Finding the Notch
It used to be a regular planet. A typical Agri-World in the Segmentum Solar, loyal to the Imperium. Then, once the Emperor left and the Father rose in his place, it continued to be the same for Him. Then, of course, once the war came too close, it became abandoned, the humans upon it either fleeing or dying.
And now, it was nothing. A blank sea of molten rock.
Not that anyone fired a shot at it. The events above simply made it inevitable.
Sixty million kilometres away, Marshal Dimarsun surveyed the battlefield. For the past three weeks, this system has been the site of one of the fiercest battles of the Dragon War.
Though unremarkable as little as a hundred years ago, that changed soon after the Sane decided to deploy strategic weapons. As the shockwaves in both Materium and Immaterium settled, it became obvious they settled unevenly. Thus, this system became a chokepoint. Any ship that went to this front had to pass within three light months of it or risk severe delays.
Two months ago, the Sane have managed to take the system and start fortifying it. For the next fifty years - or the next use of Strategics - this would give them an advantage. Barring enemy interference.
Dimarsun scowled at the displays. Interference there was. And forces to counter it. A dozen Attack Moons. Two World Engines. Three Craftworlds.
And, of course, two War Worlds, one of them
Ka'vulg's Steel.
He remembered ending up in command. A few decades ago, he was but one officer upon it. A promising one, but still one among trillions. And then, the Q-Hour came.
They have all been told to prepare for the deployment of Strategics, yet nothing could have prepared them for
this.
The space ran thick with fissures of void beyond darkness and light. Thousands of ships were swallowed whole or torn apart.
Steel was among the former.
He did his best not to recall the feeling of that moment. And when he did, it was nothing he could have ever described to another.
He was shattered. Nonexistent. Nothing had meaning anymore. No training could have helped him.
And when he finally became himself again, it was hell.
It wasn't even the hell of the usual Warp; that one he knew. Creatures of unreality beyond daemons, dark madness infecting both survivors and corpses. It was impossible to describe how this was different from the Warp realms he was taught about, but it was.
Could they have stumbled upon the edges of the Time War?
Nobody knew how long it lasted. They did their best to fortify, to bring shields and factories back online, to raise more of their number…
Trillions perished still. But somehow, he always survived. Tempered by the battles, he became the leader of whatever organization could be said to exist among the survivors.
And then, one day, the navigation systems on the bridge spoke. Among the featureless chaos of their surroundings, suddenly, one direction had meaning.
They steered the War World toward it at once. As they did, the horrors pressed upon them from all sides, eager to either destroy them or escape themselves.
And once
Steel had arrived in that location, they saw a tunnel. A tunnel they entered without hesitation.
As the ship travelled through, they weren't alone. More of it could be seen, could be felt. Splitting off the War World, merging back with it. Countless copies being guided, losing the path, finding it, splitting to search for more…
And finally, he was outside. The War World was outside.
Of course, there was much debate about what to do with them. Krork were sturdy, but there was still worry about whether to let them back on the frontlines. And of course there was much reluctance about putting him in charge.
However, other voices spoke then. Both the Farseers of the Ynnari, the Blind Seer of the humans, even Lord Imbac himself, all said the remains of the crew should remain upon the ship. They all stated that only this way can the full potential of
Ka'vulg's Steel be achieved.
Endless streams of ships, both Sanity and C'tan, were flowing into the system. Additional streams were flowing out of both the War Worlds and the Moons; drones, defence stations, sensors, jammers…
Judging from the displays, victory was maybe three hours away, barring unforeseen circumstances.
No sooner did he finish that last thought than red alarms flashed all over the main bridge.
"Commander," the First Officer reported. "We've lost
Flameshade.
Third Spearpoint is reporting severe drain to the shields. And… the Necrons are falling back."
An Attack Moon lost and the second War World under attack. Dimarsun was about to say something nasty about the necrobones, but the words got caught in his throat as soon as he saw the display.
A smooth sphere just over the size of an Attack Moon. Shining with the sickly green pseudolight of a C'tan.
A Dragonclaw.
He never encountered one, of course. Even the Veterans never saw one with their own eyes. Not big for a Planetary, they were instead the concentration of the whole skill and knowledge of Mag'ladroth in that volume. Thankfully, the investment of effort and resources was immense, as was the control required. The name was no metaphor; each of the Planetaries was under the direct command of the C'tan's consciousness. Even during the peak of the War in Heaven, there were never more than five deployed.
Unfortunately, that helped little right now. Two War Worlds were not a force which was supposed to have a decent chance against a Dragonclaw. Weapons which could harm one could, theoretically, be installed on one, but the odds of encountering one unsupported made it low priority. The Warfield contained no such designs.
There was only one tactic they could attempt. One that succeeded maybe one time in fifty.
"All forces, MC7 protocol! Execute immediately."
He half expected the commander of the
Third Spearpoint to contradict his order, but he remained silent even as millions of ships threw all they could at the sphere, often themselves included.
The shields of the C'tan Planetary were too perfect. Too smooth. Under the proper strain, they could be made regular enough for a resonance pattern.
"All the Lances in sectors nine to sixteen are to be charged to maximum. Disable all safeties on Lance Twenty-Three and overcharge it into Designer Red. Put them all under my direct control."
Dozens of Gravatic Lances from both War Worlds slammed into the enemy. The sensors indicated it was time.
"There is a problem, Marshal," an Aeldari voice suddenly spoke out of the comm. "The interference from the Dragonclaw is above what was recorded in the past. With the difficulties in divining lately… we can only provide limited accuracy."
Dimarsun nodded grimly:
"Do what you can. Let everyone do so."
The one chance in fifty was now one in five hundred at most.
The huge ship turned around. The fully charged Gravatic Lances now pointed at the Dragonclaw, under his direct command.
"This is Marshal Staldra" another transmission came through. "Our shields are down. Main weapons inoperable."
Three of the remaining Attack Moons moved to lend whatever assistance they could to the crippled War World. Thankfully, they were mostly ignored. But now, the Dragonclaw's attention was fully on
Steel.
Dimarsun looked at the status of the shields. If this attack failed, they won't get another chance.
He received what data he could from allies and fed it through his implants. The enormous guns shifted ever so slightly, tracking a carefully calculated pattern upon the enemy shields.
But right as he was about to unleash them, the world
broke.
He saw each Lance become a hundred. For each, he saw a hundred paths the shot took. Some clipping the Dragonclaw's escorts, diverted just that tiny bit. Some, shooting a millisecond later due to an error. For each, only one path led toward the proper pattern.
The Ynnari would have helped him find these paths. Now, they struggled to do so. But somehow, incomprehensibly,
he could see them.
Twenty blasts slammed into the shield of the Dragonclaw. They didn't break through, but the smoothing of the shield made a perfectly circular shockwave travel inward. Then, ten more were added to it, amplifying the wave. Then five.
Dimarsun now faced the hardest part of all. Overcharged, the final Lance had to strike at the exact right moment to add to that shockwave, hopefully creating a breach.
But how could it be done?
The possibilities of fate slammed into him. The Gravatic Lance veering off course, firing too early or too late, blowing up before it could unleash the full charge…
The hammering of the possibilities were a fire in his brain. Pain beyond belief. Almost blinded, he could see but one thing.
A notch is space and chance.
The Lance found it.
And with a twitch of his mind, it let loose.
Slowly, Dimarsun came to. He could feel blood flowing down his face. Some of the other officers were down at him with concern.
"Are you well, Commander?" The helmsman asked.
"I am, Avzgran," he answered as he rose from the floor. "How long was I out?"
"One hundred and ten seconds."
Wiping his forehead, the Marshal looked at the displays. Whatever he did, the results could not be denied.
A hole the size of a dreadnought was carved deep into the enemy moon's surface. The fleets were pouring whatever firepower they could into the breach, hoping to finally finish it. The Dragonclaw, from what the sensors could tell, had some of its shields online, but was only attacking back sporadically. Like it couldn't gather its wits.
What remained of the rest of the Dragon fleet was a little better off, doing their best to shield the breach with their own bodies. The swarm was thinning, but might hold long enough.
"Charge up all Lances in sectors one to eight."
"They haven't cooled down yet," the First Officer protested. "We are risking…"
"Override the safeties. We are not risking the Dragonclaw escaping."
"Marshal Staldra, what's your status?" he opened the comm channels to the other War World. "We need a Lance salvo."
"Serious damage, Marshal Dimarsun. Our shields are still down. The weapons are better off, but we won't be able to give a salvo of more than ten."
"Then ten it is."
"We can add some of our own, Krork," a metallic voice came from his speaker.
"I take it you're not as cautious now about keeping distance, Necron."
"The Dragonclaw does not seem in a condition for a serious hacking attack," the voice replied without a hint of being offended. "Ready to unleash fire when you are."
"So are we," the three Craftworld commanders spoke in unison.
The Marshal looked at the status of his own cannons.
"Sending targeting solutions over. All ships, fire everything in twenty… ten…"
Out of the twenty Gravatic Lances of Ga'vulg's Steel which could be charged up in time, three fizzled out. One exploded, carving a state-sized crater into the ship's hull. The rest, however, struck true.
Out of the seven remaining Attack Moons, four were in a condition to fire their own Gravatic Lances.
Thirty planet-shattering blasts shot true, slamming into the breach. The eldritch blasts of the Craftworlds, the strange weapons of the World Engines, the other, puny in comparison weapons of both the Planetaries and regular fleets, all added their power to that salvo.
It wasn't a moment too soon. The enemy ship was already recovering. Just a few milliseconds before the salvo hit, the vessel finally started slowly turning around. Fifteen seconds more, and the weapons would have hit an undamaged part.
As it was, the Dragonclaw pulsed green for a moment, then purple, then bobbed briefly…
Like leaves in a firestorm, the clustered Dragon fleets were consumed by a vortex of pure white flame appearing in their midst. Once it cleared, no trace of the Planetary remained.
Dimarsun collapsed into his seat. It was over. For now.
"Impressive, Marshal," the Aeldari voice came through again. "We have notified the rest of the forces to press the advantage while it lasts."
The Marshal nodded to himself. One of the reasons Dragonclaws were deployed so rarely was the risk. With the amount of Mag'ladroth's attention each required, the destruction of one meant severe backlash.
"But I must say, we have felt what you did earlier. How you navigated the timelines. Not something we have ever encountered with one of you. Seems like your time being lost left more of a mark than we knew. Seems the Seers were right to insist that you be in command of the ship."
"I doubt this is something me and the ship can do again any time soon. Maybe not ever," the Krork closed his eyes. "Not on this scale, at least."
Thanks to anyone who looked over the draft.
@Durin, a piece about the Dragon War.
(Note: the method to destroy the Dragonclaw was stolen shamelessly from an ancient crossover named
Thirty Years Warning).
