We also get our first novel glimpse of the Sisters of silence, which are the Great Crusade era version of the Sistes of Battle without power armour (or voices.) Also cameo by Rogal Dorn.
It's not a bad novel, not a great novel, but it provides the bridge between the events of the first three books and what is to come, basically setting up the 'sandbox' of the Horus Heresy through which the series has expanded.
As always, one update in two post.
Page 11
Kilometres long starships. note that apparently some actually have torches burning on the exterior of ships. in an airless vaccuum. GOTHIC.Shifting gently in the silent darkness, the crenellated hulls and great ornate shapes appeared as a congregation of Gothic edifices, cathedral-wrought in their complexity, drifting as if torn from the surface of worlds and carved into warships. Great sculpted bows filigreed into arrow points turned, stately and lethal, to face into the dark on a uniform heading. Torches burned on some, in apparent defiance of the airless vacuum. Plasma fires trailed white-orange streams of turbulent gas from chimneys along the kilometres of gunmetal hulls. These beacons were lit only when conflict was in the moment. The flares of wasteful, daring heat they generated were signs to the enemy.
Page 15
Jewelry with some security mechanisms inside.Kaleb felt a ripple of satisfaction, and unconsciously ran a hand over his robes and the skull-shaped clasp at his collar. The device was as big as his palm and made from some kind of pewter. The mechanisms within it were as good as a certified passage paper to the machine-eyes and remote scrying systems on the ship.
Page 15
Juvenat again giving a "fraction of the longevity" of Astartes. Considering that they're functionally immortal, this doesn't really help much.Kaleb had seen things alter, thanks to the juvenat treatments that had extended his life and given him a fragment of the longevity of his masters.
Page 16
"monosteel" power weapon. Also apparently servitors skills can be affected by prior trades or tasks - this suggests that suiting a servitor's current task to his prior skillset may be beneficial. It also explains (for example) why they make combat servitors from the insane or criminal troops, as well as giving a good reason for using living bodies to make servitors rather than just vat-grown types.Nathaniel Garro raised Libertas to his eye line and sighted along the length of the blade. The heavy, dense metal of the sword shimmered in the chamber's blue light, a wave of rainbow reflections racing away from him along the edge as he tilted it down. There were no imperfections visible in the crystalline matrix of the monosteel.
..
"It's my understanding that the servitor who attended your weapon was a machine-smith or a blade maker in its previous life. Some elements of its original artistry must remain."
Page 24
Death Guard organization.Tradition had it that the XIV would never number more than seven great companies, although those divisions held far more men than those of other Astartes cohorts like the Space Wolves or the Blood Angels; and while many Legions had the tradition of giving the honorific of 'first captain' to the commander of the prime company, the Death Guard also held two more privileged titles, to be bestowed upon the leaders of the Second and Seventh Companies respectively.
..
...just as Garro was known as 'battle-captain'. It was Garro's understanding that his particular honorific dated back to the Wars of Unification, to a moment when the mark of distinction had been handed to a XIV officer by the Emperor himself.
Page 28
Mortarion's elite guard."Deathshroud." he whispered. These two Astartes were the personal honour guards of the primarch, fated never to reveal their faces to anyone but Mortarion, even to the end of their lives. So it was said, the warriors of the Deathshroud were chosen by the primarch from the rank and file men of the Legion in secret, and then listed as killed in action. They were his nameless guardians, never allowed to venture more than forty-nine paces from their lord's side. Garro felt a chill when he realised that he hadn't even been aware that the Deathshroud had entered the chamber.
Page 30
An indicator of Mortarion's height. And of course, since this is a James Swallow novel, Mortarion will carry a Shenlong-forge world crafted weapon.The ornamental skull and star device of the Death Guard grimaced out from his breastplate and at his waist, level with the chest of a file Astartes, Garro saw the drum-shaped holster that carried the Lantern, a handcrafted energy pistol of unique Shenlongi design.
Page 31
Ork blood is red? I'm pretty sure its green."I'll say red, like the orks."
Rahl sniffed. "White as milk, like the megarachnid."
"You are both wrong." Prom behind Rahl, his face buried in a data-slate festooned with tactical maps, Tollen Sendek's flat monotone issued out. "The blood of the jorgall is a dark crimson."
Page 33
Jorgall cylinder ships.In the hololith cube, the shape of the jorgalli construct became visible. It was a fat cylinder several kilometres long, bulbous at one end with drive clusters, thinning at the other to a stubby prow. Huge petal-shaped vanes coated with shimmering panels emerged from the stern of the thing, catching sunlight and bouncing it through massive windows as big as inland seas.
Mortarion gestured with a finger. "A cylinder world. This one has twice the mass of the similar constructs found and eliminated in orbits around the planets Tasak Beta and Fallon, but unlike those, our target is the first jorgall craft to be found under power in deep space."
Page 37
Pict-circuits laced into helmet lenses - apparently those provide the blink-clicked retinal displays providing useful data. Squad leaders have cameras, and telementry from other sources can be recieved (including outside sources.) At least, at command level, and this is probably a useful feature.Through the pict-circuits laced into the lenses of his armour, Garro rapidly blink-clicked through the data available to him via his command level vox-net. There were feeds from the eye cameras of the squad leaders, quick scripts of telemetry from Voyen's med-icae auspex and there, for a moment, a grainy, low resolution image from outside across the boat's serrated prow.
Page 38
Use of electronic countermeasures to cover a boarding assault.The captain felt no fear at the jorgall guns. The assault was moving at punishing speed beneath a cloak of electronic countermeasures, heat-baffle flare bursts and glittering clouds of metal chaff that would render sensors unintelligible.
Page 44
The Lantern in operation. Basically its a glorified plasma pistol/Inferno gun, just not plasma or melta like.The Death Lord himself had clearly deemed these inferior strains of xenos to be unworthy of his scythe, and instead was at work putting them to the light of his Lantern.
Hard-edged white rays keened from the stub barrel of the huge brass pistol, leaving purple after-images on Garro's retina despite the enhancements of his modified eyesight. Wherever the Lantern's punishing beam struck, jorgall defenders became charcoal sketches, twisting, then turning to smoke.
Page 45
Hah. O'Neill colonies. May imply that the Colony is kilometers in diameter, but it may simply be referirng to circumference as well. Considering the "motes" are beyond Garro's vision (and Astartes sight can extend for kilometres), I'm betting on the former."Human spacefarers once lived in cylinders such as this." noted Sendek as he reloaded, "In the deep past, before we mastered the force of gravity. They called them ohnyl colonies."
..
He gestured upward, to where the landscape curved away to meet itself kilometres over their heads. A thin bar of illuminators extended away down the axis of the cylinder, disappearing to the fore and aft in yellow clouds. Garro's eyes narrowed as he spied motes of dark green moving up there, shifting through the corridor of zero gravity at the world-ship's centre.
Page 46
Xenos using needle weapons and lightning guns.Feet had become balls of curved talons, and there were more of the lethal arc-throwers and needle-guns embedded in joints where they had keen fields of fire.
..
Garro saw one of Hakur's men wreathed in humming glints of artificial lightning and smelled the stench of crisping human meat as a flight of the xenos flyers shocked the life from him.
Page 47
Sisters of Silence.It was difficult for him to tell the women apart. Their armour was polished to a glittering sheen, unadorned by any brash sigils or fluttering oath papers like the pale wargear of the Death Guard. Their faces were hidden behind hawkish gold helmets that reminded him of the barred gates to some ancient citadel, no doubt equipped with breather gear that let the unmodified Sisterhood manage the toxic air of the bottle-world.
..
The Sisterhood carried swords and flamers, blades and plumes of fire licked at the jorgall flyers as they dipped into range. Some also carried bolters.
Page 47-48
Sisters of Silence never speak, so they communicate through other means.As was their vow in the Emperor's service, the women never spoke, even those speared by needle rounds or struck by arc-fire. They communicated in line of sight using a gestural language similar to Astartes battle-sign, or through a code of clicks over the vox. From the way they crossed the engagement zone, he had no doubt in his mind that they knew exactly where they were going.
Page 48
Names for what the Sisters are. Depends on your author, they all basically describe the same category of beings.Garro had heard that unlike other living beings, these unspeaking women were silent not just in the material world, but also in the ephemeral realm of the mind. There were names for them: untouchables, pariahs, blanks.
Page 49
The Lantern cremating flying enemies. Note that it must have an insanely huge power supply and impressive cooling compard to plasma weapons, and increidble focus and range compared to meltaweapons. Maybe its a pistol version of a lascannon?The captain heard the slamming crack of Mortarion's Lantern once again, and looked up to see the primarch sweep it through the air like a searchlight, catching aliens afire, turning them into a rain of ashen fallout.
Page 50
Auspex heat sources. And sense serivtors. Seems to be a combination of telemetry from various s ources.Sendek ministered to his auspex. "Tactical plot shows heat sources comparable to jorgall hatchery constructs in this direction." He pointed. "That way The virtual compass is having difficulty assimilating the internal structure of the bottle-world."
"How current is that data?" asked Hakur. "The sense-servitors neglected to tell us we were landing in a chem-lake. I find myself wondering what else they may have missed."
Sendek frowned. "The readings are... contradictory."
Page 55
Astartes armour has flexsteel joints.He heard the splintering of flexsteel in the joints of his armour, smelled the acidic tang of spilled coolant as leaks jetted from his backpack.
Page 56
A psychic mutant.What surprised him was not that the xenos hatchling was completely free of any mechanical augmentation, but the freakish mutation of the tripedal being. It was conjoined, a malformation of two aliens that had somehow become merged during growth. Its skull was enormous, a bloated thing with four distinct chambers, quite unlike the ovoid heads typical of its species. Legs and arms twitched towards him, milky eyes swivelled and narrowed in Garro's direction.
Page 57
Mutant has fist sized hole blown through it by single bolter round.The mutant's torso burst in a welter of blood and bone fragments as a single bolter round tore a hole through it as big as a fist.
Page 61
Atomic charges.The wreckage of the jorgalli picket fleet was a cloud of crystallised breathing gasses, hull fragments and the dead. Some of the teardrop-shaped xenos vessels were still relatively intact. One by one, these were being scuttled with atomic charges, reduced to sun-hot balls of radioactive plasma.
Page 64
Exception to the "no speaking" rule and the pragmatism driving it. Everyone needs a translator."Forgive me, but it was my understanding that the Sisters of Silence are never to speak."
The girl nodded, her manner changing slightly as she answered. "That is indeed so, lord. No Sister may utter a word, unto death, once she gives the Oath of Tranquillity. I am a novice, captain. I have yet to take the vow and so I may speak to you. Sisters-in-waiting such as I serve our order when communication is needed with outsiders"
Page 66
Inquisitorial Black Ship. Seems to be battlecruiser scale.A piece of the void moved slowly across the prow of Endurance, passing between the bow of the warship and the distant glow of the Iotan sun. Whereas conventional vessels of the Imperial fleets ran with pennants and signal lamps to illuminate the lengths of their hulls, this new arrival, this Aeria Gloris, came in darkness, arriving out of the interstellar deeps as an ocean predator might slip to the surface of a night time sea.
Garro had never laid eyes on a Black Ship before. These were the mothercraft of the Silent Sisterhood, carrying them back and forth across the galactic disc on the Emperor's witch hunting missions. It was hard to make out anything more than the most basic details of the ship's design. Framed against the solar glow of Iota Horologii, the battle cruiser was at least a match in size for the Death Guard capital ship Indomitable Will. It lacked the traditional plough blade prow of most Imperial vessels, ending instead in a blunt bow. A single, knife-edge sail hung below the stern and on it was an aquila cut from shimmering volcanic glass. Where Endurance and the ships of the Astartes flotilla were swords against the enemies of Terra, Aeria Gloris was a hammer of witches.
Page 76
More on Mortarion's height.Like him, the primarch was no longer clad in his brass and steel power armour, but instead in common duty robes over a set of more utilitarian gear. Still, even in such simple garb, there was no mistaking his presence. High and gaunt, a man spun from whipcord steel muscle, he was as tall in his deck boots as Typhon was in the First Company's Terminator armour.
Page 77-78
The durability of the Death Guard.It was said that there was no toxin too strong, no poison so powerful and no contagion of such lethality that a Death Guard could not resist it. From their inception, the XIV Legion had always been the Emperor's warriors in the most hostile of environments, fighting through chem-clouds or acidic atmospheres that no normal human could survive in. Barbarus, the Legion's base, the adoptive home planet of Mortarion himself, moulded this characteristic. As with their primarch, so with his Astartes: the Death Guard were a resilient, invincible breed.
They hardened themselves through stringent training regimens as neophyte Astartes, willingly exposing themselves to,chemical agents, contaminants, mortal viral strains and venoms of a thousand different shades. They could resist them all. It was how they had found victory amid the blight-fungus of Urssa, how they had weathered the hornet swarms on Ogre IV, the reason why they had been sent to fight the chlorine-breathing jorgall.
Page 78
A fun drink. Agent magenta is some sort of bio/chem weapon Swallow made up from his blood angels novels. Yes, the Death guard willingly drink biowarfare beverages.The servitor deftly mixed and poured dark liquids into the cups, and Garro's nostrils sensed the odour of chemicals: a distillate of the agent magenta nerve bane, some variety of sword beetle venom, and other, less identifiable compounds.
Page 85
An interesting pict screen. We see something like it in the Shira Calpurnia novel Blind, even more interesting is that its a telementry feed from a scout craft.. albeit one limited by light speed lag from light minutes away.The pict screen was a flexible thing, like cloth, and it hung from the eaves of the armoury chamber alcove in the manner of a tapestry. Cables trailed away to shining brass sockets in the walls, streams of data feeding images from the ship-to-ship vox network. The view was a live signal, attenuated by interference from the Horologii star, and although it appeared to be instantaneous, it was actually a few minutes behind the real events, the transmission slowed by relativistic physics, not that such a fact seemed to concern the Astartes gathered to watch.
The display came from remote scrying picters on the bow plane of Barbarus's Sting, a light frigate that had been tasked to follow the jorgall world-ship on its last journey. The images were being recorded for posterity. The better views would doubtless be worked into stirring newsreels for distribution across Imperial space.
also the newsreels/propoganda angle. OUR GLORIOUS SPACE MARINES crushing xenos and all that - I'm picturing something out of the Starship Troopers movie.
Page 91
Horus' flagship. "hundreds" of gun turrets and fixed axis accelerator cannon twice the length of the Death Guard starshipBut what caught his attention and held it firmly was the single great battleship that orbited ahead of them all, isolated in its own halo of open space and screened by a wall of sleek Raven-class interceptors. A heavy ingot of fashioned iron, the Warmaster's Vengeful Spirit radiated quiet power. Even from this distance, Garro could see hundreds of gun turrets and the slender rods of massive accelerator cannons that were twice the length of the Endurance.
Page 101
Horus' outfit.The Warmaster. He was indeed every iota of that, a perfect sculpture of the Astartes ideal on the stone chair, handsome and potent, radiating chained power. Robes laced with cords of white gold and copper pooled around him, cascading over the basalt frame of the throne. He wore armour of a kind Garro had only seen before in artworks, intricately worked plates of emerald-tinted flexsteel with vambraces made of black carbon.
Pieces of Horas's battle gear resembled elements of the older Mark HI Iron Armour and the current Mark IV Maximus type, while some parts were more advanced than anything used by the Death Guard. An exotic pistol that appeared to be fashioned from glass nestled at the Warmaster's hip in the folds of an animal-skin holster. If anything, Horus seemed barely restrained by the bonds of ceramite and metal he wore, as if one mighty flex of his shoulders might split and throw them off.
Page 103
Angron.The other presence in the room was almost as imposing as Horus, and the battle-captain found himself measuring the primarch of the World Eaters against his own liege lord as the two leaders exchanged a neutral look. Where Mortarion was tall and wolf-lean, the primarch Angron was thickset and heavy. The Death Lord's pale aspect was at the far end of the spectrum from the Red Angel's clenched fist of a face, eyes deep-set among an orchard of scars. Angron's mere presence leaked the coiled potential for feral violence into the chamber.
As Mortarion embodied the dogged, silent promise of death, so his brother primarch was the personification of raw and murderous aggression. The Lord of the World Eaters stood broad and deadly in bronze armour and a heaped cloak of tarnished chainmail that trailed the smell of old blood in the air.
Page 106
Isstvan's only system network of sensors (or it seems defneses) is this one planet. SEems a bit silly if you ask me.There would be one objective to complete before the assault on the Choral City began, and that was a raid to silence the monitors on Isstvan Extremis, the outermost world of the system and home to the nexus of its sensor web network. Once blinded, the defenders of Isstvan III would only know that retribution was on its way. They would not know where or when it would strike.
Page 117
Ship's post that serves backup and ornamental functions.High up atop the Endurance's dorsal hull lay the oval dome of the ship's observatorium, a space put aside so that naval crew might be able to take emergency star fix sightings should the vessel's cogitators become inoperative. It also served a purely ornamental function, although there were few among the Death Guard who ever used it for so trivial a purpose.
Page 118
Armourglass, with polarsiation features.Isstvan's blue-white sun was a bright glow off in the lower quadrant, attenuated by a localised polarisation in the augmented armourglass.
PAge 119
Warp space time dilation and relativity of near-c travel (HAH!) have skewed Garro's perception of time. It also suggests near-c travel (but not neccesarily combat) is fairly common at this point in time.It did not seem so long ago, and yet there were countless years of time measured by Terran clocks that he had lost in the confusion of the warp, in cryogenic stasis and through the strange physics of near-light speed travel. Garro had been there as the Emperor crossed the galaxy in search of his star-lost children - Sanguinius, Ferrus, Guilliman, Magnus and the rest.
page 122
Power fist has vairable control.It was the match of his right hand, but nowhere near as large as the monstrous power fist lined with green enamel and patient little ticks of lightning. He flexed the heavy fingers experimentally. Decius's control over the glove was so deft that he could pick a flower or crush a skull with equal ease.
Page 123
Opticla magnifiers.Decius watched the battlements of the west wall through the magnifiers of his optics, studying the motion of the black figures patrolling up there.
PAge 124
Multi-shot rotary magazine missile launcher.The battle-brother with the missile launcher was still with him, sporting the ugly singe mark from a glancing shot on his torso, but otherwise untouched. He saw the Astartes drop to one knee, and then with the ammunition carousel chattering, the missileer released a four-shot salvo at the bunker.
Page 125
Signum unit of specialised purpose.He saw Tollen Sendek at his heels, a sapper-command signum unit in his grip.
PAge 126
Krak muntiions and hull-cutting charges for breaching operations. Also Sendek's helmet has some sort of rendred overlay (sensor-based) to compensate for loss of vision. (terrorsight?)Decius ran at the battle-captain's flank and plunged into the roiling clouds of rock dust, his helmet optics automatically rendering the terrain before him in grainy wire-frames over the standard visual spectrum display. Sendek had, in defiance of conventional battlefield doctrine, used powerful hull-cutter charges designed for starship boarding actions instead of standard krak munitions. The resultant overpressure from detonation in an atmosphere - even one as thin as that of Isstvan Extremis - had blown down a large part of the west wall and gone on to cut a bite from the central dome beyond it.
Page 126
Results of the breaching charge. Also, ferrocrete with rebar stuck in it.His boots crunched on the bodies of dead men pulped by the breaching charges. Lines of twisted metal rebar crowded in around the Astartes, with bits of dangling ferrocrete strung along them like dusty pearls.
Page 127
Imperial sensor platform.The briefing had told the Astartes to expect a standard Imperial sensor platform, perhaps with some recent modifications, but nothing more. Decius imagined they would penetrate the dome and find banks of cogi-tators, wave-monitors and the like. He could not have been more wrong.
Page 132
Warsingers doing their sonic/TK death trickery.Indolently, as if it were something done out of boredom rather than directed cruelty, the woman flicked her wrist and sent coils of shimmering aural force humming away down the lines of the pyramid. The waveforms caught around Pyr Rahl and hoisted him off the stone, flipping him over in mid-air. Ash came off him in wreaths, his armour puckering and bending in the wrong places. He released a strangled cry that ended in a crackle of bone as he imploded. The Death Guard's crushed remnants bounced away into the melee below.
Page 133
And the warsingers again deflect bolter fire.At his flank, he was aware of Decius giving him covering fire, grimacing as the bolt rounds whined away in ricochets from the sheer energy of the wall of music.
Page 133
Hell, why not?Holding on to the fury from the cold murder of his subordinate, his sword swept across and connected with her song-shield, the noise of the impact like a knife point drawn down a sheet of glass. Effortlessly, the enemy champion drew the sound in and threaded it into her cacophony, weaving it into the mad chorus.
In a flash of understanding, the nature of his foe was revealed to him. The Warsinger could not be brought down by the energy of light and heat. Only raw sound would be enough to kill her.
Page 133
Warsinger moving at trans-sonic speeds. The sonic based attacks grow tiresome though.From the terrible mantra filling the dome space, the Warsinger teased out a single line of screaming clamour and spun it into a fist of glowing resonance. Garro saw the blow coming and shoved Decius aside, dodging away from her. She moved at the speed of sound, and with a sonic boom shocking the air into white rings of vapour, the Warsinger hit Garro with a hammer made of hymnals.
Page 135
Aftermath of the Warsinger fight.There were patterns of crushing damage to Garro's torso and his arm, and somewhere up there he had lost his bolter.
..
Decius's face soured behind his breath mask and he was grateful that his commander could not see his expression. Less than a hand's span down Garro's thigh his right leg simply ended in a wet red scrap of fleshy rags, burnt bone and charred meat. It could only be the potent flood of coagulants, neuro-chemical agents and counter-shock drugs from his gland implants that were keeping the captain conscious.
Contemplating the sheer agony of the wound took Decius's breath away. The Warsinger hadn't simply torn Garro's leg from its socket. She had sheared it off with a serrated blade of pure sound.
Page 137
Lasfire cutting apart a Death Guardsmen. Note in the previous novel that Isstvan weapons were less impressive than Imperial lasguns...The Death Guard Apothecary's head snapped up from the body of a brother who had been cut apart by laser fire.
Page 140
Sus-an membrane, I think.The trance. Part of his brain eventually provided him with this small fragment of data. Yes, of course.
His body had closed its borders and sealed him inside it, all other concerns and outside interests forgotten as his implants worked in concert to stop an encroaching death. The Astartes was in stasis, of a kind: Not the artificially generated fashion, where flesh was chilled down and chemical anti-crystallisation agents were pumped into the bloodstream for long-duration, low-consumable starflight. This was the semi-death of the wounded man and the near killed.
Page 146
Garro's augmetic leg.Instead of a form of strong, firm muscle and sinew, there was a skeletal construct of dense steel and plates made of polished brass that mimicked the planes of a thigh and calf. The augmetic leg was of excellent quality, but it was no less shocking to see it there. Conflicting thoughts warred over Garro's expression. "It will suffice. The chirurgeons tell me that the nerve bonding went without incident. According to Brother Voyen, in time I will not even be aware of it."
Page 149
Coping/learning curve on the new augmetic.Garro's face was hard with chained anger, and he felt it surge each time the new leg made him limp. The minute gyroscopic mechanisms in the limb would take time to learn the motions and kinetics of his body movement, and until they did, he would be forced to walk as if lame.
Page 159
Ceramite and flexsteel power armor resisting stubber rounds.The Astartes moved across the dull mud in a thick line of marble-grey and green armour, a heavy wave of ceramite and flexsteel fording snarls of razor wire and barriers made of rough-cut tree trunks. They strode through kill points and shrugged off hails of stubber bullets.
Page 160
Eisenstein is a 2 km frigate, similar to the 'newer' Sword-class. Similarities in design elements may or may not suggest modular constructionThe Eisenstein was an unremarkable vessel, an older pattern of ship in the frigate tonnage grade, just over two kilometres in length from bow to stern. It bore some resemblance to the newer Sword-class craft, but only inasmuch as most Imperial ships shared a similar design philosophy. Almost every line vessel in service to the Lord of Terra was constructed of congruent elements: the dagger prow, the massive block of sub-light and warp drives, and forged between them amidships of crenellations and complex sheaves of steel.
Page 165
Power armor strength.One of the Isstvanian soldiers ran at him, shrieking and aflame, and pulled Temeter into an embrace. The captain let the flamer drop from his grip and ripped the man in two, tearing him apart.
Page 166
Titan drop pods.The captain peered out and saw a massive cylinder standing upright in a shroud of steam, some distance beyond the zone where the drop-pods had put down. It was easily the size of a hive-city habitat block, guidance fins still glowing cherry-red with the heat of re-entry.
...
From inside the monstrous drop-capsule came the hooting call of a battle-horn, and then planes of steel and iron emerged from the smoke to become a colossus bristling with armour and guns. The ground resonated with each thunderous footfall as the Imperator-class Titan strode out towards the Choral City.
Page 170-171
Astartes training includes hypo conditioning allowing them to be ship to ship combatants, and Garro comments on orbital interception (higher orbits for targeting pererred over lower orbits.) - drop pod and orbital bombardment roles seem to have similar parameters as well.Like all Astartes of senior rank, Garro had training and experience in starship operations and he fell back into the learning drilled into his mind by hypno-conditioning as he read, figuring the status of the frigate once the new co-ordinates were reached.
He frowned. Typhon had told him that Eisenstein was to act as an interceptor for Isstvanian absconders, but once settled at this new posting, the ship would be too close to the edge of the third planet's atmosphere to react quickly enough. To function correctly in their assigned role, the frigate had to stay high, giving the gunnery crews time to spot, target and destroy enemy ships. The drop in altitude only narrowed their field of fire. Then he studied the corresponding planetary co-ordinates and his concern deepened. The orbital shift would put the Eisenstein directly over the Choral City, and Garro was certain that no void-capable craft had been left intact down there.
...
Had they been carrying drop-pods and Astartes for a second assault wave, then the reasoning behind the orders would have been clear, but the frigate was not configured for those sorts of operations. It was, in the most basic sense, only a gun carriage. Decked with weapons batteries that emerged from her flanks in spiky profusion, Eisenstein's only function when ranged so close to a world was one of stand-off planetary bombardment, but such an action seemed unthinkable. After all, Horns had already eschewed Angron's demands to blast the Choral City into ashes at the war council.
Page 173
The Eisenstein's gun deck - laoding gears and hopper mechanisms. Whether they are automated, servitor or human operated we don't know. also a sighting port.The crates were halted in the service gantries that ran down the spine of the frigate. On either side of the open steel tunnel were loading gears and hopper mechanisms for the ship's primary weapons batteries. Large open gun breeches lined the walkway, ready to accept war shots from the ammunition magazines that towered above them.
..
Kaleb's face showed confusion and he let his gaze follow the length of one huge cannon out beyond the hull through the armoured slits of the sighting port.
Page 174
Life eater virus. 100 spheres in the cargo.Inside there were hexagonal frames, and racked upon them were a dozen glass spheres. Each one was at least a metre in diameter, and all of them were filled with a thick chemical slurry of vomitous green fluids.
A black symbol made up of interlocking broken rings decorated each capsule, and some basic animal reaction made Kaleb's hands clench around the railing he hid behind. A quick mental calculation told him that if all the crates were identical, then there were over a hundred of the spheres in Grulgor's cargo.
Page 176
Life eater described, and its restricted usage to large warships."Those orbs, what are they?" The work gangs were busy detaching the warhead cowlings from thruster-guided glide bombs, exchanging the explosive charges inside for the globes of liquid.
Voyen tried to speak, and it was as if the words caught in his throat, too distasteful for him to even bring to bear. "Those are Life-Eater capsules," he managed. "It is an engineered viral strain of such complete lethality that it can only be deployed in the most extreme circumstances, usually against the most foul xenos."
...
"It is a bane-weapon of the highest order, a world-killer. Only the largest capital ships are permitted to carry it in their armouries."
Also interesting they are attaching them to "thruser guiged glide bombs".. which I gather will be fired from the guns. Indicating that starship cannon can fire guided, rocket assisted ammo.
Page 184
As we recall from the earlier novel, this is Saul Tarvitz being hunted by the Emperor's Children fighters.Sendek flashed a look at the Eisenstein's hololith. The answer to Garro's question was self-evident, as the frigate's sensors showed flickers of beam fire dashing from the flight of Ravens, snapping at the Thunderhawk's stern. As he watched, the raptor-like interceptors adopted an attack posture. They were lin ing up to make a final strike.
Page 185
close quarters lascannon batteries for point defense... cogitator or manually controlled (or at least the command to fire is computer or manual control.. servitors seem to fire them.)Captain Garro shoved himself away from the vox alcove and stormed across the bridge. "Weapons!" he shouted. "I want lascannon command, this very second!"
Vought's fingers danced over her console. "Close-quarters batteries are active, sir." she reported, "cogitators are computing a firing solution." The woman blinked. "Sir, are... are you going to shoot him down?"
"Give me manual control." Garro waved her away from the panel. "If anyone is to pull this trigger, it will be me." The battle-captain gripped the side of the pulpit and then stabbed at an activation rune.
"Firing." reported one of the toneless servitors.
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Fighters seem to have fusion powerplants.On the Eisenstein's dorsal hull, a cluster of high-energy laser cannons swivelled and shifted in unison, tracking to face the Thunderhawk and the Ravens. The guns discharged silently through the void, for a single instant filling the dark with a storm of flickering energy. Spears of collimated, coherent light reached out and found their target, tearing through armoured hull metal, ceramite and plastic. Fusion cores detonated in a flashing cascade, a thick cloud of radioactive debris riding out in a perfect sphere behind a wall of electromagnetic radiation.
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Fusion core "detonation" screws up sensors for minutes.. long enough for Tarvitz to make landing.The Astartes leaned down, almost with his face in the edges of the hololith cube. Flickering storms of energy and colour made it impossible to read. The power of the explosion out there reflecting off the planet's upper atmosphere would fog the ship's sensors for several minutes.
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I'm assuming he means the detonation of the lead Raven.. not the lasers themselves.He toyed with the controls and then let the hololith run the brief engagement again in slow motion. Indicators showed the Eisenstein turn and fire, the bolts sweep towards the other craft, and then the stormy aftermath. The Astartes nodded slowly. "He didn't target the Thunderhawk at all. The shots must have struck the lead Raven. The other interceptors were in close formation. The detonation would have caught them all in the shockwave."
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Life eater virus. Eisenstein packing enough to "wipe out a large city."With each new sphere that emerged on the back of the loader crews, he felt his horror plunge deeper. As a trained Apothecary, it was his duty to be knowledgeable in the patterns and pathologies of many types of biological warfare agents, and the Life-Eater was known to him. He wished it was not. He flashed on a moment of memory, a day during his advanced training with the Magos Biologis when the mentors had given live demonstrations on condemned criminals of the effects of various toxins upon unprotected flesh. He had seen the damage a single droplet of the voracious virus could do, watching it eat into a screaming heretic from behind impenetrable armourglass. Out there, in those globes, there were gallons of the thick green transmitter medium, every cupful swarming with countless trillions of the killer microbes. He estimated that the war shots aboard the Eisenstein alone would be enough to wipe out a large city.
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Fractal edge knife.Garro sensed another aggressor coming to his rear and shifted just as a fractal-edged steel knife blade scraped at his shoulder.
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Life eater inside the bay apparently consuming all organic life, and self igniting/heating to some degree.. who knows.The banging on the metal doors grew softer and softer, until finally it ceased altogether. Garro got to his feet and crossed to the shield, placing his palm against it. It felt blood-warm, probably from the virulent chemical reactions of the rot taking place inside. He tried to block out thoughts of the carnage contained in there, the bodies bursting with liquefied organs and organic decay.
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Life span of Life Eater."I would recommend the compartment not be opened for the next six hours," added Voyen, "to be certain. The war load will have dissipated harmlessly into space after the atmosphere vents were opened, but dormant clades might linger in the bodies of the dead."
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Garro has a vision. This is, again, interesting in the implications it carries - who is calling for Garro? Is Keeler herself? Is it someone on her behalf, like Ing Mae Sing (the way she did to Sindermann?) Or is it whatever power Keeler is acting as the conduit for? Garro clearly recognizes it as some warp or psychic based contact, but beyond that we can't really speculate.Of their own accord, Garro's hands found the shape of the aquila, palms open across his chest.
"Emperor," he choked, "give me faith."
Behind his eyes, Garro felt something break loose inside him and leap, a sudden release, a flood of energy. It was beyond his ability to describe it, and there in the gloom of the half-lit alcove, he felt the ghost of a voice brush over the edges of his psyche. A crying woman, pale and elfin, strong and delicate all at once, was calling him: the voice from his dream.
Save us, Nathaniel.
Garro cried out and stumbled backwards, fighting to recover his balance. The words had been so clear and close, it was as if she had been in the chamber with him, standing at his ear. The Death Guard recovered his composure, panting hard, and got back to his feet. He sensed a peculiar, greasy tang in the air, fading even as he noticed it. The stroke upon his thoughts had been like the jorgalli's intrusion into his mind, but different. It shocked him in its intimacy, and yet it did not feel wrong like the telepathic touch of the alien. Garro took a shuddering breath. As quickly as it had happened, the moment vanished like vapour.
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It is possible to visually identify when a Titan is closing up for NBC protection.The captain of the Fourth Company scanned the hull of the machine with his optics. There was no visible damage of such scale that would cause a Titan to shut down, no possible reason that Temeter could see for it to just stop. His line of sight passed over the access hatches in the hull and he saw all of them were shut fast. Temeter searched for and found power shaft vents in the thigh armour of the mechanism. Normally they would be puffing with the release of spent coolant gasses, but instead they were sealed. Chill knives of apprehension stabbed into him.
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Atlas-class warheads, servitor guided missiles, and "impact penetrator" munitions.. seems that not all the stuff striking the planet beside sthe life eater. We don't know which warheads are carrying it, either. We know the Atlas class carries a megaton warhead usually.Garro and Decius made it up the ramp to the windowed gallery overlooking the barracks chamber in time to witness the ships of the Warmaster's fleet open fire on Isstvan III. A myriad of silver streaks, almost too fast to see with the naked eye, streamed over and around the Eisenstein and the other smaller ships at low anchor above the Choral City. Although they were just blurs, Garro didn't need to see them clearly to know what they were: Atlas-class heavy warheads converted for space-to-surface functions, servitor-guided missile bombs and multiple impact penetrator munitions. It seemed as if only Eisenstein's guns remained silent, as if every capital ship in the 63rd Fleet were taking some part in the brutality. The bombs came in a solid rain of murder, falling fast, turning and converging towards pre-designated target points all across the planet.
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Life Eater fired. We know at least 100 shells (per ship) fired, and in two salvos. That suggests the Eisenstein had at least 50 or so guns.At high altitudes overhead, the first wave of the virus warheads detonated in series, a wall of airbursts instantly unleashing a black rain of destruction. The viral clades, capable of hyper-fast mutational change and near-exponential growth rates, feasted on native airborne bacteria. The thin, dark bloom of the death cloud rolled out over the Choral City, just as the second wave fell. The shells did not explode until they hit the ground, bursting to smother city districts, open fields and trench lines with tides of destructive haze.
The Life-Eater did as it had been engineered to do. Where a molecule of it touched an organic form, it spread instant, putrefying death. The Choral City, every living thing, every human, animal, plant, every organism down to the level of microbes was torn apart by the virus. It leapt boundaries of species in a second, burning out the life of the planet. Flesh rotted and blood became ooze. Bones shredded and turned brittle. Isstvanians and Astartes alike died screaming, united in death by the unstoppable germs.
Temeter saw the warriors running towards him, dying on their feet. Figures fell to the mud as their corpses turned to a red broth of fleshy slurry, viscous fluids seeping from the chinks in their power armour.
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Dreadnought with a compact fusion generator.. which can turn volatile.With a single burning nerve impulse, the mind of the warrior at the heart of the dreadnought uncoupled the governor controls on his compact fusion generator and let it overload. For a moment there was a tiny star on the battered plains outside the Choral City, marking two more lives lost within a maelstrom of murder.
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Firegas mode."With so many dead, so fast, the Life-Easter bums out quickly, but the mass of corpses it leaves behind moulder and rot' His face soured. The... remains turn to gaseous putrefaction and decay. Imagine it, Solun, a whole world turned into a gigantic charnel house, the very atmosphere stinking and choked with the stench of new death."
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Twin lance cannons one on either side of the Vengeful Spirit.. and it ignites the firegas. Earlier suggested only a matter of "minutes" though here it is suggested to seem like "hours". It also seems to be implying something other than a global firestorm, but that's open to debate. I still stand by my earlier assessment.The Vengeful Spirit drifted to a halt and turned with stately menace to point her bow down at Isstvan III. In the silence, there was a flicker of light from the maws of the warship's twin lance cannons along the flanks of the hull. The bolts of blinding fire touched the atmospheric envelope of the planet and a new colour bloomed among the blackened clouds: the searing orange of a firestorm.
"A match to tinder." breathed Decius. "The fumes from the decayed dead are lit. The flames will burn across the world."
..
They stood there for what seemed like hours, watching the fires cross continents and raze cities as the Warmaster's flagship orbited above it all, the lone arbiter of Isstvan Ill's destruction. Time fell away as the two Astartes stood witness to the distant slaughter.