Hammer and Bolter 17

by Christian Dunn

  Aboard the Invincible Reason, flagship of the Dark Angels, Lion El’Jonson thought long and hard. There were many things for him to reason out, yet no matter how hard he tried to stay focused on the military effort to bring the Night Lords to battle, his mind was drawn back to an imponderable dilemma.

  Eighty-two days had passed since his confrontation with Konrad Curze on the desolate world of Tsagualsa. Eighty-two days had been enough for his body to heal, for the most part, the grievous wounds the Night Haunter’s claws had inflicted upon the Lion’s superhuman flesh. The armour he wore had been repaired and refurbished and repainted, so that not a mark of Curze’s violence showed upon its ebon surface.

  On the outside, the Lion was fully recovered, but within lay the most hideous injuries, inflicted not by the Night Haunter’s weapons but by his words.

  No risk of the fair Angels falling? When did you last walk upon the soil of Caliban, oh proud one?

  The tides of the warp influenced communication as much as they did travel, and no sure word had been heard from Caliban for two years. In times past, the hateful words of Curze would have been easy to dismiss. The loyalty of the Dark Angels had been beyond question. They were the First Legion, ever the noblest in the eyes of all; even when the Luna Wolves earned great praise and Horus was raised to Warmaster, no others could claim the title of First Legion.

  Yet such times seemed a lifetime ago now; civil war and schism tore apart the Imperium, and the surety of the past was no guarantee of the present, or the future. Could the Lion trust that his Legion remained loyal to him? Trust was not a natural state for the primarch. Was there some deeper purpose to the Night Lords’ endless war in the Thramas system? Did Curze speak the truth and keep the Lion occupied here while agents of Horus swayed the loyalty of the Dark Angels to another cause?

  Trust had been a scarce commodity for the Lion before Horus’s betrayal, and even then he had been taken for a fool. Perturabo had used his status as a brother to trick the Lion, taking control of the devastating war engines of Diamat under the guise of alliance, only to turn those weapons against the servants of the Emperor. The shame of being so manipulated gnawed at the Lion’s conscience, and he would never again accept the simple word of his brothers.

  It was an impossible question and an impossible predicament. The Lion had pondered the meaning of the Night Haunter’s words every night, even as he analysed the movements and strategy of his foe, trying to get one step ahead of his elusive enemy. The Night Haunter had had no reason to lie; Curze had been trying to kill his brother as he spoke. Yet they might just be random spite, as had so often spilled from the lips of Konrad Curze, who had used falsehood as a weapon long before he had turned from the grace of the Emperor; lies were second nature to the primarch and came to him as easily as breaths.

  The Lion despised himself for giving credence to the lie, creating the poison that ate away at his resolve. It was simple enough to vow that Thramas would not be surrendered to the Night Lords; it was another matter entirely to prosecute a war against an enemy determined not to fight. With every night that passed, the prospect of decisive battle lessened and the desire to return to Caliban and ensure everything was in order strengthened. Yet the Lion could not abandon the war, if only because it might be a return to Caliban that the Night Haunter desired.

  While these thoughts vexed the primarch, at the appointed hour three of his little brothers arrived to brief him on the current situation.

  The first to enter was Corswain, former Champion of the Ninth Order, recently appointed as the Primarch’s Seneschal. Across the back of his armour he wore the white pelt of a fanged Calibanite beast, and beneath that hung a white robe split at the back, its breast adorned with an embroidered winged sword. His helm hung on his belt, revealing a broad face and close-cropped blond hair.

  Just behind Corswain came Captain Stenius, commander of the Invincible Reason. His face was a literal mask of flesh, almost immobile due to nerve damage suffered during the Great Crusade. His eyes had been replaced with smoky silver lenses that glittered in the lights of the chamber, as inscrutable as the rest of his expression.

  The last of the trio was Captain Tragan of the Ninth Order, who had been raised to the position by the primarch following the debacle at Tsagualsa. The captain’s soft brown eyes were at odds with his stern demeanour, his curls of dark brown hair cut to shoulder-length and kept from his aquiline face with a band of black-enamelled metal. It was Tragan that spoke first.

  ‘The Night Lords refused engagement at Parthac, my liege, but we arrived too late to stop the destruction of the primary orbital station there. The remaining docking facilities cannot cope with anything larger than a frigate, as I suspect was the enemy’s intent.’

  ‘That’s three major docks they have taken out in the past six months,’ said Stenius. ‘It is clear that they are denying us refitting and resupply stations.’

  ‘The question is why,’ said the Lion, stroking his chin. ‘The Night Lords cruisers and battle-barges require such stations as much as ours. I am forced to conclude that they have abandoned any ambition of claiming Parthac, Questios and Biamere and seek to hamper our fleet movements for some manoeuvre in the future.’

  ‘I would say that it has the hint of desperation, a stellar scorched earth policy,’ said Stenius.

  ‘We cannot rule out Curze commanding such attacks simply out of spite,’ added Corswain. ‘Perhaps there is no deeper meaning behind these recent attacks, except to exasperate and confuse us.’

  ‘Yet that will still be a part of a bigger plan,’ said the Lion. ‘For more than two years we have duelled across the stars, and throughout that war the Night Haunter has always been moving towards some endgame I have not yet fathomed. I will think on this latest development. What else have you to report?’

  ‘The normal fleet movements and scouting reports are in my latest briefing, my liege,’ said Tragan. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary, if there is such a thing.’

  ‘There was one report that I found odd, my liege,’ said Corswain. ‘A broken astropathic message, barely discernable from the background traffic. It would be unremarkable except that it contains mention of the Death Guard Legion.’

  ‘Mortarion’s Legion is in Thramas?’ The Lion growled and glared at his subordinates. ‘You think this is not a matter to bring to me immediately?’

  ‘Not the Legion, my liege,’ said Tragan. ‘A handful of ships, a few thousand warriors at most. The transmission does not seem to originate from the Thramas theatre, my liege, but from a system several hundred light years from Balaam.’

  ‘The message fragments also mention a task force from the Iron Hands in the same vicinity,’ said Corswain. ‘Some skirmish I think, unlikely to impact on our conflict here.’

  ‘The system, what was it called?’ said the Lion. The primarch’s eyes narrowed with suspicion as he asked the question.

  Tragan consulted the data-slate he held in his hand.

  ‘Perditus, my liege,’ said the Ninth Order captain.

  ‘It’s barely inhabited, my liege,’ added Stenius. ‘A small Mechanicum research facility, nothing of import.’

  ‘You are wrong,’ said the Lion, standing up. ‘I know Perditus. I claimed the system for the Emperor, alongside warriors of the Death Guard. What your records do not show, Captain Stenius, is the nature of the research undertaken by the Mechanicum there. Perditus was meant to be kept secret, off-limits to every Legion, but it seems that the Death Guard have other plans.’

  ‘Off-limits, my liege?’ Tragan was taken aback by the notion. ‘What could be so dangerous?’

  ‘Knowledge, my little brother,’ replied the Lion. ‘Knowledge of a technology that cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of the traitors. We must assemble a task force at Balaam. A force that can overwhelm anything the Death Guard or Iron Hands have in the area.’

  ‘What of the Night Lords, my liege?’ asked Corswain.

  ‘If we relent in our hunt across this sector, or
weaken our forces here too much, Curze will make fine sport of the systems we cannot protect.’

  ‘That is a risk I must take,’ replied the primarch. ‘Perditus is a prize that we must seize from the traitors. I had almost forgotten about it, but now it is brought to mind, I think that perhaps Perditus may hold the key to victory in Thramas too. I shall lead the task force personally. The Invincible Reason will be my flagship, Captain Stenius. The Fourth, Sixth, Ninth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Thirtieth Orders are to muster at Balaam.’

  ‘More than thirty thousand warriors!’ said Tragan, forgetting himself. He bowed his head in apology when the Lion directed a sharp glare at him.

  ‘When, my liege?’ asked Corswain.

  ‘As soon as they can,’ said the Lion. He strode towards the door. ‘We cannot afford to arrive too late at Perditus.’

  II

  Although almost as tall as the Legiones Astartes warriors with whom she travelled the warp, Theralyn Fiana of House Ne’iocene was far slighter, willowy of build with slender fingers. Her hair was copper in colour, as were her eyes; her normal eyes, at least. In the middle of her high forehead, from which her hair was swept back by a silver band, was her Navigator’s eye. To call it an eye was to compare a glass of water to the ocean. This orb, translucent white but dappled with swirling colours, did not look upon frequencies of light, but delved through the barrier that bounded the warp, looking upon the raw stuff of the immaterial realm.

  Now that warp-sight was employed moving the Invincible Reason away from the translation point at Balaam. The streaming threads of the warp currents were tugging hard at the ship, which sat cocooned within an egg-shaped psychic field, buoyed upon the immaterial waves like a piece of flotsam on the ocean tides. She sat in the navigational spire high above the superstructure of the battle-barge. Out of instinct, Fiana looked for the bright beacon of the Astronomican, and as she had done for the last two and a half years she felt a part of her soul grow dim at the realisation that it could not be found. That the light of Terra no longer burned had been a source of constant argument amongst the Navigators attached to the Dark Angels Legion, with Fiana amongst the growing camp who believed that the only explanation was that the Emperor was no longer alive. This was not a popular viewpoint, and one not to be raised with the primarch, but the logic was inescapable to Fiana.

  In the absence of the galaxy-spanning Astronomican, the Navigators relied on warp beacons – tiny lanterns of psychic brightness from relay stations in real space. They were candles compared to the star of the Astronomican, and only one in ten systems in the sector had them, but they were better than moving wholly blind; so much so that both the Night Lords and Dark Angels had tacitly agreed to treat the beacon stations as no-go areas. The risk of stranding one’s own ships in the warp was too great to chance the destruction of the fragile orbital stations.

  Perditus was not a beaconed system, and was located only one hundred and fourteen light years from Balaam, on a two-hundred-and-thirty-degrees, seven-point incline heading from the Drebbel beacon, which in turn would be found on a path at one-hundred-and-eighty-seven degrees, eighteen-point negative incline three days out towards the Nemo system. Glancing at a hand-drawn chart draped over the edge of her rotatable chair, Fiana confirmed this and examined the currents lapping at the barrier of the Geller field surrounding the Invincible Reason.

  The warp did not look like its true state, even to her. Yet Fiana’s warp sight allowed her to sense an approximation of its tidal powers and whorls of immaterial confluence. The Balaam system had been chosen for the rendezvous because from here a near-constant current ran through the warp almost as far as Nhyarin, nearly three thousand light years away. Nothing was ever certain with the warp, and its strange ways meant that sometimes the Nhyarin Flow ran backwards or could not be located at all, but eight times out of ten it could be relied upon to speed travel to the galactic south-west, fully across Aegis and two other subsectors. The worlds along its route were amongst the most hotly contested between the Night Lords and the Dark Angels.

  Fiana punched in a series of coded orders for the piloting team situated in the command deck. A few minutes later, the Geller field bulged to starboard, its psychic harmonics adjusting to the controls of the crew so that the Invincible Reason edged out of its current course and into the outlying streams of the Nhyarin Flow. Psychic power gripped at the shields like waves tugging at a leaf, and though there was no real sensation of movement, Fiana felt in her thoughts the battle-barge surging ahead, flung forwards across time and space at incredible speed.

  Around her, the pinpricks of light that had been the other ships of the fleet winked out of existence. Within half a dozen minutes, nothing could be seen of the flotilla, scattered to the four points of the compass and stretched through time by the eerie workings of warp space.

  Turning in place, Fiana conducted a quick scan for storm activity. The whole of the warp was alive with tempests, but the Nhyarin Flow seemed stable enough for the moment. There was no horizon, no distance or perspective, and for just a moment Fiana teetered on the brink of being swallowed by the abyssal nature of the warp. She reeled her mind back into her skull, pulling down the velvet-padded silver band so that its psychic-circuitry-impregnated metal covered her third eye.

  Just before her othersense was curtailed she thought she glimpsed another ship, riding on a swirl of energy behind the battle-barge. It was probably another Dark Angels vessel, caught by fortune on the same timeflow as the Invincible Reason. She made a note of it in her log and signalled for her half-brother Assaryn Coiden to ascend the pilaster and take over. As the senior member of the household, it was her responsibility to see that the ship was safe during transitions, but now that the task was complete, she was glad to be able to delegate to her younger siblings. Things were far more peaceful in her quarters, and ever since Horus’s rebellion had begun and the storms had come, just an hour of exposure to the warp had left her with splitting headaches and a soul-draining fatigue.

  There had always been talk amongst the household, of what the warp really was, and whispered stories of the strange phenomena that the Navigators sometimes glimpsed on their travels. Now Fiana was certain that there was something else out there; not just aliens living in the warp as she had been warned, but something that existed as part of the immaterium itself.

  And the stories had grown in number, and in horror. Ships had always gone missing, but the frequency with which they were now lost was frightening, as if the warp itself was rebelling at their presence. Having felt dark swirls and malignant tendrils tugging at the edges of her thoughts, Fiana knew too well that the warp was far from a welcoming place.

  The Lion’s stare was cold as it fell upon the chief Navigator, Theralyn Fiana. This was the fourth audience in seven days that he had granted her, and twice also had he received representation from her through Captain Stenius. Her complaints were becoming tiresome, and made all the more irritating because there was nothing the Lion could do to alleviate the problems she and her fellow Navigators were experiencing. She had joined the Invincible Reason at Balaam, highly regarded as an expert of the warp tides they were travelling, but so far the Lion’s only impression was of a thin-faced woman who had nothing but excuses to offer for their slow progress.

  This time she had Captain Stenius for company, and looked even more agitated than normal. The Lion waved Fiana forwards with a gauntleted hand, suppressing a sigh of annoyance. The Navigator stopped five metres from the primarch’s throne, the ship’s captain a few paces behind. She was dressed in a flowing gown of green and blue, of a material that shimmered like water when she walked. Her bare arms were painted with rings of varying design from shoulder to elbow and the backs of her hands were tattooed with intricate intersecting geometric shapes copied by a cluster of pendants that hung on a thin chain around her neck.

  Fiana’s third eye was concealed by a broad silver band across her brow, but the Lion could feel its touch upon him, like a spark of heat
on his flesh. Navigators, and all psykers for that matter, caused him pause; he was not well disposed to those who might see him in ways that normal men did not. Only the Emperor did he trust with such knowledge.

  ‘What is it?’ said the Lion. He fluttered a hand towards Corswain, who had just arrived and was due to brief his leader on the latest intelligence concerning Perditus. ‘Be quick, there are other matters demanding my attention. If you wish me to still the warp with a wave of my hand, I must disappoint you again, Navigator.’

  ‘It is on another matter, an urgent one, that we must converse,’ said Fiana as she rose from her bow. She glanced at Captain Stenius and received a curt nod of reassurance. ‘Lauded primarch, for the past several days, since we translated from Balaam, I and my family have witnessed a ship following in our wake. At first we thought it coincidence; a companion vessel of the fleet that happenstance had tossed upon the same course as ours.’

  ‘But you no longer believe this to be the case?’ said the Lion, leaning forwards. ‘It is my understanding that it is extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to trail a vessel in warp space.’

  ‘That was our understanding also, lauded primarch. Many times have Navigators attempted to stay within reach of each other, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred all sight is lost within a day, and always within two days. We sometimes make analogy between the warp and the currents of the sea, but it is a simplistic comparison. The warp flows not only through space, within another realm beside our own, but also upon different streams of time.’

  ‘This I know,’ snapped the Lion, growing impatient. ‘An hour passes in the warp and several days have turned in real space. If a ship translates a day before another, it could be weeks ahead in its journey. You have not yet explained why coincidence is not a suitable explanation, Navigator. I have made hundreds of warp jumps in my life; it is not remarkable that on one journey another ship might be caught upon the same current.’