by John French
Pertinax completed his report. I nodded thanks and then looked around the circle. Each of those assembled commanded one of the fleet’s two-dozen battlegroups. Most of those in attendance were projections, their translucent images rendered in flickering light. Only Tyr, Raln and the spindle-limbed Master of Astropaths Calio Lezzek were physically present. The council had been like all those that had preceded it; all was quiet. As it had been for weeks. I caught Tyr’s eye and saw the old argument growing in the glance. I looked away to the only person yet to give their report.
‘Master Lezzek.’ The old man raised his head at the sound of his name, and cocked his head as if to listen. ‘Is there word from Terra?’
‘No, captain,’ wheezed Lezzek, the loose skin of his face quivering above his silk-shrouded shoulders. ‘There has been no word from Terra, or anyone else.’ The answer was as expected; we were as deaf and mute as we had been when the storm first spat us out.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and was about to dismiss the gathering when Lezzek took a gulp of air and continued.
‘We lost another two astropaths in our last attempt to send a message through the storms.’ The old man paused, breathing hard. I could see the fatigue running through his body. His skin had a fever sheen to it, and a drop of blood formed at the corner of his mouth as he spoke. ‘Fleet master, we have lost half the remaining astropaths in the fleet trying to get word to Terra. We cannot continue like this. The storms beat on our minds even when we sleep. It’s like they are alive. Like they–’
‘You will keep trying,’ I said, a hard edge to my voice. Lezzek opened his mouth to speak but I did not give him a chance. ‘There is nothing more important. Nothing.’ Lezzek was silent for a moment and then nodded.
It was a death order, I knew. I was ordering his astropaths to give their lives whether they wished to or not. But there was no choice, and we had all suffered losses in this endeavour. Doing one’s duty while bearing loss is the essence of loyalty. Still I felt the blind man’s empty eyes boring into my back as I turned to the other commanders.
‘Until next division,’ I said, and brought my closed right fist to my chest. All of the Imperial Fists returned the salute. Lezzek simply bowed and shuffled away, looking as if he might fall over at any moment. One by one the projected images blinked out, until only Tyr remained. A frown creased his sharp face as he stared at the back of the departing astropath. A sensation of restlessness hung around Tyr even when still, a restrained energy like a predator looking out from the inside of a cage. He was honourable and true but he bowed in respect to no one other than Sigismund and Dorn himself. He was my brother by virtue of the alterations to our flesh and the oaths we had made, but he would never be a friend.
‘If you have something on your mind you should have voiced it, brother.’
Tyr gave me an accusing look. I braced myself for renewed debate. Behind me Raln moved discreetly away from us both, his constant enigmatic grin back in place.
‘He has a point, brother,’ said Tyr, looking at where Lezzek had stood. ‘We cannot continue like this.’
‘We must establish communications with Terra,’ I said, my voice flat and steady. Tyr nodded, still looking at the spot vacated by the astropath.
‘That is true, but that is not what I meant.’ He frowned, the scars across his face becoming jagged fissures. ‘The primarch ordered us to Isstvan. Word from Terra is vital but so is the mission.’
‘Ten ships, captain,’ I said quietly. Tyr winced. Since I had assumed command he had been arguing that the whole fleet should be trying to find a way through the storms. In his eyes staying in place and preparing our defences was a waste of time. After our first conversation I had agreed that we needed to try to break through the storms. I had given Tyr the responsibility of probing into the warp to try and find a safe passage. Ten ships had been lost over the last weeks, and twice as many had taken damage. The storms had not abated; if anything they seemed to have increased in ferocity.
‘If the whole fleet sought a way out–’
‘We would lose more, and we would not be able to maintain our readiness.’
‘Is that our duty?’ growled Tyr. ‘To stay here and wait for an enemy that may never come? Command did not fall to you to delay here while our enemy waits for us beyond the storms.’ He gestured at the viewports but kept his gaze on me. I saw something dangerous in the deep centre of his eyes.
I stepped closer to Tyr, a poised stillness suddenly running through my body. My armour was void-hardened battle plate, less massively plated than Terminator armour, but I still looked down on Tyr. ‘I have listened to you.’ My voice was low and level. ‘I agreed to let you seek a way out. But mastery of the fleet is mine.’ Tyr looked about to say something, but I shook my head slowly. ‘You could have had command. You are more honoured. Sigismund holds you in high regard, as does the primarch. The decisions I make could have been yours. But they are not. You and the others placed this duty in my hands.’ Unconsciously I found I had clenched my hand, the scarred fingers hidden by the enfolding bulk of my power fist. ‘You may continue to seek a passage out, but I will not risk more of the fleet, or our deployment. That is my command, captain.’
Tyr blinked once and then bowed his head, but when he looked up again I could still see fire in his eyes. I felt something kindle at the base of my neck, a hot acid sensation that spread through my head and chest. I recognised the feeling: anger. Not the focused rage of battle, but the low human sensation.
I opened my mouth, but never spoke the words that had formed there. At that moment, the Tribune screamed.
We are told that pride is a virtue, but only when bound to humility. I had been ready for an attack. Through the long weeks of watching, drilling and planning I had waited for the enemy to show his face. I had expected silent ships drifting on momentum from the system edge, or a blunt mass assault from behind the system’s sun. Our disposition accounted for this, as it did for any number of other preludes to attack.
My plan, though thorough, had not anticipated the unimaginable. Of the many mistakes I made it is perhaps the easiest to understand but the most difficult to forgive.
It began with the servitors. There were hundreds of them, bound into the ship by interface trunks, and locked in cable cradles and machine niches. As one they howled. Some vomited data code as if trying to purge themselves. Others babbled half-formed words. Those without mouths thrashed in silence.
I tried to understand what was happening. Then the psychic wave hit me and pitched me over into a sea of fragmented sensation. I heard crying, jabbering, and pleading in a hundred desperate voices. I staggered, my vision swimming with luminous streaks of light and colour. I was falling and the sounds I heard were shards of memory and suffering that were not mine. I was drowning, stinking fluid filling my lungs. I was floating in the void knowing that I was about to die. I was screaming as an iron-faced figure walked towards me, bladed arms extending. I was shouting into the winds of a storm.
‘Brother.’ The word seemed to come from far away. I opened my eyes. A fever blur edged my vision and the screams echoed in my ears. There was a face looking at me, the pain on its features an echo of my own. For an instant I saw a ghost, a half-dream of the past meshed with the present. Then I felt a blow jolt my shoulder, hard enough to shake me inside my armour. My senses snapped back into sharp clarity. Tyr was looking at me, a snarl of suppressed pain twisting his thin face. Sweat beaded his skin. Behind him I could see human officers slumped over sensor daises, or twitching on the floor amongst pooled vomit and excreta. Blood dribbled from their eyes and ears, running over static-filled data screens. I could tell by their stillness that some were dead. There was a taste of dry ash and grave rot in my mouth.
‘Look,’ shouted Tyr, and pointed to where the holo-projection of the Phall system turned in the air above us.
I looked, and was shouting for full battle readiness even as
my mind processed what I saw.
A thousand energy signatures flared and blinked out in front of my eyes. Sensor bursts and auspex sweeps bombarded us, hundreds of them coming from sources that came to life and then vanished. Clustered spikes of data and auspex readouts bloomed and died across display screens on the bridge. It was like watching a phosphor shell scatter sparks across the night sky. The cogitators snarled as they tried to process and assess the sudden squall of data. And all the while the nightmares and visions churned through our minds in a swelling tide.
Then it was over. The last energy signals vanished from the holo-projection. The machines went quiet, the servitors slumped at their stations, and the fevered sensations faded from my mind.
Twenty-eight days before the Battle of Phall
The Phall System
They took our fear but not our doubts. Am I right? Have I misjudged? What will happen? The questions hammered on me and I bore them in silence. That is the necessity of command: that you hold doubt within. You cannot look to others for assurance, because you are their surety. You cannot share your doubts, lest they spread like a withering disease through muscle. You are alone. Sometimes I wonder if the primarchs feel this; if decisions eat at their thoughts as they do mine.
I had been drilling with my company for hours. Normally I find calm in the repetition of such practice, but the questions repeated in my mind. What if the storms did not abate? Should I change my plan? What would Sigismund have done?
The training chamber ran along the flank of the Tribune for half a kilometre. Blast doors closed tank-wide holes in one wall, shutting out the void beyond. The floor was a tangle of barricades and fire-scorched debris. Weapon servitors hung from the ceiling, sliding along gantries to rain fire from the different angles required by the training scenario.
As I glanced up I saw that the barrels of the servitors’ cannons were glowing red. The guns increased their rate of fire. Sparks danced across the rim of my boarding shield. Lines of tracer fire scored the air above my head. My shield arm was vibrating with the impact of hard rounds. A line of tracer hit the crown of my helm, and I felt muscles tear in my neck. To either side of me two of my first squad stood with their shields braced across the left of their body, their legs set.
Each shield was a thick plate of plasteel two-thirds our height. The snouts of bolters jutted from the vertical slot cut into the right-hand side of each shield. Stood shoulder to shoulder, we created a wall of metal. In battles fought in the guts of starships this is what keeps you alive and allows you to win. Fighting this way is blunt and ugly; it is killing with discipline and workmanlike routine. It is perhaps the method of war I come closest to enjoying.
‘Advance, with fire,’ I roared. Our targets were servo-rigged automata that moved to preset patterns to mimic the response of a determined enemy. Only when we had closed the distance would real opponents replace machines and servitors. We began to step forwards and every step was a volley of bolter fire, repeated with lethal rhythm.
Questions rang in my head in time with our tread. Was Tyr right? Should we try and break through the storms? After the sensory and psychic onslaught we had come to full alert, and waited for an enemy to show their face. They had not come. And the weeks had passed, and the drumbeat of questions grew in my head.
‘Enemy, ten metres, front, closing fast,’ shouted Raln, from my right. I could not see the enemy without looking over my shield, but I did not need to; Raln had seen and I trusted his judgement.
Was the Phall system really a trap? The populations of its planets were missing and we had seemed to come under a form of psychic attack. But we had not found the cause of the onslaught. There could be other factors at work. Our being here could simply be coincidence.
‘Open ranks,’ called Raln. Our shield wall opened, peeling back just before the enemy hit. Five Imperial Fists in a tight wedge, hammers and chainswords ready. Skill at war is a blade edge made sharp only by harsh practice, and so I had picked the best of the company as our close-quarter opponents. They came at us as I intended: like they wanted to kill us. The five came through the gap in our shield wall and spilled into the space behind. ‘Close,’ shouted Raln. Our ranks closed, enveloping the mock enemies within in a tight ring of shields.
Can I do this? A fifth of a Legion on full alert, drilling for an attack that I believed was coming… What if I am wrong?
A hammer blow hit my shield with a sound like a gong. An instant later one of the five enemy warriors had rammed his shoulder into the point where mine and Raln’s shields touched. It was Settor, sergeant of the sixth squad, an old warrior seasoned by the conquest of worlds. He was also lethally fast. In the instant that a gap opened between our shields he had stepped forwards, forcing it wider and bringing his hammer down on my head. My vision swam. I blinked and in that second Settor was through our shield wall. He kicked Raln’s legs out from under him and suddenly there was a wide hole in the circle of our shields. Above us the gun servitors rose on their hoists and bullets began to fall on our heads like rain.
I raised my shield high, covering my head. Settor’s hammer head hit me in the gut. I staggered and a second blow crashed into my face plate. The eye lenses of my helm shattered, red fragments spilling down my front like drops of blood. I was dead, or would have been in a true fight.
‘End,’ I called over the vox. A second later the gunfire slackened as the servitors hanging from the weapon gantries cycled their slug cannons to silence. I pulled my helmet off. Pieces of red glass ringed the eye sockets like shattered teeth. Around me my company lowered their weapons. Sulphurous weapon smoke fogged the air. Countless chips and gouges had stripped everyone’s armour back to the dull metal beneath. Flattened slugs smeared the fronts of our boarding shields.
‘There was an opening, fleet master,’ said Settor, bowing his head as he spoke. ‘A momentary gap in your guard. I used it to break the shield wall.’ I nodded. It is the duty of all Imperial Fists to recognise weakness. Settor was right – my thoughts and focus had drifted. In a real fight it could have led to slaughter and failure.
‘Thank you, brother,’ I said with a nod. Settor moved away, his hammer hanging loose from his fists. I looked at the battered helm in my hand. Anger buzzed behind my eyes. I had allowed my doubts to make me weak. If I could not find the strength to bear my duty then I would kill us all.
There may be no enemy coming for you, whispered a craven voice at the back of my thoughts. Tyr may be right and your duty might lie down another path. I thought of Sigismund, our first captain. This was to have been his duty to bear, but he had returned to Terra with the primarch. I thought of the steps of mischance that meant that his duty now rested in my hands. Would it have been as heavy in his?
‘Not bad.’ Raln’s voice cut through my thoughts. He had come to stand at my shoulder; blade cuts and gunfire had pitted and gouged his armour. He pulled his own helmet off, and took a deep breath as if savouring the thick smells of battle training.
‘The wall broke,’ I growled.
‘For the first time in four hours.’
‘It still broke.’
‘Response and cohesion have increased.’
‘Another four hours,’ I said. Raln held up his helmet as if in surrender and I saw the hint of a smile on his scarred lump of a face. I have no idea why he smiles.
‘The artificers will not thank you.’
‘Another four hours.’ I hefted my shield, feeling its reassuring weight.
Raln raised an eyebrow, but nodded and began to shout orders. The company began to reform. Overhead the gun gantries repositioned into a different configuration. I did not care if the artificers had to rebuild every suit of armour in the fleet; when an enemy came we needed to be ready. The opinions of others, whether they agreed or not, were of no matter. Strength requires obedience, not thought.
I clamped my eyeless helm over my head. I would be without
the information fed to me through the helmet’s eye lenses, but I would continue anyway. In war you cannot rely on anything except your brothers. To do otherwise is weakness.
‘Begin,’ I called and the hammer chime of gunfire filled my ears.
‘Fleet master?’ The helm officer’s voice cut through the noise as I was about to give the first order. It was Cartris; a human veteran of fifty years in service to the Imperial Fists, and the man I had trusted with coordinating the sweep of the system’s planets, moons and asteroid belts. He was not the type to be easily shaken, but I could hear the tension in his voice. Was it an attack? Alarms would have rung through the ship. No, it was something else, something important enough to alert me immediately but not enough to raise a general alarm.
‘I hear you, Cartris.’
‘We have received a signal from our search units.’ Cartris paused. I could hear the chatter of signal readouts and vox distortion in the background. ‘They have found something.’
Tyr came with me. Perhaps I wanted him to see it and so answer his own questions. But perhaps there was another, less worthy motivation.