crisscrossing girders and supports, flowing like liquid silver, surmounting every obstacle.
He could no longer see Lord Ramsey or the other Honour Guard members.
Their massive forms were entirely hidden in shadow.
The "Telepathist" clicked his teeth, activating his psychic vision.
Three forms appeared in his field of view. The others were completely hidden in shadow.
He couldn't find the rest. Then, he saw flashes of purple light.
'Just as our father's briefing stated, the Interex's Elite Warriors have no red hand-luminescence. Only their heads remain.'
'As children, they undergo ritualized surgical removal of most of their organic tissue, ultimately encased in artificial bodies.'
'An adult's organic structure is only brain, skull, and spine. Their bodies are 'interred' in a metal casing.'
He looked down at the patrolling warriors, their forms similar in size to Astartes. Their luminescence was unusually narrow.
A result of their artificial augmentation.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...
Black-armored figures "grew" from shadows. Their hands seized the Elite Warriors' shadows.
The shadows became deadly blades, piercing skull after skull.
Sasebo Tezuka, unwilling to be outdone, leaped.
The weight of his Terminator armor bore down on a tall, powerfully built Elite Warrior.
Boom!
The full-fledged "Gravedigger" shot his arms out. His powerful hands grabbed the Elite Warrior's head, twisting violently in the direction opposite his falling body.
Bang!
The cervical spine snapped. The steel-reinforced spine broke in two.
The fluid that flowed was not blood, but purple bionic fluid.
As the full-fledged "Gravedigger" broke the Warrior's neck, a shrill alarm sounded.
The Shadows of Order were not surprised. They knew the Interex's social network was interconnected.
The humans of the Interex had abandoned individuality. They communicated through networked interfaces implanted in their neural tissue at birth.
Covert operations could not continue after first blood. Even a silent, undetected death would be sensed by the entire network.
"Enemy heat-ray rifles," Ramsey's command came over the network.
The Shadows of Order, instead of using their own weapons, uniformly picked up polished heat-ray rifles from the bodies.
Ding, ding, ding...
As the Elite Warriors appeared, the Shadows of Order pulled the triggers.
Scorching, slender beams pierced the interwoven steel skin.
Elite Warriors exploded, white-hot armor fragments and charred viscera spraying.
Amidst the roaring explosions, Ramsey gave another command: "Drop rifles. Gravity rifles."
The Shadows of Order dropped the heat-ray rifles in unison, picked up another weapon type from among the bodies, and charged the defenses.
Ten seconds later.
The Interex's social network had gathered information, performed an emergency analysis of the threat, and formulated a counter-strategy.
The Elite Warriors' flexible energy shields adjusted.
Elite Warriors, now immune to the heat-rays, emerged from the defenses. The gravity rifles, in the warm air of the drydock, projected fleeting, shimmering distortions.
A sound like crisp cracks, amidst the whine of energy. The hyper-dense slugs, fired with immense penetrating power, left wounds fine as pinpricks, but exit wounds that were exaggerated, gaping holes.
"Drop guns. Bolt guns."
Ramsey, using the intelligence provided by the Black Emperor, had already confused the enemy network, seizing the initiative. Now it was time to turn advantage into victory.
Ten seconds later, Shadows of Order, having breached the control room, fired a simultaneous volley.
Elite Warriors, immune to both gravity rifle rounds and heat-rays, fell in droves.
Ten seconds, and another ten seconds, and another ten...
Ten ten-second cycles passed. The Interex's social network still could not identify the bolt gun attack.
Pure, brutal violence swept the drydock.
....
If you enjoy the story, my p@treon is 30 chapters ahead.
[email protected]/DaoistJinzu