Atlas Infernal

by Rob Sanders

  As Father approached the warp-seer the girl turned and noticed the High Inquisitor’s entrance. She gave him a blank look of empty ambivalence, neither blame nor forgiveness. The prognostic had known the fear of uncertainty and seemed the younger and more fragile for it. Hessian burned into him with the oily, black eyes of his daemon-self and gave Czevak a predatory face of handsome hatred.

  Armourless, the Relictors Space Marine too seemed frail and vulnerable, despite his height and broad shoulders being buried under a mountain of infirmary blankets. The dressed stump of his forearm was trussed up against his slashed and stitched ebony chest. As he saw the High Inquisitor with his burns and torn, soot-stained clothing he nodded grim respect and mouthed something to Raimus Klute, whose knuckles were white on the pulpit rail.

  The relief and recognition in Klute’s eyes was powerful but brief.

  ‘Is it done?’

  ‘For now.’

  ‘Welcome back,’ Klute said with genuine feeling. ‘We’re in trouble.’

  ‘So it seems,’ Czevak agreed. ‘Aft pict screen,’ the High Inquisitor ordered. One of the bridge’s lancet windows swam with brief static before displaying a view from the rear of the rogue trader. ‘No…’ was the only expression Czevak could find for what he saw.

  The rogue trader blasted on, pursued through the debris field by a growing pack of rapidly closing vessels. Warp exit halos erupted across the semi-reality of the Scorpento Maestrale vomiting forth a continuous stream of reinforcements, adding to the torpedo and warhead hurling chase.

  ‘Malchankov found us,’ Klute announced, putting into words what everyone else was thinking. Everyone except Czevak.

  ‘Which you said couldn’t happen,’ Torres accused between course corrections.

  ‘What I actually said was that it was highly unlikely,’ Czevak corrected, ‘but this is academic – it’s not Malchankov.’

  ‘Is there anyone who doesn’t want to blow us out of void?’ Torres asked, her very real fear hiding behind a sardonic wit.

  ‘In the Eye of Terror?’ the High Inquisitor said. ‘No, we’re pretty much on our own out here.’

  ‘Then who is it?’ Klute demanded.

  ‘Pict magnification,’ Czevak said. The image flickered and then returned at full magnification on the forward vessel in the chase.

  ‘Adeptus Astartes strike cruiser Stella Incognita, Excommunicate Traitoris. Gladius-class frigate Rubrician, Excommunicate Traitoris. Armed transport Chimera, wanted for mutiny and seventeen counts of piracy. Adeptus Astartes battle-barge Impossible Fortress, Excommunicate Traitoris–’

  ‘We get it, lieutenant,’ Torres stopped him.

  The magnification blurred before sharpening on the strike cruiser’s insignia, a ragged circle created by a serpent eating its own tail – a symbol of eternity and more specifically the Thousand Sons Traitor Marine Legion.

  ‘It’s not Malchankov,’ Czevak repeated, echoing the reverse of his earlier conversation with Klute on the bridge. ‘It’s Ahriman.’

  ‘And friends,’ Klute added taking in the swarm of cultist craft the Thousand Sons had brought with them.

  ‘He doesn’t want to lose me again,’ Czevak said to himself, feasting his eyes on the horrific, overwhelming pursuit.

  ‘You think?’ Klute said.

  ‘I’m open to ideas,’ Torres reminded the inquisitors as smaller rubble fragments from the destroyed planetoid hit, scraping and bouncing along the Malescaythe’s hull.

  ‘How is this possible?’ Klute asked, taking in the growing flotilla of Chaos vessels. Czevak nodded, turning the question – which he regarded as more than rhetorical – over in his mind. It hurt not to know how the daemon sorcerer had trapped him again. He thought of his meeting with Ahriman in the open cast mine. It was true that the Impossible Fortress needn’t have been in orbit around Melmoth’s World, nor Ahriman actually on the Nurglite planet – although Czevak reasoned to psychically wear Korban Xarchos’s body as he had would require some proximity. ‘I left you on the other side of the Eye,’ Czevak muttered to himself. ‘How can you be here? How can you be here?’ The distance seemed too great to cover in the warp, especially through one of the most perverse and stormy regions in the rift. ‘Why here? How could you know I’d be here?’ the High Inquisitor asked himself.

  Czevak recalled Melmoth’s World, in all its dour and toxic detail. In his mind’s eye he stared up through the thinning smog and into the night sky, fancying he spotted in his memory a large ship in low orbit. The Impossible Fortress? Then he remembered something else. Looking past the shape – that in the vagueness of his memory might have been a cloud of filthy, factory emission, a Space Marine battle-barge or a super heavy mineral transport – he saw the phantom moon of Auboron, there but not then. A world stuck fifty years in the past at the whim of the Eye’s perverse forces.

  ‘No, no, no…’ Czevak heard himself say before spitting on the deck and shouting, ‘Devious bastard.’ The High Inquisitor tried to imagine how the Thousand Sons had found him in the Scorpento Maestrale. He re-lived the polluted presence of the sorcerer. How he had invaded Czevak’s mind once again on the surface of Melmoth’s World, with the Rubric Marines holding him still. In his feverish search for the Atlas Infernal, Ahriman had set upon Czevak’s suspicious memory of Father, but Czevak hypothesised, what if the sorcerer had seen more? Travelled back further in his memories and only in the reflection of defeat had seen Czevak give the Atlas Infernal to Klute; had seen the Scorpento Maestrale and the deep blue star outside of the bridge lancet windows. An astrotelepathic message sent to Auboron – perhaps only the simplest of warnings and locations – forwarded to a confused Ahzek Ahriman, fifty years in his past. Would the daemon sorcerer heed its own garbled counsel? He might, with nothing left to show for years of intricate planning and failed entrapment than a vanquished daemon and an Omega-Minus level soul-scalding, high up above Melmoth’s World. Czevak grunted. The Eye of Terror was certainly strange enough to support such a hypothesis.

  ‘Czevak?’ Klute said as the High Inquisitor thought on the Scorpento Maestrale, on the deep blue star and on his earlier consultation with the Atlas Infernal on the bridge.

  ‘Czevak?’

  ‘Turn us around,’ the High Inquisitor suddenly commanded. It was time to stop blundering into the traps of others and start setting some of his own.

  ‘Are you insane?’ Torres said.

  ‘I said turn us around,’ Czevak insisted, trotting down the pulpit steps and scanning runebanks and screens for the Malescaythe’s current degree of declination and celestial ascension.

  ‘Those cruisers will get a clear shot at our flank,’ Torres said angrily, her naval training and common sense in evidence.

  ‘Have any of the vessels hit us with their batteries or ordnance?’ Czevak put to her, running back up the stairs. Torres stared back at him in silent defiance.

  ‘No,’ Klute supplied the answer for the captain.

  ‘That is no accident,’ Czevak said. ‘They will not blow this ship to oblivion because there is something on the Malescaythe that they want.’

  ‘You, I suppose,’ Torres cut back.

  ‘No,’ Czevak said smugly and held out his hand towards Klute. Reaching inside his robes, Klute extracted the casket-covers of the Atlas Infernal and passed it to his master. ‘This. Ahzek Ahriman wants this vessel, he wants the crew alive and he wants this precious artefact in one piece. Mark my words,’ he told the captain. ‘He will not destroy this vessel, but if he catches and boards us he will slaughter everyone on board, slowly.’

  Once again, captain and inquisitor had carried out their contest of common sense in front of the crew on the command deck and Reinette Torres had lost.

  ‘Lieutenant, make your turn,’ the rogue trader captain ordered. Then to Czevak, ‘Where are we headed?’

  ‘The blue star,’ the High Inquisitor said.

  ‘You told me explicitly not to approach that star,’ the captain snarled.

  ‘Yes I
did,’ Czevak said, ‘but that was then and this is now. Make your course, a stellar approach: equatorial east, axial declination −23°26’.’

  The bridge crew complied and the Malescaythe rolled into a savage turn, blazing for the blue star at sub-light speed. As the rogue trader presented its length to the primed bombardment cannons, torpedo shafts and lances of their pursuers, the entire command deck held its breath. As Czevak predicted, the ordnance stopped flying at the vessel and the pack of Chaos vessels threw themselves into a similar banking manoeuvre. With only one sub-light engine column functioning, Czevak could not hope to outrun his hunters. The inquisitor hoped he wouldn’t have to.

  Czevak watched Torres shiver. Klute’s breath started to cloud and the inside of the lancet windows began to mist and rime.

  ‘Tell me about the enginarium,’ Czevak said sharply. ‘While I’ve been gone, has the enginseer carried out his repairs?’

  ‘We have a single sub-light engine column, no shields and damage to the warp drive,’ Torres notified him miserably. The Malescaythe was a wreck and Czevak had barely the heart to admit to her what he planned to do next. ‘We have power for the engine column, life support, gravity and the Geller field.’

  ‘Captain, what I’m about to ask you will likely shock and appal you,’ Czevak prepared her, ‘yet I implore you to believe me that what I am about to tell you is the only way to save your ship.’

  ‘Go ahead, inquisitor,’ Torres said with resignation. ‘Shock and appal me.’

  Czevak nodded. ‘I want you to get on the vox with your enginseer and instruct him to run the sublight engines to critical.’

  A stunned silence descended on the bridge. Torres laughed.

  ‘You want me to do what?’

  ‘You heard me, captain. And you do not have much time to make this decision. Trust me.’

  The air about them was gelid and a light frost had started to form on the captain’s epaulettes as well as on the bridge’s runebanks and decking.

  ‘How about you tell me what you’re already doing to my ship,’ the captain seethed with misted breath.

  ‘I’ll be brief,’ the High Inquisitor said. ‘This is the Eye of Terror – the laws of reality, let alone the laws of physics often don’t apply here. The star that we are cruising towards is known as the Kryonova. It burns cold, captain. As a star, it saps heat from the void around it rather than radiating it like a regular star. The heat generated by a critical engine meltdown might be enough to save the Malescaythe but if you don’t initiate that and I mean now, the hull of the ship will begin to frost-shatter and disintegrate around us.’

  A moment passed.

  Torres looked from Czevak to Klute and Klute to Saul Torqhuil. The Relictor Techmarine nodded gravely.

  The deck officer held a vox-horn on a spiralled cable above his head and up out of the transept. Leaning over the freezing pulpit rail, Torres snatched the mouthpiece.

  ‘Enginseer Autolycus, this is the captain. I am about to give you an order, I want you to follow it. I don’t want to hear what the Omnissiah might think about it or about the Malescaythe’s machine spirit. She’s my ship, I know her better than any on board. This is not some warp fever or the product of an insane mind,’ Torres said, staring at Czevak. ‘We know what we’re doing. Follow my order to the letter. I want you to intentionally send the starboard sub-light engine column into critical meltdown and evacuate the enginarium. Do that now, if you please. Captain, out.’

  As Torres handed the vox horn back to her lieutenant the bridge could hear Enginseer Autolycus’s apoplectic response.

  ‘Very good, captain,’ Czevak said. ‘That was well–’

  ‘Don’t,’ Torres growled.

  Precious moments went by. The metal decking and instrumentation bled deep, benumbing cold. The lancet windows were completely caked in white and the bridge crew had begun to double over with crippling cold.

  ‘Come on, come on, come on…’ the High Inquisitor said.

  ‘Czevak,’ Klute called, retreating into the folds of his robes. ‘Perhaps we should evacuate the ship. Get everyone out through the Lost Fornical?’

  Czevak smiled at his friend’s compassion.

  ‘There’s still time,’ Czevak told him. ‘Besides, I don’t think that Captain Torres is quite ready to give up on her ship yet.’

  As they waited, the Kryonova leached heat from rogue trader’s hull, refrigerating the vessel’s interior. Instrumentation began to fizzle and die. Klute looked up as the vessel superstructure started to contract and creak. The Malescaythe moaned like some creature of the deep. The excruciating torment of metal echoed through the ship as architecture contorted and the armoured hull began to fracture.

  Torres motioned for the vox-horn again, which the lieutenant passed her with numb-jointed difficulty. Torres rasped, barely able to catch her razorblade breath in the plummeting temperature of the bridge.

  ‘Enginseer…’ she managed but at that moment the command deck klaxons and sirens screeched to life. The bridge became bathed in red and steam started pouring from wall and floor grilles. All over the vessel, emergency systems started venting heat from the starboard sub-light engine column and the enginarium. Unbeknownst to the rest of the ship, the plasma reactors had been quietly building to super-critical meltdown. Catastrophic damage and the thermoplasmic chain reaction that was sweeping through the vessel was combating the deep cold of the Kryonova’s awesome radiance.

  As thawing moisture began to rain down from the frosted lancet screens and runebanks blinked back into life, chatter and movement began to resume on the bridge. Through the command deck windows the Kryonova blazed deep blue with danger.

  ‘Look!’ Czevak yelled as he drew the bridge’s attention to the aft pict screen. The Stella Incognita’s blunt prow filled the screen; the swifter vessel had run them down and was almost upon the rogue trader. The sorcerer-captain of the vessel intended to draw alongside and board the Malescaythe. Czevak could almost imagine the gleaming rows of silent, unquestioning Rubric Marines, waiting to storm the rogue trader.

  As the Stella Incognita’s bombardment cannon

  shattered and fell away it became apparent to the Thousand Sons Space Marines that the boarding action wasn’t going to happen. The strike cruiser had over-reached itself and was stone-frozen from bow to tail. The bridge windows cracked in the deep cold of the Kryonova’s warped influence and portholes all over the ship imploded. Sorcerous lieutenants could not think straight or move their fingers to work life-saving dark enchantments and Chapter serfs and cultists were frozen pitifully to the deck. The Rubric Marines waited as the strike cruiser’s armour plating split and sheered away, until piece by frozen piece the Stella Incognita and its crew complement of mindless Space Marines shattered like cheap glass and fell away.

  Too late, the Rubrician observed the strike cruiser’s fate and began to turn away. The frigate only managed to swing its starboard flank to the Kryonova and the cold star flayed the side of the Gladius-class frigate, fracturing its silent laser battery and stripping away the vessel’s presented hull and armour plating. The Chimera was panicking also. Blinded by dead instrumentation and frosted screens the armoured transport’s prow buried itself into the Rubrician’s port side, driving both vessels deeper into the frozen deadzone surrounding the sun. Everyone on the Malescaythe’s bridge watched the transport ram the frigate past them before, like two celestial ornaments freshly drawn from a flask of liquid nitrogen, the two ships shattered around one another, turning into a shard-swarm of disintegrating scrap.

  Many of the cultist vessels and marauders – largely converted mercantile craft and freighters – had even less defence against the Kryonova’s stellar freeze. The flock of Tzeentchian ships raced headlong into the star’s raging cryosphere, intent on catching the slow moving Malescaythe. The supercooling solar wind smashed them apart like a shower of frozen teardrops. Beyond the handful of more manoeuvrable rearguard freighters that had managed to haul off, only the Impossible F
ortress remained. She came at the rogue trader, her colossal hammerhead foresection sweeping across the Malescaythe’s wake.

  ‘She’s going to try to ram!’ Torres called through the warming air. ‘Evasive portside.’ Unable to launch her Swiftdeath fighters and Dreadclaw boarding pods into the void, the battle-barge’s only remaining option was to ram the crippled rogue trader off its suicidal course and out of the Kryonova’s malign influence.

  ‘I have nothing,’ her deck officer reported miserably after a flurry of activity in the transept discovered very little in the way of functioning runebanks and instrumentation.

  ‘Just hold your nerve and your course,’ Czevak ordered. They watched as the monumental bulk of the Thousand Sons battle-barge thundered for them. Her foresection and thorax were caked with ice and her ancient armour was beginning to split and crack.

  Czevak watched the behemoth suffer in its desperation to reach them. Every once-broken bone in his body yearned for the diabolic, sorcerous genius that was Ahzek Ahriman to end himself at the heart of a raging Kryonova. Then he thought of Joaqhuine Desdemondra – the Living Saint, who still suffered for him at the fell-sorcerer’s pleasure. A suffering Czevak vowed he would end as soon as he could for the immortal.

  As fractures threaded through the snow-capped pyramid that grew monstrously out of the battle-barge’s armoured abdomen, the mighty vessel’s hammerhead foresection drifted past the Malescaythe’s bulbous rear. Finally, she was turning. An antenna shaft of vanes and aerials even scraped the rogue trader’s hull but shattered against its comparatively warmer surface. The bridge watched the withering giant continue on its failed path, away from the fierce retro-radiation of the warped star. Even Ahzek Ahriman and his accursed sorcerers would have struggled to combat the simple hostility of the Kryonova, the deep cold stabbing into their minds, incantations out of reach and hex-casting fingers stiff and arthritic.