here, it seems. Drowned in cultist mayhem while being hacked apart by the Traitor World Eaters, with daemons picking over our bones and the fearful semblance of the Blood God himself looking on with primordial satisfaction.
This would be a distracting notion enough, amongst the bolt-rounds and roaring teeth of chainaxes – but then the sepulchre wall behind me explodes.
Sharp fragments of ancient brick, stone and mortar flew across the cloistrium like shrapnel. The remainder of the sepulchre wall fell away in large pieces, revealing the interior of the repository to the stars. Chewing up the rubble and masonry on the polished sepulchre floor, Punisher rolled out on its rugged tracks. The Thunderfire cannon’s quad-barrelled muzzles smoked with the demolishing blast, and the targeting reticula mounted on its back blazed with the life of its machine-spirit through the billowing dust cloud.
During the initial assault, with Punisher having received its locking and loading libations, ritual targeting protocols, prayers and appeasements from Frater Astrotechnicus Dancred, the Thunderfire cannon had dutifully held its part of the perimeter. Dancred had attached a caterpillar flatbed trailer to the itinerant cannon to aid self-loading and assigned Punisher its own part of the battlement to defend. Unconcerned by fleeing cemetery worlders, dying Guardsmen and the horror of otherworldly threats, the machine prioritised enemy targets according to a simple equation based upon size and closing distance. This had seen the Thunderfire cannon through the horror of the immaterial assault and helped the ordnance hold the line all but alone on its eastern section of the battlement.
Following the invasion, with no further catechisa or protocol forthcoming in the wake of Techmarine Dancred’s death, the cannon had merely continued its still, silent vigil of the eastern battlement. Dancred had provided the cannon’s machine-spirit with modus-contingencia, including an inner-city ‘hunt and destroy’ protocol, should the battlement be overrun in the initial assault. Since the perimeter had held, Punisher simply waited – quiet and unnoticed by forces re-fortifying the section in preparation for the incoming Cholercaust. Charnel Guardsmen, Sisters of Battle and Excoriators assumed that the cannon was dead, like the Techmarine it had taken to following like a faithful hound.
With the resurgence of hostilities on the eastern perimeter, the Punisher returned to automotive and explosive life. As the Cholercaust swamped battlements all over the city, including the one upon which the cannon was unsuspectingly stationed, Punisher fell to its ‘hunt and destroy’ duties in the small, sloped streets and alleyways of the cemetery world city.
As the dust cleared, fresh targets presented themselves in profusion. Heretics. Daemonic entities. Enemy Adeptus Astartes. The completion of a cold equation prompted Punisher’s quad-barrel to start cycling and its trailer feed system to begin loading the rotating breeches. A large etherform attempting to enter the cloistrium received Punisher’s initial attention. The creature received an explosive shell in the face as well as several follow-up shots that momentarily drove it back to a less threatening range. Lesser entities attempted to rush the cannon, but the Punisher stopped them in their tracks with a succession of volleys at the kill zone before the cannon, turning the creatures into scraps of smouldering daemonflesh. The cannon targeted the foundations of a nearby building in order to economically stall the advance of multiple heretic signatures. The old hermitage wall to which the foundation belonged collapsed, burying the heretics in an avalanche of stone as well as temporarily blocking off the entry point, which the Thunderfire cannon’s machine-spirit had swiftly designated as tactically significant.
The enemy Adeptus Astartes closed with the cannon, but Punisher detected only small arms and close-quarter weaponry. The Thunderfire cannon sent a rhythmic barrage at the advancing contingent, blasting power-armoured bodies apart and around the confines of the cloistrium. The assault defied the machine-spirit’s calculations, and Punisher found itself turning its barrels time and again back to the enemy Adeptus Astartes, who even with body parts blown off, continued in their attempts to reach the cannon.
As the Thunderfire cannon blasted the cloistrium to rock dust, it felt the surface contact of a gauntlet pat it on its ceramite exterior shell. Several Adeptus Astartes in Chapter colours were exiting the cloistrium up a stairwell situated in the building through which the Thunderfire cannon had just passed. Discounting the gesture as non- threatening, and confirming plate markings as those belonging to Excoriators company command, the cannon decided to hold its current station and carry out the spiritual necessities of its ‘hunt and destroy’ protocol.
‘Anything from Padre Gnarls?’ Commander Heiss of the Apotheon demanded. She sat on the edge of her throne, her slender hands forming a pyramid over her nose and mouth. Midshipman Randt had a vox-speaker to his ear. He shook his head. The small bridge was silent. Ensigns clung grimly to pulpit rails, listening to the sound of murder and mayhem in distant parts of the ship. Even sickly servitors had stopped chattering their lingua-technis. Deck lamps flickered on and off, and pict-screens displayed ghostly static. The lancet viewport had a spidery crack running through it from the Apotheon’s last ramming attempt.
‘Last transmission reported boarders on all decks,’ Randt said. ‘Nothing from the padre or the boatswain since then.’
‘Gun batteries?’
‘All gun crews assigned to the repelling parties.’
‘Enginarium?’
‘The enginseer and his menials have barricaded themselves in. They confirm critical damage to the mainstage engines due to sabotage and vandalism.’
‘What do we have?’
‘Life support – for now,’ the midshipman informed her. ‘Vox-comms, auspectia and targeting all still on line. Limited manoeuvrability through docking thrusters and, of course, the lance… But that depends upon the enginarium holding out.’
Heiss nodded slowly.
The lone defence monitor had made good on its promise to take the fight to the invading Cholercaust fleet. The Apotheon’s lance had visited crippling damage on a score of bloated troop transports, Adeptus Astartes frigates and daemonic vessels, as well as destroying outright an Infidel-class raider displaying traitor colours. The monitor had also managed to damage several other craft with strikes from her reinforced Voss prow. The larger vessels, including a Traitor battle-barge, paid the Apotheon no heed. No Cholercaustian would offend their Blood God with distant and cowardly thunder from their cannons. Nearly the entire Chaos fleet was now in equatorial low orbit around Certus-Minor, having disgorged their bays and freight compartments of all description of overladen landing craft. Several smaller ships, piratical marauders and assault boats had managed to acquire the defence monitor, deploying grapnels and hull-mounted harpoons to entangle the Apotheon before cutting her open and flooding the Adeptus Ministorum vessel with cannibalistic killers.
Heiss jumped as a solitary impact struck the command deck bulkhead. They had been expecting it and still it had made her heart leap in her chest. She had ordered the bulkhead sealed off and put two members of the Naval security team on the door. It seemed ridiculous now as the two flak-armoured figures backed from the thunder building on the bulkhead with their lascarbines clutched to their sides. The boarders had reached the bridge – which meant that they must have finished their slaughter spree and picking through the innards of the repelling parties. The bulkhead was designed to resist the void in the event of a hull breach and so had a fair chance of holding the fists, rifle butts and improvised rams of the cannibal marauders. Still, all eyes remained on the metal and pressure wheel of the door. All but Midshipman Randt’s. He was looking at the Apotheon’s long range auspectral scope, and up at the cracked lancet bridge port. For a few moments he could not speak. He simply looked back and forth between scope and armaplas.
‘Commander…’
Heiss looked at him, and then at what he was looking at through the viewport. She got up out of her throne.
‘W-what is it?’ she murmured. Others turned and saw.
The prow of the defence monitor was drifting around from the creamy curvature of the cemetery world to the darkness of the void, where the Keeler Comet was making its unnatural pass, the bloody smear of the comet’s tail tracing its almost sentient change of direction and parabolic turn around the planet. This, like the colossal fleet that had been following the wandering comet like an omen, had been startling enough. Out beyond the melt-
