Editing Story:Pax Imperialis (section)

== Attack ==

“[[Warp]] portal detected!”

“Beat to quarters,” Vyn said to Janus, then looked back at Desna, who put an image of the entire solar system on the vista-plate. The auspex of the ship, combined with astromantic data collated over the past three days, gave them a fairly solid idea of the location of the ''End of Days'' and the mine field. The warp portal was marked as being several dozen astronomic units away from the gas giant, as that was the most stable entry point into the system. The warp portal glyph vanished, replaced a moment later by two sigils.

“They are…” Desna sent two runners off, who returned with a huge leather bound tome. “Uh, one moment, ma’am.”

Vyn watched the two glyphs start to move.

“Ah! They are the ''Wandering Penitent'' and the ''Absalom'', pilgrim-couriers from the next sub-system over. Most likely, they’re hauling colonists and penitents to the edge of this sector.” Desna went even more pale than usual. “According to this latest, they’re rated to carrying a hundred thousand civilians each.”

The helmsman reached for the controls, but Vyn held up her hand.

“Hold.”

The helmsman gritted his teeth.

The ''End of Days'' started to move out of the gas giant’s orbit. It picked up speed but slowly. Vyn had served on a transport or two in her days, she knew that they made even a cruiser look nimble. The only thing more sluggish than a transport was a battleship…but the ''End of Days'', she saw, didn’t start to make a turn that would put it between the two transports. That maneuver was the dream of every capital ship captain, to put two prime targets on either side of a fully loaded broadside and the ''End of Days'' wasn’t going for it. 

Vyn had guessed right.

She picked up her vox. “Enginseer Primus, remember what we discussed?”

“Yes. The supplications to the etheric spirits and vox-caster array has been complete.”

“Very good. Put us on.”

The forward vox-array of the ''Pax'' was just slightly out from behind the asteroid. From it shone a shimmering ray, needle thin and packed with information. The ray struck the auspexes of the two transports, entirely invisible to the ''End of Days''.

“Connection made! Praise the Omnissiah!”

Vyn ignored the Enginseer, instead speaking hurriedly into a secondary vox feed, the one that the Enginseer Primus had claimed would be linked to their makeshift whispering array.

“Captain of the Penitent and the Absalom,” She spoke, quickly, confidently. “I am Commander Vyn of the ''Pax Imperialis''. I know you are afraid, but you must listen to me and do exactly what I say. When you communicate, what you say will be picked up by the enemy raider, so speak in code. I need to know what your armament is.”

Silence.

Then, a panicked, older male voice spoke over the vox.

“We surrender! Don’t hurt us, we will power down our thunderstrike cannons and let you board.”

“Thunderstrikes?” Janus whispered, rolling his eyes. Those macrocannons were fine enough, for, say, dispersing asteroids or scaring low-tech xenos raiders away from your vessel. Against even an intra-system monitor, they were woefully undergunned. Vyn, though, remained focused on the issue at hand.

“We will be sneaking up on the enemy ship. Remain close to one another and when we signal, fire your thunderstrikes. Tell your gun crews that they must land as many shells as they can, it is our only hope. Emperor’s grace be with you.” She set down the vox, sighing softly. 

“Permission to speak, ma’am.”

Vyn turned to the side, looking at Hue – who stood beside her, ready to act as a runner if the vox systems failed during the battle. He was also holding her weaponry, readied and oiled and loaded to the brim. She nodded.

“You can’t hide a plasma engine, ma’am.”

She smirked. “Oh, but you can. You can hide it behind a planet. You can hide it behind a sun. Or you can hide it behind another plasma engine.”

Hue’s eyes widened. Desna called out.

“The ''End of Days'' has their stern facing us.”

Vyn gestured to the helmsmen. The asteroid they were moored to dropped away and they banked to the left, thrusters burning. They slipped behind the ''End of Days'', separated by thousands on thousands of kilometers, which began to tick down rapidly. But as they drew closer and closer to the enemy, the enemy prowled closer and closer to the transports.

Vyn leaned back in her chair, checking one last thing.

“Torpedo bay…are the modifications complete?”

“Aye,” A tinny voice came through the vox, barely audible against the background noises: Hammering, banging, shouts and calls from crew to crew.

Vyn nodded, slowly.

“Well, then,” Janus sighed. “Once more into the breach?”

Vyn smirked. “Once more.”

“And, I, as per our custom, have to ask…do you really have to lead the boarding action? We need you on the bridge, ma’am.”

“Janus,” Vyn’s smirk faded. “The captain of that ship killed the grandson of a rather dear friend. If I don’t carve Alvin McConnik’s name on his or her face with my own sword, I won’t be able to look myself in the mirror.”

“You always have an excuse…” 

The ''End of Days'' was now visible without the auspex: A large, glowing splotch right before them. Vyn stood, walking to the fore of the command plinth, grabbing onto the railing. She squeezed and watched the growing plasma fires before her.

“The enemy is turning,” Desna called out.

“We’re in range for a torpedo salvo,” Janus murmured.

“Stay on course.”

The outline of the ''End of Days'' started to become clear against the darkness of the stars. Its profile shifted, showing more and more of its length as it turned to ram one of the transports, for the boarding and the capturing that would fill its hold with thousands upon thousands of slaves. Vyn could imagine, for a moment, a look of absolute shock on the face of the captain, shock to see the ''Pax Imperialis'', still here and still fighting.

Vyn picked up her external vox. “FIRE!”

The transports started to wink and glitter as their pitiful thunderstrike macrocannons unloaded into space.

Vyn dropped the external vox, not even bothering to hang it on the proper cradle. She grabbed the internal vox and bellowed into it. “FIRE!”

The ''Pax'' shuddered, almost stopping in space as the prow opened and torpedoes launched. Two torpedoes shot through space, their simplistic machine spirits guided to the heat of the ''End of Days''’s plasma drives. Before they were halfway towards the ''End of Days'', another two were loaded. The thunderstrike cannon shells started to land on the ''End of Days''’s void shields, the massive energy barriers crackling and rippling under the pressure, then…

Popped like a soap bubble.

“FIRE!”

The torpedoes launched, the ship rocking again. By now, the ''End of Days'' loomed in the vista-plate, having almost completed its turn, its macrocannon broadside facing them fully on. Vyn grabbed the armrests of her throne, glaring straight ahead.

The torpedoes loaded once more.

“FIRE!”

Before the third volley finished emerging from the tubes, the first torpedoes slammed home, crashing into the ''End of Days''’s macrobattery decks. A moment later, their warheads exploded, orange lights bursting from around the cannon slots. Wreckage flew off into space, leaving behind burning, tangled decks and thousands of corpses. The second volley crashed home, flying even further into the ship proper.

Those did not explode.

“All power to the engines,” Vyn grinned, grabbing the sword from Hue. “Ram us down their throats. Janus, you have the bridge.”

She stood and turned, hurrying out of the bridge, followed by Hue and Kennik.

The third volley impacted against the void shields, which the ''End of Days'' had managed, through hook, crook and sorcery to throw back on the last second. Their explosions ripped the shields down just as the ''Pax''’s prow crashed into the upper decks of the ''End of Days''. The ''Pax'' stopped dead, the engines groaning, the prow crashing and banging, the echoing noises filling every corridor. Luminators sparked and the gravity field shuddered and almost went offline. But Vyn and most of the crew kept their feet.

Vyn came to the forward section of the ship, where she could hear the thunk and whump of the boarding tunnels firing. The area right behind the prow was usually a torpedo bay, meaning that it was usually full of torpedo crewmen…but right now, armsmen were passing out weapons to the crew, wearing flack vests and carrying sabers themselves. 

Crates of ammunition and grenades were set out and underofficers were calling out orders as the last of the boarding tunnels were launched and affixed themselves to the enemy’s hulls. She stepped up onto a crate, whistling.

Crew looked to her, their preparations falling silent. Vyn did have quite a powerful whistle – but she had also brought a handheld vox, which amplified her voice to fill the entire torpedo chamber.

“Friends!” She grinned. “We stand now in the gates before hell itself. Chaos taints this Reaver…but they have all the disadvantages. Their ship is larger and has bigger, better guns. They used a trap and a minefield, and more, they are outnumbered a mere one to four. It seems almost unfair that we have all these advantages, and yet, ontop of it, we have the glory of the Emperor at our back and our brothers and sisters at our side!” She raised her sword over her head. “Now, for our fallen comrades, for the Navy, for the Emperor…ATTACK!”

The crowd cheered as the boarding tunnels opened. Vyn leaped from the box, ducking underneath a hanging chain that normally connected to a torpedo for loading. As she did so, she slipped a rebreather on over her face. Behind her, Hue did the same – as did the rest of the boarding parties. The boarding tunnel had gravi-plate, so there was no loss of gravity as they hurried down the tunnel. The air grew hazy as Vyn stepped from the tunnel to the enemy ship. The corridor was a mangled wreck. Corpses – most of them not even wearing uniforms, but rather a mishmash of clothes as befitted their insane tastes – strewn the corridor…and she felt a tingling on her skin.

That was not smoke made by the fires that the torpedoes set. 

That was the feel of concentrated morpha gas. Morpha, as a painkiller, could put a man to dreamless sleep. Too much could put him into a permanent sleep. And when two torpedoes loaded with an entire ship’s complement of aerosolized morpha slams into the center of your ship…

Vyn called out. “Armsmen, to me!”

Hue was joined by a dozen or so other armsmen, each of them equipped with their own assortment of weapons: Las-carbines, sabers, chainswords, boarding shotcannons, flame pistols, and (of course) an abundance of grenades. Vyn led them, recalling what she had read of a Lunar’s layout. The corridors were filthy and the religious statues and stained-glass windows were smashed or replaced with profane sigils. There were more dead here. The only light was the luminators that were attached to the rifles and pistols of the boarding group: Vyn’s luminator was attached to her hellpistol.

Hue grinned. “So, I guess-“

A man leaned around the corner of the corridor junction up ahead. He wore a gas mask and nothing else save a loincloth, and held a crude las-carbine.

“BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!”

Vyn snapped up her pistol and pulled the trigger. The blast caught the man in his unarmored chest, blowing his lungs out on the wall. He collapsed as Hue grabbed his grenade from his belt, his eyes wide. The corridor ahead surged with the enemy crew, a teeming throng of howling madmen, each armed and ready. Hue underhanded his frag grenade. Vyn fired again and again, the armsmen to the left and right of her firing as well, their las bolts scything down the enemy. The grenade went off and the front ranks of the enemy went down, leaving a jagged hole of corpses and screaming wounded. 

“FOR THE EMPEROR!” Vyn charged forward. Her hellgun barked again and again as she brought her blade around. In this kind of furious melee, she had no time to think of the proper stance or the proper guard. Instead, she looked for enemies whose backs or sides were turned, stabbing at their kidney, their bellies, their lungs, slashing at exposed throats, shooting men and women in the back. Hue took a glancing blow off the shoulder, crying out as he fell to the ground. An armsman was impaled through the heart by an enemy sword. Others were bayonetted, smashed against bulkheads, shot through the face at near to point blank range.

“Keep moving!” Vyn shouted, continuing to advance, slashing left, then right, then kicking. “To the bridge! To the bridge!”

Hue got to his feet, firing in full auto into the crowd as he moved to keep up with Vyn. The corridor spread outward and…yes! There were the elevators. They would still be functioning, if the emergency systems were still alive and aware on the ship. Vyn put her finger to her ear as she heard Kennik over her ear-bud: “We’ve managed to cut off the reinforcements heading towards you. Get up, now!”

Vyn nodded, turning to Hue and the armsmen.

“All right, lets head on up.”

The elevator doors opened and Vyn stepped halfway in, tapped a rune to the lower deck. She stepped back out again, then put her bulky body against the door, keeping it from closing. The elevator started to head down the shaft. It headed down a few feet before suddenly dropping, the brakes completely disabled. 

“That answered my unasked question…” Hue whispered. The sounds of gunfire and combat came to the left and right corridors, shouts and howls.

“They’re coming.” Vyn shifted into the elevator, grabbing onto the emergency ladder inside the shaft. She crawled up and up and up, followed by Hue, who was carefully looking at the wall and not up. They had about a hundred meters to go, and Vyn felt every kilogram of her flack vest, mono-sword and hellpistol. They passed an elevator door, which opened with a faint ding. A man with a flamer stood there, wearing a gas mask and a combat vest with several bandoliers dangling with flame tanks. He turned it to burn the ladder.

Vyn grabbed one of his bandoliers and yanked forward. He screamed as he went over the edge, a scream that continued until his head struck the far wall of the elevator shaft. That stopped the screaming with a wet crunch. Hue threw a grenade through the elevator door, and the other reavers became a tad bit distracted. The elevator door closed once more, muffling the sharp, harsh bang. Vyn started back up the ladder, chuckling for the next dozen rungs

Finally, they got to the top of the ladder. “The bridge is just down this corridor!” Vyn shouted down to the armsmen and officers under her. “We take this bridge, we take this ship as prize!”

She pulled the emergency leaver beside the door. It partially opened, she grabbed it, hauled it open, then jumped from the ladder and into the hallway. A las bolt cracked past her ear, then two more struck her chest. The flack vest dispersed most of the energy and she kept moving, shouting. A las bolt struck her thigh, which was protected more by thick leather pants than actual flack weaving, burning her skin fiercely. But then she was among the defensive line. She hacked left, shot right, and then Hue and the other armsmen started to come off the ladder, taking advantage of her forcing a hole in the line. 

The enemy fell before their furious assault, the corridor that they were fighting in narrower than Vyn had expected. The first line and the second line fell, the reavers not having enough body armor or training to stand up to the battle hardened armsmen of the ''Pax''. Beyond them, though, was a golden door. What had once been carved symbols of the Emperor and the Saints had become profane symbols and jagged red paintings which themselves hurt to look at. Vyn steeled herself and stepped towards the door, which opened to reveal…

A single man. He was tall, broad shouldered, taller than her even. His skin was a dark gray and his hair was a russet, rusty red. His eyes were narrowed and his muscles bulged and rippled as he cast off his human skin cloak. His left hand ended in a jagged metal claw, which wasn’t even powered or articulated, beyond a simple winch that forced it shut around the hilt of a sleek, elegant blade that looked entirely too well-crafted for his brutish form. His other hand held a grenade. His thumb popped the cap off and he underhanded it. It clattered between Vyn’s legs and she saw it wasn’t the bulbous shape of a frag grenade. Rather, it had the white markings and shape of a-

“Cover your-“

The grenade flashed. The edges of Vyn’s vision ached and her ears rang, making the enemy captain’s approach eerily silent. Vyn staggered to the side, trying to keep her balance as her head swam. The enemy captain slashed his sword around, neatly decapitating one of the armsmen, his blade crackling with a bluish light. A power sword!

Vyn shifted her stance, the ringing in her ears making her own voice sound distant and muted, like she was underwater. “Face me!”

The man grinned at her, his ugly brick of a face twisting into a smirk as he realized she was the commander of the ''Pax'', thanks to her captain’s cap, her greatcoat, her flack vest, her bearing and her blade. 

His lips moved and she half heard his words: “I’m going to rip out your spine.”

Vyn stepped backwards. The bridge of the ''End of Days'' looked much like any other battleship’s bridge: A large hololithic table in the center of three terraces that created circles around it like the inside of an amphitheater or a holo-stage, each one with dozens of chairs and lecturns to organize and coordinate the operation of the entire starship. There was no captain’s throne…but then again, Vyn couldn’t imagine a throne that could hold the titan she was facing.

The captain turned to face her, though she noticed her armsmen and Hue were still trying to clear their vision. They had caught the full brunt of the photon flash grenade, so they were out of the fight for the moment.

Vyn brought her sword up.

The enemy captain ran straight at her, his feet pounding on the deck. He swung his sword and she ducked. The crackling arc of the sword’s power field cut through half of a chair and a lecturn. Sparks flew in every direction and furious tech-sprites arched form the damaged lecturn, wreathing the enemy’s blade.

Vyn slipped forward and pivoted, her left hand slamming into the enemy’s face, crunching his nose to the side. Blood spurted from his nostrils and he growled, jerking his blade out of the lecturn. He ignored his nose, then swung at Vyn again, then again. She was able to step backwards from the first strike, but the second swing forced her to catch the guard of his sword and push the blade to the side. The power field flashed and Vyn found herself holding a smoldering hilt, not a balanced mono-blade. The fragments of her sword clattered to the ground, each one smoking. 

Vyn swung, using the hilt and the guard as a crude brass knuckle. The enemy captain hadn’t expected that: She caught him in the gut. He gasped and she tried to follow her blow up with another punch, this time to his jaw. He caught her fist, then squeezed, growling as he held her tight. She grabbed his left hook, her hand slipping to the winch and yanking it open. The power sword crashed to the ground.

He brought his open hook up. The hook caught Vyn in the side, digging against her flack vest. He lifted her up, the hook not catching any flesh, but still managing to hoist her up and over his head. He slammed her down onto the hololithic table with a roar. The table cracked and came to sputtering life, its bewildered and insensate machine spirits rudely awakened and showing a random haze of light and wispy images. The enemy captain roared again and brought his hook whistling down, aiming for Vyn’s head. Vyn sat up and the hook plunged into the table. Tech-sprites leaped up the hook and into his arm, causing him to howl in pain.

Vyn slid off the table, using the momentum to kick his kneecap to the side. He fell to one leg, gasping. Vyn grabbed up his power sword. He spun to face her, managing to wrench his hook out of the table. Vyn took the offensive, despite her aching spine and back, swinging her blade for a grazing strike on his chest. He intercepted the blade with his hook hand, the hook sheared off in a crackle of blue energy. But that bought him enough time to grab her right shoulder and body slam her to the ground. She groaned, her bruised and battered back demanding she stay on the ground.

And, like any good Death Worlder, Vyn knew how to take what a body demanded and ignore it. 

She rolled to her feet, dodging a jagged metal spike – all that was left of his hook hand – that plunged into the deck plates, where her head had been mere moments before. Standing, she dodged twice more: First, underneath a fist that could have shattered her jaw, then to the side as he swung that still smoldering spike at her chest in a quick, forward jab.

Vyn responded with the tactic that had saved her from many stronger, faster, larger brutes in the seas of Aquios. She stopped thinking two dimensionally. She feinted, so that he started to duck, then leaped forward. Her foot slammed into his lowered shoulder, and then she jumped, landing right beside the dropped power blade.

Her hand closed on the hilt.

The enemy captain spun to face her, swinging his fist. She whirled to face him and his severed hand went flying, the charred stump all that remained. He howled, not even able to grab his arm, for his hook was nothing more than a spike.

“That is for the minefield.” Vyn glared at him. “And this is for the McConnik Clan.”

She swept the blade back.

His head joined the hand.