Chapter 63: Breaking the Shield

Chapter 63: Breaking the Shield

After a swift and brutal firefight, Petros's squad breached the facility's core. The corridors here were narrower, the bulkheads reinforced.

They passed through a final blast door and entered the objective. They stood before one of the primary planetary shield generators.

Petros stared at the massive device. He had seen such things before, but its sheer scale and complexity were still awesome. The generator's exposed core was a massive, glowing sphere of energy, its low, thrumming hum vibrating in the deck-plates.

It was an ancient, polyhedral structure of adamantium and strange archaeotech, its surface covered in intricate, glowing matrices. This device, a relic from the Dark Age of Technology, had protected the billions of souls on this world for millennia.

Today, its service would end.

"Phelon," Petros ordered. "Plant the charges."

The Warpsmith unclipped the melta-bombs from his belt and began affixing them to the generator's critical power-conduits. Once the charges were set, the five-man squad retreated, moving at a fast, tactical pace back the way they came.

A distant, heavy thud vibrated through the facility. The objective was complete. As they ran, they could hear the thump-thump-thump of bolter fire in the distance—the other squads, having completed their own objectives, were now converging on their position.

The entire ground operation, from the first sentry's death to the generator's destruction, had taken less than ten minutes. They had overestimated the PDF.

"Mission complete," Petros voxed to the fleet. "Planetary shield generator is offline."

At that exact moment, in the captured starport's command center, Barnabas gave his own order. He had spent the last ten minutes targeting the planetary defense batteries—their locations all neatly provided by the late Port-Master.

"All station batteries," he commanded. "Fire at will."

A storm of orbital lances and macro-cannon shells rained down from the sky. The planetary defense batteries, their own shields now gone, were systematically annihilated.

As long as the starport remained in its geosynchronous orbit, the defense network on the other side of the planet was irrelevant.

With the ground-based defenses silenced, three Drop Pods launched from The Judgment's Edge, each carrying five Astartes. Fifteen warriors, aimed like a spear, plunged toward the hive's main spire.

Following them, the Warband's air-wing launched.

A single Storm Eagle gunship, still painted in the false yellow of the Imperial Fists, led the charge. "Storm One," the pilot voxed, "engines hot. Engaging."

Four Thunderhawks, piloted by the newly-blooded neophytes, fell into formation. Their mission: air superiority. In one of the cockpits, Valerius gripped his controls, his knuckles white. He had been a co-pilot at Cadia, and he remembered the terrifying chaos of the dogfight. This was his first time as lead pilot.

Behind them came the mortal assets: the seven captured Valkyrie transports and the six Avenger Strike Fighters. In total, the Warband had only eighteen aircraft, and only that many trusted mortal pilots.

From the hive-spire's own launch-bays, the PDF scrambled their response: a cloud of 200 fighters. They had a ten-to-one advantage in numbers, but most were light, atmospheric-only craft, never intended to fight Astartes-grade gunships.

"All units, maintain formation!" the PDF wing commander ordered, his voice tight with uncertainty. "Use your numbers! Swarm them!"

The battle was joined. The Storm Eagle opened fire, its heavy cannons vaporizing three PDF fighters in the first pass. The Thunderhawks' twin-linked heavy bolters tore through the unarmored craft, turning them to shrapnel. The Avengers and Valkyries added their own firepower, a stream of las-fire and missiles.

The PDF fighters were fragile, their formation breaking under the onslaught.

"We're tearing them apart!" the Thunderhawk lead voxed. "Maintain the attack!"

"By the Throne... it's a slaughter," Valerius breathed, his fear replaced by a cold, deadly focus. He jinked, evading a burst of autocannon-fire, and lined up his own shot.

The PDF commander, in a panic, ordered his remaining craft to scatter. "All units, break off! Swarm them! Don't let them concentrate fire!"

It was useless. The Astartes-piloted gunships were too fast, their armor too thick, their gunners too precise. The Thunderhawk gunners, in particular, were methodically swatting the PDF "flies" from the sky.

The PDF wing broke and routed. The Warband's air-wing, their blood up, began to hunt them down.

Inside his Thunderhawk, Valerius watched a bogey disintegrate under his guns. "This," he voxed, his voice filled with a savage joy, "is nothing like Cadia!"

His flight leader's voice crackled back, "We're not good enough to take on the Imperial Navy, boy. But we're more than good enough to take out this trash."