"Guilliman watches over us. May all of you return your souls to the Emperor!"
The generous yet tragic roar vanished beneath the deafening sound of tearing metal. These small craft passed through the void shields at low speed, then ripped through the Conqueror's hull and plunged into its labyrinthine internal conduits and decks, only stopping when they crashed into its central adamantium keel.
The space between the hull and the keel was plowed through by disintegration fields. Whether they were the mortal servants of the Twelfth Legion or fully armed Astartes, before that absolute power of destruction, all were reduced equally to dust scattered through the air.
Still active, the disintegration fields were dragged by artificial gravity toward the ship's lower decks. Like red-hot iron balls, they continuously melted the solid ice beneath them.
The Conqueror's captain, Lotara, a seasoned and capable woman, roared orders at the third-line troops responsible for defending against enemy boarding parties, telling them to deal with those suicidal boarding craft immediately.
Once the Ultramarines inside the boarding craft emerged and infiltrated every corner of the warship, eliminating those Astartes would become exceptionally difficult.
The Conqueror's interior was threaded with an immensely complex network of passages. Its shadowy blind spots and ventilation ducts offered ample places to hide.
In their eyes, these immensely powerful craft had to be packed with vengeful Ultramarines. They were here to board the Conqueror, and the best response was to send the third-line troops specialized in counter-boarding actions to intercept them.
The Conqueror's condition was far from encouraging. Its bridge and central sections had been devastated by the disintegration fields, while the crucial sections at its stern—the engines and reactors—had remained intact through the captain's efforts to evade the attack. If those bastards crashed into the reactors, this Gloriana-class Battleship would