The shelter was neat, cool and bathed in the sodium light of a lamp-pack. The lamp-pack caught his attention immediately. It wasn’t on when he left. Krieg took a deep breath and a good, long look around his quarters. He finally found the device under his bunk: wire sensitive seismic demolition charges, with a bunch of pin-primed frag grenades for good measure. If he’d tried to sit down on the berth, he’d be in pieces right now, splattered all over the hull of the Wastrel.
Rudd. Bastard.
He’d heard Rudd threaten a fragging in the Pavilion, in front of Kowalski, but Krieg hadn’t thought the lieutenant foolish enough to convert hot words into explosive deeds. The captain-commandant wasn’t wrong about Krieg, though: he did have a way with people – and not necessarily a good one.
Realising that anything in the billet could be rigged and that nothing sentimental was worth dying for, Krieg backed slowly out of the tent. In the doorway, something touched his shoulder and he turned slowly, making his hellpistol rock where he had hung it, with its holster and power pack. Bagging the supercharged weapon for practical rather than sentimental reasons, Krieg left the site of his intended murder, dashing across the dry dock deck towards Bay Sixteen before anyone else tried to kill him.
‘I’m going to kill that Krieg.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘I mean it.’ Dekita Rosenkrantz paced up and down the squalid confines of the cell, feverishly checking the holochron on her wrist.
‘That might be difficult, my child,’ sniffed Pontiff Preed, adjusting his monocle. The huge priest towered over her like a natural feature – his obscene belly and the chins that sat like tyres around his throat marking him as a man who had eaten his fill and the fill of many others, in the name of the God-Emperor. ‘He’s probably already dead.’
‘I asked him to file those damn tallies.’
‘Tallies?’ Preed echoed as he squinted, sizing up the door. His cracked eyeglass fell and dangled from a cord on his belt. Rosenkrantz pulled up the sleeve of her flightsuit to reveal a thirteen-digit number laser scanned into her flesh.
‘Jopall Indentured,’ Rosenkrantz confirmed. She grunted and rolled back the sleeve. Everything on Jopall was tallied: the loss of an enemy life; the defence of an Imperial one. Recompense was recorded and accounted for in order that the citizens of Jopall could work off the crushing debts incurred during their unproductive childhood. The ship’s commissar, or in the case of the Guard, the company commissar, was charged with the welfare of troops under his supervision and this included responsibility for itemising and filing all Jopall tallies with the proper home world authorities. ‘Krieg holds all the tallies for me and my crew.’
Preed nodded with regret before cracking his robust knuckles and charging his three hundred kilos of pure bulk at the cell door. The impact was deafening and Rosenkrantz saw the wall around the door visibly quake: the door however, remained exactly where it was. Preed rubbed his hulking shoulder before ambling in disappointment to the corner of the filthy cell.
‘Plate draconium; probably cruciform bolt-locked and set with inertia seals…’ the priest appraised.
Rosenkrantz sagged and crumbled into a heap on the rockcrete bunk. ‘Why are they doing this? They’re supposed to be on our side.’
‘They aren’t on anyone’s side, my child,’ the gentle giant soothed in his most clerical voice. ‘They’re their own side.’
A roar that was anything but clerical shook the air and a ripple of rage cascaded down the pontiff’s mammoth form. He threw himself at the cell door once again, pummelling the dull metal with his muscular fists. The mighty priest rained a thunderstorm of blows down on the pitted surface of the door, but failed to make any impression on it. With his chest heaving, the pontiff moped over to the solid bunk and rested his backside. It almost painted a comical scene, the svelte young pilot in her flight suit, resting her head against the man-mountain that was Preed.
‘How long have we got?’ the pontiff put to her.
Rosenkrantz hesitated: ‘An hour… maybe.’
‘An hour?’
‘If we’re not off world in an hour we won’t need Deliverance to fly through space,’ the pilot assured him.
Preed suddenly put up his hand to silence her and clambered awkwardly to his feet.
‘What?’ Rosenkrantz demanded, but the priest didn’t seem to hear her. Putting a mangled ear to the floor he listened intently.
‘I must stop you there, my daughter,’ he said, rearing up to his full height and making the sign of the aquila. Again he cracked his knuckles and got to his feet, stretching the muscles in his fat neck like a pugilist. ‘It seems that our prayers have been answered.’
‘Pontiff, what’s going on?’
‘The sisters – I think – or their Militiate brothers. They’re moving along the cell-block. I can hear cell doors being opened.’
From their own door came the excruciating sound of metal grinding on metal: the bolt-lock. Moments passed. Preed and the pilot were suddenly privy to the sound of screams from the next cell, punctuated by the chemicular whoosh of a melta gun as the battle-sisters went about their cleanse and burn mission with impassive economy.
Rosenkrantz backed towards Preed and stumbled as her boot caught one of his huge sandals. As she turned she saw the gargantuan priest had picked up the ceramite bunk and was holding it above his head like a barbell. His arms trembled and thick rivulets of liquid effort rolled down the sides of his snarling face. ‘Get behind me,’ he managed.
The cell door suddenly swung open and the pair found themselves looking up the smoking twin barrels of a multi-melta. The weapon rumbled its superheated intention to fire. With a belly-grunt of exertion Preed let the ceramite block fly. The zealot frater beyond had barely a second to respond and all he could manage was a flash of his gauntleted palm at the priest in protest. The block smacked him into the corridor wall and crushed him with all the impunity of an unstoppable force.
Before Rosenkrantz realised that her flesh hadn’t actually been charred from her bones, the monstrous priest was out of the cell and storming the corridor. Sticking her head out of the cell door, the flight lieutenant watched him cannonball his way towards the cell-block bulkhead.
A number of militia members stood sentinel with chunky autoguns and flamers. They went to prime their weapons, but found the three hundred kilo blitzkrieg charging up the corridor towards them too much of a spectacle. By the time their first round had chambered Preed had smashed their shaven heads into the wall with his oncoming shoulder and stampeded them underfoot.
Keeping her head down, Rosenkrantz swept across the corridor and went for the melta operator’s holstered stub gun. In a small booth a few metres down, two Incarcetorium guards carrying riot shields and convulsion mauls stood by the cell-block door controls. At first they were completely stunned by the havoc being wreaked by Preed up the corridor. As soon as they saw the pilot they glowered before activating their mauls and rushing in.
Rosenkrantz feverishly tore at the brother zealot’s stub gun, unable to find the holster’s safety strap. As the guards closed in she abandoned the side arm in favour of the buckled multi-melta on the floor nearby. The weapon was too heavy to carry so Rosenkrantz angled the barrels upwards with the grip and depressed the ignition stud.
The guards soon lost their bravado and came to a skidding halt just in front of the weapon’s thermo-bleached muzzle. The chemicular whoosh they’d all expected didn’t happen. Instead, the heavy weapon chugged and sparked before emitting a gaseous growl of indigestion and growing suddenly hot to the touch. Dropping their suppression equipment the prison guards made a bolt for the control booth. Rosenkrantz had only one place to go: back in the cell. Rolling across the corridor she slammed the cell door shut as the multi-melta’s pressurised pyrum-petrol flask went supercritical.
The plate-draconium absorbed the worst of the blast
but the extreme heat of the detonation had warped the door off its reinforced hinges. As it fell inwards, Rosenkrantz was treated to a view of the glowing molten ceramite of the walls outside. Peering out she could see that the guards had been erased off the face of the planet and that Preed was thundering towards the cell-block bulkhead.
A lone battle-sister stood in front of the bulkhead, swathed in striped ermine. She shook the stray tresses of her jet-black hair from her eyes and hit the alarm button. Preed roared as the bulkhead slammed down behind her and increased his belting pace up the corridor. With klaxons piercing the air and lights flashing in the ceiling the battle-sister put her hand on the grip of her holstered pistol, but thought better of it, drawing instead the shimmering blade of a beautifully crafted power falchion.
Swinging the flare-clipped tip of the sword around her with practiced fluidity she prepared to face her attacker. The battle-sister positioned the blade for an entrail-spilling undercut. Preed didn’t stop though. He just kept coming, as though he were going to blast straight through the security bulkhead. Hitting her with the force of a monitor train, Preed smashed the battle-sister into the bulkhead with the uncompromising bulk of his corpulent belly. The priest held her there for a moment, allowing a final gasp to escape from her body. Her neck had been snapped and her crushed arm, pinned to the door, let the padded hilt of the power sword topple from her fading grip. Pulling away with a bestial grunt of satisfaction, Preed allowed the sister’s broken body to crumble to the ground.
As the pontiff got a grip on himself, Rosenkrantz stepped out into the cooling corridor.
‘Get the corpsmen out of the cells,’ he bawled up to her.
‘The bulkhead?’ she called back over the searing alarm.
‘Probably welded shut and bricked up from the outside by now,’ Preed informed her regretfully.
‘Good job I blew a hole in the floor then.’
Chapter Three
Truth be Told
I
Rosenkrantz took one last drag on the lho-stick before crushing it into the ramp with the toe of her boot. She hugged herself against the chill of the dry-dock as it proceeded to slip unwanted fingers of frosty air in between the buckles of her flight jacket. She hit the stud on the hull vox.
‘Chief, give me the payload description. At least I’ll know what I’m looking for.’
There was nothing for a few moments; just the drowsy blink of the vox-bulb. ‘Chief, get off your backside.’
The vox gushed static at her before giving way to Crew Chief Nauls’s leatherneck drawl. ‘Slate says one passenger.’ In the background Rosenkrantz could hear a card game in progress.
‘No vehicles or munitions?’ she returned.
‘I may not be the sharpest tool in the wrench locker, but I can read, skipper.’
‘Okay, chief, well you see that little silver stud that says “Cockpit”?’ Rosenkrantz asked with no little pedantry. ‘I want you to press that and get Benedict to stir the tanks. I’m going to give our cargo another two minutes and then I’m taking off. Do you think you can manage that?’
‘It would give my life the meaning I’ve been looking for, skip.’
Rosenkrantz flicked off the vox and sauntered around the side of the aircraft. Hovering under the fuel tanks, she was rewarded by the percolation of promethium from above. She reached up and caressed the fuselage of the aircraft. The Vertigo was a Spectre-class Valkyrie armoured assault carrier. She had the mean lines and rugged gracelessness of her Valkyrie and Vulture cousins and then some, but there was something reassuring about her swollen underbelly and thundering engine quad. Unlike her troop carrier cousin, however, she was designed to transport small vehicles and light ordnance. An unpracticed eye might dismiss the Vertigo as a Guard mule. She was this, but much more. She bristled vulgarity in the form of snub, belt-fed weaponry and rocket pods and the thrust of her aquiline cockpit section commanded the respect of a Catachan terror bird, sweeping its ungainly beak in for the kill. She was a thoroughbred of her class.
‘She’s beautiful.’
Rosenkrantz spun around to find that she was being watched. He stood by the ramp, the veins in his neck still pulsing from his short run to reach the aircraft. Rosenkrantz figured him for a courier: young, storm-trooper fatigues, lieutenant’s stripes and a plump diplomatic pouch bearing the sinister blazonry of the Ecclesiarchy. ‘I’m Krieg,’ he enlightened her.
‘You’re late,’ Rosenkrantz corrected him with a scowl. ‘I expected more of one of you glory boys.’
‘This is Bay sixteen?’
‘You’re in the right place.’ Rosenkrantz motioned the officer up the ramp. ‘You can stow your gear anywhere you like. There’s plenty of room. You’re my only consignment tonight.’
She depressed the vox-stub once again, alerting her co-pilot: ‘Benedict. Fire them up. We’re leaving.’ She raised her eyebrows at Krieg and added into the vox, ‘Finally. Ramp closing.’
At the far end of the Spectre’s large belly compartment a number of the aircrew had set up a card table using munitions crates and the carrier’s water cask. The players were all engrossed in their game of crazy eights: they were playing with a rolling pot and a Ballamehrian double-deck. Lho-sticks drooped from the corners of their mouths and they didn’t even look up from their cards as Rosenkrantz and their guest approached.
‘The crew,’ Rosenkrantz stated simply. ‘If you’d like to lose some money, they appear to have a card game going.’
‘No thanks,’ Krieg declined. ‘Do you have anywhere I can get changed?’ A couple of the crew grunted with amusement.
‘Yes,’ Rosenkrantz replied. ‘Here. This is a Navy transport, lieutenant, we don’t stand on ceremony…’ The flight lieutenant had to stop, because as she was dressing him down, Krieg had thrown her the diplomatic pouch and proceeded to dress down himself. The spectacle of the storm-trooper unbuttoning his fatigues right in front of her drew more guffaws and the odd jeer from the aircrew.
Nauls flapped his hand at the other card players. ‘You all pipe down now. Let’s play some cards.’ His face split into a bright grin. ‘Can’t you see the skipper’s busy?’
Rosenkrantz turned and gave him a Thartusian salute with her finger. ‘You reading this okay, chief?’
‘I’m getting that loud and clear, skipper,’ Nauls crowed back at her.
Rosenkrantz turned back to find Krieg almost down to his Guard-issue briefs.
Thrusting the ordo package straight back at him, she opened a nearby locker. ‘You can use the side-arms store.’
‘Obliged to you,’ Krieg nodded, gathering his clothes, and disappeared inside the tiny armoury. Rosenkrantz struck off in the other direction, mounting the bottom rung of the cockpit companionway, the crew’s horseplay following her ascent.
II
The spectre screamed skyward leaving the mercantile burghs and sprawling commercia of Spetzghast behind them. Soon, the encroaching twilight claimed them too, leaving Rosenkrantz to worry about the swarm of stratospheric commercial traffic streaking across the reinforced canopy of the Vertigo.
Vector wagons and skiffs played cat and mouse amongst fast moving cavalcades of air freighters and atmos-tankers. Whilst not comfortable, it was nothing Rosenkrantz hadn’t negotiated before. There was only one moment of dread uncertainty: a decrepit passenger liner called the Witch of Shandor wandered into a cross current and lost several of its giant tail fins, one of which threatened to cleave the Vertigo in two. Rosenkrantz had to bank sharply and cut between the ore cars of a nearby tramp-galleon.
‘Sorry,’ Rosenkrantz called over the crew vox. ‘Benedict, have that liner’s signature code reported to the port admiral’s office for citation.’
‘Affirmative, flight lieutenant.’
The co-pilot had been human once, but now he was Benedict: a naval servitor. Truncated at the waist, the co-pilot was really o
ne with the Spectre, his legs lost in some forgotten, horrific craft-to-craft collision and his spine a nexus of power couplings and nerve ports. ‘We’re leaving the commercial traffic lanes,’ he informed Rosenkrantz, moments before the Spectre breached the thin, cobalt cloudbank and gave the pilot an eyeful of Spetzghast’s looming sun.
As a brown dwarf, Sigma Scorpii wasn’t hot enough to achieve hydrogen fusion like many stars; instead it was forced to resort to burning baser fuels at its core and casting the dismal bronze light of a dying fire across the system. Lying much closer to its sun than most inhabitable planets could afford, a Spetzghastian view of Sigma Scorpii still made for a breathtaking sight.
Upon leaving the mercantile world’s cerulean skies the traffic disappeared and the relative emptiness of the ionosphere beckoned. Spetzghast’s spectacular ring system drew overhead. The girdle of dust, rock and metal encircled the planet at right angles to its plane of orbit, running pole to pole, and was attended by myriad shepherd moons, keeping the asteroid belt in good order.
Here giants ruled.
In low orbit a flotilla of bulk cruisers kept station on an outlandish rogue trader vessel. Pregnant fluyts and sprint traders bearing the Spetzghastian mercantile seal were harried into position by system ships under the wide gunports of patrolling monitors and adamanticlads. Each vessel was accompanied by its own flock of smaller tugs and luggers: cargo lighters and freight barges.
At the epicentre of this activity was the Exchequer, a spindly orbital dock that was itself dominated by warships of His Beneficent Majesty. The Stang Draak hung like a colossal heirloom above Spetzghastian skies. As the system garrison ship and one of the Exchequer’s permanent fixtures, she was a constant presence and had been for as long as anyone could remember. One of the last of her class serving in the Imperial Navy, the grand cruiser’s lances stood as a deterrent to any enemy foolish enough to sweep in under them.
Honour Imperialis - Braden Campbell & Aaron Dembski-Bowden & Chris Dows & Steve Lyons & Rob Sanders Page 33