by Andy Hoare
‘Operations?’ Lucian called over to an officer stationed in the crew pit. The old man, Rantakha, had served three generations of the Arcadius, and looked, to Lucian’s eyes, more like one of the servitors each year. He looked up from the cogitator bank into which he had been entering a long stream of data. ‘Have my shuttle readied and coordinate a flight plan with the Rosetta and the Fairlight. I’ll be there shortly.’
Rantakha saluted smartly, and Lucian heard him efficiently issuing his orders to his operations crew as he strode off the deck.
Passing his cabin, Lucian walked down the central companionway of his vessel. Though not as vast as a Navy ship, the Oceanid had once been home to several thousand souls, but the soulless automatons that were servitors served increasingly more and more functions, and the numbers of honest, flesh and blood men in his service decreased in direct proportion. Human crew carried out many more; crew press-ganged upon a number of worlds, of which the Arcadius held the ancestral rite to take its cut of the varied flotsam and jetsam that washed up there. As Lucian approached his destination, he was given cause to curse the fate that had filled his beloved ship with men such as these.
Approaching the shuttle bay amidships, Lucian turned first to enter the battery – that part of the vessel set aside to store the many thousands of tonnes of highly destructive ordnance used by its mighty weapons. The battery was situated in the very heart of the Oceanid. It was surrounded by many metres of adamantium, the strongest, most resilient material known to man. Lucian’s father had frequently regaled him with the story that should the Oceanid be destroyed, her battery would survive intact, to drift endlessly in space until devoured by a void beast, or ensnared by the inexorable pull of a black hole. Lucian had believed him at the time, and even now, standing in front of the battery’s armoured portal, it was not such an easy tale to dismiss out of hand.
A gene-lock guarded the portal, ensuring that no one other than Lucian, the master of ordnance and his trusted under-officers could gain access to it. Lucian inserted his hand into a waiting recess, as far as his wrist, palm up. He felt the sharp prick of the needle that was siphoning off a tiny sample of his blood. A moment later, a chime sounded and the armoured portals rumbled open amidst a burst of steam and flashing red beacons.
Lucian entered the battery. Within, vast racks of ordnance receded several hundred metres down the very spine of the ship, darkness swallowing all but the closest. Clunking servitors, three times larger than those serving on the bridge, prowled the rows; only their heads and upper torso betrayed a human origin, for pistons and power couplings had replaced much of their bodies, enabling them to heft the mighty shells onto waiting gurneys. These paid Lucian no heed as he took a candle – part votive, part light source – from a waiting alcove, and lit it, the better to navigate down a row of plasma coil fuses. He entered an arched nook.
Within was housed Lucian’s personal armoury. The Arcadius had amassed, over the generations, the weapons to equip a small army, and had in fact done so several times in their history. The weapons and equipment housed within the battery, however, were of an entirely different nature. They were rare in the extreme, and in many cases, devastating beyond compare with any weapons in the Imperium’s arsenal. Many were the creations of the most celebrated of weaponsmiths, others were of unknown heritage, some perhaps even pre-dating the Imperium itself. Still more were of obvious alien manufacture, such as the disruptor Lucian wore at his belt, and these were the most jealously guarded of all.
At the end of the long racks of exotic weapons, suits of armour stood motionless. They were painted in the hereditary colours of the Arcadius: deep red edged with gold, yet each was very different in design. Some were old, their lovingly repainted shells pitted with scars won in countless glorious battles. Others were covered in spidery script, litanies of protection against the enemies of mankind. Several suits were lightweight, designed for situations when a degree of protection could be sacrificed in exchange for additional mobility. Others were heavy and cumbersome, rivalling the Terminator armour worn by the elite of the Adeptus Astartes, so heavy were their armoured plates.
Once more, a tale from childhood came unbidden to Lucian’s mind. The story told of an ancestor who had fallen in battle, against the eldar if he recalled correctly; but this ancient Arcadius had not died, though his wounds were indeed grievous. According to the tale, the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus had borne him away, to attend to him in their machine temple, to minister to his body and, they had promised, make him one with the Omnissiah – the Machine-God. His followers had awaited his return for many days and nights, praying that the tech-priests might restore his body to at least a semblance of its former vitality. Finally, having almost given up hope, the retainers were astounded when a hulking machine, twice the height of a man, emerged from the temple, its metal skin painted deep red and gold. Understanding dawned upon them only slowly, but when the metal beast addressed them through loud hailers mounted upon its armour, they heard the barest remnants of the voice of their master. His broken body was forever encased within a dreadnought, an honour usually reserved exclusively for the mightiest of Space Marines. Lucian’s ancestor had led his dynasty for many decades to come. He had forged his place in the history of the Imperium, leading many more conquests against the benighted worlds of the eastern rim.
In his darker moments, Lucian feared such days might never return to his line.
Sighing, Lucian selected a suit of armour. He anticipated no trouble on Sigma Q-77, yet as head of the Arcadius, he was expected, by centuries of tradition, to wear the hereditary symbol of his rank. A suit of power armour would suffice, one Lucian had worn many times, one whose war spirit knew him as well as he knew it. The individual parts of the armour were cumbersome, yet Lucian dressed himself, preferring the additional effort to the intrusion of a servitor or rating aiding him. As he pulled on the armoured gloves, flexing them to awaken the machine impulses, Lucian reflected on the suit’s vintage. It had come into the dynasty during the time of Mathan Gerrit, known for his xenocidal crusade against the burgeoning Reek Exclaves, and still bore the scar from the encounter that killed its first owner. Lucian drew strength from the fact that he wore a suit in which an ancestor had met a violent death, knowing that, although Mathan sat at the right hand of the Emperor, some trace of his famously indomitable will remained, forever dwelling within his battle armour.
With his pistols at his belt, and his armour fully powered up, Lucian felt a familiar strength return to him. The armour was too heavy for a normal man to bear, relying instead on a complex array of fibre bundles to move its weight in response to its wearer’s movements. Lucian found the effect emboldening, lending him strength and confidence as he strode out from the armoury, making his way along the central companionway towards the shuttle hangar.
The shuttle idled upon the armoured deck, the under-lighting of the deck lights lending it a threatening aspect amidst the shadowed, cavernous bay. Fat cables snaked all around the shuttle as its systems were made ready for the coming flight, its reactor primed and its machine spirit fully awakened. A pair of heavy servitors and a power lifter plodded heavy-footed around the ship, loading external fuel tanks and cargo pods. The rear portion of the shuttle consisted of a modular component that could be swapped out, depending upon the nature of the shuttle’s mission. This component was configured to transport Lucian himself and a small amount of cargo, and it awaited him in its lowered position, its open front accessible below the blunt prow and swept wings of the ship. He knew that both his children’s shuttles would be configured in a like manner, and whilst he would have liked to have made the planetfall with one or both of them, they needed to maximise the amount of cargo they could carry back to the waiting vessels.
The pilot, Oria Kayle, stood waiting beneath the shuttle’s wings. A tall man in his thirties, Kayle was the latest of a long line that had served the Arcadius faithfully for many centuries. Lu
cian’s father had awarded the Orias the status of freeman for his part in saving the Oceanid from alien infiltration during the De-Norm Extermination. Oria’s father had accepted the promotion in status, yet remained to serve the Arcadius, pledging his line willingly and proudly to voluntary service. Lucian was grateful he had, for the Kayles bred pilots without compare.
Kayle threw a smart salute as Lucian approached, the bundle of cables hanging loose from the left side of his forehead shaking as he did so.
‘Is she ready, Oria?’ Lucian cast a professional eye over the shuttle, seeing for himself in an instant that she was.
‘Yes my lord. All preparations are complete. Our flight plan is registered and we can launch as soon as you give the order.’
‘It’ll be a rough drop. You’re sure she’s up to it?’ Lucian harboured no doubts regarding his pilot’s skill or the preparations invested in the shuttle, but knew the risks of the landing they were about to undertake. The atmospheric conditions were appalling, and the data on the landing zone incomplete.
‘My lord, if your order is to land upon the surface of Sigma Q-77, then this will happen. I pledge it upon my family’s honour. You have my word.’
Lucian nodded. He needed no more; for he knew the pilot’s word was as good as his own. ‘What are we hanging about here for then?’ He smiled. ‘Let’s go.’
The storm-wracked skies of Sigma Q-77 filled the porthole at Lucian’s side, the view shaking violently as the shuttle hurtled through the thin, upper atmosphere. Although compensated for by the shuttle’s systems, the violence of the drop was notable. Lucian could feel the heat building up, his power armour’s own mechanisms fighting to counter it.
Kayle’s voice sounded in Lucian’s ear, carried by the ships intercom yet crackling and distorted as if transmitted across light years of space. ‘Passing through the ionosphere now, my lord. There appears to have been some recent solar activity, so I expect some plasma damage. Nothing we can’t handle though. The Emperor protects.’
‘The Emperor protects,’ Lucian echoed. The shuttle bucked violently, throwing Lucian’s head against the padded seatback. The shaking increased and the temperature rose noticeably. The upper atmosphere of Sigma Q-77 now completely filled the port, and Lucian could make out the patterns of the raging storm clouds, angry white, violet and grey. Mighty energy discharges arced across the skies, back lighting banks of clouds many hundreds of kilometres across.
The clouds loomed, and rose impossibly fast to swallow the shuttle. The viewing port was swamped, the clouds so dense that only the strobing lightning was visible. The shaking increased still further, made violent and jarring by the additional friction generated as the shuttle screamed through the high clouds.
Kayle’s voice sounded once more. ‘My lord, we’re approaching a rough–’ He was cut off as the shuttle lurched upwards, only to plummet what felt to Lucian like several kilometres in the span of mere seconds. This was shaping up to be a rough drop, thought Lucian, perhaps as rough as the Kalpurnican Interface. He gritted his teeth against a second lurch, and a further plunge that exceeded even the first.
Except this second drop in altitude brought the shuttle out below the cloud layer, and Lucian was afforded a view of the surface of Sigma Q-77. Under raging skies, a ground the colour of rust rushed up to meet them. Kayle adjusted the shuttle’s vector, bringing them in on a slow, rounded dive that shed velocity startlingly fast. The shaking and vibrating abated, leaving the shuttle buffeted by high altitude winds, but otherwise unmolested.
Lucian loosened the harness that had kept him secure during the worst of the drop, and activated the intercom. ‘My compliments, Oria, how are we looking?’
Lucian could hear the relief as Kayle responded, the channel now clear of distortion. ‘My thanks, my lord. That was… testing. No appreciable damage, but the vessel’s war spirit is much displeased with its handling as we crossed into the troposphere. I fear I may be required to make contrition upon our return, my lord.’
Lucian grinned wryly at Kayle’s understatement. He knew the pilot would be ministering to the shuttle’s machine spirit for many long hours upon their return, seeking its forgiveness for its mistreatment.
‘Do what you must, Oria, but first get us back safely.’
‘Aye, sir, we approach the landing site now.’
‘Well enough, Mister Kayle. Bring us down.’
The meteorospex readout informed Lucian that the atmosphere outside the shuttle was, as Luneberg’s information had stated, breathable. It contained a high level of airborne hydrocarbons however, and Lucian took the precaution of inserting miniaturised filtration plugs into the back of his throat. These would allow him to breathe even if the atmosphere became dangerously toxic, although they would be of no use should oxygen levels drop below a breathable threshold.
Checking his auspex was operational and the coordinates for the meeting with Luneberg’s contact locked in, Lucian activated the lock. The seal broke, and the ramp lowered, oxide dust blowing into the small compartment before the ramp was fully lowered.
The surface of Sigma Q-77 was every bit as inviting as it had appeared from orbit, and far above, deep purple and grey clouds trailed across the sky, livid violet lightning arcing between them. The ground was barren and cratered, deep oxide red, yet cast a ghostly hue by the lightning. A cold wind howled, its touch chilling Lucian’s face and its shrieking filling his ears.
Although hostile, the terrain barely registered with Lucian, for he had visited scores of worlds in his career, many far, far stranger and more inhospitable than Sigma Q-77. Over the millennia, the Arcadius had developed a sixth sense when it came to new worlds, an intuitive skill passed down from father to son, demonstrated rather than taught, felt rather than reasoned.
Every world had a feel. Whether you landed first upon arid equatorial desert, tropical island chain or frozen tundra, Lucian knew that each world had its own character, quite apart and distinct from mere terrain or weather. Some Lucian had visited felt welcoming, fecund, and ripe for exploitation. Others were instantly hostile, as if aware that the coming of strangers would change its fate forever. Lucian had read accounts of worlds that his ancestors swore blind manifested an actual, malefic intelligence, rejecting their presence with every asset at its disposal, from weather to flora and fauna.
Lucian paused before stepping out onto the dusty ground. The feel of this world immediately struck him: it felt… it felt wrong.
Rounding an outcropping of rock worn into a twisted archway by aeons of erosion, Lucian saw that Korvane and Brielle had arrived at the rendezvous point ahead of him. He was glad, for the planet had about it a deathly air, and every moment he had spent trudging through the dust towards the meeting point had seen him grow steadily more ill at ease.
Korvane was standing, scanning the horizon through magnoculars, while his sister sat on a rock some distance from him, her discomfort obvious. Both wore armoured bodysuits in the colours of the Arcadius, although neither was as ornate as that he himself wore as head of the family.
Brielle looked up, hearing her father’s footsteps crunching towards them. She stood as Korvane turned and saw Lucian too.
The three having exchanged greetings, Lucian asked his offspring, ‘What do you make of this world?’
Korvane answered first, consulting his data-slate as he spoke. ‘I’m surprised that Lord Luneberg’s agents encountered natives here, Father. The archives make no mention of a colony here, and I can’t imagine it harbouring autochthonic forms unless–’
Brielle interrupted her brother. ‘That’s not the point.’ She visibly shivered as she looked out across the windblown expanses. Lucian felt the same chill, and it wasn’t caused by the temperature.
Lucian addressed his daughter. ‘What is it then Brielle?’
‘I can’t tell, Father, but something isn’t right. There’s something in the wind: echoes of somet
hing old.’
Lucian held his daughter’s gaze until she looked away, her dark eyes cast down. A thought formed in his mind, and fled before he could grasp it, as Korvane interjected. ‘Well, nothing’s showing up on the auspex, so I think it’s safe to move off.’
Brielle looked askance at Lucian before turning and stalking off. Lucian clapped his son on the shoulder. ‘Let’s go son, and keep a weather eye out.’ Korvane raised his auspex, but Lucian pushed it down again. ‘An eye.’ He pointed at his own. ‘Trust your own senses, son.’ As Brielle clearly trusted hers, Lucian thought.
Lucian and his offspring trudged across a barren, lifeless landscape, the wind steadily increasing until the dust it carried became so dense that visibility was reduced to ten metres and less. Twisted rock structures loomed from the dust, silhouetted as angry lightning illuminated the surroundings, and reminding Lucian of rearing slasher beasts. His feeling of discomfort had steadily increased as they had marched towards the site at which they would meet Luneberg’s contact. He wondered about his daughter’s reaction to her surroundings. Where he perceived the nature of the world as a spiritual chill, Brielle clearly interpreted it in an entirely different manner, speaking of voices whispering at the edge of hearing. Korvane, on the other hand, apparently felt nothing. He was either commendably steady of nerve, or stunningly insensate – Lucian could not, as yet, tell which. Either way, the boy was fated to inherit the mantle of the Arcadius, and Lucian would ensure that he did.
Lightning strobed, and thunder crashed an instant later. Korvane turned and shouted over the rising storm. ‘Half a kilometre to go, Father, the meeting point is–’