“Then who?”
“Perhaps… the Adeptus Terra, so it gets back to Earth… or even the Ordos… yes, the portents will have them running… maybe even the Ordo Malleus…” Argel frowned.
“Who?” Then the primary power failed completely.
Seventy thousand kilometres from Deep Orbit Monitoring Station Trinary Ninety-One, asteroids streamed from a growing, burning hole in the fabric of real space. The hole grew as a truly immense form forced its way out. The asteroids streaked outwards, a few impacting on the disintegrating orbital station, most of them spinning out and looping back towards the emerging object in complex irregular orbits. More and more of them shot out until the breach was surrounded by a dizzying, shifting mass of asteroids, sorcerous fire licking across their surfaces.
Space puckered and tore as the rest of the object’s mass forced its way out and the orbital station was finally destroyed in the Shockwave that rippled through reality. Astropaths and other psykers for light years around felt it happen. The star of the Borosis system was turned an unhealthy black-streaked crimson by the unholy force spewing from the breach.
And there, outside the furthermost orbit of Borosis’s reach, was a new planet where no planet had ever been before.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Many claim they wish to destroy their enemies. If this were true, most would be compelled to destroy themselves.”
—Abbess Helena the Virtuous, “Discourses on the Faith”
The Tribunicia was cold as a tomb. Outside it had the brutal lines of a warship but inside everything was dressed in marble and granite, worn smooth by generations of crewmen sworn to serve the Imperium. Many of them had been born on the ship and almost all of them would die on it, so the ship’s architecture served as a constant reminder that this ship would literally be their tomb.
Justicar Alaric slipped out of half-sleep. He was sitting cross-legged on the freezing granite floor in the middle of his small cell. A Space Marine didn’t have to sleep normally and could retain some awareness while in half-sleep and something had jolted him back into full wakefulness.
The engine pitch had changed. The Tribunicia was coming out of the warp.
Alaric stood up, murmuring the Seventeenth Prayer of Alertness as he turned to his power armour, stacked neatly in the corner of the cell along with his storm bolter and Nemesis halberd. For a moment he just looked at the wargear, ornate gunmetal armour plates with his personal heraldry over one shoulder. He had added a single bright yellow star to his heraldry to commemorate the soul of Briseis Ligeia, the bravest person Alaric had ever met, who had saved him and countless others even after a daemon had driven her mad. She was dead now, executed by the same Ordo Malleus that Alaric served.
Alaric knew he would die in that armour. Most people would never touch it if they knew that one fact as surely as he did.
Alaric intoned the Rites of Preparedness as he picked up the left greave of the power armour and began to put it on.
The bridge of the Tribunicia was a magnificent cathedral deep inside the heavily armoured prow, with a massive vaulted ceiling and soaring columns of white marble. Scores of crewmen and tech-adepts crowded the pews, working communications consoles or sensorium displays. The command throne of Rear Admiral Horstgeld took up the front pew, just before the grand altar itself, a creation of marble and gold crowned with a golden image of the Emperor as Warmonger. Horstgeld was a religious man and so the ornate pulpit that looked out over the whole bridge was always reserved for the use of the ship’s Confessor, who would take to it in times of crisis and bellow devotional texts to steel the souls of the bridge crew.
Horstgeld rose as Justicar Alaric entered. Horstgeld had served with Space Marines before, even if he had probably never quite got used to their presence. The man who sat on the command pew alongside him, however, had no such reservations. He was Inquisitor Nyxos of the Ordo Malleus, a daemonhunter and the man who had requisitioned Horstgeld’s ship into the service of the Inquisition.
“Justicar,” grinned Horstgeld. “Well met!” Horstgeld strode down the bridge’s nave and shook Alaric’s hand. He was a huge and bearded man whose heavily brocaded uniform looked like it had been altered significantly to fit him. “I must admit, I am accustomed to being the biggest man on my bridge. It will take some getting used to you.”
“Rear admiral. I’ve read of your victory over the Kill-frenzy at the Battle of Subiaco Diablo. This is a tough ship with a tough captain, I hear.”
“Pshaw, there are plenty of brave men at the Eye of Terror. I was just fortunate enough to have the charge.”
“You would rather be there now?”
Horstgeld shrugged. “In all honesty, justicar, yes I would. That’s where all the Navy wants to be fighting, we’re the only ones holding them back. But I don’t run my ship according to what I happen to want and when the Inquisition comes calling one does well to answer.”
“Well said,” added Inquisitor Nyxos. He was an ancient, sepulchral man who wore long dark robes over a spindly exoskeleton that kept his withered body standing. Alaric knew that in spite of his immensely frail appearance, he was an exceptionally tough man thanks to the scores of internal augmentations and redundant organs the Inquisition had supplied him with. An encounter with the rogue Inquisitor Valinov would have killed almost anyone, but Nyxos had survived.
It had been Nyxos who had given the order to execute Ligeia. Alaric didn’t resent the man for it, it was what had to be done. And now Nyxos was the Ordo Malleus inquisitor with whom Alaric worked most closely. Such were the mysterious ways of the Emperor.
“The reports from this area of space were alarming indeed,” continued Nyxos. “While we must send everything we can to the Eye of Terror, the consequences will be grave if we take our eyes off the rest of the Imperium. It will do no good to throw the Despoiler back into the warp if the rest of the Emperor’s work is undone behind our backs.”
“True, inquisitor, true,” said Horstgeld. “But do we even know what we are dealing with here? Or if there is anything here at all? All the records the ship has on the Borosis system suggest it is a veritable backwater.” Nyxos looked at the rear admiral. His large, filmy grey eyes seemed to look straight through him. “Call it educated guesswork, captain.”
The engines changed pitch again and the whole ship shuddered. Warning klaxons sounded briefly somewhere on the bridge before someone shut them off.
“Entering real space!” came a call from one of the officers in engineering. “Warp engines offline!”
“Geller field disengaging!” came another cry. The noise on the bridge rose as well-practiced commands were relayed and acknowledged. Down in the bowels of the Tribunicia a couple of thousand crewmen would all be labouring to ensure a safe end to the ship’s warp jump—engine-gangs redirecting the plasma reactors to power the main engines, weapon crews manning the ready posts for their broadside guns and torpedo tubes, the ship’s small complement of tech-adepts calculating the huge numbers involved in making the ship plunge from one reality into another.
The altar in front of Nyxos, Horstgeld and Alaric rose from the floor and Alaric saw that the sculptures of the altar actually crowned the ship’s massive main pict-screen. The screen rose up from the floor until it dominated the whole bridge. It was flooded with grainy static until one of the communications officers powered up the ship’s main sensorium and the image swam into view.
“Hmmm,” said Nyxos. “It’s bad, then.”
The pict-screen showed a view of the Borosis system from deep orbit, where the Tribunicia had emerged into real space. The star Borosis itself was a swollen, livid red, streaked with angry black sunspots, its corona bleeding off into a halo of sickly red light. Borosis should have been a healthy mid-cycle star, similar in type to Terra’s own sun.
“Close in on the planets,” said Nyxos. Horstgeld quickly relayed the order to his comms crew and the pict-screen cycled through closer views of the planets that orbited the sickened star.
There was a long gap to Borosis Cerulean, the most inhabited world, home to seven major colonies with a total population of about one and a half billion. It was cold and dark. The planet’s cities were advanced enough to provide shelter from the eternal winter that had now fallen over the world, but their power and supplies would not last forever. Perhaps the world could be evacuated, perhaps not. That wasn’t the Ordo Malleus’s problem.
The lifeless world of Borosis Minor, almost completely covered in ice, was an inhospitable as ever, as was the gas giant Borosis Quintus where a few thousand workers were probably deciding how they were going to survive on their gas mining platforms when the solar collectors failed. The change in the star had barely affected the outermost planet, Borosis Ultima, a ball of frozen ammonia almost too small to qualify as a planet at all.
The viewscreen cycled to show the last object in the system.
“I cannot claim to be an expert,” said Alaric carefully, “But I gather that is the reason we are here.”
There was no seventh planet in the Borosis system. There never had been. But there it was.
It was deep charcoal grey streaked with black and studded with thousands of tiny lights. Around the world were thousands upon thousands of asteroids, tiny speckles of light from this distance, like a swarm of insects protecting the planet.
All Grey Knights were psychic to a degree. They had to be for their minds to be so effectively shielded against corruption. Alaric’s psychic powers were all internalised, focused around the wards that kept his mind safe—but he was still psychically sensitive and he could still feel the wrongness pulsating from the new world. It was like the echo of a scream, a smell of old death, a slick and unhealthy feeling against his skin.
“We’ve had astropaths going mad for light years around,” said Nyxos matter-of-factly. “That would be the reason.”
“Guilliman’s rump,” swore Horstgeld. “I’ve been in space all my life and I’ve seen some things, but never a whole world where there shouldn’t be.”
“Try not to get too overwhelmed, captain,” said Nyxos. “I need a full data sermon on that planet, everything you’ve got. I’ll send Interrogator Hawkespur to coordinate. Atmosphere, lifesigns, dimensions, everything the sensoria can find. And what is the arrival time of the rest of the fleet?”
“Within the day,” replied Horstgeld. “If you could call it a fleet.”
“We’ll need it. That’s an inhabited world and if they’ve got ships of their own we might have to go through them to get down there. And we are going down there.”
“Of course, inquisitor.” Horstgeld turned to his crew and started barking orders, sending communications officers and messenger ratings scurrying.
“What do you think?” Nyxos asked Alaric quietly, as the bridge went about its noisy, barely controlled business.
“Me? I think they were right to send us.”
“I agree. What would you do?”
“I would defer to the wisdom of the Inquisition.”
“Come now, Alaric. You know why I had you accompany me, out of all the Grey Knights.”
“Because they are all at the Eye of Terror.”
“Wrong. You showed an unusual level of independence and creative leadership on the Trail of Saint Evisser. The Chapter made you relinquish your acting rank of brother-captain but they all know your qualities. Space Marines are all very well but even Grey Knights are just soldiers. Ligeia thought you could be something more and I am coming round to her point of view. So, think like one of us, just this once. What should we do?”
“Land an army,” said Alaric, without hesitation. “Take all the Guard we have and send them down. Right away.”
“Risky.”
“Nothing is riskier than indecision, inquisitor.”
“Quite. And as it happens I agree with you. Is your squad ready?”
“Always.” Alaric’s squad was under-strength following the costly defeat of the daemon Ghargatuloth on the Trail of Saint Evisser, but it still represented a concentration of firepower and fighting prowess that no Guard being transported by the fleet could hope to match.
“Good. I want you at the data sermon. You’ll probably end up the leader on the ground, one way or another.”
“Understood. I shall pray with my men, inquisitor.”
Alaric left the bridge, knowing instinctively that they would find more on the seventh planet than any amount of prayer could really prepare them for.
“The equatorial circumference of Borosis Septiam is just under thirty-eight thousand kilometres,” began Interrogator Hawkespur, indicating the pict-grab projected onto the screen behind her. “Rather less than Earth standard. The mass, however, is the same, suggesting super-dense mineral deposits. As you can see, the thick atmosphere and surrounding asteroid field prevents us from probing the surface but we do suspect the planet is without polar caps, perhaps due to deliberate depletion. The atmosphere shows strong indicators of being breathable, but with severe levels of pollutants.”
The ship’s auditorium was normally used for tactical sermons, or public dissections of interesting alien specimens and unusual mutations by the sick bay crew. Now it had been set up for Hawkespur’s data sermon and the command crew, along with Nyxos and Alaric’s squad, sat in rows around the central stage where Hawkespur was speaking. The pict-grab showed the ugly, weeping sore of a world, provisionally named Borosis Septiam, that had so completely mystified everyone on the bridge. Hawkespur’s voice was clipped and professional—she was Naval Academy material from the finest aristocratic stock, a brilliant young woman employed by Nyxos who felt certain she would one day take up the mantle of inquisitor herself.
“The asteroids are in unusually low and stable orbits,” continued Hawkespur. “It is unlikely that anything larger than a single light cruiser could navigate through them and multiple smaller ships would be out of the question. This precludes a large-scale landing.”
Alaric heard Horstgeld swear quietly. Thousands of Imperial Guard were being transported with the fleet—the initial plan to send them down to the planet had failed before it had even begun.
Hawkespur ignored the captain. “The temperature readings are particularly anomalous. A planet at such a distant orbit from the sun, especially given the current state of the star Borosis, should be extremely cold. Borosis Septiam’s climate suggests temperate conditions over almost the entire surface. This can result only from a massive thermal radiation source or climate control on a planetary scale. The indications we have of extremely high power outputs suggest the latter. Finally, there appear to be a great many orbital installations, apparently man-made. The interference from the asteroids means we cannot get a good look at them but they represent a major presence suitable for an orbital dockyard.”
“What are your conclusions, Hawkespur?” asked Nyxos, sitting in the front row of the auditorium.
“Highly industrialised, with a large and longstanding population. All the data we have has been sent to the Adeptus Mechanicus sector librarium to see if any planet matches it.”
“Any idea how it got there?”
“None.”
“Ship’s astropaths have done no better,” said Horstgeld. “They say it’s like a blind spot.”
Nyxos looked round to where Alaric and his Marines were sitting. “Justicar? Any thoughts?”
Alaric thought for a moment. The Imperium had lost planets through administrative error before—all it took was for one scholar to forget to mark down a world’s tithes and that world could eventually disappear off the st
ellar maps, especially in an out of the way system like Borosis. But this world was suspicious enough to warrant Inquisitorial scrutiny, if only to be sure. There was something so wrong with the world that it would be a lapse of duty to leave it be.
“Since no major landing is possible, we should send a small well-equipped mission down to the surface. An investigative team.”
Nyxos smiled. “Excellent. Hawkespur? How’s your trigger finger?”
“Commendation Crimson in pistol marksmanship, sir. Third round winner at the Hydraphur nationals.”
“Then you’ll take the team down. I’ll co-ordinate from the Tribunicia. Alaric, your squad will support on the ground along with as many Imperial Guard special forces as we can get onto an armed insertion craft.”
“Commendation Crimson?” said Horstgeld approvingly. “Good Throne, girl, is there anything you can’t do?”
“I haven’t found anything yet, sir,” replied Hawkespur, completely without humour.
The Imperial Navy was the only thing holding back the Thirteenth Black Crusade and all the Imperial authorities knew it. Abaddon the Despoiler had shattered the attempt to pen his Chaos-worshipping forces up in the warp storm known as the Eye of Terror and it was only Imperial command of space that had kept his ground forces from taking planet after planet all the way into the Segmentum Solar. Every Imperial warship was on notice that it could be ordered into the Eye at any moment and thousands upon thousands of them had been, from mighty Emperor-class battleships to squadrons of escorts and wings of fighter craft.
Rear Admiral Horstgeld, for all his experience and commendations, couldn’t tear a handful of good ships away from the Eye for the mission to Borosis, even with the authority of Inquisitor Nyxos and the Ordo Malleus. His own ship, the veteran cruiser Tribunicia, was the only ship in the small investigative fleet that he considered ready for a battle. The escort squadron Ptolemy, under Captain Vanu, was brand new from the orbital docks of Hydraphur and consisted of three Python-class ships of a completely untested configuration.
[Grey Knights 02] - Dark Adeptus Page 4