Chapter 288: The Energy Shield (Patreon)

The sweeping auspex pulse rippled across the system once more. Compared to the last scan, the number of Tyranid bio-ships detected had dropped by 1,200.

Yet despite these losses, the true mass of the Hive Fleet appeared hardly diminished. Even after paying such a horrific price in biomass, Leviathan’s tendrils still coiled tightly around the human fleet, like an ocean refusing to recede no matter how many waves were broken.

No matter where one stood, on the bridge of a capital ship, inside the gunnery decks of an escort, or even at the farthest flank of the formation, everyone could see it: a living tempest, an impossible storm of chitin and flesh surging in from every direction.

In the void, the Tyranids swarmed in numbers as boundless as they did on any planetary surface.

And worse yet, numbers did not equate to weakness. Just as a single Tyranid Warrior could butcher squads of mortal Guardsmen if no Astartes stood in its path, so too did each of these innumerable bio-ships possess formidable lethality in its own right, their forms bristling with organic weaponry grown solely for killing starships.

Some expelled streams of burning plasma, others hurled symbiotic parasites that bored through armor, and still others simply rammed, letting mass and biology do the work.

Admiral Quarren stood on the command deck, watching Leviathan’s living warships blot out the stars. At the fleet’s outer perimeter, a Storm-class frigate, the Heavy Cannon, was locked in a duel against a Behemoth Kraken drone-ship. Though the Imperium classified the Kraken as a “frigate,” its mass dwarfed any Imperial ship of that class, its silhouette resembling a bloated crustacean bristling with feeder-limbs.

The Tyranid ship barreled forward, its motion disturbingly fluid for something so colossal, enormous feeder tendrils lunging as it surged through the Storm-class frigate’s fire.

Only when the range closed to five hundred meters did the Heavy Cannon’s guns begin to inflict meaningful damage. A full broadside tore a hole clean through the Kraken’s dorsal plates, sending gouts of pressurized blood spraying into the void.

But the victory was short-lived. The Kraken’s tendrils lashed out and coiled around the Imperial frigate.

The void-shields flickered uselessly; the tendrils bypassed them entirely, gripping the armored hull directly. Adamantine plating groaned and warped under crushing organic pressure. The ship’s frame shuddered violently, internal bulkheads straining as if crushed by some colossal deep-sea creature.

Within moments, the Heavy Cannon began taking catastrophic damage. Its upper hull ruptured, venting thousands of crew into the abyss in a single silent eruption of bodies and debris.

The breach lay dangerously close to the void-shield generator. Secondary damage cascaded through the compartment, and the void-shields collapsed entirely.

From beneath the drifting frigate, a Corroder-class Tyranid ship surged upward, its vast maw vomiting streams of corrosive acid that ate through shattered hull fragments as though they were parchment.

Quarren saw no more. A wall of additional Tyranid organisms swarmed between him and the doomed vessel.

It was not unique. Across the entire battle line, dozens of vessels fell into the same horrific pattern. A ship wounded, immobilized, and drowned beneath a tide of living predators. The tactical hololith flickered with dozens of green icons winking out every minute, each one a thousand souls erased.

The Admiral’s bridge crew spoke in low, tense voices, attempting to keep pace with the flood of casualty reports.

Yet moments later, the Heavy Cannon unexpectedly re-emerged in view.

A Talon cruiser rammed its way through the Tyranid tide, smashing aside every bio-ship in its path before striking the Kraken wrapped around the Imperial frigate.

The impact set the Talon energy-shield blazing with brilliant white-blue radiance, warping the Kraken’s torso into an unrecognizable mass of flesh and spraying liquefied biomass into the void.

But salvation came at a cost. A massive Devourer-class Tyranid, graded as “cruiser-equivalent,” though monstrously larger, lunged from the swarm and clamped its cavernous jaws over the Talon cruiser like a predator claiming prey.

The Talon energy-shield held for a time, but the cruiser was immobilized, gradually dragged backward by the colossal beast.

Just as it began to slip out of Quarren’s view, his own heavy cruiser swept overhead. The hull tilted downward.

The port-side macro-cannon batteries and lance arrays roared to life.

A storm of firepower punched gaping wounds through the Devourer. The Talon cruiser seized the opening and unleashed its own salvo, its particle lances overcharged to maximum output, tearing straight through the creature’s spine in a shower of crackling particle discharge.

The Devourer convulsed and died. The cruiser broke free.

“Have your damaged escorts fall back to the orbital shipyard for repairs,” said Adam, appearing on the holo-display.

Quarren immediately relayed the order. All severely damaged vessels were to retreat for emergency repair.

A replacement Storm-class frigate raced to the Heavy Cannon’s former position, while the wounded ship drifted toward the shipyard. At three kilometers from the structure, tractor beams seized it and drew it into one of the repair cradles.

From the bridge of the Heavy Cannon, the frigate’s captain watched Talon forces perform what could only be described as techno-sorcery.

In the Imperium, even a minor repair to a Storm-class frigate could take weeks of continuous labor at a fully staffed orbital dock, with hull plating stripped, compartments cleared, and delicate cogitator arrays recalibrated. A tear of this magnitude would normally require months of backbreaking work, if the ship could even survive that long.

What had been a seven-hundred-meter tear in the ship’s dorsal plating was rapidly rebuilt layer upon layer with gleaming adamantium, as though the metal were being coaxed into shape by arcane sorcery.

“Can your people replace their void shields with energy shields?” Quarren asked Adam.

Adam paused. He had assumed Quarren was a staunch traditionalist, hostile toward anything from the Talon Sector. At the very least, during their earlier cooperation in the Segmentum Obscurus, Quarren had loudly declared he would never permit the use of dimension engines aboard his fleet.

Quarren could almost read his thoughts. He sighed. “I am a Navy Admiral, the master of this fleet, but even I cannot choose freely in certain matters. Circumstance dictates compromise.”

“Replace their shields,” Adam ordered.

The void-shield generators were removed from the Heavy Cannon and replaced with a Talon-grade energy-shield emitter. The engineering deck vibrated with the deep hum of the new systems as the emitter spooled up, its capacitors glowing with contained power.

Within half an hour the frigate sailed out of the docks and accelerated toward the thickest region of the battle.

Quarren had once studied the Talon fleet’s weaponry extensively. He believed that one day he might, begrudgingly, allow dimension engines…but he would never trust energy-shields.

Unlike void-shields, which dispersed attacks through the immaterial, energy-shields projected an actual barrier, one that could collide with micro-meteoroids or debris and consume vast amounts of power. Their energy consumption was staggering, and their sustained defensive performance was, at least in theory, no match for a well-maintained Imperial void shield.

But in this moment, against the Tyranid Hive Fleet, energy-shields were perfect.

Nothing pierced them. Tyranid spores, bio-munitions, boarding organisms, they all disintegrated or slid harmlessly across the barrier.

When the Heavy Cannon returned to the front, another Kraken targeted it. But now its tendrils clawed uselessly at the energy shield, unable to latch onto the hull. With time to spare, the frigate blasted each tendril apart one by one.

But it was not invincible.

During yet another entanglement, a Devourer burst from behind.

Its fanged maw snapped shut with terrifying speed..

The energy-shield lasted only seconds before shattering into drifting blue motes. The frigate’s hull split apart immediately afterward, the detonation sending out a brief halo of ruptured atmosphere and torn plating.

Yet before dying, the Heavy Cannon fired every gun and torpedo tube directly into the Devourer’s throat. The creature spasmed violently, rolled belly-up, and drifted lifeless into the void.

Energy-shields bought precious seconds. Without them, ships died naked in the cold of space.

A cruiser nearby was swarmed by several Devourers and torn apart in record time, its distress signals cutting off mid-transmission.

Listening to his officers’ reports, Quarren stared out his command viewport. By now, he had discerned the Hive Fleet’s strategy.

The Hive Fleet was not trying to overwhelm them through sheer numbers alone.

Their bio-ships were driving hard toward the fleet’s center, trying to fracture the formation and split their fleet into isolated pockets.

But then the situation shifted abruptly. The vanguard suddenly came under far heavier assault.

Just as Quarren began doubting his analysis, the fleet’s mid-sections, both port and starboard, were struck by a wave of “torpedoes”.

Tyranid “torpedoes” were grotesque things: they did not fly in straight lines. They hunted like animals, tracking ships with unnatural agility, adjusting their paths to pursue their chosen prey.

Because they were living torpedoes.

Fortunately, five Storm-class frigates and seven standard Talon escorts surged forward, carving through the dense bio-ship formations and placing themselves directly in the torpedoes’ path. Their point-defense grids spat continuous fire, shredding the pursuing living missiles one by one before they could strike the vulnerable line.