Battle for The Abyss by Ben Counter Read Free Book Online

‘The test against the Fist of Macragge was to your satisfaction, yes?’
    ‘Yes, my lord. Your will shall be done.’ The lower portion of the weapon master’s face was supplanted by a metal grille and he spoke in a tinny monotone as a result; most of his jaw and chin had been destroyed during the early years of the Great Crusade 34

    Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss
    while he was aboard the Galthalamor , fighting the ork hordes of the Eastern Fringe. The vessel, an ancient Retribution-class battle cruiser, was all but annihilated in the conflict.
    Zadkiel dismissed the weapons master and blanked the pict screens. Coding a sequence into his command throne, Zadkiel felt the hydraulic pistons at work in the dais as he was slowly, majestically, raised above the bridge and brought level with the massive viewport overlooking the vessel’s prow. The endless expanse of real space stretched beyond it. Somewhere within that curtain of stars was Macragge, home world of Guilliman’s Legion. It was the stage of his destiny.
    ‘Navigator Esthemya,’ said Zadkiel, staring into the infinite.
    ‘My lord,’ a female voice chimed through the vox set into the command throne.
    ‘Take us to Macragge.’
    ‘Vectors are locked, captain,’ Esthemya informed him from the secluded cocoon in the clerestory, a hard-edged blister that was surrounded by spines of data medium like the spires of a cathedral.
    Zadkiel nodded, turning to face the viewscreen in front of him as the Navigator went to her duties.
    The infinite gaped before him, and Zadkiel was acutely aware of the power that lay beyond the veil of real space and the pacts he had made to harness its limitless strength. Before the countenance of his enemies, aboard this mighty vessel, he would be god-like. There was no other ship in existence that could do what the Furious Abyss was destined to do. It alone had the power to achieve the mission that Kor Phaeron had charged them with.
    Only the Furious Abyss could get close enough, could endure the awesome defences of Macragge to unleash its deadly payload.
    Icons in his command throne lit up with the acquisition of their new heading, bathing Zadkiel in an aura of his own personal heaven.
    ‘Like a god,’ he whispered.

    35

    Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss
    EVERY EMERGENCY KLAXON had gone off at once in the control hub of Coralis Dock at Vangelis space port. Cestus could barely hear the thoughts in his head. Light flickered sporadically from the warning readouts on every command surface, casting the darkened control hub like some monochromatic animation. The astropathic choir bucked and kicked, and spat blood beneath the psy-skin in a collective seizure.
    ‘Station captain, report,’ bellowed Cestus.
    Falkman was reeling, trying to tear the cables from his skull as they pumped a screaming torrent of information into his mind.
    Brynngar went to the side of the human at once, preventing Falkman from ripping out more cables, determined that the station master would do his duty.
    ‘The hub reactor is overloading,’ the station captain snarled through gritted teeth, trying desperately to hold on. ‘The psychic jolt must have started a chain reaction in our electrical systems.
    The reactor must be shut down or it will destabilise.’
    Cestus’s face, lit up intermittently in readout flares and the bursts of warning strobes, held a question.
    ‘The resulting explosion will vapourise the station, this dock and all of us.’
    The Ultramarine captain turned to the assembled Astartes in the control hub.
    ‘Saphrax, stay here and maintain control over the situation,’ he ordered with a meaningful glance at Falkman. ‘Try to salvage whatever you’re able to from the astropathic choir.’
    ‘But my captain—’
    ‘Do it!’ Cestus would not be argued with, even with a battle-brother so seldom disposed to querying orders as Saphrax.
    ‘Whatever was in that message was important; I can feel it in my very marrow. It must be