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Devil's Trappings – Nick Kyme – Extract

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DEVIL’S TRAPPINGS

Nick Kyme

The Demetrion floated in a slowly decaying orbit. The space station was dead to the void. Its three docking arms were drawn together, where normally they would be extended to receive immense starships. The control hub at the station’s core had relinquished all autonomy to darkness, a heart resigned to its final defiant beats. A goliath in sheer size, laid low by numerous wounds. Even a machine could feel its own death throes and react. It clenched as soon as it was able to calculate its own end.

Its slow dying dance across the stars would not last long. Bereft of motive power, as soon as the Demetrion strayed into the gravity well of a passing moon or planet it would crash down onto solid rock and be destroyed. Its final death blow. After that, any attempts at salvage would be impossible.

Time, therefore, was a commodity Lorkar and his men could ill afford to waste.

As soon as the Demetrion’s identity was determined, the Vitriol was immediately dispatched.

A Colossus-class space station would be resource rich and fuel the Marines Malevolent’s ceaseless warmongering.

A vast and dense debris field surrounded it in a halo of wreckage. Sheaths of ablative armour plating, ripped from the hull of an Imperial starship; cathedra-like sensorium towers, broken off from the hull; fighters, their pilots flash-frozen behind the shattered glass of their cockpits. A battle had been fought here. Judging from all the debris, it was difficult to tell if there had been a clear victor.

‘Push through,’ said Lorkar in a grating baritone voice as he stooped behind the gunship’s pilot and crammed into its small cockpit.

None gainsaid the sergeant, despite the obvious danger. Just a sliver of wreckage, a broken spire or a shattered prow ram would be enough to pierce the gunship and send the warriors aboard to their deaths in the frozen void beyond its metal skin.

Lorkar was ruthless, even for a Marine Malevolent, and the promise of his wrath made any risk worth it. Moreover, Captain Vinyar favoured him and none would go against one of his ‘chosen men’. Rumours persisted though that Lorkar wanted a place amongst the Villifiers, but his captain would rather kill him than give up one of his veterans to Kastor’s so-called ‘elite’. Vinyar’s threat didn’t stop Lorkar’s desire. Increasingly, he looked for ways to garner Kastor’s favour and attention; the ransacking of the Demetrion was merely the latest.

Thus far, his attempts had proven unsuccessful. It had left Lorkar hungry; some even said desperate.

‘Negotiating field now. Hold on.’

Regon took a firmer grip on the flight stick, transferring minor controls to his copilot Vakulus as he put the gunship through a series of evasive manoeuvres. Small flotsam from whatever battlefield they were flying through battered them but failed to penetrate the armoured fuselage. Everyone held their breath. It wasn’t until they had breached the outer ring of debris and the Vitriol was clear that anyone spoke again.

‘Bring up the auspex,’ Lorkar muttered.

Further debris loomed ahead. Saviour pods, jettisoned from the station in a rash attempt at escape. Men and women lined the grav-couches inside, their atmosphere suits partially on. It hadn’t been enough to save them. Engaging dorsal jets, the Vitriol swept over the massive barrel of a destroyed macro-cannon. More of the Demetrion’s sundered defences, armour and communications arrays drifted into view the closer the Vitriol got to the station itself.

As Bledok engaged the auspex, a series of glyphs and markers lit up on the Vitriol’s transparent glacis.

‘Closing...’ murmured the navigator. Beyond the last debris field, the vast and monolithic station dominated their view. ‘External systems, power, life support, all minimal.’

Silent as the void, still as a tomb and lightless as an ocean trench, the Demetrion turned languidly on its axis.

‘Weapons ready,’ said Lorkar, wanting to take no chances.

Hellox engaged the heavy bolters, the only armament that they still possessed power and ammunition for. The war had been hard of late. Its cost was measured in shells and power cells. The Demetrion represented the potential for an abundant harvest of both.

No craft emerged from the space station’s hard docking points. None of its dormant cannon cycled up. There was no reaction to the gunship’s presence at all, a minnow when matched against the sheer size of the station.

‘Showing signs of damage,’ uttered Bledok, his voice trance-like as he interpreted the auspex data. ‘Severe.’

‘I can see that...’ Lorkar peered through the glacis at scorch marks in the Demetrion’s outer armour. As the Vitriol closed, homing in on a landing vector towards one of the station’s hangars, other signs became visible. Las gouges from heavy batteries. Deep shell impacts that had demolished entire decks. Guttering trails of venting gas and flash-frozen liquid billowed out into the void from rents in the hull.

‘She fought before she died,’ said Hellox, gently panning the wing-mounted guns, sighting through the gunship’s picter.

Lorkar was typically dispassionate, his harsh voice well-suited to his grim demeanour. ‘Evidently not hard enough.’ He scowled behind the faceplate of his battle-helm. It was cracked below the left eye. His right vambrace was spot-welded across the forearm join and his cuirass was comprised of four different suits of armour, each as ramshackle as the last. They were badly in need of refit and repair. All of them. ‘Bring us in. Find somewhere that’s still pressurised and has power.’

‘And if there are life signs, brother-sergeant?’ asked Regon, focusing on guiding the ship through a sudden gas cloud that had manifest around the station.

Lorkar was in the process of leaving the cockpit and glanced over his shoulder to answer. ‘We’ll deal with that if and when we find any.’

The bolter strapped across his torso, with its ugly-looking sarissa-blade, suggested the sergeant’s intentions if the outcome of a bio-scan proved positive.

No one was getting between them and the bounty of materiel aboard.

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