[Rogue Trader 02] - Star of Damocles

by Andy Hoare - (ebook by Undead)

  “Sorry old friend.” He threw a thunderous punch at Raldi’s jaw, sending the man crashing face down to the deck in a heap. Lucian bent over the crumpled form, his hand on the helmsman’s shoulder. Without warning, Raldi’s body tensed, and he turned his head to look over his shoulder, almost eye to eye with Lucian. For an instant it was not Raldi behind those eyes, but as soon as the impression came, it fled once more. Lucian’s officer shook his head and spat a great gobbet of blood upon the deck, coughing violently as he struggled to his feet.

  “What?” Raldi gasped through his bloodied mouth, “What happened, my lord?”

  “Just the empyrean having its way,” Lucian replied, a cold shiver passing through him. “Just the warp calling us home.” He shook his head again, knowing that he would not entirely rid himself of the feeling until they were safely out of the Sea of Souls, back in the material universe. The warp was home to all manner of evils, and few ever crossed it without feeling its effects. Whether nightmares, hallucinations or sudden mood changes, every spacefarer was afflicted in some manner.

  Lucian looked to the chronometer once more, seeing that its hands had turned quite some way. The Oceanid was due to break warp in scant minutes. Satisfied that Raldi was back at his station, Lucian crossed to his command throne and sat back in the familiar, worn leather seat. He consulted the data-slates arrayed to either side, his expert eye taking in a thousand tiny details in an instant. His vessel performed as she should, despite her age and the rough treatment to which generations of the Arcadius had subjected her. All was as ready as it would ever be for the translation from the warp to realspace.

  He lifted a polished brass cover mounted on the command throne’s seat, an action only he could perform, for the cover was fitted with a genelock that responded only to his own touch. His finger hovered over the large stud beneath the cover plate, and after a moment he depressed it. The bridge lights flickered and died, to be replaced an instant later with the crimson light used when the vessel was at general quarters.

  With that simple action, Lucian had signalled to his Navigator, Adept Baru, who lay in his warp trance in his navigation blister high atop the Oceanid’s superstructure, that all was in readiness. Lucian hated the feeling of another having control over his vessel, but had no choice. Only a Navigator could take a vessel into the warp, pilot its capricious currents, and bring it home to safety at the other end. No mere human could hope to emulate such a feat, and to even try was to invite disaster and damnation as the ravenous beasts dwelling within the Sea of Souls tore the ship and its crew apart, body and soul. Lucian forced the notion from his mind. This voyage was affecting him more than any other had in quite some time, perhaps as much as his first run through the Wheel of Fire in fact, or his last journey to the borders of the Maelstrom.

  A final glance at the chronometer told Lucian that exit was imminent. He took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. He’d done this a thousand times before, so why was he so…

  Lucian’s mind suddenly expanded, his perceptions stretched atom thin as the Oceanid reared up through the shallows between the warp and the material universe. He felt his vessel caught upon the crashing surf of impossible energies, surging through from the depths to burst into realspace. In less time than it takes to form a single thought, his mind’s eye was presented with a swirling cascade of impossible images and impossible concepts: birth and death on a cosmic scale, and a million, billion futures rent from the fabric of time and space and re-knit into a new path. From one strand of fate were sown five, which were plaited back again into a single strand, the sum greater than the parts. A cosmic fate, orchestrated by ancient powers fleeing their inevitable…

  Then the wound in the skein of reality snapped shut behind the Oceanid as she burst from the warp. Lucian’s pulse thundered in his ears, and he forced his breathing back to a normal rhythm. He looked around the bridge, seeing that the crew had evidently been affected in a similar manner, except Raldi, it seemed, who stood at his station at the Oceanid’s mighty wheel, as he always did.

  “Mister Raldi, how’s my ship?” Lucian called, noting with approval that the bridge returned quickly and efficiently to a normal routine, despite the trauma of the warp exit.

  “Number three’s grumbling a bit, my lord, but nothing I can’t contain.”

  “Well enough, keep an eye on it. I don’t want us to be the first to call in the support vessels, at least not this soon.”

  “Also, my lord…”

  “What else?”

  “The sub-etheric veins are detecting a localised field of some sort. There’s some disturbance to station keeping, but again, nothing I can’t compensate for.”

  “Station nine,” Lucian said, addressing the servitor at the gravimetrics station, “perform a primary scan as per Mister Raldi’s parameters.”

  “Astrographics,” Lucian continued.

  “Yes, sir,” the officer at station ten replied.

  “Patch your readings through to the holo.”

  The holo-plinth on the bridge deck before Lucian’s command throne came to life, a green, spheroid representation of local space projected in three dimensions. The Oceanid sat at the dead centre of the projection, and the entire scene was shot through with gently waving tendrils of what appeared to be some gaseous liquid form.

  Lucian looked to the bridge viewing ports on either side, but saw no such phenomenon. Evidently the weird, twisting forms were entirely invisible to the naked eye, though the Oceanid’s various augurs could detect them, and Raldi could feel their effects upon the helm.

  Reams of data scrolled across the projection, and across the pict screens surrounding the command throne. The Oceanid’s logister banks sought to identify the source of the phenomenon, comparing the readings flooding across the screens to records held within the huge crystal memory-stacks. Lucian watched, seeing that the logisters would fail to identify the effect.

  Turning a dial upon the command throne’s arm, Lucian expanded the view of local space, the symbol representing the Oceanid at the centre shrinking as the view zoomed out. He saw, as he had hoped to, a number of augur returns, all within a quarter of a million kilometres, and all holding station. The returns resolved as the augurs locked upon them, Lucian seeing that they represented four capital vessels and an indefinable number of smaller ships, probably two or three escort squadrons. Lucian determined to congratulate his Navigator upon the accuracy of his warp jump, and ordered the ship-to-ship comms channels open.

  Hours later, the Oceanid was within communications range of the fleet, and Lucian stood at the centre of his bridge, a cluster of pict screens arrayed around him. Each had been lowered from overhead upon thick cables, and upon each static-laced screen were the head and shoulders of a master of one of the other vessels of the fleet to have reached the first rendezvous point.

  There were four of them: Master Florian of the Iron Hands Strike Cruiser Fist of Light, Natalia of the Duchess Mclntyre, Captain Jephanim of the Honour of Damlass, and Commodore Ebrahim of the Ajax. According to their initial communications, each had arrived at the muster point within the last three days, an impressive feat of navigation, and one that belied the great skill of the Navigators selected to negotiate the unknown regions of the Damocles Gulf.

  Master Florian was completing his report to the other four ships’ masters.

  “I can therefore conclude that intra-ship transfers are unwise, given the nature of the disturbance. I shall manoeuvre the Fist of Light to a position from which our superior augurs can cover the widest arc, though to be frank, I do not anticipate any contact with enemy forces.”

  “Agreed,” Lucian replied. Although the four vessels and their tiny escort were undoubtedly exposed and vulnerable, the chances of any enemy locating and engaging them in deep space were microscopically small. Mind you, he thought, Lady Issobellis Gerrit had believed the same prior to the Battle of the Hydra, and look what that attitude had gained her.

  “My readings confirm your own.
There’s something deeply anomalous about this region, as we all knew there would be. But still, there’s something I can’t quite…”

  “You feel it too, Gerrit?” Natalia interrupted Lucian. Though her image upon the pict-slate was grainy and blurred, he could see in it an unsettling hesitancy. It was in her voice, too, he thought, a lingering dread that all was not as it should be in the Damocles Gulf.

  “I do, Natalia,” Lucian replied, “and it’s not just the local sub-etheric. It’s the immaterium itself.”

  “You are correct, Gerrit.” Lucian scanned the slates, seeing that it was Captain Ebrahim of the Ajax that had spoken. He had not met the man in person, though he had heard that Ebrahim was a well-regarded officer of the line. “My Navigator was afflicted by some form of convulsion as we exited the warp. We very nearly didn’t make it out. It was the closest I’ve ever come to…”

  “Is he recovered?” Lucian asked.

  “He assures me he needs only a day’s rest, two at the most. I’m not sure what happened, but my crew are certainly unsettled by it. My provosts are on double shifts, keeping the mutinous bastards in line, but I am assured all will be well before the second jump.”

  “Well,” replied Lucian, thinking as he spoke, “with all of the disturbance in this region, I think it’ll be some time before the entire fleet musters. Use that time well, Ebrahim.”

  It was five days before the entire fleet mustered at the lonely rendezvous point. As each had arrived, the various ships’ masters had arranged more ship-to-ship conferences. None would risk a shuttle journey to a host vessel, for the unusual disturbances afflicting the region continued. The risk of losing experienced captains so early in the crusade was unthinkable, and that of losing all of them at once for the sake of a face-to-face meeting was entirely unimaginable.

  Lucian had participated in every such conference, taking on the role of chairman with a natural authority. He far preferred the company, even if it was not face-to-face, of his fellow ships’ masters over that of the council. He considered these men and women to be his equals, while he considered many on the council to be his enemies. He listened to their reports with sympathy, for each told of some minor mishap during the first warp jump, and some of more serious incidents during the exit. None, however, suffered as serious an occurrence as their Navigator suffering convulsions during their warp exit. The thought of that still preyed on Lucian’s mind, for he appreciated how close the Ajax had actually come to being lost in the warp. He knew that the fleet had additional Navigators amongst its complement, should any such event incapacitate one of their number, but in all likelihood, a vessel whose Navigator suffered such a fate would also be lost, with all hands.

  The disappearance of his daughter was also troubling Lucian. In the aftermath of the attack on Inquisitor Grand, and the departure of the fleet, Lucian had very deliberately pushed the issue to the back of his mind. But he had spoken to Korvane of it before they had parted, and had been shocked by his son’s attitude. Korvane, it appeared, had anticipated his stepsister’s fall from grace, and had displayed an entirely dispassionate reaction to it. Lucian refused to write her off as a lost cause, however. In common with many of his standing, he felt that the mores of what passed as society in the galaxy held little sway over him and his clan. He had the curious notion that Brielle was in all likelihood pursuing her own fate, and he grudgingly admired her for doing so. She would be back, though he would certainly call her to account if her actions cost the Arcadius in any manner.

  One of the final tasks Lucian and his son had been faced with before the fleet made warp on the first leg of the crossing of the Damocles Gulf had been the issue of Brielle’s cruiser, the Fairlight. The pair had gone aboard and conferred with Brielle’s officers. Lucian had determined that the ship be turned over to Brielle’s chief of operations for the duration of her absence, making it clear to the Fairlight’s officer cadre, as well as to Korvane, that he considered that absence temporary. He had spoken with the ship’s new, acting master, a long-serving officer by the name of Blaanid, whose line had served the Arcadius since the Fall of Kreel, his great grandfather being one of the petty nobles absorbed into the Arcadius officer cadre during that period. He had shared a bottle of svort with the man, and determined he liked him, even if he could not hold his drink. He had issued Blaanid precise instructions regarding the handling of the Fairlight, making it clear that he wanted the cruiser kept well out of harm’s way unless given specific orders to the contrary. He was one child down on the dynasty already, and could ill afford to lose one third of that dynasty’s space borne assets.

  And so, on the fifth day after his arrival at the muster point, the last of the crusade’s vessels arrived. It was one of the massive, bloated troop transports, each of which carried an entire regiment of Imperial Guard and sufficient supplies to keep it fighting for years if necessary. The transport’s captain had immediately reported widespread lack of discipline amongst the troopers of the 12th Brimlock Light Infantry. General Gauge, travelling on Korvane’s vessel with his staff corps, had insisted he shuttle over to put the unrest down in person, but had been persuaded against the idea by Lucian, who had convinced the old veteran of the danger presented by the anomalous sub-space disturbances when no other ship’s master had succeeded in doing so.

  The last captains’ conference had been held, and the second rendezvous point confirmed. The fleet would travel another stretch of its journey, this jump somewhat longer than the first, the Navigators having familiarised themselves somewhat with the ebbs and flows of the warp in this region. The Oceanid was due to depart in less than an hour, and Lucian was pleased to note that all preparations were complete. He leant back in his command throne, the sudden inactivity not relaxing him, but quite the opposite. He felt an overwhelming tension, despite the years he had been about his business.

  “My lord,” a voice from behind the command throne snapped Lucian from his reverie. “Please forgive me my intrusion.” Lucian felt a mild irritation, for he had not noticed the arrival of anyone on his bridge. He turned to look over his shoulder, seeing that his visitor was the ship’s astropath, Karaldi.

  “There is no intrusion, adept. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  The astropath shuffled forward into Lucian’s view. He was shocked at the man’s appearance. Karaldi had, in Lucian’s opinion, been burned out years ago, and he had considered petitioning the guild for a replacement when the opportunity presented itself. Somehow, that opportunity had never arrived, and against his better judgement he had come to like the old eccentric. Karaldi cared nothing for his personal appearance, which was at the very least dishevelled. His robes were dirty and tattered, his hair unkempt and his face unshaven. His eyes were empty sockets, in common with many of his calling, for the soul binding ritual that allowed him to exercise his powers safely had also blasted his senses to oblivion. The ritual, Lucian knew, blinded most astropaths, and some lost other senses too. He harboured the suspicion that Karaldi had lost his olfactory senses, either that, or he really did not care how bad he smelt.

  “My lord,” the astropath said, bowing deeply to his master, “I have communed with my peers, though only with great difficulty.”

  “Explain,” Lucian replied, unsure of Karaldi’s meaning, but suspecting he had some idea.

  “There is something wrong here, my lord. I cannot explain it.”

  “You are not the only one to believe that to be the case, adept. The Navigators describe the warp hereabouts in similar terms, and even I feel ill at ease. What of the astropaths?”

  “We commune, but in doing so we hear not only the minds of our peers, but of others, or echoes of others. Forgive me, for I cannot easily describe the sensation to a…”

  “Try. You cause no offence. I am master of this vessel and warden of countless souls. If I need to understand, please aid me in doing so.”

  “Our minds, my lord, when we join in astropathic communion, we become entranced, distracted, as if called away
from afar. It’s as if our song, our astropathic choir, is subtly, but sweetly, corrupted. A note, a timbre, not of any astropath, joins our song, interweaving with our minds. It is so sweet that none will reject it, though we know we should sever the communion at the slightest outside interference.”

  Lucian’s blood ran cold at the astropath’s words. If Karaldi was telling him that some entity was working its way into the minds of the astropaths…

  “Oh no, my lord! Never that!” Karaldi blurted, evidently having picked up on Lucian’s surface thoughts. Lucian let it go, for now.

  “I thank you,” Karaldi continued, his face a mask of tension. “No, my lord, it is not some dark thing from the immaterium that whispers to the astropath. It is of this universe, of this place.” Karaldi gestured around him, suggesting that the phenomenon he described was specific to this region, to the Damocles Gulf.

  “If that is so,” Lucian probed, “can you ascribe a source?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes, my lord,” the astropath said, wringing his gnarled hands together, clearly uncomfortable, though determined to convey his concerns. “It is all around us, in the ether, in the warp, in the weave of space itself. But it emanates from somewhere within the Gulf, of that we are certain.”

  “So, the… effect… is likely to increase the deeper the fleet penetrates the Gulf?”

  “Most certainly, my lord.”

  “And your ability to communicate with the other astropaths?”

  “Oh, my lord,” Karaldi said, his face taking on a pained expression. “The note is so sweet, I fear our song might never sound the same without it.”

  Lucian saw what his astropath was really trying to tell him. Though the ways of the psyker were foreign to him, they were not downright alien as they were to most men. “You are telling me that to commune with your peers is to court disaster. Am I correct?”