A Chance Encounter

The Combatants 

Blood Angels 

Fist of Baal Astartes Battlebarge

Perdition Lunar Class Cruiser

The Warrior  Sword Class Frigate

Blood Drop Sword Class Frigate

World Eaters 

Delphis Murder Class Cruiser

Nimeas Murder Class Cruiser

Serenity Astartes Strike Cruiser 

Mediator Astartes Strike Cruiser

The Battle 

The Soatis system was charted for its singular body, an enormous gas giant that orbited the swollen eponymous star. In ages past it would have been a valuable asset for atmospheric mining but in the 31st millennium it sat untouched and silent; a mere waypoint on warplanes to more vital worlds with only a small monitoring station in orbit.

For half a dozen such waypoints the World Eaters had yet to meet any substantial opposition. The few colonies and tiny orbitals that had survived the cataclysmic warp storm were overjoyed by their saviors sudden arrival, their celebrations cut brutally short again and again by unsolicited boarding torpedoes and frenzied mauling from erratic attack craft. In their wake the fleet left nothing but death and blood, but even that slaughter was empty of any pride. Weak mortals were of no note for the astartes warriors, merely a distraction at best.

The distress call of Soatis-1's orbital station had brought the 12th legion strike cruiser Mediator to the planet, the station found already dead in the vacuum of space as its automated short wave continued to bleat into the darkness. The disappointment of yet another empty victory was short lived, however, as the cruiser's augmentix arrays registered the sudden warp signature of a massive vessel. The Blood Angels' battlebarge Fist of Baal had just translated into realspace, with it a host of frigates and a cruiser escort.

The rest of the World Eater scout fleet was splintered across the system, the Mediator's shortwaves chittering excitedly in every direction to instruct the other ships to descend upon their location at full thrust. It was an unknown how long reinforcements would take, but that was of little concern to the Mediator's captain.

A wing of thunderhawks took to the void, their pearlescent and blue livery shining like stars against the empyrean as they streaked towards the battlebarge; its point defenses lancing the darkness as they jinked and dodged in return. The suddenness of the impromptu ambush gave the World Eater's a slight advantage, the thunderhawks succeeding in silencing the battlebarge's fire command for the starboard gun batteries; the brief reprieve enough to allow the Mediator to perform a gravity turn around the gas planet and out of retaliatory range.

The World Eater's strike cruiser Serenity was the first of the 12th's fleet to answer the call, translating into realspace behind the Fist of Baal's position. The vessel found itself the sole subject of The Blood Angel's wrath; the Blood Angel escort frigates The Warrior and Blood Drop appearing and exchanging fire with the strike cruiser. The Serenity's bridge was in disarray as the Mediator saw an opportunity to repeat its previous attack run by slingshotting around the planet's gravity well and aligning for another assault. The Fist of Baal's weapon teams were not idle in the meanwhile, bringing the cannons back online and launching a volley towards the rabid strike cruiser.

The massive ordnance from the battlebarge's cannons punched through the strike cruiser's shield batteries and slammed into the command deck with an instantaneous explosion of twisted metal carnage and venting gasses, the bridge ceasing to exist in place of a gaping maw of industrial gore. The ship listed onward with uncontrolled velocity as the Blood Angel fleet already began turning its attention to the beleaguered Serenity.

More of the 12th's splinter fleet begins to arrive, the Murder class cruisers Delphis and Nimeas appearing in formation together on the dark side of the planet. The Blood Angel frigates Blood Drop and The Warrior close on the Serenity, the strike cruiser firing blindly into space with no substantial results; her wings of thunderhawks and voidhunters engaging the Blood Angel's own strike craft in a more even engagement.

The Blood Angel Lunar class Perdition translates nearby, burning immediately to interfere with the Delphis and Nimeas' target solutions on The Fist of Baal. The battlebarge did not remain helpless, however, and began engaging the Murders at long range, their mutually massive cannon arrays clouding the hundreds of kilometers between them with ordnance tracks that the Perdition deftly navigated through. In the growing combat sphere the World Eaters' thunderhawk 12-175-20-02 went nearly unnoticed as it broke through The Warrior's fighter screen and disgorged its manic assault party into the ship.

The Perdition and Blood Drop concentrated fire through the scrum and disabled the stricken Serenity. The strike cruiser went silent as the keel snapped under the shuddering assault of targeted weapons fire, her momentum carrying her forward as a tumbling hulk. None knew the few weaknesses of astartes ships better than their own brothers.

The turning tide was brief, The Warrior detonating in a brief explosion that matched the nearby star's intensity if not size, vaporizing the ship and surrounding craft. The assault team had apparently been successful, their glory unrecorded and unremembered as the battle waged on. The Delphis and Nimeas coordinated fire against the Perdition, the distraction enough for the Mediator, ostensibly controlled from a secondary flight center, to regain orientation and begin firing on the lunar cruiser from below; no longer a dead hulk as had been thought.

With her shields down and engines flickering, the Blood Drop  limped forward in exchange with the strike cruiser; seemingly hoping to take advantage of the planet's gravity well to reach an escape velocity. It was not to be, however, as thunderhawks from the vaporized Serenity exacted a murderous revenge on the Blood Angel vessel; their turbolasers lancing through the exposed hull and detonating the frigate's ordnance.

The Perdition, with damaged engines and dorsal weapons offline, dives for the Mediator with murderous intent. With its erstwhile escort vessels distracted, Fist of Baal's subwarp engines flare with intensity as it brings the massive bulk of her hull to bare against the Delphis in a ramming action the World Eaters had hoped to imitate. 

The gunship cruiser was not deft in any sense of the word, but as the even more immense battlebarge plunged towards her, the captain managed to avoid an abeam strike; instead lifting the Murder class ship over the prow of the battlebarge and rolling uncontrollably along its surface. The cruiser suffered for the maneuver, whole decks tearing open and venting into the void, but none was a cost too great to destroy the Fist's bridge in the cacophony.

Even in the midst of losing its command deck, the Fist of Baal continued to fire on the World Eaters threatening to close the narrowing gap between them, the Nimeas taking raking broadside fire that saw its shields flicker and finally burst; the remaining shells blowing vast holes into the ship's adamantium hide.

Even alone and injured, an astartes battlebarge was nothing to trifle with. The remaining World Eaters captains ordered a withdrawal, spooling up their Gellar fields for an impending warp jump. All but the Mediator, who without her main bridge continued to assault the Perdition cruiser on the dark side of the gas giant.

Dispersing the Lunar's shields with ordnance cannon fire before driving boarding torpedoes into its hull, the Mediator's wild assault saw the Perdition's plasma drives overloaded in a suicidal gambit. The miasmic detonation saw the Lunar's plasma drives breach and envelop the ship in a blooming iridescent blue that vaporized the attack craft and landing party before washing the Mediator in radiation.

The Blood Angels had fled the field, and the Mediator was left alone amidst the debris; its hull scorched and abraded by the battle. Finally her Gellar field flickered to life and she joined her fleet in regrouping.

The Narrative 

“Sensors indicated ship death Master Adeon.” The adjunct said, straining to be heard over the scream of residual booms from the ship’s bombardment cannons. In the large command bridge of the Fist of Baal, the voice seemed infinitely too small to even matter in the grand picture of things, but the words carried a large amount of meaning. The flagship had taken the brunt of the ambush well and the quick retaliatory strike on the World Eater’s Serenity indicated that the fight would not be a one-sided massacre. The adjuncts words would have been heard by the astartes on the bridge even with the auditory cacophony doing everything it could to prevent it.

“Excellent, these blood-soaked barbarians will see the Sons of Baal are no meek lambs to be slaughtered.” Retorted the Master of the Fleet. His dark mood of discovering he was being ambushed during his foolish cursory examination of the local gas giant. The unexpected and unexplainable distress beacon obviously being the trap.

“I believe the Terran saying is 'after thoughts are always perfectly versioned'” the astartes said to the smaller mortal next to him. Captain Ogius. A small, professional smile cracking his weathered face at the ancient, butchered terran saying.

“Yes, I believe that is the gist of it my lord. I imagine you have been pondering your human ancestry again?” Returned the much smaller, almost fragile in comparison human male. Ogius and Adeon having become fast friends and comrades over the course of the Great Crusade and the civil war that followed. Ogius being one of the few mortals to know of Adeon’s fascination with human literature. Before giving a reply, Adeon’s eyes examined the approaching World Eater’s vessels coming to avenge their fallen comrade.

“Sire, enemy vessel Delphis is currently on uploading attack vector.” The data console in front of the command throne flickered and jumped to show the new data to the astartes. The Master of the Fleet observed the deluge of data and determined his next course of action.

“Full power to engines and forward void shields,” shouted the lord. “If the sons of Angron want to see our ships, lets give them a nice close look.”  

With the battle raging around the Fist of Baal, the seemingly single-minded rush towards the enemy would seem a strange site, but salvation would lie on the opposite side of the colossal behemoth. The sudden blast of energy from the main engines of the Fist of Baal forced the World Eater’s counter attack to have to consider more factors.

“Captain, begin preparations for emergency warp jump once we escape the guns of the World Eater’s ships. The Manderville point should be an easy course with the enemy at our heels.” The battle barge’s forward prow forced an apocalyptic force into the side of the Delphis. The sudden change in the Delphis'  position streamed into view on Adeon’s data console. It was at this point that he realized the enemy were making their own changes to the course of the battle. The ship’s slow but quickly accelerating rotation gave the Master of the Fleet a momentary loss of words. The rotation would absorb the killing energy of the blow and allow them to perform their own ideas of strategy. The suddenly rolling Delphis was now rolling along the spine of the Baal’s Fist. Directly on a course for the bridge of the ship, and the command inside of it.

Blaring klaxons and the screams of blood thralls fleeing for their lives would be the last thing that Captain Ogius would see before the cold void greeted him. That and the vain attempt of Adeon to grab him before the cold vacuum of space forced him into the chaos just on the other side of the hull. Once the ship’s secondary bridges had gain control of the ship and managed to force the ship to the Manderville Point on blaring wings of fire, a team was sent to investigate.

They found a helmeted astartes staring at once was his viewport that was now open to the void. magboots firmly latching him to the place he hadn’t moved for a considerable amount of time.

Captain Adeon would never forget… and he would never forgive.

...

"The others are retreating!"

The notion left a heavy knot of disgust roiling in the base of his stomach as the voxnet crackled with the news. The XII legion knew nothing of cowardice, to leave the field before every opponent lay dead was a shame none of his brothers would bare. Not this day.

The World Eater sergeant bitterly felt the confines of his assault harness pressing his armored body in place, the pneumatic arms clamped onto each shoulder as his boots maglocked to the deck of the assault torpedo. There was a steady stream of analytical data pouring over his autosenses, estimated trajectories, deck layouts, targets of opportunity and likely choke points in the cruiser's nebulous corridors.

He ignored all of it. His assault squad stood in rank behind him, each a mirror image of barely contained fury while their suits stood immobile as the craft rocketed through the void towards the Perdition. The nails pulsed like a thunderclap of pain that bristled every nerve in his body, the pain only further enraging him. He felt nothing but hate, wanted for nothing but blood; to see the gore ripped from his brothers' weak bodies. His power armor was only a nuisance, a meek formality that his augmented brain yearned to be free of.

The torpedo announced its arrival with a wailing klaxon as it slammed into the Lunar's hull with an immense force. The sudden stop would have liquefied a mortal man, even with the astartes' biology and advanced carapaces the sensation was dizzying. Timed melta charges blasted their way through the Perdition's flesh, the torpedo burrowing itself like an iron tick as it crashed through internal superstructures like a drop of acid. 

The cacophony of destruction was muted within the assault craft, each World Eater focusing intently on the forward hatch as their nails sang in agonizing anticipation.

Finally the klaxon stopped, the torpedo's cogitator displaying for each legionnaire a digital outline of the surrounding bulkhead in which they'd soon find themselves. Already the Blood Angels had begun mobilizing a defense, their power armored silhouettes highlighted with associated targeting data. Lesser astartes would undoubtedly have heeded the tactical advice, but the XIIth were no cerebral cowards.

The assault ramp burst open with an explosion of shrapnel and electrosmoke that obscured the assailants' auspex signatures, the pearly invaders erupting from the maw with an unbridled charge. Their attack was savage and uncoordinated; the Blood Angels incapable of utilizing any sensible defense pattern.

...

The fire control deck within the strike cruiser was an erratic display of human ingenuity and astartes perseverance as it was hastily converted to regain control of the ship with the loss of the bridge so early in the battle. Targeting cogitators were ripped open, by either plasma torch or power armored hands, to expose their digital viscera; the technology within rewired and programmed by the legion serfs to reawaken the rest of the ship.

 There were few times that a World Eater gave allowance to mortal insects, but these crew had done a service beyond what the brutish astartes could have hoped to. The screens within the make-shift control deck showed the last gasp of the Lunar class cruiser Perdition frozen in the moment before the radiation wave had fried the unshielded external cameras; its hull engulfed in plasmatic fire as it sank into the gravity well of the planet behind it. The surface was crawling with small specks, the white and blue livery of each a testament to the lengths the XIIth would go to meet their foes in the flesh.

"Gellar field online, sire," spoke a serf from his impromptu station. Lieutenant Hori had been a weapon's deck officer, commanding the gun crews and targeting banks to see each of the captain's orders were met with a prompt response. He alone had coordinated the rapid response to retaking control of the ship and in that moment, basking in the white glow of the briefly flickering image displayed in front of him, he felt pride. The butcher's nails immediately reminded him the cost of thought, wreathing his spine in neural fire.

"Align with the fleet," he growled, fist clenched as the newly minted captain turned away, "Make haste for our next slaughter."