novelhk Chapter 14: Fortresses are often breached from within.
Chapter 14: Fortresses are often breached from within.
Abaddon couldn't remember what happened in the next few minutes.
His only memory was that his father's iron fist struck his face at supersonic speed, and then he flew about a hundred meters like a cannonball.
Then he lost consciousness forever.
He truly hopes so.
But the truth was cruel; despite his splitting headache, Abaddon was still alive.
"Get up, Abaddon."
Horus's cold voice shattered Abaddon's hopes of continuing to escape reality.
That was only natural; if the Wolf God hadn't shown mercy, his son, who had disappointed him, would never have survived.
Abaddon opened his eyes; his vision was still somewhat blurry, but he could still tell that this was not the Great Audience Hall, but rather the covered bridge outside.
He struggled to his feet, but when Abaddon turned and saw the situation in the Great Audience Hall, the notoriously tough Astartes nearly collapsed again.
The heavy steel doors of the reception hall were tightly closed, but through the small glass windows on the doors, one could see a scene that resembled hell.
The reception hall was originally littered with corpses, including mortal chroniclers, Gastrin terminators, and Eribus, whose head had been blown off by Abaddon himself...
At this moment, they were all treated equally and turned into bare white bones, while the rest of their body parts had become part of the black smoke that permeated the Great Reception Hall.
But they were relatively lucky.
Even more tragically, the surviving Gastrin Terminator warriors, whose Tactical Dreadnought Power Armor was originally designed to isolate the Life Eater virus, missed the opportunity to switch to internal circulation mode while fighting Horus. Their third lungs were futilely trying to filter and clear the virus, which only made the Space Marines suffer longer.
"No!!!"
The Gastrin troops were Abaddon's most elite soldiers and his most valued brothers.
Abaddon roared as he lunged toward the door of the reception hall, no longer knowing whether he wanted to save them or face death with them.
But the next second, someone grabbed his topknot and pulled him backward. When Abaddon fell back to the ground, he saw Horus's imposing back.
The Warlord raised Horus's Claw, which was loaded with explosives.
"You should know very well that this is not only about saving the Vengeful Spirit, but also about saving them."
Bang—Boom!
The instant the exploding bullet pierced the glass, the flammable gas filling the entire reception hall was ignited, and flames engulfed this place where massacres, desecrations, and betrayals had taken place, ending the painful lives of those Gastrin warriors who were barely clinging to life.
The heatwave even broke through the steel door and spread outwards, but fortunately Horus's tall body blocked most of the impact.
But for Abaddon, this was even more agonizing than being thrown directly into the fire.
"Ughhhhh!!!"
Abaddon knelt on the ground, tears streaming down his face. Although he didn't fully understand what had happened, one thing was certain.
"Kill me, Father... I've committed an unforgivable mistake... I've killed these brothers..."
Horus looked down at the chief company commander with a cold gaze, the raging flames behind him seemingly unable to dispel the chilling aura emanating from him in the slightest.
"The reason I let you die later is not because I intend to forgive you; I just need to find out what really happened."
"It's all because of that... despicable imposter!"
Abaddon looked up, his despair and anger finding an outlet.
"He must still be on the Great Tyrant! I will go and cut off his head myself to atone for the brothers who died because of him—"
"The Great Tyrant?"
Horus frowned, realizing something immediately, and quickly walked to the porthole.
He then let out a long sigh.
"You have indeed committed an unforgivable mistake, and what you have lost today is not just the brothers here."
Abaddon scrambled to Horus's side, his hands and feet scrambling, and stared in disbelief at the view outside the porthole.
His flagship, his base, his fortress were slowly deviating from their original course.
"Could it be that he wants to seize the Great Tyrant?"
But his remaining rationality made it impossible for him to accept this fact.
"Impossible, absolutely impossible! The ship is full of my men, how could he, alone, possibly steal it... how could he possibly leave in such a large warship!"
"Perhaps he wasn't alone, perhaps he... never intended to leave."
Despite the heavy losses, Horus seems to have finally regained the composure and calmness that belonged to a warlord.
"You have one last chance."
Horus grabbed Abaddon by the braid without hesitation and yanked him up from the ground.
"Get back what you lost."
-
As a sister ship to the HMS Vengeance, the HMS Tyrant was also a Queen of Glory-class battleship.
This behemoth, over 20 kilometers long, originally housed more than a hundred Gastrin Terminators, hundreds of Katuran Raiders, thousands of regular Astartes warriors, a Titan Order squadron, hundreds of Mechanicus, tens of thousands of Kosonia Headhunters, and hundreds of thousands of mortal crew members, slave laborers, and machine servants, whose numbers were beyond counting.
Even during the Great Crusades, this was a terrifying fighting force that inspired fear and was enough to conquer most of the Empire's planetary worlds.
But fortresses are often breached from within.
Firstly, due to Abaddon's distrust of mortals, the number of mortal crew members, slave workers, machine servants, and mortal auxiliary troops was reduced to a minimum during this operation. Even the Titan Order and the Mechanicus were reassigned to other missions.
Subsequently, roughly a third of the loyalist warriors were sent to their deaths in Istvan, the remaining Gastrin Terminators were taken away by Abaddon, and the Katuran Raiders and most of the other Astartes participated in ground combat under the Warmaster's orders...
As for the remaining hundreds of Space Marines stationed there, they were scattered across various important positions within the ship, and some of them had already been defeated one by one by Sun Qian and Grell.
All is ready except for the opportunity.
"Don't be nervous, everyone. The war commander discovered a traitor on the ship, so he sent us to purge him."
Sun Qian stood in the center of the spacious and magnificent bridge of the Great Tyrant, surrounded by ordinary crew members who looked at him with suspicion and uncertainty.
"For safety reasons, we will take over command from now on. I hope everyone agrees."
The room fell silent, after all, Sun Qian had asked the same question just a minute earlier.
The several gruesome corpses of Astartes on the ground, along with the bodies of several mortal crew members who tried to leave their seats, told them that this was not a suggestion, but a warning.
"Very well, now I have to tell you some bad news."
Sun Qian sat down on the command throne without any hesitation, while Greer stood imposingly beside him, holding a bomb gun.
"Although we eliminated the traitor, he had already damaged the propulsion and autonomous navigation systems..."
Grell turned to look at Sun Qian with some doubt, but in the end he kept his promise and did not ask any more questions.
And it just proved Sun Qian's words true.
hum! ! !
The entire Tyrant suddenly shook violently, and the main lighting system went out at the same time, with only the dim red light of the emergency system illuminating.
"If we want to survive, the only way is—"
"Emergency landing of István III".