The wreckers

The wrecker airship moves alongside the limping Cygnan Martyr. The stubbers fore and aft open up on the vessel, while wounded sailors are carried into the lounge. The defenders rake the armored cabin of the wrecker ship with lasguns, autopistols and shotguns, but to no effect. At ten yards, the wreckers fire grappling hooks into the observation decks, and a boarding gangway, propelled by small charges, crashes into the upper deck of the Martyr, into the middle of the defenders. Hooks and barbs snap into place, binding the Martyr to her attacker. Yuri, who has put bullet after bullet into the wreckers’ cabin, drops his sniper rifle and draws his two irontalons. The sailors grab heavy spanners and wrenches. A few reddots hover uneasily at the smoking mouth of the cabin. Then a pack of wreckers bursts out of the darkness and runs across the gangway, while others abseil toward the grappling hooks. The attackers are covered with bulky brown chem-overalls, patched with pieces of metal and unwholesome leathers and festooned with rusty tools and oxytanks. Their gasmasks turn their shouting into a dull roar. A few fire their selfmade shotguns at the observation deck, but the bulk charges across the gangway, brandishing boarding axes, cutlasses and knives. The first few are cut down by the defenders’ point-blank fire, but then, they are on the observation deck, and the fight becomes a chaotic melee. In a motion as natural as rainfall, Yuri puts his autopistols away and draws the two short straight blades from his back – blades made with narrow corridors and close work in mind. Drizz stands just behind him – and then he is gone. Was there a flicker, a moan? No matter, there is fighting to be done. There are shouts of surprise out of the wreckers’ ship, and gunfire, and a dull explosion. Nobody on the Martyr notices: The fight is too close and too desperate. The sailors are driven back by the furious assault of the wreckers; the decks get slippery with blood. Men drop over the railing and tumble screaming towards the acid sea. The stubbers fall silent, as wreckers storm the positions and the gun crews have to fight for their lives. All over the observation deck, small, vicious fights break out, while smoke from the wreckers’ ship and the burning thruster starts to obscure everything. Close to the gangway, Yuri and Octavia’s bodyguards form the only organized line of defense. No wrecker tangling with Yuri lives longer than a few heartbeats, his blades weaving fast red patterns, while the bodyguards cover his back and put down one attacker after another with their autopistols. While he dispatches another shape in a grublike suit, Yuri notices that the stream of attackers has stopped, as have the screams from the cabin on the other ship. Then, the wrecker ship suddenly drops ten feet, as half of its thrusters cut out. The shock hits the Cygnan Martyr, and nearly everyone is thrown on the deck, while a few unlucky souls are catapulted over the railing into the void. The Martyr starts to list; people slide over the decks towards the deep. The female bodyguard screams as she is flung overboard. Yuri sees her hanging at the railing with one hand, while both airships start to circle and sink. He flicks one blade into the floor to pull her into safety, and a steel club crashes into the deck next to his foot. He twists, whips his remaining blade around, cuts off the hands holding the club and kicks the squirming, spurting shape off the deck. He helps the armored woman to her feet. A grateful nod, then the bodyguard pulls a heavy pistol and starts to fire at the wreckers at the stubbers.
The Cygnan Martyr groans, its thrusters working to keep two ships level in the air, while the wrecker ship tears at the lines. But the presence of Yuri and the Octavia's bodyguards is telling: The fight has turned, the wreckers’ numbers have dwindled and the defenders dispatch the remaining boarders in short order. Then, the gangway buckles, bolts pop and holding lines snap. The gangway tears out of the observation deck, ripping the deck apart. Yuri thinks “Where is Drizz?” A silver-armored shape runs out of the wrecker cabin onto the tilting gangway, which now sinks fast, away from the Martyr. Drizz sprints toward the end and jumps. For a second he hangs in the air, a thousand feet over the Balemire Sea, while the gangway crumbles behind him and the wrecker ship howls into a vertical dive. Then, his armored fingers dig into the wreckage of the observation deck, and helpful hands draw him to safety. The Martyr, lightened, shoots up into the sky, while her attacker plunges into the black, roiling seas below. Yuri looks at the armored Tallarn “Where have you been?” Drizz smiles “Isn’t that obvious? I was on the other side. I found their wheelhouse. I pulled a few levers. The story’s instructive ending.” “Better be careful. It was quite chaotic over here; I don’t think anybody noticed, apart from the dead. My take: You could have killed us all with that stunt. Flashy will be the end of you.” “Don’t be stupid.” Yuri is probably talking about shooting up the wreckers’ cockpit while the Martyr was still festooned with their grappling hooks, but his reproach could also point out something infinitely more dangerous. A psyker does not have to move his legs, one tired step after another, to get to a different place. He travels with his mind, and then the body appears where the mind is, at the other side of a wall, behind the backs of his enemies. But the warp is fickle and vicious, and an airship is one of the worst places to risk its wrath.