Void Stalker

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘Several have lost their bearings, others are ploughing into the debris field. But more than three-quarters are still on target.’

  ‘Time to impact?’

  ‘The first will be upon us in less than twenty seconds.’

  ‘That’s good enough. All hands, brace for impact.’

  Soon enough, the hull’s rattling became shaking, and the shaking in turn became violent convulsions. Talos felt the creeping of some new and unwelcome unease worming its way up his backbone; how many times had he been aboard a warship in a void battle? A difficult question. One might as well ask how many breaths he’d drawn over the centuries. But this was different. This time, he was the one guiding the ship’s path. He couldn’t just leave it in Vandred’s hands and focus on his own lesser conflicts.

  Malcharion should be here. Talos quashed the treacherous thought, true as it might be.

  ‘Shields holding,’ a servitor chattered nearby. ‘Two-thirds strength.’

  Talos watched the grey world growing as the Echo of Damnation cried out around him.

  ‘Come on,’ he whispered. ‘Come on.’

  The Eighth Legion warship hammered her way onward, ramming through the asteroids lying in her path.

  The eldar captains were hardly novices in void warfare, nor could any of their craftworld home on the edge of the Great Eye ever be truly surprised by the tactics of an Archenemy warship. Solar sails aligned across the fleet as the alien cruisers swam through their haunting, beautiful attack runs, filling the rocky void with flashing streams of pulsar fire.

  Individually, each pulsar beam was as thin as string against the background of infinite black, but they streaked across the void in a cobweb of shining force, raining and lashing against the Echo’s suffering void shields.

  The Echo of Damnation rolled as it ran, offering its broadsides and spinal batteries to the enemy. Return fire burst from the Eighth Legion cruiser – corruption bursting from suppurated wounds – as the warship lashed back with its own guns. Such was their grace, several of the eldar vessels seemed to shimmer out of existence, vanishing from the path of incoming fire. Others took the onslaught, letting it starburst across their shields, secure in the knowledge that the Echo’s flight forced it to devote the majority of its armament to clearing a way through the rocks.

  The first alien ship to fall was a minor escort ship bearing a name no human could accurately pronounce. Certainly, none of those present on the Echo of Damnation cared to try, yet they cheered and laughed when it broke apart before their eyes, ruined by a barrage of plasma and hard-shell fire from the spinal batteries.

  A lucky shot, and Talos knew it. Nevertheless, his skin prickled at the sight.

  The second xenos vessel died as much from the random tides of fate as from Night Lord malice. With no time to turn, the Echo of Damnation poured all of its forward fire into a huge asteroid ahead. Its lances carved into the frozen stone, splitting the rock along fault lines in time for the ship’s shielded prow to ram straight into the surface. As the asteroid broke apart, scattering from the crackling and protesting shields, spinning rocks tumbled in all directions. The eldar fleet, for all their arcing agility, were hampered by the oppressing rocks all around. Even as they scattered to fly aside, several of them took incidental damage from the spreading rubble.

  Talos gave a crooked smile as one of the heaviest chunks crashed into the slender form of a swooping enemy warship. The debris shattered a solar sail into nothing more than beautiful diamond glass, before grinding into the vessel’s body of supernatural bone. The ship twisted, suffering and straining, before diving directly into another asteroid ahead.

  ‘Even if we die here,’ the Night Lord chuckled, ‘that was worth seeing.’

  ‘Three minutes until we pass Tsagualsa, lord.’

  ‘Good.’ The smile died on his lips as he remembered the betrayal to come. Given the ship’s trajectory and the overwhelming force against them, many of these poor souls had surely already guessed the only way this could possibly end.

  ‘Should we ready the ship for warp flight?’ asked one of the closest officers. Talos heard it in the man’s voice; the officer had surrendered his hope, and sought to hide his unrest. The prophet admired him for that. Cowardice had no place on this bridge.

  ‘No,’ Talos replied. ‘Do you genuinely believe we will make it to safety?’ The ship shuddered around them, forcing several mortal crew members to cling to railings and consoles. ‘Even with this successful run, do you believe we’ll evade them for much longer?’

  ‘No, lord. Of course not.’

  ‘A wise answer,’ Talos told him. ‘Focus on your duties, Lieutenant Rawlen. Don’t worry what will come after.’

  Septimus and Deltrian stood in the modest, cramped chamber that the tech-adept announced, with no trace of pride or shame either way, as Epsilon K-41 Sigma Sigma A:2’s bridge.

  He’d also demanded Septimus leave the deck, to which the human had replied in Nostraman, with something dubiously biological about Deltrian’s mother.

  ‘I’m a pilot,’ he added. ‘I’m going to help fly this thing.’

  ‘Your augmetic aspects, while impressive, are far too limited for you to interface with the machine-spirit of my vessel.’

  He gestured to the rocks quivering on the unreliable hololithic. ‘You trust servitors and a machine-spirit to fly out of this?’

  Deltrian made an affirmative sound. ‘More than any human. What… what a strange query.’

  Septimus had relented, but remained on the bridge by the pilot-servitor’s throne.

  The slave and the adept, along with the two-dozen servitors and robed crew, were watching the hololithic projection that served as tactical map and occulus alike. Unlike the Echo’s holo-imagery, Deltrian’s was watery and flickered at intervals that pained Septimus’s human eye. Looking through his bionic took away the ache, and helped resolve some of the flickering interference. Only then did he realise it was a projection designed to be viewed by augmetic eyes.

  The ship itself was a rounded, bloated beetle of a vessel, bristling with defensive turrets, with almost three-quarters of its length given up to the drive engines and warp generators. Bulkheads sealed those areas of the ship off from the habitable areas, and Septimus had seen several of the adepts wearing rebreather masks while entering and leaving the engine decks.

  The entire vessel was cramped to the point of madness. To make room for the vessel’s armour, weapons systems and propulsion, every tunnel was a narrow walkway, and every chamber was a squat box featuring the essential systems and enough room for a single operator. The command deck was the most spacious area of the whole ship, and even that offered no room to move if eight people were present at once.

  Septimus watched the ship’s identifier rune pulsing on the hololithic, attached to an asteroid as it hid from the aliens’ scanners. Far across the field of malformed rocks, the rune signifying the Echo was a speck among a nest of angry signals.

  ‘The Echo is almost there,’ he said. ‘They’re going to make it.’

  Septimus turned his head at a familiar sound. Variel walked in, his armour joints humming with every movement.

  ‘Tell me what’s happening,’ he demanded, as calm as ever.

  ‘It doesn’t look like they know we’re here,’ Septimus let his eyes drift back to the hololithic.

  ‘Tell me about the Echo, idiotic mortal.’

  Septimus had the grace to force a smile, abashed at the obviousness of his mistake. ‘They’re going to make it, Lord Variel.’

  The Apothecary showed no emotion at the use of the honorific, just as he never showed any emotion the many times Septimus had or hadn’t used it before. Such things were less than meaningless to him.

  ‘Am I to assume we will be departing soon?’

  Deltrian nodded, doing his best to simulate the human movement on a neck not des
igned to flex in such subtle ways. Something locked at the top of his spine, and he had to take a moment to will the vertebrae coupling to loosen.

  ‘Affirmative,’ he vocalised.

  Variel moved to where Septimus stood, watching the hololithic himself. ‘What is that?’ he gestured to another runic signifier.

  ‘That…’ Septimus reached down to the servitor pilot’s console, and adjusted the hololithic display with a few tapped keys. ‘…is the Genesis Chapter’s strike cruiser we destroyed months ago.’

  Variel didn’t smile, which was no surprise to Septimus. His pale blue eyes blinked once as he regarded the hololithic image of the broken cruiser, its hull left open to the void. He reached down to magnify the image, taking in the absolute devastation where the warship lay dead at the heart of the Talosian Density, among the thickest cluster of asteroids above the broken moon.

  ‘That was a particularly satisfying kill,’ the Night Lord noted.

  ‘Aye, lord.’

  Variel glanced at him with those disquieting eyes. After almost ten years in service to the Eighth Legion, Septimus would have gambled on nothing being able to unnerve him anymore. Variel’s eyes seemed to be a rare exception.

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ the Apothecary asked. ‘Your heart rate is elevated. You reek of some moronic, emotional excitement.’

  Septimus inclined his head to the hololithic. ‘It’s difficult to watch them fight without us. Serving the Legion is all I’ve done for most of my adult life. Without that… I’m not even sure I know who I am.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Fascinating.’ He turned to Deltrian. ‘Tech-priest. A question, to alleviate my boredom. I want to listen to the eldar’s communications. Can you leech their signal?’

  ‘Of course.’ Deltrian deployed two of his secondary limbs, letting them arch over his shoulders to work on a separate console. ‘I have no capacity to translate eldar linguistic vocalisations.’

  That caught Variel’s attention. ‘Truly? Curious. I’d thought you’d be more enlightened than that.’

  ‘An adept of the Mechanicum has more pressing matters to attend to than the mumblings of wretched xenos-kind.’

  ‘No need to become irritated,’ Variel offered a momentary smile, as false as it was brief. ‘I speak several eldar dialects. Just leech the signal, if you are able.’

  Deltrian paused before pulling the last lever. ‘Explain your mastery of the alien tongue.’

  ‘There is nothing to explain, honoured adept. I dislike ignorance. When the chance to learn something arises, I take it.’ He looked over at the robed figure. ‘Do you believe the Red Corsairs only battled the corrupt Imperium? We fought the eldar countless times. Captives were not unknown, either. You have one chance at guessing who extracted information from them through excruciation.’

  ‘I see.’ Deltrian accepted the answer with another attempt to simulate a nod. His spinal column, made of various precious metals reinforced by tiny plates of ceramite, clicked and whirred with the movement. As he engaged the lever, the bridge was flooded by sibilant alien whispers, distorted by vox crackle.

  Variel spoke a word of thanks, and returned his attention to the hololithic. Septimus stood with him, his attention alternating between the unfolding battle and Variel’s pale face.

  ‘Stop looking at me,’ Variel said after a minute had passed. ‘It is getting annoying.’

  ‘What are the eldar saying?’ Septimus asked.

  Variel listened for another half-minute, not seeming to pay overmuch attention. ‘They speak of manoeuvres in three dimensions, comparing warship movements to ghosts and beasts of the sea. It is all very poetic, in a bland, worthless and alien way. No casualty reports yet. No sound of any eldar captains shrieking as their souls are cast adrift.’

  It was suddenly clear to Septimus what Variel was really listening for. First Claw had been right; Variel really was one of the Eighth Legion, no matter the origins of his gene-seed.

  ‘I…’ the Apothecary started, then fell silent. The eldar voices whispered on in the background.

  Septimus drew breath to ask, ‘What are they–’

  Variel silenced him with a glare, his pale eyes narrowed in suspicious concentration. The slave crossed his arms over his chest, waiting and hoping for an explanation, but hardly expecting one.

  ‘Wait,’ Variel finally breathed, closing his eyes to better focus on the alien tongue. ‘Something is wrong.’

  XXIII

  A FATE DENIED

  Octavia was doing something she’d not dared in a long while. She was using her gift for pleasure, not for duty or necessity.

  The Sea of Souls was not a source of easy indulgence, and her childhood was littered with a thousand tales told of Navigators who looked too long, too deep, into the warp’s tides. They never saw anything the same afterwards. One of the Mervallion family’s own scions – her cousin Tralen Premar Mervallion – was locked beneath the family spire in an isolation tank where he could do himself no more harm. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been floating in the murky fluids of an amniotic pool, leashed by restraint straps, now the proud and laughing owner of a ragged hole in the middle of his forehead where his third eye had been. She shivered at the memory, seeing the bubbles spilling up from his laughing mouth. He always laughed now. She’d hoped whatever fuelled his manic amusement offered some kind of solace, but she wasn’t naive enough to believe it.

  She didn’t like to think of Tralen. Navigators were said to die from the removal of their warp eyes. It seemed there were some few, rare exceptions to that vile rule.

  It had taken long enough to calm her nerves before risking her needless viewing, but with her human eyes closed and her bandana pulled free, the rest took no time at all. In truth, it was almost frighteningly easy – a similar sensation to falling from halfway up a difficult climb – but she knew she had the strength to pull herself back.

  Octavia, once Eurydice of House Mervallion, might not have been born to a bloodline blessed as strong Navigators, but experience aboard the temperamental, wilful vessels of the Eighth Legion had honed what skills she possessed. She couldn’t help but wonder, as she gazed into the infinite black tides, how she would perform on the aptitude judgement arrays back on Holy Terra now. Had she grown stronger, or was it merely a matter of familiarity and confidence?

  She’d never know. The odds of her ever setting foot on the Throneworld again were millions to one. That thought didn’t seem as bleak as it once had. She wasn’t sure why.

  Curiosity forced her hand now, though. A less selfish, more perverse curiosity than dwelling on her own fate. Seeing into the Sea of Souls was as simple as opening her third eye. She didn’t need to be in the warp, though she knew some Navigators did. Few of them could compare the use of their gift with absolute common ground. Her father could only see into the warp with all three of his eyes open. She’d never known why; they all had their personal habits.

  When she saw, she merely stared with her secret sight, watching the shadowy ebb and flow of the half-formed nothingness, shapeless yet tidal, formless yet serpentine. Shamans and witches from the primitive ages of Old Earth would consider it no different than a ritual allowing them to look into the layers of their mythical Hell.

  But when she searched, she couldn’t help but hold her breath each time, until her hammering heart and aching lungs forced her to breathe again. She was aware, on some logical level, that she was projecting her sight through the unholy tides, perhaps even casting a fragment of consciousness into the ether – but Octavia cared little for the metaphysics at play. All that mattered was what she could find with her second sight.

  In the madness of the eldar blockades, they’d run again and again, flowing through the tides along the path of least resistance. Talos’s psychic scream left the warp raw and abused, its veins swollen and its rivers in turmoil. She’d guided the ship as best she could, riding t
he winds rather than fighting too hard and risk the Echo breaking apart. All the while, she’d been caught between two states, seeing the sundered warp and feeling her hand resting on her swelling stomach.

  Now, free from the pressure of navigating the warp, she was free to stare into it. Octavia stared harder, her sight reaching deeper, past the hundred shades of black outside the Astronomican’s light, seeking any source of light between the conflicting clouds.

  For the first time, she started to see what Talos had done. The colliding waves of daemonic matter bled before her eyes, riven by savage wounds and leaking into one another. She watched them splitting and reforming, meshing and dividing, birthing screaming faces and dissolving them just as quickly. Hands reached out from the thrashing tide, melting and burning even as they gripped the outstretched claws of other nearby souls.

  Octavia steadied herself, staring deeper. The wounded warp – no, she realised, not wounded…. energised – stretched on and on, the bleeding rivers meeting to become a bleeding ocean. How many worlds were choking in this invisible storm? How much terror would this spread?

  She could hear her name in the crashing waves. A whisper, a scream, a plaintive cry…

  Octavia pulled back. Her eye closed. Her eyes opened.

  For a moment, fascination at what Talos had spread through dozens of solar systems gripped her more than the fear of having to fly through it. The warp was always in eternal flux, and in the hours after the scream first sounded, it had boiled with rejuvenation. Now, however, she was preparing to guide an unfamiliar ship into unsailable seas.

  The Navigator replaced her bandana, retied her ponytail, and stretched in the uncomfortable throne, trying to ease the pressure on her backbone. She gave an idle thought for her attendants stationed outside the door, no doubt cramped in the narrow corridor. She missed Hound with a dull ferocity, and that in itself was painful to admit. More than that – and how I hate to confess this, even to myself – she wished Septimus was with her. He was incapable of ever saying the right thing, but even so. His self-conscious smile; the edge of amusement in his occasional glances; the way he slouched into his throne no matter how dire the threat seemed…