The Flight of the Eisenstein

by James Swallow

  The bunker silenced, Temeter glanced into the tunnel mouths that branched downward from it. ‘Seal all of these,’ he ordered. ‘We don’t want rats popping up behind us after our line advances past this point.’ Without the roar of the cannons, once again the captain became aware of the reedy caterwauling issuing from a vox-speaker. He punched it into pieces with his fist. ‘Destroy those repeaters wherever you see them,’ Temeter continued. ‘That oath-forsaken noise is damaging my calm.’

  ‘Sir!’ called one of the men, pointing out through the gun slit.

  Temeter saw a huge shadow dropping towards the horizon on pillars of retro-rocket fire, and then felt the earth tremble like a struck bell. Every Astartes in the bunker left the floor for a split second, and he heard the ferrocrete roof crack with the shockwave. The captain peered out and saw a massive cylinder standing upright in a shroud of steam, some distance beyond the zone where the drop-pods had put down. It was easily the size of a hive-city habitat block, guidance fins still glowing cherry-red with the heat of re-entry. There came a mighty moan of stressed metals and the sides of the cylinder fell away, trailing flexible pipes and streams of white vapour. From inside the monstrous drop-capsule came the hooting call of a battle-horn, and then planes of steel and iron emerged from the smoke to become a colossus bristling with armour and guns. The ground resonated with each thunderous footfall as the Imperator-class Titan strode out towards the Choral City.

  ‘Dies Irae,’ said Temeter, naming the massive war machine. ‘Our cousins from the Legion Mortis have decided to join our outing.’ He allowed himself to marvel at the huge battle construct, then shook it off. ‘Signals,’ he called, ‘contact the Irae’s princeps and update him on the battle situation.’

  The young Astartes officer handed Temeter back his combi-bolter and frowned. ‘Lord, there is a concern with the vox.’

  ‘Explain,’ he demanded.

  ‘We’re having difficulty making contact on some channels, including the feed to the Titan and our ships in orbit.’

  Temeter glanced up. ‘Are the locals jamming us?’

  The Astartes shook his head. ‘I don’t believe so, captain. The drop-out is too selective for that. It’s as if… Well, it’s as if certain vox frequencies have just been switched off.’

  He accepted this with a brisk nod. ‘We’ll work around it, then. If the problem gets worse, then inform me. Otherwise, we proceed with the attack plan as determined.’ Temeter bounded out of the cloying air of the dead bunker and strode forward. ‘On to the Choral City,’ he called. A vast shadow hove above him and the captain looked up to see the underside of the Dies Irae’s foot as it passed over him, descending to fall upon another bunker some distance ahead. The heavy impacts of artillery were starting to converge, coming down in twists of smoke. ‘Death Guard!’ he called, shouldering his bolter, ‘we’ll let the giant take the brunt of the big guns. Into the trenches, brothers. Sweep the ground clean of these rebellious scum!’

  CARYA LOOKED UP as the brass leaves of the bridge iris whispered open to admit Garro and his two warriors. The man shot a quick, nervous look across at the woman Vought and then put up the mask of sullen authority that he had worn in the landing bay. ‘Battle-captain on the bridge,’ he intoned, and saluted.

  Garro accepted the honour with a nod. ‘Ceremony was appeased down below, Master Carya. Let’s not overburden ourselves with it here, and stick to the necessities instead, yes?’

  ‘As you wish, captain. Are you going to take the conn?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not without good reason.’ Garro took in the layout of the ship’s command chamber. It was unornamented, as was fitting to the lean and spare intentions of a vessel in the service of the Death Guard. Unlike some starships, where decorative panels of wood or metal covered the walls, the Eisenstein’s conduits and workings were bare to the eye. Twisted snarls of cables and piping ranged around the bridge space, clustering around cogitator consoles and viewports. They reminded Garro of the gnarled roots of ancient trees.

  Vought seemed to catch on to Garro’s train of thought. ‘This vessel may not be pretty, but it has a strong heart, captain. It’s been an unswerving servant of the Emperor since the day it left the Luna shipyards, before I was born.’ He noticed how she was careful not to look directly at his injured leg. Even under his power armour, the stiffness in his gait made the aftermath of his recent injury obvious.

  Garro put a hand on the central navitrix podium, studying the etheric compass enclosed in a sphere of glass and suspensor fields. A discreet gunmetal plaque fixed to the podium’s base showed the ship’s name, class and details of the frigate’s launching. Nathaniel read it to himself and felt amusement tug at his lips. ‘Fascinating. It seems the Eisenstein took to space in the same year I became an Astartes.’ He glanced at Vought. ‘I have a kinship with her already.’

  The deck officer returned his smile, and for the first time Garro felt a moment of genuine connection with a member of the crew.

  ‘Eisenstein,’ ventured Sendek, rolling the word over his lips. ‘It is a word from an old Terran dialect, of the Jermani. It means “iron-stone”. It is fitting.’

  Carya nodded. ‘Your warrior is correct, Captain Garro. It also shares its name with two noted men from the Age of Terra, one a remembrancer, the other a scientist.’

  ‘Such history for a mere frigate,’ Decius opined.

  The shipmaster’s eyes flashed for an instant. ‘With respect, lord, in the Warmaster’s military there is no such thing as a mere frigate.’

  ‘Forgive my battle-brother,’ said Garro mildly, ‘he has grown too comfortable in the spacious bunks aboard the Endurance.’

  ‘A fine ship,’ Carya replied. ‘We’ll do well to match the battle record of so illustrious a vessel.’

  Garro smiled slightly. ‘We’re not here to win accolades, shipmaster, just to do our duty.’ He approached the front of the bridge, where rows of consoles and operator pulpits glowed with the actinic blue of pict-screens. ‘What is our status?’

  ‘At station-keeping,’ said Vought. ‘The Warmaster’s orders were to hold at these co-ordinates until all Astartes were aboard, then await further commands.’

  The battle-captain nodded. ‘I am afraid that we may not be making much history today. Our primarch has ordered that we maintain orbit here at high anchor and watch for enemy ships that may attempt to escape Isstvan III under cover of the ground assault.’

  Garro had barely finished speaking when a bell chime sounded from a shadowed nook off to the starboard side of the bridge. A heavy sound-curtain was bunched up to one side of the dim recess, held open by a thick silver cord. It was a vox hide, an alcove where important communications could be received in relative privacy during combat operations. A gangly young officer wearing a complex signalling collar and holding a data-slate in his hand stepped out into the light and snapped to attention. ‘Machine-call message, prioris cipher, expedite immediate.’ He wavered, looking between Garro and Carya, unsure of who to address. ‘Sir?’

  The shipmaster offered an open hand. ‘Let me have it, Mister Maas.’ He glanced at Garro. ‘Captain, if you will permit me?’

  Nathaniel nodded and watched Carya page quickly through the data. ‘Ah,’ he said, after a moment. ‘It seems Lord Mortarion has decided to make a different use of us. Vought, bring manoeuvring thrusters to standby.’

  Garro took the slate as the deck officer carried out her directions. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘No, sir. New orders.’ The shipmaster bent over the helm servitor and began giving out a string of clipped commands.

  The data-slate was curt and to the point. Directly from the vox dispatch nexus aboard the Vengeful Spirit, marked with the signet runes of the Death Lord and Horus’s equerry Maloghurst, the fresh directives were for Eisenstein to depart from the current navigation point and drop into a lower orbital path.

  Like all Astartes of senior rank, Garro had training and experience in starship operations and he fell back into
the learning drilled into his mind by hypno-conditioning as he read, figuring the status of the frigate once the new co-ordinates were reached.

  He frowned. Typhon had told him that Eisenstein was to act as an interceptor for Isstvanian absconders, but once settled at this new posting, the ship would be too close to the edge of the third planet’s atmosphere to react quickly enough. To function correctly in their assigned role, the frigate had to stay high, giving the gunnery crews time to spot, target and destroy enemy ships. The drop in altitude only narrowed their field of fire. Then he studied the corresponding planetary co-ordinates and his concern deepened. The orbital shift would put the Eisenstein directly over the Choral City, and Garro was certain that no void-capable craft had been left intact down there.

  He handed the slate back to Maas, his frown deepening. Had they been carrying drop-pods and Astartes for a second assault wave, then the reasoning behind the orders would have been clear, but the frigate was not configured for those sorts of operations. It was, in the most basic sense, only a gun carriage. Decked with weapons batteries that emerged from her flanks in spiky profusion, Eisenstein’s only function when ranged so close to a world was one of stand-off planetary bombardment, but such an action seemed unthinkable. After all, Horus had already eschewed Angron’s demands to blast the Choral City into ashes at the war council. The Warmaster would surely not change his mind so quickly, and even if he had, there were hundreds of loyal men down there.

  Garro became aware that Carya was looking at him. ‘Captain? If you have nothing to add, I’m going to execute the orders.’

  Garro nodded distantly, feeling an ill-defined chill wash through him. ‘Proceed, Master Carya.’ The Death Guard stepped closer to the main viewport and stared out through the armourglass. Beneath him, the cloud-swirled sphere of Isstvan III began to drift nearer.

  ‘Something wrong, lord?’ Decius spoke in a sub-vocal whisper, below the hearing of the crewmen.

  ‘Yes,’ said the battle-captain, and the sudden honesty of the admission surprised him. ‘But by Terra, I don’t know what it is.’

  KALEB SHRANK DEEP inside the folds of the ship-robes and moved with care along the edges of the service gantry. Over the years he had become quite adept at being unseen in plain sight and to an outside observer the housecarl would have resembled nothing but a common serf. His badge of fealty to the Death Guard and the Seventh Company was swaddled beneath the grey material. There was a part of his thoughts that cycled an endless loop of anxious warnings against what he was doing, but Kaleb found himself moving forward despite it, going onward.

  How had he changed so? What he was doing had to be some sort a criminal act, masquerading as an Eisenstein crewman instead of openly walking with his real identity visible, and yet, he felt filled with the rightness of his actions. Ever since the Emperor had answered Kaleb’s prayers in the infirmary and saved his master Garro, the housecarl had become emboldened. His orders were coming from a higher power. Perhaps they always had, but only now was he sure of it. The battle-captain had told him to follow the Stormbird’s cargo, and he was about it. If it was Garro’s wish, then this was the Emperor’s work, and Kaleb would be right in doing it.

  After the men of the Seventh had left the landing bay, Kaleb had placed himself where he could give directions to the frigate’s servitors but also observe the last Stormbird. It had only been a few minutes before one of Grulgor’s men had returned to the bay – the boorish one, Mokyr – and drawn off a work gang of serfs to unload the shuttle’s cargo. Kaleb watched the heavy steel cubes roll out of the vessel, and then watched the serfs bind them to chain carriages and shift them towards the aft. The containers were identical: blocks of dull metal scarred and pitted from use, detailed with the Imperial aquila and stencilled warning runes in brilliant yellow paint. They could hold anything. From this distance, Kaleb could not read the loading scrolls fixed to the flanks.

  He watched with interest as one of the helot teams fumbled and a crate slipped on its moorings, falling a metre before the men caught the slack and stopped it slamming into the deck. Mokyr stormed over to the foreman and backhanded him to the floor. Over the constant noise of the bay, Kaleb could not fathom the words he spoke, but the tone of the Death Guard’s ill-temper was obvious.

  In a steady train, the crates shifted up and away. Kaleb watched them, hesitating. He had orders to supervise the equipment transfer, yes, but Garro had also demanded information on the nature of the Stormbird’s cargo. Kaleb convinced himself that the latter was the more important command.

  So, keeping his distance, the housecarl threaded his way through the Eisenstein, keeping the convoy of containers in sight, careful to stay out of Mokyr’s eye-line. The crates were halted in the service gantries that ran down the spine of the frigate. On either side of the open steel tunnel were loading gears and hopper mechanisms for the ship’s primary weapons batteries. Large open gun breeches lined the walkway, ready to accept war shots from the ammunition magazines that towered above them. The crates were being shifted to the staging areas near the portside guns. Kaleb’s face showed confusion and he let his gaze follow the length of one huge cannon out beyond the hull through the armoured slits of the sighting port. He saw the dim reflection of a planetary surface out there, drifting in the dark.

  The work gangs had some of the crates open and he shifted forward to get a better look, slipping over the lip of seal plates where wide emergency barrier partitions would drop into place in the event of a munitions discharge or misfire. Kaleb’s dismay grew stronger when he recognised the tall, broad shapes of Death Guard standing watch over the serfs while they worked. Bareheaded and intent, Commander Grulgor was at their forefront, shouting out orders and giving directions with sharp jerks of his hand. The crate closest to him gave out an oiled hiss and unfolded like a gift box. Inside there were hexagonal frames, and racked upon them were a dozen glass spheres. Each one was at least a metre in diameter, and all of them were filled with a thick chemical slurry of vomitous green fluids.

  A black symbol made up of interlocking broken rings decorated each capsule, and some basic animal reaction made Kaleb’s hands clench around the railing he hid behind. A quick mental calculation told him that if all the crates were identical, then there were over a hundred of the spheres in Grulgor’s cargo. Things added up: Mokyr’s abrupt anger, the commander’s presence at the unloading, the exaggerated delicacy with which the crewmen moved the capsules. Whatever the liquid was inside them, the glass pods represented something utterly lethal.

  The thought crystallised in Kaleb’s mind with such an impact that it pushed him back up to his feet. Suddenly, all the bravery he had felt at his clever little disguise evaporated, and stabs of fear shot through him. The housecarl spun about to run and slammed into an ambling servitor with a tray of tools. The piston-legged machine slave tipped over and collapsed, sending its gear flying. The tool-parts sent up a cacophony of sound, drawing the attention of Grulgor’s Astartes. Kaleb saw Mokyr start towards his hiding place and the housecarl fled into the deeper shadows.

  Fear enveloped him as readily as the thick material of the ship-robes. It was only as his eyes adjusted to the dark that the housecarl realised he had backed into a wide alcove with no other exits. The dead-end stopped with a sheer wall of hull metal and hanging catwalks overhead that he couldn’t hope to reach. He would be found. He would be found and they would know who he was and who had sent him. Nerves in the servant’s legs twitched. Grulgor would end his life, he was certain of it. He remembered the look in the commander’s eyes back aboard the Endurance, the loathing. But that death would be nothing compared to the crushing failure it represented. Kaleb Arin would die and he would perish having failed both his master and the Master of Mankind.

  Mokyr gave the servitor a sideways look and kept coming, straight towards Kaleb, one hand resting on the hilt of his combat blade. The housecarl prayed silently. Emperor, Lord of Man, protect me and hold me safe against the enemies of Your Divine Will
—

  In the next second he was yanked from his feet and felt strong hands pull him off the deck, up and away. Kaleb thrashed, coming to face a serious aspect there in the dimness.

  ‘Voyen?’ he whispered.

  The Apothecary put a finger to his lips and held Kaleb tightly. The housecarl looked down from the catwalk and watched Mokyr run a cursory glance over the alcove below them, then snort and stride back to Grulgor. After a moment, Voyen relaxed his grip and let Kaleb settle on to the scaffold.

  ‘Lord?’ whispered the servant. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Voyen’s voice was a low rumble. ‘Like you, my suspicions were piqued. Unlike you, my skills in stealth are of a decent standard.’

  ‘Thank you for saving me, sir. If Mokyr had found me there—’

  ‘It would not have gone well.’ It was clear the Apothecary was deeply troubled.

  Kaleb looked back at the loaders and the glass spheres.

  ‘Those orbs, what are they?’ The work gangs were busy detaching the warhead cowlings from thruster-guided glide bombs, exchanging the explosive charges inside for the globes of liquid.

  Voyen tried to speak, and it was as if the words caught in his throat, too distasteful for him to even bring to bear. ‘Those are Life-Eater capsules,’ he managed. ‘It is an engineered viral strain of such complete lethality that it can only be deployed in the most extreme circumstances, usually against the most foul xenos.’

  He looked away and Kaleb felt a chill at the warrior’s mien. If an Astartes could be fearful of these things…

  ‘It is a bane-weapon of the highest order, a world-killer. Only the largest capital ships are permitted to carry it in their armouries’

  ‘They brought it from the Endurance!’ Kaleb blinked. ‘Why, lord? Why are they loading it to fire on the planet?’

  Voyen gave him a hard look. ‘Kaleb, listen to me. Go to the captain and tell him what we have seen. As fast as you can, little man. Go. Go now!’