Hammer and Bolter 17

by Christian Dunn

  ‘No, lauded primarch, it is not,’ replied Fiana. She straightened to her full height and met the primarch’s glare, though only for a moment before the intensity of his eyes forced her to look away again. ‘It is remarkable that we have changed stream four times in the last five days, seeking the fastest current to Perditus, and within the hour the ship is behind us again. It is following us, lauded primarch, and I know of nobody who possesses that capability.’

  The Lion did not waste time asking if she was certain; the forthright tone of her voice and hard look in her eye convinced him that she spoke the truth as she believed it. He nodded and gestured for Captain Stenius to step closer.

  ‘I am sorry, Lady Fiana, for my curtness. Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention. Captain, I believe that you were already aware of this?’

  ‘Lady Fiana brought her suspicions to me yesterday, my liege. I asked her to confirm her findings for another day and decided it was worthy of bringing to you.’

  ‘It is an impossibility, lauded primarch,’ said Fiana. ‘No Navigator can track another vessel in the warp with such accuracy. We work on suggestions and instincts far too vague for such precision.’

  No Navigator, thought the Lion, but not impossible.

  During his infancy on Caliban, growing up alone in the dark, monster-infested forests, he had learned quickly that some beasts did not need to see to hunt. Some possessed senses other than sight and hearing and smell; they could stalk their prey by the spoor of their soul. Such creatures were the deadliest he had faced, not wholly physical. The knights of Caliban called them nephilla and it was only with great effort that they could be slain, though the Lion in his youth had killed several.

  It was a stretch from nephilla roaming the dark forests of Caliban to a ship that could unerringly track another through the warp but, like Fiana, the Lion did not trust anything to coincidence. There were forces at play – forces unleashed by Horus and his allies – that he did not fully understand, and until proven to the contrary the Lion was willing to believe his foes capable of anything.

  ‘For the moment it is sensible to assume that our mysterious pursuer is a Night Lords ship,’ the Lion said after a half-second of contemplation. ‘Do you think it is possible to elude this enemy without undue risk or excessive delay to our journey? I would not have the foe learn of our destination and the secret held there.’

  ‘I am not sure I would know what to do, lauded primarch,’ said Fiana. ‘It is not something a Navigator learns.’

  ‘Surely you have experienced pursuit by other than a ship?’ said the Lion. ‘There are denizens of the warp that are known to chase vessels.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Fiana. ‘I know a small repertoire of evasive manoeuvres, but the usual response when facing such a crisis is an emergency translation into real space.’

  ‘That will be our second option,’ said the Lion. ‘I would rather avoid the delay that would add to our journey. You have two days to shake our hunter. Report your progress directly to me, Lady Fiana.’

  ‘As you command, lauded primarch,’ said the Navigator, sweeping down into a long bow.

  When Captain Stenius and Lady Fiana had departed, the Lion called to his seneschal to attend him.

  ‘I am deeply suspicious of this craft that follows us, Cor,’ the primarch said. ‘Have the weapons crews sleeping beside their guns, and double the watch strength.’

  ‘As you command, my liege,’ said Corswain. ‘If you have time, we should discuss the strategy you wish to employ when we arrive at Perditus. The last contact we have shows that the Iron Hands and Death Guard were just beginning hostilities. It is possible that one side or the other may have gained the upper hand since then.’

  The Lion pushed aside thoughts of phantom ships and concentrated on the wider task.

  ‘We treat Perditus as hostile,’ he declared. ‘It is impossible to say for which cause any other force fights. Death Guard, Mechanicum, Iron Hands: all are to be treated as enemy until I say otherwise.’

  For two days Fiana and the other three Navigators aboard the Invincible Reason performed several manoeuvres that would, in normal circumstances, separate them from the following ship. They frequently changed flows within the warp, shifting the battle-barge from the fast-moving stream of the Nhyarin Flow to the more sedate currents that drifted from its outer edges. They dived into swirling eddies, a risky proposition even before the recent tumults that had engulfed warp space. Twice they turned the ship fully about and forged into counter-flows, taking them away from the route to Perditus. Always the other ship found them again, sometimes never breaking away, other times vanishing only to appear on the edge of detection an hour or two later, following unerringly in the battle-barge’s wake.

  After the two days allowed by the Lion, Fiana and Stenius convened again with the primarch to discuss the next course of action. With the Lion was Corswain, summoned by his master. It was Stenius who spoke first.

  ‘Whatever force guides our pursuer, it is beyond our means to shake them loose, my liege,’ announced the ship’s captain.

  ‘Not wholly beyond our means,’ said Fiana, earning herself a sharp look from Stenius; enough to betray the existence of a previous argument between the two, though his partial facial paralysis prevented any more meaningful expression.

  ‘I will not risk my ship,’ Stenius said flatly.

  ‘You have an alternative?’ said the Lion, directing his gaze to Fiana.

  ‘Three days ahead, perhaps four, there is a well-known anomaly, which we call the Morican Gulf. It corresponds roughly to the Morican star, a dead system. There is a region that is like a gap in the warp, a bottomless gulf surrounded by a turbulent maelstrom. It is possible to run the outer edges of this whirl, and the storm should mask our departure route.’

  ‘And the risks?’ asked Corswain.

  ‘The null space, the void in the eye of the storm, can becalm a ship, leave it stranded for days, for weeks, sometimes forever,’ said Stenius, shaking his head in disapproval. ‘It should not be considered at the best of times, and our mission at Perditus is too important to risk delays or worse.’

  The Lion considered this, weighing up the merits of losing the pursuer against potential calamity. He disregarded the Navigator’s plan, but remembered the earlier conversation he had shared with Fiana.

  ‘Lady Fiana, you suggested before that we might make an emergency jump to real space. Is it possible that we could do so whilst the other ship has been blinded by one of your manoeuvres?’

  ‘Possible, yes, lauded primarch,’ said Fiana.

  ‘There is no guarantee that our phantom ship has not the means to detect such a thing,’ said Corswain. ‘We have no idea of their capabilities. As I understand it, any translating ship creates ripples, an echo along the warp currents. If the Night Lords have a psyker or some other means to track our normal movements, a translation would be as clear as a summer day to them.’

  ‘An emergency jump even more so, lauded primarch,’ added Fiana. ‘The backwash would be like dropping a boulder into a lake; even an inexperienced Navigator could detect it.’

  ‘There is also the danger that our warp engine rift will collide with the Geller field of the other ship,’ said Stenius. ‘Whatever means they have to follow us, they have to stay close to use it.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said the Lion, a chain of thought set in motion by the Captain’s warning. He looked first at Corswain and then fixed his eyes on Stenius. ‘Little brothers, have the ship secured for an emergency translation, but keep the gunnery crews at their stations. Lady Fiana, I want you to position the ship in a particular way. Find a swift-moving warp current from which you can quickly move to a contra-flowing one.’

  ‘What is your intent, lauded primarch?’ asked Fiana, a worried frown creasing her pale skin beneath the silver of her headband.

  ‘Our enemy shadow our movements closely but not instantaneously,’ explained the Lion. ‘We will move in such a way as to draw them ext
remely close, and then we will activate the warp engines to jump back to real space. The other vessel should be caught in our exit wake and drawn from the warp after us. In real space our enemy will become vulnerable to attack.’

  ‘If both ships are not torn apart, my liege!’ said Captain Stenius. He was about to continue his objections, but the Lion cut him off with a sharp gesture.

  ‘You know my intent. The plan is not a subject for discussion. Lady Fiana, it will be up to you to choose the optimum moment for translation. From everything I have heard of your skill previously, I expect success.’

  ‘Of course, lauded primarch,’ said the Navigator, her face set with determination. Her reputation had been placed on the line, and for a Navigator aspiring to be the next Matriarch of her House there was no commodity more valuable than the praise of a primarch.

  The Lion looked at Stenius and leaned forwards, his voice dropping low.

  ‘You understand my orders, captain?’ asked the primarch.

  ‘I do, my liege,’ Stenius replied quietly.

  ‘Then you are both dismissed,’ said the Lion. He reached a hand out towards Corswain. ‘Stay a moment longer, little brother.’

  When the ship’s captain and Navigator had departed, the Lion motioned for Corswain to approach the throne.

  ‘I am worried about Stenius,’ confessed the primarch. ‘At first he delays bringing the fact of our pursuit to my attention, and now he seems reluctant to resolve our predicament.’

  ‘I am sure there are no grounds for suspicion, my liege,’ said Corswain, affecting a formal tone, disquieted by the subject of Stenius’s loyalty.

  ‘Sure, little brother? One hundred per cent certain? You would vouch for Stenius yourself?’

  Corswain hesitated at the challenge in the Lion’s voice. After a moment, he lowered to one knee and bowed his head.

  ‘I have no doubt about Captain Stenius, my liege. However, to allay any reservations you may harbour, I shall have Brother-Redemptor Nemiel report to you.’

  ‘As you see fit, little brother,’ the Lion said, offering a rare smile.

  III

  The narrow chamber atop the navigational pilaster could barely hold all four of the Navigators. What the primarch had asked for required a very specific set of circumstances. Fiana and her fellow Navigators each surveyed a stretch of the warp, seeking the conjunction of flows needed to bring the Invincible Reason quickly back towards the phantom ship. All other preparations had been made; the ship’s company were braced for the potentially devastating drop back into real space, while Fiana had warned her companions of the deleterious effect it could have on their minds.

  ‘I have something,’ said Ardal Aneis, Fiana’s younger brother. ‘A counter-nebulous promontory, on the port bow.’

  Fiana directed her unnatural gaze in the direction Aneis had mentioned and saw what had caught his attention. Three warp streams, one very strong, the other two weaker but approaching each other at steep angles, came together to create a three-dimensional whirlpool. The outflow curved back over the battle-barge’s path and intersected with a dead pool that slowly leached back into the Nhyarin Flow.

  ‘Captain Stenius, please direct primary navigational control to my console.’ The communications pick-up buzzed in Fiana’s shaking hand and she resolutely avoided the concerned looks in the eyes of her fellow Navigators. She received the affirmative from Stenius and a few seconds later the screen below her left arm flickered into life. A diagnostic sub-routine scrolled quickly across the pale green glass and then the screen went blank.

  Fiana’s voice dropped to a whisper as she keyed in the manoeuvre required to plunge the ship into the heart of the promontory. ‘Remember the pride of House Ne’iocene.’

  There was no sound, in the warp. No real tidal pressures or inertia pulled at metal and ferrocrete, but even so Fiana could sense the tortured mass of the Invincible Reason as its Geller field realigned, shoving the battle-barge from one streaming eddy of warp energy into another. Fiana felt a moment of sickness as her othersense lurched and spun, while all around her, the clashing currents of the psychic promontory smashed together like the slavering jaws of an immense, immaterial beast.

  Kiafan, youngest of her siblings, fell to his knees beside the chief Navigator, emptying the contents of his stomach upon the floor between snarled gasps of pain. Fiana ignored the distraction and keyed in another instruction on her runepad. The ship settled into a trough of psychic power for several seconds, before rising up, ejected from the promontory like a grain of sand caught in the spume of a breaching whale.

  Fiana gritted her teeth and made a final adjustment to their course, forcing herself to peer along the unwinding threads of energy that unravelled before her. She anchored the Geller field onto the strongest and then pushed aside her companions to collapse into the only chair in the chamber.

  ‘Captain, we are on our new heading,’ she gasped over the comm. Steadying herself, she looked for the bobbing mote of energy that was the other ship’s warp signature. She located it ahead, approaching quickly. There was no time to waste. Even from their prepared idling state, it would take several minutes for the warp engines to charge to full power. Any longer and they would be right on top of the phantom ship, their Geller fields merging. The effect of translating in such close proximity to another vessel would be certain destruction for both ships.

  ‘Translate now, captain! Activate the warp engines!’

  Trying to emulatethe example set by his primarch, Corswain stood immobile on the gallery above the Invincible Reason’s strategium, just behind and to the left of the statuesque Lion. On the other side of the primarch was Brother-Redemptor Nemiel. The Chaplain wore a skull-faced helm, so that nothing could be seen of his expression, concerned or otherwise. Lady Fiana’s snarled command had not helped settle Corswain’s mood, and had set the command crew below into frenetic activity. The navigation aides moved quickly from station to station in the bright glow of their screens, monitoring power outputs and safety thresholds as the plasma reactors of the battle-barge went up above one hundred per cent output in preparation for the warp engine activation.

  Corswain clenched his jaw as he felt an ill-defined pressure building in his skull. It was not like a concussive shockwave or the pull felt in a plunging drop-pod, but more like a container slowly being filled, reaching its capacity and yet not bursting. The ache was behind his eyes, mental not physical. Aside from the brain-juddering dislocation of teleportation, it was the most unpleasant sensation he had ever encountered in his long years of service to the Legion.

  A glance at the Lion confirmed that if the primarch suffered the same discomforts as his little brothers, he showed no outward sign of it. The commander of the First Legion stood with legs braced apart, arms folded across his breastplate, eyes fixed on the multiple screens that made up the strategium’s main display wall. The aides working below acted and interacted like organic parts of a complex machine, the hub of which was Captain Stenius in the command throne. Inquiry and reply, report and command all flowed through the ship’s captain, who orchestrated the whole endeavour with curt responses and clipped orders.

  Corswain could only imagine the thoughts occupying Stenius at the moment. Warp translation was difficult enough in perfect conditions, and the current conditions were far from perfect. Another glance at the Lion showed Corswain that the primarch’s attention had moved, from the grey blankness of the screens to Stenius.

  It was impossible to discern real meaning from the primarch’s inscrutable glare, but that did not stop Corswain from speculating, occupying his mind with such idle thoughts in order to distract himself from the coming moment when reality and unreality would clash and they might all be wiped from existence.

  The Lion’s comments regarding Stenius concerned Corswain on two levels. At first hand, he wondered what he had missed that had been seen by the primarch’s insight. Corswain was, for the moment at least until they were reunited with Luther and the rest of the Legi
on on Caliban, the right hand of the primarch. It was his duty to foresee his master’s commands and act before they required the Lion’s attention. If there was some facet of Stenius’s manner that he had missed, Corswain felt he was not properly fulfilling his duties.

  Contrary to this was the worry that there was nothing amiss in Stenius’s behaviour, which did not bode well for the Lion’s current state of mind. Since Tsagualsa the primarch had brooded, even more than Corswain had become accustomed to. His master had said nothing of what preoccupied his thoughts, speaking only of the ongoing campaign against the Night Lords, but even those conversations had been touched by a new determination, bordering on a hunger for victory that Corswain had not seen in the Lion since the earliest days of the Crusade. The seneschal’s brush with death had forced Corswain to acknowledge his own shortcomings and apply himself to his duties with greater endeavour; perhaps the primarch felt the same.

  ‘Warp translation in ten seconds.’

  Stenius’s monotone declaration cut through Corswain’s meandering thoughts. He balled his hands into fists, knowing what was to come. The Lion stepped forwards, gripping the balcony rail in both hands as he stared down at Stenius, eyes narrowed. The primarch opened his mouth a little, as if he was about to speak. He said nothing and shook his head slightly, lips pursed.

  ‘Beginning translation to real space.’

  This was the part Corswain hated the most, in sensation most alike to the disembodied lurch of teleportation. For an endless moment the Invincible Reason was held between two dimensions, perched on the precipice between the material and immaterial like a wanderer standing at the crossroads of fate. A moment before, it had been adrift on the tides of the warp, cocooned within a bubble of reality kept intact by its Geller field. Now it was in the true universe, plucked from the unnatural currents, its Geller-borne reality imploding as real space engulfed the vessel.