Rogue Trader

by Andy Hoare

  The bridge filled with shouts of ‘Aye sir’, junior officers, deck crew and dozens of servitors going about the business of getting the Rosetta under way and clear of the space station – the Chasmata Orbital. Korvane, his father and his stepsister had raced from the surface aboard Brielle’s shuttle, each rendezvousing with their own vessel. No one had pursued them; a fact that Korvane put down to the laxity of Mundus Chasmata’s security forces. Furthermore, they had gambled that the staff of the orbital would be lax in their security and would not to attempt to intercept them. To Korvane’s huge relief, such had been the case.

  The cargo lighters dispatched, what seemed days before, to offload the goods collected at Q-77, had still to complete their task, but had fled for the orbital as Korvane had ordered the Rosetta to general quarters. He gave them no more thought, because getting clear of the orbital was likely to require all of his attention.

  ‘Disengage, all points,’ Korvane ordered.

  A deck officer stationed nearby looked up from his console, concern written across his face. ‘Sir, the umbilicals aren’t made fast, we’ll lose–’

  ‘I said, Mister Taviss, “disengage all points”. Do so now or I will order you left behind.’

  The man nodded, before speaking into a fluted horn at his station. He gave the order. The rogue traders had no time to waste in the protracted process of breaking dock; his father had made it clear to Korvane that they should disengage with all haste, regardless of the consequences. A shudder rumbled through the vessel, her bow thrusters awakening. Any moment, they would clear their throats, and the Rosetta would move slowly sideways, clearing the orbital’s docking arm.

  ‘Thruster burn in thirty seconds, sir,’ called the helmsman, and a brass-rimmed clock face mounted above the forward viewing port began to count down the seconds.

  Korvane watched the clock’s hand as it moved, knowing that even now men on the lower decks would be racing for the safety of the inner chambers. Not all would make it, some would suffocate as the outer chambers depressurised, and a few would be sucked out into space through the unsecured outer portals, as the umbilicals were ripped away from their mountings.

  He gave them no more thought. The clock hand reached 30.

  The port bow thrusters coughed into life, their power staggering as they laboured to move the vast bulk of the cruiser. For what seemed an age the Rosetta wallowed, unmoving despite the vast energies unleashed. Then, inexorably, the scene outside the viewing port shifted, the docking arm receding as the Rosetta slid gracefully to starboard. Once moving, her speed increased, and a moment later a terrible grinding sound travelled along her decks, the unsecured umbilicals, and by the sound of it, several mounting plates, being ripped free.

  A moment later and the helmsman called, ‘We’re free sir, full speed ahead?’

  ‘Full speed ahead, Mister Ellik. Form us up on the Oceanid.’

  ‘Sir,’ the Rosetta’s Master of Ordnance called, ‘augurs are detecting a power surge from the orbital! I believe it is–’

  Before the officer could finish his report, a blinding flash filled the forward viewing port. Korvane held his breath, but the impact he expected did not materialise.

  ‘Report!’ bellowed Korvane, suddenly filled with anger at the thought of someone daring to fire upon his vessel.

  The Master of Ordnance bent over his console, his hands working a multitude of dials and levers, his screens filled with scrolling gibberish. ‘The cogitators can’t identify sir. It was extremely high powered, but left no etheric wake.’

  Deciding not to risk a second volley, Korvane ordered, ‘Shields to full capacity. Helm, get us moving right now, at full speed. I want to put some distance between us and that orbital.’

  Once more, the bridge filled with shouts of “aye sir”, as the crew hurried about its tasks. Korvane scanned the viewing screens crowded around his command throne, seeking any clue as to the type of weapon the orbital had employed, if indeed it was a weapon at all.

  ‘Sir, a second power surge!’

  This time Korvane glanced across at his screens as the surge spiked, reams of machine code language screaming indecipherable warnings.

  A second flash, but this time accompanied by the unmistakable sensation of the Rosetta’s shields absorbing an impact. The bridge lights flickered and dimmed as every last kilojoule of available power was diverted to the screaming shield generators. A patch of space, a section of the field projected in front of the vessel, glowed white-hot at the point where the weapon had struck.

  Fear stabbed cold in Korvane’s chest. What by the Emperor, had the orbital just fired at them? Whatever type of weapon it was, it had, a quick scan of the cogitator screens told him, stripped the Rosetta’s shield arrays to less than half of their capacity.

  ‘Helm,’ Korvane shouted. ‘Use every unit of power not required for the shields to get us out of range of that weapon, now!’

  ‘Aye sir,’ called back the helmsman, sweating at his wheel and labouring on a mighty lever, feeding as much power to the main drives as he dared.

  ‘Shields?’

  A servitor at the shield control station turned its head towards him, spitting a ream of parchment roll from its rictus mouth. A nearby rating passed the paper to Korvane. A cursory scan confirmed what he had feared. The shield arrays were severely damaged; he doubted they could take a second impact.’

  ‘Sir?’ the Master of Ordnance called. ‘The cogitators observed the second discharge in full. They have formulated an analysis. The weapon fired some form of hyper-velocity projectile. It was solid, not energy based. Our shields absorbed its force, but are not configured to convert such high-velocity particle impacts.

  Korvane’s mind raced. He knew nothing of such weapons, for the majority of human vessels used either high explosive projectiles or energy-based laser weapons. He knew the other space faring races fielded a wide range of exotic weapon types, but with the exception of those of the eldar such weapons were rarely of undue threat.

  He looked once more to the banks of nearby screens, seeking some clue as to the actions of the Oceanid and the Fairlight. He quickly saw that his father’s vessel had disengaged and was manoeuvring away from the orbital. Beyond, his stepsister’s vessel had yet to separate fully from the docking arm.

  The monotone voice of the servitor at the comms station intoned, ‘Incoming ship-to-ship transmission. Source: Oceanid.’

  Korvane stood. ‘Patch it through.’

  Angry static filled the air, interspersed with random clicks and pops.

  ‘Korvane, Brielle?’ His father’s voice cut through the static.

  ‘Here, Father,’ he replied, hearing his stepsister do likewise after a short delay.

  ‘Listen carefully both of you. I’m transmitting jump coordinates.’ A glance at his screens told Korvane they were being received. ‘We scatter here, and make the jump as soon as we’re clear. Understood?’

  Korvane scanned the coordinates scrolling across his screens. They indicated the destination as the nearest inhabited system, Arris Epsilon. They gave an outbound jump point only two astronomical units out.

  ‘Father, are you’re sure it’s safe?’ he asked.

  A small delay was followed by his father’s reply, ‘No, but my augurs are showing that we’re not just up against the orbital. Check near space tracking.’

  Korvane called up the long-range augur returns. ‘What the…?’

  He stared for a moment as a group of signal returns appeared at the extent of his augur range.

  ‘I don’t know who they are Korvane, but I’m not prepared to sit here and find out the hard way. We jump as soon as we’re clear.’

  ‘Understood,’ replied Korvane.

  ‘Good luck, the pair of you,’ he heard his father say, before a howl of feedback screamed from the speaker grilles, and then silence.

  The Master
of Ordnance spoke up, ‘Sir, another surge.’

  ‘All hands,’ Korvane called, preparing himself for the catastrophic damage he knew was about to be done to his vessel, ‘brace for impact.’

  None came.

  He looked to the bank of screens, seeing that it was not the Rosetta that had been the target of this attack, but the Oceanid. Having manoeuvred his vessel away from the docking arm, his father had not ordered her away, but had come around to engage the station in a deadly broadside.

  Cataclysmic energies played across the Oceanid’s dying shields, secondary fires raging across her port as atmosphere bled into space. Korvane stood from his command throne and crossed to another viewing port, from which he could make out the epic confrontation unfolding only a few hundred metres distant.

  He watched in awe as fire blossomed across the Oceanid’s side, the discharge of her port weapons batteries unleashing a fearsome broadside at extreme short range. The orbital station was wreathed in fire as the devastating attack struck home, and several docking arms sheared off as explosions gutted the central core.

  Yet the station was far from dead, despite the terrible damage done by the Oceanid’s broadside. Korvane winced as another, blinding flash indicated that the station’s deadly projectile weapon was still operational. Though the projectile itself was invisible, he saw its passing etched upon the smoke and fire billowing into space from both the Oceanid and the station. It struck his father’s ship a glancing blow to a dorsal augur array, the structure shearing off and spinning into space.

  Stunned by the ferocity of the battle raging before him, it took Korvane a moment to realise that he was hearing his father’s voice addressing him over the communications system.

  ‘…peat, get moving the pair of you, now! Good luck.’

  Korvane opened an intercom channel to Adept Mykelo, his Navigator. ‘Awaiting your order adept. You have the vessel.’

  A pause, before the adept replied. ‘This is against my better judgement sir, but given the circumstances I shall undertake the manoeuvre. Pray for us all.’

  Korvane closed the channel and leant back in his command throne, watching as the bridge crew made the final preparations for the emergency warp jump. This was the second time the vessel and her crew had undergone a warp jump recently, and it appeared as if Mykelo would reject Korvane’s order. It was entirely within his rights as a Navigator to do so, Korvane knew, for any and all matters relating to a vessel’s passage through the warp were entirely the province of its Navigator, by ancient decree. Mykelo had considered the situation, realising that they had little choice if they were to avoid a confrontation with the unknown vessels, which were bearing down on them with obviously hostile intent.

  A mournful peal sounded from the ship’s address system, the signal that a warp jump was imminent. Korvane knew somehow that this would be a bad one, although he had no idea in what way. He had heard the tales.

  The signal ended and all of the lights on the bridge died. Korvane could hear his own pulse thundering in his ears, and he gripped the arms of the command throne all the tighter.

  A distant sound became audible, an atonal drone, building in volume to the scream of a billion, billion souls adrift upon an ocean of pain and chaos. Korvane’s own voice added to the terrible din, as did that of every man and woman onboard the Rosetta. They were joined together in a terrible communion, sharing the damnation of the denizens of the abyss.

  Then there was silence.

  Korvane opened his eyes, and then vomited. The bridge lights flickered back to life, one by one. He heard coughing and moaning from the bridge crew. Having painfully voided the contents of his stomach, Korvane looked around his bridge, breathing heavily as he fought to make some sense of what had just occurred.

  Something had gone terribly wrong, that much was clear. His crew was scattered around the bridge, or slumped over consoles, groaning or silent, unconscious, insensible, or worse. Only the servitors appeared to have escaped unharmed. The Master of Ordnance sat up and looked towards Korvane with madness in his eyes. Korvane saw with a start that the man’s hair was now entirely white, while it had been merely grey-shot before the jump. Utter shock threatened to overwhelm him, and he strove to maintain control of his faculties in the face of what had happened.

  ‘We pray for those lost in the warp,’ Korvane mumbled, the words of the spacefarers’ prayer coming unbidden to his lips. The prayer gave him some comfort, and he felt himself calming. He glanced at the banks of screens surrounding his command throne. All were dead.

  Realising that he would need to take visible control of the situation, Korvane stood, shakily at first. A junior officer appeared nearby, offering aid, which he waved away.

  ‘Bridge crew, listen to me. I need a full situation report and I need it now.’ He straightened as he spoke, feeling confidence return as he played the role for which he was born and raised – that of leader. ‘Then I need to know where the hell we are.’

  ‘Aye sir,’ came the mumbled replies from the crew. Men straightened themselves out, smoothing creased uniforms as they returned to their stations. Within minutes, the bridge bore some resemblance to its normal state – men, and mostly servitors, going about their business. Yet still the screens were dead.

  He turned to the junior officer hovering nearby. ‘Find out if Adept Mykelo is in need of help.’ The man nodded and hurried away.

  Korvane crossed to the forward viewing port. Looking out, he was confronted with unfamiliar constellations, but at least, he thought, it was space out there, and not somewhere else. He shook the thought off and studied the view; a nearby star glowed white through the halo of a comet’s debris, yet he had no clue if it was Arris Epsilon, or an entirely different system.

  The rating appeared at his side once more. ‘Report,’ he ordered.

  ‘Sir, we’re being hailed.’

  Leaving the question of the Navigator’s state to one side, Korvane asked, ‘The Oceanid?’ He doubted, even as he asked, that either of the other two rogue trader vessels would be nearby.

  ‘I cannot tell, sir.’

  ‘Why can’t you tell, lieutenant?’

  ‘Sir, the comms systems appear to have sustained some damage. We have crews working on getting them fully operational. We have short-ranged hailing, but little else.’

  ‘Fine.’ Korvane felt at a major disadvantage with his ship’s systems running under capacity, but he would have to make the best of the situation. ‘Open a channel, and contact Mykelo.’

  ‘Aye sir,’ the officer said, before ordering the servitor at the comms station to patch through the transmission.

  ‘…vessel. Repeat. Activate identification transponders immediately or be fired upon. You have entered sovereign space and we will fire if you do not identify yourself. Repeat–’

  Korvane cleared his throat, before announcing, ‘This is the rogue trader vessel Rosetta, of the Arcadius. I am Korvane Gerrit of the Arcadius, son of Lucian, heritor of the Arcadius. To whom do I speak?’

  The channel burbled and whistled for a second or two, before the reply came back, ‘Rosetta, this is Epsilon system defence boat Gamma Secondus. You will lock onto our signal and follow us in. Then you will be ferried to the surface, is that understood?

  Korvane sighed. He was intensely relieved that they had reached their intended destination of Arris Epsilon. With many of the ship’s augur systems still incapacitated he had no clue as to whether his father and stepsister had yet arrived. That, to his mind, put him in a position of authority.

  Perhaps, at Arris Epsilon, he could repair some of the damage his stepsister had done at Mundus Chasmata.

  ‘Do as they instruct,’ he ordered the helmsman, before retiring to his quarters to prepare to board the other vessel.

  ‘Arris Epsilon, my lord.’

  Korvane looked through the shuttle’s cockpit port as the small ship swep
t through the upper atmosphere of Arris Epsilon: vast, bioluminescent clouds glowed acid yellow and jade green, casting the landscape far below in an actinic, murky half-light.

  He nodded to the captain of the security cutter, his mind engaged by conflicting distractions: the need to plan for the coming meeting with this world’s leaders, and the need to gather as much information on this world as possible. The view, which was really quite stunning, was another distraction.

  Spotting the smudge of what he assumed was a distant conurbation, Korvane turned to the captain, ‘How far to your capital?’

  The man bowed his head as he communed with the shuttle’s machine spirit, his soul intermingling with that of the machine via the consecrated mind impulse cables threaded from the back of his head to the ports behind him.

  The captain raised his head, ‘Thirty-seven point five.’ Korvane raised his eyebrows, holding the man’s eye. ‘Local,’ he finished, Korvane nodding.

  Korvane settled back in his seat, deciding to use the time wisely. He had gathered, from what little conversation had taken place between the security cutter’s crew and himself, that an Imperial Commander named Zachary Droon ruled Arris Epsilon. His ancestral seat lay in a range of mountains that bisected the world’s main landmass, his capital named Arralow City.

  Beyond that, Korvane had scarcely gleaned anything, for the Epsilon security personnel were tight lipped, even for the natives of such a backwater world. It wasn’t that they had a problem communicating, for their Low Gothic was uncommonly coherent. They simply didn’t communicate very much.

  Korvane sighed, inwardly, for to do so out loud would be, to him, an unforgivable rudeness. He looked once more out of the cockpit’s port, his eyes tracing the patterns in the vast cloud formations. Many hundreds of kilometres tall, they formed pillars that connected the various strata of Arris Epsilon’s atmosphere. The incredibly complex convection currents within each supported entire worlds of microscopic life, or so the captain had informed him. Apparently, it was the only subject on which he was capable of holding forth.