Carnaphract

Space cracked and shattered apart under the strain of a Banished Slipspace Drive core transitioning back to Realspace. ‘Shards’ of subspace spun in the void, dissipating into clouds of blue and orange gas, contrails of exotic matter emerging from Slipspace, having been dragged through the non-euclidean realm in the wake of the three Carnaphract-Class Gunketches.
Their sleek and brutalist design caught the sunlight from the system’s twin suns, auxiliary armour plate burnished silver and black, contrasting with the burnt umber and crimson keels of the vessel as they split apart the expanding, dissipating cloud of gases and detritus like sharks cutting through waves.
All three formed into a loose pyramid formation, roaring on belching engines of orange-golden flame towards UNSC Deep Space Repair Platform Romeo Niner.
“Jiralhanae to combat posts!” screamed the Ketchmaster on all comms channels. “Let the cannons roar!”
Acrid fire blasted from a hundred weapons across the Gunketch group. The hulls rattled, vibrated and rattled. Spinal mounted cannons on the Gunketches' prows burnt a vibrant sunlight yellow before turning white hot and gold. They loosed with a deafening whine of radio emissions, scrambling shorthand comms for light-minutes around.
The high-energy particles scored a deep and angry gash across the surface of the Human Repair Platform, gutting relay towers and puncturing metres of thick Titanium battle plating. Atmosphere vented in wispy trails of white and blue before airlocks could shutter and seal the decks, dooming those within to their fates to protect everyone else.
In the confusion, there was no response yet from the Human defences, not even the Fleet had fully realised what was happening yet; a small handful of diminutive vessels crowded around a large cruiser, lazily turning to starboard.
The second Gunketch loosed a searing blast from the spinal-mounted MALSER Cannon. Pure energy vented from the depths of the ship’s reactor bay, shaped and contained by magnetic rails, accelerated to near light speed by the explosive reactions at the heart of the Gunketch’s reactor core. The MALSER gouged a brutal and bleeding slashing wound across the starboard side of the largest Human vessel. It burnt, armour turned red then amber, then white-hot and blew from the moorings as the temperature differential ruptured pipelines across its hull. Lights flickered across the mighty ship, more than twice the size of a single Gunketch, yet now totally at their mercy.
The third Gunketch spun up the MALSER and belched an inferno towards the Human defenders. One of the smaller, angular warships crowded around the Cruiser took the beam to her stern, where her engines met her hull. Her midsection ballooned, crisscrossing lines of fire emerging beneath her plates and armour. 
She exploded, engines tossed wide, front side cartwheeling away from the force of the blow. Only now did the Humans turn to meet their attackers, fighters swarming from hangar bays and guns lighting up with return fire. Missiles streaked across the vacuum of space, and the Ketchmaster bellowed his approval.
“Finally some fight from them! Loose the fighters, prepare for battle!”
Banewings, Grievers, Banshees and Phantoms sped from hangar bays out into the vacuum, burning hard against the inertia, pulling twenty-Gs or more to best speed towards the glory of combat!
“Let them know our fury! Let them know our might!”
Fighters slashed and banked between lines and formations, breaking and mingling while fire cut through space on tendrils of hot plasma or icy grey billowing smoke trails. Points of light erupted among the melee, parts and armour plate shattering against the forces come to bear and glittering in the starlight like a thousand crystalline shards.
The human Warships were now turned, save for the Cruiser, who listed and drifted aimlessly, fighting to restore power and turn to join the fray. Outnumbered five to one, the three Gunketches now had to deal with an assortment of equal-tonnage vessels.
Thankfully, their goal had never been to engage the Fleet, only the Platform at the heart of the formation. The Gunketches continued their burning advance and acceleration, their engines still roaring and still picking up blistering speed.
“Approaching ramming speed!”
A volley of MAC cannon rounds blasted from the barrels of mighty Human armaments. Two from each ship, ten to each Gunketch, a hundred rounds piercing the veil of space, carving through the fighter melee and the debris field growing around the site of battle, where salvagers would later pick the bones and pluck the shards of scrap from the void for their forges.
Two rounds bounced off the lead Gunketches’s shield, a third splintering the energy field and piercing the veil to crunch against the hull. A crater appeared on her prow, but she accelerated undeterred. Two more hit the nose and crumpled it, angular armour plates buckling beneath the onslaught and the ship lost speed, but did not cease her advance. A plasma line ruptured and her nose blew clear from her mountings.
The Shipmaster roared a mighty, defiant and wailing battle cry, his bridge erupting in flame and fire and he along with it. The other Shipmaster and the Ketchmaster of the Battlegroup echoed it, clogging the comms of Banished and Human alike with their caterwauling cries.
The ship exploded one last time.
The other MAC rounds impacted the second and third Gunketch at the same time. Four glanced off the shields of the second Gunketch, mighty armour plates absorbing the fifth and breaking away to join the arcing and shimmering shards clogging the space around them.
A trio of Longswords approached her port side, strafing her with missiles now her shields had dissipated. Two were swatted aside by massive point-defence cannons, the third banking hard as the fire trailed behind, loosing one last missile as he went.
Banewing Fighters were upon him before he managed to become a speck on the visual scanners, and a dot of fire bloomed in the darkness as his fighter took a plasma round.
Three managed to puncture the shield of the third Carnaphract Gunketch, each impacting the auxiliary armour along the side of the vessel. The plate shattered under the impact, revealing the Gunketch’s precious underslung cargo; a quartet of Banehauler Drop Pods, each a hundred metres in length.
They were close enough now to cleave through the faltering formations of Human warships, speeding through unhindered on a direct collision course with the multi-kilometre Platform. Human guns fired wildly at them, but the front armour of the Carnaphract was made for such abuse. Undeterred, both vessels seemed ready to impact, before the Ketchmaster barked once more.
“Break and loose pods!”
Both Gunketches fired emergency thrusters to starboard. Explosions raked along the hull, a pure and sudden influx of energy shunting the massive hulking forms of the five hundred-metre long vessels to port. They groaned, listed, rotated about their axis and their pods came to bear on the Repair Platform. Eight landing pods holding a hundred boarding parties each.
The pods broke free of their moorings, as they were meant to, and the ships missed the Platform by a scant few hundred kilometres. The pods, on the other hand, rocketed forward, unyielding..
Its heft buckled, armour plates yielded, and the Platform was sundered at its core apart by the impacts of the boarding craft as they made impact, punctured through deck after deck and each came to rest impaled fifty metres into the bulk of the colossal Repair yard.
Within the pod, a Chieftain hefted his Dreadmaul and smiled, braced against the impact by a row of cushioned harnesses. The Unggoy did not receive such luxuries, but his Jiralhanae did.
He made an appreciative rumble as the doors on the mighty pods opened wherever there was open space, wherever the pod registered atmosphere beyond, and wherever they could. Legions of Banished erupted from the pods, and the firefights started immediately.
“Time for my favourite part,” he said to himself, stepping down off the ramp and activating a personal energy gauntlet. “The Carnage!”
----
Commander Belmont entered the bridge without his usual commanding swagger, or sense of decorum. He wore a scowl on his face, all the more grizzled by the presence of an angry plum scar that snapped across his face like lightning.
The Bridge was packed with people, thumbing through reports and jostling for space around a holographic table. Damage reports, casualty readouts, and security feeds from the battle played out around them, with each of them motioning to different parts or discussing different aspects among themselves.
An AI paced up and down the far length of the table, and Commander Belmont made it a point to toss his datapad through the holographic avatar as he approached. The clatter of the pad and the disruption of the holograms made all the faces snap up towards him, just in time for the Marathon Commander to slam his hands down onto the screen, causing ripples of light and sparks to dance across its surface.
The bridge went silent.
“What did they get?” he growled.
“We don’t know,” a squirrely man in pressed olive fatigues shrugged.
Sighing, Belmont turned away from him. “What’s the extent of the damage?”
“Significant,” the AI said. “But beyond that,” a pause, “we don’t know.”
Belmont picked up his datapad and positioned it on the edge of the table, his scowl deepening. His hands balled into fists.
“Why didn’t they destroy the station?”
“We don’t know,” someone said.
Belmont punched his datapad and shattered the screen. 
“What—!” he paused, closed his eyes, and took a deep, calming breath. “Gentlemen. What do we know?” he laced his fingers together and smiled.
They looked at one another, and stepped back from the table. 
“We know they were onboard for a grand total of one hour thirty five minutes,” the AI beneath him said. He motioned to Commander Belmont with a wispy indigo hand. “We know that every security team from every escort ship came down hard on them and stonewalled their advance.” 
He turned, bringing up a security video that showed a lumbering mass of muscle and armour hefting a hammer of some kind. 
“We know their leader was a Chieftain,” the AI continued. More security videos surrounded it of the central complex, complete with associated holographic map references. 
“We know they focused efforts here on the central forges. We know they were looking for something. We know they didn’t want the station, we know they sacrificed a lot to get onboard and get whatever it is they were after, and…” he trailed off, snapping his fingers. 
Every previous hologram disappeared, and a new one appeared. A massive ship with a hooked prow and two matching hooks on port and starboard like a trio of massive claws. 
“We know that a massive capital ship they call a Dreadwherry came and picked all the survivors up,” the AI finished.
Belmont eyed the holographic display of the capital ship and nodded. “And in that time, we don’t know what they were after, whether or not they got it, or why they left us alive.”
“Correct,” one of the men said. “There is one other thing we know; Spartan Kynes engaged their Chieftain in single combat.”
Belmont snapped his head up. “Where is she?”
They looked at each other once again. 
Belmont gripped the edge of the table so hard his knuckles turned white. 
“We don’t know that, either.”
The Dreadmaul, as the Brutes called the weapon, was a wicked thing. The handle curved midway down, possessing a trigger-like mechanism and knuckleguard. On the rear of the hammer head itself was a circular intake or engine-like contraption, with miniature fuel cells and exposed wiring running out from it down into the handle. At the pommel, lashed and bolted to the grip, was a strange alien skull, jaw complete with metal hinges.
The gavel itself was square, with ridged square plates in three rows of three on the front, and auxiliary armour plates sweeping back carved with runic script. Separating the circular intace and the gavel was a cube-like device with two hemispherical metal cells on either side.
All in all, it drew her eye the moment she was dragged within view of it—moreso than the Chieftain himself did.
The alien turned to face her, taking in her appearance with an appraising look. She’d killed three of the Brutes before being captured, though had suffered for each victory. Bruising, a swollen face, and a murky black eye and two missing teeth were her rewards.
He stepped up to her, and behind him the Spartan could see he had her armour strung up in a strange apparatus, held in place with maglocks and restraints. The Techsuit was unzipped, spread by hooks like a frog in a science class. The plated titanium armour was arranged on it in haphazard fashion, like they didn’t fully understand where it went or how to mount it. 
The helmet was downcast, arms limp, and legs dangling.
Kynes was lifted up off the floor by her arms by the Brutes holding her, brought to eye-level with the approaching Chieftain.
“I’ve always wanted to fight a Spartan,” the Brute grinned through yellowing, cracked teeth. The rest of his pack laughed as he stood before the captured Spartan. “Though from the looks of things, you won’t be fighting much anymore.”
She spat at him, and the two Brutes holding her aloft growled, squeezing her arms enough to make her shoulders creak in their joints. 
He wiped the spittle off his cheek and grinned, grabbing her face with a mighty paw. He tilted it to one side, his own head tilting to match it, then he repeated the motion to the other side. 
She kept her gaze locked on his, biting her tongue to keep from spitting at him again.
“Still some fire in you, I see.” He nodded. “Good.” He leaned close enough that she could smell his rancid breath, and she nearly gagged. 
“I want you to bear witness,” he whispered, “to the Banished’s latest triumph!”
More Brutes appeared, hauling a second device, much larger than the one currently holding her armour aloft and spread-eagled. They set it down and used massive drilles to bolt it down onto the deck, before standing back.
The Chieftain set down his Dreadmaul and approached it with a reverent sigh and hands balled into fists. He knelt beside the device and pressed a trio of buttons on a screen.
It began to unfold. 
By the time the Chieftain stood up, the machine had unfurled into an assembly of arms and plates, much like the ones holding her armour aloft.
More Brutes came forth, each with more machines. Some held metal plates, some held tools, some held what appeared to be glowing blue plasma. They connected it all together, strapping and plugging each machine into the next. 
“Years in the making,” the Chieftain said. “Now bearing fruit. All we needed was a Spartan” he turned to the Spartan and smiled. “Or rather, we needed their armour.”
He flicked a switch on the first machine that held her MJOLNIR, and a whirring noise filled the room, drowning out the distant gunfire and screams with mechanical buzzing and grinding.
A plume of orange-red light started at the tip of the MJOLNIR helmet, and began inching its way down. The second machine, and all its accoutrements, began to whir to life. The arms began to move, and plates of metal came up to shield the interior of the second machine from outside onlookers as it went to work.
A sickening, sinking feeling appeared in Kyne’s gut as she watched her MJOLNIR be deep-scanned, and the complementary assembly begin its dreadful task of constructing something deep within it. Sifting resources from the attached storage containers, a shining light appearing through the seals in the doors. 
“The time of our last victory is at hand, Spartan. Can you feel it?” the Chieftain asked. He barked at the two Brutes holding her aloft, and they let her go.
She hit the plating beneath her with a thud and a grunt of pain. Rolling her shoulders, she went to stand only for an armoured boot to slam into the small of her back, keeping her pinned.
“Not yet, Spartan. Save your meagre strength,” the Brute above her laughed. “You will need it.”
The deep scanner reached her armour’s boots, and winked off. The cacophony of buzzing and whirring ceased, and the lights dimmed.
Growling, the Chieftain approached the secondary machine, and the doors parted. Steam, smoke, and the acrid smell of melted, forged metal and something else she couldn’t place assaulted her.
The boot lifted from her back.
She looked up to see a suit of Banished armour, suspended by the same hooks and clasps, spread eagled the same way.
“Thank you, Spartan.” The Chieftain grinned to himself, looking over his shoulder at the prone Spartan. “This marks the turning of the tide.”
He stepped into the machine, turned around, and lifted his arms, pressing his back against the armour. The doors slid shut once again with a hiss and a whine.
A second later, the screaming began.
What emerged was not the Chieftain. The lumbering, hulking mass that emerged stood at ten feet tall, armour as thick as Hunter shields, and helmet sealed and reflective. Joints buzzed and whirred, shields sparked to life and raced out over the imposing silhouette in rivers of hexagonal energy plates.
Kynes stared up at the thing that emerged as it stepped down out of the assembly forge, where it promptly dented the decking as it walked.
Grabbing the Dreadmaul off the floor, it reached into its skull, and took out a glowing orange bead. It thrummed with an arcane and esoteric energy, and the Brute dropped it into the circular intake on the rear of the Dreadmaul. In an instant, the contraption came alive, whirring, glowing orange, and sporuding a vicious barbed spike from the intake the bead just vanished into.
With glowing orange spine and Maul in hand, the former-Cheiftain raised both hands into the light and bellowed.
“Now I fight as I was born to!” his voice, heavily modulated from filtering through exterior speakers, roared in glee. “Not as Lucarius the Chieftain, but as Lucarius, the Casketborne!”
The rest of the Banished warpack joined the roars with their own triumphant cries.''
“Can we mount a rescue operation?” Belmont asked, hunched over the table
“We don’t even know where their Capital ship retreated.” one of the men said. “We have their Slipspace vectors, but no reference point after that. They could’ve jumped a hundred more times once they dropped out.”
“It’s a start, isn’t it?” Belmont said. “Set up a patrol to watch for Banished activity and inform CENTCOM—” 
“Commander—” One of the men went to interrupt him.
Belmont continued unhindered. “I don’t wanna hear it! Those bastards have one of our own! I will not sit idly by while they do god-knows what.”
The man across from him rolled his head. “Commander! With all due respect, we cannot afford to waste ships and lives for one soldier.”
“One Spartan,” Belmont stressed, baring his teeth in a grimace that made his scar ripple like a serpent.
“That’s if she’s even still alive,” the man across the table said. “And with respect, sir,” he paused, tilting his head at him. “For her sake? I hope she’s dead already.”
Commander Belmont lunged at him.
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Category:The Weekly
Category:Short stories
Category:The Weekly Winners