by Rob Sanders
The Chogorisian shipmaster had cautionary words for Occam, reminding him that the region housed the capital world of the sub-sector, was densely populated and served as operational hub for the Adeptus Ministorum in the area.
Occam appreciated that from the shipmaster’s point of view, having been a mutineer, privateer and pirate, it was a foolish destination. With the worlds of the important Badab system and coreward sectors still ablaze from the Tyrant’s rebellion and Quetzel Carthach snuffing out home worlds belonging to the successor sons along the rimward border of the Maelstrom, the presence of the Adeptus Astartes was severely depleted in the galactic region. Added to that was the massive reassignment of regimental forces and sector fleet assets of the Imperial Navy in recent months. Such forces had joined the Astral Fists, the Angels Eradicant and the Black Templars as part of a battlegroup initially to combat the aggressive expansion of the Overfiend of Octarius. The crusade force had then been diverted to halt the progress of splinter fleets peeling off from Hive Fleet Leviathan and rising up through the galactic plane.
As Naga-Khan had insisted to the strike master, this meant there were huge swathes of Imperial space in the rimward sectors going largely undefended. Frigates now patrolled where Imperial Navy battleships kept the peace. Following the exodus of regiments in the area like the Pharaghast Hive Rifles, the Valhallans and Darsine Patricians, regional security was largely in the hands of penal legions and the relatively inexperienced and poorly equipped local militia. Even the forge strongholds of the Adeptus Mechanicus, like Brontal-Maxima, Tanthrax and the Arx worlds – highly fortified in themselves but with no remit for sub-sector defence – had lost their Titan Legions to combat the tyranids.
When Naga-Khan had told Occam that there had never been a better time to be a pirate or renegade warlord in the area, the strike master had agreed. Alpha Legion, like the Sons of the Hydra, had not been the only ones to pounce on the opportunity. Huron Blackheart’s Red Corsairs were running riot across the region. The mutant hordes of the Ménage were striking out from Chimerica on the fringes of the Maelstrom. The activity of eldar raiders in the region had intensified while daemon ships of the Word Bearers visited the dark righteousness of orbital judgement on the faithful of the Imperium.
It perplexed the shipmaster, therefore, that Lord Occam had him navigating the crowded systems of the Crozier Worlds. Several times the Q-ship had almost run afoul of cardinal world monitors and Adeptus Ministorum system ships. When challenged over the cardinal world of St Clements, Naga-Khan had transmitted that the armed freighter was transporting pilgrims to Inviolata-Proctor.
This explanation, and the sub-light blizzard of other pilgrim ships moving between worlds and systems of the Crozier Cradle, had meant the Iota-Æternus had been sent on its way, only to almost collide with a sleek unregistered corvette that the shipmaster suspected belonged to the Holy Ordos. It too seemed intent on reaching its destination and went swiftly on its way.
This was one of the many reasons that Occam employed the privateer as his shipmaster. Naga-Khan was calm in a spot. In all the time the Redacted had employed his services, the ship had never been boarded once. It had come close the time a heavy cruiser of the Imperial Navy and its accompanying pirate-hunter squadron of frigates mistook the Iota-Æternus for a corsair. The pirate ship had been terrorising merchant shipping between the nebulous Pillars of Heaven. As a case of mistaken identity, Occam could hardly lay that at the shipmaster’s door. As ever, Naga-Khan had kept his cool and navigated his vessel through the trouble.
If the Q-ship was ever boarded and searched, Occam was confident that the legionnaires of the Redacted could evade detection and capture. Operatives could assume roles in the deception. Identica, paperwork and logs were maintained to keep up the illusion that the Iota-Æternus was one of a billion unremarkable transports plying their trade about the Imperium. The Seventh Sons might even be able to pass for pilgrims. The Q-ship’s hidden weaponry, however, and its enginarium – customised using xenos technology – were another matter entirely.
‘Anything?’ Lord Occam asked.
Naga-Khan moved along the runebanks, checking in with cultists and servitors.
‘No vox-chatter,’ the shipmaster said, ‘no augur returns. Looks good.’
‘Quoda?’
The sorcerer came forth from his small choir of astropaths.
‘No long-range communications,’ he confirmed, ‘as far as we can detect.’
‘Give me a pict-angle on the planet,’ Occam ordered.
Within moments, several of the lancet screens sizzled to an exterior pict-feed. Before the gathered operatives, cultists and legionnaires of the Redacted on the bridge was a heavily forested world, the continents of which were choked with the variegated foliage of colossal trees. Beyond, the crew could see the sunburst smirch of the distant Maelstrom.
‘My lord?’ an uncertain Ephron Hasdrubal asked.
‘You are looking at the fruits of your labours, sergeant,’ Occam told him. ‘Intelligence gathered by Blatch and Perdita on Saint Clements, from the penitents they brought you and your interrogation of them, has led us here.’
‘And here is?’
‘Sub-sector Trinitus – spinward crook of the Crozier Cradle,’ Naga-Khan interjected.
‘Specifically the forest world of Nemesis Spectra,’ Occam told him. ‘Mostly Titanwood barrens and shallow seas – all but uninhabited, bar a few isolated abhuman populations.’
‘So what are we doing here?’ the sergeant asked.
‘Give me a close-up on quadrant forty-four east, one hundred and twelve north,’ Occam said. As the pict-image began to formulate, he added, ‘Centre and pull back.’
As the bridge was flushed with the seasonal greens, browns and blues of a close-up on the canopy expanse, a colossal tract of deforestation and damage was revealed. Black streaks of hazy devastation. Clustered patterns of craters across leagues of primordial woodland, focused around a huge hole in both the forest vastness and the crust of the planet surface.
‘Opinions?’ Lord Occam asked.
‘If I didn’t know any better,’ Hasdrubal said, ‘I’d say that was the work of the Legiones Astartes.’
‘From the collateral damage,’ Arkan Reznor said, the warpseer giving his professional assessment, ‘the pattern and spatial distribution, I’d say we were looking at an orbital strike from a capital ship. A grand cruiser – perhaps even a battleship. The bombardment was very targeted. Insistent, also. The primary crater must be deep, the result of consecutive strikes.’
‘We’ve seen this before,’ said Sergeant Hasdrubal. ‘On the Canticula shrine world.’
‘Word Bearers?’ said Carcinus Quoda.
‘They have been getting increasingly adventurous,’ Lord Occam said. ‘Sending out demi-Chapters, warbands and planet-smashing battleships from their daemon forge.’
‘Surely we are not desperate enough to pick at the leftovers of such daemon-worshippers and fanatics,’ Hasdrubal said.
‘Fanatics have their uses,’ Lord Occam said, ‘as our Legion well knows. This strike, as well as those on Canticula and the archive worlds of the Zosima Crucizoid is the work of the Dissolutio Perpetua, a daemon ship out of the Ghalmek forge world. Big. Ancient. Afflicted. She’s been sighted smashing a path through the Crozier Worlds. As confirmed by Perdita’s investigations and your own interrogations, sergeant – her tour of destruction took her here, where she dumped her ordnance upon Bastion-Conundra.’
‘Which is?’ Sergeant Hasdrubal probed.
‘We have been searching for Conundra on and off for years,’ the sorcerer Quoda said. ‘A secret Inquisitorial fortress-repository, containing countless banned artefacts of xenos and cursed origin.’
‘And the Word Bearers beat us to it,’ Lord Occam said, ‘which doesn’t reflect well on the Legion.’
‘The artefact we’re looking for,’ Hasdrubal said, pointing to the lancet screen, ‘was down there?’
‘Yes.’
; ‘So we’re too late.’
‘You can tell,’ Arkan Reznor indicated, ‘the ordo’s real high-security installations from just their barracks and processing facilities. Many are underground and even then, the first twenty levels or so are a fortified front. I’d say that the orbital bombardment probably took care of them, opening the way for a Word Bearers raid on the maximum security repository below.’
‘Perdita,’ Occam indicated. The Assassin retained her own appearance, which pleased the strike master after the conflict in his quarters. Her head was clean-shaven and serpentine tattoos slithered down the side of her face. The Alpha Legion operative was leaning against the hololithic projection plate and now got to her feet.
‘The High Serpent and I infiltrated the chambers of the chartered captains on Saint Clements,’ she told the gathering. ‘The merchant fleets operating in the area largely have responsibility for running the pilgrim trains or transporting victuals between the agri worlds of Provenda Arcturo and the Crozier Worlds. Some are retained for the personal use of the cardinals astra and dioceses. We gathered intelligence from a number of shipmasters and fleet operators who claimed that their vessels had been urgently reassigned by their sponsors and sent into restricted space in Sub-Sector Trinitus. Some of the loose-lipped captains revealed that their services have been commandeered by the lord of the Holy Ordos for the transportation of high-security cargoes off Nemesis Spectra.’
‘Where did they transport such cargoes to?’ Quoda put to her.
‘That’s the question,’ Occam told him, pointing at the sorcerer.
‘The consignments received Inquisitorial escorts and the flotillas were shadowed by reserve Navy cruisers brought in from the sector base at Strontia Primis,’ Perdita said. ‘They delivered their cargo to a small, uninhabited world two systems away.’
‘Tell me you have the location,’ Quoda said.
‘The agri world freighters were forced to offload their cargoes at the edge of the system,’ the Assassin told him.
‘Which probably saved their lives,’ Sergeant Hasdrubal interjected. ‘If they had borne witness to the destination, the Inquisition would likely have had them executed. The local lord of the ordo must have an agreement with the cardinals.’
‘One curious captain told me he saw vessels of Martian registration leaving the system,’ Perdita said, ‘from its outer region.’
‘Mechanicus arkfreighters,’ Reznor said, ‘probably transporting heavy mining equipment for the excavation of a temporary installation.’
‘Warpsmith?’ Lord Occam said, as Reznor moved across to a navigations runebank.
‘The outer regions boast three worlds,’ he told Occam. ‘Two gas giants and a rocky dwarf planet recognised by the Adeptus Ministorum as a minor shrine world.’
‘It won’t be there,’ the strike master said. ‘The Inquisition won’t want the attention. Do the gas giants have moons?’
‘Only one large enough to sustain atmospherics and workable gravity for a temporary installation,’ Reznor said, scanning through the data flashing up from the runescreen. ‘Fifty-Four-Thermia. Uninhabited.’
‘So this xenos artefact,’ Sergeant Hasdrubal said, ‘this Tesseraqt, has been transported there?’
‘No,’ Occam said. The answer drew furrowed brows from the gathered legionnaires. ‘The Tesseraqt is gone. Intelligence I have from another source confirms that it was amongst the artefacts the Word Bearers pillaged from the repository on Nemesis Spectra during their raid.’
‘So why aren’t we running down the Dissolutio Perpetua?’ Arkan Reznor asked.
‘Because the daemon ship,’ the sorcerer Quoda said, beginning to understand, ‘its mission complete, has returned to Ghalmek with its prize.’
‘Then the artefact is lost,’ the sergeant said.
‘Perhaps not,’ Lord Occam told him.
‘You want to make a suicidal run into riftspace,’ Hasdrubal said, ‘and raid a daemon world crawling with Word Bearers and entities for an artefact we know next to nothing about?’
‘No, brother,’ Occam assured his sergeant. ‘I do not. Your assessment of the dangers and the likelihood of mission success is an accurate one.’
‘Then what are we doing here, my lord?’
‘Perdita?’ Occam prompted.
‘The merchant captains confirmed that along with the freight transported offworld from Nemesis Spectra, one shipment contained prisoners,’ the Assassin said.
‘The installation on Nemesis Spectra was a repository,’ Arkan Reznor added.
‘Yes,’ Occam said. ‘It was not outfitted for prisoners. The Word Bearers’ raid might have been successful but as the freight shipments prove, they were unsuccessful in taking the installation. It seems that some of their number were taken by Inquisitorial forces and abandoned by the Dissolutio Perpetua. Those prisoners have been moved to this new facility on Fifty-Four-Thermia with the transported artefacts. The ordo lords are on the back foot. They are unprepared, as their temporary installation is, for a second attack. We shall capitalise on their weakness and free these Word Bearers prisoners. They shall be the key to unlocking the secrets of Ghalmek, as the Tesseraqt will be the key to finding the Lord Dominatus – an Alpha Legionnaire with whom the Redacted’s destiny is intertwined.’
Occam looked around the bridge. Operatives like Naga-Khan and the High Serpent knew better than to offer any challenge to their Alpha Legion overlord. Malik and Phex, for their own different reasons, seemed uninterested in the mission’s details. Both were more at home in the execution of such details. Quoda and the warpsmith knew the extreme dangers inherent in what their strike master was proposing but Occam knew that both desired entry to the Inquisitorial repository, with its treasure trove of heretical technologies and damned artefacts. Only Ephron Hasdrubal seemed to hold any doubts but as sergeant of the Redacted and second to Occam’s command, he did not advertise them beyond the most necessary of questions.
‘As you wish, my lord,’ the sergeant said.
‘Now tell them the bad news,’ the strike master said to Mina Perdita.
‘Several freighters were already carrying assignments when they arrived at Nemesis Spectra, which were taken on with the cargo and prisoners.’
‘What were they carrying?’ Hasdrubal asked.
‘A detachment of Battle Sisters from the Citadel-Preceptory on San Sacrista.’
The sergeant grunted. ‘Then I hope they are ready to die for what they believe in.’
‘Shipmaster,’ Lord Occam commanded, ‘make way. I want a sub-light speed approach to the system with concealed weaponry primed.’
‘Will you be requiring the Seventh Sons, my lord?’ Freydor Blatch asked. Occam looked to Arkan Reznor.
‘It’s too cold on the surface,’ the warpsmith told him.
‘Assist the shipmaster,’ Occam ordered. ‘I suspect that it is too soon to expect augur stations and monitoring platforms. Perdita’s contacts reported two battle-scarred Inquisitorial corvettes assisting in freighter escort duty. They must have survived their encounter with the Dissolutio Perpetua, with one or perhaps both holding some kind of clandestine station in the system. The Iota-Æternus will be ready for such resistance and if required the Seventh Sons will assist in manning the gun decks and repelling boarders. Perdita, you too. The Redacted will handle this mission – alone.’
θ
Cold Blooded
It was dark. Occam’s optics cycled through different visual spectra. As they did so the strike master was treated to a vision of 54-Thermia’s frozen desolation. The Inquisitorial base was located on the night side of the planet but the darkness was intensified further by the black ice and snow that covered the planetoid’s surface.
Occam trudged through the lightless oblivion, his plate working hard to fight off the sub-zero bitterness. Primordial winds howled across the icy plateaux and through the valleys of stunted black mountains that rose up about the Redacted. With their camo-cloaks and the scales of their armoured suits m
atching the darkness, the Alpha Legionnaires made their slow progress through the black snow, the storm and the desolation.
Progress had been equally cautious into the system. Naga-Khan had brought the Iota-Æternus up through the shadow space created by the dark side of the system’s colossal gas giants. He had expertly picked the Q-ship’s path through systems of rings, debris fields and moonlets, all the while using the freighter’s enhanced long-range augurs to feel out vessels in the crowded region before such craft detected them. Occam had been impressed with both the shipmaster and Arkan Reznor’s xenos modifications, as the augurs picked out the ghostly presence of an Inquisitorial corvette boasting its own advanced technologies in the form of scanner-resistant hull plating. Essentially cloaked, the ordo corvette was stationed within the colossal crater of a shattered moon. Hiding within the impact site of a collision that had long ago destroyed the moonlet, the ship seemed to wait like some predatory fish on a reef.
Avoiding the Inquisitorial vessel, the Q-ship similarly concealed itself among the smashed bodies of the debris field. Masked by regular meteorite activity in the region, shallow descents and impacts on the ice world, the Serpent’s Egg fell towards the surface of 54-Thermia. Exiting the Dreadclaw some distance from the unmaskable heat signatures of the Inquisition repository, the Alpha Legionnaires made their approach on foot.
Vilnius Malik and the warpmaster Reznor were out in front. Malik was utilising his excellent night vision to follow frozen tracks he routinely uncovered beneath a layer of fresh snow. The compacted tracks crunched beneath his armoured footfalls, while Reznor scanned for devices that might give the presence of the renegades away.
‘I have nothing,’ he reported back to Occam over the encoded suit vox-channel. ‘No augurs, motion detectors or trip beams. No evidence of minefields either.’