by William King
Then it happened, the thing that every star voyager fears. Warning lights flared. A terrible vibration passed through the hull of the ship. Weird moaning cries filled the air. I sprang upright in my bunk and reached for a weapon.
‘What in the name of the Emperor?’ said Anton. He pulled himself upright, tugged on his gear and reached for a weapon. It was as instinctive for him as it was for me, although the chances were that there was nothing for us to fight out there.
‘I don’t like this,’ said Ivan. It was understandable. No one likes to hear alarms going off on a starship, particularly not one under way.
‘Really,’ I said. ‘Why ever not?’
‘It makes it difficult to sleep,’ he said and wrinkled a nostril.
The ship started to vibrate as if it were being impacted by a shower of giant meteorites.
‘That’s not good,’ said Anton. His fingers were white where they gripped his sniper rifle. I nodded. I knew we were all thinking about those tales of ships that had sailed off into the dark between the stars never to be seen again. Maybe we were about to find out what happened to them.
All of the lights flickered and went out for a moment. My mouth went dry and my stomach lurched. The thought that without power a starship is just a gigantic coffin entered my mind. No air getting purified and circulated, no heat to drive back the cold of space. No void-shields to ward off enemies. It was so black in the cabin that I could not see my own hand let alone the faces of my companions. I thought of tombs. I thought of ships full of frozen corpses floating through the infinite void. I thought of haunted vessels uncovered a thousand years after they last set out by terrified Imperial explorers. I took a deep breath and told myself not to panic.
It was hard. I could feel my heart pounding against my ribs. I closed my eyes, though it made no difference to the amount I could see. The knowledge that each breath might be my last filled my mind and brought with it a primitive, animal fear. I told myself to breathe, then to take another breath and then another. As long as I was doing that I was still alive. Every breath was a small victory over death.
‘Leo,’ said Anton. There was an undercurrent of fear in his voice.
‘Yes?’ I said. I was proud of the fact that my voice came out level and strong.
‘Any chance of you paying back those five credits you borrowed on Glory?’
‘Not till next payday.’
‘Guess I’ll have to wait then.’ The ship began to shake, violently, like a hive in the grip of a quake. I could feel the vibration passing through my body. The whole floor seemed to be moving up and down. My head hit something hard, and stars flickered across my field of vision. Something wet ran down my brow, blood most likely. I grabbed the support strut of my bed. Muscles twisted in my arms as I tried to maintain my position. I felt the ache of my wound return redoubled. I was not healed well enough for this. I bit back a shout of pain.
The vibration increased. It was far worse than anything the Lux Imperatoris had endured from the planetary defence batteries back in the Demetrius system. I heard a groan from across the room and the clatter of metal hitting metal, and it came to me that Ivan had been tossed right across the chamber.
There were great groans from the hull as if the metal were coming under enormous stress, and the shuddering and bucking of the ship reached a crescendo. Suddenly, everything was silent and still. For a moment I heard nothing save the sound of my own breathing. It was not a good sign. The last thing you want to hear on a starship is silence. It might be the last thing you ever hear.
I was uncomfortably aware of all the sounds that were missing: the rumble of the drives, the whoosh of the great air-circulators, the low humming of the lights, the hundreds of small noises that signalled that the ship and its crew were alive and well. I held my breath, wondering how long it would be before all the systems failed and we died. At that moment, the lights flickered back on. I looked around the cabin. Ivan lay on the ground nearby. Anton was hunched up in his lower bunk, glaring wildly around, fists wrapped round the support stanchions he had been using to hold himself in place. With a groan Ivan raised himself from the floor and said, ‘Someone should have a word with whoever is piloting this ship. I think he still needs to learn a few things.’
‘He got us through whatever it was,’ Anton said.
‘We don’t know that yet,’ I said. They looked at me. I mopped blood off my face with a rolled up shirt and wondered what was going on.
Along with Macharius we stormed onto the bridge of the Lux Imperatoris, pushing through corridors that teemed with uniformed crew members performing urgent repairs. Hundreds of officers bustled around, reacting to incoming data, barking orders into speaking tubes, saluting as they took orders in turn from their superiors. Half the holo-screens looked dead. Tech-priests moved around them intoning technical liturgies as they performed the rituals of maintenance and repair on cracked command altars. The air stank of incense, rising above half-melted machinery. It made me nostalgic for the old days, for riding in the belly of a Baneblade.
The ship’s captain was sitting there on his command throne, surveying his officers as they went about their work. His face was darkened on one side by some kind of flash burn. Men limped and nursed injuries. Medical adepts inspected bodies stretched out on the floor between command altars.
‘What happened?’ Macharius asked.
‘We were caught in a warp storm, Lord High Commander,’ the captain said. ‘It came upon us suddenly as we passed through the immaterium. It separated us from the rest of the fleet. We could not remain in it without being destroyed. Our Navigator plotted an escape course that brought us up in this system. It was the only thing he could do, otherwise we would have been destroyed.’
‘And where exactly is this?’ Macharius asked. The captain steepled his fingers and let out a long breath. He looked at one of the officers who wore the uniform of an astronavigator, a grizzled, grey-haired man with his arm in a sling.
The astronavigator said, ‘I will need to take sightings and plot our position on star charts to be entirely certain. My initial observations lead me to believe that we are in the system marked as Procrastes on old charts, but I would like to confirm that. When a warp storm strikes you can be driven a long way from your initial destination. We are lucky our Navigator managed to bring us out at all.’
‘I’m aware of that fact,’ Macharius said.
‘It is a relatively rare occurrence, Lord High Commander,’ said a smooth new voice. We looked around. A member of one of the great Navigator Houses had entered the command deck. He must have come from the sealed chamber from which he guided the ship. He was a mutant, but the third eye which he used to look out into the warp was decently concealed by a thick brocade scarf bearing the emblems of his House and calling. He did not wear Naval uniform. Instead, he was dressed in the sort of formal court clothes that one associated with the great merchant Houses of the Imperium. ‘The main thing is that we have survived. Many do not.’
The captain looked up from the divinatory altar that he was studying. ‘We have suffered some damage to the ship as we exited the warp. It will take us a few hours to perform repairs.’
One of the officers rose and turned to his captain, clicked his heels, saluted and made a report. ‘Sir, we are picking up considerable comm-chatter. It seems that there is a human inhabited world in this system, and it is coming under attack by xenos.’
That got Macharius’s attention. ‘Record those communications and relay them to me. I wish to know what is going on here.’
If the Navy captain was offended by that peremptory instruction he give no sign of it. ‘Of course, sir,’ he said. ‘But there is nothing we will be able to do until we restore the main power cores and get our engines back online again.’
‘I want you to keep me informed of every development,’ Macharius said. ‘I want to know everything that is happening here. If those xenos make a move against us, let me know immediately.’
‘It w
ill be so,’ the captain said. We followed Macharius off the command deck.
We looked out the huge circular viewport at the dark, dark curtain of space beyond. Macharius had returned to his chambers for the moment, leaving us to our own devices. We had chosen to inspect the damage to the ship from the nearest vantage point to our berths.
The armoured shields had been rolled back. I could see the great pockmarks in the ship’s sides and the small human figures moving along them, checking for flaws in the hull. From here I could see exactly how huge the ship was, a self-contained worldlet, larger than a dozen parade grounds, large enough for an army to march across. There was a suggestion of mountainous hills in the way the superstructure rose over the plains of the lower hull.
‘Think they’ll find anything?’ Anton asked.
‘If the hull had breached while we were in the warp we most likely would all be dead now,’ I said.
‘Not if it got holed at the last moment, as we emerged. Something might have broken in then,’ he said.
‘You’ve been listening to too many sailors’ stories,’ I said. ‘Next you’ll be saying that a hundred years might have passed since we left Demetrius.’
‘Well, they might have,’ said Anton.
‘Yes, they might have, but what difference would that make to us? We’re still alive. That’s all that matters.’
‘We might have missed the crusade.’
‘We could not be that unlucky,’ said Ivan.
‘I doubt any more than a couple of weeks has passed,’ I said, not at all liking the direction this discussion was taking. None of the others seemed to have realised that all of the things they secretly feared had already happened to us. None of us would ever be going home. All of us were marooned in time and space. All we had left was each other and the people we knew. The Imperial Guard was our home now. It had been for many years.
‘Any idea where we are?’ Ivan said.
‘Not where we’re supposed to be, that’s for sure,’ I said. ‘This isn’t Emperor’s Glory. The sun’s the wrong colour.’
‘Another hellhole in the back of beyond then,’ said Ivan. ‘Some things never change.’
‘You think we’re lost?’ said Anton. There was a faint note of panic in his voice.
‘We might be,’ I said, just to wind him up. It was Ivan who chose to break the suspense.
‘Even if we are, they’ll soon find a way to get us home.’
‘Did you see that bloody mutant, that Navigator?’ said Anton. I looked around to make sure none of the crew were close enough to overhear him. The crews of ships are strange. They spent a lot of time locked in these durasteel coffins. They are loyal to each other, and they have no love for outsiders. Not that Anton ever paid much attention to such things.
‘He’s a mutant who has the blessing of the Imperium,’ said Ivan. I could tell the words were making him uneasy even as he said them.
‘Gives me the creeps,’ said Anton. ‘They say they have an extra eye in the middle of their foreheads, that’s why they keep them wrapped. They say it looks into other places, let’s them see things that are not there.’
‘You’ve seen things that weren’t there, when you’ve drunk enough,’ I said. I watched a tiny figure clamber over a gargoyle on the hull. He seemed to come unstuck, like a fly taking off from a wall and began to drift off into space. I wondered if I was watching a small, distant tragedy about which I could do nothing. It would not be for the first time in my life.
I could see Anton’s features reflected translucently in the armour-glass. He sucked his lower lip thoughtfully. The scar flexed on his forehead. He was uneasy. ‘It’s bad enough having to get on these ships,’ he said eventually. ‘Now we don’t even know where we are.’
‘Not much different from usual in your case then, is there?’ said Ivan.
‘You think there might be some sort of curse on the Fist? You think it might be responsible for this happening? Those priests weren’t too happy about us taking it.’
There had been a time when I would have laughed in his face for suggesting such a thing, but I had seen too many strange things since we left Belial. We all had. I watched the drifting crewman. He was tugging himself back in on a line. Maybe he had drifted off deliberately to get a better view of the hull section. In any case I felt relieved.
‘You think some heretic priest’s curse is stronger than the blessings on this ship?’ Ivan asked. ‘It’s as venerable as a Baneblade and served the Emperor just as long as Old Number Ten.’
Anton appeared to consider this. ‘No, probably not.’
‘Good,’ said Ivan. I wondered at the vehemence in his voice and suspected he was just as uneasy as Anton. He just hid it better.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll get home in one piece,’ I said and added eventually in a murmur too low for the others to hear.
Four
‘Lord Ashterioth,’ Sileria says. ‘There is something you should see.’
I look at her, mortally weary of existence, and I say, ‘I am already looking at you.’
She smiles at the flattery but says, ‘A ship has been detected.’
‘Eldar?’ I ask, wondering how my enemies could have found me. What mistake had I made that they picked up the trail so quickly?
‘Human,’ she says. ‘It emerged into real space from the translocation point some hours ago.’
‘A trader?’ I say. It seems the most likely explanation. I know this world is not part of any of the human political blocs in this part of the galaxy.
‘The energy profile fits that of a warship, lord,’ she says.
‘Just one? Not a fleet?’
She nods. ‘It could be a scout. It is not progressing in-system. It is holding a position near the translocation point.’
‘You think it some form of advance guard?’ I begin to play back our invasion of this place in my mind. When we seized this world, no distress signal was sent on any of the channels we monitored, and we could not have missed anything the human’s primitive systems could broadcast. I know they do not have any of the psykers the humans are foolish enough to use, the so-called astropaths.
‘The energy profile is unusual,’ she says and hands me the vision-slab.
I see instantly what she means. ‘Very low emissions for a warship of that displacement. It is damaged, a straggler from a fleet perhaps, or survivor of a warp storm washed up here.’
She nods again, and I smile coldly. ‘Muster the fleet,’ I say. ‘Let us go and take a look at this unexpected prize.’
‘It could have been worse,’ said Drake. He was sitting in one of the massive leather armchairs in Macharius’s state room. Macharius sat across the table from him. There was a regicide board between them. Neither had touched it in hours.
‘By this you mean we could be dead,’ Macharius said. His face was grim, and I thought I understood why. There was nothing he could do here, the repairs of the great warship were out-with his area of competence. He was just as helpless as the rest of us, and he did not like it in the least little bit.
‘I mean things could be worse,’ said Drake. His voice was patient. He seemed a man much more used to being patient than Macharius at that exact moment. I knew this was not entirely the case. Macharius could be as unflappable as a stone idol when waiting on news from a battlefield. Then he was never flustered. This was something different.
‘I must be on Emperor’s Glory soon and with this cargo intact,’ said Macharius.
‘We have suffered very little temporal displacement according to my chronometric readings,’ said Drake. ‘Once the repairs are done we shall be back under way. We will not have lost much time.’
‘If our crew can locate where we are and plot a course home,’ said Macharius. ‘Something went very wrong on our way out.’
And there it was, the thing that was on all of our minds. Something had gone wrong and none of us were sure what it was. If we had been on a battlefield, Macharius would have known and understood any setba
ck. Here we were just sentient cargo.
It never fails to worry me exactly how vulnerable all starships are. In the event of the Navigators going mad, getting killed or being taken out of action, there was no way of a ship getting home. No normal man could look out into the warp and pick the ship’s path through that strange sub-universe. On the back of this fact, the Navigator Houses had turned themselves into one of the great powers of the Imperium. It was possible to argue that without them there would be no Imperium at all. Without starships, how would the great armies move?
The air flickered and a holo appeared in the air above the table. It presented a picture of the ship’s command deck.
One of the watch officers suddenly stood up at the divinatory altar he was supervising, spoke something to the ship’s captain, who gave an order to his subordinate, then spoke to Macharius.
‘Lord High Commander, I must report we have picked up signals from multiple incoming ships. Xenos.’
‘Hostile?’ said Macharius. There was little chance they would be anything else.
‘We must assume so.’
‘I will need access to command echelon sub-nets of the ship’s vox systems,’ said Macharius. ‘And I will need it now.’
The captain nodded. Macharius strode over to an altar and called up internal schematics of the ship. Being who he was, he had most likely memorised all of them earlier, but he wanted access now. He put a comm-bead into his ear and slipped a microphone under his jaw just as the battle-stations warnings echoed through the ship.
Ignoring them he began to speak commands, gravely, precisely and with a certain relish.
Our ships spiral gracefully out-system towards the contact. I sit at the helm and study the vision crystal. All around ancient power sources hum. The crew perform their duties in the long oval chamber, its ruddy light turning them into bloody phantoms. For a moment, I contemplate the beauty of the intricate mechanisms that keep me alive and move me across the face of the void.