Chapter 13: Boarding Action
Petros and five Battle-Brothers were sealed inside the boarding torpedo as it launched from The Ironclad.
As the torpedo neared the enemy void shield, its thrusters cut, and it decelerated rapidly. Once it drifted through the shield boundary, its main drive ignited, accelerating it hard. This was the known vulnerability of void shields and, indeed, most Imperial shielding: they stop high-velocity impacts, not slow-moving objects.
With a violent shudder, the torpedo's melta-charge warhead detonated, vaporizing a section of the hull. The torpedo punched through the molten slag and into the ship's interior.
Petros had been certain they wouldn't fire. Even if they had, the point-defense on a civilian freighter would have been lucky to hit them.
The assault ramp slammed down. Petros, boarding shield locked and bolter raised, led the charge. His five brothers fanned out behind him. The pounding of boots echoed from the corridor. A squad of ship's armsmen in flak armor ran up, their weapons slung or held at port-arms, safeties visibly engaged, not daring to provoke the Angels of Death.
The lead officer snapped to attention, making the sign of the Aquila across his chest. "My Lord, we—"
THUMP!
Before the man could finish, a mass-reactive bolt detonated his skull. Petros's bolter was still smoking, aimed from the hip. The other brothers opened fire. The armsmen, their weapons still on their backs, were cut down. It wasn't a fight. It was a one-sided slaughter.
Simultaneously, Antonius and the other six brothers were storming the Vagabond-class hauler. The plan was to seize both ships at once.
After clearing the breach point, Petros's order came over the internal vox.
"'Kaelen, Gregor, with me. We take the bridge. Fledri, you and the other two secure the Enginarium."
"To the Forge!" Petros bellowed.
"And We are Forged to Steel!" his brothers roared in reply.
This was standard void-combat doctrine, a professional tactic. The bridge is the brain; the engine is the legs. Seize both, and the ship is a helpless prize, its command structure decapitated and its mobility gone.
This was war, not... theatre. Not like some deviants in purple armor, who would board the lower decks just to slaughter ten thousand thralls for the sound of it. That kind of undisciplined excess just gave the real enemy—the trained armsmen and any Astartes defenders—time to organize a counter-assault. Petros and his squad had been forced to "plug the leaks" of such an idiotic maneuver more than once. His grimace, he assured himself, was purely tactical. Damned fools.
The two fire-teams split. In the cramped confines of a ship's corridor, an Astartes isn't an infantryman. He's a walking tank.
They encountered token resistance. A few armsmen, still dazed and confused, hearing the ship-wide alarm too late. They heard the THUD-THUD-THUD of ceramite boots, like hammers on the deck, and then a massive boarding shield would round the corner, followed by bolter fire. They were dead before they could even raise their lasguns.
The ship's captain finally realized what was happening. This wasn't an inspection. It was a hostile takeover. The ship-wide vox crackled: "All hands, all hands! Boarders are hostile! We are under attack! All armsmen, repel boarders! Repel!"
Too late. Petros was already near the bridge. As he rounded a junction, a high-intensity beam slammed into his shield. A twin-linked lascannon. The heavy weapon's rapid fire actually drove him back a step, leaving a dozen pockmarks in the adamantium.
He should have anticipated this. Even on a freighter, the bridge would be the final, hardened strongpoint.
Petros fell back, reaching for a krak grenade. But Kaelen, the brother with the heavy flamer, stepped up. "My Lord. Permit me?"
Petros nodded, and Kaelen took the corner.
He thrust the heavy flamer around the bulkhead and pulled the trigger. A torrent of burning promethium—a roaring fire-drake—blasted down the corridor.
Kaelen loved the flamer for boarding actions. It didn't need to hit the mortals to kill them. The superheated air flash-cooked them, and the fire consumed all the oxygen in the sealed corridor. The ship's pathetic ventilators couldn't cope. In an instant, the mortals manning the lascannon collapsed, suffocating in their own armor.
Kaelen grinned, breathing the cool, recycled air in his helm. Brother Phelon had once quoted some ancient text to him: "The most powerful poison is oxygen itself." Kaelen didn't really understand the logic, but he loved the result. The brothers didn't even waste bolts on the collapsed mortals, just crushed their skulls underfoot as they advanced.
They reached the bridge hatch. Petros fired a tight three-round burst, weakening the plasteel, then shattered the spot with a single, thunderous blow from his gauntlet. A few las-beams lanced out from the opening, sparking harmlessly off his pauldron. He ignored them, armed a frag grenade, and tossed it through the hole. The WHUMP of the detonation and the screams within were satisfying.
Petros kicked the ruined door from its hinges and the three Astartes stormed the bridge. The dozen or so armsmen inside were cut down in a spray of precise, single-shot bolts. Kaelen, holding his heavy flamer in one hand, was firing his bolt pistol with the other, a picture of joyous slaughter.
They leveled their weapons at the senior crew. Petros activated his external vox.
"Captain. This ship is now our prize. You have two choices. Surrender, or die."
The captain, a man with a short, neat beard, glared at them, his face purple with rage, his teeth gritted. "You... you damned traitors! Heretics! I will never surrender to you! The Emperor will see you damned for this!"
He reached for the laspistol at his hip.
THUMP!
A single bolt from Petros's gun obliterated the man's hand and forearm in a red spray.
"Foolish," Petros grunted, giving an honest assessment. "But he has courage."