Void Stalker

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘We’re going to die.’ Talos gestured to her bank of wall monitors, each one showing a different angle outside the ship – each one an eye staring upon the millions of rocks drifting in the void. ‘How can I be clearer? How can it be more obvious? Outside this asteroid field, alien warships wait for us to make our move. We’re dead, Octavia. That’s all there is to it. Now ensure you are ready to leave the ship. Take whatever you wish, it matters nothing to me. You have eleven hours before I never want to see you again.’

  He turned and left, shoving aside two of her attendants that didn’t scatter quickly enough. She watched him walk away, tasting freedom on her tongue for the first time since she was captured, and unsure whether the taste was as pleasant as she remembered.

  The door opened with smooth traction, revealing his master in the entrance arch.

  Septimus looked up, Uzas’s helm still in his hands. He’d been making the final repairs to the left eye lens socket.

  ‘Lord?’ he said.

  Talos walked in, filling the humble chamber with a chorus of snarling joints and the ever-present hum of live armour.

  ‘Octavia leaves the ship in eleven hours,’ the Night Lord said. ‘Your unborn child goes with her.’

  Septimus nodded. His eyes never left his master’s faceplate. ‘With respect, lord, I had already guessed.’

  Talos walked around the room, casting his attention here and there, never lingering for long on one thing. He took in the half-repaired pistols on the desk; the sketches of schematics; the charcoal drawings of his lover Octavia; and the clothing left in messy heaps. Above all, the small space bled a sense of life, of personality, of being the sanctum of one specific living soul.

  A human’s room, Talos thought, reflecting on the empty lifelessness of his own personal chambers – chambers resembling the quarters of any other Legionary, except for the prophecies scrawled on the iron walls. How different they are to us, to leave their imprint so sternly on the places they live.

  He turned back to Septimus, the man that had served him for almost a decade now.

  ‘We must speak, you and I.’

  ‘As you wish, master.’ Septimus put the helm down.

  ‘No. For the next few minutes, we will forget the roles of those who serve and those who are served. For now, I am neither master, nor lord. I am Talos.’ The warrior removed his helm, looking down with his pale features calm.

  Septimus felt the mad urge to reach for a weapon, unnerved by this strange familiarity.

  ‘Why do I feel like this is some frightening prelude to slitting my throat?’ he asked.

  The prophet’s smile never reached his dark eyes.

  Octavia and Deltrian weren’t getting along, which was a surprise to neither of them. She thought he was unbearably impatient for such an augmented creature, and he thought she smelled unpleasantly of the biological chemicals and organic fluids involved in mammalian reproduction. Their relationship had started with those first impressions, and gone downhill from there. It was a relief for both of them when she went to her quarters for her final preparations before flight.

  She strapped herself into the uncomfortable throne in the belly of Deltrian’s squat insectoid ship. Her ‘chamber’, such as it was, offered a single picter-screen and barely enough room to stretch her legs.

  ‘Has anyone ever sat here and tested this equipment?’ she asked as a servitor slid a slender neural spike into the modest and elegantly-crafted socket at her temple. ‘Ouch. Careful with that.’

  ‘Compliance,’ murmured the cyborg, staring with dead eyes. It was all the answer she received, which didn’t surprise her, either.

  ‘You push until it clicks,’ she told the lobotomised slave. ‘Not until it comes out my other bloody ear.’

  The servitor drooled a little. ‘Compliance.’

  ‘Throne, just go away.’

  ‘Compliance,’ it said for a third time, and did exactly that. She heard it bumping into something in the corridor outside, while the ship shook on the deck with final armament loading. Octavia’s box of a room had no porthole windows, so she cycled through the external picter feeds. Image after image of the Echo’s main hangar deck flickered across the screen. Thunderhawks were being loaded with full payloads, and drop-pods were winched into position. Octavia watched with emotionless eyes, not sure what to feel. Was this home? Would she miss all of it? Where would they even go, if they managed to get away?

  ‘Oh,’ she whispered, watching the screen. ‘Oh, shit.’

  She paused the scrolling feed, keying in a code to tilt one of the imagefinders on the ship’s hull. Loader buggies and crew transports ferried back and forth; a lifter Sentinel, stolen from some long-past raid, clanked its way past, steel feet thumping on the deck.

  Septimus, with a beaten leather bag over one shoulder, was speaking with Deltrian by the main gangramp. His long hair covered his facial augmetics, and he wore a subtly armoured bodysuit beneath his heavy jacket. A machete was sheathed at his right shin, and both pistols hung low at his hips.

  She had no idea what he was saying. The external viewfinders didn’t offer sound. She watched him slap Deltrian on the shoulder, which the stick-thin cadaver of chrome didn’t seem to appreciate, if his recoil was anything to go by.

  Septimus made his way up the gangramp, and vanished from view. The screen showed Deltrian return to directing his loader servitors, and the endless flow of machinery being brought aboard.

  She heard the knock at her bulkhead door almost immediately after.

  ‘Tell me you’ve got your bandana on,’ she heard him call through the metal.

  She smiled, reaching a hand to check, just in case. ‘You’re safe.’

  The door opened, and he dumped his gear the moment he’d closed it behind him. ‘I was dismissed from service,’ he said. ‘Just like you.’

  ‘Who’ll fly Blackened down to the surface?’

  ‘No one. There are only enough squads for three gunships. Blackened has been loaded into this ship’s conveyance claws already. Talos has bequeathed it to Variel, full of his apothecarion equipment and relics from the Hall of Reflection. It’s to be returned to the Legion in the Eye, if we ever make it that far.’

  Her smiled faded, the sun going behind the horizon. ‘We’re not going to make it that far. You know that, don’t you?’

  He shrugged, evidently sanguine. ‘We’ll see.’

  Word had surely spread throughout the ship of the upcoming battle, but the Echo was a city in space, with all the various multitudes such scope implied. On the highest crew decks, the battle to come was a matter of focus – the officers and ratings knew their parts to play, and went about their duties with all the professionalism of those aboard an Imperial Navy warship.

  On the lower decks, as one ventured deeper into the ship’s innards, the battle was either a matter of prayer, ignorance, or helpless muttering. The thousands who fed the ship with their blood and sweat, toiling in the reactor chambers and the weapon battery platforms, had no wider understanding of the situation beyond the fact a battle would soon be fought.

  Talos went alone to the primary hangar deck. Tenth Company’s surviving warriors were already on board their drop-pods, while their Thunderhawks were loaded with wargear to be ferried down to them on the surface. Servitors stood in idle silence here and there, waiting for the next order that would engage their limited response arrays.

  The prophet crossed the quiet landing bay, to where Deltrian was descending down his ship’s gangramp.

  ‘All is in readiness,’ Deltrian vocalised.

  Talos regarded the adept with unblinking red eye lenses. ‘Swear to me you’ll do as I say. Those three sarcophagi are priceless. Malcharion will stand with us, but the other three tomb-pods have to reach the Legion. They are relics beyond price. They cannot die here with us.’

  ‘All is in readiness,’ Deltr
ian said a second time.

  ‘The gene-seed matters most of all,’ Talos pressed him. ‘The gene-seed supplies in storage must reach the Eye, at all costs. Swear to me.’

  ‘All is in readiness,’ Deltrian repeated. He had scant regard for the swearing of oaths. In his view, promises were something sworn by biologicals seeking to use hope in place of calculated likelihood. In short: an agreement made on flawed parameters.

  ‘Swear to me, Deltrian.’

  The tech-priest made an error sound, vocalising it in a low burr. ‘Very well. In an effort to end this vocalisation exchange, I give my oath that the plan will be followed to precise parameters, to the best of my ability and capacity to oversee the efforts of others.’

  ‘That’ll do.’

  Deltrian wasn’t quite finished. ‘Estimates suggest we will remain in the asteroid field for several hours after your departure before we know for certain if every xenos vessel is giving chase. Auspex unreliability is a factor. Drift jamming is a factor. Alien interference is a factor. The logistics of–’

  ‘There are many factors,’ Talos interrupted. ‘I understand. Hide as long as you need to, and run when you can.’

  ‘As you will it, so shall it be.’

  The tech-priest turned, then hesitated. Talos wasn’t moving away.

  ‘Do you linger here in the desire that I will wish you luck?’ Deltrian tilted his leering skull of a face. ‘You must be aware that the very idea of fortune is anathema to me. Existence is arbitrary, Talos.’

  The Night Lord held out his hand. Deltrian’s eye lenses focused on the offered gauntlet for a moment, soft whirrings in his facial structure giving away the fact his eyes were refocusing.

  ‘Intriguing,’ he said. ‘Processing.’

  A moment later, he gripped the legionary’s wrist. Talos gripped the adept’s, returning the Eighth Legion’s traditional warrior handshake.

  ‘It’s been a privilege, honoured adept.’

  Deltrian searched for the appropriate response. He was an outsider, but the ancient formal words, traditionally spoken between warriors of the Eighth Legion on the eve of hopeless battles, came to him with an alacrity he found surprising.

  ‘Die as you lived, Son of the Eighth Legion. In midnight clad.’

  The two broke apart. Deltrian, as dead to patience as he was to subtlety, immediately turned and walked up the gangramp, heading into the ship.

  Talos hesitated, seeing Septimus at the top of the ramp. The slave raised his gloved hand in farewell.

  Talos snorted at the gesture. Humans. The things emotion forces them to do.

  He acknowledged his former slave with a nod, and left the hangar without a word.

  XXII

  GAUNTLET

  The Echo powered through the asteroid field with no concern for ammunition reserves or void shield charges. The smaller rocks crashed aside, repelled by the ship’s crackling shields as the cruiser rammed the asteroids out of the way. The larger rocks died in invisible detonations, as the warship’s guns pounded them into rubble.

  It didn’t turn to avoid any impacts. It didn’t slow down, or manoeuvre, or deploy drones to break up any debris in its path. The Echo of Damnation was done hiding. It tore its way from its volatile sanctuary, every cannon along its sides and spine swinging forward, ready to cry out in anger for the final time.

  On the bridge, Talos watched from his throne. The command crew, mortals all, were almost silent in their focused devotion. Servitors relayed printed reports, several of them emitting slow rolls of inked parchment from augmetic jaws. The prophet’s eyes never left the occulus. Beyond the twisting rocks, past even those that weren’t yet bursting apart under the Echo’s weapons fire, the alien fleet lay in wait. He saw them moving through the void in a tidal drift, disgustingly harmonious, their glittering solar sails tilted to catch the distant sun’s weak light.

  ‘Report,’ Talos said.

  The responses came from every section of the command deck. Calls of ‘aye’ and ‘ready’ hailed back in an orderly verse. To coin Deltrian’s phrase, all was in readiness. There was nothing he could do now beyond wait.

  ‘Alien fleet moving to intercept. They’re positioned in the clearest paths through the rest of the asteroid field.’

  He could see that well enough. The smaller vessels, shaped of contoured bone, remained around their motherships – lesser fish feeding from sharks – but the bigger cruisers moved with a speed no less impressive. They came about in fluid arcs, sails banking, running to head off the Echo of Damnation as soon as it left the densest sector of the asteroid field.

  He didn’t like how they moved; not only because of the grotesque agility far beyond human capability, but because outrunning and outgunning this fleet was already impossible, and they were making it look like outmanoeuvring them was an equal fiction.

  ‘Forty-five seconds, lord.’

  Talos leaned back in the throne. He knew full well there was a chance he’d never get off this deck alive. The run to the planet was looking to be the hardest part; slaughtering these skeletal alien wretches in the Tsagualsan catacombs would be a delightful treat by comparison, and one that almost made his mouth water.

  ‘Thirty seconds.’

  ‘All targets marked and locked,’ called out the weapons overseer. ‘We’ll need a full minute of uninterrupted bearing to unleash the entire first volley.’

  ‘You’ll have it, Armsmaster,’ Talos replied. ‘How many targets will that hit?’

  ‘If the aliens behave as eldar fleets usually do, rather than running alongside us for a broadside exchange… Fifteen targets, my lord.’

  Talos felt his lips twitch behind his faceplate, not quite a smile. Fifteen targets in one volley. Blood of Horus, he’d miss this ship. She’d been a beautiful twin sister to the Covenant, and it would be churlish to begrudge the armament improvements performed by the Corsairs in the centuries they’d claimed her.

  ‘Twenty seconds.’

  ‘Give me shipwide vox address.’

  ‘Done, lord.’

  Talos drew a breath, knowing his words were being heard by thousands upon thousands of slaves, mutants, heretics and serfs across the ship’s myriad decks.

  ‘This is the captain,’ he said. ‘I am Talos, of the bloodline of the Eighth Primarch, and a son of the sunless world. A storm like no other bears down upon us, ready to break against the ship’s skin. Survival rides on your blood and sweat, no matter the deck you toil upon. Every life counts in the minutes to come. All hands, all souls, brace for battle.’

  ‘Five seconds, lord.’

  ‘Start the Shriek.’

  ‘Aye, lord.’

  ‘First volley as planned, then fire at will.’

  ‘Aye, lord.’

  ‘Lord, we’re clear of the Talosian Density. Enemy fleet is moving to eng–’

  ‘Open fire.’

  The Echo of Damnation ran with all its heart, streaming plasma flame in contrails almost beautiful in their devastating heat.

  The wider asteroid field’s presence was one of the many unwelcoming aspects that made Tsagualsa such a secure haven for so many years after the Heresy. It was significantly less of a hazard to navigation than the denser debris around the shattered moon, but the eldar ships still ghosted and looped around any loose rock rather than risk impact.

  The Echo of Damnation took no such care. It ploughed ahead, relying on its void shields and forward weapons array to ram aside any impending threats.

  Their initial dives were somewhat less graceful than their previous void dancing, for their prey was playing a different game. The Echo obeyed no conventional logic, never once turning for better angles with its weapon batteries, making no adjustments to its flight vectors. The warship wasn’t where the alien vessels expected it to be, nor was it going where they’d prepared for it to go. By simply carving its way t
hrough the asteroid field, the Echo was sacrificing an insane amount of ammunition and shield power, knifing directly towards the world ahead.

  The eldar ships ready to engage, laying in wait throughout the clearer routes in the debris field, now found themselves far away from the path of their fleeing prey.

  ‘Is it working?’ Talos asked. He could see it working – it was obvious in the way several alien vessels were coming about at speed to adjust their attack runs – but he wanted to hear it, nevertheless.

  The officers stared down at their consoles, none more keenly than those stationed at the auspex hololithic projectors.

  ‘The eldar fleet is struggling to come about to our trajectory. Several cruisers are already failing their intercept courses.’

  ‘It’s working.’ Talos remained in the throne, resisting the desire to pace the deck. The ship shook with the firing of the guns, and the hammering shivers of rocks pounding against the void shields. ‘We’re outrunning almost half of them.’

  The alien ships were elongated, contoured things – all smooth bone and shining wing-sails. He suspected the distant sun made the eldar warships sluggish, starved of the heat they needed on their solar sails, but he hardly had a wealth of experience in the function of alien vessels. With the eldar, everything always felt like guesswork.

  ‘Xenos vanguard ships entering maximum weapons range.’

  Talos thought of his brothers in their drop-pods, and the gunships warmed and waiting in the landing bays. On the occulus, the coin-sized grey sphere of Tsagualsa grew by the second. Proximity alarms wailed at each and every asteroid that went spinning aside from the inexorable advance, and servitors slaved to their stations chattered at the threat of incoming warheads.

  For no reason he could adequately explain, Talos felt a smile creeping across his face. A crooked, sincere smirk of inappropriate amusement.

  ‘Lord,’ called out one of the auspex officers. ‘Alien torpedoes are resistant to our interference.’

  ‘Even to the Shriek?’ He knew it was calibrated to Imperial technology, but even so, he’d been hoping it would make a difference.