In a maddening rush, Helios’ senses returned to him.
His armour’s auto-senses recalibrated, flooding his retinas with a wash of emergency icons. He checked the chronogram at the edge of his visor. Only seconds had transpired, yet the scene before him was wholly different to what it had once been.
The entire landing bay was on fire. Flames gushed like ink spreading through water from ruptured promethium tanks, ignited by the sparks of crashing metal and fed by pockets of trapped air still within the frigate.
The void beyond the hangar doors was turning at a violent speed, sending cargo crates and loose debris flying about in all directions. Through the flames, Helios could see the lighter was intact and still within the bay. He began to move towards it, as a titanic groan and a chorus of shearing metal pitched the world forward.
The internal gyros of the Chaplain’s armour whirred and locked as he fought to recover his balance, the magnetic soles in his boots keeping him upright. He felt the tendons in his legs strain and torque as he started to struggle towards the lighter. The small shuttle began to slide towards the open bay doors, sparks fountaining from its landing claws as they ground against the deck plating.
‘Seneca,’ Helios called out over the vox, the fire and debris that filled the air interfering with his ability to locate the squad’s armour transponders. ‘Ariston, Nicanor, if anyone can receive me, respond.’
Tongues of flame hissed against his armour, blistering away the ebon paint on its plates. Warnings trilled at the corner of his eye, informing him of dangerous internal temperature spikes within his suit. Helios bent forward, resisting the gale of escaping air, and pressed on.
Helios spotted a glimmer of cobalt in the corner of his eye. His visor display detected the transponder of a warrior approaching from behind him, manoeuvring through the collapsed network of twisted rebar.
‘Kyros,’ Helios called out through the flames. Turning back, he activated the power field of his crozius, hacking away at the debris that separated him and the Primaris Marine like a jungle world primitive clearing a path through suffocating foliage. With a snarl of effort, Helios pried away the remaining tangles of burning metal, and Kyros moved to his side.
‘Brother.’ Helios gave Kyros a curt nod and gestured towards the shuttle. ‘We must make haste, the ship is coming apart around us.’
The Primaris Marine’s helm was a mangled ruin, one side badly crushed and oozing a sheet of dark blood from a spider’s web of fractures. The area around his left eye had been torn completely open, exposing a bright orb of bloodshot hazel. They began to push forward through the inferno, watching the lighter as it slowly slid towards the void, further from their reach.
‘Salvation is just ahead of us, Brother Kyros,’ said Helios, the flames marring the vox into a static wash. ‘We will make it!’
They heard the clatter of armoured boot steps, and a trio of Iron Warriors emerged into the hangar. Seeing them, Kyros came to a halt.
‘Leave them,’ said Helios. ‘The ship shall be their grave. Our destiny lies beyond here.’
Kyros did not move.
‘Kyros!’
‘Go, Brother-Chaplain,’ said Kyros. He hefted his bolt rifle in one hand, and drew a melta charge in the other. ‘These dogs will meet their end at an Ultramarine’s hands.’
‘Leave them, you fool, this is not the time!’
‘Brothers,’ said Kyros across the squad-wide vox. ‘Remember me, and suffer no enemy. We march for Macragge!’
Helios watched Kyros charge back, catching one last glimpse of the Primaris Marine before a burst of screaming flame filled the space between them.
‘Kyros!’ Helios roared, fighting between running after his squad member and withdrawing to the shuttle. The melta charge detonated seconds later, making the decision for him.
The blast hurled Helios back clear from the deck. Kyros’ ident rune vanished on his retinal display. Helios hissed an angry benediction between his teeth, and refocused. He disengaged the magnetic locks of his boots, leapt up and aimed himself at the lighter, arrowing his body and reaching for the shuttle as it slipped through the doors.
With a sharp bleat, Helios’ armour sealed against hard vacuum. He triggered his inbuilt thruster pack, grimacing as an impotent sputter was the only response. He blink-clicked the command again, and again, his frame shuddering as the damaged propulsion unit struggled and failed to comply. The lighter slipped further away.
Prayer worked from his lips as he closed his eyes. Opening them, Helios calmly gave the command. His thrusters coughed and threw him forward with a burst of frantic force, sending him hurtling in the lighter’s direction. But he was approaching too fast. Far too fast.
The shuttle rushed up before him, flashing into view as he rolled. The impact nearly drove the air from his lungs as he struck the port side and skipped down its downswept wing and towards the back of the fuselage. Helios twisted, reaching out to seize hold of anything on the craft’s hull to stop his momentum. His fingertips scraped against the lighter’s wing, gouging shallow tracks into its metal skin, but it was not enough to slow him. He lost hold, and began to slip away from it.
An arm shot out as he lost contact with the hull, taking hold of his wrist in a vice-like grip. Another grabbed him by the collar, hauling him forward through the open rear hatch of the Arvus.
A single red lumen gave thin illumination to the interior of the lighter. Helios saw Ariston and Nicanor crouched within the cabin, the latter reaching forwards to help Caprico pull the Chaplain the rest of the way inside before sealing the rear hatch behind them.
The Primaris Marines had stripped the Arvus of everything not absolutely essential to clear space, yet still the hatch could barely close with their combined bulk. Lighters such as the Arvus were light cargo ferries, not designed with the dimensions of Space Marines in mind, let alone the even larger Primaris brethren. Seneca was crushed into the forward section, having torn the control throne out of the cockpit to allow himself access. The twin engines on either side of the shuttle’s main fuselage ground and protested, sending reverberations through the hull as Seneca attempted to bring the tiny vessel’s systems online.
Caprico looked back to the cockpit as the hatch sealed. ‘We have him.’
‘Zeta Four through Eleven stand by for monotask.’ The vox rang harshly within Zosime’s helm as she curled her Hell Blade back away from the Damnatio Memorae.
‘Execute attack run on opposition Destroyer – Hunter-class.’
She snorted a nosebleed back into her nostrils. The squadron, or rather what was left of it, had been sprinting between the two vessels since the engagement began, surging forward to harass the enemy destroyer before falling back to intercept the salvos of ship-killing torpedoes it fired. Fighter by fighter, their numbers dropped, lost to the enemy’s defensive cannons or in suicidal crashes to destroy torpedoes.
Zosime ran a cursory diagnostic as she aimed her Hell Blade back towards the enemy ship. Her fuel was dwindling, dangerously approaching empty. Her autocannon had long since starved of ammunition, while her lascannon was malfunctioning from overuse, locking as often as firing as its internal systems were frying to slag a shot at a time.
The destroyer expanded in view as Zosime approached, a stout crenelated spear of cobalt and gold. The colours meant nothing to her. She had no hatred for the warship’s crew, the world they hailed from or the masters they served. Zosime had fought ship to ship inside the storms of the Eye. She had made war alongside warbands of disparate demigods, and turned upon them moments later when the whims of her master had changed. To her, this was only another enemy.
Triangular icons blinked on her auspex display, as more Hell Blades from the squadron joined her in the attack run. Zosime mouthed words to the spirits of the grasslands, a prayer whose feeling she remembered from the world of her birth. Ranges ticked down on her consoles, bleeding the distance between them away as she hurtled towards firing range.
Zosime’s thumb hovered over the firing stud of her lascannon as the targeting reticule flushed crimson. ‘Dancers dance,’ she whispered.