Dreadwing (Novella series 1 Book 5) by David Guymer

Author:David Guymer [Guymer, David]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2018-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

IX

The Sybarite ploughed into the Invincible Reason. It drove through her armour like a knife through the kidneys, perforating the pressure hull, mauling interior bulkheads, metal and bodies glittering like chaff as they spewed from the gaping tear in her side. Forward momentum pushed the heavy cruiser on, shunting Invincible Reason aside like a bulldozer.

Expert manoeuvring and steely nerves on the part of the bridge crew ensured the damage looked worse than it was. Burning out the last of her plasma furnaces had given her velocity enough to be almost beyond the Sybarite at the moment of collision, robbing the impact of crucial force. In the same manoeuvre, cool heads had bidden the Invincible Reason to turn into the collision in the seconds before impact, directing the Sybarite’s aggression down the length of the exterior hull. It made for a messy wound, but a superficial one.

Void shields flared off one another, countering force with force. Consoles and unshielded cabling spurted, but the damage to the bridge was surprisingly mild. Little that could catch fire or explode remained that had not already done so.

Twenty-nine minutes after wishing Holguin and his Deathwing good luck, Farith Redloss returned to the bridge.

‘Damage report!’ Stenius roared out to someone as Redloss ran up the ascent ramp to join him on the command dais by his primarch.

Vesepian coughed on the plastek smoke spewing from the machine pits. Various crewmen crawled about in the dark. Nobody answered right away. The Invincible Reason spoke for them, an unholy squeal of metal friction as the two warlords ran against one another, skin on skin. The sound was almost elegiac compared to the whine raised by the void shields. They ripsawed through the acoustic registers, the two shield bubbles pushing and scraping and spasming against each other. The pitch oscillated towards an inflection point where it impinged even on a Space Marine’s ability to tune it out.

Redloss winced and held his ears.

Even the Lion looked mildly discomforted.

‘What is that noise?’ Stenius shouted. He stared at his screen displays.

Redloss had a sense that he knew. He knew weapons, better than he knew people. In the shriek of shields on shields he heard the laughter of gods. Masses of kinetic energy were being dumped into the warp, conjoining the embattled ships over an active fissure to the immaterium. That had been the Sybarite’s intention all along. To form a conduit.

They meant to board.

‘Stand to repel!’ he yelled, already drawing his bolt pistol.

A clap of psychic pressure peeled away the railings that ringed the command dais, like petals plucked from a flower, and then crushed it. The implosion murdered Commodore Vesepian instantly, crushing the fragile mortal, and hurled Redloss and Stenius in opposite directions from the dais. The Lion was driven back into his throne with a grunt.

In his place, a Grekan colossus stood bestride the ­shattered dais. Pink-skinned and glistening with electricity, the nephilim was lasciviously clad in purple-and-gold Legion plate, its forehead branded with a Palatine Aquila. A long, lolloping tongue draped from its gurning mouth.

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