The Path of Heaven

by Chris Wraight

  ‘He does.’

  ‘Bring him back, the others too. There is nothing here for us.’

  Then the Khan turned and started to march back the way he had come. There was no time left for speculation – the docked Stormbirds were far off, and Jubal would not have notified him if the threat were not imminent.

  Then he paused, looking back over his shoulder.

  The end of the Crusade.

  Dark Glass had not been made by House Achelieux. It had been made by the Emperor.

  Then he was moving again. The questions might be answered, but not now, and not by him. Just as it had done unbroken for every year of his centuries-long life, battle called again.

  White Scars fast-attack wings screamed out of the empty void. Phalanxes of fighters – Fire Raptors, Storm Eagles, Xiphon interceptors – scattered ahead of the thundering passage of frigate-level warships. A full third of the V Legion fleet had been deployed, every void craft powered up to maximum velocity.

  The Kaljian thrust ahead, foremost of the true warships. Twenty more frigates fanned out in its promethium-afterburn wake, thirty destroyer-class escorts, hundreds of gunships and heavy bombers, all snaking and diving among one another in perfect synchronisation.

  Faster.

  Shiban stood on the edge of the bridge command platform, watching his brothers burn towards the inner edge of the aether-clouds – the extremity they had pushed through in order to discover Dark Glass.

  No one rides the void like we do, he thought.

  ‘Signals!’ reported Tamaz.

  Ahead of them, the azure walls of turbulence churned – the vast inner sphere of blue-tinged detritus, unbroken, unscannable, crawling outwards from the epicentre with glacial slowness.

  Shiban narrowed his eyes. Garbled visual signals multiplied ahead, obscure but tangible, hundreds of them. Every crew member on the bridge concentrated their attention forwards, waiting for the first break in the boiling matter. They knew where the enemy would emerge – a straight line from the Mandeville point – but only roughly, and they did not yet know numbers.

  ‘Maintain full speed,’ Shiban ordered. ‘Fire only on my mark.’

  The initial impact would be critical. Their pursuers would be sensor-blind, prone, vulnerable, suffering from the damage of the passage as they had done in their turn.

  Then the first one punched through, shoving a plume of blue-edged plasma ahead of it.

  ‘Swing to zenith!’ roared Shiban. ‘Calibrate all lances on that point!’

  The ships powered upwards. The fighter wings angled sharply, boosting ahead, followed by the heavier gunship squadrons, then the lance-bearing vessels.

  Shiban waited just a few seconds longer, watching the azure cloud-banks pucker with incoming ship-forms. The moment had to be timed, held back for maximum impact.

  ‘Mark,’ he commanded.

  Every attack craft loosed its weapons, just as the first enemy prows jutted clear of the aether-storm. Torpedoes, las-beams, heavy bolter-rounds, cannonades – all smashed across the narrow void and slammed into the emerging ships. A curtain of immolation spilled across the sphere’s concave interior, igniting against the edge of the turbulence and sending coronas of fire flaring wildly.

  ‘Again.’

  The gunships came about quickest, hammering at the flame-wreathed ships from their battle-cannons. More lance-strikes followed, splitting the void with white-hot intensity. Salvo after salvo hit home, cracking against void shields and slamming hard into the adamantium beneath.

  In the face of that concentrated fury, even Legion armour would break. Enemy escorts shot clear of the cloud-banks, swathed in an aegis of drawn-out aether-spume and burning plasma. Like firecrackers they spat and withered, leaking promethium from a thousand cuts, their spines aflame with sequential explosions. They were III Legion outriders, nigh as fast as the V Legion craft that preyed on them, thrown hard into the maelstrom and taking on horrific levels of damage.

  ‘Punish them,’ ordered Shiban coldly, bracing himself as the Kaljian fired its main lance again, spearing the beam clean through the ventral flanks of a tumbling Emperor’s Children destroyer. ‘Again.’

  The mass of firepower ramped up another notch, turning the starless void white and gold. White Scars hunters wheeled and darted amid the carnage, swinging in wide arcs like the raptors of the old plains, piling on the waves of destruction.

  The entire enemy vanguard broke apart, its formation shattered as commanders desperately tried to evade the concentrated barrage. Some plunged low, others tried to climb; a few desperately activated retro-thrusters to slow their emergence from the encompassing aether-clouds. The Scars went after all of them, running them down, harrying them with a freedom they had not been able to indulge for years.

  At the forefront, the Kaljian turned hard, exposing its broadside to the burning morass of ships before it.

  ‘All guns,’ ordered Shiban, feeling exhilaration again. ‘Fire at will.’

  The frigate’s macrocannons boomed out, hurling their payloads across the abyss in serried waves. Two III Legion escorts were snared in the hurricane, their shields annihilated, their hulls breached, their fuel-tanks pierced. Seconds later they exploded, spreading huge starbursts of raging plasma and tumbling debris in ragged blast-spheres.

  But then the true monsters emerged, barging their way through the barrier, their heavy-armoured prows shoving aside thick tendrils of flame. The enemy battleships thrust into contact like cetaceans swimming up from the deeps, their heavy guns already firing. These were liveried in both purple and gold, and dirty white – the combined main attack force of the Emperor’s Children and the Death Guard.

  ‘Ready second wave,’ ordered Shiban, watching the giants push their way into range. There was still a tactical advantage, one that had to be pushed for as long as possible. ‘Select targets and run-out guns.’

  The numbers were already daunting. Line-class battleships roared into contention, one after the other, all more heavily armed and defended than the advance guard. They smashed their way up through the shattered ruins of their own kind, already firing back from main lances and soon to be in position to launch their own ruinous broadside volleys.

  ‘Now,’ commanded Shiban, giving the pre-prepared signal to Tamaz. ‘All ships, fire second wave.’

  The Kaljian leapt forwards, its crew feeding a final boost-level to its straining engines. The frigate raced out under the shadow of the burning enemy wrecks, aiming for the blunt angle of a XIV Legion cruiser. Its speed brought it away from the potential of the forward lances and below the fire-arc of the macrocannon batteries.

  Every White Scars ship did the same, relying on superior momentum and position to race in close, avoiding the ship-killing lance fire-lanes and rushing in to raking range. Every commander switched power from fleet-range weapons to the close-killers. The gunship wings did likewise, swarming over the bridge-towers of the bigger ships and hammering them with concentrated bolter volleys. They flew fiercely fast, fiercely close, strafing along the spires of the Emperor’s Children ships and the blunt watchtowers of the Death Guard vessels, breaking and burning. Fighter wings shot along in support, soaring clear to loose charges into the mouths of the opening hangars, destroying the enemy gunships before they could even get out of the hulls.

  The Kaljian reached its destination, hurtling along the underside of the greater mass of the Death Guard battlecruiser and peppering it with targeted strikes from its upper-level guns. Just as it drew level with the far larger vessel, Shiban ordered retro-thrusters to fire, subjecting the frigate to a bone-aching drop in velocity.

  ‘Flanking fire,’ he ordered, watching the more ponderous warship struggle to come about. They were close in now, and he could see every panel of every deck-level, every comms-vane and every gunwale covering. ‘Over hard.’

  The tactical crew responded, sending t
he frigate swinging over on its central axis, rolling tightly and bringing its lateral broadsides into range.

  For a moment, Shiban relished the sight – the target was just a few hundred metres distant, already burning, moving too slowly to do anything about it.

  ‘Fire.’

  The Kaljian’s broadside thundered out, vomiting its entire complement of loaded ordnance in a single bloc. The macrocannons slammed back in their carriages, barrels glowing hot as the shells sped across the void.

  They hit in a rolling wave of plate-ripping devastation, impacts feeding from one another, birthing a raging cauldron of liquid fire across the battlecruiser’s flanks. Its void shields blazed then buckled, exposing the hull-plates beneath, which were pulverised by the incoming waves of hard-round ammunition.

  The battlecruiser was bodily crunched aside, spinning clear of the smaller frigate, its underside raging. The Kaljian rolled back the other way, rotating one hundred and eighty degrees to bring its other broadside gunnery to bear.

  By then, Shiban was grinning. ‘Fire!’

  The second volley had the same intensity as the first, launched by weapons teams anxious to match the performance of their brothers, and the void was ripped apart again by the tempest of the battery launching as one. Mortars and incendiaries pierced the burning cruiser’s shell, burrowing deep to strike at its vital organs – its engines, its fuel tanks, its warp reactor.

  ‘Now away!’ roared Shiban, detecting the first huge energy spikes. ‘Get us out, then find another.’

  The Kaljian kept firing even as its enginarium crew propelled it beyond the burning battlecruiser, out ahead, into the oncoming storm of ships. Just as it broke free of the blast-zone, the cruiser exploded, blasted apart by the horrific forces unleashed within it. It broke into three, plumes of raw plasma flaring into the tortured abyss, its constituent parts spinning wildly and sending clouds of burning metal flying. White Scars fighters flew exuberantly through the blazing wreckage, strafing the last of it before circling around to find new prey.

  Shiban guided the Kaljian higher, pulling up across the expanding battlesphere. Every passing second brought a new ship into the void-theatre, a huge procession of Legion assets. Soon the numbers would become ridiculous – they would have to fall back to Jubal’s position and consolidate ahead of the gathering storm. These newcomers were too huge and well-armoured to be troubled by the firepower he had at his command, and once they reacted to the sensor-loss and the damage of the passage, they would be able to deploy fearsome levels of retribution.

  But not yet. For a few precious moments more, they were disorientated, plunging into a feverish nightmare of swirling fire and an enemy that was fast and savage, and had nothing to lose.

  He almost laughed aloud, just as he had once done in every battle.

  ‘The Khagan!’ he roared, and the crew on the bridge roared back.

  Then the Kaljian ducked and pushed ahead, its next target located and fixed, its guns reloaded and its engines at full tilt. Every white-prowed ship in the fleet did the same thing, racing heedless into the maw of danger, unloading their wrath, out-pacing, out-firing, out-thinking, and bringing the long-nurtured vengeance of Chogoris to those who had dared to chase them down.

  Every shadow held a flame of malice within it, curling away, rising from the blackened iron like heat-haze. The lower they went, the more acute it became. The surroundings gradually changed, from the utilitarian bleakness of the upper void station into something new – an almost organic profusion of curls and spirals, all sculpted from the same unyielding metal, glinting in the gloom like obsidian blade-edges.

  ‘This place not made for star-mapping,’ Yesugei said to Veil.

  The ecumene nodded. ‘Not completely,’ he said, shuffling clumsily through the narrow corridor. ‘Something else, yes.’

  Ahead of them went four legionaries, blades drawn and casting flicker-patterns of electric-blue across the pressed metal walls. Behind them came two more, and after them the unbroken shadow.

  Yesugei checked his comm. Nothing. No orders, no updates.

  That in itself was strange. He was about to open a channel to the Khagan when Veil suddenly halted.

  ‘Now, then. I recognise these things.’

  Just ahead, the corridor opened up into a high, circular chamber, its walls clustered with ganglia of pipework. Long grilles ran away into the distant roof-vaults, screening narrow shafts that led out in all directions, and the floor was smooth and polished. Helm lumens rippled over valves and gauges, all linked to a byzantine clot of glass transistors. None of it was operative, but Yesugei could feel a faint afterglow of heat across the surface.

  ‘What are they?’ he asked.

  Veil poked at the machinery with his good hand. ‘So much power needed, impossible amounts. But they were trying here.’ He turned back to Yesugei, and his face was a ghostly glow behind his void-suit’s visor. ‘We used machines like this on Herevail, and on Denel Five. They built one on Denel and it took years, and even then it was not enough.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To go beyond the shallows.’

  Yesugei reached out and touched the machines in the walls. They were old. They looked barely human in origin – more like xenos constructs, designed by minds far removed from Terran limitations. Even the portals around the edge of the chamber were oddly shaped – fluid, with fern-like tendrils intertwining with the forests of cables.

  Veil moved across to the far side of the chamber, held rapt by what he was seeing, studying everything. The legionaries remained at the doorways, on alert. Yesugei felt a gathering sense of unease. The air should have been colder – they were far from any heat-source, and yet the readings had started to climb. The silence was unnerving, and had been for a long time. Only his own breathing broke the grip of it.

  Where was Arvida? Why had he not heard from the Khan?

  He moved towards the chamber’s centre. The poison was getting to him, making his thoughts cloudy. He had let it work for too long – arrogance had always been the great peril for his kind.

  ‘Something is aware of us,’ Yesugei said. ‘Keep away from the machines.’

  Just as the order passed his lips, the chamber suddenly flickered into light. Strip-lumens running up the walls flared briefly, then settled into an uncertain glare. A column of vivid blue light burst out from the floor, surging up to head-height, then disintegrated in a riot of cascading sparks.

  In its wake stood a man, smooth-skinned, young-looking, wearing rich robes and a sapphire-draped bandana across his forehead.

  ‘Welcome to Dark Glass,’ came a cultured voice speaking Terran-accented High Gothic. ‘I am Novator Pieter Helian Achelieux, House Achelieux, Cartomancer’s Envoy. I am sure you have many questions.’

  Twenty

  Everything was difficult, everything was slow. The entire crew worked as if in a fog of insomnia, taking far longer than they should have to complete even the simplest tasks.

  Ilya was not immune – she had to cram her fists into her face and rub hard to wake herself up. Watch-squads of legionaries were dispersed from their stations to oversee operations in the enginarium and on the gunnery levels. For a short while, that stopped the rot, but then the chain of command slowed again, and Jubal ordered more to move through the vast starship. They had licence to use their weapons, to force compliance, something that was hateful to all, for the White Scars had never been a Legion built on fear.

  Despite it all, the fleet had responded. Alignment was almost complete, the defence-grids raised. Shiban’s desperate raid had done what it had needed to do – given space for the main battleships to orientate themselves to the approaching enemy, to gauge their numbers and their positions, to formulate a defence.

  Jubal strode back and forth among the bridge crews, issuing orders with every breath, tireless, imposing. Ilya admired him, just as all others did. />
  It would not be long now. Through the viewports she could already see the first of Shiban’s outriders limping back from the initial raids, their flanks streaming plasma. Beyond that were the mammoth beasts of the void, the pale-prowed monsters of the XIV, the gaudy barges of the III.

  She rubbed her eyes again, scouring away the ever-present urge to give up, to let it all go. Every time she stood still for a moment, the same thoughts raced to clog her mind.

  This has been wasted. There is nothing here. He is not here. They have found us, and now it ends, far from Terra, alone.

  She staggered over to a nest of sensor-lenses. The Swordstorm remained in close proximity to several heavy cruisers and three personnel transports – the manoeuvre to turn and bring its lance into optimal range was not trivial.

  It was then that she saw the signals, hundreds of them, swarming out of a lone vessel running almost dark, its engine signature flaring off the scale.

  ‘What is that?’ she asked one of the sensorium menials, pulling him from his station and showing him the markers.

  The man looked at them dully for a moment, blinking. Then he pulled himself together. ‘The Xo Gamail,’ he said. ‘Out of position. Drifting. They have been hailing.’

  Ilya turned away, strode over to a comm-station and took up the equipment. There were many shuttles out in the void, pulling ahead of a greater crowd of saviour pods. She isolated the ident of the lead craft and patched in a link. ‘Declare yourself,’ she ordered.

  It took a moment for the link to punch through. When it did, the quality was grainy, almost inaudible.

  ‘Open the hangars. Vessel abandoned due to engine failure. We are one hundred and thirty-two Legion blades, many more standard crew. Open the hangars.’

  She recognised the voice instantly. She had been at the trials, and had never forgotten them. ‘You have left it late,’ she warned, pulling up a schematic to assess if a transfer were even possible. ‘The shields are up.’