Rapid Fire Challenge: Retribution - September 2021

[Race Bannon]

Prompt: Retribution

Maximum length: 500 words

Deadline: 30 September 2021

Where to post submissions: In this thread

Note - please make sure all submissions adhere to the forum rules. Any entry that breaks one or more rules shall be removed.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Race Bannon

[Dumah]

Minor quibble but the thread title should say "September".

[Race Bannon]

Minor quibble but the thread title should say "September".

 

Fix0rded 

[Mazer Rackham]

For weeks the enemy battleship stalked the Space Marines below, impervious to their armaments, it mocked them by splitting the clouds with low orbital bombardment.  The Iron Warrior voidship, The Burning Desecration was well named, Draekor considered, the deck of his own great war-engine trembling under his feet as it ploughed onwards, sheer bulk smashing down the rubble of a destroyed city, pulverising bones, rockrete and cement into clouds of swirling dust.  It billowed around the vehicle in vast eddies, the front of the mighty metal conglomeration chopping through it, blunt, as some whaler of old.

 

Draekor grinned as he imagined squads of heretical cultists flattened into oblivion beneath treads wider than a Baneblade was long, their chimera transports nought but minnows to this great behemoth.

 

He could see the stabs of macro-battery fire lancing out, only for seconds to elapse before some great clod of earth was tossed skywards.

 

Well now the bastards were going to get a taste of it back - if it was his last act in this universe.

 

"Chapter Master," the Tech-Guard Commandant addressed him in that odd sing-song Mechanicus cant.  "Firing sequence shall commence in three minutes."

 

He could feel the ancient bones and sinews of the massive war machine begin to grind and heave, a rumble of power in impossibly old mechanisms, turning into a high-pitched whine as the energy poured into the capacitors, pounding and pulsing in rhythm with his own heartbeat.

 

He watched the broad, black arrow of the battleship as it cleaved the heavens, thrust as speartip at his world and he cursed it, teeth humming even though his skull was insulated by Astartes meat and armoured plating.  The power built, until it became a painful, monotonous shriek for minute upon long minute.

 

The time came.

 

“Firing,” the Commandant said.

 

“Now,” Draekor growled, “now from this blasted ruin, I spit my revenge at thee!”

 

The power decanted in a flood of urgent relief and a blazing riot of light erupted in a tortured golden ribbon.  The whole world shuddered as the energy discharged rocked even this hallowed bastion, equipped with stabilisers and void shields both.

 

His visor darkened to protect his sight, and even the armoured glazing of the observation deck shadowed in sympathy, for this was the last blow of a dying Chapter, the righteous smiting of a Mechanicus-god.

 

Seconds bled away, until a new star erupted where the blasphemous vessel had hung, black blots of falling debris would rain down and pollute the ground of his world, but it was done.

 

The Centurio Ordinatus Engine Gehenna, with its mighty Apocalypse Cannon had felled the dread, Iron Warrior whale.

 

“Target Destroyed.”

 

Draekor grinned and let go of the shattered body only his will held together, collapsing to the deck, duty done.