Space Marine Apocalypse (Extinction Fleet Book 3) Read online

  Gunnar had done his best to spread the veterans out among the four crews. Though only he and Mateo had fought a full garm battle force, plenty of the others, like Zeke, had shed their fair share of garm blood in skirmishes over the years.

  While the Einherjar were disposable warriors when it came to individual battles, each marine was functionally immortal, and it was only the blackout or Grendel's poison that took them off the board.

  For men like Gunnar and his crew, there was only the one death, the one chance to make a difference, and in this war, for those who had but the one life to give to the cause, that meant that the faces of one's comrades changed often

  Gunnar watched as his crews loaded giant carbon magazines into the hoppers of each of the quad cannon's multiple barrels. The mechanics freshened the greased gears that allowed the machines to swivel on their gyroscopic mounts, and then double-checked the void seals that encapsulated the one-hundred-eighty-degree field of fire.

  Battery 12 was on the lower section of the Bifrost's second ring, putting them in a position to defend much of the circular star fortress's first and third rings. The crew chief lowered the temperature controls in the chamber by several degrees, pushing it down until he could see his own breath mist in front of his face. When the fighting started, the heat from the cannons would turn this place into a furnace anyway, might as well reduce their energy draw from the central system. Gunnar had no doubts that every spark of power would be needed elsewhere, and he rubbed his hands together to keep them warm as he and the others waited for the enemy to appear. Jarl Edwin was right to have pulled second shift and replaced them with a fresh crew.

  They did not have to wait long.

  Proximity warnings blared over the speakers embedded into the walls, and several visual feeds appeared on Gunnar's command lectern.

  "Hostile ships incoming. Visual confirmation pending," announced Zeke, his target finder pinging on several signals even as Gunnar's lectern showed him the same thing from the central system feed. "We're between them and the sun so they have an eclipse advantage."

  "They've attacked us enough to have learned how to use orbital timing in their favor. We'll get exhaust signatures any second now, as soon as that happens, the Watchman will hit them with the big guns," said Gunnar reassuringly, though he wasn't so much saying it to the crew as he was himself. He still wasn't fully comfortable with his command position, especially since he'd risen to the post after only his first battle. While he had accorded himself well in the skirmishes since then, he'd never commanded during a heavy engagement.

  "Copy, they're firing," responded Zeke, and Gunnar felt the shudder in the deck as vastly larger weapon systems lashed out at the encroaching battle force.

  Gunnar couldn't tell from the readouts just how large the force was, though he could see that it was smaller, he thought, than the one he'd faced all those years ago.

  Fewer ships might not mean a lesser threat, warned his inner voice, the same voice that had led him successfully through a life of violence and squalor before giving himself over to the All-Father. He listened to that voice, always had, and something wasn't adding up.

  "Alpha and Charlie cannons, watch your spinward quadrant in case there are breakaways from the main group," ordered Gunnar suddenly, and then, "Bravo and Delta cannons, eyes forward."

  "What's that voice telling you, Chief?" asked Mateo over the headset, speaking over the command channel that only the crew chief and each team lead could hear.

  "Last time they came right to us, a straight up brawl, guns on guns until one side or the other loses," said Gunner, working it out in his mind even as he spoke, doing his best to follow the data feeding into his command lectern that informed him the larger weapons had begun to swap fire with the oncoming force. "And that looks like what they’re doing, but it feels wrong. After all this time, why do the same thing again?"

  "They're the garm, doing the same thing over and over is how they fight, they wear us down until they can push through," answered Mateo, "It’s how they win, how they've always won. Single-minded and relentless."

  "No offense chief, but don't you think the Watchman is asking that same question?" posed Zeke, his voice holding some reservation at disagreeing with his commander, but Gunnar admitted that it had to be said. "The garm adapt."

  What insight could a shunt have that wouldn't have already been considered by the Watchman and Einherjar command? Skald Wallace had been in command of the Bifrost when Gunnar had fought the great garm force, and even without being the Watchman, the skald had done a fine job of thwarting the enemy's assault.

  Still, that feeling was there, piercing the back of his skull like a needle. He used to get that feeling, hear that voice of warning, during his years as a ganger. When a deal was about to go bad, when a friend was going to stab you in the back, and when he didn't listen to that voice, well, that's why he was a widower and couldn't bear to look at his own daughter. The one time he didn't listen was all it took for his world to be torn apart by the bullets of a rival, and out here in the darkness, he wasn't about to make that mistake again.

  Still, what could twenty men in Battery 12 do to change the course of a massive void battle? Yet, he couldn't shake it.

  Something was out there, and it was coming straight for him.

  "Retract guns! We're about to get hit!" shouted Gunnar, finally giving into his instincts and launching himself into action, going through the emergency blast shield protocols.

  They wouldn't be able to shoot through the thick plates that began to close over the swiftly retracting guns, but that was a fair trade for protection. It was a credit to the crew that they followed his order so quickly and with such discipline.

  In seconds, the guns were retracted, and the shields inched closer to full seal. It was a common tactic in the middle of a firefight, to pull the guns back and weather a fusillade of incoming fire, then to open them up again and return fire. Yet battle, at least for the anti-air weapons, was far from being joined, or so it seemed.

  Gunnar sucked in his breath as the orbit of the Bifrost around the small star from which it drew its power, positioned the fortress in such a way that a glint of light flared against a shape emerging from the darkness of garm space. The crew chief just barely made out the matte black hull of a Prax gunship, one of the deadly vessels used by the skald operators in the name of the All-Father on multitudes of treacherous missions.

  No sooner had Gunner caught a glimpse of the ship than it launched a punishing wave of rockets at the star fortress, the stealth tech of the ship having allowed it to approach undetected during the furious exchange of fire between the Bifrost and the oncoming garm fleet.

  The blast shields sealed shut just before the first of the rockets pounded into the second ring of the star fortress. Battery 12 survived thanks to Gunnar's quick thinking, though as the deck chief looked to his lectern he saw that many of the others had not fared so well. Batteries 10 and 11 were redlined, and the garbled transmission from Jarl Edwin in Battery 13 indicated heavy casualties and only one of their four weapon systems still operational.

  The talk of the fortress was that Skald Thatcher had betrayed the All-Father and humanity, and sided with the garm. Gunnar had never known fully what to believe, as there was so much hearsay and rumor within the ranks of the support staff. The Einherjar were relatively tight-lipped in general, and even the narrative strategy was something spoken of in hushed tones as if none dared to believe it was real.

  That ship, however, was very real, and Gunnar knew that worse was to come.

  "Open the shields and go hot!" shouted Gunnar, "We've got incoming!"

  As the blast shields swiftly retracted, the deck shook with more impacts, though Gunnar had no clue whether they were from Prax rockets or garm ordinance. His lectern was awash in damage alerts and proximity warnings, and through the chaos of his readouts the deck chief could see that Bifrost was in trouble. He did not need Zeke to tell him that much of the Bifrost's spinward side
had been ravaged by enemy fire.

  Suddenly Alpha and Charlie cannons opened up, and the deck pulsed as the recoil dampeners absorbed the tremendous force of the weapons. Gunnar watched as two garm vessels streaked across the viewport, one of them trailing great torrents of blood and viscera from several wounds torn into their broadsides by the cannons.

  In seconds there was an ice trail of frozen gore sparkling in the light of space, and the wounded ship continued to soar into the distance, as if some part of whatever coarse intellect or navigational capacity the individual ship had, was damaged. The other vessel, however, banked hard and sped directly towards the Bifrost, right into the muzzles of Battery 12.

  "Bravo, Charlie, Delta cannons line upon that ship!" ordered Gunnar as he recognized the enemy vessel for what it was. "Alpha stay on spinward, more will come."

  All three weapon systems roared with mechanized fury as the triggermen spat hundreds of plasma bolts at the oncoming vessel. Gunnar hoped it would be enough firepower to stop the beast before it made impact.

  The garm vessel reminded him of an aquatic creature he'd learned about in school as a child, a Manta Ray or Marko Ray, something like that. It had an oblong body that flattened somewhat as it tapered off into wings on either side, like a warped dinner plate, though it had a long tail-like structure, which Gunnar presumed allowed it to stabilize itself once in atmosphere. He'd fought these things before, during his first battle on Bifrost, and knew them to be small-scale transports, capable of flight in hard vacuum and in atmosphere planetside. They were maneuverable and had enough armor plating on their bow that they could weather a significant amount of enemy fire as they approached. It had been a good call to have some of his guns on spinward, as facing down two of them would have been impossible.

  The armor of the oncoming vessel appeared to hold for a moment, and Gunnar's knuckles turned white as he stared at the approaching vessel, silently willing it to die. Just before the craft approached the threat line, a point in space where the lead spotter Zeke had swiftly determined was the minimum safe distance for avoiding a collision and uploaded to Gunnar's lectern, the beast's armor gave in to the tremendous punishment.

  Chitin cracked across the vessel's bow, and the ship's trajectory shifted as the momentum of the ship was overwhelmed by the force of sustained projectile impacts. The ship's axis tipped into the vertical, exposing the topside of the vessel to cannons hungry for a good target.

  "Charlie, strafe the spine," snapped Gunnar as soon as he saw the vessel begin to tilt, and the trigger man adjusted his fire an instant later.

  While Bravo and Delta cannons continued to pulverize the ship's bow, Charlie cannon stitched a line of bolts right up the middle of the vessel. Gunnar watched with satisfaction as he saw several bolts punch through the segmented ridges on the ship's back, causing the vessel to shudder with what Gunnar and his men recognized as a death spasm. The garm vessels were lifeforms just as much as any ripper drone or UltraGarm, and Gunnar imagined that this must have been what it felt like to be one of the Hittia elites who often went safari hunting in the wilds outside the walls of the polluted mega-city.

  Gunnar let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding as the dying ship drifted away from their field of fire. Had the nightmare been able to cross the threat line then it would have smashed into Battery 12. The armored hull of the beast had a significant chance of breaking through, and even if the vessel perished in doing so, it would have been able to vomit forth its cargo.

  Bifrost had been boarded a few times in its history, though every time the incursions had been swiftly suppressed by the armsmen. Gunnar had a feeling that the success of the armsmen had been more about how few boarder swarms were able to make it to the deck than it had been about the potency of the defender's response.

  "Strikers on the approach," announced Zeke, and Gunnar smiled, despite the continued din of the damage alerts and proximity warnings cascading across the screen on his lectern.

  "Cannons at the ready," ordered Gunnar as he watched his gun crews swiftly vent heat and replace exhausted carbon magazines in anticipation. "Alpha, stay where you are, I don't want any more transports swinging around. Damage reports indicate that most anti-air batteries spinward have been disabled or destroyed."

  "Screening maneuver coming from topside," announced Jarl Edwin over the command channel, his voice haggard and the sound of his remaining weapon system firing making it difficult to fully make out his words "Strikers are soaking up fire for another transport ship. Be ready."

  No sooner had the jarl signed off when a swarm of the garm void skirmishers streaked over the viewport. They were hideous creatures that looked more like flying crab claws that had been severed from the crabs they belonged too. Unlike the transport vessels, the strikers would never have been able to muster the propulsion required to operate in atmosphere, though the Hive Mind had little need of them considering the potency of shrieker swarms in conflicts dirtside. The strikers were able to utilize the lack of atmosphere in space to their advantage, and were covered in what Gunnar could only describe as orifices, each one capable of excreting a gas that would propel the craft in any direction, giving it a three hundred and sixty degree range of movement that most other ships, even exclusively void borne ones, did not enjoy.

  Of course, Gunnar thought to himself as his three ready cannons began taking shots at the claw-like vessels, they weren't really craft at all. The strikers had no cargo, only payload, and once they'd fired all of their caustic projectiles, the ships would return from the direction whence they'd come. Often after a star battle, there would be hundreds of them floating in space, just out of weapons range, having flown and fought themselves to death. The larger hive ships would gather them up, presumably to recycle their corpses and grow a new swarm.

  Already his crew had splattered four of the creatures across the void while Alpha cannon pounded bolts into the transport they'd been screening. Gunnar knew the ship would be back, as it was better prepared for Alpha's attack, and had angled its armor towards the cannon. The deck chief was confident that his crew could handle the strikers for now, and so he took a moment to dive into the damage reports on his lectern. While Battery 12 was active and doing its job, the former ganger wanted to see how the rest of the fortress was faring in the aftermath of the Prax assault.

  It only took him about thirty seconds to realize that Bifrost was doomed.

  Whether it was the gunship or the garm, the entire spinward side of Bifrost, the part facing the sun, had been ravaged by the enemy. Gunnar risked several more precious seconds as the tiny voice in his head insisted that he look deeper.

  The deck chief pulled up the timestamps on when different batteries went down and soon a picture of deadly betrayal began to reveal itself. The first victims had been the anti-air batteries, most of which fell moments after Battery 12 was attacked. From what he could see, Gunnar estimated that the Prax gunship had made at least two strafing runs, firing its full payload of rockets and cluster bombs to destroy or radically reduce Bifrost's capacity to defend itself from smaller attack ships and transport craft. While the big guns continued to exchange blows with the massive garm ship-to-ship weapons, according to the buzzing mess that was the full spectrum display of scannable ships in the immediate vicinity, the garm were taking advantage of the gunship's actions even now.

  Gunnar opened up his comms to the ship channel to confirm, and indeed his ears were filled with radio traffic from multiple deck chiefs and fortress command elements. Spine frigates were moving against the fortress in swarms, many sacrificing themselves to the big guns so that others could pass over the threat line unopposed by the now silent anti-air close quarters batteries. As the frigates swapped death for death with the massive fortress weapons, the striker swarms flushed out the few close quarters batteries that were still online, forcing the weapon crews to deal with the claw-like ships while giving the transport vessels a window of approach.

  The garm are inside!


  At first, Gunnar thought it was his inner voice screaming at him, and then he blinked, realizing that it was the voice of Jarl Edwin booming in his ear. The jarl had opened his command channel, and Gunnar, along with the other Battery 12 leads, listened as the sound of shotguns and alien screams filled the line just before it went dead. Mateo did not stray from his weapon and kept shooting. Zeke stood up and turned to face Gunnar, his face draining of color as the sickening reality of events began to overwhelm his mind.

  Gunnar looked up from his lectern, in time to see Bravo cannon pulp a striker as it flew through the weapon's cone of fire. He turned his head and saw Alpha cannon drive off a transport ship that was already somewhat wounded, as the cannon and vessel continued their deadly dance. Delta cannon went down before Gunnar could shake off the shock of what he'd just seen on his lectern, taking a series of direct hits from three strikers that swooped in for a shooting run. Charlie and Bravo slaughtered all three ships as they banked after the run, but the damage was done. Caustic projectiles smashed through the armor of the weapon's cage, exploding as their outer shells were stripped away to cover the gun and the crew in a sort of acidic slime. The last thing Gunnar saw before the automatic vacuum seals slammed shut were the bodies of the men turning to red sludge that mixed with the slag running off of the melting gun.

  "Boarders, sir!" cried Zeke, his voice shrill with near uncontrollable panic, and Gunnar was thankful that most of the other men were so focused on their task that they had not noticed, "We have to clear the deck!"

  "If there are targets in the air we stay on station," Gunnar growled over the command channel as he locked eyes with Zeke, who returned to his chair after a moment's pause.

  The voice in Gunnar's mind was insistent that the battle was lost, and though the deck chief agreed, he wasn't about to abandon his post.