Atlas Infernal

by Rob Sanders

  As the Malescaythe settled into a division between two of the larger rings, several system ships attempted to follow. Undoubtedly their captains wanted to impress their ordo commanders back at Nemesis Tessera with their skill, faith and fervour. Two monitors, an adamanticlad and a heavily armed freighter followed the rogue trader on its insane route through the debris field, the chasm of open darkness between the canyon-like walls of ice, dust and spinning boulders a tight squeeze for the vessels.

  With satisfaction, Czevak noted that the rest of the fleet, including the Justicarius and the personal corvettes, re-commissioned frigates and exotic xenos vessels, were deemed too valuable to risk and had hauled off – as the High Inquisitor had hoped. Only the sub-light system ships had commanders desperate or foolish enough to follow.

  As an optimistic beam of pure energy lanced up beside the Malescaythe, forcing the vessel into a slight roll that could be felt on the bridge, Czevak pointed out a small moonlet, not four hundred metres across, making its slow, orbital way amongst the icy haze and floating rubble. Torres nodded, immediately picking up on the High Inquisitor’s intent.

  ‘Ready starboard battery,’ she said, flicking the vox-switch on the arm of her throne. ‘Target the moonlet, fire as you bear.’

  The Trader serfs down below on the gun deck could have little idea why their captain had ordered them to fire their laser cannons at a by-passing moonlet but they obeyed, hitting the pock-marked miniature moon again and again. Smashing it out of its tidy orbit, it was blown into a hundred rocketing fragments. These collided with other fragments, shards and debris that threw the ring wall into chaos and collapse. The adamanticlad was simply unlucky. A sheet of metal spun at the passing vessel and sheared through part of its port engine block, cutting the chase dead for the system ship. The lead monitor, who had been responsible for the optimistic lance blast at the rogue trader moments before, attempted an incredible manoeuvre, evading a still glowing, smashed quarter of the moonlet.

  A succession of minor impacts hammered the defence monitor’s heavily armoured prow and slowed the vessel down. The armed freighter was sprightlier than the monitor and found following in the vessel’s wake an easier task. The second monitor following behind was not so fortunate. A head-on collision between the ship and the rolling moonlet fragment became inevitable and at the last moment the monitor attempted to fire its mighty lance. The colossal explosion resulted in nothing more than blasting the vessel and part-planetoid to dust and causing further disarray to the silent discipline of the ring system beyond.

  A second lance shot from the remaining system monitor was swift and seemed to proceed from anger and frustration rather than disciplined gunnery. That didn’t stop the high-powered energy stream cutting straight through the Malescaythe’s port flank. Klute was thrown towards the throne this time and Czevak into the screeching Guidetti’s cage.

  ‘Report damage! Enginarium – where’s my bloody warp drive?’ Torres called in anger and frustration. Enginseer Autolycus’s indecipherable gabble filled the bridge once more but the captain ignored it.

  ‘Port stabiliser fin hit,’ the deck officer reeled off. ‘Port ether vanes hit. Long range scan array hit. Comms hit. Port sub-light engine column hit. Losing power and speed.’

  The captain’s face began to fall only to re-tense with immediate fury.

  ‘All stop. Turn to present port battery.’

  ‘One hit from that monitor will cleave us in half,’ Klute warned, hoping to bring Torres, ever the Imperial Navy realist, back to her senses.

  Again Czevak turned to the furious captain, ‘Weapon to weapon we are outclassed. You know this. Do what they won’t be able to do.’ He turned and leant over the pulpit rail at a runescreen below. Czevak pointed at the display. ‘The rings are not continuous. Some segments are dense and others sparse. We’re coming up upon a gap. Take us through to the next division. Make your enemies do the same.’

  Torres looked down at the deck officer for assurance of the gap’s existence but she didn’t need to. The Malescaythe’s inertial velocity and starboard engine column were bringing them upon it and the captain could see the division for herself on the main lancet screen.

  ‘Belay that order,’ the captain said, settling back down into her throne. ‘Make preparations for a sharp, full-speed starboard turn.’ Then to Czevak, ‘You’d better pray to the God-Emperor that you’re right about this.’

  ‘If I’m wrong, little good prayers will do us,’ Czevak replied dourly.

  ‘The enemy vessel is charged and ready to fire,’ the lieutenant informed the bridge.

  ‘Helm, begin your turn,’ Torres commanded.

  As the brutal swerve began to take its toll the rogue trader vessel started to moan and creak. The crew felt the centrifugal pull in their bones and the Malescaythe felt it in hers. A beam of energy passed harmlessly past their blasted bow and into the haze, leaving the defence monitor and armed freighter moments to decide if they would follow.

  The commander of the heavily armed freighter had clearly had enough of the Malescaythe’s games and carried on, beginning their ascent, aiming for the top of the ring debris field. The defence monitor, although broader and less manoeuvrable, bulldozed its way through the narrow, ragged gap. Czevak reasoned that the vessel’s commander was intent on making a further shot from the prow at the rogue trader in a place where the Malescaythe could ill afford to manoeuvre. He didn’t get his chance, however. The monitor misjudged the turn and allowed its aft section to trail around and be caved in by several spinning bergs of ice on the edge of the gap. Propelled further around, the defence monitor fell into the maelstrom of the ring itself. It was pulverised by rubble and debris before exploding spectacularly within the haze. The vessel’s remains were then shredded by smaller fragments hitting the decimated ship with the speed of bolt-rounds.

  For Torres it became not an issue of manoeuvrability – her orders, instinctive course corrections and the answer of the vessel’s helm were almost perfect. It was speed. With the Malescaythe down to one sub-light engine it became increasingly difficult to keep the vessel’s starboard side out of the gap wall of savage debris and colossal bergs. Moments from the ring division on the other side the Malescaythe began to shudder. The thunder of an avalanche of light collisions hammered through the plating of the starboard hull as the rogue trader’s slacking speed took it into the debris field. When the rogue trader did explode out into the open space of the further ring division she looked as though she had been roasted on one side. The starboard hull was both clean-shaven of antennae, vanes and architectural flourishes and scarred like a glacier ravaged valley floor.

  Torres visibly sagged as the adrenaline coursing through her body crashed with the passing of their immediate danger.

  ‘All ahead full. Lieutenant, begin the ascent and take us out of the ring system,’ Torres ordered. Then to the throne vox, ‘Enginseer – I repeat, where’s my bloody warp drive?’

  As the Malescaythe rose out of the rotating ice and debris field, Klute clasped the rogue trader captain by the shoulder.

  ‘Excellent work, Reinette,’ Klute told her with a smile. ‘Honestly – first class.’

  Czevak wasn’t with them. He was back to leaning over the pulpit rail, attempting to get a better look at the runescreen upon which he’d discovered the ring gap. Meanwhile bridge personnel went about the business of congratulating one another and celebrating their narrow escape. Only the servitors kept their jaded, lidless eyes on their logic engines and instrumentation.

  ‘Enemy vessel, dead ahead!’ Czevak announced, drawing officers and serfs back to their banks and consoles.

  As the Malescaythe surfaced and erupted from the debris field it found itself looking at the armoured, cannon-bristling side of an Inquisitorial Black Ship.

  ‘They’re firing!’ Klute called. There was nobody on the bridge that needed instrumentation to confirm that; the Inquisition vessel’s side crashed and flashed with high-powered cannons and a broad
side energy storm flew at the rogue trader.

  ‘Master Autolycus, do we have shields?’ Torres screamed at the vox. ‘Autolycus!’

  The deck officer ran along the wall banks, searching for confirmation.

  ‘We have shields,’ he called, almost tripping over himself.

  ‘All power to the prow screens,’ Torres bawled.

  The order could barely have been given and executed when the first las-blasts hit. The area of space before the Malescaythe became a blanket of white as the forward void shields soaked up cannon bolt after cannon bolt, launched from the side of the Inquisitorial Black Ship. A continuous shock wave rippled through the rogue trader from bow to stern.

  ‘Shields failing,’ an ensign announced from the other side of the transept. The captain would ordinarily have shot the officer down in scorn but it had been a miracle that the shield generator had stood up to such a merciless pounding in the first place. Like the Malescaythe itself, it would not survive a second.

  Behind them, the rear view lancet pict screen showed an explosion. At first, Klute thought they had been hit by another enemy vessel but in fact the reverse was true. The armed freighter had been similarly ascending from the original ring division only to be caught in the broadside fire not absorbed by the oncoming Malescaythe. Unprepared for such a mauling, the ordo system ship was vaporised, its fiery hulk falling away to join the rock, ice and metal in the ring debris field.

  ‘I know that ship,’ Czevak mumbled.

  ‘What?’ Klute said.

  ‘That ship,’ Czevak replied, keeping eye contact with the Inquisitorial Black Ship, ‘is called the Divine Thunder.’

  Klute’s mind raced to catch up. ‘Valentin Malchankov?’

  While Klute wrestled with what was happening, Czevak grasped the pulpit rail with both hands. He turned gravely towards Reinette Torres.

  ‘Maintain your course,’ he told her. His tone was unreadable. It was difficult to distinguish between advice and an order.

  ‘Czevak, the shields won’t take another beating. We have to begin evasive manoeuvres before their battery charges,’ Klute said. All the while the Malescaythe flew at the Divine Thunder’s row of gaping cannon.

  ‘Inquisitor?’ Torres said and could have been talking to either of them.

  ‘Reinette begin…’

  ‘Maintain your course, captain,’ Czevak told her. This time she was sure it was an order. She’d never been issued conflicting orders by the Inquisition before and it was proving to be a most uncomfortable situation, especially under enemy gunfire. She trusted Klute; but High Inquisitor Czevak was the ranking ordo authority on board the ship. Besides, Czevak invariably had some brilliant plan or tactic up his sleeve.

  Klute turned his attention from Torres to Czevak.

  ‘It’s not Malchankov, its Ahriman,’ Czevak said with feeling.

  ‘Captain, their battery is charging for a second broadside,’ the lieutenant informed her.

  Torres got up out of her throne, ‘Are you sure about this, my lord?’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ Klute insisted.

  ‘Captain, maintain speed and heading,’ Czevak said, his eyes burning into the lancet screen. ‘I want you to ram that vessel.’

  ‘It’s not Ahriman,’ Klute shouted. ‘Malchankov’s probably been working out of Nemesis Tessera for years.

  ‘And you can be sure about that can you?’

  ‘No,’ Klute admitted, ‘but I can feel it in my bones.’

  ‘Like you felt it that day above Cadia?’ Czevak shot back, his eyes now searing into Klute.

  Klute had no answer to that. The accusation had a physical effect on the inquisitor. His head bowed slightly; his shoulder sagged.

  ‘Do as you will,’ he said and turned to leave.

  ‘Captain!’ the one-eyed deck officer erupted. ‘The enginarium confirms full power reinstated to the warp drive.

  Torres looked at Klute and then Czevak. They both had their backs to her and each other.

  ‘Lieutenant, make a short range jump, no more than five light years in distance,’ the captain ordered. The jump was risky. She had little care for what havoc the immaterial leap might cause the enemy ship but it was possible that they could take half the gas giant’s ring system with them through the warp.

  ‘Torres!’ Czevak turned on her.

  ‘Destination, captain?’

  ‘Any bloody where but here.’

  ‘Torres, no!’ Czevak roared, then turned to address the lieutenant in the transept, ‘Belay that!’

  The Divine Thunder fired.

  The Malescaythe jumped.

  ‘You fools!’ Czevak yelled across the bridge. The rogue trader gave a violent shudder and the warp engines gave a screech of mechanical agony. And then there was silence. Something was wrong.

  Not satisfied with a view from the command pulpit, Czevak skipped down the steps into the transept. Here he took a closer look at the cogitators, runebanks and screens. The instrumentation was frozen, however, each bank recording the same data from a few seconds before. Czevak called for the deck officer but when he didn’t reply Czevak slowed to stillness himself. A chill ran down his spine like a droplet of icewater. Lifting his eyes from the frozen runescreens, Czevak stared around the transept. The bridge crew were still. Threading his way through the ensigns, logi and servitors, all struck still like statues, Czevak stared around amazed. Looking up at the lancet screens – both those belonging to the bridge as those devoted to pict feeds from the vessel’s stern – all Czevak could make out was a deep darkness, the darkest he’d ever seen. Gerontia and its magnificent ring system were gone. The Divine Thunder wasn’t there. Czevak couldn’t even make out the twinkle of stars. It was a blanket state of nothingness.

  Running back up to the command pulpit, Czevak found Torres out of her throne; mouth open as in mid-order. Klute had been frozen still as he made his way to the elevator but had turned back with the grim, hurt expression that Czevak had put there with his harsh and thoughtless words. In the silence and motionless calm of the bridge, away from the desperation and dread of battle, Czevak got a glimpse of the damage his selfishness could wreak – etched into the weary face of his only friend.

  Detaching interfaces from frozen bridge servitors, Czevak screwed the mind-impulse links into the back of his skull. Nothing. The ship was completely silent. Dead. Without instrumentation there was little Czevak could do to ascertain what had happened to the Malescaythe or why he was seemingly unaffected by it. The High Inquisitor’s mind free-fell through a sky of possibilities; perhaps the damage to the warp drive had been more grievous than Enginseer Autolycus had predicted. Or maybe the Divine Thunder’s gunfire had found the rogue trader before or as she made her immaterial jump, causing further damage to the drive. The jump itself could have placed demands on the drive that, in the middle of repairs, it simply could not handle – the jump would then have caused further critical damage mid-flight. Perhaps, Czevak wondered, this was some strange effect of making an ill-advised in-system jump too close to the gravitational pull of a planetary body. Perhaps Torres had been correct about even a short range jump this close to the unnatural currents and warped immaterial forces of the Eye of Terror.

  Regardless of its cause, it seemed fair for Czevak to assume that either upon entry to the warp or whilst attempting to exit warp space, the Malescaythe had become trapped in a moment in time – somewhere between reality and the psychic realm. Why Czevak himself should be exempt from the effects of this strange, dimensional flux, he could not know. He knew he’d seen stranger things in the Eye of Terror, where of all places in the universe the rules of physics, reality and sanity did not seem to apply. Perhaps it was his long term exposure to the age-regressing effects of the alien webway or maybe the High Inquisitor was simply dreaming the whole episode.

  Then something swept away his fantasies and rationalisations with stomach-wrenching horror. Something moved. There were figures down in the transept, slipping between the frozen dioram
a of the crew and cybernetics. Czevak swiftly detached himself and ran forward to the pulpit rail. They were there and then they weren’t; phasing in and out of the reality – or unreality – of the bridge. The freakish circus were here for him. The Harlequinade, come to take him back to the Black Library of Chaos, to live out eternity as a prisoner. Or worse, Czevak’s panic-addled brain came to realise, perhaps they were here to kill him. To take back the Atlas Infernal and end his existence so that he could trouble the universe no more with the dangerous secrets stored in his head.

  The High Inquisitor no longer felt in control of his feelings. Gone were the cold, analytical contemplations of moments before. His heart was thundering in his chest and the bridge reeked of fear. He felt like a caged animal, moments from execution and his mind was flushed with the simultaneous and damning desire to escape and the futility of expectation.

  The spindly leader stalked forward, his gargoylesque helmet leering at Czevak with hungry intention and the desire to swallow his soul. From the helmet sprouted the furious, pink plume and in each hand the monstrous alien carried a lithe plasma pistol. Nearby, the half-mask appeared from behind a frozen lexomat, moving like a carnivalesque scorpion, the riveblades and tubular fist spike adorning each appendage flicked out like claws. Framed in the absent-darkness of one of the lancet screens, the Death Jester bored into Czevak with the empty sockets of its ghoulish skull mask. It clutched the obscene length of its shrieker cannon to the ribs of its carapace, holding the terrified High Inquisitor in its sights.

  Czevak turned and ran. It was all his usually inventive mind could think to do. Dashing past the suspended Torres, Guidetti and Klute, Czevak streamed shape and colour at the elevator doors, the Domino field leaving a trail of after-images behind him. The doors were locked shut, however, as they had been when the Malescaythe made its interrupted jump to warp space. No manipulation of electrics or hydraulics would open them, Czevak realised with sickening dread. They were frozen in time. Slamming his clutched fist at the metal he spun around, his back fearfully flush to the doors. His eyes were everywhere, searching for the predatory forms of his eldar assassins. His mind clawed for possibilities but was flooded with irrational terror. He searched for the source of the fear, the hurricane epicentre of psycho-emotional manipulation in the chamber and found him in the corner of the bridge. The mirror-masked Shadowseer sat balanced on the pulpit rail, one booted foot casually supporting him while the other dangled to the deck, the rune-smoking witchblade draped across the eldritch being’s shoulders with fingers resting on both hilt and blade tip. The Shadowseer dropped down and began its advance upon the helpless Czevak. Its Harlequin coat – very much like the one Czevak was wearing himself – rippled behind it with natural drama.