Salvation's Reach

by Dan Abnett

  Ominator! Ominator! raged the first destroyer.

  Gorehead! spat the shredded vox-casters of its twin. Gorehead! Gorehead!

  Necrostar Antiversal! declared the blood-shot cruiser.

  Last of all, deepest, and most awful, the voice of the monstrous capital ship, like the deathscream of a black hole.

  Tormaggedon Monstrum Rex!

  NINE

  The Fight at Tavis Sun

  Kabry fell backwards into the pheguth’s cell, the back of his skull blown out. A sticky sheen of blood and tissue coated the wall and floor surfaces behind him. Cant forced his way into the cell, laspistol drawn.

  It had all happened in a second. Chained at his seat, Mabbon Etogaur looked up, saw Kabry twist over dead, and dropped the trancemissionary text he was reading.

  The other guard on duty inside the cell that shift was Varl. He screamed at Mabbon to get on the floor, and threw himself at the open hatch door. His lasrifle was still strapped around his body.

  Varl’s weight hit the hatch and swung it hard into Cant. The impact staggered Cant halfway back out of the hatchway, but his chest and shoulder prevented the hatch from fully closing so that Varl could bolt it.

  Varl put the full yield of his augmetic shoulder into keeping the hatch pinned on the attacker, but with his body wedged against the door, he couldn’t unship his rifle. He yelled a few savage curses as he rammed the hatch repeatedly.

  Cant had his right arm and shoulder inside the cell. He was pushing back, his left hand and cheek pressed against the outside of the hatch.

  His laspistol was in his right hand.

  He raised it and fired into the cell, shooting blind. Shots smacked off the rear wall and the floor. One grazed the ceiling. Two of the bolts ricocheted like cometary fragments off the dull metal surfaces. One punched clean through the back of the pheguth’s seat. Mabbon was face down on the floor, as far out of the firing line as the chain would allow.

  Cant fired again, intent on filling the interior of the cell with sizzling, rebounding las bolts.

  Calling Cant a name that would not have impressed his poor, dead mother, Varl stabbed him through the forearm with his warknife. The blade cleaved through muscle and bone and bit into the steel liner of the cell, staking Cant’s right arm against the wall inside the hatch, so he was pinned like a specimen. Pain forced Cant to drop his pistol.

  Varl redoubled his efforts to shove the door, hoping to crush or crack bone. Cant growled in discomfort.

  ‘You like that, you bastard?’ Varl shouted. He stepped back and threw the hatch wide so he could gun the assassin down.

  Cant faced him.

  Varl hesitated, seeing the face of a friend and comrade. He didn’t hesitate long, but it was just enough for Cant to form a beak with the fingers of his left hand and smash Varl in the chest. Varl was thrown clear across the cell.

  Alarms started to shriek. The bracket lamps in the approach corridor began to flash and cycle. Battle stations. There was a strong ozone whiff as the void shield generators lit up.

  Cant yanked Varl’s warknife out of the wall and freed his pinned arm. Blood ran down his wrist and dripped off his fingers. He took a step forwards.

  Varl was trying to get up, gulping in air as he tried to fill lungs that had been pressed empty. His face was bright red, his eyes wet with tears.

  Lasfire ripped up the approach hallway and spanked off the hatch and the hatch surround, causing Cant to duck in alarm. Cowering, he turned. At the far end of the hallway, Kolea was approaching, firing his rifle from the hip.

  The assassin threw himself flat, rolled close to Mktally’s corpse outside the hatch, and tore the lasrifle away from the dead Tanith. Sitting up, the assassin returned fire down the approach. Kolea dived behind a bulkhead to avoid the hail of bright las rounds.

  ‘Varl!’ Kolea yelled. ‘Varl, close the hatch.’

  The assassin was no longer wearing Cant’s face, nor Rawne’s. Pain, and the necessity of redirecting his strength into the fight, had obliged him to revert to his own face. It wasn’t the one he’d been born with, but it was what amounted to his true identity. It was the face of Sirkle. All of the rogue Inquisitor Rime’s minions had the same visage.

  Kolea fired again, two or three loose bursts. The shots spattered around the hatch end of the approach. Sirkle fired back, full auto, his rifle lighting up with bright petals of muzzle flash. The barrage caused Kolea to duck back into cover. Sirkle turned around to unload into the cell and finish his mission.

  He was just in time to see the pained, red-faced Varl slamming the cell door in his face.

  The hatch locked. Sirkle roared in frustration. He turned back and began blasting down the hallway again, walking forwards, preventing Kolea from getting out of cover or returning fire.

  Head down behind the bulkhead rim as shots hammered against it, Kolea yelled into his microbead.

  ‘Holding level. This is Major Kolea in the holding level. I need security here now! Security and medicae. Urgent!’

  Kolea couldn’t hear if there was any reply. The fury of the gunfire coming at him, combined with the shrill of the alarms, filled the boxy hallway.

  Sirkle advanced, firing as he came.

  The interdiction flotilla didn’t wait to be fired upon. There was no mistaking the intent or allegiance of the howling daemon ships that streaked in towards them from the disintegrated stretch of realspace fabric.

  The Aggressor Libertus lit off first, rolling out of its line position ahead of the massive Sepiterna. Advancing at a crawl, it delivered a series of punch-fire barrages with its main batteries, which surrounded its steepled, armoured flanks with a corona of fire.

  Benedicamus Domino also commenced firing. It began to come about out of its rendezvous heading with the Armaduke and retrained on the attacking group. Its turrets began to spark and crackle as it directed its fire forwards across the gulf. It was attempting to screen and support the decelerating Armaduke, which was all but aft-end on to the attack.

  The other escorts, holding their places in the gunline relative to the capital ship, began their own rates of fire.

  The range was considerable, but the Archenemy ships were closing rapidly, and they seemed to drink in the Imperial barrage. Firefly darts of light crackled around the ruddy glow of their shields. Even the formidable main weapon fire of the Aggressor Libertus flashed off their shields like rain.

  They continued to howl out their names, throaty and malevolent, scorching out the Imperial vox systems, drowning their audio traffic, distorting their auspex returns.

  Ominator! Ominator!

  Gorehead! Gorehead!

  Necrostar Antiversal!

  Behind them all, the doom-voice of the daemon monster.

  Tormaggedon Monstrum Rex!

  ‘Have you located Cybon’s launch?’ Gaunt demanded.

  ‘I’m trying to,’ replied Spika. With the vox system compromised by the daemon ships’ relentless aural assault, the bridge crew of the Armaduke had switched to voice relay, shouting commands, instruction and data from position to position. Gaunt realised that the shipmaster was doing a thousand tasks simultaneously. Spika was watching every single bridge position, and the main board of his station, plus the strategium’s tactical plot. He was listening to every shouted relay, every nuance of dialogue, and chipping in with orders that sent crewmen rushing to obey. He had both hands on his master systems, operating dials and power-modulation levers without looking. He was feeling the soul and motive energy of the Armaduke as it spoke to him through the deck, the seat, the metal controls.

  ‘Coming about,’ he said.

  ‘You’re turning to face them?’ asked Gaunt.

  Not even looking at Gaunt, Spika manipulated another control and reeled off a string of corrective heading numbers. Below, the steersmen hurried to obey his command.

  ‘How do you usually fight, colonel-commissar?’ Spika asked. ‘With your back to the enemy?’

  Gaunt didn’t reply.

&nbs
p; ‘I can mark more of my batteries as status effective if I present head-on or broadside,’ said Spika.

  ‘Side-on makes us a bigger target,’ said Gaunt.

  ‘Only while we’re turning.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we run in alongside the Sepiterna?’ Gaunt asked. In truth, he had very little idea of the fight’s comparative geography. The three-dimensional strategium displays were moving too swiftly, and the type of detail they were processing was far removed from the tactical flows he was used to reading. They made the essentially flat plane of a battlefield seem elegant and pure.

  But he knew enough to know that the Armaduke was turning into the line of fire, and that, along with the Benedicamus Domino, they were placing themselves ahead of the flotilla’s main strength and directly in the path of the howling daemon ships.

  ‘I’m not going to leave the Domino alone to face this,’ said Spika, working his controls. ‘Two frigates, side by side. They can harm a lot of hull between them.’

  ‘But–’

  Spika looked at him for the first time. It was just a brief glance, but Gaunt was struck by the singleness of purpose he saw in Spika’s eyes, the fortitude and, in a tiny measure, the anticipation.

  Shipmaster Spika had been too long away from fights worthy of his talents. He wasn’t going to run or back down.

  Gaunt raised one hand in a gesture of submission.

  ‘You don’t come down to the surface and tell me how to deploy my men,’ he admitted.

  ‘I certainly do not,’ replied Spika. ‘I imagine I would be tremendously bad at it.’

  ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ asked Gaunt.

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ asked Spika. ‘Now keep quiet or I’ll have you ejected from my bridge.’

  He stood up.

  ‘Enhance the strength of the port voids as we turn. Artificers, power to the primary batteries. Bombardiers, load up. Detection, find us a target we can burn. And find the thrice-damned lord militant so we can screen him!’

  Gaunt had seen Spika’s spirit before. It was an old warrior’s lust to achieve one last hoorah, to prove he was still worthy of the uniform. It was a desire that often manifested in suicidal decisions.

  Given what was bearing down on them, a man prepared to take potentially suicidal risks might be their only hope.

  The Armaduke began to turn. Once fully executed, the manoeuvre would put it in a modest gunline formation with the eager Benedicamus Domino, which had slowed to a dogmatic attitude of confrontation and was blitzing with all weapons. Huge volleys of main battery fire were ripping past and above both ships from the main gunline thousands of kilometres astern.

  The Sepiterna had begun to spit huge, ship-killing bolts from its primary batteries.

  The onrushing daemon ships wore the fusillade. Their shields wobbled like wet glass as they soaked up the punishment. They were half a million kilometres out, closing at a sharp angle to the system plane, as if they intended to perform a slashing strike down and across the Imperial gunline.

  Then the black shape proclaiming itself Necrostar Antiversal began to glow brightly from within, a red glare that started in its heart and spread through its tracery of red veins, straining with light and heat like a charred volcanic cone about to split and blow open under pressure from within.

  A vast froth of red corposant enveloped the daemon ship’s prow, chained lightning that crackled and coiled like live snakes. With a sudden flash, the lightning boiled over and lanced a jagged red bolt out ahead of the ship, a whiplash discharge of immense aetheric energies.

  The bolt wasn’t even a direct platform-to-target strike like a main plasma or laser weapon. The lash of it flew out sideways, wild and frenzied, untamed and unaimed. It coiled madly out into void space and only then whipped back towards a target, like a lightning strike jumping as it hunted for something to earth itself against.

  The jagged, blinding discharge struck the Benedicamus Domino like the vengeance of a displeased god, blowing out its forward shields and exploding its upper decks. There was no sound. A snap shockwave of heat and debris ripped out from the impact, followed by a slow, widening ball of white light that was too hard to look at. Bridge viewers dimmed automatically. When the glare died, the Domino was revealed on fire and listing, sections of its upper structure and hull architecture annihilated or left glowing gold along burned edges.

  Spika maximised the magnification to get a look at the frigate. The pict image jumped on the bridge screens, fuzzed, and then steadied and resolved.

  ‘By all that’s sacred…’ Gaunt breathed.

  Screaming its name again, like a child driven to raving madness by a fever, the Necrostar Antiversal bled more corposant and unleashed another shot.

  The second bolt of jagged red fury hit the Armaduke as it turned.

  Gol Kolea realised he might have actually passed out for a few seconds. He hoped it had only been seconds. Something had made the ship shake like a toy rattle, and he’d bounced off the hallway wall and deck.

  It was dark as he came round, apart from the emergency lighting and the flashing hazards. The air was full of smoke, and it wasn’t just the heat discharge from the fire fight. There was dark fuel smoke in the ship’s air circulation system, like blood in water.

  They’d been hurt.

  He snapped awake and got up, clutching his lasrifle. There was no sign of the assassin. He could hear bewildered and rapid vox chatter coming out of every duct and wall-link as the crew tried to re-establish control of the pole-axed ship. He felt as if he were standing at a slight angle to the horizontal, as though the deck were tilted. That suggested the inertial systems had been damaged. Kolea didn’t know much about warpships, but he was sure it wasn’t a terribly good sign.

  The main lights blinked back on as power was restored. It made the smoke seem thicker. Kolea hurried down towards the cell hatch, keeping his aim up and wary. There was still no sign of the killer.

  ‘Varl,’ he yelled ‘Varl, open up!’

  He knelt down. Mktally looked like he was asleep, but he was stone dead, a warknife transfixing his heart. Cant was a mess of blood, so much blood it was hard to look at. What appeared to be a noose of wire had almost decapitated him.

  ‘Oh, Throne,’ Kolea whispered.

  Cant was alive.

  ‘Varl! Open the door!’ Kolea yelled, clamping his left hand around Cant’s throat to try to staunch the blood-flow. Cant was unconscious, but he was trembling with pain.

  ‘I’m not falling for that again,’ Varl yelled from behind the hatch.

  ‘Open the fething hatch, Varl. It’s Gol!’

  ‘Right, and last time it was Cant! I’m not an idiot. Suicide Kings, Gol. I’ve got a job to do! If you are Gol, you’ll know I’m right. If you’re not, go feth yourself!’

  Kolea heard movement. He kept his left hand clenched around Cant’s neck, but hoisted his lasrifle in his right.

  ‘Identify!’ he yelled.

  Figures appeared in the approach hallway, moving towards him through the smoke wash. It was Bonin, with Cardass, Nomis and Brostin. Their guns were up.

  ‘Kolea?’ Bonin called.

  ‘I need a medicae!’

  Coughing, Zweil pushed past the B Company men and lowered himself beside Kolea.

  ‘Oh, the poor boy’s gone,’ Zweil said.

  ‘Are you a gakking medicae?’ Kolea snapped.

  ‘Not this week, major.’

  ‘Then could we get a real medicae before we resort to last rites?’ Kolea snarled.

  ‘Just let me give the poor lad some consolation in case,’ mumbled Zweil, fishing out a pocket icon of the Saint and a silver aquila on a chain.

  ‘Let me through,’ said Dorden. He looked down at Cant.

  ‘Gol, I’ve got it,’ Dorden said as he bent down and put his hand over Kolea’s. ‘On three, let me take the compression. Two, three.’

  Kolea took his hand away. It was wet with blood.

  ‘Will he live?’ he asked.

 
; ‘He shouldn’t even be down here,’ said Zweil. The old priest glanced at Dorden. ‘Oh, you mean the boy. I get you.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Dorden. He began working at Cant’s throat, pulling back the neckline of the jacket. ‘Where’s my pack?’

  Bonin ushered Kolding through. The albino was lugging a medicae supply kit.

  ‘I need wadding and some sterile gauze,’ said Dorden.

  Kolding nodded, opening the kit and taking items out.

  ‘Sacred feth,’ Dorden murmured as he worked. ‘Look at this.’

  Kolding peered in.

  ‘What?’ asked Kolea.

  ‘The badge,’ said Kolding quietly. ‘The Suicide Kings badge. This man had it fixed to his collar. It hooked under the garrotte. If it hadn’t got in the way, the wire would have gone clean through to the spine.’

  Kolea looked up at Bonin.

  ‘Small mercies,’ said Bonin.

  ‘It’s still a damn mess,’ said Dorden. ‘We need to release the wire, but it’s pinching the carotids. If they’re torn, taking the wire away will make him bleed out.’

  ‘We can’t patch him without taking the wire off,’ said Kolding quietly.

  ‘Damned either way,’ said Dorden. ‘I’m not even sure how we’re going to patch the wound anyway.’

  ‘Tape and carbon bond,’ said Kolding.

  Dorden looked at him.

  ‘Not a procedure I’ve heard of, Doctor Kolding.’

  ‘Not a medicae one,’ admitted Kolding, ‘but in the mortician’s trade it works well. I suggest it because once we take off that wire we’ve got to move quickly.’

  ‘You’re not serious?’ asked Kolea.

  ‘It’s the best suggestion I’ve heard,’ said Dorden, ‘and I’m senior medicae here.’

  Kolea got up and looked at Bonin and the other troopers.

  ‘The killer’s got to be close by. He’s hurt. He fled when everything went dark.’

  Bonin nodded. He had already started to search the hallway.

  ‘I’ve got a blood trail. Let’s go.’

  ‘Why did everything go dark?’ asked Kolea. ‘Did we hit something?’