Bump.
I'm still trying to get a proper sorting for the info, something standard out of that flood of information. At first I tried to subdivide "Operation" into more parts, but it was just too messy to be useful. I updated some of the specs, corrected some others, and I went looking for the "Cadian Blood" references. See below:
Cadian Blood wrote:
The Depth of Fury was the single Imperial Navy ship of true cruiser size present. The Dominator-class was rarely seen in Battlefleet Scarus, and was considered by many captains to be something of the Navy’s bastard son. The more reliable Lunar-, Gothic- and Dictator-class cruisers held pride of place among Naval ranks and populated the majority of battle groups.
The Dominator’s undesirability was centred on its main weapon mounting. Thrusting from the armoured prow like a bared lance and reaching almost half a kilometre in length, a nova cannon took a horrendous amount of preparation in order to fire even once. It was also inefficient in orbit-to-surface warfare, rendering it less versatile than standard lance batteries, which in turn rendered it even less desirable.
Lastly, it was not viable to mount a nova cannon on any ship smaller than a cruiser-class vessel, purely because the recoil of firing the weapon would, at best, throw navigation all to hell and take precious minutes to recover. At worst — and much more likely — firing the weapon would collapse a smaller vessel’s superstructure and destroy the ship.
So this difficult, awkward weapon found its home on the prow of the often disregarded Dominator-class cruisers.
Captain Straden was all too used to being ordered into lesser duties — duties that he considered far below the honour worthy of an Imperial cruiser. He sat in his command throne now, feeling the heavy thrum in his bones as his beloved, underestimated ship came about to a new heading. The engines shook the entire ship, and well they might, for five thousand slaves and servitors laboured in the endless layers of the Fury’s aft decks. The enginarium was a hothouse of banging machinery, burning furnaces, sweating slaves and bellowing petty officers armed with pistols and whips.
Cadian Blood wrote:
This was the first time Straden could ever remember thinking that the metres-thick adamantium armour of an Imperial ship, coupled with the invisible, crackling protection of void shields, would simply not be enough. Upon hearing those words, the name of that accursed ship that had been Segmentum Obscurus legend for thousands of years, he knew with cold certainty that he would die here.
He steepled his fingers as his elbows rested on the arms of the command throne. Death… The thought was oddly liberating.
“Bring us about until Terminus Est is in our forward fire arc. Status on the nova cannon?”
A weapons rating looked up from his console, one hand raised to his earpiece. “Prow fire control reports all systems ready,” he said.
“Warn the enginarium to make final preparations.”
There was the chatter of dozens of voices around the bridge speaking into vox mics, alerting fellow officers across the ship that the main armament was readying to fire.
Straden requested ship-wide vox, and a rating patched it through to the systems within his enclosing command throne.
“This is the captain,” he began, and his mouth grew dry even as his calm took greater hold on his heart. “All crew to battle stations. Brace to fire the nova cannon in thirty seconds. Station commanders to sound off when ready.”
[...]
“Come on,” Straden whispered. “Come on. Please, come on.”
“Enginarium…” the voice began, and the captain was already out of his seat before it finished, “…ready.”
Straden stared at the viewscreen, at the bloated shape of Terminus Est powering closer through the void. He drew his formal sabre, and aimed it at the image before him.
“Kill. That. Ship.”
Cadian Blood wrote:
The principles of nova cannon technology are relatively simple.
Generators mounted in Depth of Fury’s prow and the cannon itself charged up, creating a series of powerful magnetic fields. Teams of slaves in the prow work with great loading machinery to feed a specially prepared projectile — an implosive charge the size of a small building — into a great hallway known as the release chamber.
Bulkheads slam down as the nova cannon readies to fire. The firing mechanisms must be isolated from the rest of the ship, and it is rare that all slaves escape in time. As Depth of Fury thundered towards, Terminus Est, battered by the anger of a dozen lesser vessels, Straden demanded haste above all else. Hundreds of slaves and servitors were killed in the preparation even before the ship’s destruction several minutes later.
Upon the order to fire, the magnetic fields accelerate the payload and hurl it from the fixed cannon at something close to the speed of light. Then the time-consuming and dangerous reloading process takes place, and the cycle repeats.
The payload hurtles through space faster than the human eye (and indeed, most instruments of human design) can track. It is programmed not to implode within safe distance of the firing vessel; a nova cannon’s destructive force is immense.
This failsafe can, of course, be overridden. In only a handful of minutes, it would be.
The projectile lanced across the distance between the two converging ships faster than the blink of an eye. Once it struck, it was programmed to implode, collapsing in on itself and achieving a density so intense all nearby matter would be sucked inside it and compressed to practically nothingness.
This is how stars die.
And this is what hit the oncoming prow of Terminus Est.
A sizeable chunk of the diseased ship simply ceased to exist, wrenched out of physicality and into nothingness. Consoles chattered and servitors grunted as Depth of Fury’s bridge instruments registered the damage.
“Direct hit,” said the lieutenant by the main weapons console.
Now the gangrenous ship was wounded. Detritus, mutated crew and shards of armoured hull span away into space, drifting from the gaping hole ripped into the prow of the advancing Chaos warship. The blood Straden could see was a flood of dark droplets — some hideous fluid leaking from the wounded sections of hull, turning into glittering crimson crystals as they froze in space.
It began to rotate — a fat whale rolling to avert its face.
“She’s hiding her bridge,” Straden cursed. “Sixteen per cent hull damage, captain. They’re venting air pressure and… and thousands of kilolitres of some kind of dark, organic fluid. Terminus Est is still coming, captain.”
Straden looked at the man as though he were the lowest form of idiot.
“Then by the God-Emperor,” he said, “you will fire again!”
Cadian Blood wrote:
Depth of Fury powered on, shieldless and streaming jagged metal from its wounds. Like a plague of locusts, Chaos fighters flitted around the cruiser, a cloud of annoyance harassing all four kilometres of the great vessel. Depth of Fury shuddered under the withering hail of fire, geysers of pressurised air and quickly-killed flames gushing from the holes blasted in its ridged hull. The cathedral-like structures adorning its long back were in ruins, resembling the bones of some long-dead civilisation.
The ship’s destruction was inevitable. The damage was already nearly total.
The reports reaching Fury’s captain flashed through his mind and were discarded by all but the core parts of his consciousness. The hull was literally collapsing on too many decks to keep track of.
The void shield generators had been ejected into space to prevent a critical internal detonation. Half the plasma drives had ceased functioning. Navigation was fighting to keep the ship under control, and what control the officers had was unreliable in the extreme.
The cruiser passed between two Chaos vessels, and a final chorus of broadsides fired. The banks of cannons roared into the silence of space, tearing great scars along the edges of the grey-green ships as Fury sliced between them like a crumbling dagger.
Still, somehow, the prow was aimed at Terminus Est, following the larger ship as it rolled. We’ll only get one more shot, Straden knew. By the throne, I pray we make this count.
“Main weapon primed!” yelled a rating.
“Fire! In His glorious name! Fire!”
No preparations this time. The nova cannon charged its magnetic fields and spat its implosive gift at the Archenemy flagship.
Two things happened in the wake of that release. Close to the speed of light, the projectile hammered into Terminus Est, unleashing the physics of a collapsing sun into the ship’s underbelly.
Several decks simply ceased to exist as the implosion gouged a wicked, bleeding hole in the Traveller’s vessel. More wreckage, more crew and more diseased fluids drifted into space from the grievous puncture.
The second thing was that Depth of Fury lost all pretence of stability. The kickback from firing the nova cannon was colossal, effectively killing the cruiser’s forward motion and sending it veering to starboard, out of control.
The predator sensed its prey was crippled: Terminus Est loomed in the viewscreen, drifting closer.
Cadian Blood wrote:
Petty Officer Ovor Werland laboured shirtless in the prow armament chambers of Depth of Fury. He was forty-three years old, and would never see forty-four. In his right hand was a laspistol, its ammunition expended. In his left hand was a whip, the leather cord slick with blood.
He’d lashed them, he’d shot some of them, but he’d done it. His team of slaves, now down to barely a hundred men, had reloaded the nova cannon in just under seven minutes. The mouth of the great turret had been fed with the huge warhead it would unleash.
Werland sprinted across the wreckage-strewn deck, leaping at the last moment over the still twitching body of a man he’d shot himself. He dropped his weapons, keyed the wall vox-speaker active and shouted over the wailing sirens that the captain could fire the main armament. His last duty done, Werland turned from the wall.
And froze.
The remaining hundred men of his slave team ringed him in an impenetrable semicircle. As the ship shuddered and came apart, the men stood there, pieces of wreckage held as weapons.
Petty Officer Ovor Werland paid the price many slavemasters have paid since time out of mind.
With nothing left to lose, his property rebelled and took their vengeance.
Depth of Fury was doomed. Although it would end its honourable but understated career in less than a minute, Ovor Werland was quite dead by then.
“Their cannon amasses power once more, great Herald.”
Typhus nodded his horned helm once. “End them. Now.”
“Main armament ready!” crackled the voice over the vox. Ovor Werland’s last words.
Straden’s mouth fell open for a moment. For one insane second he wanted to get back on the vox and ask that officer’s name, in order to recommend him for special citation.
“Fire my damn gun!” he roared at the surviving weapons officers.
They tried. Depth of Fury twisted slowly, exploding as it turned, bringing its cannon to bear with agonising slowness.
Their bridge. Straden breathed fast, unable to believe what he saw. The Archenemy flagship was filling the viewscreen now. And he saw…
Their bridge.
“It’s too close to fire, sir,” spoke one of the ratings. “We’ll be caught in the implosion.” Straden couldn’t believe what he’d heard.
“Do I look like I give a shit? We’re dead already! Fire! Fire, fire, fire!”
The magnetic fields powered up. Straden could feel them. He didn’t care that it was impossible.
He could feel the magnetic fields charging, heating his blood, vibrating his bones. He ignored the bridge detonating around him.
“Kill them!” he cried out with a savage brightness lighting his eyes. “For the Emperor! Kill them!”
Depth of Fury’s plasma drives finally exploded under the last sustained lance volley from Terminus Est and its support cruisers. The explosion sent shockwaves that rocked the nearby Chaos vessels, creating a great cloud of plasma residue and debris, hanging in space like a bruise-coloured nebula.
Terminus Est parted the dust cloud like a shark cutting through water. “That was close, Lord Typhus,” said one of the Death Guard flanking the Herald’s throne. “If they had fired…”
Typhus ignored him. “Make for The Second Shadow. That dies next.”
