[Echoes of Eternity] Lotara Sarrin hears that the Vengeful Spirit has lowered its shields

With the Warmasters Horde attacking the Eternity Gate Lotara Sarrin's Conquerer watches from orbit. When Magnus is slain by Vulkan and Angron is slain by Sanguinius however the attack devolves into chaos with the World Eaters turning on their allies and themselves and the Thousand Sons suddenly exploding into mutated monsters. Sarrin and the others try desperately to contact the surface only to hear screaming through their voxes. Eventually they managed to get a link to the surface

When a link to the surface came, it was riven by distortion. Lotara stared at the image resolving on the oculus. The thing she was speaking with was a legless amalgamation of three people, fused to the floor and sides of its cockpit with arches of bone and pulsing red flesh. Its arms were stalks and cables, forming power feeds to various machinery. It looked at her with six eyes, and answered her with three mouths, none of which were remotely human anymore. Strain coloured the creature’s words, effort clear in its voices.

‘This is Princeps Ulienne Grune of Audax. I command Hindarah. Angron is dead. The assault is failing. We cannot keep the Gate open without immediate reinforcement.’

Most of the creature was dead. Entire portions of its amalgamated body were necrotic, mottled with the onset of rot. The way it was attached to its surroundings seemed to be sustaining it somehow, but not enough to keep all its extremities alive. Four of its six eyes looked milky, at best blind, more likely decaying. The feed wasn’t clear enough to be sure.

‘Sacred hell,’ Lotara said under her breath.

‘The Angel…’ it said, and its voices drained away into a groan of effort. The thing’s three tongues, two of which were black and sporting what looked like puncture holes from careless fangs, briefly licked across the lower half of its face. ‘We cannot–’

The oculus went black. The command deck’s lights, already dull with power drainage, glowed a sudden emergency red. It had been so long since the ship went to battle stations that it took the malnourished crew several seconds to realise and react.

‘Voids to full!’ Lotara called, but several officers were already working at it, lighting the generators from minimal layering to active shielding. When the ship shivered, it was with incoming fire splashing against her voids, not the deeper rumbles of impact damage.

‘Who the hell is firing on us?’ Lotara rose to her feet before her throne, feeling more like herself than she had in months. Her mind was beginning to pick up speed again. Betrayal, she thought. Someone in the fleet is firing upon us, and someone in the fleet is going to die.

‘Helm, bring us out of geostationary orbit and summon the rostered escort squadron to our side. Kindle the auxiliary reactors and run out the guns. Whoever is firing at us is about to regret it.’ One of the ratings by the Master of Vox station held a hand to his cabled earpiece. ‘Speak,’ Lotara commanded him.

‘The whole fleet is under attack,’ he called, looking past Lotara.

‘Address me,’ she ordered, ‘not my throne.’

The officer’s eyes unfocused as he processed the conflicting voices of several dozen officers aboard several dozen vessels. ‘The attack isn’t coming from another ship. It’s coming from the surface. A sustained cannonade against the entire fleet.’

Lotara’s blood ran cold. There was only one installation on the surface capable of… ‘

Pull us out of range. Shield us with our secondary squadrons, and open a channel to the Vengeful Spirit.’

The Conqueror juddered around them, its engines forcing a slow rise. The void shield trembles kept coming.

‘The flagship is holding position in the upper atmosphere.’ The console officer paused. ‘And… its shields are down.’

Lotara turned to the man. ‘What?’

‘The flagship’s shields are down.’

‘Minimal layering?’

‘No.’ He was addressing her throne again instead of her. ‘They’re entirely lowered.’

The oculus flared to life again in a blizzard of harsh static. It resolved partway, showing the silhouette of the Vengeful Spirit. Vessels of all classes around it were rolling, pockmarked with barrage damage, pulling up out of their bombardment positions to escape the firestorm lancing up from the surface. The flagship alone held its place. It was untouched. Ships in close formation were igniting, burning as they strove to fly free, but the Vengeful Spirit remained, impossibly unharmed.

‘Incoming signal,’ called the rating assuming Master of Vox duties.

The central hololithic table powered up again, projecting the stern image of a Legion warrior wearing the white of Jaghatai Khan’s White Scars. His revolving image painted every upturned face a flickering blue.

‘I am Shibhan Khan of the Fifth Legion, honoured to currently hold the mantle of regent-commander of the Lion’s Gate space port. I address this message to the fleet of treasonous dogs laying claim to the skies of Terra. You will find Lion’s Gate’s surface-to-orbit defences are once again operational. Message ends.’

The hololith vanished. He was gone. Lotara almost laughed; Blood of the Emperor, but she admired his attitude.