the torpedoes gouging their way through the outer armour.
‘Damage report!’ shouted Mhotep above the din of the bridge.
‘Negligible, sire,’ Officer Ammon answered from the engineering helm. ‘What?’
‘Minimal hull fractures, my Lord Mhotep.’
‘Sensorium definitely read four impacts,’ confirmed Helms-mate Ramket watching over the readouts.
Embedded deep in the hull of the Waning Moon , the outer casing of each torpedo split with a super-heated incendiary and six smaller missiles drilled out from their parent casing. They were ringed with metallic teeth and bored through the superstructure of the strike cruiser as they spun. Drilling through the last vestiges of hull armour, the missiles emerged into the belly of the vessel and detonated with a powerful explosive charge. With a deafening thoom-woosh of concussive heat pressure, the gun decks were ruined. Ratings and indentured workers died in droves, burned by the intense conflagration. Heaps of shells exploded in the firestorm, throwing lashes of flame and chunks of spiralling shrapnel through the decks. Master Gunner Kytan was decapitated in the initial barrage, and dozens of gunnery crew met a similar fate as they scrambled for cover as the gun-decks became little more than an abattoir of charred corpses and hellish screaming.
THE WANING MOON shuddered as explosions tore through its insides. A destructive chain reaction boiled through the upper decks and into crew quarters. Stern-wards, detonations ripped into engineering sections, normally well shielded from direct hits, and ripped plasma conduits free to spew superheated fluid through access tunnels and coolant ducts.
Damage control crews, waiting at their muster points to douse fires and seal breaches, were torn asunder by the resultant car-72
Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss
nage from amidships. Orderlies at triage posts barely had time to register the pandemonium on the gun decks before the blunt bullet of a warhead thundered through into the medicae deck and annihilated them in a flash of light and terror.
Chains of explosions ripped huge chunks out of the Waning Moon ’s insides. Like massive charred bite marks, whole sections were reduced to smouldering metal and hundreds of crewmen were lost to the cold of the void as the vessel’s structural integrity broke down.
‘REPORT THAT!’ ORDERED Mhotep, clinging to his command throne on the bridge as sections of the ship collapsed around him, revealing bare metal and sparking circuitry. The lights around the bridge were stuttered intermittently as the Waning registered power loss and damage across all decks. Mhotep’s crew were doing their best to marshal some semblance of order, but the attack had been swift and far-reaching.
‘Massive internal and secondary explosions,’ replied Officer Ammon, struggling to keep pace with the warning runes danc-ing madly over the engineering helm, and snapping off further reports. ‘Plasma venting from reactor seven, gun crews non-responsive and medicae has taken severe damage.’
‘Tertiary shielding is breached,’ said Mhotep as the ship-to-ship vox crackled into life.
‘Mhotep, report your status at once! This is Captain Cestus.’
The impacts had shaken the vox array and the Ultramarine’s voice was distorted with static.
‘We are wounded, captain,’ said Mhotep grimly. ‘Some kind of Mechanicum tech that I have never seen before burned our insides.’
‘Our lances are firing,’ Cestus informed him. ‘Can you stay engaged?’
‘Aye, son of Macragge, we’re not done yet.’
A further crackle of static and the vox went dead.
The bridge of the Waning Moon was alive with transmissions from the rest of the ship: some calm, reporting peripheral dam-73
Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss
age to minor systems; others frantic, from plasma reactor seven and the gun decks, and there were those that were unintelligible through raging fire and screaming: the last words of men and
‘Damage report!’ shouted Mhotep above the din of the bridge.
‘Negligible, sire,’ Officer Ammon answered from the engineering helm. ‘What?’
‘Minimal hull fractures, my Lord Mhotep.’
‘Sensorium definitely read four impacts,’ confirmed Helms-mate Ramket watching over the readouts.
Embedded deep in the hull of the Waning Moon , the outer casing of each torpedo split with a super-heated incendiary and six smaller missiles drilled out from their parent casing. They were ringed with metallic teeth and bored through the superstructure of the strike cruiser as they spun. Drilling through the last vestiges of hull armour, the missiles emerged into the belly of the vessel and detonated with a powerful explosive charge. With a deafening thoom-woosh of concussive heat pressure, the gun decks were ruined. Ratings and indentured workers died in droves, burned by the intense conflagration. Heaps of shells exploded in the firestorm, throwing lashes of flame and chunks of spiralling shrapnel through the decks. Master Gunner Kytan was decapitated in the initial barrage, and dozens of gunnery crew met a similar fate as they scrambled for cover as the gun-decks became little more than an abattoir of charred corpses and hellish screaming.
THE WANING MOON shuddered as explosions tore through its insides. A destructive chain reaction boiled through the upper decks and into crew quarters. Stern-wards, detonations ripped into engineering sections, normally well shielded from direct hits, and ripped plasma conduits free to spew superheated fluid through access tunnels and coolant ducts.
Damage control crews, waiting at their muster points to douse fires and seal breaches, were torn asunder by the resultant car-72
Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss
nage from amidships. Orderlies at triage posts barely had time to register the pandemonium on the gun decks before the blunt bullet of a warhead thundered through into the medicae deck and annihilated them in a flash of light and terror.
Chains of explosions ripped huge chunks out of the Waning Moon ’s insides. Like massive charred bite marks, whole sections were reduced to smouldering metal and hundreds of crewmen were lost to the cold of the void as the vessel’s structural integrity broke down.
‘REPORT THAT!’ ORDERED Mhotep, clinging to his command throne on the bridge as sections of the ship collapsed around him, revealing bare metal and sparking circuitry. The lights around the bridge were stuttered intermittently as the Waning registered power loss and damage across all decks. Mhotep’s crew were doing their best to marshal some semblance of order, but the attack had been swift and far-reaching.
‘Massive internal and secondary explosions,’ replied Officer Ammon, struggling to keep pace with the warning runes danc-ing madly over the engineering helm, and snapping off further reports. ‘Plasma venting from reactor seven, gun crews non-responsive and medicae has taken severe damage.’
‘Tertiary shielding is breached,’ said Mhotep as the ship-to-ship vox crackled into life.
‘Mhotep, report your status at once! This is Captain Cestus.’
The impacts had shaken the vox array and the Ultramarine’s voice was distorted with static.
‘We are wounded, captain,’ said Mhotep grimly. ‘Some kind of Mechanicum tech that I have never seen before burned our insides.’
‘Our lances are firing,’ Cestus informed him. ‘Can you stay engaged?’
‘Aye, son of Macragge, we’re not done yet.’
A further crackle of static and the vox went dead.
The bridge of the Waning Moon was alive with transmissions from the rest of the ship: some calm, reporting peripheral dam-73
Ben Counter – Battle for the Abyss
age to minor systems; others frantic, from plasma reactor seven and the gun decks, and there were those that were unintelligible through raging fire and screaming: the last words of men and
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