[Battlefleet Gothic 02] - Shadow Point

by Gordon Rennie - (ebook by Undead)

  “Ordinarily? Never anything less than between fifty and sixty at any one time,” answered the inquisitor. “But an inquisitor has the entire resources of the Imperium to draw on, so, when necessary, when I decide that the situation demands it, I have often had good call to second many more than that into my temporary service.”

  He looked again at Semper and Pardain. “Many, many more than that,” he repeated again, significantly.

  Both navy officers could not fail to pick up his meaning. Pardain cleared his throat noisily then drained the last of the contents of his glass. Even before he set it back down on the table, the ensign attendant was already starting to refill it.

  “Three capital vessel ships of the line, not to mention two Sword-class frigates and all the attack craft squadrons aboard this very splendid vessel. You do yourself too little credit, inquisitor. I’ve known entire planets taken with a smaller ‘temporarily seconded staff’ than the one you have under your command here.” Pardain paused, wiping his lips on a napkin, and gestured towards Semper. “The good commodore here thought he was merely transporting an honoured guest, but now he learns that in fact he was welcoming aboard his new commander in chief when you transferred over to the Macharius at Elysium!”

  Despite the apparent humour in Pardain’s voice, Semper was uncomfortably aware of the rear admiral’s barely-concealed anger at the idea that the naval vessels and their crews might be under Horst’s direct command if the inquisitor deemed such action necessary. Aware of the long-standing historical enmity between the Inquisition and the most senior levels of Battlefleet Gothic Command, Semper felt that some subtle diplomacy was called for.

  “As you say, inquisitor, and like you and your comrades in the Inquisition, we all serve in different ways, but we still all serve the same purpose. My ship, my crew and my own loyalty to the Emperor are all at your disposal, should you so wish them.”

  Horst nodded in polite gratitude in reply to Semper’s words. Pardain followed up with a more measured reply of his own.

  “As is my loyalty. I meant no disrespect, of course, inquisitor, but I’m sure our good Commodore Semper and his officers would be more assured of the role you perhaps intend for them to play if they actually knew more of the purpose of this mission?”

  Horst smiled. “I thought the Lord Admiral’s orders were clear on the matter. Admiral Pardain. We will take up rendezvous station in far orbit around the world of Stabia and await further orders.”

  Yes, but who is it that we’re supposed to be having this rendezvous with, thought Semper to himself? He wondered again about the possibility of Horst possessing some kind of psychic ability as the inquisitor looked over at him and smiled.

  “Patience, commodore. I promise you’ll be fully briefed when we reach the rendezvous point.”

  A junior helm officer entered the dining room and nervously hurried over to Semper, whispering something urgently into his captain’s ear. Semper laid down his cutlery, carefully wiped his lips with a napkin, and rose to his feet. The other conversation round the table died away. The senior officers of the Macharius looked expectantly towards their captain.

  “I look forward to finally learning more about this mission, inquisitor, especially since it appears it will be occurring even earlier than expected.” He looked towards his officers, who rose as one from the table. For the men of the Macharius, at least, the meal was now over and duty called once more.

  “Gentlemen, our Ship’s Navigator has surpassed himself once more. Our voyage is ahead of schedule and we’ll shortly be arriving at our destination. Duty positions, gentlemen. We exit the warp in less than one hour.”

  In a series of closely synchronised energy eruptions, the Macharius and its sister vessels burst through the barrier of the immaterium and re-entered the real universe on the edge of the Stabia system.

  The Macharius led the way, flanked on either side by its two companions, Drachenfels and Graf Orlok. Two Sword-class frigates, the Volpone and the Mosca, followed in the larger vessels’ warp wakes, immediately separating away from the three capital ships to form their own squadron formation.

  Surveyor and augur scans from all five vessels probed into the unfamiliar reaches of the system, searching for any source of danger to the Imperial vessels. Quickly, and one by one, the captains of each vessel received the collected information from their bridge crews.

  “The system is clear, captain,” reported Ulanti. “No signs of any potential hostiles or any hazards to navigation, other than those already charted.”

  Semper nodded, and studied the data-slate summary of the surveyor scan findings. “So what do you think, Mister Ulanti?”

  “I think, captain, that if I were planning to lay an ambush for someone then this would be the perfect spot to do so. You could hide a Ramilies star-fort or two in the electronic backwash from that damned pulsar and any recently-arriving vessel here would be none the wiser from the scrambled surveyor readings it would get back from the thing. Emperor only knows how many ships you could cloak in amongst those asteroid belts.”

  Semper smiled. “Agreed, Mister Ulanti. By the time you get close enough in-system to see what might be hiding in the petticoats of that pulsar star, then whatever’s waiting for you in those rock fields would have had plenty of opportunity to jump out and bite you on the arse.”

  Now Ulanti smiled. “So what are your orders, captain?”

  “We’re Battlefleet Gothic, Mister Ulanti,” came the expected and welcome reply. “The best damn fleet in the best damn segmentum in the whole damn galaxy, and we don’t turn tail at the suggestion of the possibility of trouble.”

  “Indeed not, captain,” said Ulanti, taking his role in the traditional and well-loved old navy man’s joke. “After all, that’s what the Holy Emperor, in His divine wisdom, created the battlefleets of the Segmentums Solar, Tempestus and Ultima for.”

  “Indeed so, Mister Ulanti. Signal the battle-squadron—all vessels to continue in-system on their current course and speed. Defence shields raised and fully charged. Long-range surveyor scans at maximum powers. Any scan anomalies to be reported at once and fully catalogued and investigated.”

  Semper caught the querying glance from his second-in-command.

  “We’re Battlefleet Gothic, Hito, and that means we don’t run away from a scrap, but it also means that we don’t go running blind straight into the jaws of trouble like a bunch of over-zealous and battle-eager Space Marines.”

  “A sound policy, commodore, although perhaps it’s best for you that there aren’t any brethren of the Adeptus Astartes around here to hear you express such sentiments.”

  Semper turned, seeing Horst entering the command deck and coming towards him. He was accompanied by his Arbites right-hand man, Stavka, who was now wearing a flak vest and a holstered bolt pistol harness. With them also was the inquisitor’s other main lieutenant. Semper had only briefly glimpsed the man when he had first come aboard the Macharius and he had not attended the earlier meal, even though an invitation had been extended to him. Semper tried hard not to stare too much in curiosity at the glowing circuit patterns of electro-glyph markings on the man’s face and shaven skull, nor at the unfamiliar nature of the man’s cyber-adaptations. Emperor knows, the tech-priest servants of the Adeptus Mechanicus were common enough aboard an Imperial warship, especially on the command deck, but Semper had never before encountered one such as this.

  Officer of the Watch Broton Styre and his armsmen guards bristled in righteous indignation at the sight of the sidearm openly worn by the ex-Arbites man. It was bad enough that non-naval personnel had entered the bridge without first seeking the captain’s permission, but the fact that at least one of them—and Semper suspected that Horst rarely if ever went about unarmed—was blatantly carrying a firearm, the most severe kind of breach of command deck security imaginable to the navy men. Semper quelled their indignation with a subtle glance. As with so many other things this was yet another example of the fact that the members of
the Inquisition seemed to operate under entirely different rules than those which applied to the more lowly servants of the Imperium of Mankind.

  “Inquisitor Horst, welcome to the bridge of His Divine Majesty’s Ship, the Lord Solar Macharius,” noted Semper, dryly.

  If the inquisitor detected any irony in Semper’s welcome, he gave no indication. Instead, he indicated the figure of his tech-priest advisor. “Commodore, with your permission, I would like my associate Monomachus to check your surveyor readings and possibly make some adjustments to their frequency range.”

  Navy captains had been known to throw civilians not just off their bridge but right off their ship for such apparent impertinence, but Semper knew that, sadly, such an option did not apply in this case. He acquiesced to the inquisitor’s request with a simple gesture.

  Monomachus went to work at the bridge’s surveyor section. Anxious and irritated surveyor officers hovered around him, maintaining a suspicious watch on everything he was doing.

  “We’ve conducted a full surveyor sweep of the system,” Semper told Horst, careful to keep any irritation out of his voice. “If there’s anything out there other than us, we’ve not found it yet.”

  Horst’s reply was smooth and diplomatic. “I don’t doubt the skills of your surveyor crewmen or the quality of your ship’s technical systems, commodore, but sometimes it helps to know exactly what you’re looking for.”

  Monomachus was approaching them now, handing a data-slate to Semper. “Commodore Semper, with your permission, I would suggest a temporary adjustment of your vessel’s surveyor systems’ frequency range to the following new settings.”

  Semper looked down at the technical data scrolling across the slate’s viewing plate, and frowned. “These frequencies are extremely low-level, and the prime fluctuation vector you’re suggesting in these equations is extremely unorthodox. The Despoiler’s vessels aren’t too dissimilar to our own, with a broadly similar power output signature. Anything two or more ratio levels above these figures is enough to detect anything, friend and foe alike, within a radius of at least three AUs.”

  “Indulge us, commodore,” smiled Horst.

  Semper nodded curtly to his surveyor officers, who immediately set about making the necessary adjustments to their instruments.

  “The surveyor devices will take some moments to match the recalibrated settings we have introduced into them,” warned Monomachus. “In the meantime, it would be best if…”

  He broke off, looking meaningfully towards Horst.

  “Tell your crew to be prepared, Semper,” said Horst, taking up the warning. “Tell them that, no matter what appears on their auspex screens, they are to take no offensive action of any kind. You can consider this a command backed by the full authority of the Emperor’s Inquisition.”

  “And what exactly are you expecting to find out here, inquisitor?” asked Semper, refusing to be intimidated on the bridge of his own vessel by anyone, even a senior inquisitor.

  Horst did not immediately answer. A few moments later, one of the junior gunnery officers did it for him.

  “Throne of Earth! There, eighteen thousand kilometres to our starboard rear. Vandire’s teeth, they’re practically staring right up our arse!”

  A loud babble of exclamations and oaths from tech-adepts and surveyor officers quickly confirmed the sightings. Semper looked at the data-images suddenly appearing on the augur screens all round the command deck. He kept his composure, but it took all his will not to react in the way which his every command instinct compelled him to.

  Eldar vessels. Three of them, all easily within striking distance of the Macharius and its sister ships.

  The newly recalibrated surveyor readings clearly showed the signatures of three alien ships—one capital-class ship and two escorts—keeping perfectly synchronised formation as they shadowed the Imperial ships’ course into the Stabia system.

  “Remember my command, commodore, and pass it on to your fellow captains. No hostile action is to be taken against the alien ships unless they attack first, or unless I command it. Maintain your present course in-system, and have your communications officers closely monitor these comm-net frequencies. They may have to make some changes to their equipment. If that is the case, then Monomachus will be glad to show them how.”

  Semper looked at the comm-channel frequency information on the data-slate handed to him by Horst. As with the surveyor settings, the information displayed was strange and unfamiliar, the frequencies at the far end of the spectrum from those used by the Imperium. He handed the data-slate to a communications officer, and looked speculatively at Horst.

  “I assume then that we have just made a successful rendezvous with the parties you were expecting to meet here, inquisitor?”

  Horst smiled. “I understand your concern, commodore, but, if we achieve everything I hope, then what we do today may change the course of the war and save untold numbers of worlds.”

  Erwin Ramas sifted through the streams of new data flooding into him through the mind-link with the Drachenfels. He had received the almost incomprehensible orders relayed from the inquisitor aboard the Macharius, and, like the other vessels in the Imperial formation, his crew had recalibrated their surveyor systems in the same way as the Macharius had. Now the four eldar ships stood revealed to the Drachenfels’s electronic senses, and Semper studied their detestably alien and unfamiliar shapes with a detached and coldly cruel interest.

  It had been more than a hundred and fifty years since he had last encountered the eldar, but here they were again, cruising through space well within range of his vessel’s lance turrets like a peace-time flotilla parading before some local planetary dignitary at a ceremonial review of the fleet.

  Ramas didn’t know what dangerous foolishness the Lord Admiral and that damnable inquisitor on the Macharius had had in mind when they had come up with the idea for this mission the Drachenfels and its two sister ships had been despatched on, but he knew one important thing.

  The eldar were not to be trusted. He’d follow orders and hold his fire, but, at the first sign of treachery from those xenos scum, he’d let fly with everything the Drachenfels had.

  He reached out through the mind link into the ship’s matriculators, retrieving his precious firing solution programs. He activated them, running them in a practice simulation through the Drachenfels’s logic engines, his mind flickering back and forth between the simulation and the real-time information relayed to him by the ship’s surveyor and auspex systems. He compared the two data streams, and then merged them, using the surveyor-gathered information on the nearby eldar ships as the new model for the firing simulation.

  Ramas’s equations had been good, he knew, and the logic engine-created phantasm images were fine enough for what they were, but it was always better to have a real target and hard data to work with.

  The logic engines waged the imaginary battle amongst themselves. Non-existent lance beams cut through an imaginary void to find and strike illusionary targets. Phantom explosions erupted in an intangible battle-zone which existed only in the ship’s dreaming machine-mind.

  Ramas studied the results, and made the necessary corrections to his firing solutions and targeting equations. He ran the simulation again. This time, he was far more satisfied with the outcome.

  He smiled his lipless smile. He would follow orders, but he would watch the enemy ships and be ready for the first sign of treachery. When that happened, he promised himself, they would find him more than ready and prepared to settle old scores.

  Somewhere else within the Stabia system, hidden vessels watched and waited. They hid in shadow, cloaked from the senses of the other vessels, even those of the eldar ships. They monitored the transmission bursts that passed between the two groups of ships. The occupants of these hidden watcher ships could not decode these transmissions, but their meaning was clear enough.

  Slowly, the two formations split up, spreading out to take up preset positions throughout the smal
l solar system. The remaining two ships, one eldar, one human, remained in high orbit above the dead world, each of them balefully studying the other as their comrade ships warily stalked each other in wide, elliptical picket guard orbits, their scanner senses trained more on each other than in search of any unknown threat which might be waiting out there for them.

  Aboard the hidden watcher ships, power and propulsion systems were slowly nursed into life, and the abominable, twisted things they carried in their prison-holds were roused and brutally herded into their waiting positions aboard barb-prowed boarding torpedoes and assault craft.

  Swiftly, silently, the dark eldar ships slid out of their place of concealment, like an assassin’s poisoned dagger being stealthily drawn from its hidden sheath.

  The hunt had begun.

  For the first time in millennia, the burning god walked upon the earth of a world. Wherever it walked, destruction followed in its wake.

  The world itself was unimportant. Once it may have belonged to the children of Asuryan, but they had abandoned it long ago, retreating back to the comparative safety of their craftworlds.

  Now other, lesser, races had chanced upon the world, not caring or knowing anything of its previous inhabitants, and, in their ignorance and conceit, these new would-be conquerors had built their settlements upon the ruins left behind by their vanquished betters.

  The burning god was angry. So much of the webway had been lost since it had last walked its secret, mystic byways. Passages were blocked off or too unstable to be safely traversed. Whole sections had disappeared or been destroyed. Several times now, it had been forced to make detours, seeking alternative paths towards its destination via several remote and long-unused nodal points.

  This world was one such nodal point, containing several hidden but still-active entrances to the webway. The burning god had exited the webway several hundred kilometres to the south, amongst the ruins of what had once, long-ago, been an Exodite colony. Little remained of the place’s delicate wraithbone towers and shimmering crystalline fortifications, though. Instead, the burning god had found the place overrun by the planet’s new inhabitants, the universal pestilence known as orks. Foolishly, the greenskin animals had built their own foul settlement upon the ruins of the Exodite colony. Emerging through the hidden webway portal which, unknown to the orks had been active and amongst them all along, the burning god had immediately set about showing them the error of their ways.